It's Live!

You can download it on zylom and gamehouse right now.
Zylom has changed the date from 1 December to 30 November! PLease enjoy everybody and don't forget to leave a positive review!
Check out our facebook page as well!

Have Fun! Big Time!

Only 7 days to go!

Hi folks,

Just wanted to share with you that A NEW VIDEO IS OUT! Part 2 to be exact!
You can watch it here: http://www.facebook.com/DeliciousGames

Delicious Release Date

Dear Delicious fans,
We have an important thing to share with you. There have been rumours about the release date of Delicious – Emily’s True Love. At this point we can tell you that, unfortunately, it’s not going to be 21 November.
We will keep you posted!
Stay tuned!

FANTASTIC NEWS!

FANTASTIC NEWS TO START YOUR WEEKEND! Delicious - Emily's True Love will be released within one month from now! You can't believe how excited we are! Spread the news!

pimp your office

Some people just know how to make themselves comfortable...Like this desk...don't you just wanna work here too?

5 YEAR ANNIVERSARY!

Because it’s our and Emily’s 5 year anniversary and we like presents, we have one for you!
The Delicious fan who sends us the most original happy anniversary message will win his or her own game character (even with your own name!) in the new Delicious – Emily’s True Love! How fun is that??
Go to Emily´s Place, send us a photo, a drawing or even a video message. It’s up to you!
In the end, you are the one who decides which one is the most original. Get as much friends as possible to vote for your message and the one who has the most likes/votes before October 1st wins! It’s that easy!

BETA is out!

I have great news! We have a beta test live! Just to remind the people who tested Delicious - Emily's True Love last time on our beta board; Check your mail boxes and makes sure our mail doesn't get stuck in your spam folder. We really NEED your feedback!

For the people who participated in our promotion video campaign; You will receive a special version on Monday! So please stay tuned and check your email as well.

Thanks and enjoy your weekend!

Friday afternoon inspiration

What do we do on a friday like this one?
Get inspired by Rolling through the Bay Toothpick Sculpture.

Finding Emily's True Love

Dear Delicious fans,

As you may know we’re working on the new Delicious – Emily’s True Love game. This chapter of Emily’s life will be all about finding true love. Now we need your help to put Emily’s story together!

What’s the most romantic thing someone has ever done for you?

We will use the answers to this question as research for the new Delicious game, and some replies may even be used. This means your special moment can be part of the new Delicious game!

You can share your moment by sending us an email at:
Emily@zylom.com
Your romantic moment is in good hands with us; we will treat it with respect!

Have a fun day!

We want you!

GameHouse is looking for enthousiastic delicious players to help us promote the new delicious! If you'd like to help us and are not afraid of putting yourself in front of the camera, let us know. We are looking for native speaking people from the US, UK, Germany, France and Brazil. What's in it for you? You'll get access to the first hour of Emily's True Love months before release, an official membership to the worldwide delicious promotion team and you will get the new game for FREE!
Make sure that we can contact you if you want to participate.

Have a fun day!

Can you imagine?

How do you like the idea of a flower store in Delicious?

Emily's Place on Facebook!

Emily's got her own place now and guess what it's called? EMILY'S PLACE! Isn't that great? Although we spend a lot of time and posts on Emily and her friends, you can now also connect with Emily on Facebook. It's not only the name of her new restaurant but also the name of her little Facebook corner. She's just beginning of course, so give her time.
http://www.facebook.com/zylomgames

Have a fun day!

10 year anniversary!

Last week we celebrated Zylom's 10th year anniversary and especially for this occasion Miss Pebble created a cake (!) version of Henri and his little house in Paris from our game Pastry Passion. A game created in our studio ages ago, but still in our hearts...
Here's more (if you can read Dutch that is...It's from a forum on creating cakes yourself).

The cake was...hmm...Delicious!
Have a fun day!

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THE DAY WE HAVE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR HAS ARRIVED!
Today we are going...BETA! All players who have been invited to our betaboard please check your email somewhere this afternoon.

In case you feel the urge to post your comments on this blog, after the first playsession, please be careful with spoilers! Not everyone following this blog has been invited to our betaboard, so please comment with consideration.

We hope this will make your weekend start the right way!

have a fun day!

5 lucky women!

Today is a big day! 5 lucky women are going to test the first restaurant in the new Delicious! They have been invited to a nice little cottage in the country (Last year we had found the perfect spot for a day like this. Just look at these pictures!) to get them in a delicious mood (Don't worry. Nothing will happen to them;) so our players can play and test the game in a homelike environment. The focus of todays testing is to see if the game is user friendly.


10 levels of pure gameplay fun! And I can assure you; after playing 10 days of the newest delicious, there is NO WAY you can stop playing. Trust me. You just can't. So I hope the guys from our studio who accompany these players (they're watching our players from behind a mirror) will still be able to get to their homes before it gets dark;)


So, it won't be long now before the first Alpha test is here! To everyone who received an invitation: You won't have to wait much longer now. Pretty soon you too can play the first restaurant on our betaboard. Stay tuned!

Wall of Fame

Between all the game art that brightens up our office already, someone already made a tribute to the next Delicious by putting up some of the great concept art made for this already highly anticipated game!

Out with the old...

In with the new!
After having and serving the same customers in the Delicious restaurants for the last 3 editions, we thought it would be time for a change.
We decided to renew the customers who come to visit Emily's restaurant. Not only that, we've spent countless hours in picking and matching the clothes they are wearing. Here's what Ehow.com has to say on color matching clothes:

Tips for Matching Clothing Color

Color is just one way of expressing yourself in fashion. Develop the ability to make a fashion statement just by understanding the color wheel. Understand the meaning of words, such as complimentary, triad, and monochromatic. Learn to choose the most flattering colors for your own skin tone.

There's simply not a catalog or a fashion show we have missed the last couple of months.

While we're still in the designing process; If you have any suggestions or requests for our design department, let us know! I'm can't promis you anything, but a good idea is always welcome!

Emily in the making...

Sometimes, we find the time to do something nice for a change (You know, working on games is really really boring...) and we have been thinking about creating Emily in 3D for quite some time now.

Since a few months we had the opportunity to give it a try. Raymon Manders, who is working on all the main characters, special characters and customers in 3D, is also modelling a high resolution model of Emily.
We won't be using her ingame, but if we have more time on our hands, who knows? Maybe we'll make a movie about Emily;)

Just like home...

Working in a gamestudio is sort of like home...You work together because you have to, you don't choose your colleagues, and you hate each others guts...at least sometimes...

Do you have an Ipad?

Today one of our favorite games, Delicious-Emily's Childhood Memories, is going to be sent to Apple for submission. And we've got proof! Check the images!

So if you have one, you just have to wait just a little bit longer...maybe we'll throw in a free version when it's live! Stay tuned...

Festival of Games 2011!

Here's what we've been up to the last two days.

We have been lucky enough to visit 2 days of industry talks from people around the globe. Guests like Mary Bihr from LucasArts (Star Wars), Ian Livingstone from Eidos (Tombraider, Deus Ex) to people -not known by many but still very inspiring to many of us- like Nicholas Francis (Unity) to name a few. One of the things he mentioned was -get this- to unplug your computer from the internet for 4-6 hours per day to increase productivity and focus!


And to give you a sense in what kind of remote area we work in, a chance to visit StarBucks for once in a while...

Places from the new Delicious!

Here you can see Emily visiting Venice, but it has been cancelled and taken out of the new game. Although it looks like finished artwork, it will never be part of Delicious 7...
Not everybody agreed ofcourse and some even called it a `missed opportunity`.
Well...we´ll see about that!

BETA***Test the new Emily!***BETA

As you have noticed, your registration on our beta board has to be activated by our admin. Because we initiated this operation ourselves, we decided it was easier to set a date so you had the time to register and for us to have just one date on which we activate accounts. Because there is still some misunderstanding, we wanted to let you know we are planning on activating your account from april 1 on. This means that as of tomorrow you will be receiving an email from our admin.

Just so you know, we are as excited as you are!

have a fun day!

I think i saw a puddy tat

In Emily's life there was room for a pet. After some discussion we thought a cat seemed the appropriate pet for her. We picked the last one (o). Or should we say the last one (o) picked Emily?

Delicious haircut?

Since a couple of years we have been trying to find ways to improve Emily. There's a big chance she'll cut her hair during the next game. Take a look at what we've been up to today...What do you think? Yes or No?

The Last Delicious?

At the moment we are working on Delicious 7 and I don't think there is another casual game outthere that has done the same. If you would have told anyone in our studio - way back when - there would be at least 6 sequels to this game, people would have left the building screaming and crying.

But we didn't.

People enjoy working on every new game even more than working on the previous one. How come? Because we feel there is progress to be made. And every single game is a chance for us to improve something in the game.

One thing we are anxious about improving is something called visual storytelling. If the story tells us that Emily is happy, it helps to show that Emily is smiling and - even better - if Emily also jumps for joy!
Simply drawing all these different poses would take us forever. Just look at a glimpse of how Emily feels about things.

A while ago we decided to create every character in 3D so we could give Emily and the entire cast more room to express themselves. Of course when it ends up in the game all characters maintain their typical 2D look. Otherwise it wouldn't look delicious anymore;)
At the moment we are re-re-doing all characters in 3D starting with Angela, Emily's younger sister.

So, as you can see Delicious 7 is not the last Delicious, simply because Emily is not finished yet. Far from it. We feel we have just begun.

New Delicious sneak peak!

Well, it's finally here! We are very excited to show you a very early and very new Delicious sneak peak. Delicious 7 to be exact. Wait a minute! Is that Emily's mother Evelyn peaking through the front door? And who's that standing beside her? What are they doing?

Now I have a special offer for everyone who is interested in testing the new Delicious beta that's coming in a few weeks time. Are you interested? give us a shout and I will add you as a new betaboard member before Delicious 7 goes Beta.

Quote of the week!

"The rose has thorns only for those who would gather it." - Chinese proverb

Have a fun day!

Your favorite event?

Learning to ride your bike, collecting daisy chains or catching fireflies are some of the favorite events that happened in Delicious - Emily's Childhood Memories and they were fun to play. At least according to some of the people over here in the studio.

Now, we're curious. (and I heard some of us are already willing to bet...) What is your favorite event from Emily's childhood memories?

Quote of the week!

"All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it."
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Enjoy your week!

In the spotlight - 1

We thought it would be nice if we gave our posts a more personal touch by introducing a new series. We call it "In the spotlight".

We asked someone whom you're probably not very familiar with, to step into the spotlight and share with you some of his feelings about the project. The writer of Delicious, Mr. Ed Kuehnel.

I don’t have nearly as many good childhood memories as I’d like. This was my thought as I sorted through the multitude of fond ones related to me by the good folks at Zylom Game Studio, who had just hired to me to work as a writer on the sixth installment of their beloved Delicious series, Emily’s Childhood Memories.

The anecdotes were gleaned from employees, friends, family members and other fans of Emily’s. They spoke of chasing fireflies, roasting marshmallows, summer vacations and happy holidays and were largely ones I had never experienced firsthand. I’m thirty-eight, and I am not by nature very nostalgic, but I had signed on to the project was determined to do my best. You see, I pride myself for my work on lighthearted titles, and the Delicious series was tops on my list of games to work on after finishing up another project for Eindhoven called Heart’s Medicine, a game with a decidedly dramatic theme but with similar gameplay.

As part of my preparation for working on Heart’s Medicine I played most of the Delicious series over the course of a day or two. I fell in love with its whimsical characters, absurd situations and endearing message of family and friendship. Truth be told, I’m not only a fan of Emily’s, I’m also a little jealous. Her parents, while not perfect, are supportive and loving. Francois would do anything for Emily, and Angela…well, Angela is Angela.

Ernest Hemingway once said that, “The first draft of anything is…” Well, I won’t repeat the exact quote. Suffice to say that my first attempt at shaping the stories and dialog in Emily’s Childhood Memories did not reflect the tone one felt reading the anecdotes that helped to inspire it. So l tried again. And again. Eventually, (and I can’t take all the credit) the game took shape into what you see now.

Everything happens for a reason. I have a loving, caring wife and two small boys. My mother lives in farm country and my father, now retired, is anxious to spend time with me and his grandsons. Exploring Emily’s past was a wonderful experience, on that I’ll treasure always. More importantly, the flood of memories, while not my own, have inspired me. I can chase fireflies with my boys at my mother’s house in farm country. I can (and have) taken my children camping to roast marshmallows over a campfire. We can make daisy chains with in the backyard and my wife and I are taking our children to Ohio in the summer to see her family. As with Emily’s Childhood Memories, everything has come full circle and for that I am eternally grateful.

-Ed Kuehnel

14,6!

This is our confidential paper disposal box. Out of frustration someone glued an "idea box" sticker to it. This might look like a joke to you but in reality it was one of the most visited places on the floor during development of Emily's Childhood Memories (number one is the coffeemachine).
We counted (we really did) the amount of ideas we threw away on an average day. For every idea that ended up in the game 14,6 ended up in this box. That's on average!

It's one of the burdens of working in a creative environment. Dealing on an hourly basis with your ideas being canned. Being rejected. To illustrate what we mean; Here's an example of something that we thought could work very nicely with a younger Emily, but eventually didn't make it in the game.



Of course, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but to tell you the truth, a lot of people find it very difficult when their ideas are not being used, end up in the game or worse that they are taken out because for some reason they didn't seem to work out.

So if you're having this romantic idea of working in a creative environment, you might want to think twice (or 14,6 times;)

Happy Valentine!

First I would like to say thank you to all the creative ideas everybody contributed the last couple of days for the next Delicious installment. One of our artists took the time to visualize some of the ideas and we decided to say thank you by sharing with you this piece of concept art of Emily on this very special day.

If by any chance you might think: “Hey! She doesn’t look like Emily at all!” Then you’re right. As we often do to keep our creative juices flow and to keep an open mind, we treat our brands with various graphic styles when we’re in the middle of brainstorming sessions and pre-production.
Anyways, this one's for you! (And your secret lover;)

We wish you happy valentine and again, have a fun day!

And the number one is....!

With all the overwhelming positive comments and reviews childhood memories is receiving these days, we would almost forget a game we released not so long ago. Although we got quite a few remarks about it being too short, we were glad (or should I say relieved?) that it got such great reviews!

I'm glad in times like these I can quote my friend Winston Churchill who once said: "In victory, you deserve Champagne, in defeat, you need it." I say: To the Zylom Game Studio! Good work guys! Cheers!

Best of 2010, in the category Time Management:
From the developers of Delicious Emily's Holiday Season comes another gem of a time management game every casual gamer needs to experience. Heart's Medicine: Season One takes place in a hospital where the newly-arrived Allison Heart is just beginning her residency. Help sick patients by tending to their needs, shuffling them through the hospital as efficiently as you can, never forgetting to take good care of each person. The storyline is fantastic, the presentation is superb, and both the variety and the game's pacing are perfect. Heart's Medicine is simply one of the most well-balanced and entertaining time management games you can find!

http://jayisgames.com/best-of/2010/download/time-management-or-simulation-results/

if you haven't tried Heart's Medicine, season one before, you just have to try it for free right here:
http://www.zylom.com/uk/download-games/heart-s-medicine-season-one-deluxe/?dsgid=6074

HERE WE GO!

We're Live! Delicious - Emily's Childhood Memories is now officially part of history!

Have a fun day!

What do you think?

Although we're all very excited about the upcoming new Delicious, we're already in the process of brainstorming about the next one.
So, we're curious! Where do you think Emily should go in the next one? Tell us! We need your opinion! So if you have any ideas on new themes, new story ideas, new characters, no matter how unimportant they seem, anything you can come up with is very helpful to us! Let us know!

The Delicious-Team

Delicious - Emily's Childhood Memories

The promo video is LIVE! The official countdown has begun!
If you want to see more please check:
http://www.zylom.com/uk/promo/delicious6/prelaunch.jsp

Have a fun day!

inspiration is all around us - part 4

As we are aware that a great part of our game playing audience is both male and female we watch this video every now and then. This information can also be useful in everyday life;)
Mark Gungor explains the difference between the male and the female brain

Have a fun day!

inspiration is all around us - part 3

Again from Derek Sivers. These two videos are really worth watching.

"There's a flip side to everything," the saying goes, and in 2 minutes, Derek Sivers shows this is true in a few ways you might not expect.
http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_weird_or_just_different.html

With help from some surprising footage, Derek Sivers explains how movements really get started.
http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movement.html

have a fun day!

inspiration is all around us - part 2

The following is from Derek Sivers blog. Maybe you should check it out.

It's so funny when I hear people being so protective of ideas. (People who want me to sign an NDA to tell me the simplest idea.)

To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.

Explanation:

AWFUL IDEA = -1

WEAK IDEA = 1

SO-SO IDEA = 5

GOOD IDEA = 10

GREAT IDEA = 15

BRILLIANT IDEA = 20


NO EXECUTION = $1

WEAK EXECUTION = $1000

SO-SO EXECUTION = $10,000

GOOD EXECUTION = $100,000

GREAT EXECUTION = $1,000,000

BRILLIANT EXECUTION = $10,000,000

To make a business, you need to multiply the two.

The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20.

The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000.

inspiration is all around us - part 1

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.-- Henry Ford.

New Delicious packed with lots of fun!

This is a snapshot from another promotional video for the upcoming Delicious - Emily's Childhood Memories. The new video is packed with a lot of never before seen images and fun from the game itself! It will be aired a week before launch. We'll let you know when.
The new game (release 3 February 2011) is also packed with loads and loads of fun! Besides the game itself with a new and highly anticipated feature, it contains extra screensavers, a making of video, a personal photo album and many many more! It even contains things we aren't allowed to discuss...

Put in your agenda: 3 February!

Taylor Swift joins forces with Emily!

How about this one?
In early stage of production this video was created for internal use to get everyone's noses pointing in the same direction. What is the feeling we want the player to get when playing Emily's Childhood Memories? How do we get a childhood memory's impact to go straight for the heart in a casual game? That's why we felt it was useful to create a video supported with a song with a strong emotional message.
Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcyTYT-2QTs

Delicious - Emily's Childhood Memories!

Here's one of the official videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YZOtvM8jpw

it's cool!

New logo for the studio?

After finishing Delicious - Emily's Childhood Memories we thought it would be great to spend some time on developing our very own studio logo. You know, to develop our own identity. So at the moment we are sketching as if our lives depend on it...The last couple of days have been very enlightening and exhausting at the same time and to give you a glance of what we are up to: we're exploring various directions that represent what the zylom game studio stands for and that we can use to accompany our logo. Here's a few sketches for ya.




























Oh...and by the way, these ones haven't made it to the next round...