The sun has long risen and the bags are showing under our Jammers' eyes as they head to the business end of the competition! Here's what's been happening overnight...

After a year's hiatus TagJam returns with a bang! This time round our four teams will be using either GearVR or Oculus Rift to see what they can come up with in just 24 hours. To spice things up that little bit more, we've also added a them for the event, which is....

As part of a new regular blog series, we'll be chatting to some esteemed members of Team Tag about current hot topics in the games industry. To start, we'll be finding out what they think about the imminent arrival of Super Mario Run, the first mobile game to star Nintendo's beloved mascot. The game is due to hit iOS devices in December and will be "free to start", with users paying a one-off fee to unlock the whole game.

Motion capture has come a long way since it made its gaming debut back in the 90s through titles such as Virtua Fighter 2and Soul Edge. As the tech has advanced its usage in games has extended from adding realism to beat-em-ups to capturing every nuance and facial expression in story-based titles such asLA Noire and Beyond: Two Souls. With mo-cap equipment often costing hundreds of thousands of dollars however, is it a technique out of the reach of small and mid-sized developers? Is it a technique with limited purpose outside of big-budget Triple-A titles? A few years ago the answer to those two questions would have been a resounding “Yes”, but with advances in technology and a little ingenuity, it’s perfectly possible to make mo-cap transfer well to the smaller screen.

We’re heading to GamesCom next month and looking forward to catching up with our industry friends and contacts. It’s been a huge year for Tag as we’ve released our biggest title yet with Angry Birds Action! and have more great new projects in production. Naturally, we’ve a lot to talk about and are keen to share more in Cologne this August - so please email us to book a meeting.

If you haven't had the chance to work with Tag Games yet, or you could do with a refresh on what we do, read on for a few reminders of who we are and what makes us unique.

One Special Day is an event that brings games companies together to devote one day to raising money for Special Effect, the gamers' charity. This all goes towards helping people with disabilities play and enjoy video games, so naturally it's a cause we're proud to be associated with at Tag.

To support One Special Day our Tag Team dusted off the old consoles and set about recreating this summer's Euro 2016 tournament using as many vintage football games as we could find. Competing not just against each other, but against the unreliable nature of the office Dreamcast and N64, many goals were scored, decisions contested and rivalries formed.

A strong IP has always been something that can give a game serious leg-up in the market. Combining 2 major IPs can be even better, so we asked a few members of the Tag Team to imagine their dream IP crossovers. They came up with some fascinating (and occasionally bizarre) ideas for winning combos that need to happen.

Read on to find out more!

The comedy aprons have been dug out from the cupboard and the cow parts have been ordered. Yes, it's almost that time of year when we join our Ninja Kiwi chums for our summer BBQ at Monikie Park! As we get set to put the heat to the meat, we've been thinking about just how under-represented the art of cooking has found itself in the world of video games. True, for some players an egg whisk might not capture the imagination quite like a rocket launcher, but over the years a few games have certainly given it their best shot.