I have just this minute sent off an email that has entered Light the Skies in the Indie Games Arcade 2010 competition. So what is the Indie Games Competition and what are the prizes, you ask. The IGA is a competition where the winners get floorspace to show their games at the the Eurogamer Expo, scheduled to be held in London, from the 1st to the 3rd of October 2010.

Now most of us at Drop Dead Interactive were planning on going to Eurogamer anyway, so what better reason than to show off LTS to the public?

Of course nothing as big as this can come together without a great deal of time and help from others, so a special thanks to Eurogamer for donating the floorspace for the competition winners, Pixel-Labs for the time and effort to organize the competition and the Expo Sponsors for supplying hardware to run all the winners games on. Hats off to you guys for supporting the Indie games scene.

The closing date for competition entries is August the 13th, so if you’re reading this and you’re part of an indie team that has a game that will be ready in time don’t just stand there! Hurry over to indiegamesarcade and enter and hopefully, with a bit of luck, we’ll see you there!

Those of you that have followed the ups and downs of Drop Dead Interactive over the last two years (thanks mom), will have realized that we’ve been uncharacteristically quiet over the last couple of months and those of you who regularly check our website for clues and hints to what what we’ve been up to lately will have recently noticed a page on the website saying that we were in the process of building a new website. Well here it is, I hope you like it - there’s much more of it still being developed.

So, I hear you cry, why have we been so silent? Well, the truth is that Drop Dead Interactive has undergone some major alterations in the past few months, both in how we are doing things and in who we are doing them with!

Firstly we’ve been growing the business and have taken on board several new members of staff; firstly there is myself, Greg, I have several years of professional games industry experience, as well as many years experience in running companies and have been given the task of guiding Drop Dead Interactive in their task for world domination! I tried to explain to the others that “The Powers That Be” probably wouldn’t like us ruling the world as that would mean free beer and pizza for everybody, so after much debate we’ve set our sites a little lower and have decided to concentrate on establishing a name for ourselves as a developer of quality, fun to play, games.

Next up in our line of introductions is Michael Falzon. Mike has joined our growing art department to assist Ivan with the massive task of producing all the necessary graphics in order to complete Light the Skies and has been rapidly working on a variety of fantastic background images which will dramatically enhance the story-line of the game.

We have also recruited a very talented musician, James Barker. James has been locked up in a little room with a computer and a whole host of recording equipment and is being kept there until we’re happy with the music for Light the Skies! Occasionally we slide a pizza and a beer (recurring theme) through the flap in the door and in the morning they have magically disappeared! On a more serious note, James’ raw talent and hard-rock sounds really enhance Light the Skies and have turned a great game into an incredible one!

There have been so many fantastic people who have pulled through to help us when we asked them to in the last few months; Mad B, who recorded an incredible song for our (soon to be released) official trailer - check him out on youtube, Reese Mills who put together a Drop Dead Interactive logo for us to use with Light the Skies and Nicholas Bajeh, yet another young artist who has done some outstanding work for us.

The other exciting news is that we’re finally official! That means that I’ve received the registration documents for Drop Dead Interactive LLP and after more than 2 years as an unofficial group we are now a legal entity! Big breath and glasses of champagne all round!

There’s so many other things that have happened over the last month; Light the Skies continues to progress from strength to strength. The new level 3 and 4 bosses are looking superb, as are the new backgrounds and we’ve added a new element to the game in the form of of player versus player death match (although I think Jay has written something into the code to always let him win).

We’re currently working on putting together the official trailer for Light the Skies, so I’ll let you know once that’s finished. I’m sure there’s somebody or something I’ve forgotten to tell you about, but as always in massive catch-ups there’s always something you remember just after posting. I promise I’ll write it down and let you know what it was next posting. Until then ….