First of all, before anything else, if you’re reading this: Thank you very much. The fact that you are reading this means that you still think of Stabyourself.net, founded with only two people a little over three years ago, which is incredibly awesome and humbling. There are plenty of small game developers like us around and having an actual audience is an honor.

So, first of all: Mari0 SE is cancelled at this point.

Making Mari0 was a great experience that we won’t forget, and the positive (and some of the negative) responses we received will stick with us for a long time.

The reason for this inevitable announcement is that as SE grew with planned features, issues started to pop up that would either require even more code duct tape or a complete recreation of the game, which is frankly more work than we are willing to put into it - Mari0 was, after all, started only as a test Super Mario Bros. clone that had portals added because the idea sounded neat. At this point creating what is essentially a sequel is not a commitment we can make - especially not one that we would be satisified with.

We’re sorry if you’re dissapointed about this, and we’re sure a lot are. Perhaps some different decisions in the past would have led to SE actually being released, but at this point Mari0 is shelved for good and it might be for the better - there is only so much you can do with a mashup of different games.

If you really want to take a look at SE, we have released some betas on the forums during the development of Mari0 SE which were compiled by a user on the forums. Feel free to try it out, but keep in mind it is basically in alpha state.

Now for some better news:

Gamescom 2015! As we wrote in the last blogpost, we once again visited Gamescom in Cologne with our usual games lineup but also developed a game specifically to be played on an LED wall with 2 players. The reception we got was amazing and that’s the stuff that we run on. It’s not about money for us (the devil has yet to tempt us), but about seeing people have fun with the games we create (even if that means pouring our own cash into making it happen). It was an awesome week that we are hoping to be able to recreate next year. There’s also been some interest that we provide the whole package (LED wall, the controller and the game) at other events, so we’ll see how that works out too. Might be an interesting thing to look into.

You can find an album of pictures we took here.

One last thing you may be wondering is what we’ll be doing in the future.

In the short term, not much. We have fairly recently started workin full-time so we still have to get used to that before we can go about and crunch out a game again. It’s mostly about having motivation, inspiration and a lot of time.

We would love to make another big game like Mari0, but you can’t exactly plan popularity. An original project is a lot more likely.

Thanks again for sticking with us for so long. We hope to have some good news for you soon.