The RPS Biscuit Charity Drive: The Response

Inspired by IGN offering free office space to indie devs a few weeks ago, RPS launched a funding program for any struggling indie developers who wanted a helping hand. In summary, we offered to send them a biscuit. We're not made of money here at RPS (except John, who is literally a pile of coins), so we were only able to send off one pack of biscuits. But send them we did.

The responses of those biscuit recipients are collected here. To a man, they proved themselves worthy of their prize.

I can now reveal that the biscuits sent out WERE: Ginger nuts. Tough, yet yielding, complex but bearing no pretentions, the ginger nut was the only biscuit that could ever have represented the RPS readership.

First mention has to go to Matt Ratcliffe and Tim James of Masters of Pie, who were inspired enough by their biscuit to make a goddamn game they're calling BiscuitCraft, because "games with Craft in the title seem to do well at the moment":

You can download it here, and read about it here. I am assured that the actual biscuit I sent them has been "placed in a vault that can only be opened with a large red button and a passcode." I suspect I'll be posting a Wot I Think of BiscuitCraft later in the week.

Meanwhile, inspired solely by his biscuit, independent developer gentleman Alex McGivern is currently slaving away at game called The Golden Honey Biscuits of Anateki, and you can keep an eye on its development at ashortgameaboutbiscuits.tumblr.com. In TGHBoA you play gentleman badger Arthur Mellivorous on his quest to recover the priceless biscuit-based treasure of the Apide bee-people of Cryptonesia. Most recently he's posted the game's logo:

Which may or may not be the indie game equivalent of an untextured gun render. Not sure.

Mister Phil Carlisle of Mindflock.com writes to say "I tried making a game in honour of reciept of said biccies, but it was balls. So here's the tribute vid:

"And here's me actually unwrapping said biccies:

"Notice the fantastic use of the glow filter. I'm just learning to edit vids, so you almost got a "TV effect" version. As it is, just wanted to say thanks, your support is appreciated."

Thank you, Phil!

The wonderful Rob Fearon (whose photo of his/a child I used as the header image up there) also got half-way through making a biscuit-related game before bailing, but ended up writing a heartfelt blog post about how receiving his biscuit actually, genuinely helped him out.

Other inspiring blog posts included that of the indietacular Rob Hale:

This was not all however. The Royal Mail; being the thoughtful and loving organisation they are; had recognised that this was a package destined for a games developer and had joined in by turning the biscuits themselves into a game. A Puzzle game.

Go read! It's the touching story of an indie man receiving a biscuit and going on to make a brand-new enemy for his independent indie game.

But not all of our biscuit recipients had time for these sorts of big gestures. Some, like Steven Lavelle and David Prior, settled for grateful emails.

Steven:

Oh man, I just arrived in Cambridge to start my new life, I was so stupid - I slept in and missed my train, and had to shell out for another ticket :( - then followed by a rather lengthy train ride - I finally got in, having not eaten all day, and @bentosmile was all, like "Hey there's some post for you already", and I was all like "oh boring paperwork", but one of the envelopes was more interesting, and I was rattling it about and all, like "it looks like there's some variety of small object in here" and then I opened it and there was a ginger nut biscuit in there. It was very tasty, and will serve me until my celebratory Indian arrives - I really couldn't imagine better circumstances in which to receive a biscuit.

David:

On behalf of the davecheesefish Games board of directors (myself, a goldfish in a funky hat, and Martin the empty Terry's Chocolate Orange box) I would like to thank you for your generous indie developer support package as received last week. The ginger nut-powered orbital death-laser is nearing it's completion and would not have been otherwise possible.

Don't mention it, guys. Charity is its own reward.

Did I mention that we bucked the long-standing RPS tradition of only sending things to UK residents and sent some of our biscuits abroad? Because we did!

Look, here's Neil Thapen, indie developer, enjoying his biscuit in Prague:

And here's Marko Moskov of PHILADEPLHIA, USA, taking his biscuit on stage during his band's final show.

"I feel good knowing I was able to share the stage with a real English biscuit," says Marko.

And finally we have Andreas Jörgensen of Sweden, who also blogged his own personal biscuit experience with atmospheric blurry serial-killer photography.

EDIT: And double-finally there's Martijn Zandvliet of the Netherlands lands, who as a result of this very post went rummaging through some recycling and discovered the biscuit we sent him. Well done, Martijn. Well done. Here's a trailer for the guy's upcoming game, Volo Airsport.

And that's it! Congratulations to all our lucky biscuit-gifted indie developers, and consolations to IGN, who I doubt could manage anything this beautiful, let alone on this scale.