The past year has been a whirlwind of new games and some amazing local and national recognition for PerBlue.
We were so proud to have been recognized by several organizations within the last year. PerBlue was a finalist in the GetDiscovered! Contest, recognizing awesome Android apps. Pocket Gamer named us one of the top 10 ‘Developers to Watch in 2012’. In May, we were featured on Forbes in “How I Launched My Mobile App From My Apartment”. Then in October, Justin was invited to the White House for the Empact100, honoring the top 100 startups in the United States.
We were really involved in several of Madison’s technology and hackathon events. Groups from our team attended and participated in hackathons, BuildMadison and Startup Weekend this year. The Isthmus named us the ‘Best Tech Startup’ in Madison for their annual Best in Madison feature. Justin Beck was featured in this fun video about innovation at the UW.
We launched a few new games in 2012. In the style of our flagship title, Parallel Kingdom, we released two additional location-based MMORPGs, Parallel Mafia (March) and Parallel Zombies (July). Another topic of interest for us this year was casual games. We launched two casual games over the summer, Bugduster and Bob vs. Bear, available free on Google Play.
Our first location-based title, Parallel Kingdom remains our primary focus. We recently announced a new Age. Each Age introduces a large set of new features, mechanics, and artwork. It’s been over a year since our last Age and our players are really excited about the upcoming release.
Parallel Kingdom reached many notable milestones this year. In January, we surpassed 1 million registered user accounts. As part of our continued partnership with PlayMob, our players donated over $4,000 to HelpUSA, Kitty Kind, and 4 Paws for Ability. When our players weren’t donating to various charities, they were really busy building Parallel Kingdom. Check out this awesome infographic of interesting statistics from the game.
Our CEO, Justin Beck spoke at three of the four Game Developers Conferences (GDC) this year. His presentation ‘Bootstrapping 101’ was highly rated at each GDC conference, and Justin was selected as one of this year’s top 50 speakers at the conference. He also participated in the first annual Mobile Gaming USA conference, the Forward Technology Festival, and made several trips the the UW to give entrepreneurial advice to engineering and business students.
PerBlue Headquarters was a busy place this year. Over the summer we had seven interns in the office. From our development team, to the marketing team, these interns helped our full-time staff on various projects. The summer months were also full of company cookouts, ultimate frisbee games, and a beach volleyball social. As the winter begins, we’ve just completed our second annual ‘Holiday Board Games Drive’ and collected over 20 games for Domestic Abuse Intervention Services (DAIS).
Oh yeah, and we just launched another game last month. Boardtastic, the only 3D skateboarding game on Google Play. The game drops players at the beginning of an exciting pro-skateboarding careers. Boardtastic has over 30 tricks to master in three skateboarding parks all over the world. The game is available for free exclusively on Android devices.
We are already predicting 2013 to be another great year at PerBlue. Stay up to date with all of our projects by following us on our blog, Facebook, and Twitter pages.
Check out past PerBlue news posts here.