As we approached the new year, the best of 2008 awards started to pop up. I was really happy that Gamasutra, IndieGames and Rock, Paper Shotgun liked You Have to Burn the Rope (YHTBTR). The Gaming Club over at Slate’s gave the game some attention while Spike TV used my song ”Now you’re a hero” at the end of their show The Next Great Game Gods. I celebrated when Jayisgames finally wrote a full post about the game and as the article by Stuart Horvath in the New York Daily News was published I was quite surprised. YHTBTR by the side of GTA IV, Fallout 3, Braid and the other great games was an honor beyond my wildest dreams.

To top it all of, YHTBTR is nominated for Innovation in the 2009 Independent Games festival. I really want to go to San Fransisco to attend the awards but I’m not sure I can. The tickets + expenses will surely amount to at least 1000 EUROS which is way over my budget. Oh well, you never know what might happen.

I read some comments about the nomination and realised that some people think YHTBTR don’t belong on the list. I can’t make you like the game and if you don’t, to be honest, I’m not going to lose sleep over it. But I want to make something clear which is obviously just a misunderstanding. People who think YHTBTR was something Kian and me threw together in a hurry need to think again. To get it in perspective, let me tell you about the text on the way to the boss. If you count the hours me and Kian talked about colors, placements, alternative ideas, testing it on people and so on, it amounts to at least ten. Do the math and you’ll understand how long it took to complete the full game.

Surprised?

An old saying fits well here:

Sometimes the simplest things are the hardest.