Gumshoe looking for a publisher

Hiding Buffalo is the development team that won last year's UK-based Dare to be Digital competition, in which teams of up to five students are challenged to produce either a Web site, a piece of animation, or a PC game in just 10 weeks after their concept has been approved by a panel of industry experts.

"I've worked with a huge number of teams over the past 15 years, and I have rarely come across a team with as much discipline and self-control as Hiding Buffalo," said Jim Woods, managing director of GameOps and former development director of DMA Design, who mentored Hiding Buffalo during the competition and while the company was formed. "Even the most experienced teams can fall prey to feature-creep and sprawling development times. Hiding Buffalo recognized they had a very tight schedule and worked efficiently within their timeframe to create a very solid game."

Hiding Buffalo's winning entry, Gumshoe, is an episodic adventure game set in 1930s America in which players assume the role of a private detective. The idea is that each episode will be a new case for the player to solve, and Hiding Buffalo is already in talks with a number of the UK's leading crime authors with a view to having them write future episodes.

No release date has been announced for Gumshoe at this time, and any publishers interested in the game can find more details at Hiding Buffalo's official site. According to today's press release, PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions of Gumshoe are also being considered for the future, although this would obviously depend on the strategy of the game's eventual publisher. We'll bring you more news on Gumshoe as it becomes available.