Our history (expanded version)

Codeminion was founded by Maciej Biedrzycki and Konrad Olesiewicz, two friends who first met in primary school and who always wanted to make computer games. Although the legal entity of the company was founded in 2004, we've worked together under the Codeminion logo since the year 2000. Below you can learn about projects and events we consider important for us and our company.

Spellscape (2001 - 2003)

www.spellscape.codeminion.com

The first project conducted under the Codeminion logo was called Spellscape. It started in 2000 and was meant to be a big cRPG game. We fought hard for almost four years but - surprise, surprise - we failed to complete the game. We managed to release a playable tech-demo which can be downloaded from the Spellscape website. You can visit it by clicking here.

Pteroglider (2004)

www.pteroglider.codeminion.com

After burning out on an impossible project like Spellscape, we wanted to make a small game that we could actually finish from start to finish in a short time. Having this in mind, in about 4 months we created a small "shareware" game called Pteroglider. Unfortunately it turned out to be quite a flop, mainly because of poor balance and high software requirements. But we did it! We published our first game!

We spent many days wondering why Pterloglider didn't turn out to be a great success and analyzing what we did wrong. At this time we didn't know that all of this brainstorming was about to pay off with our next project...

Magic Match (2005 - 2006)

www.magicmatch.codeminion.com

Magic Match was a major breakthrough for us and took almost a year to complete. This time we made conscious decisions and actually did some market research on what was out there on the Internet. By the time we finished Magic Match the term "Casual Games" was gaining popularity and we finally knew what we were doing!

Magic Match proved to be a great success - which was quite a nice surprise for us - and became one of the best selling casual games of 2006. Today we believe that its success was mainly due to our enormous commitment to quality. Polishing the game during the beta stage took us about 5 months, which was almost as long as developing the actual code and assets of the game! It turned out that we invented a whole new match-3 mechanic, which later became to be known as "Drag Select". Currently it is still very popular as many developers decide to use it in their games.

Magic Match did very well on most portals, staying in the Top Tens for a long time. Later we agreed to sell the Magic Match IP to its exclusive publisher Oberon Media. This enabled us to invest in our company by opening a new office and hiring more people to help us turn our game ideas into reality.

CUG Framework (2006 - now)

We were quite unhappy with the technology we used when making Magic Match. It was created in WinAPI GDI - the same technology used in the Mine Sweeper game introduced with Windows 95. For a long time we wanted to make a powerful yet simple game engine that would enable us to work faster and expand on a proprietary code base. We finally got the impulse to begin working on CUG Framework in late 2006. CUG stands for Codeminion Universal Game Framework.

CUG Framework is currently still in development, but already it has several impressive features. It supports different platforms (currently MAC and Windows), is simple to use and speeds up things like localizations, asset management, testing and integrating various game editors. CUG is a project that matured in our minds for about 6 years.

StoneLoops! (2006 - 2008)

www.stoneloops.com

StoneLoops! was a first project developed for us by a third party company basing on our design and prototype. Farm51 (a polish developer) delivered the base gameplay and graphics and we did the polish in-house.

Game Club Cafe (2008-now)

www.gameclubcafe.com

There are many portals and casual game sites, but we wanted to create our own that would stand out from the crowd. Graphics and slick design were our primary concern as we believe that having a great experience when it comes to usability and comfort is a key to having a great website.

On Game Club Cafe you will find only a small selection of games that are of highest quality. Thanks to an original tag system not only can you have your newsletter customized, but also you can search for specific types of games. You can visit GCC by clicking here.

Saqqarah (2007 - 2008)

www.saqqarahthegame.com

Our in-house flagship project. It is also the first game that will showcase all the amazing features of CUG Framework. As of writing this the game is in the late stages of development. For more information visit Saqqarah - The Official Website