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Vice Verse and Funkmasonry Industries Release "Cookinville" for Free Download!

2010-02-03T23:04:59Z

In the summer of 2009, underground rapper Vice Verse turned to the beat-making team at Funkmasonry Industries to produce his latest album, Cookinville, and the end product is now available for free download at Funkmasonry.com!

Keep reading for more information, including a full track listing.

Inside Gaming Awards Nomination!

2009-11-26T09:27:13Z

Groov has been nominated for the "Best Indie Game" category of the first ever Inside Gaming Awards! We here at Funkmasonry Industries would like to extend our thanks to the people at Inside Gaming for this great honor. And, we need the help of all the people who have played Groov and enjoyed it to support the game in the Gamers' Choice category -- more details coming soon!

Groov Price Drop!

2009-10-04T01:36:07Z

We here at Funkmasonry Industries are pleased to announce that our award-winning debut into the trade of videogame-makery, Groov, is now only $1 (80 MS Points)!!

Groov has received positive coverage from outlets like 1UP.com, Gamasutra, Edge Magazine, and Official Xbox Magazine. See why Groov's addictive blend of interactive music and dual-stick shooting has earned its #7 rank in user ratings (out of over 500 Indie Games) on the Xbox Live Marketplace, and download it for only 80 MS Points!

Getting the Band Back Together...

2009-06-05T01:34:41Z

Things are going down here at Funkmasonry Industries headquarters (my bedroom). The band that started it all, Funkmasonry, is up to exciting new things. Stay tuned to this space...

Edge Magazine Issue 202

2009-05-22T00:05:53Z

The latest issue of Edge Magazine has a great article about the successes and challenges of Xbox Live Community Games. Along with other XNA creators, Funkmasonry Industries' own Julian Kantor was interviewed for the piece. Groov was described as "a neat spin on Geometry Wars with a nasty habit of stealing half an hour here and there," and even given its own sidebar (the only such sidebar in the article, I might add):

Julian Kantor's Groov, a dual-stick shooter with a musical bent, is one of the service's early highlights. You fly around a rectangle's interior as normal, but each of your shots produces a synth sound effect, and each enemy has their own instrumental effect that plays when they die. Visually it's functional rather than exceptional, but it uses its limited palette cleverly to differentiate live enemies from dead ones (which stick around before exploding on certain beats) and has a neat 'slowdown' special weapon rather than yet another smartbomb. There's a wonderful moment about 45 seconds into your first game - but we won't spoil it, because you're going to try it out, right?

To read the rest of the article, along with tons of other interesting features, check out Edge Magazine Issue 202 on newsstands.

Cinema Blend's "5 Actually Good XNA Games"

2009-04-29T23:29:49Z

Cinema Blend included Groov on their list of 5 Actually Good XNA Games For $2.50 Apiece! Along with NextWar: The Quest for Earth, Johnny Platform's Biscuit Romp, Philip Muwanga's Hexy Trench, and Miner Dig Deep, Groov was deemed a game "you should know about, unless you hate fun." Here's their whole write-up on Groov, awesome part emphasized by myself.

What at first appears to be a more-affordable version of Geometry Wars quickly distinguishes itself as some sort of music/rhythm/shooter type-thing-game. If that description made no sense, I'll clarify; every enemy in the game moves to a certain beat, and your bullets fire at that same beat. Once you hit an enemy and "kill" it, it will turn into a harmless, white version of itself. That white enemy will then die out at a time that is appropriate for the beat of the song. Each different type of enemy makes a different musical sound when it dies, and your bullets make piano...

You know what? Just download the trial. It's like Geometry Wars mixed with Beethoven and Jesus. That's all you need to know.

Niiiice.

1UP Game Night 4/14/2009

2009-04-14T00:34:30Z

Make sure you tune in to 1UP.com's game night tomorrow night! In addition to playing Dishwasher: Dead Samurai, the awesome people at 1UP will be playing some Xbox Live Community Games (Miner Dig Deep, Supercow, and a little game called Groov) and answering fan questions about the games in real time. The event will stream live at 5:00 PM Pacific Time (8 Eastern).

Thanks again to 1UP for giving such great coverage to Groov!

Listen UP 4/10/2009

2009-04-11T20:48:29Z

How awesome is this? After hearing guest hosts Nick Suttner and Patrick Klepek mention Groov on previous podcasts (thanks guys!), host Garnett Lee checked it out. What resulted was 4 minutes of praise-heaping (and constructive criticism, of course) from the guys at 1UP and John Davison of What They Play on the latest episode of Listen UP (formerly 1UP Yours). Garnett was even cool enough to have included it in the show description! A couple awesome quotes from Garnett:

"I love music and game integration...and this is one of the cooler ones I've ever seen."

"If you're into music rhythm games and you like twin-stick shooters, it's a no brainer. Just go get it to support the guy who made because its really really cool and I really like it."

So sick! Check out the episode here or on iTunes.

GamePro Community Game of the Month

2009-04-07T05:48:27Z

GamePro Arcade, the downloadable-game web branch of the well-known print mag GamePro has named Groov their Community Game of the month for March 2009! Read all about it here!

Funkmasonry Industries particularly agrees with author Andrew Ramsey's "buy" verdict...

Groov "a diamond in a VERY rough rough"

2009-03-29T23:19:41Z

While there certainly are many other awesome games on the service (see the post below), we appreciate being singled out as an example of "people doing actual GOOD THINGS with the [sic] XNA" by gaming blog Prime Gamer. Read the entire article, which focuses more on the influx of non-game applications on Xbox Live Community Games, here.