Last month, we introduced The Indie Dozen, a selection of 12 indie studios all working on intriguing projects, due for release sometime in 2011. We're set to follow all of them through a year of their development lives, finding out about the trials, tribulations and delights of coding games for a living.
Here is the first part of our March round-up. Let's find out what the Indie12 have been up to...
Jack Nilssen, Dark Acre
Vancouver film school graduate Jack Nilssen is working on several projects, including an ambitious combination of Star Flight, Star Control and Privateer.
I launched the prototype of my tilt-puzzle, Ball of Steel, to Kongregate in February, as part of their Unity Game Contest. I'm also currently in talks to do some contract development for a media firm in town, some form of mobile game that promotes cultural awareness.
First part of the week was spent re-adjusting to Vancouver time, and poring over the feedback generated for Ball of Steel via Kongregate and a private circle of playtesters.
In the current basic Dark Acre dev cycle, two weeks are allotted for pre-production, where all of the paper-planning and code-snippet prototyping gets done to prove out an idea. Ball of Steel came about in a rush at the end of the last cycle when the previous project imploded. So since Ball is a proven concept, these pre-pro weeks have been focused on deciding what (if any) new features to add, what needs tuning (game speed was the overwhelming response from players), and the layouts of new levels.
I'd like to add 80 more levels to make it worth the baseline price in any given iStore, so some of this pre-pro time has been given to mapping those out. Since the whole thing is grid- and tile-based, it's a matter of sitting down with the graphing paper and drawing. 80 might seem like a lot, but once there are some solid themes to wrap the levels around (like the various mechanics in the game) it really isn't so bad.
In addition to the above work on the core Dark Acre project, I've been very closely involved in some collaborative efforts that I'm currently not at liberty to discuss. I've had to factor those into the schedule as well, so the week delay will hopefully help me better accommodate the extra work.
Finally, I've taken on an apprentice coder and am spending a couple of hours each day teaching what little I know of C# and how it works with Unity. I taught English for 10 years in Japan, so the mechanics of instruction aren't new to me, but attempting to teach something as complex as a computer language has been a bit of a wake-up call. I'm pretty sure I'm getting more out of the lessons than the student, as it's helped me organize my own thoughts on programming and given me more insight into how code should work.
So there you have it. To say it's been busy would be a bit of an understatement, but there's nowhere I'd rather be, and nothing I'd rather be doing.
Dan Marshall, Zombie Cow
UK studio Zombie Cow is currently working on DLC for its sexual health platformer, Privates.
The last couple of weeks have been pretty manic. We couldn't afford to go to GDC this time round, and as it turns out it landed slap bang on a really important week; the Privates DLC level is in final, final, definitely final testing, so there have been a few squiffy bugs and issues to sort out. I don't mind bugs when they're outright hilarious, but at this point they're all just boring, annoying things that need fixing up.
I'm also now in full swing on The Next Thing – I've started to scribble down a few ideas about what it might be, and I'm quite excited about how it's taking shape. When I lie awake at night playing it through in my head, it's a really entertaining little game. For me, this is the fun part of Game Development, where you've got a blank page staring back at you and you can just start drawing anything So many questions... What does the main character look like? What sort of weapons will the game have? Will it even have weapons, or will the player be using a toilet brush to scare enemies off? Actually, that's pretty good, I might use that.
One thing that's already clear, the next game's already my most manic and ambitious yet. Uh oh.
Terry Cavanagh
The talented coder behind VVVVVV and Don't Look Back is working on multiple projects including the RPG, Nexus City, with Jonas Kyratzes.
I was at GDC! It was pretty amazing, but I'm absolutely knackered. Already looking forward to next year, though.
I only went to two talks in the main GDC sessions, and I had to sneak because I didn't have a proper pass. The first was the experimental gameplay sessions, which was amazing and inspirational - each game had an advocate who talked about what they found interesting. They could also discuss the work of creators who weren't present, like my flatmate Increpare's game, Opera Omnia.
The other session I snuck into was SWERY's design talk on the making of the beautiful game Deadly Premonition. He discussed the seven concepts that define his approach to narrative game design – all of which were interesting in and of themselves, but moreso when considered in terms of how they led to the direction of the game.
For example, in Deadly Premonition, the character can sleep, eat, and shave. It turns out, these are present as gameplay elements, not because they make the game more immersive or anything like that, but because SWERY wanted players to think of Deadly Premonition outside of the game. When you shave or sleep in real life, he explained, you should think of Deadly Premonition.
I also attended the Indie Games Summit this year, which was also wonderful. There seemed to be less focus on indie startups and more on personal stories and designer perspectives, which I really appreciated. Highlights for me were Michael Todd's personal talk on game design and depression, and Edmund and Tommy telling their story of what went into creating Super Meat Boy.
I played a lot of NIDHOGG at the IGF. I dunno if it was beginners luck or whatever, but it turns out I'm awesome at it. Won about 80 games in a row – the only people to beat me were Daniel Benmergui and Messhof himself. Was delighted to see it win an award at the festival, it's an amazing game.
Dave Castelnuovo, Bolt Creative
Based in San Francisco, Bolt is the small studio behind iPhone sensation, Pocket God. The team is currently working on a range of spin-offs to that game.
I partially went to GDC. I didn't get a badge because we couldn't afford to take the entire week off, but I decided to attend some developer gatherings, a couple business meetings and some interviews with a few online outlets.
The biggest benefit I get from GDC is meeting with other developers. We exchange secrets, talk about future cross-overs and in general just get to know each other and have a good time. We have a couple cross-overs tentatively planned which will turn out as incredible updates for Pocket God. Other than GDC, our biggest struggle is managing a large number of projects while keeping our team small. This last week we submitted updates for Pocket God Journey to Uranus and the iPhone version of Pocket God. Now we have a week of non-development time so we have to rush and get all our meetings, business matters, and planning out of the way before we need to get back into crunch mode again. I have a list of 10 ongoing partner management threads I have to take care of in between updates. I usually completely neglect them once we get two weeks from our submit date, and then have to spend a good week catching up with everyone. It's very hard for me to be in a space where I have to talk to a lot of people and respond to emails while I am trying to be productive from a development perspective.
We are also in the process of finding art help for Allan [Dye, the company's designer] before we get too busy again. It's been really hard to find the perfect resource that doesn't need a lot of direction. The last couple of people we tried out actually used up more of Allan's time than him just doing everything himself. I guess that's the negative aspect of not growing into a larger company that has management built into its structure. We are really trying to keep things small so we can continue to work at home and keep expenses low. I really enjoy getting to see my family despite working crazy hours – sorting out an office and building a proper team would get in the way of that. We also want to continue doing the fun part of development and not become overseers.
This last few weeks have been mostly about us struggling to get bigger while staying small…
Other stuff
Chris Hecker has had a hectic month, speaking at both the Game Developers Conference and Pax East. You can find a version of his Independent Games Summit speech on his blog.
Budding developers have until Sunday April 3 to apply for this year's Dare to be Digital game design competition. Organised by the University of Abertay, the contest is open to students in teams of five. There are more entry details here, and you can also find a list of vacancies here if you're interested in joining a team, rather than forming your own.
