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Exclusive InterviewsIndie

Roman Semenov & Irina Ignatovich: Cars, Carnage and Racing on Mobile

February 27, 2017 — by David Radd

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Roman Semenov and Irina Ignatovich is the Co-founders of Velcro Games, maker of caRRage. By winning the GetIT! Indie Prize, Velcro Games was given the opportunity to show off caRRage at Indie Prize Berlin 2017, as part of Casual Connect Europe.

Winning at GetIT! Indie Prize Kyiv 2016

“Winning GetIT! Indie Prize and being invited to Indie Prize Berlin 2017 were big accomplishments for our team,” said Irina. “We’re thrilled to be taking part in an international exhibition of this scale. It’s a great opportunity to showcase our project, get some feedback from players, developers, and publishers, and share experience with other people who love games as much as we do. And take selfies with icons of the video game industry, of course!”

ContributionsIndustry

Keep Your Friends Close, and Your Enemies Away From the Nice China

January 3, 2017 — by Industry Contributions

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By Nicole Canovas, Creative Content Intern at Mega Cat Studios

I’m about to relay to you the story of one of the most vivid gaming memories I have. It’s a tale of suspense. It’s a take of betrayal. It’s a tale of teens. I can’t remember the year, but the game was Mario Party and the system was Nintendo64. I was maybe 18 at the time, my younger sister and our mutual best friend maybe 16. It’s our friend’s turn, and he lands on the coveted Star Space. Toad jumps up and down, asking if he would like to purchase a star for 20 coins. The rest seems to happen in slow motion.

My sister’s hand snaps out and hits the joystick on our friend’s controller down- right as he’s pressing “A”. I had never been so proud and terrified of my little sister at the same time. Our friend looks at her, slack jawed, as his character declines the star. It was completely silent for about a minute before all hell broke loose.

Exclusive InterviewsIndie

Exploring the Pig Bang Theory with Yuriy Krasilnikov

January 2, 2017 — by David Radd

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Yuriy Krasilnikov is the Director of Business Development at TrilobiteSoft, developer of Pig Bang. The game recently took home the best art and Grand Prix prizes at the Indie Prize partner event Indie Game Cup at White Nights Moscow 2016, an international cross-platform business conference for game industry designed to facilitate networking among game developers and publishers from Russia and all of Europe. TrilobiteSoft will present the game at Casual Connect Europe and Indie Prize.

Pig Bang

“The team working on Pig Bang sets the highest standards - both related to the visual component of the game, and to the gameplay in general - to those experiences that Pig Bang gamers can get,” said Yuriy. “Awards received during Indie Game Cup at White Nights Moscow 2016 showed that we are heading in the right direction and this definitely is inspiring.”

“We are going to come to Berlin with even better-polished game, and, peeling away the mystery, most likely with additional characters and even with the mode of the game. So to say, we are keeping our hopes up that at the Casual Connect’s Indie Prize, the game will be really appreciated,” Yuriy continued. “On top of that, conferences of this kind are a great opportunity to talk to colleagues in the industry, to the leading developers and potential partners.”

ContributionsDevelopment

EVA 2016: A Retrospective of One of the Biggest Developer Expos in South America

December 21, 2016 — by Industry Contributions

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Article by Florencia Orsetti
PH: Marisol Estevez
Designers Logos: Carola Lucía and Agustín Cordes

Networking meetings at EVA 2016
Networking meetings at EVA 2016

EVA 2016 (Argentine Videogames Exposition) has been reuniting game developers from all over Argentina and other countries since 2003. The event is an incredible opportunity for devs to showcase their games, attend lectures by regional and international speakers, assist to workshops and access to business networking meetings with publishers and influencers from all over the world. The latest edition of EVA was held on November 4th and November 5th, earlier this month, in Palermo, Buenos Aires, at Centro Cultural de la Ciencia, a cultural venue that hosted hundreds of assistants, including game developers, entrepreneurs, gamers, and press, among other actors from the video game industry.

EVA 2016 in Numbers

Event organizer ADVA (Argentine Videogames Developers Association) estimates an attendance of more than 1500 visitors. EVA Play, the exhibit booth area, hosted more than 80 Argentine videogames, including a VR-ready area. The complete event program included over 30 lectures from regional and international speakers and networking meetings attended by more than 50 studios, including Epic Games/ Unreal Engine, Unity, Globant, NGD, Pixowl and reputable Universities such as UAI and Image Campus. Those lectures that were deliver at the central auditorium from 2pm to 5pm were live streamed on EVA official Website and can be watched now on YouTube: Day 1 video here, and Day 2 video here. ADVA also give away prizes worth $150,000 ARS.

EVA Play, the exhibit booth area, hosted more than 80 Argentine videogames, including a VR-ready area.
EVA Play, the exhibit booth area, hosted more than 80 Argentine videogames, including a VR-ready area.

DevelopmentExclusive Interviews

Solid Clouds Takes to the Stars

December 17, 2016 — by David Radd

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Solid Clouds is an Icelandic studio founded by veterans of EVE Online and led by CEO Stefan Gunnarsson. They’re focused on making 4X MMO games, with their first game being Starborne.

Cao Renkun, tactician from Starborne
Cao Renkun, tactician from Starborne

Starborne is born from decades of strategy gaming, from old play-by-mail titles like Austerlitz to modern iteration of the Civilization franchise,” said Stefan. “The massively multiplayer strategy aspect is greatly inspired by Travian version 3 and -funnily enough- the lack of innovation of the Travian franchise is also what ignited the dream of having a fully 4X MMO, because, I wanted more depth out of my MMO strategy experience and MMORTS games unfortunately weren’t providing it.”

Refining the MMORTS

Stefan says he’s a big fan of strategy games. In particular, he fell in love with MMORTS games where thousands of players can recreate the history of human politics and war in miniature, but he also ran up against some issues with the genre.

ContributionsDevelopmentIndie

Rikodu Brings Robots and Mayhem from Transylvania

December 5, 2016 — by Industry Contributions

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Editor’s Note: The RGDA Dev-Play Indie Pitch Contest took place on 26th and 27th of September in Romania. At this contest, Romanian indie studios get a chance to present their creations to a jury with well known developers, national and international publishers and specialized media to determine two winners. As an Indie Prize nomination partner, RGDA has invited the winner to participate at the Indie Prize Scholarship which is taking place at Casual Connect Berlin.


By Alexandru Palade, Founder, Managing Director at Rikodu

Hi there. I’m Alex, and in April 2016 I founded an indie game studio in Cluj-Napoca, a city in the heart of Transylvania. Read on to hear a personal story of why I left my safe, well-paid job to jump into indie gaming, how Team Rikodu got together and how we ended up winning our first prize at the Dev-Play Indie Pitch with the prototype of Second Hand: Frankie’s Revenge.

Going Indie

Indie is a loaded term and it means different things to different people. To me, Indie boils down to two things: increased risk and some level of sacrifice. Indie developers live or die by their success and they sacrifice either their free time or the potential to make more money. In exchange, they get creative freedom and the potential to get a much larger share of the financial success.

My story is a variation on another common theme: software developer who loves games, always wanted to make them, but was taken by life on a different path. The only minor variation is that I had a better paid job to give up than usual, because I had climbed the corporate ladder and was managing a large product department by the time I left. But those of us who are marked have no escape. The fascination with games is what led me to follow a career in technology. If I would have settled and hadn’t jumped in – Indiepocalypse be damned – I would have regretted it forever. For those of you nodding in agreement who haven’t taken the plunge yet I have a quote from my favorite book: I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

DevelopmentExclusive InterviewsIndustry

Joshua Granick Joining FlowPlay for Platform Development

August 18, 2016 — by David Radd

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VW Free Slots iOS-2
Vegas World Free Slots on iOS

FlowPlay has appointed Joshua Granick to be scientist-in-residence. Joshua will help FlowPlay’s platform grow and change, though will remain with OpenFL as managing director. FlowPlay is in the process of transitioning Vegas World to OpenFL and plans to do so with its games that are present and future to the engine.

“Thousands of games, technologies and industries are already using OpenFL, and it’s a perfect fit to enable FlowPlay’s future development plans,” said Joshua. “By transitioning to OpenFL, FlowPlay has increased the versatility of the company’s multiplayer platform while accelerating development times and freeing up more resources to focus on new innovation. I’m eager to become a part of that process and help raise awareness on how OpenFL can help other developers in the casual games industry.”

Part of OpenFL’s appeal and reason for its rapid expansion is the fact that it’s open-source software. Joshua says they want to make the world a better place using OpenFL. They feel like making OpenFL a paid product would work against that goal.

Asia 2016Video Coverage

Chenyu Cui and Analyzing Fun | Casual Connect Video

July 6, 2016 — by Catherine Quinton

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'The lack of good hardware for the Chinese market is the main problem.' - Chenyu CuiClick To Tweet

With China’s console ban lifted and the growth of Android-based set-top boxes, TV games look like the new blue sea for games publishers and/or developers. However, due to younger players and SARFT censorship, sales are not encouraging. The exception in China is VR which has sparked a new industry passion for TV games. In this session from Casual Connect Asia, analyst for IHS Chenyu Cui discussed the VR market in China and shared IHS’ forecast of installed headsets and sales value. Chenyu explained, “The future Chinese VR market will be relatively small. Most of the future market will be made of adapter headset which doesn’t give good quality or a good experience. The lack of good hardware for the Chinese market is the main problem.” To learn more about VR in the Chinese market, watch this video of Chenyu’s complete session.

ContributionsDevelopmentIndiePostmortem

The Cruz Brothers are Taking Olympic Boxing

April 26, 2016 — by Industry Contributions

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André Amorim started developing indie games with the project of Bunny Battle Arena for iOS in 2014, project signed as Donut Coffeeshop Studios. But the path of acquiring knowledge began many years before.  André is self-taught from the age of 11. That interest in digital design continued to grow until now, at the age of 29. Now, he tells the story of his newest creation based on a real story: Cruz Brothers. 


ContributionsDevelopmentGame DevelopmentIndieOnlinePostmortem

Scribbled Arena: Cross-platform Multiplayer Warfare with Casual Vibes

September 2, 2015 — by Industry Contributions

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Make way for some sweet multiplayer addiction: Scribbled Arena in the house! - as told by Laxmi Khanolkar, CEO of Apar Games. She calls it a dream project for all of them at the company, The game is a unique cross-breed between adrenaline-pumping action and casual unwinding gameplay. If you’re a person who really digs upgrades like cooler ammunition and vehicles, you will definitely be spoilt for choices! Like to keep it simple and classic? Don’t worry, you will enjoy it too because it can be as easy-peasy lemon-squeezy as you’d want it. 

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