News
Tumblestone Announced
March 6, in the year of our Lord 2014 --
Tumblestone is a casual, competitive multiplayer game from the
creators of The Bridge. Tumblestone's beautiful, hand-drawn
artwork will captivate you while the maddeningly addictive
gameplay will keep you playing "just one more round" with your
friends. Don't be fooled by similarities to other Match-3 games
- Tumblestone reinvents the genre with a unique experience that
you won't forget.
Features
Addictive Gameplay: Playing "just a few more rounds" with
friends could easily turn into a late-night Tumblestone
marathon.
Beautiful Visuals: 100% hand-drawn, 1080p artwork. The vibrant
scenes and dynamic characters bring the game to life.
Multiplayer: Challenge your friends and/or the AIs in local or
online versus modes, or work together in the cooperative mode.
Single-Player: Sharpen your skills with the Marathon, Heartbeat,
and Puzzle game types.
Variety: A dozen charming characters and backgrounds to unlock.
The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild
The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild was created in 2011 by Ty
Taylor. Ty, along with artist Mario Castaneda, released QAG's
first game, The Bridge, in 2013. The Bridge, a black-and-white
M. C. Escher inspired puzzler, has been featured in numerous
game competitions and festivals around the world. During The
Bridge's development, it was one of the PAX 10 selected games,
in addition to receiving the Best Gameplay and Best Art awards
at the Indie Game Challenge and being featured in the IGF,
IndieCade, Dream.Build.Play, A.MAZE, and various other
international game competitions. After QAG released The Bridge
on Steam and Xbox Live Arcade, the game received tremendous
critical reception, and it has sold over 125,000 copies to date.
Now Ty and Mario, with the new additions of Alex Schearer and
Justin Nafziger, are working on a new project: Tumblestone, a
fast-paced multiplayer game with maddeningly addictive gameplay.
Tumblestone will hit the digital shelves in Autumn of 2014.
Game History
The story of Tumblestone is really a story about Seattle. That
melting pot known as the Seattle Indie Game Scene. Ty, Alex, and
Justin have known each other for years, but had their own,
individual projects keeping them busy.
It was only after Ty shipped the award-winning The Bridge did
their schedules start to converge. Alex had returned to Seattle
after over-a-year abroad. Justin agreed to put his roguelike on
hold until the game development community could agree to a
proper definition of roguelike. So they could make a game
together, but what game?
Their first idea was to feed strange concoctions to a Leprechaun
to see how it'd react, but that turned out to be kind of weird.
Their second idea wasn't much better. Then Justin tried to
convince Ty and Alex to make some weird game involving
enticement to lust. All of this arguing led to a key decision:
they needed to make a game in which they could compete against
each other. This was the seed from which Tumblestone was born.
Local-multiplayer "party" games are severely underrepresented on
modern consoles. Most modern multiplayer games tend to focus on
networked play, with one user per computer/console, but people
still have fond memories of plugging four controllers into their
older consoles in playing with three friends and/or enemies.
Ty brought in his longtime collaborator, Mario Castañeda, to
provide the art and aesthetics. The art grew into the gameplay,
influencing their shared direction. The core gameplay was
refined until it could cut like a thousand suns.
We think the world is ready. Ready for the inevitable return of
local-multiplayer games.
Awards & Recognition
"Finalist - Grand Prize" - Seattle Indie Game Competition 2014