A busy time at the studios.

Last week saw the first step in preparation for the new upcoming secret project. On Friday afternoon the entire office was reshuffled so that the whole team could once again be magically reunited together after many years apart (much like the romantic fairy tale stories you hear about…but without the happy ending just yet!).

As you can imagine with 25 employees moving around, we were bound to make some mess and noise. The office was knee-deep in chaos which we actually had to recklessly abandon on Friday when it started to get too late. Monday morning was then spent finally clearing up the last of it, much to the enjoyment of all the sleepy and coffee-starved programmers and artists.

How many people does it take to move a screen? Two, while one programmer and one artist watch!

Not happy bunnies on the Monday morning.

An unidentified hoarder’s corner. We think her body is under there somewhere.

Our last victim seemed to have escaped from their bonds. It took a while to tidy up after them.

Previously we have had the two separate teams for Gauntlet and Helldivers in different rooms. Gauntlet were around 10 people and Helldivers were 12 – now there are 25 of us sitting on one big room (and don’t forget the dog! And Snöre the Sloth!).

The previous Gauntlet area. They weren’t allowed out much, bless ’em.

The Helldivers area. We think the programmers tried to escape via the boxes, but we were onto them.

The reason for this move is mainly to improve communication and synergy within the whole team. We wanted to get that big cosy “family” feeling back, which had been missing while working on two separate projects. Now, we have 5 distinct areas in the room – all named after different heavy metal bands/songs!

This will now be our studio layout for the next few months, at least until we have the architects come in and rip the whole place apart to create a shiny new interior. Then it will descend into chaos again quite quickly, I’m sure.

Don’t mind the little random notes everywhere.

The Valkyrie guards the entrance to Hell…divers!

Hey, it’s a long way from where we started at least.

This is what a real gaming studio looks like ;_;