I know it’s been a long time since I posted anything, but believe me the Downsized hands have not been idle. Things went from zero to eighty-eight in twelve parsecs after the last time the online websites picked up on BulleTrain, and we’ve been struggling to keep up since. All things considered, it was a real wake up call for us, and we doubled down to make the game everything we promised it could be. So now, a year after Pandemic Studios was sent to the gallows pole, I can proudly announce…

The BulleTrain is finally pulling into the station!

Have your tickets in hand, stow your bags in the overhead compartments, and set your tray tables for fun! (I’ve never been on a train, obviously… unless you count those monorails, or the subway).

It’s been a long road to get here, certainly longer than any of us anticipated, but it has been an awesome experience. We got to work on something we all enjoyed, and we learned a lot more about game development than the years we spent as cogs in the machine. We’ve gotten a lot of good advice, as well as some terrible suggestions (mostly people telling us to shut up and to stop rocking the boat), but we pulled through and we are proud to finally have something out there we can call our own. BulleTrain may be an irreverent metaphor of the video game industry, but it’s a work of love aimed right at the heart of the industry we love. Take that as you will, but we here at Downsized are thankful that we have the opportunity to make fun and entertaining games for a living, and we hope things work out so that we can continue to deliver.

We hope you all enjoy the ride, and take the BulleTrain to the top of the charts. Check out the trailer video below and then go download and rate BulleTrain! I promise we will never become “The Man” no matter how many times you give us a five star rating.

Purchase BulleTrain on iTunes for iPhone

Purchase BulleTrain on iTunes for iPad

~ Manny “The Man” Vega

PS: If you are one of those intertube reporters, send us a email and we’ll send you a download code so you can review BulleTrain.

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The other night I saw an article on Kotaku, and it came with this picture.

are you threatening me?

Now, it didn’t mean much to me at first until I realized this was a promotional piece from EA for their up-and-coming rip-off Bulletstorm. Then I looked closer and I see the top left corner has a sticker that uncannily resembles the Pandemic logo, and it got me thinking. Is EA implying that this is the ground up meat of ex-Pandemic minions who would dare go up against them? I mean Bulletstorm is clearly an attempt to steal our BulleThunder (TM), are they so afraid they are trying to tenderize us? What’s the deal? I know they are scared, but really $25.99 for ground beef? Only EA could get away with charging those prices.

~ Manny

We’ve been hard at work to get BulleTrain ready for prime time, and we think we’re finally rounding the last bend. From an art perspective, we’ve been done for a while, so I took it upon myself to design some cheeky ads to hopefully get the buzz going again on the ole BTrain. I was holding on to these for the right moment, but when I saw that the season finale episode of Justified (on FX) is named Bulletville… well I thought it was too good to be true. I love me some Justified. If Timothy Olyphant wasn’t already typecast, I would pick him to play Miles Stone without blinking. I mean the original idea for BulleTrain was loosely based on an episode of Firefly, and no disrespect to Captain tight-pants, but Raylan is much more of a bad ass. Shoot, Raylan would have put two holes in Niska and banged his daughter. I’m not sure Niska even had a daughter, or if said daughter would even be hot enough for Raylan, but you gotta think he’d do it just on principal alone. Though you have to give it to Mal when he boot kicked that Crow guy into the ship’s engine. Now I am torn…

So look for more of these ads in the coming weeks, I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them. For now it’s back to the bug fixes and tweaks. All aboard!!

~ Manny