Simon Flesser has gathered a number of remixed ilomilo songs that you can listen to for the fine price of 0 space dollars! Enjoy!

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“Daniel Olsén’s ilomilo soundtrack is one of those rare game soundtracks that I listen to outside of the game. It’s pop played by 5 year olds. It’s melodies that you can hum along to. It’s playful and fun yet melancholic and sad. It manages to bring out nostalgia for videogames we played as kids, as well as for a time that we’ve never experienced, a time when people wore hats and had funny curly mustaches and listened to grammophone records.

- Simon Flesser”

Also, there has been no upgrade here for a while due to me being busy with all kinds of stuff, so here’s some fan-art. Hope that makes it up to you!


Fantastic ilomilo cross stitch tapestry by Tooru Unezaki from japan

A delicious ilomilo birthsday cake sent to us by Meabh

And some nifty ilomilo ear rings made by Mary

Many of you have thought, “ilomilo is such an awesome game, but wouldn’t it be even better if, in multiplayer, two players could play at the same time and solve puzzles together in real time instead of having to wait for each other?”

Well, good news everyone! We have heard your plea and have decided to release a free game update that allows up to four players to solve puzzles in split screen or up to eight players online, in real time! That’s right! No more waiting! Just real time puzzle fun for you and your friends!

ilo and milo is now accompanied by their four cousins, “Filo”, “Silo”, “Rilo” and “Stan”. They play just like ilo and Milo, and they will also take part in the ilomilo shuffle mode so that now, instead of just controlling ilo and milo, the player also controls their four cousins.

Controlling six characters at the same time might sound challenging, and it is! Trice the challenge, trice the fun as we say!

Of course we had to rebuild all the levels in order to fit with the new six player mode, and we’re gonna have to reset all the leaderboards, but we think you understand.

We don’t have a release date for the title update yet, but more info is on the way!

Hiya all! Southend had a splendid ilomilo release party last friday where the ilomilo team and the rest of the Southenders celebrated the releases of ilomilo XBLA and ilomilo WP7.

Since ilomilo is much based on hats (There’s an ancient golden rule stating that everything gets remarkably better with hats) it was quite fitting to make the evening hat-themed!

The party started in the kitchen with some sparkling wine and some accordion live music by newcomer Erik Strandh.

After a few words by Fredrik, our producer it was time to gather around the table for some culinary specialties ordered directly from the famous 5 star restaurant “ilo & milos knife and fork”.

As gamers we all know the importance of competition, so of course there were some fun games to play while enjoying the food, including Quiz, Bingo, Poker… and a “best hat competition”.

Quiz, poker and Bingo are all good, but thanks to super power multi hacker programmer Björn Persson it was also presented in quite some style.

Check these in game screenshots out:

Guerilla game making:

Ilomilo shuffle was created by Björn and me in our spare time. We knew we were not going to be granted any official time for it, so we just hid it in the menus and it was actually hidden there for quite some time. The only way to reach it was to use a secret button combination – that’s still in the game.

The same is true for Sebastian’s Story. I wrote and created the scenes in my free time, and decided to hide them on the bonus levels. I did the same thing for the retro pixel/voxel ilomilo’s.

Shuffle facts:
The ”Avoid falling for high score” instructions is an obvious nod to ”Avoid missing ball for high score” instructions in Pong.

The laughing 8-bit Sebastian in Ilomilo shuffle is of course inspired by the dog from Duck Hunt.

The Huntsman & The Fox is meant to be a classic fable. The visual style is inspired by a lot of retro video games. The lost woods theme of the story is inspired by The Legend of Zelda series.

A lot of creatures are wearing hats in ilomilo. This might have something to do with heavy listening to Tom Waits (whom is seldom seen without his hat) when producing the art assets.

The trees in the park setting are of course very inspired by Gustav Klimt art. As are some of the patterns in the Autumn setting as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Klimt

A lot of stuff in ilomilo is inspired by Hundertwasser.
The house in the first setting is particularly very hundertwasserish.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedensreich_Hundertwasser

The name of the song ”Ballad of the Dog fish” (on of the songs in the second chapter) is a little nod to the”Ballad of The Wind Fish” song from Legend of Zelda – Link’s Awakening

Sebastian De Mambo got it’s name from the last stage of Wario Ware: Twisted which is called ”Wario De Mambo”. Excellent game.

Most of the square patterns on the textures are actually scans from aquarelles made by my better half. The doodles found on the house walls of the third setting’s are sketches and doodles from her notebook. Noticed the calculations? Those are actually her notes from solving puzzles in Professor Layton and the Curious Village.

Spoiler warning:
The last date Ilona and Milton is seen, is the same date as my birthday.

Spoiler warning:
The train in the ending. There has never been a bad song written about trains. The ending is experiment to see if this logic applies to games as well. Also, trains have this romantic flair in some way, somehow they illustrate the sense of leaving very well.

Something about the story and universe of ilomilo:

I don’t want to dig too deep into the story of ilomilo and point out absolutely everything that happens and what is real or not, but there is some stuff that I do want to share.

Please only read this if you’ve already played the game, as it’s probably more interesting to dive into the game with a fresh mind set.
If you do not want anything spoiled in the story, do not read this!

The themes of ilomilo is first of all memories and to some extent dreams. There’s also of course a very strong theme of friendship and love.

The ilomilo universe consists of different realities.

The first one is the physical reality, in which you as the player exists.
When watching the storybook sequences, you are still in this reality.

When playing the game and solving puzzles, the second reality presents itself – this is the world of memories and dreams, a reality which is not physical.

The letters you are able to read after collecting memory fragments exists in the same reality as the player.

Sebastian and his story exists within and parallel to both realities. He’s kind of the link between the worlds, but one could also argue that his reality is the third one. Is he human?
His story is something that I would love to dig a lot deeper into in future games as he’s my favorite character in the game. The Huntsman & The Fox would make a very interesting game.

There are a lot of secrets and hints in the letter pictures. Look out for them.

Last – Ilona was a painter and Milton was a writer.

Here is a very interesting interpretation of the story in ilomilo (spoilers!):
http://afroryan.blogspot.com/2010/12/analyzing-ilomilo.html

Safkas got their name from the artist Melanie Safka.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanie_Safka
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIFknAdVvNM

Milton Foley’s name is borrowed from the most underrated artists of all time:
Blaze Foley
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaze_Foley
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69YCXgVdyR4

and Milton Chesley Carrol.

Sadly, there’s absolutely NO info on Milton Chesley Carrol on the internet. A country artist who released two albums (I think – one of them seem to be extremely rare.) in the 70′s. His self titled album is brilliant.

Milton Chesley Carrol

Ilonas surname, Zevon, is taken from the artist Warren Zevon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Zevon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44Rwu5yPUrc

Photographs was for a long time the only pick-ups in the game. Photographs fits the memory theme very well as photographs are like small memories on pieces of papers.

That concludes part 1. Stay put for part 2 folks!