Dan Jorquera shared tips to success for a mobile game during his session at Casual Connect USA 2014. “Games are getting easier to design, publish, and find,” he says. “There’s a constant evolution of new game ideas and concepts to advance upon.”
At Casual Connect USA, Dan Jorquera announced that Mindgrub and it’s gaming division Mindgrub Games have officially relocated its headquarters to the Locust Point neighborhood of Baltimore City. The new office is more than double the size of its previous location. This summer, Mindgrub will continue its gaming education partnership with Howard County Library System’s HiTech program. Their latest mobile collaboration is the iOS and Android game, Cyborg Glitch. The game was created under the guidance of Mindgrub by local middle and high school students in the HiTech program.
Honing His Skills
Jorquera is a game developer and game designer at Mindgrub, but he also helps out with web design. He began working at Mindgrub after leaving a startup educational game company that was not able to employ him full-time. While at that company he honed his programming and art skills and leveraged skills as an indie game designer and as quality assurance tester for online games.
The most exciting part of his career occurred with the release of Windsquire: Race From Dragon Castle. He says, “It took nearly a year, but seeing the game in the Apple and Google Play Stores, and seeing people enjoy the game, was very satisfying.”
High Quality Mobile Games
An emerging trend that Jorquera is following is the ability to release extremely high quality titles on mobile devices, something that was not possible until recently. Mindgrub is working to implement this trend by keeping up with the latest mobile development tools. As the game development tools become more streamlined designers are able to spend more time improving their games.
He has seen a huge surge of developers moving toward alpha releases of their games, something he believes will have a tremendous impact on the games industry as a whole. He claims, “Players are willing to jump into a game early, even if there are multitudes of bugs and even at full price.”
When Jorquera is not working, he enjoys mountain biking, hiking, skiing, rock climbing and, of course, making more games. His favorite platform to play on is PC, but he also has recently acquired Wii U, OUYA, and 3DS, and plans to purchase PS4 soon. He feels, “These consoles have been very proactive with indie development, although the real reason I buy any system is to play the games. It just takes one amazing looking title to attract me.”
Currently he is playing Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U, Don’t Starve, Monument Valley, and Hearthstone. Two of these titles are multi-player, and being able to play with a friend is a huge draw for him. He says, “The other two are as artistic and inspiring as they are fun.”
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