We’re used to surprising other people with the player stats for our releases, but it’s not often that we knock ourselves out.

Released in 2009, “Brilliant Brushers” is one of our simplest games, but has been a jaw-dropping success. Aimed at 4 – 11 year olds and their parents with a dental hygiene message wrapped up in a fun way, it has had over 18 million plays lasting almost 7 minutes each on average. Wow! That is simply breath-taking.

Created for Philips to promote its Sonicare range of toothbrushes for kids, “Brilliant Brushers” now has a sequel in this year’s release of “Cosmic Clean”. Featuring our hero of the pearly whites, Sonic Simon, and his sidekick Sonic Sophie, the daring dental duo take off for a 3 level game to spread good dental hygiene habits throughout the cosmos. The aliens of the Moons of Molar, Planet Plaque and Comet Canine are in for a toothy treat!

In all seriousness though, fun and simplicity are not to be sneezed at as successful game mechanics. And if Matmi helps spread the word about good dental hygiene for a few million kids and parents around the globe, we can live with that.

Game on! Stewart.

After a great meeting with the good folks at TBWA New York during our trip earlier this year, we were delighted to get a call asking us to get involved in producing a series of games for the iconic Twix brand.

Twix, meaning “twins sticks” (hey, we know our stuff, y’know) has been around since 1979 and its current branding revolves around “Take a pause like you mean it”. Using this as our theme, we created a game concept based on the equally iconic game, Brickbreaker, and gave it a Twix twist.

“Feedbreaker” features 10 increasingly difficult levels, where using the Twix bars as your paddle, you break the bricks, catch power-ups, avoid the power-downs, enjoy the techno music (mostly) and send swag to your friends on Facebook so they’ve got power-ups ready for when they play. You may find your friends’ faces appearing randomly on the bricks as well which feels slightly bizarre – but the bricks make great noises when they break, so we reckon it’s all fine!

Games.com gave us a great review which bodes well for the next release, so standby for more classic chocolately fun! Stewart.

Northern Ireland’s favourite craft baker, Genesis Crafty, has been expanding into the UK in the last year, striking major deals for its glorious breads and cakes with Waitrose, Tesco and Sainsbury’s. Already a social media savvy brand, they asked Matmi and their advertising agency Brandhouse, to create an advergame to help ‘spread the word’ in the UK.

We were delighted to oblige – especially when we realised that the 6 brother bakers and the brand were almost as quirky as Matmi. Having immortalised themselves as stickmen bakers, it was a joy to place the baking brothers in a frenetic flurry of floury fun gaming, stretching players’ baking (and multi-tasking) skills to the max!

“Knead for Speed” is a bake-off of epic proportions where quality is key – just as at Genesis Crafty itself. Leaving the dough for too long, missing a step or forgetting to take cakes out of the oven makes sorry spoils that eat into players’ scores. But baking the right number of cakes and breads perfectly in each level accumulates a well raised result!

Players can post the scores they’re proud of to the global leaderboard – or challenge friends through Facebook and create their very own high score table. The game can be shared over twitter too, and the top scoring Bread Heads can even send a gift or redeem a voucher to buy Genesis Crafty’s gorgeous goods.

So will you use your loaf or become a gluten for punishment? (And we’ve got plenty more bread-based puns on hand, so I suggest you leave now while the going’s good!)

Have bagels of fun, Stewart.

There’s nothing old and wrinkly about this competition game release for Nivea!

Taking the brand’s “Feeling closer” theme, we developed a concept around mementos – objects with emotional value that we often associate with friends, places and good times. “Mementos of Closeness” is the result – a 5-level game set in various locations around the UK featuring short, fun Nivea advertising clips that subtlely reinforce the brand’s presence during play.

Players need to collect at least 10 mementos in each level to progress – everything from gas stoves and powder puffs to rubber ducks and guitars! You may find the odd Nivea product lurking in the scenery too… (we figured that was OK; it’s their game after all).

Nivea sponsors ITV’s “This Morning” show which is our 3rd encounter with the broadcaster (“Colour of Money” and “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here!”). People are going to start talking soon…..

Talking of which: “Mementos of Closeness” is a competition game and closes on 30th November so get on there and get playing! You can win an exclusive tour of the “This Morning” studio or one of 50 Nivea goodie bags – which has got to be good on the run up to Christmas (ugh, sorry, did I really just say that word?)

Anyway! Over to you and if you like the game, don’t forget to pass it on to your friends through Facebook and twitter. Big thanks to the guys at Nivea and ITV – and good luck to all players! The marvellous Matmians can’t enter the competition – which is a shame for our girlfriends but good news for you.

Enjoy, Stewart.

How will the new cloud-based gaming platform affect the entrenched console vs. PC platform debate of the gaming world?  Matmi’s lead developer, James Tibbles, buys himself a box and gives OnLive a road test.  Here’s his report.

I’ve been a gamer since the days of the Sinclair +2 Spectrum (yes, I am that old) and have experienced the formation of the gaming world’s console vs. PC platform divide first-hand.

Let me get this out of the way now and declare myself a console-ist which happened for the simple reason that I had a laptop at the time without a mouse.  You just couldn’t interact easily enough with games to do anything but end up shouting at the screen in frustration.  Give me that joystick and make it snappy!

But whether you’re a PC or console freak, we both have a problem.  We’ve always been reliant on newer, faster, whizzier hardware to run the increasingly CPU-sapping games coming onto the market.  That’s the rub – sooner or later, you’re going to have to shell out for new technology.  But maybe not any more.

Released in the UK in September, OnLive is a cloud-based gaming platform that runs on any platform with a reasonably fast Internet connection.  It’s been around since 2007, but Internet speeds weren’t quite up to the mark so OnLive’s taken a few years to get any traction – but it’s now well and truly arrived.

So what do you get?

• Free OnLive membership (no subscription unless you fancy additional package deals).
• Free to play most games 30 minutes a day.
• The ability to watch others play games, and view new game trailers.
• A vast amount of well-known games, and the comfort of knowing the hardware and game library will be continually updated, automatically.
• Single and multiplayer online.
• No need for top of the range graphics and sound card because you’re effectively watching a video, not rendering 3D environments on the fly.
• No need for a hard drive.
• Customisable controls if you’re using a keyboard.

I joined the OnLive service and played via PC first.  After a quick program download I signed in.  The OnLive system starts up just like you’re accessing a dashboard on a modern day console.  Even the introduction is video streaming – a rotating sweeping logo comes in to screen then fades out.

Then you’re in to the menu system – a grid-like layout allowing you to browse through games in the marketplace, change your settings and even watch other people’s games currently in progress (this is live streaming after all).

A brief look through the marketplace and it’s great to see so many well-known game titles available to play.  F.E.A.R 3 and Split Second immediately took my interest.  Another great little feature is that most games are available to play for free for 30 minutes a day. The system simply disables any save abilities and brings you back to the dashboard after your 30 minutes are over.

Being the gamer that I am and being impressed so far, I decided to give the OnLive gamepad a try.  I know this sounds counterproductive – that you’re back to buying hardware – but it does give you a great gaming experience.  Dual thumb-sticks, standard main controls, 4 trigger buttons and (this bit’s really nifty) additional keys to control video recordings, allowing you to very easily record, review and upload your video clips.  This is great for a chuckle, especially recordings that point out game flaws such as walking through walls and defying gravity. Top that off with the usual rumble pad and menu buttons and the OnLine gamepad is possibly the nicest controller I’ve ever used.

I plug it in to my TV, boot it up and continue my OnLive journey.  As before, the dashboard comes up, and intuitive navigation kicks in. This time I load up F.E.A.R 3 (a game I previously purchased and played on the PC version of the OnLive system) which takes seconds.  Then it takes me to my last saved point and away I go.

I only have two criticisms.

The gamepad doesn’t come with a wireless connection as standard – you have to connect via a wireless bridge – so it loses a point in my eyes.  And while I was playing Split Second, one of my favourite racing games, the screen jolted and stuck for a moment or two, then a “network problem” message popped up.

These blips continued intermittently – 3 times in 3 hours of play – so it didn’t really bother me, but I did decide to upgrade my 6mpbs Internet connection.  Running games via a streaming system, no matter how fast your Internet connection may be, your controls simply won’t be as quick to respond as you may be used to.  Short of restructuring the entire infrastructure of Internet communication (which, impressively, Steve Perlman – OnLive’s founder, is currently working on) this will always be cause for concern.

So is OnLive really the console and PC gamer killer?

I don’t think so, but it’s definitely a game changer, sitting itself quite happily, comfortably and perhaps permanently in-between the hard-core PC gamer, the console lover and those who don’t have hundreds of pounds to spend on either.

Streaming gaming has real potential to please all people and end the divide, and it’ll make tablet owners happy too.  Personally I’ll keep on playing via the console rather than the PC, but I can also see myself plugging in my mouse and keyboard, just to get that extra control in some more PC-based games.

Despite my new dependency on constant fast internet access, what pleases me the most is that I no longer have to worry about keeping my hardware completely up to date. But instead I now worry whether or not OnLive can keep their hardware up to date!

With OnLive being so cheap, sexy, unique and fun to use I’m proud to add it to my console collection, and I look forward to watching the service expand and improve over the coming months and years.

The future of gaming is here. All hail streaming media! All hail the big fluffy cloud!