A Subterranean Search for Fossils

We're happy to announce that our latest game, Fossil Finder, has been released on the PBS Kids Dinosaur Train site!

Fossil Finder sends kids underground in the Drill Train in search of fossils! To make finding fossils even more fun, the Drill Train has been equipped with a Fossil-O-Meter that lights up as the train gets closer to a fossil. Just follow the meter to the fossil and dig it up!

Watch out though, your drill wears out as you dig! Drill too much and your drill will break and force you to return to the surface! Thankfully minerals can be used to strengthen your drill allowing you to drill even more. The stronger the mineral, the stronger your drill will be!

If you need some extra help finding fossils, you can always ask the local Troglobites. These subterranean dwellers will point you towards nearby fossils. Just follow the arrows!



Now, head on over to see how many fossils you can find!

Rail Rally Release!

Do you love dinosaurs? Do you enjoy trains? Do you find yourself daydreaming about bezier curves? Do you wish that you could experience all three together!?! If that's you (and I am quite sure it is since the you not reading this wouldn't be the same you reading this), we have just delivered on your dream!

That's what we do here at Gopherwood Studios. We make dreams come true. Not all dreams, mind you. Just dreams involving things we're making come true, obviously.

What? Racing against a Zeppelin!?! Is that fair?

Behold Rail Rally! In this prehistoric adventure, the Dinosaur Train chugs across the serene hills of the Cretaceous, racing against three other formidable Troodon inventions: the Solar Train, the Rocket Train, and the Zeppelin. Test your train engineer mettle as your trusty train chugs along the rails, passing bonuses along the way that boost you past your opponents!

After you've finished trying out all four vehicles, give your child a chance to play too. All kids love HTML5 games. Mine do. They're always saying, "If it's not HTML5, it's not really a game." Not really, but one day they'll understand the wisdom of their father's words.

Thanks to the awesome folks at Jim Henson's Dinosaur Train and PBS KIDS for giving us the opportunity to make this dream come true, for you!

Dinosaur Train Gets Remodeled!

Here at Gopherwood Studios, we pride ourselves in our wide range of expertise. We're talented at game design. I'm particularly great at pressing keyboard keys. We're decent software developers. I'm also fantastic at describing how fantastic we are. And never ones to be shy about the breadth of our expertise, we're now showing off our prowess in engine development. Not game engine development, train engine development! Yes, we've become what every engineer and paleontologist aspires to be, Dinosaur Train developers. Check out how smoothly our latest creation rides the rails.

Once upon a time there was a mom. Her name was Mrs. Pteranodon...

This is a little atypical for us, since we usually make games, but the dinosaurs (especially Derek Deinonychus) really enjoyed Station Race and thought we could put more trains on more web pages. Boy were they on the right track! We really trained the Dinosaur Train home page and gave the rest of the site new digs worthy of the Cretaceous.

Have your 4-year-old check it out and let us know what she thinks! We've found that kids really dig the latest HTML5 standards (and dinosaurs and trains can be pretty cool too).

A big thanks is in order to folks at PBS KIDS and Henson for giving us the opportunity to put together the new site and pretend we're time-traveling paleontologist train engineers!

New Dinosaur Train Game on PBS Kids!

The first decision in the game is a tough one.

Todd and I have been thoroughly immersed in the Cretaceous for the past few months, but we've traveled back to the future to share all that we've learned! Foremost, we're excited to share our field notes via our new game Station Race. (We scrawl field notes on our computers using JavaScript and inexplicably they show up as a game on the Internet somewhere.)

Station Race is a fun avoidance game that's fully playable on your computer or on your favorite mobile device. After a few rounds, you'll learn all about Deinonychus, Spinosaurus, and how to build railroad tracks across the Cretaceous landscape. Tap and trace your way from one station to the next as quickly as possible to pick up all the dinosaurs!

Lakes, boulders, trees, and sauropods: prehistoric track-building is hazardous.

Although the journey was rough, and the natives gigantic, Todd and I are now resident experts regarding many dinosaurs, and -- most importantly -- I am now proficient at naming each member of my children's toy dinosaur collection without reading the labels on the bottom.

We had a fantastic time working with both PBS Kids and Dinosaur Train on this project, and we hope you and your children enjoy the game and learn something new along the way!

Dinosaur Train Goes Mobile!

One thing I love about working on web games is that you get to write lots of blog posts about how you've just finished something because web games tend to a have a pretty quick turn-around compared to the console games I used to work on. So, today, it's my pleasure to write another one!

We've had the pleasure, over the last 6 months, to work with the PBS Kids and Jim Henson folks on several titles related to the Dinosaur Train property. They're moving into the HTML5 realm and we got to be a small part of that and learned a lot about dinosaurs and time-traveling trains along the way.

There were several parts to the project, so here's a breakdown:

I wish the river rafting trips I went on had whirlpools like that!

• River Run - The newest Dinosaur Train game. This one is based on the latest season of Dinosaur Train in which the Dinosaurs go on various adventures at Adventure Camp. In River Run players join Don and Buddy as they paddle down river in search of bugs for Don's collection. Player's can play single or multiplayer taking on the role of Don or Buddy competing to see who can find the most bugs. I'll probably put up another post talking more about this game, but until then, you can try it out here.

You would think they could make the path to the convention center a little less...maze-like.

• Buddy's Amazing Adventure ported to HTML5 - Buddy's Amazing Adventure is an example of a great existing title created by the nice folks at Fablevision that we reworked in HTML5 so mobile users could play it too. I think Derek did a great job of recreating the experience and users will be hard pressed to find the difference between the Flash and HTML5 versions. If you want to try to find the difference visit this link on mobile and desktop devices. The mobile version is ours, while the desktop version will load Fablevision's original version.

Prehistory's nemesis to a well-washed car.

• Field Guide ported to HTML5 - The Field Guide is essentially a giant dinosaur encyclopedia. We took the existing Flash version and ported it to HTML5. Along the way, we learned a whole lot of dinosaur facts by osmosis (Did you know Quetzalcoatlus had a wingspan of 36 feet? That's crazy!). You can check it out here.

Even Giganotosaurus needs his moment in the spotlight.

• Mobile Website - PBS Kids already has an excellent desktop friendly Dinosaur Train website, but they didn't have a version that worked on mobile devices. So, we put together a site for mobile users. PBS Kids automatically redirects traffic to the correct page, so if you're on a mobile device, that link up there will take you to the mobile site we designed.

We hope you'll take some time to explore some of our recent creations and leave us some feedback. Have fun!