The company I work for, NinjaBee, has announced our newest game. It is the best sandbox game that I’ve had the privilege of working on, and well worth looking at if you have a chance:
A World of Keflings
The official company blog announcement
And various bits of concept art from the NinjaBee blog.
It’s been a fun game to work with, and I’m really looking forward to seeing it in its final state. Here’s hoping you all enjoy it too!
(Of course, the irony here is that I still don’t even have an XBox. I guess I have to play it at work. I’ll call it… testing.)
I wonder if you could buy yourself an xbox and call it a tax deductible business expense……?
Shoot – if it was anything but xbox exclusive I’d be all over that.
mpb, I don’t know… but I may have to look into it.
Andrew, the precursor, A Kingdom for Keflings, *is* currently in late beta testing for a PC release. I’d suspect that if it’s received well, it’s not impossible that this one would get a port, too. I can’t speak bindingly one way or another, but really, it wouldn’t surprise me to get a port.
Looks cool
Not having an Xbox, I won’t be able to play it… unless you want to covince your company to send out some free sample consoles? 
I promise I’ll give some constructive testing feedback! 
I played the trial of A Kingdom for Kelflings so I’m looking forward to seeing the improvements in World of Kelflings.
I was struck by the use of “sandbox” in your post though. I thought Kingdom was sort of an RTS-Lite-ish game. Isn’t World the same thing only improved? Or is there more to it that I’m missing?
RTS-lite-ish is a good way of looking at it, since you’re managing workers and trying to build things. That said, there’s not really any conflict, no enemies to defeat.
Here, I’m using the term “sandbox” in a different way than we might use it on an MMO or even RPG. Internally, we’ve called these games “toys” more than once, since there really isn’t conflict, and no real goals other than those you set for yourself (and maybe unlocking the tech tree and building everything). It’s meant to be a very Zen-like easy sort of experience, where you just play because you’re having fun playing and building.
To me, that’s one flavor of a sandbox, where you’re just pushing around the pieces of the game, seeing what you can put together and how it looks. My terminology may be a misnomer, but that’s where I was coming from, at least. *shrug*
Kingdom of Keflings is still one of my all-time favorite xbox games. I can’t wait to check out Keflings 2.0. -and to anyone who doesn’t have an xbox – having one is worth it to play these downloadable arcade games, a lot of them are really well thought out and designed, inexpensive and completely a “must play” for anyone who is into gaming. xbox’s are cheap now, it’s worth the investment. you don’t need a Gold sub to have fun and experience arcade games.
[...] a $50 gift certificate), the IRS returned some of our money, and I really want to be able to play A World For Keflings when it comes out (hopefully soonish!). I’ve been working on XBox Arcade games for three [...]