iPhone development is a funny thing – it empowers the little guy, but there’s a lot of little guys. Still, whatever the challenges in being heard above the App Store din, the fact is that the iPhone is basically unrivaled as a petri dish for independent game designers who actually want a shot at finding an audience.
So it’s no surprise that you’ll find VFS grads in the mix and making their iPhone offerings available to all. We caught up with the alumni involved in two recent examples.
Flip TacTic
Jesus Rodriguez graduated from the 3D Animation & Visual Effects program in late 2008. He would go on to establish the Florida-based Playmore Games as a way to work his way into the game industry. Long-term, he hopes the company can be a testbed for recent grads like him: “Ideally, I would love to gain enough interest to begin getting projects and giving recent grads from VFS a place to get their feet wet. I want a place where grads can come learn, get some quick games and experience under their belt, see how the development process is, and move on to bigger things.”
Flip TacTic is his first offering, a “3D tic-tac-toe game unlike any other out there,” as he calls it. “What sets our game apart from the rest is the balance and strategy we added to an otherwise simple game. You can use two main abilities or one super ability either defensively or offensively to win.”
Alien Space Lizards ATTACK!!!
Alien Space Lizards ATTACK!!! is a 2D actioner with a lot of personality and many VFS grads behind it - Game Design Senior Instructor Andrew Laing helped group Game Design alumni together (as well as a Sound Design for Visual Media grad and a member of the VFS Resources staff – full credits here) and published the game to the App Store through his own company.
For the team of alumni, it was a great chance to keep their skills sharp and tackle the challenges of the medium. “The most interesting part of designing for the platform was making a control scheme that worked without any of those buttons that us designers depend on,” says Game Design grad Andrew Myers, Design Lead and Programmer. “But with that challenge, I think something great came out of it. The innovative control scheme that we came up with adds that layer of fun and accessibility that a lot of iPhone games are missing.”
Andrew acknowledges the challenge of rising above a flooded market – “no matter how well-designed the game was or how fun it was to play, without any marketing or reviews, the game will slip between the cracks and into App Store obscurity” – but at the end of the day, it’s about successfully creating an enjoyable play experience for gamers. The team knows it’s done that. (Video showing off the gameplay can be found here.)
“Once you start playing the game and getting into the flow of shooting enemies, gravity nodes, and coins, it’s quite difficult to put down,” he says. “I’ve heard quite a few reports of people missing their stops on the Skytrain…”
(Alien Space Lizards ATTACK!!! on iTunes)
Alien Space Lizards ATTACK!!! and Flip TacTic are two recent examples of VFS alumni finding ways to get their work out there. Are you a VFS grad developing for the iPhone, or finding other distribution avenues for your indie projects? Let us know at blog@vfs.com!
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