But the press keeps coming in from E3 and other previews. Ophelea at GamersInfo.net wrote up a superb preview describing her experience in the Mushroom Men world.

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“Less known, but still worthy of anticipation”
July 31, 2008
Canada’s largest urban weekly paper Straight lists Mushroom Men among the games they’re looking forward to on the Wii.

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Zentendo’s Eyes-On review of Mushroom Men.
July 30, 2008
At E3 last week, the Zentendo staff saw Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars for the Wii. See what they have to say about it.

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Pre-order goodness for Mushroom Men
July 28, 2008
News hit the wire today about all the little bells and whistles that are rewarded to those of you who pre-order Mushroom Men for the Wii and DS.

Character design and concept art are two areas in which Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars excels, and the free gifts for those who preorder the game use both extensively.
Those who reserve a copy at Gamestop will be able to claim the “life-size” statuette, as well as a pack of eleven Mushroom Men trading cards (a twelfth comes with the game itself) featuring the title’s diverse range of enemies.

A further eleven cards will be offered to those who preorder Mushroom Men: Rise of the Fungi on the DS, as well as a superb Les Claypool/Mushroom Men poster.

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One of the 11 Best Nintendo Games of E3 2008 is Mushroom Men
July 28, 2008
Lynxara at OMG Nintendo likes Mushroom Men. My favorite quote in this article listing their top 11 games for the Nintendo consoles shown at E3 this year:

Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars brings a real sense of wonder back into platforming in much the same way Super Mario Galaxy did, by bothering to construct a world worth exploring and a character who’s fun to explore it with.

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A 2008 IGF Showcase winner is us!
July 28, 2008
The organizers of the Independent Games Festival have announced the nine winners of the Austin GDC IGF Showcase, picking the very best examples of ‘local flavor’ in terms of indie games from Austin and the Southern U.S. to be exhibited at the Austin Game Developers Conference from September 15th to 17th.

Some of the top local titles span the gamut from one-man teams through tightly focused console indies, including Texas-honed games such as physics-heavy iPhone puzzler Enigmo, CosMind’s evocative art-game Glum Buster, Red Fly Studios’ Wii/DS quirky Mushroom Men duo, knockabout Guildhall @ SMU student title ToyBox Heroes, and user-generated game website Mockingbird.

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News of Les Claypool’s soundtrack for Mushroom Men
July 25, 2008
Mainstream music sites perk up when they hear about Les Claypool jamming in Mushroom Men’s soundtrack.

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Best of E3 2008
July 23, 2008
Matt Simmons at Zentendo lists Mushroom Men among his favorites from E3 this year.

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Blind testing
July 23, 2008

Blind testing, originally uploaded by Red Fly Studio.

After developing a game for a year and a half, it’s crucial in these final months to put the game into the hands of someone who’s never seen it before. We’ve lived in these environments for so long, we can play through our levels forwards and backwards without paying much attention to them. This makes us a little blind at times to certain flaws that a newbie stumbles upon naturally. Designers learn a lot by watching someone pick up the game for the first time.

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Mushroom Men interview at The Escapist
July 23, 2008
The Escapist interviewed Mushroom Men’s Lead Designer Ryan Mattson at E3 last week. Their video is on-line now!

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The triage room
August 12, 2008

The triage room, originally uploaded by Red Fly Studio.

In the final weeks of the project, leads are isolated in a smaller office out of the main pit where they make the hard decisions and answer the tough questions.

As remaining months turn into remaining weeks, most of the staff works through lunch to get everything wrapped up in time to ship some top-notch games.

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Mushroom Men Sightings sweepstakes
August 12, 2008
GamesRadar is hosting a contest for Mushroom Men where you can prove to the world that Mushroom Men really exist!

To get things kicked off, they’ve also linked to Tater’s Blog, a must-see for Mushroom Men enthusiasts.

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More Mushroom Men previews.
August 12, 2008
VideoGamer.com gives a first-look preview of Mushroom Men for the Wii. This is one of my favorite previews so far. Being mentioned amongst such powerhouses as Ninja Scroll and Watership Down gives me goosebumps.

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Destructoid’s preview of Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars
August 8, 2008
Destructoid has finished their playthrough of the alpha build of Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars for the Wii. See what they thought about it!

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Video documentary about Les Claypool’s music in Mushroom Men
August 7, 2008
Gamecock has released a short documentary about how Les Claypool’s music is upping the ante on the play experience in Mushroom Men. Matt Piersall of Gl33k explains it all.

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IGN’s hands-on preview of Mushroom Men
August 6, 2008
IGN got their hands on Mushroom Men. Here’s what they think of it so far:

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Join in the chatter!
August 5, 2008
It’s a forum, so expect the usual trolls and whatnot, but Mushroom Men fans should make themselves heard on this Gamespot thread.

GameTrailers’ forum mentions the Nintendo Voice Chat PODCast which in turn features a little bit about Mushroom Men.

Mushroom Men minimal press on IGN? Daemon says they’ve been giving it a lot of press, Craig says they’re limited as to what they can do – Will have an exclusive hands-on on Wednesday.

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Mushroom Men E3 trailer at IGN
August 5, 2008
Check out the sweet trailer we put together for E3!

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Report from abroad
August 1, 2008

Report from abroad, originally uploaded by Red Fly Studio.

Producer Chad Barron just returned from a two-week press junket across Europe. He reported the good news to the entire team.

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Nearly finished
August 22, 2008

Nearly finished, originally uploaded by Red Fly Studio.

We’re doing a full playthrough checking gameplay, game flow, art, scripting and audio.

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Gamecock’s Mushroom Men Contest
August 22, 2008
MCV reports how you can win your very own copies of Mushroom Men: Rise of the Fungi (DS) or Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars (Wii) as well as some of the sweet concept art.

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The results of Space Squid’s Mushroom Men contest spread across the internets
August 21, 2008
Several sites picked up the news about the results of the Mushroom Men fanfic contest at Space Squid.

Visit Space Squid’s original contest page.

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Red Fly at Leipzig
August 20, 2008

Red Fly at Leipzig, originally uploaded by Red Fly Studio.

Art Director Kris Taylor will be the cameraman this week as Producer Chad Barron (left) and Studio CEO Dan Borth (in the Keep Austin Weird shirt) attend this year’s Leipzig Game Convention.

Dan catches his breath in CDV’s booth.

Producer Chad Barron demonstrates Mushroom Men: Rise of the Fungi at the Leipzig conference.

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New Mushroom Men DS trailer
August 18, 2008
This one is a lot of fun. It features Pax, the hero of the Wii version (Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars) playing the DS version (Mushroom Men: Rise of the Fungi).

Other sites picked up the feed and commented, as well.

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Infendo highlights a mention about Mushroom Men in a recent Games Radar article
August 17, 2008
Games Radar recently listed Top 10 Reasons to Stay Loyal to Nintendo. Amongst those reasons: us!

Infendo points out the bit that made us smile.

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Game Informer’s hands-on experience with Mushroom Men
August 17, 2008
Game Informer got a chance to player through some of Mushroom Men recently. Read their thoughts on the experience.

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And the winner is…
August 14, 2008
Space Squid’s Mushroom Men writing contest is done. Grand Prize winner is “The Legend of Shiitake” by Christopher J. Oatis. Congrats!
Thanks to everyone who entered. All the stories are fantastic! Read them all on Space Squid. Right now!

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Quick blurb at Wii Fanboy about Mushroom Men’s HUD
August 13, 2008
I like how Wiifanboy describes Mushroom Men’s almost absolute lack of any on-screen HUD elements. It’s something we decided very early on in production. Since Mushroom Men occurs in such a fantastic world, we didn’t want to cover it up with health bars and weapon icons and status messages. We love it when people notice and appreciate the little details.

And thanks Yaktastic (see comments on the linked page) for further support as to how Mushroom Men is only barely fictional.

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Mushroom Men Walkthroughs on GameTrailers
September 4, 2008
GameTrailers watched Producer Chad Barron play through Mushroom Men at PAX last week. Here’s what they saw:

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Another fan.
September 4, 2008
JohnnyV at WiiBlog likes Mushroom Men and linked to some videos that helped sell him on Mushroom Men.

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More words of encouragement from our friends at GoNintendo
September 3, 2008
GoNintendo has always been very supportive of Mushroom Men.

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Wired enjoyed Mushroom Men
September 3, 2008
Chris Kohler at the Wired Blog speaks highly of Mushroom Men.

The last thing I expected to say while playing Mushroom Men was, “Wow, this is what Force Unleashed should have been like.”

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More from PAX 08
September 3, 2008
Fast Forward Weekly includes Mushroom Men in a list of games “worthy of anticipation.”

I’m not sure if this is a good article or not. My German is a little rusty, but it seems positive.

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ScrewAttack interview from PAX 08
September 1, 2008
ScrewAttack interviewed Producer Chad Barron during PAX. See those two minutes here:

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PAX 08 Coverage
August 30, 2008
CEO Dan Borth, Producer Chad Barron and Art Director Kris Taylor are at PAX 08 this week.

Gamecock had old-fashioned stand-up-style cabinets constructed to show off the games. Pretty sweet!

The first posts from reviewers and bloggers are already online.

Brad Gallaway speaks well of Mushroom Men in his Drinking Coffeecola blog.

GameZone got their hands on the game at PAX, too. Sounds like they had a good time.

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Hey, we’re popular!
August 29, 2008
We showed up on IGN’s Most Popular Wii list today. That’s exciting! I hope we stay up there for a while.

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Gamecock’s PAX lineup and some other news
August 28, 2008
Worth Playing reports on Gamecock’s lineup for PAX this year.

The N+ Blog has some nice words to say about Mushroom Men.

GameRadio interviewed Mike Wilson of Gamecock about what they’re doing as a publisher, including a brief mention of Mushroom Men.

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Nice PlayZine preview for Mushroom Men
September 11, 2008
Download the PDF to get the full interactive experience, but here’s the page with PlayZine’s write-up on Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars.

Grab the entire issue in PDF form here:

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Here’s a new one
September 10, 2008
Mushroom Men has been compared favorably to some pretty cool stuff: Oddworld; The Force Unleashed and other top titles. But this article at Edge is the first we’ve seen that brings up legendary B-movie director Ed Wood. Another compliment, I’d say.

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X-Play preview of Mushroom Men
September 9, 2008
X-Play interviewed Designer Ryan Mattson about Mushroom Men a while back.

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And don’t forget about Rise of the Fungi
September 9, 2008
We’ve been posting a lot of articles about the Wii version (Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars), but don’t forget that there’s also a DS version, a completely unique and stand-alone adventure called Mushroom Men: Rise of the Fungi. Serving as a prequel of sorts, Rise of the Fungi establishes the climate of the mushroom world in the early days after the meteor fell. In it, you play as one of three character archetypes with RPG-lite mechanics and stats that allow you to totally customize your little mushroom dude to your play style.

Rise of the Fungi is getting some good press, as well, such as this preview at ds fanboy.

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Game of the year?
September 9, 2008
Someone on the EuroGamer forums posits that Mushroom Men might be a contender for game of the year on the Nintendo Wii. We sure hope so! That would be sweet! Sound off at the EuroGamer forums if you agree.

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Infendo’s “Best Wii games of the fall”
September 9, 2008
Infendo Includes Mushroom Men as one of their top picks for the upcoming holiday season.

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The MushMobile!
September 9, 2008

The MushMobile!, originally uploaded by Red Fly Studio.

Gamecock’s Mushroom Men VW Bus is awesome!

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Tons of new PAX coverage came in over the weekend
September 8, 2008
Topping the list is Adam Sessler’s enthusiastic floor report of Mushroom Men (and other Gamecock titles).

Game Vortex saw the DS and Wii versions of Mushroom Men at PAX.

BlogCritics Gaming reporter Brian Szabelski got his hands on Mushroom Men and has this to say about it:

It might not be the biggest Wii release this holiday season, but there is a good chance it could be the best.

4 color rebellion enjoys the 50’s-era pulp Sci-Fi feel of Mushroom Men.

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New contest at Destructoid
September 5, 2008
Destructoid is offering up a kick-ass bass guitar signed by Les Claypool himself and other great Mushroom Men prizes to the best Mushroom Men diorama. See details at their site.

GoNintendo picked up the story, too. I like the comments on their site. Glad someone realized that we’re really interested in sparking creativity.

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Nintendo Gal’s impressions of Mushroom Men
September 17, 2008
Nintendo Gal saw Mushroom Men at PAX this year and had a fun time exploring the giant world of man from the Mushroom Man perspective.

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And this article in the Guardian?
September 16, 2008
Not entirely sure how we ended up here, but we enjoy any press!

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Silinconera’s report from the Nintendo Power event is enthusiastic
September 16, 2008
Scroll down until you see the photo of uncomfortable designer/programmer James Clarendon for the bit about Mushroom Men. Another exciting article!

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Superb write-up of Mushroom Men on UGO
September 16, 2008
UGO has written one of the best articles we’ve yet seen for Mushroom Men.

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1Up’s report on Nintendo’s Starlight Children’s Foundation event
September 16, 2008
1Up says this about Mushroom Men:

The other big hit of the night was Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars, which releases in November. The game’s biggest fan was likely Mark-Paul Gosselaar’s son Michael, who could not put the game down — and he’s only four years old!

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Kain and Ryan demo Mushroom Men
September 15, 2008

Kain and Ryan demo Mushroom Men, originally uploaded by Red Fly Studio.

At the Austin Game Developer’s Conference.

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Mushroom Men press from the Nintendo Power event in New York
September 15, 2008
Nintendo Power staged an event in New York City over the weekend in support of the Startlight Foundation. They showed off a lot of upcoming games including Mushroom Men.

Kotaku was there, giving Mushroom Men a try.

Infendo wrote up a whole slew of impressions of many games at the event, including Mushroom Men.

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Unexpected coverage
September 14, 2008
We expect news to come out of the game sites and blogs like G4, IGN, GoNintendo, Infendo, WiiFanboy, and our other favorite sites (too many to list). But a wonderful side-effect of building our universe on a basis of real-world floral, fauna and fungi is that we occasionally find articles about our games on totally non-game-related sites like AlabamaMycologist. I particularly like how the experts at sites like this pick up on certain inaccuracies such as the fact that our hero Pax is a bolete mushroom “with gills, rather than tubes.” Sometimes art outweighs truth, I guess. At the resolution available to the Nintendo Wii, the slivers of gills offer a lot more visual fun than the tiny, spongy surface on the underside of an actual Boletus mushroom cap.

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——————————————————————————–
Located in downtown Austin, Texas, Red Fly Studio is a young studio founded by ten-year veterans of the gaming industry with experience on titles such as Star Wars Galaxies, BloodRayne, Nocturne, FIFA Football 2005, Anachronox, SSX3 and Deus Ex.

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To handle all of our DS builds, we utilize Zen Studios out of Budapest, Hungary. Their technology pushes the Nintendo DS hardware to its limits and allows us to focus our efforts on the Wii and PS2 builds, secure in the knowledge that the handheld version of our game will be of the highest possible quality.

——————————————————————————–
We always had revolutionary plans for the audioscape of Mushroom Men, making the audio as critical to the game experience as the graphics and gameplay. We’ve known the guys at Okratron5000 for years, and we knew that they had the vision and skills to accomplish our goals. In addition to the games we’ve collaborated on in the past (Roadkill, Blowout, Thief 3, Deus Ex 2) Okratron has handled voice and sound design for many very popular titles including: Tony Hawk Project 8, Tony Hawk Proving Grounds, Guitar Hero 3, Metroid Prime 2 and 3, Stuntman Ignition, Kingdom Under Fire, Full Metal Alchemist, Dragon Ball Z and Sonic Rivals 2.

Feel like you’ve got what it takes to join the team? Look through the available positions listed on the Jobs page and contact: hr@redflystudio.com

Red Fly Studio
206 E. 9th St. Suite 1502
Austin, TX 78701
(512) 236-1551 – Phone
(512) 236-1051 – Fax