We are officially starting phase two of the Lugaru video contest! All of the entries have been submitted and now we are starting a three day voting period, ending Saturday, December 6th at 11:59 PM PST.

You can view all of the entries here: Lugaru contest entries

The owner of the video with the most WeGame "Likes" at the end of this period will win a free copy of Overgrowth and a $50 gift certificate to the Cafpress Wolfire T-Shirt Store! The next two runners-up will receive a free copy of Overgrowth! We reserve the right to award subjective bonus prizes for notable efforts, even if they don't win. Remember, even if you didn't submit a video you can still vote here and feel free to vote for as many videos as you like.

We've seen stone mazes, fire mazes, 8 vs 1 fights, stick legs, melon heads (I guess that's all Tannim so far), the AI tricked into barbecuing itself, challenge level 2 beaten in 5 seconds, savage fights with 70's funk, savage fights with 90's rock, something about Wal-Mart!? and more. Needless to say, regular users of WeGame were a little confused by all the random Lugaru videos and some of them accused us of spamming! Luckily we talked to the founder of WeGame prior to launching this contest and this is officially condoned.

Awesome job guys and good luck in the voting period!

And Steam is picking up Overgrowth!

Well, I guess Overgrowth has become big enough to be noticed by the guys at Valve -- Overgrowth is going to be distributed on Steam! This is huge news for us, given that Steam is the premiere platform for PC games. We are really excited by this news, and it's awesome to think that Overgrowth is going to be sold next to games like Far Cry 2, Crysis, and GTA IV.

This is a huge day for Wolfire Games, and a huge day for indie developers in general!

P.S. We are still looking for distributors. Steam is a good start, but we want more! Let us know if you guys have any connections or other ideas for getting the word out about Overgrowth.

I extended the shadows and ambient occlusion maps to include static objects such as rocks and trees! The only thing left to do for the static lighting is to add lightmaps for shadows cast onto the objects.

Hey guys, we have just posted this week's Overgrowth Alpha, bringing us up to week 2! There is a lot of new stuff that's been covered on the blog recently (be sure to subscribe) and, of course, a little bit that hasn't. ;) The big changes are with the terrain rendering engine, bringing sweet shadows and higher detail terrain (although the highest detail has yet to come).

- New sky
- Sweet terrain shadows
- Higher detail terrain
- Ambient occlusion
- More objects, including new rocks, a joshua tree, and a small bush.
- Instead of a single floating cube, there is now a nice little scene Aubrey whipped up using Phillip's editor.

More notes in the secret preorder forum, and of course, that's where you can find the download links.

Whenever I play a game, I look for design lessons that I can learn and apply to my own games. Recently, I decided to show these lessons in the form of a video tour of games that make interesting design decisions. The first one is about World of Goo by 2Dboy. Please forgive the stiff narration; I am still getting used to talking to myself :)

Be sure to click here watch it in HD!

Press the triangle button for captions (download transcript)

Just got a response from Kyle Gabler from 2Dboy!

"Wow thanks David! I laughed out loud at some of the very small, and embarrassingly correct, details you managed to pick up on. I remember the day we got the balls stretching and squishing along the velocity vector - an entirely cosmetic feature - but it instantly made the game more fun and tactile. Also, you noticed we used blurred foreground and background textures as a sneaky way to have higher image compression ratios. That's completely right, which is funny, since that was a case of a technical limitation that actually caused the game to look better with more depth.

Very perceptive, thumbs up!"

Be sure to subscribe to the blog so you don't miss our upcoming design tours! The next one (Knytt Stories), is already up here.