So the entire reason I wanted to make games was a chap called Jeff Minter. My first Minter game was Gridrunner for the Atari 65XE. Then Attack of the Mutant Camels. Even as an eight year old, his games stood out as being by far the most intense, imaginative and coolest. So when the opportunity to do a tune for his PSVita game ‘TxK’ came around, I was on it like a rat up a drainpipe.
Here’s the whole album on Bandcamp. Mine’s called ‘Gin Swigger’.
Avoid Droid OST EP
I’ve also completely finished the Avoid Droid soundtrack EP! You can download it for free or pay what you want here:
Pocket Gamer Avoid Droid coverage & Interview
Pocket Gamer came round to the old ISG design labs to play the game! They had a good time, as did we. You can read the preview they wrote here: http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/PS+Vita/Avoid+Droid/news.asp?c=58332
I also did a little interview with PocketGamer.biz about making games with zero budget and winging it. You can see it here:
SO! What’s goin’ down just now? Well things are ticking along nicely. Let’s do a quick update on where everything is:
Avoid Droid
So working on Avoid Droid for Sony has been just about the best experience we’ve ever had working in conjunction with a corporation ever. They have given us the most important things that anyone can give a developer:
-1 Hardware.
Devkit? Have two! One each! Amazing. Pride of place in both me and Charlie’s workstations (dining tables).
-2 Freedom
We are not being hounded One. Bit. Like, for anything. At the start there was some feedback on the prototype they’d seen which was extremely positive but had a few suggestions from the game consultant who assessed it. We took a lot of the suggestions on board because they were great, but some things we were reluctant to change because it didn’t fit with our finished creative vision of the game. And that was totally absolutely cool with them. God, we love Sony.
-3 Empathy
They understand that we gotta do what we gotta do, and it’s gonna be different from the way most companies do it. They know we aren’t a company with an office and 9-5 working hours and they *understand*. We’ve had Skype calls when sensible people should really be in their jimmy jammers cos it’s the only time we could make it. Nary a raised eyebrow!
So here’s where we’re at just now…
So yeah, we’re really happy. And happy devs are productive devs! We now have the game ported to Vita, so we’re now on to the ‘mystery’ bit of messing around with shaders and gameplay tweaks to make it look and play like the solid, timeless arcade game we want it to look and play like.
The Audio Grill
I’ve teamed up with a lovely fellow called David Burrows to form a two man music and audio team called The Audio Grill.
The company’s vision is centred around the idea that the best people to make music for video-games would be a highly trained professional musician (David) and some guy who makes games and music (Me). Therefore, combining my career insight into design and audio implementation which enhanced the feel of gameplay – with David’s training, composing experience and preposterous levels of musical prowess. Thus, the perfect bespoke music and audio conception and production pipeline is born.
We’re also blogging about the games that we’re creating the audio for. It’s just our insights and philosophies we have while making the music for each of the games, so it’ll gradually grow and become more introverted and bizarre, probably. Come read us! http://theaudiogrill.wordpress.com
But don’t just take our word for it! Since forming The Audio Grill, we’ve already created music for what I’m certain will be a it of a phenomenon. It’s called Division Cell. Here’s the trailer…
The game is by a couple of reeeeeally genuinely lovely and creative guys called Hyperspace Yard. You can, and should, check out the Division Cell website, cos it’s got a tasty html5 version of the puzzles you can generate, play and share on there!
They Can't All Be Zingers! 