ToastieLabs 9th Birthday!
- Toastie_Lee
- 3 hours ago
- 8 min read
Another Year!
The 17th of August marks 8 amazing years since the launch of Coloring Pixels, and 9 years of ToastieLabs!
After a trickier 2025, it feels like 2026 has been our year; we have found our feet again and are back on track for our ambitious goals! Moving into new premises, networking with the local Game Dev community and porting our games to Xbox for the first time, to name but a few!
Not to mention our long-overdue Rebrand of our Games Studio Logo! We've wanted to update this for a while to make our logo have more colour and be more in line with Gaming!
An Exciting Evolution!
As you've seen in our Vlogs, the last office was falling apart (Literally!) with a hole in the roof causing rain, mould, cold and electrical problems. Far from ideal conditions that not only affected our moods but also our ability to work. Thankfully, we got rescued by "Council James", as we lovingly call him, and moved into temporary Gateshead Council-provided offices before finalising our move into the new ToastieLabs HQ! We have a cool sign and everything!
As the office space is much larger than the 3 of us need to make games, we are in the process of acquiring investment to expand our reach into the local gaming community as well as online! If you're in the area, maybe consider stopping by to buy some merch, try our escape room or play some games in the Games Corner room!
Don't worry! This new venture won't affect our regular Game Development, and we still have exciting plans coming for the games you know and love too.
Patreon Overhauled
We've always been very thankful for our steady Patreon support. You guys have been the constant moral and financial boost we've needed for such a long time.
Our Patreon was always just a nice-to-have option for anyone who wanted to support us a little bit more than buying our games. Once we set it up, we kind of just left it to steadily grow, always wanting to offer more but never having the time. However, since you have all been an amazing support for so many years, and since a Patreon overhaul goes hand-in-hand with this anniversary rebranding, we thought it was long overdue to give back a little more to those of you who back our Patreon
We've added new benefits to both tiers on offer on the Patreon page.
Starting next month, anyone who backs us with the £10 p/m tier (Toastie Hero) will not only get all the original amazing benefits, but you will also be getting a copy of each month's Steam Keys for the monthly DLC releases! Including Coloring Pixels, Coloring Voxels and WooLoop DLCs!
For full info on the Patreon update, check out the post we shared here:
Thank you to everyone who has, does and will back our Patreon in the future!
2026 Achievements Unlocked
Xbox - We have begun porting hexceed to Xbox! The first of many games we plan to get onto the Microsoft Store and onto your consoles!
New Office - Our new office looks great, is warm and allows us to expand our games and business into the future.
Getting out of our Shell - A bit of networking! We realised it was long overdue to meet our Game Dev neighbours! Going for local Game Dev Drinks, travelling to see upcoming Games at GaMeYo with Games Republic, and even giving talks at the local GameNExt event.
Toastie Rebrand - We made a new, colourful logo that we know you'll love as much as we do.
New Website - As I'm sure you've seen if you're reading this on our website, we rebuilt the entire website to match the new and improved branding!
Shop - Not only do we have a space to sell our own gaming merch, but we are also partnered with Games Workshop and are licensed resellers of Warhammer wargaming products! A very exciting new venture for us all.
Coloring Pixels
Coloring Pixels has continued to be your favourite game, and we love being able to make more levels for you all to enjoy.
We've got to thank Jack yet again for his dedication to providing unique and amazing pixel art every single month. Without him, the game just wouldn't be the same. With the addition of the XL packs each year, which you have requested more of, adding to his pixel art workload, he loves it really!
Bonus Image
It's not a Coloring Pixels Birthday without a Pixel cake! Head over to the bonus book now to play the newest Birthday Cake level for free!
Nintendo Switch!
Your love for Pixels on the go has led to us almost finishing Pixels on the Switch as well! With the release of Coloring Pixels: Collection 7 earlier this year, we'll be finishing the Nintendo Switch collections with a bang with the release of Collection 8, the Christmas Advent pack, later this year!
Coloring Voxels
An entire year of Coloring Voxels is upon us! Thank you to all of you who have played the successor to Coloring Pixels and have let us know your enjoyment of this 3D evolution of our coloring game!
Reaching almost 40,000 unique users on Steam, we can't thank you enough for your support and patience as we ironed out some of the kinks at launch. We've continued to release DLC every month, and the worlds only get better and better as Jack gets into the groove of making thematic voxel worlds!
Free Birthday Bonus World
We couldn't have a Voxels birthday without a little gift! We struggled for a moment to work out the best way to deliver a birthday gift for Coloring Voxels, as we don't have a bonus world like Coloring Pixels to add a fantastic cake level to; well, we didn't before today!
Check your Coloring Voxels for a new, free bonus world for you all to enjoy! There are some great levels in there, but most importantly, there is a birthday cake too!
hexceed
hexceed is the game that keeps on giving! Although we wrapped up DLC development last year, that hasn't stopped you from loving the game! Still averaging over 500 daily players on Steam, you can't seem to put it down!
To keep the hexceed ball going, we are still releasing the DLC on the Nintendo Switch, and hexceed will be the first game that we release on the Xbox! So if you love playing games on a console, make sure to watch out for hexceed hitting the Microsoft Store later this year too!
WooLoop!
WooLoop continues to hold a place in all of our hearts. We are constantly being pushed creatively to make more and more interesting levels for WooLoop, and we love the challenge! With new DLC being released every other month, you all keep wrapping and weaving, so we keep creating more for you to play!
WooLoop received controller support this year to make it Steam Deck compatible! So if you have a Deck, let us know how it feels to play WooLoop on the go.
Although work hasn't begun just yet, the next big steps for WooLoop will be releasing on the Nintendo Switch!
Skystead Ranch!
Skystead Ranch! The cutest game to come out of the North East of England! We have been enjoying thinking up new event mini-games, along with new buildable items and cute Skylets to go along with these updates!
The Skystead Events now include: Eggstravaganza for Easter, Haunted Harvest for Halloween, Frostfall Festival for Christmas, and now the Founder's Festival to celebrate our Toastie Birthday!
Rob has been excited to finally get back into the game development of Skystead Ranch after we had to take a little break. You can expect the Beach Island update to drop soon.tm, along with news on the progress of compressing this beautiful game for the Nintendo Switch, finishing the interior of the player house and all the remaining finishing touches.
Community
As always, every ToastieLabs Birthday is dedicated to you, our community and players.
Year on year, our community has continued to grow and develop, and we are very excited about what we have achieved together. You guys are amazing <3
Social Media - Twitter is still a good place to go for news and posts about our game development, but as it's no longer everyone's cup of tea, we also have a Bluesky account and an Instagram where we post most of the same stuff!
Discord - Our Community Discord server is still the largest part of our community, with around 2,500 members, cool new boosted features, and monthly DLC giveaways!
Reddit - We have a ToastieLabs subreddit! Small and cosy, but we post regularly with updates for those of you who prefer this format.
YouTube - We have kept the Dev Blog going all year due to your support and love of the weekly videos! Now at 4300 Subscribers, we still keep our Livestream VODs there too for you to catch up on anything you miss
Twitch - Livestreaming is now a fully scheduled part of our work. Stop by every other Friday to watch one of us do something Game Dev-related live! You can even subscribe and get some ridiculous Twitch Emotes of Jack's face.
Patreon - A huge thank you to everyone on our Patreon. To thank those who have gone the extra mile for us, we have given our Patreon a much-needed upgrade, including store discounts and access to free Steam Keys for our monthly DLC releases.
More to Come!
The biggest next step for us is getting our Games Corner shop open! From Games Workshop Warhammer stuff to 3D printed toys and our own merch, we can't wait to open the doors and meet you in person.
We also have plans in motion to include an escape room and gaming room for anyone to hang out in!
But not to worry if you aren't in the UK; not everything on our roadmap is local. Keep an eye on the news posts as we start our first development for Xbox and release more on the Nintendo Switch. And as we are slowly expanding our team again, the new year should also bring new games. 👀
The Annual Pixel and Voxel Art Competitions
Continuing the tradition! The 8th annual Coloring Pixels art competition is here! For anyone who isn't aware, this competition is the chance for you to get your own pixel art into Coloring Pixels! The winners of our previous competitions have their art in the Community books, which you can play right now!
Beginning a new tradition for Coloring Voxels! The 2nd Voxel Art competition is now live, allowing you to make your own voxel art levels to be included in the next Community world! 16 spaces are up for grabs for 16 luckys/skilled winners!
Thank You!
If you've been here from the beginning, found us halfway through, or are just discovering our corner of the Gaming world for the first time, thank you for your time, interest and support in our Indie Games Studio!
We truly couldn't do the job we all love without you, so thank you for everything. We hope you continue to enjoy our games as we run headlong into 2027, and we can't wait to meet some of you in person when you pop along to our Games Corner shop in Gateshead (look it up on Google Maps; you can't miss us)!
From all of us at ToastieLabs, Stay Toastie! <3
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