Not so long ago we were contacted by Jake Birkett, owner of Grey Alien Games and man behind such BigFishGame’s hits like Fairway Solitaire, Unwell Mel and some other great games.

The task sounded simple – he needed some art for his new Easter-themed game which was based on his Holiday Bonus engine.

Probably it’s worth checking the game itself, especially taking into account that it was already released at Grey Alien Games website and soon to be released on most of the casual games portals:
http://www.greyaliengames.com/springbonus/index.php

Original list of assets looked like that:
- Game Logo
- Loading Screen bar/text
- Map Screen dot and bottom panel
- Options screen: Checkbox/mark, slider bar/knob
- Various button sizes
- Various dialog sizes (inc. in-game menu, level complete screen + more)
- 7 game pieces + a golden egg (special piece)
- 9 bonus pieces and 3 special particles
- 3 grid tiles, ice cube, and related particles
- 12 border pieces + special border overlays
- In-game Gui (left side, score area, time area, bonus gauge area, goal area, menu button)
- Mouse cursor

But as with any development – list of final items was slightly updated and reworked during art and game production.
And while originally it looked like relatively simple job it was ended as pretty complex task, especially taking into account really short deadline.

As usually, we started with some rough concepts for the game-field and game’s interface elements.
We tried to fit our first tries with backgrounds created by other artist and spring atmosphere we were feeling, but in final art direction was changed to something more generic, less stylized but still nice and cool looking. Partially GUI was inspired by Season Match.

Originally it was planned to use pre-rendered 3D elements for all the game-field chips, bonuses and probably tiles. Jake wanted something similar in terms of style to his previous Holiday Bonus game.
We like 3D and do it nice, but for consistency and cuter look prefer to use hand-drawn 2D art for casual games we are working on. And while 3D can save some time if you need cute animations (Jake planned to have them) it requires a bit more time to create 3D model itself and balance final visuals with 2D environment.

Because of that and also because of tight deadline we suggested Jake to go with fully hand-drawn graphics and leave misc animations as optional work for later stage.

Pay attention to really cute frog concept
Tiles were based on the idea of melting snow/ice and it was planned to use the same idea for backgrounds originally. They should be changing their state from frozen winter images to warm spring scenery, but in final there was no enough time to implement that idea both in code and art.

Final set of match-3 chips, tiles and bonus icons created by our team.

After Spring Bonus main GUI elements were chosen and polished we proceed to creation of universal constructor for windows, buttons and other interface elements.

Simultaneously we were working on probably most important game’s thing – Logo. From a couple of ideas Jake chosen the one of blue color, which reads and stands out well.

Additionally we created sand clock animation, rainbow power-up indicator animation and couple of other misc animations.

Currently Jake is finishing porting of Spring Bonus to other platforms (such as Windows mobile and iPhone/iPad) and we are helping with some miscellaneous work needed for that.
You can read Jake Birkett’s testimonial about the cooperation with RetroStyle Games team below:

Well I’d like to thank you for a job well done.  Everything you’ve done looks top quality and everyone loves the look and feel of them game.  I believe it’s going to do very well.

Be sure to check other testimonials on our Contact page:
http://www.retrostylegames.com/index.php?action=support
And our Art Outsourcing 2D/3D portfolio here:
http://www.retrostylegames.com/artwork

Hi there, “RetroStyle Games” team would like to wish you best winter holidays and coming St Valentine’s day.
Let the love and health be with you!

To celebrate everything we wanted to share some of the holiday-themed icons we had in our collection. Read more to download them.

Most of the icons were done by our new trainee artist and slightly polished by our main artists. All of them were saved as transparent PNGs and come in different resolutions inside of ZIP packages you can download by the links below.
These Christmas and St Valentine icons can be used for free in any type of projects. They can suit match-3 prototype, online game, Facebook application or you can just decorate any of your artwork.

St Valentine free icons collection
Includes such 512×512, 128×128 and 64×64 icons:
- St Valentine opened love letter
- St Valentine closed love letter with heart stamp
- St Valentine arrow-pierced loving heart
- St Valentine heart-shaped strawberry

Download: http://retrostylegames.com/artwork/st-valentine-heart-presents-free-icons-collection.zip

Christmas and New Year presents simple match-3 icons pack
Includes 64×64 icons:
wineglass, cute cartoon snowman, snowflake, new year tree sock, Christmas presents, winter sled, new year tree ball decoration, Santa’s hats, tasty pie, cartoon moon, bells, champagne, corks, candies and candle.

Download: http://retrostylegames.com/artwork/christmas-new-year-presents-free-icons-pack.zip

Christmas and New Year online game presents icons
This pack includes eight 256×256 icons done for our friends from http://dreamfoot.net/
We did around 50 in-game presents and other kind of icons for them. Players can grant each other with these presents in game.

Download: http://retrostylegames.com/artwork/dreamfoot-net-christmas-presents-icons.zip

If you’ll find these icons helpful or useful in some way – let us know.
As was mentioned previously – they are FREE for any use. You can credit our team or link to our site if you’d like.
And don’t forget to Share/Like this page using Facebook widget at the bottom.

Thank you for you interest and downloads!

Almost a year ago we were asked to create a series of game sprites and tiles for Dreamspike Studios turn-based strategy game “Bronze“. It was necessary to keep everything on budget and also meet the style of previously created illustrations.
Recently we were contacted by Alex Kutsenok of Dreamspike Studios with information that “Bronze” was released! Moreover – it was reviewed in one of the biggest USA games magazine – PC Gamer #210 (check out page 74) and currently it’s gaining a lot of positive reviews from strategy lovers from all over the world.

While “Bronze” can look somehow outdated and simplified nowadays – it really delivers on strategy side of things and has this nice retro-felling of old good games.
We have created big amount of seamless game tiles for Bronze to have enough assets to build game map. There are more than 10-20 variants in each category: sea tiles, rivers, deserts, deposits, buildings, bridges and misc environment objects.

The hardest thing was to keep everything seamlessly tile-able and to build enough variations to natural tiles and their combination. Also we have created more than 10 different buildings and other structures for player to choose from. In final “Bronze” game seems to have enough personality to stand out!

In “Bronze”, from Dreamspike Studios, gamers have a chance to rewrite history. As supreme ruler of one of twelve historically based civilizations the player is charged with expanding their civilization’s territory by creating Farms, Towns, Embassies, Ziggurats, and even Armies. Construction is as easy as a click, and in no time at all your empire can stretch from map edge to map edge.

You can read more about “Bronze” game and try the Demo on site of their published:
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/Dreamspike_Studios/BRZ/BRZ_page.html

Among nice positive “Bronze” reviews you can find:

“But it’s another thing to learn a game by watching the AI play and having something click in my head. “Ah-ha, so that’s how you use that!” It’s been a long time since an AI taught me about a game.” - Tom Chick, Fidgit

“Strategy veterans should find a lot to like here thanks to the quality AI and unique mechanics.” – James Allen, Out of Eight PC Game Reviews

“Bronze is a remarkably elegant design. Worth playing.” – Soren Johnson, Lead Designer, Civilization IV

We have prepared these icons for a small match-3 Christmas game, which we have planned to produce before holidays. But as result because of time lack we have decided to stop development at game designing stage.

Icons are free for non-commercial use.
Originally they were done in 3D and can be rendered to any resolution with alpha channel.

You can download archive with them (64×64 TGA version with alpha channel) here:
http://retrostylegames.com/temp/blog/christmas-icons-64×64.rar

Included: cartoon heart, 3 kind of Christmas balls, candy and 3 presents.