After our fantastic partnership on Graceful Explosion Machine, we’re proud to announce that we’re working with Super Rare Games once again. Super Crush KO will soon be available in physical form on the Nintendo Switch!
This time we’re doing a limited edition and a Steelbook edition, each with unique cover art by the wonderful and talented Saffron Aurora. Both editions come with a full-colour manual, trading cards, and a sticker sheet!
It goes on sale next week, July 22nd at 6pm BST (10am PT/1pm ET) at superraregames.com. Only 4,000 copies will be printed, so please pre-order if you want a copy!
You’ve played Graceful Explosion Machine and Super Crush KO, and now we are bringing the game that started it all, WE ARE DOOMED, to Nintendo Switch!
WE ARE DOOMED is a twin-stick shooter where you zap polygon baddies with an absurdly overpowered laserbeam.
It’s a hyper-focused arcade game that still feels great to play all these years later, and is especially perfect to play on-the-go. Our studio has grown so much since 2015, and we thought it would be fun for all our new fans to experience our debut game.
As a huge thank you for the amazing support we’ve received over the years, owners of Super Crush KO or Graceful Explosion Machine will receive a 40% discount!
WE ARE DOOMED is coming out on August 13th, for $7.99 (€6.99).
We’re excited to announce that, in partnership with Super Rare Games, Graceful Explosion Machine is getting a physical release on Nintendo Switch!
Here’s what it looks like:
Isn’t it gorgeous?! We went all out, with brand new box art (by the very talented Shae Humphries), a full colour manual, and trading cards.
Pre-orders open next week, on June 18th at 6pm BST (10am PT/1pm ET) for £30 ($31/33€) at superraregames.com. There are only 4,000 copies available, so please pre-order if you want a copy!
Zip up your freshest windbreaker and grab your blasters because Super Crush KO is finally available for you to pick up RIGHT NOW!
We’re so proud of this game (and have been trying to one up each other on the leaderboards in these last couple weeks before release) and we hope you enjoy it too.
Get it on the Nintendo Switch eShop or on Steam today! You can also pick up Robby Duguay’s amazing soundtrack on Bandcamp.
Thanks so much for all your support… now go save that kitten!
We’ve been busy working on Super Crush KO over the past few months, but I wanted to take a moment to get everyone up to speed on what we’ve been up to. It’s been an super productive summer, so there’s a lot to cover…
We made a new trailer!
While we’re really excited about all the beat-em-up-and-shoot-em-down action of Super Crush KO, this trailer shows off the cute, funny, and kinda heartwarming narrative of the game. The trailer also shows off one of our terrifying bosses, a first for a Vertex Pop game!
In June, we set out for sunny Los Angeles to attend E3 2019. We met some wonderful people, had a lot of fun showing off our game, and Robby even got to play the Final Fantasy 7 Remake.
Check out some of the great coverage from the show:
Finally, let’s talk release dates. We were hoping to get Super Crush KO out in 2019, but we’ve decided to push it back to “Early 2020”. It was a tough decision to make, but as we worked on the game we kept finding more cool stuff to add, polish, and improve upon. Given the extremely positive feedback we’ve received (both online and at conventions) we thought it was worth taking the extra time to make something extra special. ✨
You can follow us on Twitter for all the latest updates, and sign up for our newletter. Or if Chubbz and our beautiful new trailer already have you sold, you can wishlist us on Steam.
Stay tuned for more updates! 👏
We’ve been secretly working on a demo for Graceful Explosion Machine on the Nintendo eShop, and surprise! It’s out today. 🚀✨
One of the things we’ve heard over and over again is how folks who “aren’t usually into shoot-em-ups” totally get into GEM, and a demo seemed like the perfect way to get more players to give GEM a try. So if you know someone that would love to get into a vibrant and unique shmup like GEM, tell them to head to the Nintendo eShop and pick up the Graceful Explosion Machine Demo today.
As an added bonus, to make it even easier to love we’re putting Graceful Explosion Machine on sale. It’s 30% off (just $8.99 / €8.99) starting today, for one week. Share the news, share the joy, share the GEM!
I’m excited to announce our new game, Super Crush KO.
Super Crush KO is a fast-paced brawler / shoot-em-up hybrid set in a vibrant, near-future city. You take control of a neon-wearing, robot-stomping, stylish-as-heck hero and save humanity from an AI apocalypse!
Super Crush KO takes the frantic action and tonnes-of-enemies aspects of our shoot-em-ups, and combines it with the close-range, combo-heavy combat of brawlers. And as you’d expect from Vertex Pop, the game is set in a gorgeous, pastel-coloured world, and features catchy, upbeat tunes.
In short, we think we’re on to something really special. ✨
Super Crush KO is being developed for Nintendo Switch and Steam. We’re debuting the game at PAX West 2018, as part of the always-amazing Indie MEGABOOTH. If you’re attending please come by and check it out!
You can also wishlist the game on Steam, and follow the game’s development on Twitter or our newsletter.
I can’t believe it’s been a year since we released Graceful Explosion Machine! Looking back it was such a whirlwind of emotions, before and after launch. So much happened at once and we never really had a moment to reflect on it. In honour of our GEM-iversary I wanted to share the story of Graceful Explosion Machine from inception to now, including our eShop sales figures and our biggest sale yet.
I began prototyping Graceful Explosion Machine in mid-2015. The initial spark was creating a shoot-em-up with multiple weapons that the player could switch between effortlessly. It started with two weapons, but pretty soon I thought “Wait, why stop at two?!” With four face buttons on a controller, wouldn’t four weapons work? It did, and everything else grew from there.
So how did a game I was prototyping on my own eventually end up on the Switch? Like most “Whoa, how did that happen?!” stories, this one was pretty boring. Literally, I just tweeted Damon Baker:
@DWBakes Hi Damon, I’m interested in writing games for the 3DS. I’m in town for the week of and following PAX, can we meet up and chat?
He said yes! That was it! I sat down for a meeting with Kirk Scott at Nintendo HQ. This was way back in 2015, and though we wouldn’t discuss the Switch until more than a year later, this is where it all began.
In 2016 we went into full production, which meant expanding the team from just me to a team of five. The game really started taking shape: Gabby took my programmer art and turned it into something beautiful, Robby came up with the perfect “intense-but-chill” musical direction, and our producers kept us on track. (Shoutout to Nina for wrangling us into a meeting room every week and coaxing status updates out of us!) We were also fortunate enough to exhibit the game at PAX several times with Indie MEGABOOTH.
We learned about the Switch later in the year (with the debut trailer, just like everyone else), and quickly put together a pitch for Nintendo. We were the perfect match: the release dates for GEM and the Switch lined up, and more importantly, our in-house engine meant we weren’t dependent on anyone else to make or break our release date. The folks at Nintendo got it. They responded to our pitch quickly and a few phone calls later we were signed on to be a Nintendo Switch launch title. Everything was going great… but then we actually had to port the game.
In a month.
On a console none of us had ever seen.
We got our dev kit and I went into hiding, determined to not emerge until I had the game running in my hands. There were many days of me sending process shots to the team, and them cheering me on. It was a pretty overwhelming technical challenge at first, but once I got the basics working everything came together quickly. Before we knew it, the whole game was running perfectly on the Switch.
All the while we were still working on finishing up the game. It came right down to the wire: we were at PAX East setting up our booth when I submitted the final build to Nintendo for certification. It was approved just a few days after we got back. (recounting this story to our current producer is giving him a heart attack) In short, it was an intense month.
The stress of shipping the game was softened by the love from press and fans. Our announcement tweet got so much attention that it crashed my Apple Watch. GEM was featured in the inaugural Nindies Showcase for Switch, we were interviewed by Polygon, and on IGN’s excellent NVC Show. When press got their hands on GEM, we received pretty flattering reviews.
(We were also featured in Nintendo’s Cat Mario Show in Japan, which may be the greatest achievement of them all)
The launch itself wildly exceeded our expectations. It’s been a whole year, but I still vividly remember everything: the game going live, watching our sales numbers grow every hour, climbing the eShop charts, and our celebratory Korean BBQ team dinner.
So just how well did it do? To date, Graceful Explosion Machine has sold just under 50,000 copies on the Nintendo Switch. This is such a remarkable achievement for our humble little game! We continued to support the game (with features like the new score screen, highlight screenshots, and video capture) and continue to be amazed by (and grateful for) the community’s support and enthusiasm. Most importantly, GEM’s success put us in a strong position to get back to work…
Speaking of which! We are definitely working on a new game, and we’re excited to share it with you… but not just yet. For now, let’s state the obvious: it’s an action game, it’s colourful, and it’s coming to Nintendo Switch in 2019. Sign up for our newsletter to be the first to hear about it.
Until then though, we want to celebrate our first year anniversary with our biggest sale yet. Graceful Explosion Machine is 50% off on the Nintendo Switch eShop (and Steam as well) starting today, for one week only.
Thanks for taking this trip down memory lane with me!
(Special Thanks to Shae Humphries for our gorgeous, brand new key art at the top of the post!)