Cheerful Ghost Blog

The Cheerful Ghost Blog is the place to find important site news and allows you to travel back through time to see how the site has evolved and read some of the most important and interesting articles and discussions!

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When I launched Cheerful Ghost more than three years ago I wanted to build an amazing video game community that was funded by its users. Initially I had three ideas for ways to make enough money to keep things going and one was using traditional web banner advertising. I didn't plan on this making us much money, but felt it was a good compromise to make a few bucks to offset some of our traffic costs. In a perfect world, I don't actually mind this model as it mirrors much of how traditional forms of radio and television use to fund the programs we love. With that, there have been some very interesting conversations recently about web advertising, privacy and respect... Read All


Greetings human. Wick and I will be giving a co-talk at this years Eugene IndieGame Con about Starship Rubicon from it's early stages to eventual Steam launch. We talk about the games humble beginnings, Kickstarter and also discuss the age old question "why make another indie game?" Spoiler alert, we ain't rich but we can hopefully convince you we had fun and learned... something. Oh and come by and check out our all new Cheerful Ghost / Starship Rubicon booth. We will have some surprises for people so come check it out.

IndieGame Con is happening October 2nd-3rd and we will be boothing and give our talk October 3rd. For more information about IndieGame con, ticket... Read All


I recommend everyone take a look into the local Indie game scene around your home town. If it's even a fraction of the mad craze in Portland then you are in for a treat. Recently a lot of really great games have been announced here in Portland and I wanted to wrap a few of them up for you to chew on. All of these games are being made by my friends from PIGSquad which makes this post double cool.

Laser Lasso BALL

Laser Lasso BALL is a local co-op game where two players go head to head in alien deathsport. Featuring some of the fastest mutiplayer matches I can remember, Laser Lasso BALL is a really fun experience that is easy to understand and hard to master. The amazing... Read All


Following in the vapor trails of our early 2015 release Starship Rubicon is now on Steam! It’s pretty exciting to be part of a game that is now available for people to play on Steam. Tick one off that bucket list!

This update is pretty massive in that it features an all new gravity gun, ship and level editor, mod tools and freshly baked Linux port. So you know, this seems like a great time to buy the game and everything so… why don’t you head over to Steam and get it?

http://store.steampowered.com/app/372030

If you bought Starship Rubicon through Cheerful Ghost/the Humble Widget, Itch.io or Desura we have already dropped a key on that site and it should be available very... Read All


When I got the email from Steam that Starship Rubicon was Greenlit on Steam I immediately called Wick and left him a message. A few minutes later we were gleefully talking about it and basking in the glow of joining the games accepted to Steam club. As the Greenlight campaign was still a significant way from the top 100 (though we had an awesome approval percentage!) it appears Valve works in mysterious ways!

Wick has been hard at work on a big Rubicon update that will feature a Linux port, a raft of bug fixes and some really awesome new features that we will talk about as we march closer to a Steam launch. We wanted to personally thank everyone that picked up the game... Read All


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Summer is coming up and with it a ton of game related conventions. I usually have a Cheerful Ghost booth at a few Oregon cons and this year we will keep with that tradition. This year will be a bit different as we will have a Cheerful Ghost booth that we share with Starship Rubicon, our first published game. After the rebranding of the site I've really wanted to get the new Ghost art on some new swag and wanted to show off the new Cheerful Ghost button. Pin this on your bag to show the world you visit a website they never heard of(hipster points for everyone)!

We will be showing Starship Rubicon and have the new Ghost swag sticker, button and more stuff I can't talk... Read All


PIGSquad is a local Indie PDX game group that I frequent and Cheerful Ghost sponsors from time to time. Recently OPB radio covered the Ludum Dare game jam and you can listen to the story above. The piece paints a great picture of how jams work and also covers the local scene.

I am also part of the piece so if you want to hear me talk about a local game jam game, check it out starting at 12:28. I wasn't at the jam as I was away from Portland and the time but was able to make to the OPB and talk to April about PIGSquad and gaming.

If you are interested in going to a local PIGSquad event, I recommend you checkout the PIGSquad site and subscribe to the Facebook page.

... Read All


Time to see what kind of gaming April Fools jokes come around.

In the main video above, Guild Wars 2 is treating us to some really amusing airplane noises and sepia effects. At least it's amusing for the first 30 minutes or so.

In Diablo III's PTR, you can go big-head mode and slaughter demons with 500% more head!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqmyUhQmvyY

What else have you guys seen?


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After the gamemaster was finished explaining the rules for March of the Ants I was ready to build my colony. As a young kid I couldn’t get enough of SimAnt so it seemed like March of the Ants was something i’d enjoy. Created by Portland locals Ryan Swisher and Tim Eisner, March of the Ants was successfully Kickstarted to it’s currently released state of strategic game goodness. The joy of playing a locally crafted board game run by the people that had a hand in developing it is one of the reasons why attending GameStorm is a unique experience. Plus it doesn’t hurt if you can take down a rogue centipede or uncouth spider. If you are looking to play new games in early... Read All


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I wanted to let everyone know about a slew of new features that I added to the site over the last few weeks that I can finally talk about. I've wanted to add this stuff for quite some time and have been really happy with how it turned out. Let me know how the new features work out for you and if you run into any issues with them.

Steam Login

Most of us use and love Steam. Steam is constructed such that the Desktop and web client are pretty much the same. One cool part of Steam on the web is that you can authenticate to a website like Cheerful Ghost through Steam. Facebook, Google and Steam have provided websites like Cheerful Ghost with the ability to authenticate for... Read All