Post #235423 by hanford_lemoore on Thu, Jun 1, 2006 11:40 PM

We've been advertising Tiki Arcade's "Prime Suspects" game for close to a month. For everyone who's been wondering how this ad came along, I thought I'd share this story and a bit of an endorsement for the site:

Tikiarcade.com bought a banner from us out of the blue, and I had to email them to tell them I myself was a game designer -- It just seemed like a really small world and I thought it was funny. Ion, the guy who runs Tiki Arcade, replied and we chatted ... it turns out that although he doesn't really post much, he's a huge tiki fan and checks TC quite a bit. It turns out he'd be in San Jose for the Game Developers Conference, and we met face-to-face at a party that his company sponsored. I then ran into one of his employees who ran a video game review site that had given my game a 5 star rating two years ago -- the first time they ever game a puzzle game a perfect score! At that point the size of the world felt incredibly small. Ion gave us his invite to a private party at SmokeTiki in San Jose that he wasn't able to make it to himself. It was a lot of fun to hang out with him while he was in town.

I decided I'd try playing his "Prime Suspects" game and see what it's all about, because he said it was his number one seller (and it turns out it was developed by a publisher of one of my games ... it IS a small world). Humu and I tried the demo of the game (for free) and we thought it was pretty fun, so I purchased the full game and we played it completely through! It's a pretty cool game for two people to play together because the main goal of the game is to spot items hidden in full-screen, detailed pictures. I was quite surprised at how different and fun it was.

I still can't get over how small of a world it is, and how interesting all of the Tiki crowd is. Ion was very cool, and I want to thank him and his company for the hospitality that he extended to Humu and I at the GDC. On top of that, his games are very entertaining.

Hanford