Hermit Crab in Space on PlayStation Mobile Today

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Hermit Crab in Space on PlayStation Mobile Today

Hermit Crab in Space - PS Mobile

On behalf of Golden Ruby Games, I am pleased to announce that the our first game, Hermit Crab in Space, winner of the 2013 PlayStation Mobile GameJam is launching today on PlayStation Store. When we first started thinking about what we wanted Hermit Crab in Space to be, we got hooked on the idea of adaptation on the fly. Andy Wallace (Lead Developer/Programmer) and I wanted to offer a thrilling and challenging game to players, but we also wanted to captivate them with great gameplay mechanics.

We got to refine this initial idea, over President’s Day weekend, when Andy Wallace and I, along with our good friends Jane Friedoff and Nicolas Cinquegrani, joined the Sony/IndieCade East GameJam competition. PlayStation Mobile actually had an open session the weekend before the competition to field any questions and allow us to get familiar with the tools provided in the PlayStation Mobile SDK.

Hermit Crab in Space - PS Mobile

As with all GameJams, you are given a theme with which you are supposed to use to help you design and build your game. The theme that we received was “evolution” and we were instantly drawn to the idea of creating a game that allowed the player to evolve their gameplay based on the challenges that we threw at them. We also loved working with the PlayStation Mobile SDK and built the game around using every feature that was made available to us. From the moment that we started the competition, our goal was to create a complete game to publish.

Hermit Crab in Space - PS Mobile

When it came to the style for the graphics and game play, two popular games came to mind: Minecraft and StarFox. These are the games that we mostly borrowed our ideas from, but others influenced us as well. What we wanted was to give gamers a cute character that they would feel compelled to go on a journey with. The game’s look is very cartoonish, and that was deliberate because we wanted to make players think that the game was going to be easier than it really was.

As with any GameJam, you have many challenges; the size of your team, the time to produce a polished title for judging, and having the right people to get the job done. Given the size of our team, and the limited time that we had to get the game ready, we had to think outside of the box on a number of occasions. For example, none of us had experience with sound design, so we had to find the easiest solutions possible, which led us to use a free randomizer from BFXR for the sound effects. We also had to find license-free music that was publicly available online.

PS Mobile Game Jam

The GameJam was intense, with 12, highly talented and creative teams competing for four semi-finalist spots. We were thoroughly excited to have been selected as one of the four semi-finalists along with Team Snakesss, Team Dozen Eyes and Team Back Pedal Games. We spent the next month fitting in all the additional ideas we couldn’t get to during the GameJam, including a ton of additional animations, modes, and gameplay tweaks in order to make the game much more polished. We had an additional month after being announced as a semi-finalist in order to cram in as many features as we could into the final version of the game that would be judged at GDC in San Francisco. We added animated sprites, an Endless mode, an updated shield component, and more.

Thankfully, our hard work paid off and at GDC we were announced as the winners of the GameJam competition. After coming off of that high – and having a bit of a freak out — we went back to work on the game and made as many tweaks as we could in order to prepare to show it off at E3. At E3, we were right up there talking about our game alongside many other great PS3, PS Vita, and PS4 titles and got to see the public try it out for the first time. It has been a surreal experience within our first year of business and none of us would’ve imagined we would be at E3, rubbing elbows with some of the biggest names in the industry.

All in all, we are incredibly pleased with the final product and hope that we can continue to expand the Hermit Crab universe in the future. PS Vita owners can download Hermit Crab in Space from the PlayStation Mobile section of PlayStation Store for $2.79; Owners of PlayStation-certified devices such as the Sony Xperia Z smartphone, Wikipad or Sony Xperia Z tablet, can obtain them through the PlayStation Mobile Store for the same price.

Click here for a full list of the certified devices or here for installation instructions.

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16 Comments

  • Ha! This looks great! Love the name!

  • aw nuts. I only have 2.31. No crabs for me :(

  • This game looks different, which is the number one thing I look for in a game. I’ll definitely pick this up.

  • When I first signed up for PSN these store “updates” was already done by at least 3:00. This was back in 2010. Please RE-HIRE who was in charge of the PS store “change over” from 2010 because WHOEVER they have in charge of it now is REMEDIALLY SO SLOW!!!! And I could have swore that store didn’t get changed until WEDNESDAY of last week, so what AAHD guy they have doing it needs to “pick up the pace,” PRONTO!

  • THANK YOU! Geesh.

  • Looks very cool Thanks, guys.

  • how much does it cost?

  • @7, it says right in the artlcle: “PS Vita owners can download Hermit Crab in Space from the PlayStation Mobile section of PlayStation Store for $2.79.”

  • Playstation Mobile really needs to come to more devices. No Samsung devices at all. No Asus tablets. What is the holdup – is it the manufacturer, or Sony certification, or what? I’ve got devices that should have the horsepower, but the Playstation Mobile app detects it’s on an “unsupported” device and won’t run.

    I can’t get too excited about games like this, because I can’t play them. Is anybody trying to address this?

  • This is cool & all but PS mobile games are better if there were trophies.

  • No trophy, no buy.

  • “This content may not yet be for sale or is no longer for sale.
    (NP-2247-5)”

    Welp, looks like I can’t buy this game.

  • @10: Games are never better because of trophies.

  • @12: If you clicked on a banner, those aren’t live when they go up. It takes a few hours before PS Mobile is actually updated. So the banners are kind of misleading. Just wait and check later.

  • Thanks for all the kind words everyone!

    We had a blast making the game and hope to continue to expand it in the future.

  • Played it this morning. I didn’t get real far, but I really enjoyed it. I built a very elegant looking ship with all its guns facing forward) which didn’t move too well, but quickly demolished the first couple of opponents. Then I ran into fast moving enemies who taught me that I should have tried to build something which turned faster and could shoot in multiple directions. Live and learn :).

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