Farting, bloating, sugar rush, obesity, vomiting. Our latest educational game, Nom Nation for Channel 4 Education has at last been released on PSN. It seems to have taken an eternity to see the game finally launch. We started the project over a year ago, producing a flash game using the flixel engine, creating an original group of characters and storyline, a vast amount of pixel animations and tile sheets and lots of large levels to enjoy.

We then ported the whole lot in-house to PSP. At the same time we’ve also ported a version to iPhone, iPad and iPodTouch. With the best intention in the world we hoped for them all to go live at the same time but we’ll settle for a PSN release first. The web version and iOS versions are so very close too. Each version has different aspect ratios and control methods to deal with so it’s been quite an undertaking.

We’ve started distributing PSN review codes to some online sites so if there are any review sites reading this, just drop us a line and we can send a review code too. So far we’ve seen it described on one post as a ‘peculiar looking platformer’ which made us laugh, we’ll take that as a compliment as it really is full of some very unusual powerups based upon the effects of food on the human body. Not ones you’d usually see in consumer games. Being a little odd is not a bad way to get noticed but we know it has to stand alone with some good gameplay too.

As with our previous education games such as Rizk, Stop Disasters and Routesgame, this is not an educational game in the traditional sense. It doesn’t popup loads of worthy information. The more you play the game, the more the player begins to understand about food and nutrition and the benefits from eating a balance of foods. All the target focus groups (primarily teenagers who play games online and on handheld devices) we tested the game with enjoyed the gameplay and took away the right level of learning so we anxiously await the big wide world’s response to the game.

Unfortunately the PSN version of the game is not available in the US, but stateside players will be able to check out the iOS and flash versions of the game too very soon