TDU2 developers form Blossom Minds

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 5 July, 2011

"We are done with triple-A titles."

Some of the people behind Test Drive Unlimited 2 and Alone in the Dark have formed a new developer.

Blossom Minds, founded by 10 ex-Eden Games staffers, aims to create "original and quality content for the digital distribution market".

Its first game is down for launch in 2012.

"Blossom Minds is built on strong gameplay values, graphical skills and in-house state of the art technology, making smaller games but with big production polish," the group said.

"We are done with AAA titles; let us bring the OOOOOOH! instead."

In May Eden Games went on strike against parent company Atari over plans to cut 51 jobs from its 80-strong team.

"Eden Games pays now for Atari mismanagement," Eden said in a statement.

"For several years we are witnessing multiple leader changes at its head, they did not hesitate to get rich despite financial difficulties.

"Atari does not play the game of negotiations with employee representatives on the redundancy plan measures. Employee representatives of Eden until now have been extremely collaborative, respecting the very tight deadlines of the redundancy plan."

Eurogamer's Test Drive Unlimited 2 review put its foot down on a 7/10.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (24) Latest comment 11 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • berelain #1 11 months ago

    Remind me, when did they make an AAA title, again?

  • Eldritch #2 11 months ago

    TDU2 has some of the worst character animations I've ever seen in a commercial release. And from what I've heard from people actually working on that game, shifting the blame exclusively on Atari is a bit of a joke.

  • Kaonazhie #3 11 months ago

    So they are gonna make pseudo flash games and charge £12 for them, instead?

  • BillMurray #4 11 months ago

    What happened to TDU2. Did they ever roll out the patches they promised?

  • Lucodeath #5 11 months ago

    Cos alone in the dark was a triple a game. not
    I got ps3 version for 6 quid new and still felt I got ripped off.

  • George-Roper #6 11 months ago

    How about you write non-shit code instead and stop releasing unoptimized, buggy games?

  • landlock #7 11 months ago

    Really? once you nailed the controls. Alone In The Dark was pretty enjoyable game.

  • Spekingur #8 11 months ago

    If Atari is supposed to take care of funding for the game and didn't do so in a proper manner then that explains quite a bit about 'quality of character animations' and current lack of patches.

  • metalangel #9 11 months ago

    TDU2 was rushed out because Atari wanted/needed money fast. Eden has paid the price, and we're stuck with a game that's fallen short of greatness.

    The patch (with the various fixes, new races, new cars) is still coming, it was announced last week on the TDU2 forum.

  • slickster #10 11 months ago

    Im still waiting for my free TDU2 dlc you promised us not long after the game was out. :o(

  • SuperFanBoy #11 11 months ago

    More and more talented programmers are leaving triple-A development disgusted by poor working conditions. Maybe the publishers should sit up and take notice?

  • Subdominator #12 11 months ago

    TDU 2 was rushed out because it has been in development on and off for four years and Atari lost patience that it could become any better. They had already pushed it back half a year to allow some more bugfixing and finetuning. It's just incompetence on Eden's side. There's a reason why TDU, Alone in the Dark and TDU 2 all suffered from bad controls and lack of content. They always managed to create a beautiful open environment (Oahu, Ibiza, New York with Central Park) but had no idea how to fill it with content and interesting experiences. Eden's idea of interesting gameplay is to do the same task over and over again or search for hidden stuff isomewhere in those large environments. They give you a sandbox and want you to figure out what to do with it. They did random tasks in TDU/TDU 2 and random respawns in AitD. And with each game they promised to listen to the buyers and change everything with patches, yet made the same mistakes again with the next game. BTW still waiting for the patch to fix the 360 controls in AitD.

    It's the same with storytelling. The games start just fine, you think you're part of a nice story. Maybe a bit shallow, but nice. It's like that in TDU where you are welcomed at the airport, it's like that in AitD where you have these epic destructions taking place during the first hour of the game with NPCs and narratives, it's like that in TDU 2 when you become a racer. But then you realize these are only extended intros. Because after you get your first house in TDU, enter Central Park, finish your first set of races in TDU 2 - there's nothing left. You just sit there and wonder why what started out with so much promise ends up being an annoying collection of similar tasks with no story at all.

    So it makes sense that Blossom Minds emphasizes the graphical skills and in-house state of the art technology - because that's all they ever did at Eden. TDU was despite all its faults a great game because of achievements. While the game itself didn't give you some real goals, achievements did. It's like the first Crackdown in that aspect. Here's a sandbox, we have no idea what to do with it, but hey, here are some great achievements to give you a goal. In TDU 2 they messed those up completely while keeping the lack of content. Hell, while importing half of the game from TDU (Oahu) and adding offroad courses to the island they even managed to give you much less races than in TDU. TDU 2 was in all aspects a worse game than TDU, which in itself is quite an accomplishment.

  • Eldritch #13 11 months ago

    At least TDU2 is the first racing game where you can get an achievement for plastic surgery. And new haircuts.

  • lasersrule #14 11 months ago

    TDU2 was fucked by trying to cram two whole islands onto one DVD, and the totally ludicrous storyline, two errors that left fuck all space on the disc for much else. I wonder who insisted on that? Atari or Eden?

  • Markusdragon #15 11 months ago

    "Eden Games pays now for Atari mismanagement," Eden said in a statement. "For several years we are witnessing multiple leader changes at its head, they did not hesitate to get rich despite financial difficulties."

    Presumably a statement signed off by their Head of really unprofessional PR releases?

  • Flabio #16 11 months ago

    Should be pointed out that the term 'AAA' is a marketing term, and is to do with marketing spend and sales projections and has nothing to do with the actual quality of the title in question.
    Edited by Flabio at 05/07/11 @ 10:49

  • Tryhard #17 11 months ago

    "What happened to TDU2. Did they ever roll out the patches they promised?"

    No the roulette table is still switched off in the casino.Consoles have still not received the free dlc and update that was promised that the pc gamers already received.TDU2 is now officially dead.

  • Machetazo #18 11 months ago

    Another racing studio (essentially)gone. :( What's the Midnight Club team up to, atm? Oh, and there's Ridge Racer - and the new Carmageddon, if you count that! But still, there are few studios focused on big budget racing games, without any sim trappings.

    @18: That same roulette table that played a heavy part of their pre-launch adverts - isn't even enabled!? :o Bad.
    Edited by Machetazo at 05/07/11 @ 12:00

  • agparrot #19 11 months ago

    I am so annoyed by what they did to TDU2 on the 360, that I'm glad these people have given themselves a new, unique name, so that I can avoid everything they ever make in future.

  • Madder-Max #20 11 months ago

    stuff that. what about the TDU patch?

  • G-Lord #21 11 months ago

    Is it just me or might this sector be overcrowded soon?
    @landlock: Played it on PC and I have to agree. I actually enjoyed the game.

  • metalangel #22 11 months ago

    Machetazo: the roulette worked for the first few weeks, before being disabled due to an exploit that meant you could just walk away if you were going to lose. Unfortunately, people who avoided the exploit (or, like me, didn't overdo it for fear of being banned) have ended up the real losers as there's not many ways to make money. Meanwhile, folks who did have hundreds of millions they can't spend and you can only transfer money by deliberately losing multiplayer races or poker games, at a painful rate of 50k per game (NB: several cars cost over a million)

  • acmilan1899 #23 11 months ago

    TDU was excellent - good luck guys on your new venture - death to the corporate opressors

  • Lucodeath #24 11 months ago

    @landlock
    I finished the game but the controls never got any better, no proper surround sound, piss poor camera vews. Good job I didnt get the xbox version that was supposed to be loads worse if thats possible.