Welcome to the first entry in our new weekly blog post here at Tumbleweed Interactive. We’ll try our best to have at least one new update each week. Most of the blogs will be written by yours truly, but I imagine I’ll delegate the task to some of the other team members from time to time.

The blog will mostly be about our progress here at Tumbleweed, miscellaneous fun stuff happening at the office and our take on some of the gaming news we’ve picked up on during the week. Hope you’ll like it, and feel free to leave a comment or two!

E3 is once again upon us with more gaming news than you can shake a Wiimote at, and on tuesday most of the team stayed late at the office to watch the Sony and Nintendo press conferences. The general consensus from the team seems to be “why are there no announcements we care about?”.

While we understand Nintendo’s dedication to the “casual” gamers out there it seems Microsoft, creator of the console with the biggest hardcore following, now suddenly wants to appeal to grandmas and 8-year olds as well. Another big let down for us was how Sony, who actually previewed some cool hardcore games (MAG, God of War 3), would only show us CG videos. At least we can look forward to interesting PSN titles such as Flower and new additions to wonderful franchises such as Patapon and Loco Roco.

Between checking www.joystiq.com for the latest updates from the show floor, us at Tumbleweed Interactive are hard at work with Umami (www.tumbleweedinteractive.com/umami), which is progressing nicely.

After we divided into two big offices our Umami programmers have been cut off from the Mobile and Management team for a while. This is all about to change, as the Managing Director (Me!) will start working more closely with the Umami project. The project is entering a very exciting phase, but at the same time we know this is when the hard work really begins.

On a related note: If you live in the Hamar area and are interested in some early playtesting, send us an e-mail at contact@tumbleweedinteractive.com and you might be one of the first external testers! Be sure to include your name and age, and relevant info regarding your gaming interests. Your favourite games and game genres, and how much time you spend gaming each week is plenty. E-mails can be in either norwegian or english.

- Kris Jet