A big congratulations to Ann Burkett for putting on a successful inaugural Game Design Conference here in San Francisco. I gave a talk on Innovating by Breaking the rules. For those who are interested in my lecture slides, you can find them here.

Here is another video of some of the tech we're building for Extrasolar, this time showing off the procedural system we're using to build populations of plants across the planet.

It's been just shy of a year since we first announced Lazy 8's next original game, something we're calling "The Extrasolar Project." To say it's a bit of a departure from anything we've done before (or, we like to think, anyone else has done for that matter) is a bit of an understatement, as you may have gathered from our original teaser post. Despite a good deal of radio silence we have in fact been working very hard and have grown from one engineer and one artist to a team of seven along the way. To break that silence here is the first of many videos of some of the tech we've been building that might give you some insight into how exactly this game is going to play out.

Without further ado...

We're happy to announce that Cogs is finally available on Android. For those of you have been keeping count, this is the ninth platform that we support: PC, Mac, Linux, iPhone, iPad, netbook, PS3 Home, Android, and even cable television set-top boxes!

Not only is Cogs now on Android, but we're launching with the Humble Bundle! That means that you can name your own price, contribute to charity, and get other amazing Android games at the same time! It's a limited time promotion, so get to the Humble Bundle site soon! Once that promotion is over, you can get Cogs at the Google Play store for most Android devices.

For those of you who weren't able to make it to my GDC 2012 microtalk at the Indie Soapbox session, fear not! Technology to the rescue!

"To unconstrain your thinking, think with constraints."

"In this unique private venture, we're allowing you to take control of one of the many rovers we'll be landing on the surface of the planet." Someone stumbling on the polished promotional video for the eXoplanetary Research Institute (XRI) might be shocked that they'd never before heard of the ambitious company.

At first glance, the newly announced project Extrasolar appears completely authentic. It promises anyone with a Web browser the opportunity to play a pivotal role in the first expedition beyond the confines of our own solar system. Interested applicants are directed to XRI's website at www.exoresearch.com.

The agency is fictional, but it's easy to get lost in the rich universe that's been created by Lazy 8 Studios, the independent developers behind the award-winning game Cogs. The game so thoroughly blurs the line between fantasy and realty that at times, it's hard to know where the science ends and where the science fiction begins.

Unless you've been living in a cave, you probably already know that Valve's hit game Portal 2 launched last week to universal acclaim. What you may not know is that Cogs was one of the 13 indie titles woven into a massive Alternate Reality Game (ARG) that led up to the April 18 release. You may have heard of this ARG referred to as #PotatoFoolsDay or the Potato Sack.

WARNING: For those who haven't heard, GLaDOS has made her way into a number of indie games that are distributed by Valve. Here is the full list of infected games:

You asked for it. We delivered. Cogs is finally available on the Mac in all of its original shiny, high-poly glory! Check out the screenshots in the gallery.

To celebrate the release of Cogs for Mac, we're cutting prices across the board! For a limited time, Cogs for Mac will be on sale at $4.99, half off the base price. We dropped the price of Cogs HD for the iPad from $4.99 to $2.99 and the iPhone/iPod Touch version is now FREE!

If you've purchased Cogs for the Mac and found a bug, please let me know by sending mail to support@lazy8studios.com.

For my third year in a row, the Global Game Jam was an immensely positive experience for me -- an opportunity to meet new people, learn new skills, and see a game design through from inception to completion. I worked with a team of four at the San Francisco venue. Robin Yang and Sara Thatcher focused on game design, UI, web design and gameplay tuning. John le Plastrier and I played the role of programmers.

This year's theme was extinction. Not wanting to take the theme literally, we decided to brainstorm about more exotic ways to interpret the theme. Eventually, this led us to talk about our hopes and dreams and the fear that if our aspirations aren't nurtured, they can go extinct. After a few dead ends in the brainstorming process, this eventually led us to the two-player game that you can find right now at aboutOurDreams.appspot.com. [A warning: you may want to encourage a friend to play at the same time if you don't want to spend the day waiting around an empty chat room. If you don't get properly connected, try pressing the "New Game" button every 15 seconds until you connect.]