Merry Yuletide and a Happy New Year!

Today has been the day of celebrating Christmas in many countries and we want to take the opportunity to wish you all the best of this holiday, no matter what you are celebrating, and to sincerely thank all of You that play our games, gives us feedback and believes in games that stick to their vision and don’t try to cater to everyone and noone. Yesterday, the 24:th, was the day of celebration in Sweden and all of Arrowhead has gone for a well needed two week holiday.

The year is coming to a close and it has been an eventful and changing year for us as a studio, and as individuals I believe. This is just the first of a series of blog posts to come. Every Thursday from now and 15 weeks to come, a new person from the studio will share something of their choice with you all.

In the end it will be a way to get to know us better – all the serious stuff and silly business that goes on in our fairly cold part of the world.

In the beginning of the year the studio moved together again after having been split in two for about 8 months – the main part still in Skellefteå, while me and Emil Englund had moved to Stockholm the year before to start up a new project. We had gathered up a group of interns and also teamed up with Pixeldiet, so when we all moved back together in the new office we were suddenly a larger team than ever, nearing 30 people. It was a whole new challenge for us to keep up with managing two projects and the results varied somewhat.

By the beginning of the summer one project was cancelled. We couldn’t keep all the new people that had been working on that project, and most of Pixeldiet (well, they were 4 people) also moved on to another office and project. Suddenly we were down to almost half the team size again and the office space felt quite, ah, spacey.

Everyone went back to work on the same project again, The Showdown Effect, and while it was sad to have lost a project and a bunch of new people, it was also good to have one focus again.

The Showdown Effect project has, like most things, had its ups and downs. But we have wrapped up the project together with the year and are very happy and proud with the result. In case anybody missed it, the Showdown Beta signup opened last week and you can also find the beta trailer HERE. We’ll be very excited to hear your first reactions as soon as the beta starts in the beginning of the year, and then to release the game in Q1!

We don’t quite know what the future will look like when we get back after holidays, if the beginning of next year will bring great success or hard times for Arrowhead. But one thing you can be sure of; no matter what, we will keep on making the games we dream of making. The games that we ourselves would like to play; challenging, creative, serious and humorous, different, new and reminding you of the best from old favourites.