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ContributionsDevelopmentGame DevelopmentIndieOnlinePostmortem

JELLIES!: Developers’ Team Gathered Through Instagram

March 4, 2015 — by Industry Contributions

52 Hertz Whale are 3 guys from Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. They were once working at the same local IT company and decided to create an indie game together. Inspired by titles like Limbo, Badland and Ridiculous Fishing, these developers tried to create something unique and gorgeous, and they got it. JELLIES!, a color-matching arcade game. “It has a great simple design, unique entertaining gameplay and awesome little wicked jellies”, says Mikhail Shagin, the co-founder and developer in 52 Hertz Whale, as he shares the story of the game.


ContributionsDevelopmentGame DevelopmentIndieOnlinePostmortem

Entertainment Forge: A Formal Deal Turns Into a Team

March 17, 2014 — by Mariia Lototska

Entertainment Forge was a Serbian-based one-man indie studio founded and run by Darko Peninger, the programmer and game designer. Darko later joined forces with Gilbert De Vera from the Philippines, the studio’s artist who also shares game designing duties. They’ve recently launched their second game for PC, How Smart Are You?, where the player happens to land on a planet with some intelligent civilization whose history arises as the visitor solves their puzzles in a pyramid. At the same time, the player’s IQ is being measured for some reason… Darko, with help from Gilbert, explains how they got to working together and how they’re going to conquer the world.

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Darko Peninger, the founder of Entertainment Forge

First Choice: Less Money, More Work

I started working on my game-making career as soon as I finished high school on the 1st of July 2011, though I should have totally left school and started earlier! Back then, I didn’t know much about game design, knew almost nothing about programming, but had a big passion for making games - as I still do! So I just thought out and did everything myself, including artwork. Oh boy, was I bad in art! In about a year and a half, I made a game called Mystery IQ Test. It was my first game that got sponsored.

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“Oh boy, I was bad at art!”

I got two sponsors fighting over the game. One offered more money, and the other one promised less money and some additional work. So, logically, I chose the latter! It was actually a good decision, because this is when I met Gilbert. The chosen sponsor from Yepi, Roy Tzayag, suggested paying an artist and working together to make the game even better. This could have been a valuable experience for a newbie, so I decided to give it a try.

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Improved graphics by Gilbert

Since then, the story goes on around a new game with a similar idea, called How Smart Are You? and presented at the Indie Prize Showcase at Casual Connect Europe 2014.

From Call Center Trainer to Game Artist

Gilbert De Vera has been a game artist since 2010. He started it as a part-time job, while still working as a trainer in a call center of a company.

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In 2011, Gilbert quit his day job and became a full-time game artist.

“Like everyone else who’s starting a new job, I didn’t have all the things I needed to make art: no tablet, printer, scanner and not even a good computer,” Gilbert explains. “I used my camera and took photos of my art in paper, and then transferred them to the computer for digital coloring. What is more, I was using a crappy old PC. That was really hard, but turned out a great challenge.”

“In 2011, I quit my day job and became a full-time game artist,” he recalls. “I’ve worked with different clients, garnered a lot of experience in game development and finished plenty of games. One of them was a game made by Darko. A client who happened to be his sponsor asked for help to improve the game’s visual aesthetics. After we finished that project, Darko planned to create a sequel to the game he made first. And How Smart Are You? appeared.”

Puzzles Make a Game Fun, Even With Little Mechanics

The game’s puzzles were designed with the help of my friends. They used to come to my place or we just sat in the park brainstorming puzzles. There were at least 200 ideas, but I picked the 40 I found most suitable for the game. Many of these still didn’t appear to be good enough, so only 30 ended up in the latest version of How Smart Are You?. I think figuring out puzzles was the hardest thing, cause the game itself doesn’t have much of a mechanic. And then Gilbert joined the team to do his magic and make art! We started creating games together with a 50/50 percentage deal.

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There were at least 200 ideas of puzzles, and only 30 ended up in the game.

“I didn’t have any problem doing art on this game, since Darko explained all the details he needed pretty well,” Gilbert says. “At the start of the project, I always ask what kind of character is needed, to make sure to create two or more so that there’s a choice. Darko told me to draw a spaceman that looks like a human, while it’s actually an alien. There is a puzzle room where the character needs to put boxes behind an X-ray machine to see what’s inside. It also shows the character’s skeleton that should resemble a human one. This is the tricky part: making players believe that the character behind the spaceman suit is a human being.”

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“Darko told me to create a spaceman that looks like a human, while it’s actually an alien,” Gilbert recalls.
This is the tricky part: making players believe that the character behind the spaceman suit is a human being.

“The best experience for me is when a player loves the game so much that we receive fan mail and good feedback,” the artist confesses.

“Sometimes we disagree about the design, but the good thing is that we respect each other’s opinion, value each other’s reasons, and eventually end up using the best version (that are mostly my suggestions),” Gilbert says. “But I really commend Darko for being one of the fastest coders I’ve worked with (or maybe I’m really that slow).”

“It took us almost 2 months to finish the game,” Gilbert recalls. “The main challenge for me was keeping up with Darko’s deadlines! Since I was working for several projects back then, my attention was split, and I wasn’t doing things fast enough. However, I learned one thing here: better to do one project at a time and focus on it, in order to finish it much faster. Never really expected that Darko and I will continue doing games in the future, but I really admired his efforts on finishing a project, and that’s why I suggested to him to make more games together.”

Currently, we’re working on smaller games to get more experience and build up some budget - Physics, Launcher, Action/Adventure games for Web (and planning to go mobile soon) platforms. We’ve noticed that making a small but fast to finish game is the safe way to earn money in this line of business. Risk is much lower compared to creating a game that we could finish in a few months.

Darko's goal: to make awesome games that will rule the world
Darko’s goal: to make awesome games that will rule the world

Plans: Rule the World and Beat Bill Gates’ Fortune

I have plans for bigger games (most likely web and mobile). From the very beginning, my goal was to make awesome games that will rule the world (Muahaha!!). To be serious, it’s creating really engaging and meaningful game experiences for players. And I will accomplish these goals, cause I strongly believe that I can and will give everything I’ve got to achieve them!

Gilbert wants to top Bill Gates' fortune
Gilbert wants to top Bill Gates’ fortune

“My future plan is to top Bill Gates fortune and be able to donate half of it to charity,” Gilbert smiles. “Kidding aside, my real plan is just to top Bill Gates fortune.”

Right now, How Smart Are You? is available for web only. In the meantime, Darko and Gilbert are thinking of some new games, both similar to the previous one, but, at the same time, totally different. 

Video Coverage

NaturalMotion’s Struan Robertson on Animation Innovation and Learned Lessons from Going Freemium

November 15, 2012 — by Brian Anthony Thornton

Struan Robertson is the Product Producer for NaturalMotion, a company that has their hands in everything from real time 3D Dynamic Motion Synthesis and engine development to mobile game design. He recently met with Gamesauce for an animated discussion of his origins, the impact of the freemium model, and the future of social games.

Beginnings

When Struan Robertson spoke to us about his early experiences with video games, the excitement was still evident. The game that had the biggest impact on him at a young age was Double Dragon. The combination of the 80’s action movie aesthetic and martial arts totally spoke to him as a 7 year old, to the point where he now says he was obsessed with the game. His interest went beyond simply playing the game; he also wrote design docs based around the Double Dragon mechanic. His fascination with this game was one of the influences leading to him joining the industry.

“His fascination with [Double Dragon] was one of the influences leading to him joining the industry.”

Before switching to the video game industry, Robertson was an ESL teacher. He then taught English in Japan for a year, and after that considered going into banking or something similar. Thankfully, an opportunity to work at a gaming start up came about, and he leaped at the chance. He found working at something both technically and creatively fulfilling very appealing.

Robertson claims that in spite of coming from a totally different work background, he didn’t encounter any specific challenges getting into the industry. He has a degree in Computer Science that helped him work with coders, but generally the ability to document and communicate were - and still are - the most important skills he needed.

Innovation In Motion

Robertson described for us the work he does at NaturalMotion. He is the Product Director at the NMG division, which means he is responsible for the direction, design, and delivery of all of their titles. He manages the team of Product Managers and Product Leads who in turn manage the dev teams and the development of individual titles. He was also a Product Lead on CSR Racing, which meant working with the dev team on a daily basis.

Robertson stresses that NaturalMotion stands out due to the quality of the games they make and also due to the ethos of the people who work there. According to him they are obsessed with learning how to make better games and spend a huge amount of time iterating and improving them.

The environment at NaturalMotion is both supportive and creative with a lot of great ideas flying around. He tells us how great it is to be somewhere prepared to take the time necessary to create something truly special.

Struan Robertson worked as a Product Lead on CSR Racing, which meant working with the dev team on a daily basis.

The Freedom To Be Social

The freemium model has had tremendous impact on the video game industry. Robertson described it this way: “First and foremost it’s brought more games into the lives of many new gamers. “Free” is a powerful word, and being able to use that power to reach such a huge audience is just fantastic. Outside of expanding our audience, I think we’re still at a point where there are many new ways to discover that will make games free but profitable, so freemium has also opened the doors to a lot of experimentation in terms of game design.”

Robertson tells us that the most important key to success in this market is suiting the form factor and play session of the device.

As these doors open in the casual market, the competition grows fiercer. Robertson tells us that the most important key to success in this market is suiting the form factor and play session of the device. You have to make games that suit the way people use their phones and tablets. Failing to do this is a mistake he sees far too often.

Another common error is misunderstanding the target audience. A lot of developers want to create something that appeals to them. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean it will appeal to a super-casual audience.

“People don’t always want to team up or participate in PvP but the idea that there’s a wider world of friends also experiencing the same thing as you is very appealing to our nature.”

The social aspect of games continues to increase in importance. Robertson emphasizes that when a game gets social functionality right, the natural human instinct of wanting to share success, failure, serendipity - i.e. the human experience with other players comes into its own. “Playing together, alone” is a phrase that springs to mind. People don’t always want to team up or participate in PvP but the idea that there’s a wider world of friends also experiencing the same thing as you is very appealing to our nature.”

Robertson tells us the future of social games will definitely include more high quality experiences. “For a lot of new gamers out there, they’re consuming almost anything we put in front of them because they don’t have a console or PC gaming background to lean into. Once they see more high-quality, graphically rich titles like My Horse and CSR Racing more and more casual players will start to demand those production values of all their games.”

We asked Robertson what he could tell us about new ideas we could look forward to from NaturalMotion. He would say only, “I can tell you that they’re all good!”

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