joystiq-indie-pitch
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The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Guns of Icarus
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Howard Tsao, Founder of MuseGames, about his steampunk airship title Guns of Icarus. How did you or your company get started? We started exploring the virtual world and 3D chat spaces for a different company, and we became an early adopter of the Unity engine. Along the way, we saw avatars wearing less and less, and decided that we didn't have it in ourselves to push the boundary further in that direction. So we took what we learned with Unity to start making 3D games for the web and other platforms, which is what we are really passionate about. Why did you want to make games? It really is just passion and the belief that we can add something new to the world of gaming, whether that something is game play, visuals, etc.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: BOH
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Simone Bevilacqua, creator of BOH, about his game and why he'll always love his Amiga. How did you or your company get started? I run no company: I'm just an old-fashioned bedroom coder. When it comes to games, I've been a bedroom coder for my whole life. The machine that had to chew my first inexpert lines of code was a C64, which I stuck to for years both because I loved it and because I lived in small town where I was totally isolated; ignorant of how the world of computers was growing -- just think that when my first C64 died, instead of getting another one (as I did), I could have passed to the Amiga 500, but I didn't consider that possibility because I didn't even know that the Amiga existed! Several years had to pass before my second C64 was replaced by another machine, which I instantaneously fell in love with: an Amiga 1200.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: The Journey Down: Over the Edge
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with creator Theodor Waern about his adventure game The Journey Down. First of all, who is your daddy and what does he do? Contrary to common belief, my daddy is not Arnold Schwarzenegger. My daddy is most definitely my ego. It owns me and controls me in a way only a proud, loving, demanding, worried parent can do. He pushes me to the very edge of my capabilities, watches me balance on the precipice and then laughs manically as he sees me tumble and fall to my doom. Then lovingly he picks me up in his fatherly arms and places me back on safe ground again, pats me on the head, and convinces me to do it all over again. (On a less metaphorical note however, my father is a landscape architect and quite the entrepreneur, I owe much of my own ambitions to his, and my mother's personal undertakings.) To get serious: what's your game called and what's it about? The full title of the first chapter in my story is titled: The Journey Down: Over the Edge. "Over the Edge" follows our brave pilot hero Bwana and his sidekick Kito as they, while trying to scrape up some cash to pay their debts, end up getting thrown into a twisting plot of corruption and adventure.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Fleck
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk Seppo Helava, co-founder of Self Aware Games about the developer's new social gaming project, Fleck. What's your game called, and what's it about? The thing we're working on right now is Fleck. You can check it out right now at http://www.fleck.com. The simple description? WoW + Facebook + The Sims + Google Maps = Fleck. It's an MMO where you can do all sorts of things, from creating an amazing garden to slaying the zombie hordes -- but it's all done on a map of the real world. But it's not just a map -- it's your neighborhood. Your favorite restaurants, pulled from Yelp. Your local weather. When you fight zombies, you fight them on streets you're familiar with. In Fleck, you interact with people. Real people in real time. You can work together to create a garden by your house. You can complete scavenger hunts or quests together. Play with friends -- in your neighborhood. There's something incredibly more satisfying about hanging out in a familiar place than in yet another orc-filled fantasy or bald space marine-filled sci-fi realm.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch - Totally Tiny Arcade
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Joe Lesko of Flea Circus Games about his new scaled-down arcade game collection, Totally Tiny Arcade. How did you get started? I grew up in the era of the Commodore 64, with favorites like M.U.L.E., Archon and Modem Wars. While I spent most of that time playing games, I dabbled with programming text games in BASIC, and learned how to do pixel art using Garry Kitchen's GameMaker. I didn't really learn proper game development until many years later, when I started making games in BlitzBasic as a hobby. After completing about a dozen small freeware games, I saw that a few developers were having some financial success with downloadable titles, so I thought I'd give that a try. This was around 2006, right before the current indie and casual game movements gained traction, so it was a bit riskier than it might seem nowadays.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Wispin
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Chris Graham of Grumpy Face Studios about his iPhone action puzzler Wispin. What's your game called, and what's it about? It's a quirky little affair for the iPhone/iPod Touch called Wispin. We describe it as an arcade experience with a unique twist: The addition of "color-matching" gameplay elements. Players can change our spunky hero's color on the fly by utilizing the on-screen "Color Wheel," which can be tapped or swiped much like a joystick. Gameplay involves a constant balancing of offensive and evasive maneuvers, as changing your color determines which enemies you can dispatch (those that match your color) and which will do you harm (those that don't match). A number of additional features and mechanisms are also present to keep things interesting, such as "color streak combos", performance-based point multiplying, online leaderboards, and an overall game progression that advances from calm to deliciously chaotic. We also tried to inject a healthy dose of wackiness (such as a usable cheese powerup), because we're weird like that.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Gang Garrison 2
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Sam Goldberg, Simeon Maxein and Shawn Fraser. Sam and Simeon are the two founders of Gang Garrison and Shawn is a senior developer who was directly responsible for the major updates colloquially known as Gang Garrison 2.0 and 2.1. How did you or your company get started? Sam: Back in 2008 the TIGSource.com forums' design competition theme was "Bootleg Demakes," asking developers to take a modern game and remake it as though it were a bootlegged game created in generations past. I had just discovered Team Fortress 2 that summer and was playing obsessively, so it seemed almost intuitive to try and do a TF2 demake. I posted my ideas on a thread in the forum for hooking up with collaborators, and Simeon, our programmer extraordinaire, responded. We quickly got to work prototyping, and by the end of the competition we had a rather impressive little multiplayer demake that garnered us a lot of players and attention. We came in second place and our success, as well as our following of dedicated fans, encouraged us to set up our own website and faux-company, so we could continue developing and perfecting the game.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: A.R.E.S.
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Nenin Ananbanchachai, managing director of Extend Interactive, whose Dream.Build.Play first place winner A.R.E.S.: Extinction Agenda launches today on Direct2Drive and Gamersgate. How did you or your company get started? Almost everyone in Extend Studio knew each other from university. We have participated and won many game contests in Thailand. After our graduation, we set up our own game company and started working on A.R.E.S. as our first title. Why did you want to make games? We'd played many games when we were young, and some of them really inspired us. We want to make something unique, fun and different in our game. %Gallery-110564%
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Ash
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with SRRN Games co-founder Aujang Abadi about his company's recently released iOS RPG, Ash. How did you or your company get started? I went to grad school to (theoretically) go work for a big video game company. I'd written a bit about the gaming industry -- particularly the philosophy of game design --and was talking to a few of my professors about it one day when co-founder Tyler Carbone overheard me. I sent him what I wrote, and he came back the next day and said he wanted to be a part of it. Up until that point these were just thoughts floating around in my head, but Tyler really wanted to start a company and thought this was as good a reason to try as any. We brought in Nathaniel Givens, one of my closest childhood friends, after we realized we desperately needed some technical expertise. Soon after, we started recruiting developers. Coincidentally, basically everyone involved in the day-to-day affairs of the company was or is still a student of the University of Virginia. We didn't plan it that way, but that's how it worked out. %Gallery-109461%
Joystiq Indie Pitch: Scarlett and the Spark of Life
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Tim Knauf and Tristan Clark of Launching Pad Games about their royal adventure, Scarlett and the Spark of Life. What's your game called, and what's it about? Tim Knauf: Scarlett and the Spark of Life is a bona fide, designed-for-iPhone adventure game, in the tradition of classics like Monkey Island but with a modern streamlined interface. It's the first episode in a series of four games: The Scarlett Adventures. Tristan Clark: Scarlett's a princess - the kind with a crowbar and a penchant for rescuing herself when kidnapped. The first episode sees her stranded in a remote alpine village, with her only chance of escape being a grumpy, egotistical mechanical horse. Hilarious hijinks ensue.
Joystiq Indie Pitch: Kosmo Spin
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Simon Flesser, half of Simogo, the team behind the adorable Kosmo Spin. How did your company get started? We met at Southend Interactive where I worked as an artist and Gordon as Technical Director. I had always wanted to "do my own thing" and it turned out that Gordon wanted the same thing. Times have changed and it's now possible to make games with only two people and no publishers, thanks to all the new places to distrubute your games (like AppStore). I also think that the DS, Wii and the iPhone have played a huge part in changing people's attitude to gaming. Not only are there more people playing games, I also think bite sized gaming is more accepted by "real gamers". Not every game has to be this super big epic experience. Not that we don't enjoy those games, it's just great that there's room for everyone now. So, the time was right and everything just seemed to fit, so we decided to set up Simogo and go for it.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Beat Hazard
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Steve Hunt, half of the team behind the music-fueled dual stick shooter action of Beat Hazard. How did you get started in game design? I first started making games when I was about 10 on an Atari 800. I remember I made a grave robbing game (unpublished!) where you had to break into a cemetery and drag out corpses without getting seen by the guards or caught by ghosts. I'm not sure if my parents though I was clever or messed up in the head. I've been doing game design pretty much ever since.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: DETOUR
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Geoff Keene, CEO of Sandswept Studios, about his upcoming XBLIG release, DETOUR. First things first, who are you and what do you do? My name is Geoff Keene, I'm 19 years old, and I'm the design director/project lead for DETOUR. I'm mainly in charge of keeping everything moving and moving smoothly within Sandswept Studios. Sandswept is a team of incredibly talented artists, programmers, writers, and I think at least one of our guys rides a motorcycle. We are currently working on the PC and Xbox LIVE Indie Game DETOUR, set to launch early 2011.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Prismatic Solid
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Yoichi Hayashi, whose Prismatic Solid took home third place in this year's Dream.Build.Play contest. How did you get started in game design? I started developing games using BASIC from the early '80s when I was in junior high. Books and magazines were my teachers since there was no internet at that time.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Retro/Grade
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Matt Gilgenbach, co-founder of 24 Caret Games, the developer behind upcoming PSN release Retro/Grade. How did your company get started? We always dreamt of having our own game studio. In the summer of 2008, the game business was booming, the sun was shining, and birds were chirping, so the time seemed right to venture out on our own. Unfortunately, soon after we started, we were caught by surprise by the great recession of aught-eight. Perhaps it wasn't the best time to start after all! Despite that setback, we decided to follow our dream against innumerable odds. We are hoping to option the true story of 24 Caret Games to Hollywood for one of those feel good triumph of the human spirit movies. I was thinking Rpattz could play me. He had the appropriate game developer complexion in Twilight. So far, no studio has gotten back to me about it ...
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Lumi
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Christophe Panattoni, co-creator of Kydos Studios, the developer behind Dream.Build.Play grand prize winner Lumi. How did you get started in game design? I created Kydos Studio with Nicolas Daures a year ago; we both had a background in game development. We basically started designing games at the same time and we often take our inspiration from real life activities. For example, the main idea behind our latest game, Lumi, came while we were pinning tasks on a white board using small magnets. We were having fun with those magnets and we thought that would be a good start for a game.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Retrofit: Overload
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Will Storer of WAM! Games. Joystiq: How did you and your company get started? Will Storer: Martin Stone and I were both working freelance after several years at large studios. We both worked together on MotorStorm for the PS3 and we used to chat about games a lot on the way home from work. We then went our separate ways into various other jobs and freelance gigs but kept in touch. We literally decided one night at the pub, lets make a game of our own, something simple, something small, just to see if we could actually make a complete game by ourselves. About five months later Pegzo was released.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Silas
How did you get started in game design? I was around 11 years old when I first started programming 2D games. I was using an old program that made these top-down 2D RPGs. This was in the late 90s. After a few months of creating these really ugly tiles and sprites in Paint, I soon decided I wanted to work on 3D games. I played around with some different engines, and soon enough I was programming and making art hours a night. Some years later, the thirst then began to consume me and ordered me to make a game. So, I willingly gave in. While still in high school, I started the company, and started laying the foundation for Silas. It was a crazy idea at the time, and still is, but its all part of accepting risk and believing in your product! %Gallery-97840%
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: 0 A.D.
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Aviv Sharon of Wildfire about the studio's 0 A.D., an indie project nine years in the making. What's your game called, and what's it about? 0 A.D. (pronounced "zero ey-dee") is a free, open-source, cross-platform real-time strategy (RTS) game of ancient warfare. In short, it is a historically-based war/economy game that allows players to relive or rewrite the history of Western civilizations, focusing on the years between 500 B.C. and 500 A.D. The project is highly ambitious, involving state-of-the-art 3D graphics, detailed artwork, sound, and a flexible and powerful custom-built game engine. It focuses on six factions: The Hellenic States (aka The Greeks), the Roman Republic, The Celtic Tribes, the Persian Empire, the Iberian Tribes, and the Carthaginian Empire, each complete with unique artwork, technologies and civilization bonuses.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Delve Deeper
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk Lunar Giant Studio's Adam Eidukas (Lead Developer) and Neil Wickman (Creative Director / Lead Artist) about how Adam FULLY beat Final Fantasy with just the thief. ... Oh, also they made a game.) How did Lunar Giant get started? Neil: In the future of the planet Earth arose a world of unthinking, unfeeling machines. A world without fun, a world without games. A world without heroes. But not without the memory of them, or those few left who could resist the robots. And like unto heroes did they arm themselves, and set upon their quest, bringing joy to a world that knew only the grip of steel. A great battle was fought, and though it was awesome, the machines were too strong, too numerous to be defeated. At that very moment before humanity's final defeat, two Men and one Stig escaped through time and space. Returning to the year 2008, Lunar Giant was formed. A company with one purpose: to save the world.