Coloring Pixels launched on Friday! We just wanted say a huge thank you for all of the positive comments and feedback we have received over the weekend. We have been overwhelmed by how you all have received it.

Hot on the heels of Fridays launch is a hotfix to address a couple of bugs that have been discovered.

• Firstly, we have addressed a performance issue that occurred when loading audio assets from disk. Most users were noticing lag spikes in approximately ten minute intervals. This will now be resolved in most cases and drastically reduced in the rest.
  
• Secondly, there was a issue with the large 600x600 level at the end of the second book. To rectify the issue, the page has been cropped to a 400x400 image. Unfortunately, because of this change all previous progress on this level will be lost. Apologies to anyone that has so far attempted/completed it.

A competition? Yep, a pixel art competition!

The 20 winners of this competition will have their pixel art featured in a free update to Coloring Pixels. It's very easy to enter; keep reading to find out all the information you need. When you're ready, SUBMIT HERE.

The deadline is the 19th October 2018 at 17:00 GMT, the winners will be announced on 26th October 2018 via a blog post on our website. Follow us on Twitter to stay informed.

We need to make sure that your pixel art is compatible for use in Coloring Pixels. To help improve your chances, we have come up with a few simple rules for you to follow and some suggestions to help you get started.

• You must submit an image of file type PNG. Sadly, PNG is the only image file format supported by Coloring Pixels. Other formats can easily be converted to PNG through most image editing software and online converters.
  
• Image must have a maximum dimension of 200x200 pixels. As you will have noticed the larger images in Coloring Pixels take exponentially more time to complete. Smaller images are better; we don't want levels taking taking 6 months to complete.
  
• Submission must have fewer than 100 different colors. The fewer colors the better for Coloing Pixels, so try to keep to as few as possible. It is difficult to know how many different colours there are in an image, if you accidentally submit more than 100 colors it will be alright (we will just need to pass your image through a filter). Some applications such as Aesprite let you create a color pallete (which we recommend) which allows you to keep track of colors easily. If you choose an application such as Paintnet we recommend sticking to the pencil tool over using paint brush tools as they can often create numerous different colors in an attempt to blend with the background.

• Size doesn't matter! As long as you keep within the 200x200 image dimension limit you won't be penalised for submitting a smaller image. We will be judging submissions based on aesthetic and not complexity. For example: if you submit an image of size 10x20, it will be judged equally to one of size 150x200.
  
• Which software should I use? We recommend using either Aesprite or Paint.net (free).Both are very powerful pieces of software which are more than capable of creating pixel art for this competition. That being said you can use whichever software you want, as long as you can draw and produce a PNG file it should be good enough.
  
• I've gone brain dead... I need inspiration! We can't chose for you but you can draw anything. If you can't think of anything new or inspiring, try drawing something you love (film, game, pet fish) or even something on your desk (lamp, a book, that murder weapon you need to get rid of).
  
• Can I submit multiple times? Yes, don't hold back! Submit as many images as you like. We will judge each image anonymously and individually.

Colouring Pixels is our newest creation. A relaxing colouring by numbers game for PC where you colour in pixel art.
It's perfect for if you are stressed out, just rage quit PUBG, or perhaps you just want something to do while watching netflix. Give it a try, it's free, quick to download, and easy to jump in and out of.

Yes it's free, and no adverts! We want as many people as possible to play Coloring Pixels, making the game free was a decision made with this goal in mind.

Unfortunately, we need to eat, pay bills, and buy computer games so we we need to make money somehow. With that in mind Coloring Pixels has been designed with future DLC packs in mind. We will periodically release new books of levels for a reasonable price. Stay tuned for more info when they arrive.

For those of you who don't know, "coloring" is the American spelling of the word and "colouring" is the British. It's the same word, same language, same meaning but unfortunately for us, different.

You might be asking "why has a British games company spelt their game the American way?". And so you should! We have two reasons why:

The majority of purchases for our other games have been from America and other non UK countries. For searchability and less confusion for the majority of our audience, we chose to use the American spelling.
The Logo. We wanted to include a full spectrum of colour as part of the logo. Although it might be a comparably silly reason: there are 7 colours in the rainbow, 8 letters in the word "Coloring" and 9 in the word "colouring". We chose the option that closely matched the number of colours in the rainbow.

Those of you who are lucky enough to have access to a PC touch screen may notice that we have implemented touch controls. We did this for good reason, and not just because the game is almost impossible to play with a laptop trackpad. We did this as a foundation of mobile development, as we are going to attempt to port Coloring Pixels over to mobile devices and tablets.

This is a first for the company so it will be a valuable learning experience. Mobile development is very different from what we are used to and we expect to overcome an array of challenges on our journey.

Wish us luck and keep an eye open for upcoming news about our progress.

We want to release additional free content after Coloring Pixel's launch, and we wanted to offer the community the opportunity to have an impact. For the first time, ToastieLabs are hosting a pixel art competition for anyone to take part! Winners of the competition will have their art featured in an upcoming free update.

More info can be found in a following blog post.