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Open Beta test for The Reawakening started Friday
Just when the week seemed to cool down and relax a bit, The Reawakening opens up the beta test for everyone and suddenly a stroll in the park seems pretty far away.

After an extensive closed beta testing, endless hours without sleep and fighting bugs, The Reawakening is now ready to move on to the public beta stage. Amazing feedback, constructive criticism and love letters from the truly devoted testers of the closed beta, has been invaluable and helped the team whip the game into shape.

Dreamlords The Reawakening is the follow-up to last year’s acclaimed MMORTS debut title from Swedish Lockpick Entertainment. Blending the popular RTS and RPG genres, The Reawkening is set in a ravaged world where the players each controls a Dreamlord, a celestial warlord, in their quest to restore order and peace.

• Free to Play.
• Recruit and manage your troops, form alliances with other players or crush them…
• Bring your Dreamlord with you all the time in the game, equip it with various exciting gear and cool stuff.
• Simplified rules system, easy to get into – hard to master.

Dreamlords – The Reawakening is a free-to-play MMORTS that will be available at www.dreamlords.com in a near future.

May 23rd, 2008 – Supernova 2: Spacewar is a space wargame combined with a resource macromanagement simulation from Tycoon Games (www.tycoongames.eu)

Riva Celso, programmer/designer of Tycoon Games stated “After the first title, I wanted to shift genre completely, making a turn-based space wargame, integrated with a resource macromanagement part. I wanted to keep the management part simple, with global variables affecting your whole empire rather than managing every single planet. It is my first
game for the Tycoon Games website, which will feature exclusively strategy, simulation and war games”.

Supernova 2 is available for Pc and Mac platforms, and has a very simple interface, but lots of gameplay elements: you have to manage your empire resources, then research new technologies like new weapons, armors, shields or mysterious devices to build a powerful fleet. Once you have assembled your army, target an enemy starsystem to conquer it, and see the wargame part in all its splendor. Many different ship classes, from small, fast scout ships to huge, slow, but devastating motherships: each one with its own statistics, plus the addition of unique ships for each faction, for a total of 25 different ones. Lots of different weapons both for short range fighting like beam cannons and bolts, or long range like missiles and torpedoes. The wargame simulation has lots of details, including different weapons ranges, ammo and recharge times, and the angle of fire which affects weapons damage and if used properly can turn the tide of the battle in your favor.

A free demo is available from Tycoon Games website at
http://www.tycoongames.eu

23rd May 2008. Stourbridge, UK. Data Design Interactive, successful video games publisher and games developer today announced the opening of its US office in Sarasota in Florida, a stunning Class-A 10-storey glass elevator building which has an open-air courtyard, a fountain and overlooks the beautiful Sarasota Bay. The purpose of opening this new studio is to help provide the correct creative atmosphere required to work effectively on today’s demanding Next-Gen projects. The emphasis has been placed on providing both a natural and open work environment with sunshine 320 days of the year, a City Centre location, a ten minute walk to the sea and only a 2 hour drive to Disney, Orlando.

Stewart Green MD of DDI said,

“With so many games companies losing millions, and UK companies forced to leave the country to cut costs, I ‘m pleased to be part of a British success story, and this has been a very successful year for our company. Our GODS development system has enabled us to design and publish 62 Wii Skus in under a year, which probably makes us the biggest and most reliable Wii developer in the world, our titles have sold very well and we now need to expand the company to keep up with the global demand for even more of our titles. The decision to open a US office is not an exit from the UK, in-fact our UK office is still undergoing expansion with a doubling of UK staff planned this year. The US office will be run as a separate US registered company DATA DESIGN INTERACTIVE LLC, and will initially focus on a number of Wii sports titles specific to the US market, then start work on our PS3 and Xbox360 development. Although the tax breaks for Canada are good, the weather in Florida is far better, and we thought the staff would rather work there by the beach.”

Opening this office in the US will expand the company’s development team - responsible for their multi-million Nintendo Wii label Popcorn Arcade. Data Design Interactive is one of the most successful UK independent studios and continues to go from strength to strength with its prolific development schedule.

Data Design Interactive Ltd (DDI) is part of Green Solutions Ltd (GSL) which manages the production of interactive products for the entertainment industry. From game design, development and publishing on PC and Consoles. GSL owns the popular MYTH MAKERS and KIDZ SPORTS brands and the publishing rights to the GODS development system. We control a number of studios which specialize in key areas. DDI LLC is based in Sarasota USA and DDI Ltd is based in Stourbridge, UK it is a licensed developer and licensed publisher for Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft. Artworld Studios for our computer animation, and Advergaming is the market leader for in game advertising and custom games. Popcorn Arcade www.popcorn-arcade.com is the brand name for our family friendly, value priced Wii range.

Push your freehand drawing skills to the limit!

LONDON & SAN FRANCISCO (May 22nd, 2008) – SEGA® Europe Ltd. and SEGA® of America, Inc. today announced that PictoImage™, a fun and challenging party game that will sharpen your wit and drawing skills, is coming exclusively to Nintendo DS™ in August 2008.

PictoImage is a pick up and play puzzle game in which players to take turns drawing the image of a word, while competitors race against the clock to guess the word first. The words are generated at random and can be anything from an apple, to a waterfall or a butler! Even if art is not your best subject, the three playable modes means there really is something for everyone and it can actually help you learn to draw!

The Multiplayer Mode in PictoImage allows up to eight players to enjoy a variety of party drawing games. In Picture Pass, for example, a subject will be passed from player to player in an image and the last player guesses the subject based on the last drawing. The single-player and two-player mode gets players guessing an image from a library of 300 drawings created by people of all ages whilst the tutorial mode teaches players how to draw different images from the four main categories of Animals, Objects, Food, and Other. Art has never been so much fun!

PictoImage is exclusive to the Nintendo DS and will be available in August 2008.

Barcelona, May 23, 2008 - Gammick Entertainment and the studio Freedom Factory announced the signing of an agreement to produce several multi-platform titles.

Freedom Factory Studios, a newly formed developer consisting of renowned veterans of the Spanish industry, will develop their forthcoming titles in association with the producers of Gammick Entertainment. The agreement provides for the development of games from the next-gen platforms such as Xbox 360®, Wii™ and PlayStation®3, to the portable consoles of Nintendo DS™, and the intent is for these games to reach players by the end of 2008 and throughout 2009.

“It’s a unique opportunity for us to work with a group who ranks among those who are behind some of the greatest blockbusters in our country,” said Sergio Rincon, Managing Director of Gammick. “The members of Freedom Factory have reaped successes in all of the previous generations of games in both PC and console, and we believe they will be major players in the panorama of development through the next two years.”

The new colaboration between both companies is Fritz Chess™, the first console version of the most powerful chess player program in the world, and up until now it wasn’t possible to develop for any machines besides the most powerful PCs. Fritz Chess™, will come to light from the creative forces of Freedom Factory and Gammick Entertainment for Xbox 360®, Wii™ and PlayStation®3 in late 2008.