Rampant Games - Running Rampant

Running Rampant! Issue #1
August 21, 2004

Welcome to the first ever official newsletter of Rampant Games, "Running Rampant!" You are receiving this newsletter because you've shown the incredible boldness, wisdom, and strength of character and signed up for this newsletter. We humbly bow to your awesome powers.

News for this issue:

* Void War Contest
* Void War Trailer
* BETA Report
* Void War in the News
* Team Member Spotlight

VOID WAR CONTEST

As you are no doubt aware, Void War is nearing completion. We just entered beta last week, and the bugs are pouring in (GROAN!). However, it's good news for subscribers to the mailing list - because that means our free give-away contest has started. For the next several weeks, we're going to give away three licenses of Void War away EXCLUSIVELY to subscribers to this newsletter. If you aren't yet subscribed, and are reading this newsletter online instead of in your mailbox, you can still join the contest! You can subscribe directly at:

http://www.rampantgames.com/newsletter/sign_in.php

You can also subscribe from the void war main page at www.voidwar.com

Our first three contest winners were chosen and emailed. They are KnightG, Eric "Erasor" Peterson, and Christian Weingart! (names given by permission - hope to see these handles online in Void War games very soon!) Congratulations, and we look forward to seeing several other people join the ranks of winners.

VOID WAR TRAILER
If you haven't checked it out already, take a look at the new Void War trailer. You can download it directly from our site at:

http://download.rampantgames.com/voidwar_trailer.wmv

You can also find a quicktime version of the trailer at GameTrailers.com
http://www.gametrailers.com/

BETA REPORT
We just added our online matchmaking functionality to Void War, and played a few games using it. Very fun. You can simply click on "Network" in the launcher and see what games are up and playing. We tested it out the other night, and it worked great. If you host a game, simply choose to make your game "public" and it will automagically be posted on the master server, so other players can join your game from all over the world. Yes, we know, it's pretty common stuff these days - but we still think it's pretty cool.

We had a "Joint Beta Test Fest" this weekend at the offices of Wahoo Studios for Void War, and the upcoming game "Outpost Kaloki" from Ninjabee. We had an awesome time, ate plenty of pizza, talked lots of trash, and gained lots of feedback. Both games were met with enthusiasm and unanimously passed the "Is it fun?" test with flying colors. I came away from the whole event with a sizeable bug-list (the next couple of weeks are going to be BUSY!), but also feeling the thrill of "indie power."

If you are REALLY interested (or really bored) you can see some pictures from the event at:
http://www.voidwar.com/testfest.html

VOID WAR IN THE NEWS
We've received several great previews and Q&A sessions lately - check them out!

Game Chronicles Magazine: Developer's Corner - Inside the Game
Q & A with Jay Barnson
http://www.gamechronicles.com/qa/voidwar/voidwar.htm

Game Chronicles Preview of Void War:
http://www.gamechronicles.com/previews/pc/voidwar/voidwar.htm

Boomtown's "Void War Interview":
http://pc.boomtown.net/en_uk/articles/art.view.php?id=5931

Warcry's Void War Preview
http://www.warcry.com/scripts/columns/view_sectionalt.phtml?site=15&id=117&colid=3608

Gamezone's interview with Jay:
http://www.gamezone.com/news/08_20_04_09_01AM.htm

Gamepike.com Interviews Jay Barnson
http://www.gamepike.com/index.php?view=doc&id=446

MyGamer.com's preview of Void War:
http://www.mygamer.com/index.php?page=gameportal&mode=preview&id=207

TEAM MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
Who makes up the mysterious team of superheroes at Rampant Games? We are sure you've been wondering this for at least a second or two, so we'll now unmask...

Name: John Olsen
AKA: Spudly, Infix
Role: Programmer
Game Credits: Links 2003, Animorphs (Playstation), Streak, Jet Moto II, Jet Moto PC
Location: 40° 37' 24" N, 111° 57' 55" W
Superpowers: Puns
Favorite Games: Neverwinter Nights, Civilization 1-3.
Favorite Void War Ship: Twitch reflexes are gone, so I prefer the beginner boats.
Preferred Void War Weapon: Fire-and-forget mines to discourage tailgaters.