TwO Brothers' Climb to the Top of the Castle on consoles
Tim, 23, and Orion Araya, 20, are the two brothers behind TwO Bros. Games, recent winners of the 2BeeGames Indie Game Competition for their submission Climb to the Top of the Castle. Like Auditorium and Storm before it, the siblings' game has earned a digital distribution publishing deal through Zoo Games.
Joystiq recently exchanged emails with the Arayas about their game and what to expect from the upcoming console version:
This might seem like a silly question, considering the game's title, but, what exactly is the goal in Climb to the Top of the Castle?
The goal in the game is obviously to climb to the top of the castle and die a lot!
The game is simplistic by design, so what's its defining attribute?
As far as what makes the game stand out, besides the visuals, there just aren't many classic 2D-style games out there, it's kind of like with Shadow Complex: the game innovates with old ideas.
Name some inspirations for the game's design.
There where a lot of inspirations for Climb to the Top of the Castle. I guess the main reason was the desire to make an old-school-style platformer with a persistent goal to reach. A few games that influenced the idea were Super Mario Bros, Zelda, Braid, and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.
As far as people we admire in the industry, you have to start with Shigeru Miramoto, also Peter Molyneux, Hideo Kojima, among others. And in indie games, Jonathan Blow is inspiring. As a whole, we think the indie game industry is pretty exciting right now.
Which brother was initially responsible for starting your work as game developers? What are each of your roles?
Tim: I come up with all the ideas. In making this game, I came up with the concept, game design, and I designed all the levels. Basically, I tell Orion what to do.
Orion: I deal with all things technical. I really enjoy making all the art in the game, but I also do everything else: I did all the programming, graphics, sound, animation -- basically I get bossed around by Tim. We built the game with Game Maker, and other tools we used were Photoshop, Audacity, Blender, Pencil, Paper ... Some of the sounds we recorded ourselves, the rest we got from freesound.org.
What console platforms are you targeting? What changes might we see in the console version?
I think the best platform for the game would be the PS3 (thanks for nothing, 360 D-Pad!). Maybe even the PSP. One of the changes we would like to make is to respawn you when you die.
[Editor's Note: The specific release platforms have yet to be officially determined.]
What key challenges do indie developers face today? What kind of advice can you offer them?
I think it's a pretty good time to be an indie developer right now. It's important to be very creative, but not necessarily with a really crazy concept. I think something like Assassin's Creed is just as creative as something like Katamari, just in a different way.
