Andy: So you’re about to make the leap from $1 mobile apps to fully fledged commercial PC development. Nervous?

Tom: The biggest change is that Battle Chef Brigade will take more than two months to make! There’s a lot involved in a larger game that we got to gloss over with our mobile games. We’ve had to get some help, particularly for art, sound, and music. Those changes come with a lot of challenges, of course, but it’s also really fun to let ourselves run a little wilder. We’re thrilled to be able to make multiple dollars per sale instead of pocket change. So, I’d say we’re both excited and only slightly nervous. We’ve worked on much larger projects before, especially at Wideload/Disney, so we’re not out of our depth yet!

Andy: If nothing else, having money to eat has got to be a bonus.

Tom: Absolutely!

Andy: Prior to starting work on Battle Chef Brigade, you guys published two mobile games – Colour Sheep and Orion’s Forge. Did you learn any valuable lessons from your first attempts at indie development?

Tom: Definitely. We started Trinket after having worked together for years at Wideload, but it still took some time to settle into a good workflow that respects everyone’s distinct styles. Our mobile games let us work through those issues quickly while still releasing games. On top of that, we actually started with the intention of releasing three mobile games. The third was codenamed ‘Accidents’ and ended poorly. We ended up designing ourselves into a corner, namely the Physics-Based Rube Goldberg Puzzle Corner of Doom, which taught us a bunch of lessons. Most importantly, we learned to work towards our strengths, which has gone a long way towards molding Battle Chef Brigade‘s design.

Andy: Something I’ve always wondered when I see developers from big studio teams break off and go ‘indie’. How are you finding all the extra jobs surrounding your own project? Has it been difficult to accommodate for all those extra tasks like social media and marketing now you’re flying solo?

Tom: It’s been both frustrating and educational. Accounting and legal issues are particularly bothersome and nearly always orthogonal to the game’s needs. Marketing, on the other hand, has been primarily enjoyable. Learning to talk about our games and honing our message are great general-purpose skills, for instance. None of us had Twitter accounts before Trinket, so the world of social media was scary at first. Now, however, I love getting to know people all across the globe who are also working hard on great games. Interacting with fans has been especially rewarding. It’s really too bad that development at large studios is kept so far from players.

Andy: Now cooking features pretty heavily in Battle Chef Brigade. I mean the game focuses on making the best meals from what you kill and prepare afterwards, right? It’s not a common theme to frame in a game, and most people are going to instantly think of Cooking Mama as a comparison. Do you think there’s a need to distance yourself from these ‘cooking sim’ games, and if so how do you think you’ll manage to do that?

Tom: We set a goal for ourselves to bring “Fantasy Iron Chef” to life. Iron Chef, along with nearly all cooking shows, focuses on creative cooking. Most cooking games, however, focus on player execution of by-the-book pre-determined recipes. Instead of dictating what dish to make, we want to leave as much as possible up to the player.

Of course, the choices that chefs make, particularly when targeting specific taste and texture combinations, are really complicated and often based on decades of experience. We’ve spent a huge amount of time prototyping different potential solutions to that issue. Fantasy ingredients are part of our solution, since we have more room to specify how they work. At the least, players will have a lot less intuition about dragon tail than pork chops.

Andy: So, don’t hold out any hopes for a Cooking Mama cameo then?

Tom: Probably not. We do love the personalities of real life chefs, though, and hope to incorporate some of their quirks in our chefs. Cooking Mama is pretty quirky, so perhaps we’ll find a way to slip in a joke or two.

Andy: Please tell me there’s going to be a Gordon Ramsey character somewhere…

Tom: We’ll see! He’s definitely one of our favourite chefs.

Andy: Can you walk me through a typical… match? Round? How do you see the game play out? Can we expect a storyline and campaign to push players through a series of culinary challenges to become the best?

Tom: We’re still playing around with the possibilities, but right now a round starts in the Pantry Arena. There you’ll find yourself surrounded by monsters to slay for their ingredients. The monsters, of course, will try to prevent that. The opposing chef is also battling for ingredients.

Once you’ve collected enough ingredients, the next phase is the Kitchen. There you’ll be able to grab ingredients from the ones you’ve collected and start processing them at the various tables available. The default tables include stations for chopping, boiling, sautéing, baking, and plating. Of course, you can use other tools, like bowls, rolling pins, or pasta cutters to transform your dishes further. Those can help you make dough and eventually a pie, for instance. Eventually, you’ll want to have created multiple edible dishes to serve to the judges!

Andy: This format sounds like it would slot very well alongside a multiplayer mode. Is there any notion to look into doing something like this later down the line? I can easily see tense bake-offs happening amongst players.

Tom: It sure does! For now, though, as a team of just three, we’re focusing on single-player format against an AI chef. We see the potential and hopefully either a Kickstarter or big launch will allow us to add multiplayer support. There are other cool options that provide some of that competitive fun, at least, like Spelunky’s daily challenges.

Andy: Are you aiming to fund this project entirely by yourselves, or do you foresee a crowd funding/early access decision to be made later down the line?

Tom: We’ll definitely need additional funding to keep Trinket going as our full-time jobs, so Kickstarter and/or Early Access are very likely. We think BCB is intriguing enough to raise at least some money on Kickstarter. Our original plan was to launch the Kickstarter during PAX East in April, but we decided to postpone it and focus on the demo instead.

It’s clear the guys at Trinket Studios are pouring all of their creative juices into Battle Chef Brigade, and judging by the quality of concept art and ideas being thrown around I’m eager to see how this game evolves. If like me, you want to keep tabs on the development of the game, or if you just want to watch more of these awesome eating gifs, be sure to stalk their dev blog.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

When I first caught a glimpse of Autopret, a sandbox driving game, it didn’t take long for me to fall in love with the art style. It didn’t matter what was actually happening inside the game, I just knew I had to find out more about this beautifully crafted world from developer Sander van der Vegte.

The Indie Mine: What sparked the idea of Autopret?

Sander: I was busy trying out Unity a few years back. At the time I was messing about, trying to make a car. After I succeeded I wanted it to move around autonomously. Fast forward to a year ago, and I had a simple city with cars driving around on their own. It was great to play with, from a developer’s point of view. Then I realized that if I can translate that form of ‘play’ to something players can do, I’d have a great game. As for the edit functionality, designing an entire city takes a lot of time. A way to design your own city needed to be found, otherwise the scope of the project would be too big for a small team. The level editor was specifically made with no grid in mind. Full flexibility but with a super-easy interface. I prototyped this all, and named it Autopret.

The Indie Mine: The ability to affect the game by using words reminds me of Scribblenauts‘ free-form world manipulation. How deep are you planning to make this feature in Autopret? Can you give me a few examples of some cool ways to change the game world using this feature?

Sander: This is heavily based on Scribblenauts, yes. Their way of influencing the world is a great inspiration. The difference with Autopret is that you can point out which object you want to influence. This can become as deep as we want. You get the feeling that anything is possible, and that’s our goal, too. There are so many suggestions we have seen by play testing the game. Another huge source for inspiration and a great way to create what players want. Some cool examples: The trailer shows ‘brick’, ‘plank’, and ‘freeze’, which put together, combines into a solid ramp you can jump off. I personally like to type in ‘beam’, which creates a 2 by 4, drive on top of it, and then make the beam really big in one go. This action flings the car into the air.

The Indie Mine: The trailer shows off a world editing view too, allowing you to draw new areas onto the game space. What are you aiming for with this and how big can we expect a map to get? Will I be able to create a sprawling city for example?

Sander: You can create as many roads as you want. We haven’t really found the limit of map size yet. From a game design perspective, it might be better to limit the amount of roads you can make, but that’s something we still need to explore. If you want to create a sprawling city, you sure can. A new road can be magnetized in position and rotation, allowing you to create a grid structure similar to big cities. Place high-rise, and you’re done. The game will populate the city accordingly, making cities more traffic dense than villages.

The Indie Mine: What’s the deal with the other cars on the road? How does the AI understand what’s happening when all hell breaks loose and they start flying off into the horizons?

Sander: All cars have a mind of their own. At first, they start off easy going. However, for each collision they make or get, or if they need to wait for no good reason, their temper goes up. Eventually, they will start ignoring rules, and try to back out of a traffic jam. The result can be pretty hilarious. There’s a lot of tweaking involved to get this right. Even though a huge traffic jam can clear itself over time, it might not always be interesting to look at. There is a fine line between moving traffic, and stopped traffic, to give the player a fun environment.

The Indie Mine: How many people have been working on the game? How long has it been in development for?

Sander: We have been working with a team of five, for the past ten weeks. The Gamefonds and the Creative Industries Fund NL honored us with a stimulus fund to make this happen. Now that we can show how promising this game is, we need to use this momentum to find other ways to continue development.

The Indie Mine: When do you hope to release it, and on what platforms? What prices are we looking at?

Sander: Autopret is currently made for PC and Mac, but can be ported with relative ease to pretty much any other platform. We hope to be able to offer this game for free. With an endless amount of customization, we are looking for other ways to support this game. A basic version for free, for anyone to enjoy, and perhaps a paid version if you want a bit more objects or cars to play around with. These plans depend heavily on feedback, so we’d love to hear what people think of it.

You can find out more about Autopret and keep up to date with the games progress through their official website.

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

During this year’s Eurogamer Expo, we got to chatting with Mike Bithell of Thomas Was Alone fame. In the interview below, we talk about Volume, his newest creation which trades the highly emotional lives of rectangles for cover-based stealth action.

For more information about Volume, check out the official site here.

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Castles in the Sky took me by surprise, not because of stunning graphics, hardcore gameplay or amazing physics. No, what took me by surprise was innocence, a sense of whimsy I’d long since forgotten after becoming a ‘proper grown-up’.

Produced by a small indie team of two, Castles in the Sky comes across as a delightful blend of simplistic platforming and heartfelt narrative, presented as a spread of colourful pixel-based art. The game is equal parts story book and platforming, where the goal is to scale upwards towards the sky, bouncing from cloud to cloud as a rhyming narrative unfolds.

Because of the nature of the game, it would be difficult to reveal much else about its features without spoiling the overall experience, so I caught up with Dan Pearce (@gamedesigndan) and Jack de Quidt (@notquitereal) to ask them a few questions regarding Castles in the Sky, and what the future holds for The Tall Trees.

The Indie Mine: What made you choose to do this ‘interactive picture-book’ gameplay?

Dan: I started the project on my own one night. We’d started a few projects (which are still going) that were going to be in production for a while longer, and I felt like playing something like Castles. I was struggling to find anything, so I decided to toy around with a small prototype. This resulted in me staying up until 6AM making this little thing with a kid jumping in clouds, the art for which is what you see in the game. I became pretty attached to it and pitched it to Jack the following day as an introductory piece to showcase what The Tall Trees is.

Jack: Dan pitched it to me as similar in terms of gameplay to Doodle Jump, and while those games are great, I always felt they were lacking something normatively. Ha! I mean, story isn’t really what they’re for, but that sort of gameplay where you’re inexorably moving upwards could lend itself really nicely to discovery and narrative.

I’m not entirely sure where the decision to make it rhyme came from, but as soon as that appeared, it was pretty much set as a picture-book. There was something so playfully naive about writing in that style, and I don’t think another story would have worked. From then on, I tried as best I could to emulate the style and feel of the picture books I had read to me as a kid. I didn’t want to push the story anywhere too radical – just keep it gentle and playful. And as is the way of all these stories, they end with the kid going to bed. So that’s where we had to go.

The Indie Mine: So the style is very innocent and childlike, like you said to emulate those old memories of a children’s bedtime story. Would you say this was aimed at a younger audience? I can see this being very popular as a shared activity between young kids and their parents.

Jack: I think from my perspective I’m always taken with the stance that Pixar take, which is “we just make films. Hopefully, both adults and kids will like it”. It’s true that there aren’t really enough games for parents and children to play together, but I wouldn’t say it was designed in mind for a single demographic. That said, introducing younger generations to indie games in a way in which their parents are an active part of the game is a really admirable goal, and if we can do that even a bit, I’ll be happy.

Dan: Yeah, I had someone ask me this earlier actually and I think the answer I gave was something like “it’s not for kids, so much as adults who wish they were kids”.

The Indie Mine: Since you chose to publish this as your first game under The Tall Trees brand, do you see yourself making more of this style of interactive story book gameplay in the future? Is there a particular style of game you’d really like to explore?

Dan: I think it’s definitely something we’re thinking about when looking at future projects. As I said, we started a couple of our projects before Castles, and those are definitely in a similar vein. I’m not amazing with words (which is why Jack’s so good to work with), so I’d have trouble defining what The Tall Trees is all about. Jack and I have agreed that Castles is a very “Tall Treesy” game, though, so hopefully the game says what that means better than I can.

Jack: We’d like to make games about discovering beautiful things frequently and surprisingly. I don’t know if we’re likely to make more rhyming, jumping games, but the sensibility at the heart of Castles (“you’re going on a journey, here are some lovely things”) is one that I think is central to our designs.

Dan: I think that’s our core really. The main thing that will change around that will be the control schemes and tones of each game.

It’s important to note that Castles in the Sky isn’t your typical game experience. The game will take approximately 10-15 minutes to finish, and in many ways it is more story than platformer, which is reflected in the games very affordable $1.50 price tag. Those wanting to pre-order the game can do so at the official site here. Pre-ordering will net you the game (on PC & Mac), soundtrack and wallpapers when the game launches on the 18th of this month.

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Congratulations on the recent release of your first novel, The Adventures of Stanley Delacourt: Book I of Hartlandia. How does it feel to be a published author?

Thank you so much for your well wishes, Mr. Schmidt! It feels very gratifying to finally have this book in the world. It’s been in my head for nearly ten years, hollering to get out!

Can you tell our readers a bit about the novel?

Ten-year-old Stanley Delacourt loves his quiet life in the peaceful village of Meadowwood. At least, he does until his best friend is killed. Then the town library—where Stanley lives and works—is burned to the ground. The individuals responsible for both tragedies are a nasty group of soldiers. They work for the kingdom’s new leader: Christopher Siren.

No one understands the rules Siren’s creating. They don’t know why breaking them means death, or why the leader is so keen to destroy books. And no one can figure out where the former queen and king disappeared to—or if they’ll ever return.

With the grown-ups too fearful to take action, Stanley vows to confront Siren. He plans to get answers and demand justice. Little does he know that his journey will involve sword-wielding knights, kidnapper fairies, and dark magic.

Stanley has only two allies back home. One is an intimidated witch named Meredith. The other is a young apothecary called Sophie—who may have enchantment problems of her own. Can they help him discover the reason behind Siren’s crimes and end this terrible reign? Or is Stanley set to become the next victim in the tyrant’s evil plot?

If you enjoy the fantasy works of Rick Riordan, Lemony Snicket, or Philip Pullman, then explore the world of Stanley Delacourt today!

Although the book is set in the fictional Hartlandia, the story begins in the village of Meadowwood. I couldn’t help but be reminded of The Shire and other literary towns that time forgot. Where did you draw your inspiration from for these worlds?

It’s funny you reference works like The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings—that’s sort of the feeling I was going for. Not to copy Tolkien of course, but to return to that need for home deep within us. I specifically wanted to create a timeless world where nothing changed—until adventure came calling!

As the title suggests, in the book we’re following the journey of young Stanley Delacourt, a shy, quiet, but precocious boy. He’s obviously had to grow up a lot faster than most kids, but it’s obvious he still has a youthful fascination with the world. What was the thought process that went into creating this character, and do you feel like he’s an identifiable figure for any particular type of reader?

The character is a combination of someone I knew in real life, and my own relationship with the world. Specifically, Stanley is the part of me that is (was?) afraid to take a chance. Some of us won’t do anything outside our comfort zone unless we’re pushed to. And as you can see from your reading, Stanley is definitely pushed! I think shy, quiet kids (and some adults) can relate to him, as well as anyone who wants to escape the real world . . . but can’t.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe you plan to turn this book into a trilogy. Do you already have the entire adventure mapped out, or is the story still evolving?

You are correct, sir! The Adventures of Stanley Delacourt is indeed the first of a trilogy. I have the adventure mapped out for Book II of Hartlandia, but Book III is still evolving. However, I am planting seeds in Book II that will sprout into exciting things in Book III. The most exciting part is . . . not even I know what they are yet!

Without giving too much away, will Stanley’s journeys give readers a glimpse into the full world of Hartlandia? You mentioned earlier that ‘need for home’ that Meadowwood provides to readers, so I’m wondering if you will continue to come back to that setting.

Wow—you ask very insightful questions! Rest assured that I will flesh out a great deal more about Hartlandia. I plan to do this throughout the trilogy, as well as other novels, novellas, and short stories that take place in that world. Meadowwood remains a setting throughout the first and second volumes. However, in the third one, the main characters will once again have to venture outside their comfort zones and leave the village.

Ilana Waters, author of the Stanley Delacourt series

You also mentioned earlier that you had this book in mind for 10 years. What was the tipping point in getting you to write and publish it?

I finally got to the point where I had to follow my dream of being a writer. I was in a very stable job, but it failed to satisfy me (to say the least). I thought I’d got what I wanted. But when it wasn’t enough to make me happy, I decided to take the leap into something that did. To my delight and surprise, Stanley was waiting. 

What are your thoughts on the Young Adult genre in literature today? Obviously big name series like Harry Potter or The Hunger Games have made people of all ages take notice.

I think the Young Adult (YA) genre today is fantastic. I wish we’d had books like this when I was a teen. I mean, we did to some extent, but not nearly in the numbers we have now. There were a few Middle Grade (MG) and YA fantasy authors, like Tamora Pierce and Patricia C. Wrede. But most literature—especially fantasy—was aimed at adults. If you were younger and not up to that reading level, there was little from which you could choose. Now we have things written at all levels, being enjoyed by all ages. It’s a great time to be a writer for young people!

I’m big on technology, so I’d like to know what you think about e-readers and self-publishing methods that allow more authors to get their works to more people. What has this done for you personally, and do you feel like this is necessarily a good thing for the industry?

I used to despise technology. Then, with a lot of practice (and more than a little hair-pulling), I slowly realized its benefits. I think a lot of this had to do with online shopping.

And that’s sort of what e-readers (and free e-reading apps) are all about, in a way. The bridge between authors and readers has shortened considerably, making for a much more streamlined experience. What this has done for me (and countless other authors) is let us launch new careers over which we have complete control. Of course, it also comes with a ton of work, but I think the freedom is worth it.

I also think the new technology is a great thing for the publishing industry in general. Readers get more books faster and cheaper. Their money is then freed up to pursue traditionally-published books as well, so that side of the industry benefits. Really, I think whatever is done to get people reading more can only be good for the business side of things.

Readers can pick up Book I of Stanley’s adventures right now, but when can we expect to see the sequel?

I’m hoping to have the sequel to Stanley out sometime in 2013. But before that, I’ll have a Hartlandia novella and short story made into e-books. Oh, and a vampire paranormal romance as well—really! Because I heard there was a shortage. So hopefully, readers who enjoy Stanley will have something to tide them over until that sequel!

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Mr. Schmidt, for having me on your site! 

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© 2012 – 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

The guys at Gristmill Studios are hard at work getting ready for the release of their upcoming XBLIG title XenoMiner. Before the big day arrives, they’ve taken some time out of that schedule to talk to us about the game. It’s also a fascinating look into how indie studios can make it work despite a number of members with different opinions and different real-life priorities. I hope you find their insights as fascinating as I do.

Congratulations to you and your studio for making it into this year’s Indie Games Uprising. How does it feel to be included in the event, and how did the team react to the news?

Rod: Amazing! I think we’re still taking it in. This is our second year developing for the XBLIG channel. We’ve been growing our team, and stretching our talent to push as hard as we can on each new title. We raise the bar for ourselves every year. For Devilsong we played it safe and stuck with the standard flight/shooter approach to an engine, but with XenoMiner we quickly realized that wouldn’t work. There’s been a lot of open source voxel work out there, but most of it was abandonware, or just not ready for the Xbox experience. So we built it up almost entirely from scratch. There is still so much to do! We’re super stoked that all of the work is paying off though, and that being part of the Summer Uprising is giving us such good exposure. We can’t say enough about what Dave Voyles, Michael Hicks and the guys heading up the Uprising have done for us and the other developers on this platform.

Jesse: We’ve been hammering away at these different ideas and game concepts in obscurity for closing on two years now, and it’s great to finally get some people noticing what we’re up to.. and with that the chance that more people are going to invest their time in having these experiences we’ve been trying to build. I was surprised when we got into Indie Games Uprising 3: We tried with Devilsong last year and didn’t make it. When I found out we were getting in this year, I thought: Well, I guess we better make a logo for the studio and try to start blogging more!

XenoMiner is the latest title from Gristmill Studios

XenoMiner is your game that was chosen for the event, but Gristmill has had some other titles also released or in various phases of development. Tell us a little about the history of your studio and some of these other titles.

Rod: We began as a small group of friends, talking about games and our ideas at lunch or over the water cooler at our day job. We quickly discovered in each other a not so secret passion for building games, but we were caught in the 9-5 world of software development and wanted to be storming the pixelated beaches of iOS, XNA and Steam with the rest of the indie crowd. Then, and I’m not even sure how it happened, we stepped off the ledge and started work on ZPOC. It is a zombie survival game mixed with sandbox world-building that we’ve gone in and out of development with, but we just haven’t been able to push to completion. Dream.Build.Play rolled along last year and we decided to take a break from zombies, insane survivors and client-server code and take a run at it. Never mind that we only had 30 days until the deadline. We built the game from concept to release in that time. That was an intense experience, and I think it’s had us all hooked ever since. From there we moved on to Etch, a game we entered into the Independent Games Festival contest. At the tail end of that project we returned to ZPOC, with the intent of reskinning it with a voxel engine. But by then Dream.Build.Play was looming once again. This time we gave ourselves 90 days instead of 30 and sprinted on our current title XenoMiner. We had already begun work on a voxel engine for ZPOC, but with 90 days there wasn’t enough time to build a voxel engine, a procedurally generated world, and get some type of zombie raiding/combat system with mob AI going, so we decided to experiment just with the world, the voxel engine, and more generalized survival. Setting that in a post-apocalyptic world didn’t seem quite right, but on a moon orbiting a gas giant? Perfect!

Jesse: Yeah, I was working on a scratchy, post-apocalypse diary interface when Doug got on Skype and said, “Oh hey, about that interface.. we’re kinda thinking of switching things up a little. Instead of post-apocalypse we’re wanting to move into space, and instead of zombies.. well there aren’t going to be any zombies in space.”

There seems to be a wide variety of genres amongst that list. A lot of studios tend to stick to what they know or do best, but Gristmill seems to want to try its hand at just about everything. Why is that?

Rod: Part philosophy and part strategy. Philosophically we just don’t want to let off the gas, or let ourselves pigeon hole into one genre. There’s a comfort trap there that’s not healthy for developers of any stripe in this fast moving environment, so we want to stay sharp and challenge ourselves on every front. Strategically, it’s allowing us to create small pilot titles to release on different platforms to see what sort of mileage we get, and how much we enjoy working in that particular genre or platform.

Etch is an ideal “touch” experience, for example, but the iOS App store is so crowded right now that we decided to build some buzz for our studio before releasing it. XenoMiner has struck a chord in all of us. Not only are block builders fun to play and popular right now, but we believe we’ve been able to put a new spin on an otherwise crowded niche.

Our only regret is that 90 days is not nearly enough time to put in all of the cool features we’ve drawn on our whiteboard! We’re thinking of this game as a type of Kickstarter project: We just want to throw an introductory idea out to the community and see if they like it as much as we do. If the response we get is strong enough, you can be sure to see some of the features left on our whiteboard become reality!

What’s the development environment like for Gristmill? Do you all crowd into one office like sardines? Are some of you working remotely? And what are some of the benefits or challenges that you encounter in your day-to-day activities?

Rod: Our work environment is probably familiar to most Indies. All of us have our day jobs, then gather at one of our devs’ apartments to jam. We’re a group of hobbyists trying to go pro, but without an office or a budget. We usually have 4 guys plugged in around the kitchen table, another guy in the sun room, then someone on the couch cranking out art ideas or writing up text descriptions and dialog. Then there’s the disembodied voice of Jesse emanating from a notebook sitting on the kitchen counter.

Jesse: At the moment I’m the only one outside of Wisconsin, and I Skype or Google Hangout in from Missouri.

Rod: The primary challenge, in my opinion, hasn’t been location though. We struggle with the fact that we’re all gathering after our day jobs and dealing with the reduced energy and time that this implies. We manage to do this once a week, then some of us work from our homes on off nights.

We’ve talked with 1-person studios where producing artwork or music is the most strenuous aspect of the process. Other studios talk about how promoting/marketing their work is the most difficult task. What’s the toughest part about developing games for you guys?

Rod: There are really two issues there. Producing the game, then trying to get that game to market. We are heavily time and budget constrained, so our features list is always compressed into something that we believe we can handle. This is certainly not unique, even to AAA studios, so I guess we can join the chorus there! Getting the game to market is tough though. The XBLIG store and iOS app store, as well as Desura and Steam, are making content delivery quite easy. Getting our titles in front of customers has been a huge challenge. We’ve been doing pretty well with a $0 marketing budget, like getting covered by you guys at The Indie Mine, and that’s exciting!

Jesse: Our promotions and marketing are really aided by the fact that we have a well rounded team. John, Matt and I make art and interface designs for the game, but between us we also have backgrounds in web development, social media marketing, user experience and video production. Being able to produce graphics, websites and videos in-house really helps us out.

As much as I enjoy getting a peek inside the development process, we’d be wasting a perfect opportunity if we didn’t talk about your latest game, XenoMiner. Can you tell our readers all about the game?

Rod: Please check out the game description at http://www.gristmillstudios.com/xenominer

More data on XenoMiner can be retrieved from the official site

Keep in mind, that’s the game as it exists now. As I’ve mentioned before, a lot of features needed to be cut to make the Dream.Build.Play deadline. We managed to get a few new things in before the Uprising deadline, but there is a xeno-ton to do yet. We’ve put a lot of work into the engine and really need to get more content in to show off what it’s capable of. So be on the lookout for content and feature updates after September 19!

How do you decide which features make it in and which get axed? I have to imagine in a group with varying opinions that that process can be even more difficult.

Rod: Sometimes that’s true. Generally though, someone is the champion of the running project and the final call falls to them. We’ve changed that role a few times, and each time the current champion has been pretty flexible. They are the gate keeper of the vision though. So the approach has been to pitch an idea and get the entire team excited about it. That means the leader needs to have a clear vision to start, and once the team has bought in we’re easier to keep on target since the vision is king.

Add to this that XenoMiner is a large project and there are a lot of pieces to work on. That allows each of us to add our personality to the code or subsystem that helps expand on the theme. We’ve come up with a lot of cool additions that way that enhanced the theme, rather than fighting over pet ideas. We rarely get into arguments over features, and I’m proud of our team for that. A creative bunch generally has more strife, but we’ve been professional enough to avoid that.

Is there something specific you can mention that isn’t going to make the initial release that you really wish had made it in?

Rod: One?!? Hostile aliens, meteors, trams, turrets and other defensive structures. The thing is, we’ve just had to be practical about this. Our intent has always been to do incremental releases, we just don’t have the time to do it all in one pass. A few years ago I may have tried…

Are there any desires from the staff to make this a full-time gig?

Rod: Hell yes! Bootstrapping is rough though. We’ve gone well past the point of treating this studio as a hobby. The issue is building up a viable portfolio to continue to scale up and earn increasingly more revenue. At this point, we’re aiming for any revenue! We’ve stuck with it this long though, and we keep getting better, so we’re confident that persistence will eventually pay off.

The only bootstrapping here is the one done to keep you from flying off into space

What advice would you give to small groups of indie developers just getting started? 

Jesse: I think the most important advice is to be consistent with your time. It’s hard to be an indie developer because you have to work all week at your job or career, and often the last thing you want to do when you get home is do more work. Being a game developer isn’t about how skilled you are, it’s simply about participating in the act of development. At Gristmill, we have Tuesday nights set aside for game development. That ensures that once a week you make progress on something, and it also clears your head of “I really need to work on the game” the rest of the week. When you don’t have a set development time, projects start getting stuck or abandoned.

Well I’m sure a lot of the press and consumers out there are going to want to know what separates XenoMiner from other block builder games. As you said earlier, it is a crowded market. Why should Xbox owners try your game?

Jesse: We’re all avid gamers, and several of us have been playing block builders like Minecraft and Ace of Spades since early in their beta days. We’ve lost sleep over Dwarf Fortress and played games like M.U.L.E., Utopia and Rampart as far back as elementary school. That’s all to say that we love this genre. We love building and destroying, and it shows in XenoMiner. When we release on September 19, XenoMiner will include two features that we always wanted in block builders. First are gravity boots: these let you completely rethink the regular x/y/z axis of a building game. You can make a ceiling your floor or a tower a bridge. Next are the bots. I can’t quite describe how great they are: you can automate mining and tunnel exploration with them, along with totally geeking out over writing your own ‘recipes’ for whatever you can imagine, then watching it being built before your eyes.

I’m only naming two features, both of which will give you a completely new experience in the genre. If we can get the community behind us and our visions, there will be lots more to come.

Developers, how do your experiences compare to those of Gristmill? And gamers, what would you want to see different in a block builder game? Leave your comments below.

Additional XenoMiner coverage:

The XBLIG – Prelude to the Uprising: XenoMiner

© 2012 – 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

In our latest interview, The Indie Mine talks with author Michelle Barclay. Barclay recently published her first novel, the horror story Morrigan’s Shadows. In the interview we discuss her genesis as a writer, what inspired her novel, and some of the valuable lessons that all new writers must learn. I hope you all enjoy.

Michelle, thanks for taking the time to talk to us. You’ve had quite the interesting journey to becoming a writer including leaving high school early, becoming a cook, and moving from coast to coast to coast. When did you know you wanted to be a writer, and what made you finally make that leap?

I knew I wanted to become a writer around the age of ten. I always enjoyed school assignments that involved writing and I was an avid reader. My mother is a poet and I have several writers in my family, so I think it was hardwired into me. However, what made me start writing for the fun of it was my little sister Mindy. We shared a room when I was that age and she used to con me into making up stories for her every night at bedtime. She particularly loved ghost stories and witch stories, so I told a lot of them. Finally, I sat at our desk and started writing them. I think the first written one was called “The Witch’s Hand,” though she might remember a different title.

I finally made the leap to becoming a writer when I got sick about five years ago. I got some awful bug while on vacation that hung around for a few months. I couldn’t keep up with the cooking and was bored at home, so I started writing. I eventually found my niche and found ways to make it a career and I have not stopped since.

In your day-to-day life you write non-fiction, mostly involving history. How does the fictional writing process compare to that?

Writing non-fiction is a careful process. You want to make it your own and include your observations, but you always want to adhere to the facts and find good sources for those facts. You spend most of your time reading. Only a small fraction of what I do is actually writing. I’m always learning and finding the most interesting information for my readers and clients.

Most fiction writing requires very little research, so I am doing much less reading to prepare for a novel. It is also very personal. It is like writing your daydreams on paper and showing them to other people. With non-fiction, I can put what I have out there and discuss the contents of it from an outsider perspective. With fiction, everything about it is me. Everything that happened in that piece first happened in my mind. I guess that is the best way I can describe it.

Which do you prefer and why?

That is a tough question. Each has its own pros and cons. However, if I had to choose between the two, I would choose fiction. Non-fiction is informative and what I write can be helpful, but fiction gives people an escape. If one person reads a novel I have written and finds it engrossing, I have given that one person a story to get lost in and given them enjoyment for however long it took them to read it. Because I cherish the countless novels that have done that for me, but remember only a handful of non-fiction books as providing that, I have to go with fiction.

Well let’s talk about your first fictional novel, Morrigan’s Shadows, which recently made its debut. How would you describe this horror novel?

I would describe it as a horror novel that uses elements of mythology and dreams to allow reality to shift for the protagonist Morrigan. It has themes of romance, loneliness, horror, fear and friendship.

You mentioned earlier about how fictional writing is about the author. What part(s) of Morrigan’s Shadows are you?

Well, the idea for the novel came from my love of writing unreal landscapes into existence. I used to write blurbs about settings that I never made into stories. I would just create oddities. There were no characters, just places that l felt were the characters. In addition, since I was a child, I have had very vivid, seemingly long dreams. At least one of the nightmare sequences in Morrigan’s Shadows takes place in a setting that I frequently revisit in my own dreams. Also, I chose to make Morrigan a chef because I could easily relate to a main character who spends all of her time in a kitchen. It made her more real to me and more like a friend.

I feel like most artists and creative types are hoping to reach their audience by creating a particular connection often through introducing a lesson learned or by evoking a particular emotion. What do you hope your readers get out of Morrigan’s Shadows?

Well, I think the most base emotions I strive to evoke are those associated with fear. If I can get one person to leave the light on just a bit longer, I have done my job. It would be nice for people to be as fascinated by the landscapes in Morrigan’s Shadows as I am, as well.

What was the experience like getting your first fictional novel out there for the world to see?

Oh, it was terrifying. Having people read my fiction to me is like being naked. I actually never intended to publish it. It was just something I wanted to write. Then, someone very dear to me begged me to let him read it for several months. When I finally did, he urged me to publish it and so I went through that process. Now that I have, I am very happy that I did. Even if only one person likes it, I should give him or her the chance to read it, I think.

Well now that you’ve overcome that fear, what else do you feel like you’ve learned from the process that you think will help with future projects?

I put aside Morrigan’s Shadows for six months after the rough draft before I even re-read it. I think that was a good move and I will do that with every novel from here on. It is good to get a fresh perspective before editing and then again before publishing. As for the publishing process, I learned that it can be fun and will go into in the future with more enthusiasm.

I noticed that you’ve already started work on your next novel. Are you ready to reveal any info about it or are the details a secret?

Well, this novel is going to delve into the story of another character that I am excited to write more about. It is going off in quite a different direction, but it is a necessary path to take for this series. I will likely have more to say about it once I am closer to publishing. I am not very good at keeping secrets and if someone is excited to know, I will be excited to tease them with little details, so stay tuned.

Are there any specific authors out there that you feel inspire you as a writer?

Well, I have to go a little cliche here and say Stephen King, firstly. His work ethic is very inspiring. I would love to be as prolific as King some day. Another is Ray Bradbury. To me, Fahrenheit 451 is among the creepiest novels ever written. The feeling of suspense, of seeing a character sneak novels like one would hide away a dirty secret was very thought provoking. I would love to be able to evoke such feelings in a reader. Lastly, Harper Lee. She wrote one novel. One single novel that burned her name into American literature forever. She did not have to write a lot. She just wrote the best. Also, Atticus Finch is my favorite character of all time.

What advice would you give to aspiring authors?

You are going to have to get to the promoting, editing, slashing, burning and sharing part eventually, but do not rush it. It all starts with writing. Sit down and write. Do not think about where the words are going to end up while you write them. That would be like a midwife stressing about a child’s college fund while bringing it into the world. Focus on your story. Worry about the rest once you have one.

I want to close today by asking is there anything else you’d like to say to our readers who might be interested in checking out Morrigan’s Shadows?

Thank you for checking it out. I enjoyed writing it and hope you enjoy reading it. I do wish it will make you squirm a little at least once.

Readers interested in checking out Morrigan’s Shadows can find it available in paperback or Kindle versions on Amazon, or through CreateSpace.

© 2012 – 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Hi Andy. We’re here to specifically talk about your novel The Darkening Dream, but before we get into that I’d like to discuss Andy Gavin the author. You’re probably best known for being a co-founder of video game studio Naughty Dog. Can you tell us a bit about the journey that took you from there to becoming an author? When and how did your interest in writing begin?

From at least high school on I always intended to write a bunch of novels. Work just got in the way.

And the thing about making games is that you can no longer do it mostly by yourself. These days, most games are big teams of over a hundred people, with budgets over 50 million dollars. It’s no longer about your creative expression (most of the time), but about getting it done well, on time, and on budget. And the role of team lead is largely about fire fighting and resource (achem… people) wrangling.

So, I really wanted to focus directly on the creative aspects. Dozens of story ideas have been bouncing around in my head for years, and I felt it was time to let a couple of them out.

Have there been any times where you began to doubt your future as an author?

Of course. Fundamentally I believe in the strength of my writing and I get enough positive feedback to support that, but novels have a visibility problem. There are hundreds of thousands published every year and only a few rise to popularity. I’m pretty confident that a lot of people who read my books will love them, I just worry that not enough will find them.

Have you considered going back into game development?

I occasionally evaluate what that might mean. I love video games. They are also very creative, and it’s a bigger industry dollar-wise. But games today are also large projects that take a lot of money and people to get started.

You’ve had a lot of interests over the years and you seem to really dive into whatever creative field it is you’re currently working in. Knowing that, I’m curious if you have any opinions on the self-publishing scene?

I never do anything halfway. So in 2010 I read about 20 books on publishing and query writing and spent hundreds of hours researching and querying agents. Since I’ve self published one book and also have a real literary agent (my second book is on submission to New York) I know a bit about both.

The traditional route is all about waiting and bashing your head against a wall. You query and query, investing time and emotional currency, only to get back very little feedback. I eventually landed a great agent, although it took two books to do it. Then you submit and wait and also get very little feedback. With self publishing you have control of your destiny. I think with The Darkening Dream I made an A quality product. It’s heavily edited and proofed, professional typeset, and has a brilliant cover by acclaimed fantasy artist Cliff Nielsen. I have a great Kindle edition, a beautiful trade paperback, and a gorgeous hard cover edition (rare for an Indie book). But the marketing and sales arena is new and constantly shifting. There is no guaranteed way to get it out there and advertising is not very effective for novels. So you have to be creative and lucky.

Let’s talk about your first novel, The Darkening Dream, which released earlier this year. It’s a dark fantasy novel set in early twentieth century Salem. What made you settle on both the genre and the time period?

When I started writing the book I wasn’t thinking YA/adult, I was just thinking about my story. I find this age based slotting to be a recent and artificial construct of the big chain bookstores and marketing departments. Regardless, I like to read books with young protagonists, and you write what you like to read. In some ways, the meta idea of The Darkening Dream is a twisted gritty historic reinvention of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which is my favorite television show of all time). I wanted to emulate the angst and wonder factor of dealing with newly discovered weirdness as a young person, but also ground the entire story in researched and “real” magic and occult, and “sell” it via a very hardboiled and matter of fact style.

As a history buff, I’m always thinking, “that could have been so much better if they didn’t make up the historical backstory” so I started with the villains. What kind of ancient evil creatures might still be around? What do they want? And what legitimate human reason would they have to destroy the world (which is so Buffy)? I don’t exactly answer the question in TDD, because the motives of 5,000 year old baddies should be mysterious. But trust me, they have a plan, and the sheer audacity of it will literally shake the foundations of the heavens.

The focal point of the novel is Sarah, a young girl coming of age and fearing the pressures of what that brings. Were there any challenges in writing a young, female lead from that time period?

I chose 1913 for a number of reasons. I wanted a time before mobile phones and the internet and a time when people’s knowledge of the world left a little more room for mystery. Additionally, as I always intended this as a series with long lived (achem… immortal) characters, I wanted some runway to cross through history. I also loved the idea of a “vampire in the trenches” so I stuck it right before World War I.

Fundamentally, I think I settled on a female protagonist because of contrast. A bookish female is the less expected character in the role of budding sorcerer and central pivot. I enjoyed trying to get inside the female head. They’re more exotic and foreign. I like exotic and foreign.

There are a lot of different supernatural elements to The Darkening Dream. Did you have any particular literary or religious influences that helped shape the story you created?

The book has a bunch of themes, but one of the overriding ones is the relativity of belief. Each religion, and even esoteric belief structure, has its own lens through which to view the world. I wanted to envision a system that made real the myriad magical and supernatural ideas people have historically held. But how to properly envision a world in which vampires, the Archangel Gabriel, witchcraft, and Egyptian gods all exist? Many writers might just toss them together arbitrarily, but I wanted to find a framework consistent with traditional mysticism. Having read hundreds of religious and magical texts I have identified numerous consistencies in the thought patterns of the esoteric mind. I have a more extensive write up on my magical researches here.

What was the experience like finally getting that first book out the door? Relief? Fear? Triumph?

After nine or more drafts, total exhaustion. Like a game release, it was very anticlimactic.

Judging by Amazon and other sources, the reviews seem overwhelmingly positive. Do you feel like that’s an affirmation that you’re doing just fine? Is it inspiring you to try even harder? Basically, what’s your reaction to the feedback you’ve received?

Reviews have been great. About 50 professional and blog reviews have been posted and eighty-seven on Amazon. The overwhelming majority are positive, even some going as far as to say it’s one of their favourite books ever. A few people love the book but don’t love the ending. But even Publishers Weekly, notoriously hardass, gave it a starred review and said, “Gorgeously creepy, strangely humorous, and sincerely terrifying tale.”

It’s gratifying that a lot of people seem to get what I was trying to do with the book and enjoy it.

What audience do you feel like your novel is targeted at? Who do you feel would get the most enjoyment out of it?

The book has a couple different audiences. At one level it’s a fast paced horror story packed with action, pretty solid characters, and even a bit of dark humor. I tried to marry a fairly hardboiled realistic tone with some pretty wild and dark stuff. The overall effect is pretty creepy and should appeal to those that like HBO fantasy dramas (True Blood, Carnivàle). There’s also a lot of interesting history and religious and occult detail in there which appeals to an older more historically oriented audience. But I tried not to ever let it bog the story, which (at Renni’s insistence) just moves and moves. Finally, the book has young characters and some romance for the younger fan of urban fantasy (Laurell K. Hamilton, Kim Harrison, Jim Butcher).

You’ve already been hard at work on your next novel, Untimed. In what ways has the writing process for that novel benefitted from your experiences writing The Darkening Dream?

I learned a tremendous amount while writing (and more importantly revising) The Darkening Dream. I used these lessons to make Untimed a stronger and more sellable novel. In early drafts TDD was too long and too unfocused, so for Untimed I chose a single first-person point of view. This helped focus the book. I also worked to make this voice unique and individual from the start. It’s unclear how much this matters to readers, but agents and editors love “voicey” prose. And perhaps most importantly, I went with a more high concept story that begins with a big hook and a dramatic inciting event in the first chapter.

Do you have any advice for up-and-coming authors out there?

Read, read, write, write, edit, edit, edit. And hire good professional help too. Friends and family can give you a sense of how the book reads, but they can’t usually tell you how to fix anything serious. I’ve read a lot of half-decent Indie books on my Kindle that are at their core good, but just need some serious tightening and polish. Hell, I’ve read plenty of big-six bestsellers you can say this about.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us today.

If you’re curious about The Darkening Dream, you can read the first couple of chapters for free via the official website.
 For updates on Andy Gavin and his future projects, be sure to Follow him on Twitter and Subscribe on Facebook.

© 2012 – 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

The Indie Mine: Thanks, gentlemen, for talking with us today. Can each of you tell me a little bit about your background in development and the history of your studios?

DaddyPigGames: I’m pleased to say with very fond memories that my first taste of games programming started way back in the early 80s, my first computer back then being a Vic20. For me personally it was a great time for discovering anything to do with programming and it really felt like a true period of pioneering.

In the early days you just knew something big was going to happen, the potential was just phenomenal.
I can certainly remember the likes of Codemasters (then Mastertronic) releasing their first games for the C64 and ZX spectrum, no different to what anyone else was doing back then and look at them now, it’s truly been a fantastic journey.

Unfortunately I lost touch with the scene once my work career took hold and its only in the last year or so that I really decided to give it another go after recently purchasing an Xbox / Kinect bundle for the kids and seeing what was happening on the XBLIG scene, that totally resparked the desire to get involved.

DaddyPigGames became the moniker of choice (again, thanks kids) and its 100% muggins here doing coding, artwork, sound fx etc… So, jack of all trades and not quite the complete master of any just yet, however after picking up the gauntlet less than a year ago and recently getting my first game out in the marketplace then its still early days with lots still left to learn.

IronReaverGames: First of all thanks for taking the time to talk to us. Since the age of 8 after “looking after” the house computer of a 48K Spectrum “the one with the rubber keys =)” I have always enjoyed programming computers. This interest continued and stayed with me which eventually lead to me gaining a degree in Software Engineering. I am currently in the software development industry and have been working as a professional developer for the last 14 years. In my spare time I often got together with friends to try to develop the next great game idea, often using languages like AMOS for the Amiga way back.

I got into XNA development about 3 years ago after realising I could develop my own games for the Xbox 360 console which seemed like a fun thing to do. My first published XBLIG game Spectrangle360 came about as an experiment with different technologies really.

I wanted to learn Silverlight as a technology and the first thing that came to mind was to develop Spectrangle the board game by Jumbo games as it used simple geometric shapes which could be drawn easily “again I cant draw to save my life”. After some time I realised that quite a few people enjoyed the game and thought it might be interesting to try to develop the game using XNA.

So I started quite a long process of getting in touch with the current IP holders of Spectrangle – Jumbo Games – and asking them if I could use their IP in an Xbox 360 game. To my surprise they got back to me and agreed that an electronic version of Spectrangle would be a great idea as they were currently looking into how they could expand into the digital market.

After a relatively quick time converting the game to XNA I then spent a number of months trying to get Spectrangle360 onto the XBLIG channel and the rest they say is history.

1BK: 1BK was formed by three students to make We Are Cubes as our final year project at university. We had individually developed some smaller games during our time there, but prior to that we had no programming or game development experience. After graduating in 2010, Steve and I decided to publish to Xbox Live Indie Games, but our third member disappeared. We hardly worked on it for a year, but in 2011 we started development again in our spare time. We recoded everything, optimized it to run on the Xbox 360, added more stuff and polished it. Andy, who was our module leader at the time, made the original soundtrack specially for our game. Finally in early 2012, we had finished our first commercial product, although it was mainly a learning experience and personal project to us.

The Indie Mine: Well that leads me into my next question and it revolves around the fact that each of your studios has released its very first game within the past couple of months. What was that experience like in the last few weeks of development? Did everything turn out as planned? Were you struggling at all with trying to build up interest in the game?

DaddyPigGames: That’s a great question! As a first timer I didn’t really know what to expect at all, but one thing soon became clear – social networking would play a big part in spreading the word and getting some attention both for your game and equally important for yourself as a developer.

The first thing you have to appreciate is that the review process is conducted by fellow developers 100% voluntarily and can be a slow process. So you really need to put the word out and get noticed but more importantly become part of this great community and do your own share of helping out as well. That’s totally fair.

After initial Google searching I was lucky to come across one particular name who has helped tremendously in this particular area, Martin Caine of Retroburn Game Studios (big thanks). An in depth reply from Martin soon had me up and running on Twitter and Facebook, and it’s the former in particular I believe that has had the most impact with regards to making contact with like-minded developers and being able to request assistance throughout the peer process.

However, for me one thing I didn’t expect was just how friendly and supportive this whole community is!
The greatest spin off of this whole process for me has simply been making fantastic friends along the way, and I’m very fortunate to include the guys in this interview in that list also.

As for the first time through the peer process, you learn a lot, very quickly! It’s amazing just how prepared you think you are, but as soon as you hit the submit button, any failings in the game soon become apparent once the review feedback comes back in – all in a positive and constructive way of course. So this part of the process became yet another steep learning curve, every problem reported resulted in more research until you had a 100% watertight game to publish.

For me personally there wasn’t a particular dead line that had to be hit for release, it was more a combination of overwhelming desire, excitement and frustration to simply get that ‘first game’ out in the marketplace that had you up every hour nursing it through to a published state. A very stressful process, but looking back now ultimately satisfying!

Another area glaringly overlooked by me was gauging just how soon to approach the editorials, in my case this didn’t happen until the last week prior to publishing. Personally I’m not sure just yet how much of an impact this has on the end gamer. In my experience, if I see a game on the dash for 80 MSP that looks good and reads well and has a trial that pulls me in then I’m OK purchasing it, I don’t think I’ve ever read a review and purchased a game based on it for anything less than a AAA game.

What has been interesting for me has been how well received We Are Cubes has been in the media, with well deserved praise throughout. I’ve seen ‘The Best Indie Game ever’ quoted a number of times (and I wouldn’t disagree with this). However, from the feedback I have had from the guys I’m not sure this has 100% contributed to proportionate sales expected. So I would be very interested to read the guys’ thoughts on this to see just what impact press coverage has had on the gamer at large, and to try to shed some light on where we are at this particular phase in the life of consoles v mobile gaming tech in terms of sales, as all our games are specifically XBLIG titles only.

IronReaverGames: Well as I said before the playtest/review process was really tough to get through. Although it’s pretty difficult to get your voice heard above all the other noise going on in the (MS) AppHub forums it definitely helps if you’re a well-known studio name. Our problems came about when trying to get the game tested by enough people to ensure that it would pass through the review process (you must receive 8 passes by other AppHub members before your game can be published). There were a number of times where our game would go for weeks without anyone really playtesting the game even though I tried to spend time playtesting other games (hence bumping into great people like Jonathan “Snakes gunz and ladderz” and Victor “We are cubes”), so assuming that no one had found any issues, I would then submit the game to review and then another review failing issue would be found. So after waiting another week I would then repeat the entire process again which overall took about 2 – 3 months in the end.

As for trying to build up interest in the game, I didn’t seem to have any problems trying to get reviews for our game. As the game Spectrangle is based on a board game, I think a few people were a bit reluctant to review the game. Also, because again it was my first game maybe people thought the quality would not be that great. However, once people actually gave it a try I got reasonably positive reviews.

However, now as to most games the interest has waned as the game has slipped back in the new releases list and other games are now taking the limelight.

1BK: The last few weeks turned into the last few months due to issues with peer review. However this gave us an opportunity to enhance the areas of the game which we felt gave an overall more professional and polished feel. This has been frequently mentioned in the feedback we have received and we are pleased that we took the time to ensure this was corrected before releasing. We both agree that one area which we could improve is our trial mode, as we don’t feel it gives a true reflection of the addictive nature of the game. The initial interest to the game was hugely positive and in the beginning we had many amazing reviews. However this has been difficult to maintain as We Are Cubes slipped further down the list of recent game releases. It has made us realise that Xbox Indie Games is a good platform to learn on but lacks the exposure level we would one day hope to achieve with 1BK.

The Indie Mine: It’s not uncommon to find the same industry people – devs or press or otherwise – working together and talking together a lot in the social media sphere. However it seems like the three of you were often joined at the hip on Twitter during the latter stages of getting your games out. You mentioned helping each other playtest, but what have been some of the other benefits of finding each other and working together?

DaddyPigGames: I suppose it’s like the ‘first day at school’ effect and you gravitate towards a certain group, start helping each other out and then it just bonds from there. In my case, I couldn’t have hoped to have met two better groups of people to move forward with.

In all fairness the playtest and peer process has to go through XBLIG AppHub to ultimately get approved and get you noticed with the other devs, but if a problem was found then obviously we could try to help each other out, assist with any code issues and just try to capture as many problems up front as possible. I also believe that creating an environment of encouragement also helped to keep everyone’s spirits up, especially as it took us all a few attempts to get through the review process on our first attempt. In fact the pinnacle of this had to be ‘release night’ for me, as both myself and OneBeeKay by pure coincidence ended up releasing on the same night, so that built up to quite a crescendo and the final relief of hitting the publish button was a great moment indeed.

I really hope that moving forward will allow us to bounce ideas off each other earlier in the design process. In my case as a solo developer, the whole concept of the game was already mapped out and in place prior to meeting up with these guys, so there wasn’t really much room for change at that stage but I hope that on future games we can share ideas and suggestions at an earlier part of the process.

Obviously this depends a lot on the direction each of us will take and which platform we decide our future ‘investment’ is best placed.

IronReaverGames: Personally I found the reward of having 2 devs that can test your software with the understanding that you would do the same for them was fantastic. Although the AppHub tries to replicate this same thing via playtesting and reviewing I found that the games simply got swamped by a lot of other people doing the same thing. Also I often found I would go out of my way to playtest a bunch of games and the developer would never reciprocate, maybe that should be somehow implemented in the AppHub, but I guess forcing people to do it would just result in the quality going down.

With only the 3 of us working together we could get the game files to each other and ask to test for specific issues and visa versa, as there where only 3 games to deal with it made the whole process a lot quicker sort of like our own mini playtest\review “circle of trust”.

It also helped when we did see issues. Many a time I would send a rant email to Jonathan complaining about why another fail reason had been found in my game. I would often feel really low and almost felt like giving up but Jonathan would send a great email and really pick my spirits up enough for me to try again and eventually release Spectrangle360. I guess I really owe the success of Spectrangle360 to these 2 guys if I am being honest.

1BK: It was extremely lucky that we went into peer review at the same time DaddyPigGames and IronReaverGames, as they’re both really great guys that have helped us loads in the last months of testing. We helped each other in playtest, gave feedback and independently tested versions of each game quickly which sped up fixing any issues. Another benefit was the motivation -as all 3 of us failed peer review a couple of times- we kept each other going in the rough time that followed a fail in the process.

Having an extra pair of eyes is great when you’ve been working so long on a project, as you may miss things that seem obvious to you. Both DaddyPigGames and IronReaver spotted out glaring issues that we completely overlooked and found bugs that we hadn’t thought of testing. And as DaddyPigGames says, we ended up going for the same release night, and having him help out with that was amazing. After all the issues we went through during peer review it was fitting that we both published our games at the same time. We Are Cubes would not the game it is today without these 2 guys.

The Indie Mine: In our time covering indie games, we’ve noticed that there seem to be a ton of indie developers in the UK. What are your impressions of the indie scene there, and does it seem to be growing?

IronReaverGames: Like I said previously there has been a pretty long history of home computers that have been developed and sold in the UK. Things like the Spectrum which just celebrated its 30th birthday and the Amiga and Atari just to name a few. These home computers have cultivated a generation of bedroom coders and I guess things like XNA and other platforms has allowed those bedroom coders to express themselves in a new way being able to develop games for the Xbox and other platforms. Some have even made a very good living out of it.

However, I don’t know if this trend is continuing. If you read the news in the press at the moment, children are not being taught that kind of stuff these days and they really don’t just tend to sit down and write computer programs. I believe there are plenty of other things to distract them, things like social networking sites being one of them.

But hopefully things like XNA and the recently released Raspberry Pi might fire kids’ imaginations again and create another generation of coders.

DaddyPigGames: As IronReaver says, the UK has always had a healthy game development heritage and I am really proud of what the UK has achieved to date in games development. As someone who has recently re-discovered the gaming development community, its great to see we are still actively producing top titles but I’m still trying to establish just how big the UK scene is right now. I get the feeling that from social profiles and the regular invites for meet ups throughout the country that the scene is definitely just as strong today as it was back in the early 80s when the whole thing exploded.

It’s also a good point raised about awareness in schools. Back in the 80 we had the BBC Micro program that certainly helped build up the scene back then, but not really sure what is being offered to the kids today? I believe that back then coding was perhaps simpler and easier to get into from an early age, but not sure how kids now would react to the coding environments offered now, hopefully they wouldn’t be put off. Hopefully they can be taught that it’s not just about coding and that the role of the graphics artist, musician, level designer, AI etc is of equal importance in today’s game designing. On that point I would just like to give an acknowledgement once more to Martin Caine who I know is also active in this area, visiting schools, giving talks and getting the kids interested. I think that’s fantastic and big credit to Martin for getting involved in that.

This summer there is also a Games Expo being held at Magna in Rotherham geared specifically towards school children. This Games Britannia videogame festival will open up the world of game development to a younger audience by giving them an idea of the work that goes into creating a game and will hopefully inspire them to pursue a career in the games industry.

1BK: I’ve met some truly talented developers here that bring great innovation to gaming. The indie scene in the UK is amazing, and I can only see it growing worldwide. The barrier of making games and getting them out there has been destroyed in the past few years. Services like Xbox LIVE Indie Games, Appstore, Google Play, Desura or even Facebook (to name a few) make it extremely easy for people to play your creation. That ease is what attracts more people to the making indie games: all you need is an idea and the will to invest your time into it.

The Indie Mine: There are a lot of mixed opinions on the XBLIG service. A lot of of people think it’s a waste of time because of the low odds of commercial success. Others argue that it’s an easy way to get your foot in the door. How do you feel about the XBLIG service now that you’ve released a game, and do you think your long-term plans will continue to include it?

DaddyPigGames: For me XBLIG was the natural platform of choice as I only had an XBOX console anyway. It’s been great for learning C# and from what I can see that in itself is a popular language that appears to have a good life ahead of it regardless of the future of XNA. Although frustrating at the time, the tight peer review process and quality control associated with XBLIG also develops a skill set that gets you thinking about all those kind of quality issues and mentally conditions your own quality control, so moving forward it’s been good in that respect also.

I think Snakez Gunz and Ladderz has been a bit like Marmite with gamers either loving it or hating it. One things for sure, as soon as you release a game and start getting feedback you instantly realise all the ‘issues’ within the game, those which perhaps you were a bit blinkered to during the actual coding process.

I am now working on a sequel and based on the feedback I’ve had so far it will hopefully address all the issues in the original, a game concept which I believe is still sound and I just want to make it the game it was always intended to be. After that I would definitely consider looking at other platforms, so for that reason I think XBLIG has proved to be a good prototype ground and given me a good idea as to what works in a game or more importantly what doesn’t!

With regards to financials, I really am amazed at the sales figures the top sellers get on XBLIG. For the rest of us it really is small fry. I think you’ve got to be in the top 10 / 20 tier to make something serious from it, but as long as you bear that in mind and just treat it as a hobbyist platform and a place to showcase your game, then if you do make something in return then that’s great! Moving forward, I’m not sure which platform to target at this stage.

I think the games market is in a state of change again. Obviously the rise of mobiles and tablets have pushed the console back and there’s talk of the next gen consoles possibly appearing within the next 24 months or so. Not sure how it’s all going to settle down so I just plan to use this period as part of a continued learning process, developing my own skill sets etc and then hopefully I will be in a better position to take advantage of new platforms the next time around.

IronReaverGames: To be honest when XNA was announced as being available for the Xbox 360 which allowed programmers to develop their own games in C# this was a no-brainer for me and I couldn’t wait to develop my own game for the platform. I had heard rumours that games on the indie channel didn’t do so well with only a few games that have really sold well, with some indie developers making a very good living out of it.

For me it was more about the challenge of developing something that would be a bit of a challenge to complete, a game that had a proper menu system and a game that if only a few people played meant it was a success in my eyes. However I didn’t want to develop some shovelware massage app or something. I wanted to do this as a learning experience with the view that I hope to expand upon what I learned. This is why I decided to get as many features into Spectrangle360 as I could. I know that even if the game didn’t do that well I would have learned a whole host of techniques which I have never really used before, things like AI and networking etc.

Now that I have released Spectrangle360 I hope to provide an update in hopes to improve the game with a few extra features and fixes. Again I probably wont get any more sales doing this, however I want to make sure that Spectrangle360 is as good as I can get it before I move on. I have had many comments that Spectrangle360 might do well on the iOS market so I might look into that if I get any spare time.

But I guess my roots will always be XNA, so I don’t plan on just leaving it and moving to the next thing. As far as I can tell MS is not completely dumping the platform either and until they say they are I will still try to contribute to the XNA community as a whole.

1BK: People complain about the Xbox LIVE Indie Game service but the fact that you can make anything and publish it to a console on your own is nothing short of amazing. We learnt how to develop a game with We Are Cubes, and in our eyes publishing it was a success on its own. I do believe XBLIG has some major flaws, specifically regarding dashboard visibility and the ratings system, but it’s a great hobbyist platform. Chances are you won’t make much money on it, but you’ll learn a lot and meet some amazing people along the way.

As long as we keep programming in C# XBLIG will always hold a place in future projects. However I’ve been playing around with Unity3D lately and the ability of publishing to different platforms so easily is something that really interests me. I’m currently working on a new XNA game, so there’ll be at least one more title on XBLIG from us!

The Indie Mine: Let’s leave our readers with some food for thought. What advice or wisdom can you impart to them on being an indie developer?

DaddyPigGames: First of all, forget about the big bucks, at least to start with! If you have an idea, then go for it and have great fun developing it and getting to meet loads of great people in the community along the way. At the end of the day, if you do make something from it then consider that a bonus. Try to aim for incremental improvements on each release, but don’t set the bar too high. There’s a lot to learn and you could soon get disappointed if you try to produce COD on your second outing! Indie games are about what you want to create. Have fun, learn something, meet great people and enjoy!

IronReaverGames: If I was to give any would-be indie developers any advice my advice would be at first to aim low with what you plan to publish. What I mean by that is to not aim to create the best game in the world, that MMORP or that 8 player FPS. Aim to create a simple game, something like Tetris or Pong. However you must finish this game to the best of your abilities. The game must have a start, middle and end.

You must polish this game as much as possible and then get that game out for review. You can learn alot from other peoples feedback, don’t take that feedback to heart though. Must people will give you constructive feedback and if it isnt constructive just ignore it don’t feel the need to reply back, simple people simply wont like your game. Use the feedback as a means to improve your craft further.

Finally the only other quality you must learn to acquire is persistence. You will hit many bumps in the road when trying to publish your game to the world. Even when you feel like giving up and not finishing that game you have to learn to pick your self up and keep plowing on with it. Once you have that game out there you will feel all the better having managed to overcome these obstacles and improve open your efforts. Good luck.

1BK: If you’re making an XBLIG game, develop it with the Evil Checklist in mind, it’ll save you trouble in the long run. Put in extra effort into the Trial Mode, it’s the gateway to getting your game purchased. Have other people play your game before you release it, don’t tell them anything about it and take notes on what works and what doesn’t. Allow yourself to take criticism and don’t be afraid to change whole mechanics if something doesn’t work. Market the game well before its release and use social network sites to create a buzz. Talk to other developers and learn from their experiences. Read reviews and play other games to see where they went wrong and fix similar issues in your game. Use the Xbox LIVE services (eg, GamerTags). If this is going to be your first game, make something simple. You’re not going to make the next big MMO, at least not just yet. Have fun developing it, your passion will shine through!

© 2012 – 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

In our latest interview, I talk with Aaron Jacobs and C. Brian Hickey about their new urban fantasy/horror anthology That Weird City, out now for the Amazon Kindle. We connect the dots between H. P. Lovecraft and Robert Howard, discuss black magic and other forms of tech support, and dig into the workings of the indie writing world.

The Indie Mine: Aaron, C. Brian, thanks for taking the time to talk with us. Before we get to That Weird City, can you talk a little bit about your backgrounds and how you started collaborating?

Aaron: Hello, and thanks for having us. My background is that I’ve always been writing weird shit – one of the earliest stories I remember writing was as a seven or eight year old, getting Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials as a birthday present from my father and putting together some strange story where an Old One (which I took to mean like a crotchety old man alien) takes his half alien, half husky The Thing out on a walk and discovers buried treasure. Based more on the illustrations and names than any sort of cogent background info, but I like to think that writing the equivalent of HP Lovecraft/John Carpenter mashup fiction before hitting puberty gives me a leg up on the weird horror/fantasy. Since then I’ve just been writing down every bizarre thing my brain comes up with, and that’s how I mesh well with Chris. I’ve known him for… Christ, close to a decade now and most of that has been us badgering each other to write more. We decided last year that our styles are complementary, and that maybe if we both jumped at the same time we’d have enough false bravado between the two of us to actually self-publish something.

C. Brian: Yeah, I come from that same sort of early childhood brain-rewiring. When I was little, my dad had this great big box of pulp novels from the ’60s and ’70s–tons of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Howard’s Conan stories, maybe a little Lovecraft–and even before I could read, I’d get the stories from those gorgeous covers. That set the tone for the sorts of things I read as a kid; while the other children were getting the The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, I was sneaking Stephen King into my bookbag instead. It wasn’t until I was thirty, though, when a buddy of mine let me read Harlan Ellison’s Deathbird Stories, that I knew I wanted to be a writer. My discipline was for shit before then, so I think the idea landed on me at the right time.

Besides, and I think Aaron will back me up on this, if you have the predisposition to write, and you don’t do it, you go crazy.

The Indie Mine: With those influences it’s not hard to guess the overall shape of That Weird City, but Howard to Lovecraft is a rather wide range. Can you tell us a bit more about the book itself, and what catapulted it into the “write or go crazy” level for both of you?

C. Brian: I blame Aaron.

One day last year, he suggests we do a little experiment. Ten stories, five stories apiece, six thousand words per story, kick it up to Amazon, see what happens.

ONE YEAR LATER

Aaron: I think that in spite of the wide range, one of the coolest things about Howard and Lovecraft is how they buddied up and interwove their stories together so that Conan and company could have conceivably lived in the Lovecraft universe. Bran Mak Morn certainly did, what with the Worms of the Earth. I promise this isn’t a random pulp fiction tangent; that interwoven feeling one of the elements we tried to bring to That Weird City, and in fact provided some of the inspiration for the book. We thought it would be cool to take a bunch of the most mundane, normal things in the real world (GPS nav systems, technical support, DJing) and put together a common mythology of strange things happening behind the scenes. Sharing a universe gave it a bit more weight too, made it feel like the whole planet could have bizarre stuff happening right under our noses instead of an isolated case of two like traditional horror stories. Once we decided to use that as a skeleton for the anthology, everything grew very organically. We brainstormed a handful of possible story ideas and they all sounded too cool not to write, if that makes sense.

C. Brian: Also, bear in mind: “write or go crazy” wasn’t just the battle cry for this collection. It’s often said that writing isn’t a career; it’s an affliction, and I think that’s absolutely true in our cases.

The Indie Mine: As a fan of short stories in general that’s really interesting; I’m only a few stories in and didn’t realize you’d deliberately put them into a shared universe. Do you have any plans to come back and add to that world, or have any favorite ideas or characters you want to revisit?

Aaron: We kept them deliberately separate so it wouldn’t feel like some kind of novella with disparate chapters, but there are some key phrases and themes we try to keep consistent throughout, based mainly off Chris’s Jason December serials. He has some cool ideas on the astral plane and outsides that I had to rework some of my stuff to adhere to. I’d definitely like to revisit some of the characters I came up with for this, though. I have some twists on the vampire legend that I had to cut due to pacing problems, and I want to expand upon the idea of magitechnical support in general.

The Indie Mine: I remember waiting for each Jason December story to show up on Weaponizer, so I’m excited to hear you’re both expanding on that world. Switching gears for a moment, what was it like moving from a web-based serial to print? Any lessons from your run on Weaponizer that helped make That Weird City a reality? Any changes or challenges you didn’t see coming?

Aaron: I’ll let Chris take this one since he has the experience with actual serials instead of just shorts and flash fiction, but I do think even doing the one-off pieces for Weaponizer were fantastic prep for That Weird City. Good training for deadlines, handling criticism and putting work out in front of a large audience without having a panic attack. I will say that working on That Weird City made me want to try some serialized stories myself some day, if I can tear myself away from novel-writing long enough.

C. Brian: I always think of Weaponizer as physical therapy for my brain. I was coming off a long blockage, and submitting stuff was absolutely key in getting my discipline in line. The serials were an evolution in that, having the confidence to try longer-form fiction.

The Indie Mine: That kind of discipline must come in handy when you don’t have a publisher waiting for a draft. What can you tell us about the process of publishing independently? What did you learn along the way?

Aaron: That it’s never as easy as it sounds at first. When we went into this, we were quite literally thinking “we’ll write this up in a month, have it edited a week after that, and then upload it.” MONTHS LATER, here we are publishing and promoting it. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing, as our product would have been absolute trash without the polish we’ve have time to put on it. The other major thing, while it hasn’t directly impacted us yet, is reading up on self publishing and finding that it really is a bit of a wild west scenario out there right now. It’s very difficult to attract attention without a professional advertising campaign just because of the sheer amount of books going online at an hourly basis, but at the same time traditional publishers are as selective as ever. When you hear about breakout self publishers, they’ve typically gained a fan group through traditional publishing (or more rarely, sheer force of personality) and then splintered off to do their own thing with more freedoms and greater rewards for the risk, ala Trent Reznor.

C. Brian: The most important thing we’ve learned is that you don’t need anybody’s permission to do something like this. With the channels opening up, and the technology opening up, if you want to make something–a book, an album, a podcast, whatever–you can just go do it. That’s a powerful thing.

The Indie Mine: That’s one of the most exciting aspects of the indie community; we see so many great ideas that might never have seen the light of day a few years ago. Plus, when we talk to indie game developers, it seems like the community is very willing to share information and advice to help other creators. Does the wild west mentality dominate the independent writing community, or did you find a similar level of support?

Aaron: I think that it’s been very supportive. There’s a whole slew of sites out there dedicated to self publishing advice, for free, and almost always advocating that new writers try to make mutually beneficial connections. There’s this vibe I’ve gotten from the self publishing community as a whole that eschews the more cutthroat world of traditional publication and prefers working together as creators. I forget the site that said it, but back when we were originally researching one particular quote really stood out to me in regards to twitter advertising – authors should always retweet and help each other out, because it’s better for someone to sell some stories than no one.

C. Brian: Everybody we’ve gone up to with a question or for advice has been extremely helpful so far. I think the Wild West metaphor only holds up as far as people racing to stake a claim in a new frontier. If you’re clever, and have a good product, you can make a little money. If you’re lucky on top of that, you can make a whole lot of money. As long as you don’t go in looking for a big payday, you’ll do well.

I honestly thought we’d only sell maybe ten copies, and use it as proof-of-concept. Everything beyond that is extra.

The Indie Mine: Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers who might be interested in That Weird City, or with other writers considering independent publishing?

Aaron: The best advice I can offer, honestly, is to just go for it. It’s easier than ever to put your stuff out there to read, and if you have a good story bubbling inside you it’s criminal not to take advantage of just how simple and risk-free self publishing has become. There really is no better feeling than selling even one or two books. And if anyone does decide to buy our book after reading this, thank you in advance and I sincerely hope you find it enjoyable.

C. Brian: Agreed. In most cases, it’ll cost you nothing but your hard work, and who knows? You might hit it big.

The Indie Mine: Aaron, C. Brian, thanks for taking the time to talk with us, and best of luck with That Weird City. We’ll look forward to seeing what’s next for both of you.

C. Brian: Thanks–this was fun!

Aaron: Yeah, thanks again for having us. It was great.

© 2012, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.