Mind Candy

So here I am, the last of my 12 weeks as a Flash programming intern at Mind Candy. I’d like to think I’ve brought a lot to the company. I programmed the Underground Disco for Moshi Monsters which went live recently, as well as a few small things that will hopefully pop up in the future, but aside from that I’ve tried my best to take an active role in meetings and discussions, possibly to the frustration of my more experienced (but very patient!) colleages.

My main reason for coming here was to learn, to become more experienced in doing what I do in a working environment and as part of a team. I’m happy to say that I learnt a lot more than I expected to! I’m programming in a much more professional way, in a much more complicated but rewarding development environment (FDT in Eclipse). I’ve previously been quite uncomfortable having other people work with my code but here I was introduced to the joys of using an SVN repository which has been pretty painless and very useful for recovering old work. I’ve taken part in pair-programming too which was surprisingly productive and again something I’ve never been exposed to before.

I’ve been involved in all stages of a product cycle, from the wide-eyed aspiration of the initial design meetings to the gut-wrenching final moments before release. Working with designers, artists, animators, testers, and coders of various disciplines really highlights the importance of communication between disciplines, and that going that extra mile, or even inch, to make things easier for other people helps a lot in bringing a whole product together.

In two weeks I’ll be heading back to do the final year of my degree, where I will immediatly get myself an SVN repository set up and write better code than ever before; and hopefully will keep in touch with some of the great people that I’ve worked with. :)

It’s been a while since we last covered Perplex City, but today we have some exciting news for all of you puzzle fans out there.

We released the first wave of new puzzle cards all the way back in 2007 and ever since then we’ve been hard at work getting Moshi Monsters off the ground.

We always wanted to release wave two of the cards, and we’re ecstatic to let you know that we’re finally able to do it! That’s right, you can look forward to 86 never before seen puzzle cards, spread across the usual range of difficulties.

That’s not all though. To celebrate the release, we’re putting the boxes on sale at a hefty discount. They’ll be exclusively available tomorrow from Firebox at only £20 for a box of 36 packs.

This will also be your last chance to pick up wave 1 cards and you’ll only have a limited time to get the wave 2 boxes. If you want a piece of Perplex City, grab them while you can!

NB. The codes on wave 2 cards won’t work on We Love Puzzles, so you won’t get points for solving them. However, we will be releasing the solutions at some point in the future, so keep your eyes peeled.

As much as we’d love to bring back the Perplex City ARG, there are sadly no plans to do that in the short-term. We simply felt it would be far better to release these puzzle cards to our loyal fans rather than letting them gather dust in our warehouse. We Love Puzzles will be one of the best places to join in the discussions.

Have fun!

Earlier this year, the Surrey County Council launched their campaign to encourage kids aged 5-11 to become regular borrowers. Here at Mind Candy we’re all in favour of getting more kids to read and thought we should lend a hand!

Over the upcoming Autumn half-term holiday – that’s 27th to 31st October – we’ll be giving away special Moshi Monsters prizes to any children who sign up for a new library card. 

If you live in Surrey, grab the kids and drop by. To find out more and see where your local library is, visit the council’s site.

We have finally made it, the new Mind Candy website is up & running (as you may have already noticed!). Taking a break from the daily Monstro City tasks myself & Ryan have been hard at work getting WordPress themed up and running smoothly over the last couple of weeks, but we are not finished yet – over the next while we will be adding new content, adding final tweaks to existing content, along with the inclusion of Flickr feeds and who knows, maybe even blog more :-)