Hello and welcome back to the ol' blog! 

I hope everyone has enjoyed an exciting start to the new year! I know that everyone at Products for Robots has been working hard to promote Metacell on Kickstarter. Although I'm not sure if we'll be 100% successful with the campaign, I'm still so proud of all of the work everyone put into it.

One thing we have been successful with is our press! We've had some great press clips over the past few months, and I want to share some of them with you.

First, there's our amazing review from ZTGD. Although it's an oldie at this point (it was published in March 2012), they took the time to write an incredibly helpful and positive review. Here are a few choice quotes:

• “A unique take on match three concepts.”
• “I love a good puzzle game, or any kind of puzzle game, really. I like games that have unique takes on the genre to spice up the game play a bit. That’s why I enjoy Metacell so much. It’s a match three game, but adds a little more to the game play to liven the experience up.”
• “The presentation and original soundtrack are both great and actually really impressive for an indie title.” 
• “If you’re looking for a unique take on a puzzle game, you can’t really go wrong with Metacell. The twitch shooting mechanics, power ups, and hectic incoming attacks really make this game stand out from the pack.” 

Fantastic, right?

Next, we had a streak of other kinds of press: 

• The start of our Kickstarter campaign was featured in an article from Online Athens, the online section of a local paper. 
• We were delighted to discover this video introduction to Metacell from Youtuber MapleDungeons.
• Write Click Play interviewed our fearless leader, John Posey. 
•  The University of Georgia paper, The Red and Black, published an article about the campaign.

We received another wonderful review, this time from IndieStatik:

• “Metacell is Exactly What I Didn't Know I Needed."
• "Allow me to be curt –Metacell is an action-puzzler, or to be precise, another match-3 game. But don’t be amiss here; it has the kind of direction behind it to ensure that it’s not just a plain old diamond encrusted foray into this well-established genre.”
• "I accidentally spent an hour playing the beta version instead of writing about it"
• "Interestingly, as you no doubt picked up on at the top of this plight, Metacell is part of a proposed 5-part game series... they’re all intended to be difference gameplay experiences inside the same story. Which is quite an interesting way to handle a game’s narrative and keep people invested in it with a fresh game experience every time. I’m not saying it’s the new gospel, but it’s pretty cool, is all."

We also received a lovely review from Indie Retro News:

• “Metacell is an immersive 2D twitch puzzle shooter with a hard sci-fi plot. Though we don't feature many puzzle shooters, this one peaked my interest"
• "As you can see by the gameplay video above, it's certainly different that's for sure. Almost a shoot em up, bubble bobble mix up in space.”

Finally, the Metacell is currently starring on the front page of the Flagpole Magazine:

This magazine can be seen all over Athens, and it is so amazing!

Well, that's the end of my press round-up for today! If you'd be interested in featuring Metacell on your blog/website/podcast/whatever, or if you'd like to interview the development team at Products for Robots, please let me know in the comments!

And I'll leave you all with a question: What do you think is the best strategy for indie advertising? Who do you think does/did the best job, and how did they pull it off?

Hope to hear lots of opinions! Have a great day!
-Kate