There was also some concept art for levels that never went into production.

Once we had a better idea of what the scope of our game would encompass, it was up to Augusto again to do some storyboarding.

Hope you enjoyed looking at these. Be sure to check out our Facebook page, where we will post the rest of the concept art. Also follow us on Twitter!

Blue Demon Jr.

It has been one month since the release of Guacamelee and the official blogs from Playstation Europe and North America confirmed yesterday that Guacamelee is #1 on the PSN charts! Everybody here at Drinkbox is SUPER PUMPED. It’s a bit surreal seeing Guacamelee above Journey in the PlayStation Store charts. Well, maybe not that surreal, but we’d be lucky to be going as strong as Journey one year after its launch.

Highlights of the month:

Guacamelee got 9/10′s from IGN, GameSpot, Destructoid, and Polygon. And there’s pretty much universal praise for the game on the Guac PS3 and Vita Metacritic pages. Some reviewers criticized the game’s difficulty spikes, which is a fair knock.

Video-wise, we got a ‘BUY’ verdict from SourceFed, a glowing review from Reviews on the Run, and VintageBeef is currently doing a playthrough (with stellar voice acting).

Guacamelee was also at the centre of discussions about how other cultures are portrayed in video games. Over at VentureBeat, Kotaku, and TechNewsDaily, it seems that more people than not were satisfied with how we used Mexican culture in Guac.

One article in BuzzFeed pegged us as the next Lucas Arts.

And here are a few mixed reactions from our indie dev peers:

Finished Guacamelee tonight, it was over just as i was really loving it, but it had me entertained the whole way through.

— Edmund McMillen (@EdmundMcMillenn) April 13, 2013

GUACAMELEE. TODAY. @drinkboxstudios. GO BUY IT. VITA. PS3. CROSS-BUY. AMAZING REVIEWS. TORONTO. guacamelee.com

— Nathan Vella (@Capy_Nathan) April 9, 2013

That headband looks familiar somehow… love @drinkboxstudios multitude of game refs in Guacamelee! twitter.com/MareSheppard/s…

— Mare Sheppard (@MareSheppard) April 10, 2013

@konjak @jonbro @docky @pietepiet guacamelee is in this order: gorgeous, fun to listen to, an ok super metroid clone, an ok brawler

— Adam Atomic (@ADAMATOMIC) April 17, 2013

man, guacamelee looks pretty great, but all that reddit shit is really turning me off. whats the link between mexican folklore and reddit?

— PHIL FISH (@PHIL_FISH) April 10, 2013

Thanks for all the love you all sent to us on Twitter, Facebook, and good old-fashioned email! And thanks for helping us get to #1!

What a busy couple of weeks.

Just before leaving on the least life-threatening PAX-related road trip in recent Drinkbox Studios history, news about Guacamelee was emerging from all corners of the internet. IGN did a preview (see below). Polygon highlighted Guacamelee’s Mexican theme. Destructoid called our game “Guacamazing.” (That’s not a word, Destructoid.) There was a playthrough filmed with Revision 3. And GamesRadar had trouble pronouncing the title of the game, not that I blame them.

At PAX East, a.k.a. Boston, the guys made a day of the dead altar, and dressed up in popular Mexican attire, wearing guayaberas and bandanas (I checked with Augusto to make sure Wikipedia was correct in saying it’s popular Mexican attire), and Destructoid honoured Guacamelee as a ‘Must Play!‘ Hooray!

road trip food

Back in Toronto we were keeping busy showing the game off at Long Winter 5, a local music/arts festival put together by the band ‘Effed’ Up. We had a blast, especially Augusto, showing off Guac and helping our local game dev friends show off their games.

The week after was GDC where we were nominated for Excellence in Visual Art at the 15th IGF awards. While we didn’t win (we lost to the effing beautiful Kentucky Route Zero), we did get to drink free booze and sit next to the Spec Ops: The Line guys. Here is photographic, and I use that term loosely, evidence of Drinkbox at the IGF/GDC awards.

Oh, and we announced the release date for Guacamelee, probably setting a world record for shortest amount of time between the announcement of the release date and the release date. The game will be released on April 9th in the Americas, April 10th in Europe, and will support Cross-Buy for $14.99. Cross-Buy means you buy the game once and get both the PS3 and PS Vita versions. There’s also a Platinum Trophy!

Jope YOU enjoy Guacamelee!

The Guacamelee! Hype train is getting ready to roll down the tracks. April 9 hype hype hype. #Jope twitter.com/bigc_33/status…

— Brian Silva (@bigc_33) March 26, 2013

P.S. Muchas gracias to our PR team at VIM Global!

Also – be sure to check out Graham’s post over at the Playstation Blog. He gets really depressed when no one reads what he has to say, so do it as a favour for us.

This morning Steph and I headed out into the winter madness to record a promo video that’s going to be shown on Gamespot.com for the IGF. It will be part of a montage featuring all of the nominees.

We did a little rehearsing before stepping outside:

Things took a bit longer than expected to get a working take (17 attempts!). Here’s Take 3:

Keep an eye on Gamespot.com for the final montage!

Hey guys!

We have some amazingtacular news! Guacamelee is a finalist at this year’s Independent Games Festival for Excellence in Visual Art! A big congratulations to our art team who are working hard to make Guacamelee look so good. So to Steph, Augusto, Ben, Tameka, Jay, and Tanya: congratulations!

We still have a ways to go before Guacamelee is a finished product, but it’s great to get kudos like this to let us know we’re on the right track.

Would you like a closer look at the creative process here at Drinkbox Studios? Then take some time to watch Augusto and Graham chat it up in the short video we made for our 2012 Indiecade nomination.

Also, congrats to fellow Toronto devs Asteroid Base for Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime being a finalist for Excellence in Visual Art! All the finalists are so darned good-looking, what an honour!

We’re doing well, thanks for asking.. Been working hard towards getting a stable build of Guacamelee! that we can use for focus testing and balancing. Today we did it!

In celebration, here’s some candid footage from the office today:

What does this mean for you? Not much really.. There’s still a lot of work to do to make the game as awesome as it can be.

Thanks for stopping by! As your reward, here’s a photo of chicken luchador with his pink cat entourage (Photo by Don Spiro):

Hola to all (especially skeletons!), Augusto here.

It’s DrinkBox’s favoritetest Holiday! I hope everyone got their Pan de Muerto and cempasúchil flowers for their altars.

We’ve been busy celebrating here, but somehow we’ve managed to take some time off from eating sugar skulls to finish BETA for Guacamelee! (almost there!)

Gotta go back now, those Mucbil pollos aren’t gonna eat themselves!

Wait? What are the remaining names?! Well – this is a great time to start learning about Spanish (your responsibility), and Guacamelee! (our responsibility):

First of all, just wanted to update everyone with our newest trailer:

Second, we’re excited to be part of the Gamercamp Magazine Launch Party tonight, 7pm at the Pacific Junction Hotel. Event details can be found here. Join us!

Next in the news, Juan Aguacate (the luchador from Guacamelee!) has been announced as part of the new Minecraft Skin Pack 3 coming out this Friday, Oct 19 on XBLA. Pretty awesome:

More details about the other characters in the pack can be found here!