As mobile gaming continues to expand at an amazing rate, Game Design students have risen to its challenge. Earlier this year we saw the release of the first iPad student game, Faine’s Melody, and today Forerunner, a game designed and produced almost entirely by VFS grads, makes its way onto the App Store.

Forerunner comes from All Are Kings, the studio formed by Game Design alumni Justin Nichols, Remi Storms, Balraj Basi, Christopher Ellington, Jarrett McKenna, and their friend, Jared Wuerzbuger. After working for other companies such as Relic and Electronic Arts, the friends decided to try their hand at independent game development. The result is a fast-paced, atmospheric game with elegant controls and a beautiful art style. They took time before the big launch to answer some of our questions.

Can you tell us what your role on the game was?

Justin: I worked on the art and level design side of the game. First, I created animations for the character. After that, I drew several level assets, building blocks for the levels, as well as background pieces. Once Remi had finished adding collision to the level assets, Chris and I began building levels. I also help in placing backgrounds for the levels.

Remi: I was the technical artist in charge of modeling our main character. Once that part was completed, I worked with the pieces that Justin created for our levels and created the collisions for them, as well as some simple scripts for the background colour change.

Balraj: My role on this project was co-programmer alongside Jarret. My focus throughout development was getting the various parts of the game working together correctly.

Chris: We didn’t really have defined roles for our production, but I’d say I was a game artist and level designer.

What motivated you to start your own company and develop in the mobile space?

Chris: The mobile space is a platform that allows small teams to make games that have a clear path to monetization. I had already been working with Balraj on a simple Flash game after graduation, and when I heard that he was working with Justin, Remi, and Jarret on something new, I wanted in!

Balraj: As a team, I believe we all brought something valuable to the table, and our range of skills worked well with one another’s. It just made sense to try and create something that was fun and allowed us to use our abilities. Our reason for developing for the mobile space had a lot to do with the low barrier to entry. We used the Unity game engine which helped us get up and running quickly and didn’t cost us a fortune.

Remi: After graduation I just wanted to continue making games, and when we talked about making a simple game for the iPhone I didn’t have to think it twice. I was very excited about the project.

Justin: I always planned to work for a couple of years before trying to go independent, but finding a smart and well balanced team who is just as crazy as you are can be hard. Also, as time goes on, people tend to take on more responsibilities and can’t take a risk like making indie games. Earlier this year, Balraj and I were working contract jobs at local studios. We started talking about our plans after the contracts were up and found out that we both wanted to take a stab at indie development.

How has the learning curve been in terms of learning to develop for iOS and working with Apple?

Balraj: Developing for iOS devices was a new experience for most of us, so we had to initially spend some time getting familiar with the tools. We quickly realized that we would not be able to have numerous objects on screen if we wanted the game to run smoothly on previous generation iOS devices as well as current ones. A lot of time was spent optimizing the game so that it would be able to run on multiple iOS devices.

Remi: It was a really good experience to learn a new game engine. We started playing with Unity 3D and fell in love with it right away. We also had to do a lot of research on how to optimize our game for mobile devices.

Justin: Balraj is the one who made Forerunner “Apple-friendly”. For me, it was kind of tough sometimes from an art perspective. Certain visuals had to be toned down for frame rate. But I have no regrets. To me, no matter how good a game looks, it has to feel good for me to keep playing. Even though we had to scale some things out (like sun flare in some levels, or level decorations) we still got a lot of compliments on how it looks.

Chris: My final project at VFS was an iPad game, so you could say that most of my game design experience has been in the mobile space. The iPad project gave me an idea of what it was like to work within constraints. In making an iPhone game, our constraints were even more stringent, but we’re always willing to push the limits!

Tell us about the game. What was the inspiration for it?

Justin: Forerunner is an iPhone game for fans of classic side-scrolling platform games (old Mario games), and “run-forever” style games like Canabalt, Robot Unicorn Attack, and Bit Trip Runner.

Gameplay Inspirations: Canabalt was a game we looked at a lot early on. We liked the fast paced platforming, and analogue jump, but found that while in the air the player is helpless. So for our game we wanted to give the player more control over the character, more mobility. With the air jump and air dive mechanics the player will always have control over the character, even while in mid-air.

Art Inspirations: Limbo and Outland are two Xbox Live Arcade games that have a visually appealing, silhouette art style. The foreground is black, and the background is lighter. I have never seen the style on the iPhone. Most iPhone games go for a cartoon art style. To help differentiate our game we went with this silhouette style. The high contrast between the shadowed character and the bright, colorful background makes the character stand out, which is important on a small screen.

It’s clear that mobile is going to be huge. Do you see yourselves doing this permanently, or would you also like to work on, say, AAA-console titles?

Chris: As a group, we’re pretty much willing to do anything. For now we like the accessible scope of the iPhone and iPad. (Don’t forget, Forerunner has a forthcoming iPad version too.) I think what we want is to take the types of games we love on the major consoles, and boil them down to something fundamental that makes sense for mobile. In the future, however, who knows? Our next steps will be determined by how Forerunner does. If we are successful, we’ll keep making games at the highest level of quality we can achieve.

Justin: I think we are always open to work on anything. We will see how Forerunner is received and let that shape what we do next. Since we have now developed an iPhone game, there are less unknowns in iPhone development for us. We have also been throwing around ideas for small PC games. Whatever is next, it will probably be another small-scoped game. For now, we would rather gain experience by making several low-scope, high-quality games instead of spending a year or more on a single game.

We all have are own separate long term goals, but for now, we are helping each other get to them, and learning a lot from one another. For me, I really enjoy working in smaller development teams. One day I would love to work on games for Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, or Steam. Currently, I’m having a lot of fun working on mobile games.

We are working on an iPad version for the near future. If we receive enough revenue, we would like to release on Android devices as well.

Remi: Since we are a small team I think we will continue making mobile games for a while, but we are always open to new ideas. Of course, our next move depends heavily on how well this first project does, but we are definitely very excited about new projects.