Well, it's about time I posted some more news. The Best Australian Game award news has been up long enough!

The Jolly marketing machine has been slowing lately, but I recently had the pleasure of doing an interview with the Black Panel, which has been presented oh-so-nicely here.

Also a couple of other things I just found out recently. There's an extended interview with me on Good Game and I made a brief appearance on Channel 10's The Circle (27th of August, Andrew McLelland). I was also suprised at FreePlay by the folks from Making Stuff is Fun, who popped a mic in front of me and asked me some questions on the floor. Thanks guys!

Jolly Rover just won Best Australian Game at FreePlay!

This is a huge honour for me, and a credit to the team that worked very hard to make this dream a reality!

I can now say "The award winning Jolly Rover"... it occurs to me that I now need some kind of "Awards" section on the site. But until such time, you can check out the award prettiness here.

Hopefully this award can in some way help me to continue doing what I love with awesome people, and mean the Jolly Rover sequel doesn't take too long to come out.

Jolly Rover rubs shoulders with giants in this list of Gamezone's Top Games of 2010 Thus Far.

FreePlay is on the horizon, and with it the soon-to-be-coveted FreePlay Awards of which Jolly Rover is up for Best Australian Game and Best Audio. This weekend I'll be finalising how I'm going to coordinate the Everything Old is New Again panel, and getting some assets to potentially show on the One Man Band panel.

Oh and I just ordered this tacky marketing device. I hope it comes before FreePlay and PAX. Oh yeah, I'm going to PAX.

Two more reviews to tell about. There's this one from Indie Gamer Review (4/5). And this highly entertaining video review from Davin Da Geek. Davin is one cool guy, and his enthusiasm for Jolly Rover can't be denied, so please support him by giving the video a look.

Yesterday I recieved word from the nice folks at FreePlay that Jolly Rover was nominated for two awards - Best Australian Game and Best Game Audio. Also, I found out I'll be presenting Jolly Rover to the public on the expo floor, that's when I'm not talking on the 'One Man Band' panel or chairing the 'Everything Old is New Again panel'. FreePlay is shaping up to be a big event for Jolly Rover.

One review and one interview this week. The review from Czech website FreeHry.cz (75%), and the interview from my old university RMIT.

Jolly Christmas everyone! Enter BOSN000LS in the Discount code area of the Jolly Rover Steam key buy page for 50% off the retail price of Jolly Rover, this weekend only!

In other news there are two new reviews and one interview! One review from Gameboomers (B+) and the other from Cheat Code Central (4/5). The interview is with Adventure Classic Gaming and I think achieves the award for the longest and most in-depth interview yet, complete with previously unreleased concept art images!

I've managed to stay on top of things this week, spending time before and after work answering emails so I'm not swamped at the end of the week. I'm currently waiting on a laptop to arrive by FedEx so I can start some top secret contract work (though not at all exciting).

There have been two reviews and two interviews thus far this week. I know there's at least one more interview floating around waiting to be published. I'm getting to the stage where it might be nice to take a break from interviews for a while, I'm starting to repeat myself.

Okay, the reviews were with CaptainD (8/10), and adventure-treff (75%). One interview was with Brisbane based Rave Magazine, it's a pretty cool article in a pretty cool magazine! The other interview was with my good friends at Club Casual. Club Casual have been super supportive of Brawsome and have acted as mentors for making it as an indie developer, if you're not buying the game direct from me, I'd suggest you buy from them.

Finally, remember I'll be sending out discount for 50% off Jolly Rover tomorrow! The code will be valid all this weekend, so make sure you've signed up to the mailing list, twitter or facebook fanpage to get it.

Oh what a week! This working while marketing Jolly Rover thing is really taking 120% out of me. It' been great learning experience though, I must admit I understimated the effort it would require to market Jolly Rover by about 50%. Thinking I could just market Jolly Rover part time was a bit of an understimate.

But the result of that hard work is paying off, with great reviews such as those done by Adventure Island (7/10), DIY Gamer, AusGamers (7.7/10) and the MX Newspaper (3/5) (Thanks to Barbara Kerr for this photo!).

So, Jolly Rover has been out a month now and I'm running the first ever Jolly Rover sale! This sale is exclusive to people who have signed up on the mailing list (eyes left), are following brawsome on twitter or a fan Jolly Rover on facebook. On July 24 I'll be sending out a discount code to anyone on the aforementioned services that will allow them to purchase a Steam Key direct from Brawsome at a 50% discount between July 25-26, let's call it "Jolly Christmas". Copies aren't limited per user, so if you've already bought Jolly Rover you can still give the gift of adventure gaming this Jolly Christmas.

Just read this great review of Jolly Rover from Gamer Vision (8.25/10). It's been out since Monday but I missed it. It hasn't been updated on Metacritic yet, but hopefully it'll pull the score up a little further.

And not to be outdone, the Indie Games Channel also did a nice review. You may remember the Indie Games Channel from their earlier Jolly Rover Interview.

Boy, a lot seems to happen between updates, which is a good thing! But means I have less time to focus on other things, such as writing, design, and most importantly, trying to get more funding to develop games.

It's been a year for awesome events, the first being the release of Jolly Rover, and now this article I wrote appearing on Gamasutra - State Of The Point-and-Click Art. Also of note was being able to catch up with the super-nice Dave Grossman at GDC and at least get emails back from several ex Lucas Arts and Sierra adventure game greats (not Ron Gilbert though, but I wont' give up!).

Currently though, I'm in a lull, I suppose it's post-project blues, with an indefinite start date for when I can start implementing new ideas again, but I'm always chasing up different avenues of making game development a reality, like the Indie Fund

Oh right! Cool stuff. Jolly Rover was reviewed well on PC Gamezone (7.5), Jay Is Games, and Game Shark (B). If you'd like to be awesome, jump on Jay Is Games and vote for Jolly Rover, and leave nice comments under the other reviews.

Finally, and I just found out about this today. Jolly Rover is now up and about on the Adventure Store!

Finally got around to putting up the Wallpapers page for Jolly Rover, check it out by directing your eyes to the menu on the left! The wallpapers currently come in 1024x768, 1280x1024 and 1680x1050 flavours, if you want any higher than that, buy a poster from the zazzle store =0).

What else... what else... oh! There's a mighty long interview with me on Jolly Rover on the Indie Games Channel. Jolly Rover is also reviewed quite nicely in this months edition (#180) of PC Power Play, and appears right next to Puzzle Bots! Small world...

Aaand... there's now a Mac demo of the game directly available from the Jolly Rover website. I recommend this because it directs you to MY buy page =0P. Tell your friends, impress your enemies!

And finally! Jolly Rover has been entered into the IGF! Just being one of the finalists in the IGF (Independent Games Festival) would be a HUGE (Humongous Undulating Giants Eyeball) deal for me, so please send some positive vibes my way!

We have 3 great reviews for Jolly Rover coming in from QuestZone.RU, Explicit Gamer, and a Kotaku AU Reader

At the moment I'm on a 6 month contract working 3 days a week teaching programming at a local games uni. I'm back to the 3 hour a day commute. At least I'm catching up on my reading. It's just one of the realities of being an indie developer with a family to support, but with reviews like this hopefully I'll be able to get back to developing the games I love soon =0).

Okay, this is going up a little hasty, but someone sent me a very nice email recently asking for some Jolly Rover wallpapers. I'm going to get a proper page set up for this, but in the meantime, you can access the following wallpapers using these direct links

• Groggy Island
• Sleeping Quarters

My current desktop background is the Groggy Island one, I really love this background, I remember the first time I saw it and sent an email back to Viskatoons with a lot of exclamation marks!

These images are 1024x768, so you get a little more detail from these than you do in the game. The master versions of these are 3200x2400, which make neat posters! Maybe one day I'll be able to do a ridiculously hi-res version using these backgrounds. If you've got a favorite background you'd like a wallpaper of, please let me know.

Oh, and if you'd like a poster, there are some available from the zazzle store. Is there a poster of something you really want that's not there? Just let me know and I'll see if I can make it available for you =0)

Quick! there are free copies of Jolly Rover up for grabs from Alternative Magazine Online!

Also I wrote a brief Blog about Jolly Rover and indie marketing on the Invest Victoria Blog.

Just got an email from someone telling me there was a good review of Jolly Rover on PALGN, and lo and behold, they were right! PALGN has given Jolly Rover an 8/10 and I couldn't be happier!

Just got in a great review from 2 Girls 1 Game on their game podcast. Which you can check out here! (17:40 - 22:40)

And Mahkia liked it so much she wrote a very nice review here.

Club Casual have released Jolly Rover on their site here.

Club Casual were one of the first portals I signed Jolly Rover with and have been building an exciting new site for launch. They're an Australian distribtor and have been really supportive of the project since hearing about it on Gamezebo.

*Phew*! Finally got the new website up! It moves away from flash so now you can view it on your iPhone!

Recently the jolly kind folks at Gamezebo decided to give me a short interview, but I turned it into a long one. Check it out here.

Also, the game was reviewed kindly on JustAdventure, getting a generous B+! Check that out here.

Oh, and lastly Jolly Rover is set to appear on The Adventure Shop around the start of July.

So, a funny thing I've found out in the last week or so is there are some folks that really hate Steam. I don't understand this, but I don't really have to, because people can get the game from so many places. However if you're looking for a non-Steam version of the game, that has a one hour free trial check out these links:

PC: http://www.gamearena.com.au/pc/games/title/jolly-rover/index.php

Mac: http://www.macgamestore.com/detail.php?ProductID=1476

Can I just say as well, that Mac Game Store have been on board with Jolly Rover from the start, and they've been awesome, very good to work with and pro-indie. This isn't to downplay my other distributors, but I just thought they deserved a special mention. They're also the only Mac-only distributor I have.

Last night Jolly Rover featured on Good Game on ABC2. Jolly Rover got a great review getting 15.5/20 (77.5%) rubber chickens! Check out the awesome review here!. Note: to watch the video, scroll to 'Play Video' at the bottom.

Gamezebo (4.5) - "solid gameplay, hilarious writing, and gorgeous visuals".

Adventure Gamers (3.5) - "...humor is strong, with a dash of pathos for depth: unfulfilled clown dreams, voodoo priests clamoring for your soul, cannibals that want to eat or marry you, what more can you ask for?"

The wait is over! You can buy Jolly Rover here for $19.95!

This will take you to a secure order page run by BMT Micro, which accepts just about any online payment method you can think of. After purchase, you'll be sent a key you can use to download the game via the Steam Client. The Steam version of Jolly Rover is extra awesome because it allows you to play the game on PC & Mac and stores your save games in the Steam Cloud, which allows you to move between computers and continue your game from where you left off.

Remember to check out the Brawsome Store! for all your official Jolly Rover swag!

Been spending the last week or so fixing bugs with builds for distributors and doing Steam integration. Jolly Rover is going to use the Steam Cloud feature of Steam, as well as hook into their Achievements. The Steam Cloud stuff is the coolest, being able to jump from PC to Mac and continue your game is simply magic!

For those of you already on Steam please join the Jolly Rover Group, it's where all the cool kids hang out... so I hear.

Hold onto your socks and hats, for here is the official Jolly Rover trailer!

In other news, Jolly Rover is set for release on June 7th through the following distributors

• Steam
• Greenhouse
• Direct2Drive
• Real Networks
• iWin (iWin, Exent, WildTangent)
• Mac game store
• Oberon Media
• mygameIQ
• Club Casual

For those of you that still come here for the latest in Jolly Rover news over the twitter, facebook or mailing list options; good for you! Nuts to those 'popular' forms of communication!

Jolly Rover has hit Beta! The folks that signed up to be testers are getting their hands on it and trying to break it open and feast on the goo inside.

Blink and the game will be released! And on that note check out this link to Mac Game Store where Mac users can pre-order the game right now!

Phew! After 3 weeks of intensive voice recording we're about 85% of the way there! All of the 230 secondary character animations are final and implemented in game, and close to 100% of Gaius' animations. About 80% of the backgrounds are now final and implemented in game. With music and sfx pulling up the rear, but not far behind.

Brawsome has been chatting with distributors mygameIQ and Club Casual about distribution and in particular running a closed Beta Testing program. Jump on Facebook or subscribe to Twitter to find out when I'm opening up the Beta.

The Jolly Rover YouTube video was picked up by Tsumea and DIY Gamer. And in other press I just found out that I appeared on a GameSpot AU video (I pop up around 18:50).

Check it out here!.

Also, more press! Two very thoughtful articles on Adventure Gamers and PC GameZone

And if that still ain't enough Jolly Rover fer ye, ye can take one of those silly survey's on Facebook to find out Which scurvy dog from Jolly Rover arrr ye!

Get your free limited edition copy of Jolly Rover here!

A couple more press links filtering through. Firstly the interview with DIY Gamer is now up here. And an in depth interview on The Age's Screenplay here.

Remember if you want up-to-the-minute updates on Jolly Rover, follow us on twitter @brawsome, or on the Facebook Fan Page!

In other news we're starting voice recording this week with Scott Poythress as Gaius James Rover, and we've got the musical score in the works with some tracks already complete!

Back from GDC and facing a sea of cool art to put in, plus we start voice recording next week. We're in the eye of the storm now and lashing ourselves down for a wild ride to Beta.

Gamezebo was kind enough to do a preview on Jolly Rover here. And GameRevolution game the game a brief mention while I was at GDC. Check it out here.

Brawsome has recently recieved the sad news that Adventure Game #2 will not be going ahead, because of this efforts on Jolly Rover are being doubled and the game is set for release at the beginning of June.

Brawsome is going to GDC again this year, this time the agenda is to pitch Jolly Rover to distribution partners, as well as show off how awesome it is to various press!

There is now new fan page on Facebook for Jolly Rover. Hop on board here

Adventure Gamers have provided an awesome little announcement on the development of Jolly Rover. Check it out here

Tsumea was kind enough to do an interview with Brawsome on Jolly Rover and going indie - http://www.tsumea.com/australasia/australia/news/080210/interview-with-andrew-goulding-from-brawsome-on-jolly-rover-and-go.

We be workin' like dogs to get this here site up and runnin', so ye can be enjoyin' the spoils of our toil.