Hey everyone, long time no update. We've been pretty busy over here at Spotkin. Here is a quick overview of everything that we've been doing:

Farewell to Keith

After many years of game development, our friend and programmer Keith Johnston has made the tough decision to move on from Spotkin and enter a new stage of his career outside of the games industry. We are so thankful for all of the great years we got to spend with Keith at Spotkin, and we wish him the best of luck with everything in the future. To replace Keith, we are teaming up with long time friend and original GarageGames associate Justin Mette. Justin and his team are very excited to be working with us again, and they are pumped to make Contraption Maker the best game that they can. As with any transition, there has been a bit of downtime as they are getting up to speed on all of our systems.

Contraption Maker Mobile

We took some time to start work on and evaluate the mobile version of Contraption Maker. We obviously all have phones and tablets, and we are all so excited to get the game into the hands and pockets of everyone in the world. The mobile version is technically up and running, but after taking a deeper look at it, we are going to be back-burnering this project for a while. In addition to a complete overhaul of the UI to make the game more touch friendly, there is going to need to be a lot of time and resources put into deeper issues like memory, game size, etc. Becuase of this, and because of the crazy nature of the current mobile market, the mobile release is going to be pushed much farther back. We are happy to have it running how it is, and we all really want to be able to release it, but there are just so many more importanat things (like desktop Contraption Maker) that we need to focus our resources on right now.

Contraptioneers & Schools

Deborah has been doing some some amazing work with Contraption Maker and schools. Contraption Maker is now available in over 300 schools! The Incredible Machine was a very popular game in schools back in the 90's, and it's so great to see Contraption Maker gaining so much traction all these years later.
A map of everywhere Contraption Maker is being used in education Here are some recent highlights from our blog about Contraption Maker education:

• 4th Graders Learn Next Generation Science Standards using Contraption Maker
• Building, Tinkering, and Inventing at the Eugene Mini Maker Faire
• Using Contraption Maker in a Language Arts / ELA Lesson

We have started what we are calling the "Contraptioneer" program. Contraptioneers are rockstar teachers that love our game and our mission. They are helping us spread the word about the game, developing lesson plans and curriculum, and giving us feedback on how to improve the game for use in schools. There are currently 8 contraptioneers, and the list is growing quickly! Check out THIS LINK to see our list of contraptioneers. We are also working on a project with the Hewlett Foundation, but there isn't much we can publicly talk about yet. You can expect to hear more on this soon :-)

Contraption Maker Updates

You may notice each time you launch Contraption Maker, our splash screen mentions our awesome "Winter Update". Last time I checked, it's July now which means it isn't exactly winter anymore. Updates haven't stopped, they have just taken lower priority as we have worked on everything else. We have a new "walls & structure" update that we are pretty excited about coming out fairly soon.
In addition to the upcoming update, we are going to start releasing much more regular free updates. Although we love the game, there are so many things we can continue to do to make it the best game that it can be. In an announcement next week, I will be outlining our entire future roadmap and plan. Just know that you can expect things such as new parts, puzzles, interface improvments, game modes, achievements, and more!

New Project

On top of all this, there may be something else in the works...I'm not sure though. I have no idea where this concept art came from...