Welcome to the official website of Milkstone Studios. We are a small team of passionate game developers located on the north of Spain whose main goal is to bring back the joy of playing games. Remember when games had more fun and less bloom? We use advanced technology as an addition to the gameplay, but never as a replacement.
Wool development time distribution
While developing Wool, we were measuring the time we spent working on each game part. We think it will be useful to us to help estimate better our future project development times, and the effort needed in each part of it.
Wool development time distribution
As you can see, most of the time spent went to Betatest, Level design and Graphics Art. The only thing unexpected here was the time spent developing each level. Despite having an editor that allowed us to design one complete level from scratch in around 15 minutes, the whole process took around 1.3 hours per level (Not including playtest). That is due to level redesigns, subtle modifcations, difficulty tuning, etc.
Wool enters the peer review phase!
Finally, after months of hard work, our beloved game Wool has entered peer review. We’ve put lots of care and love while making this game to ensure every player get as much fun as possible from this game (remember, it will be available at only 80 MP).
We’re currently working on the game trailer, by tomorrow we should have it finished and published on Youtube.
Trust us, you’ll like it. A lot. Even black sheep.
Showing two recent features of Wool
Wool’s entrance into the final phase is almost ready, a matter of days. Until now, you can see here two of the features that were added recently.
Versus mode
The first image shows the Versus mode, a competitive mode for 2-4 players where the goal is to keep as many sheep as possible on your zone, while trying to prevent other players from doing the same. Each white sheep gives one point per second when you’re controlling it, and black sheep give three points.
The number of sheep available can be configured, being the minimum around one sheep per player, and the maximum a total of 25 sheeps per player! Without any doubt, our favorite setting. This mode features 5 stages right now (the number could be improved before release), with variants for 2, 3 and 4 players.
Wool Classic mode
And the other thing worth mentioning is the Classic mode, enabled after finishing the solo or coop campaign. This mode allows you to see the game as if it were an old worn out movie. Don’t forget to bring some popcorn when starting a game with this mode enabled!
Player gamertag list for online matches
Some users have reported that finding people to play an online match of Little Racers is difficult. We’ve created a list of gamertags to help you find other users eager to race with you.
The gamertag list can be found here.
If you’re interested in appearing in the list, just post a comment on it and we’ll add it right away.
If you have any other suggestions to improve the online experience, just tell us and we’ll do our best.
Little Racers XBLIG Session on Monday 26th
XBLIG Sessions is an initiative formed by many XBLIG review sites, made to allow players pit their skills against the developers of Indie games with online capabilities.
Little Racers is the first game to be featured. If you’re interested in playing some online races with us, just look for races on Monday 26th Oct, 8.30 pm GMT, we’ll be hosting some sessions.
You can get more information and some gamertags in the XboxHornet blog post
See you there!
Presenting our current project: Wool
We are proud to present the first screenshots of Wool, the next game by Milkstone Studios for Xbox Live Indie Games.
Wool is a game with a single objective: Guide as many sheeps as posible to the pen at the end of the level. Obviously, this won’t be so easy: Survival is hard for sheeps with no sense of danger.
If you bark now, the sheeps will probably end up drowned into the lake
To reach this objective, you can use your sole presence, which causes some fear to the standard sheep, and your powerful bark, which makes most sheeps flee from you. But be careful, you don’t want a flock of sheeps running towards dangerous hazards.
Sheeps tend to go in flock, except when they flee
As anyone knows, sheep tend to group in flocks, so usually they can be guided without much problem when there is no danger… except for black sheeps. These sheeps tend to be more individual, and other sheeps don’t like them.
Don't forget about the time limit
Full version of Wool will feature a campaign with at least 30 levels of single and cooperative play for up to 4 local players, and a special versus mode, for only 80 Microsoft Points. Our estimations are that the game will be ready to enter the peer review phase in around a month.
Little Racers 1.5 available for download
v1.5 update for Little Racers is available for download. It should ask you to update automatically when you start the game.
The update includes the following changes:
Improvements
- Fixed a crash issue on the network lobby
- Added a new track, Revolution, with a design proposed by Chris(chiz sniper).
Little Racers sales data and postmortem published
We’ve posted the last sales numbers of Little Racers and a Postmortem document with some additional information about the development process of Little Racers.
Please let us know what do you think of them.
Little Racers sales numbers
It’s been a lot of time since we posted our last sales data, so here’s our latest information for you to know.
Here are the current numbers (as of 09/16/2009):
- Little Racers trial downloads: 50709
- Little Racers full purchases: 2630
- Conversion rate: 5.18%
The following chart shows the download / purchases amount over time:
Little Racers sales as of September 16th 2009
Also shown in logarithmic view, so the relation between downloads and sales is shown more clearly:
Little Racers sales as of September 16th 2009 (Logarithmic)
As you can see, most of the purchases have been done over the first days, with an extra boost when extra countries were made available and the ratings system was implemented on first days of August.
We’ll post some information about our next game in a few days, among other new features on this website, so please stay tuned!
2nd Little Racers Twitter giveaway contest winners announced
Our second Twitter giveaway contest has finished. We’re glad to announce the nicks of the 4 winners, one of each will get a free redeem code for the full Little Racers game:
Congratulations to all of them! Each one should have received their code on a direct message via Twitter. The codes will have a validity of three months, if they haven’t been used by then it we’ll consider them as available for future promotions.
Follow us
Games
- Retro game of the week: Duke Nukem 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4a3_wazRPA2010/09/06 06:59 - For those who didn't notice, our games Wool and MotorHEAT are finalists in 3 categories at the Hó Play International Videogame Festival!2010/09/02 08:27
- Check out this nice review of MotorHEAT!
http://fb.me/FdZoypY22010/09/02 08:34 - Our games Wool and MotorHEAT are nominees at the Hó Play International Festival!
http://twtn.gs/bkr2010/08/31 09:01 - Retro Game of the Week: Jumping Flash! by Exact and Ultra (PlayStation)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2hukvZ0zBw2010/08/30 12:35 - Retro Game of the Week: Transport Tycoon Deluxe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HluOjdtxmNU2010/08/23 06:05 - Congratulations to @brenes, he's the lucky winner of the 1600MP code!2010/08/21 12:11
- Check out Avatar Ninja, a highly rated Indie game for Xbox 360! - RT & Follow for a chance to win 1600MP!
http://bit.ly/acaB7W2010/08/20 20:40 - Check out Avatar Ninja, a highly rated Indie game for Xbox 360! RT & Follow for a chance to win 1600MP!
http://bit.ly/acaB7W2010/08/20 13:04 - Retro game of the week: Rise of the Triad, a First Person Shooter by Apogee
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMf4KzlbzI82010/08/20 06:51