So Indie You: Developer Profiles

Andrew Roberts, Cosmic Logic.

The indie gaming scene is here and growing like a CA brush fire, but it wouldn’t be what it is today without the dedication of programmers, designers and companies willing to release quality titles without the backing of major publishers. Here at IndieGameReviewer, we want to know what makes ‘em tick.

We had a chance to interview Andrew Roberts, CEO of Cosmic Logic, a new and talented team who are already making a name for themselves in the indie gaming community.

IndieGameReviewer: Andrew, can you tell us how Cosmic Logic came into being?

Andrew Roberts: Cosmic Logic officially became incorporated in April of 2008, however, was in conception for over 4 years before that point. In 2004, while still in college studying business, I had the idea that someone should start a video game company that was rooted in the 80’s. I thought it would be unique for a company to start making games as if it were 1983, and simply make a game as if it were to be launched on NES or Atari 2600. From that, the company would take that same game, and do a 16 bit sequel, followed by a 3D sequel, etc. The main point however, was to start small with a game that could be realistically put on the market with minimal development time, while at the same time building brand recognition by designing strong characters and planning sequels.

Read the rest of this entry »

You have seen tile games before – a board of pieces with one open space into which you can slide any of the existing tiles in order to solve a puzzle. So why would the world ever need another one? Well, you could say the same thing for the automobile, except that there are always new and improved designs to make the experience that much more enjoyable.

Cogs brings the best in both tile based puzzles and design together, appropriately drawing from the Steampunk aesthetic (although the creator admits this association was recognized after the fact) and pairing it smooth, increasingly challenging gameplay.

IGR was fortunate enough to interview Rob Jagnow, head of Lazy 8 Studios, and ask him about the game’s development.

IndieGameReviewer.com: Give us a brief timeline of the events that led to you not only creating but becoming capable of creating as complex a game as is Cogs.

Rob Jagnow: Cogs has been a part-time project for a long time. From conception to completion, it took nearly five years to finish, during which time I also graduated from grad school, traveled around the world, worked for a studio in Boston and finally ended up in San Francisco with enough time to finish the game. I have a Ph.D. in Computer Science with a focus in graphics, which you might think would make me qualified for game design, but it’s really my time at Demiurge Studios in Boston that taught me how to make a great game.

IGR: At the IndieCade microtalk you spoke briefly about wearing many hats. Tell us a little about the process for getting Cogs to market and what you have learned since it went up for sale to the public.

RJ: Most indie developers understand that you have to wear a lot of hats to make a game. If you’re working alone or with a small team, you need to be a programmer, producer, concept artist, UI designer, and level designer. We all have this idea in our head that we’ll release the game, kick back and let the cash roll in. But the reality is that when the game is done, the work is just getting started. If you want to find a distributor and sell enough copies to finance the next project, then you also need to take on the jobs of reading legal contracts, writing press releases, expanding your list of online distributors and promoting the game.

Indie game developers wear many hats

IGR: Once I had a writer who read a manuscript I had written point out how Steampunk my environment was. I only realized this after the fact. I believe the surge of interest in Steampunk comes from a nostalgia for times less virtual, a love for tactile tinkering. Talk about your interest in Steampunk.

RJ: Honestly, I had never heard of “steampunk” before I started work on Cogs. But when I started searching the Web for concept art that matched the polished mechanical universe that I was trying to create, I kept seeing that word. Brendan Mauro, who did all the artwork for Cogs, had a more refined artistic background and already had some experience in steampunk design. He was an ideal fit for the project and turned Cogs into something far more beautiful than it ever appeared in my imagination.

The one big design principle that I laid out from the very beginning was that the game must be 100% mechanical: No HUD overlay, no harsh transitions, nothing appearing or disappearing. We stuck to this rule all the way through to the end credits, which are built in to the final puzzle. When you turn the crank on the box, the credits roll by on a long piece of parchment. The result is a truly immersive environment where you really feel like you’re interacting with a massive steampunk contraption.

"Helios" from Cogs

IGR: How do you create and implement puzzles as complex as the ones in Cogs? It is one thing to solve them, but I imagine exponentially more complex to create them!

RJ: Whenever I needed inspiration, I would go for a jog and let various ideas stew in my brain until a puzzle finally took shape. As it turns out, designing challenging puzzles isn’t actually that difficult. The hard part is creating simpler introductory levels that still have a lot of variety. I actually designed about 60 puzzles total but threw out the ones that felt repetitive or weren’t as much fun. That left us with 50 puzzles in the final release. Cogs was released with mod support from the very beginning, so I’m happy to see some modders releasing a few free puzzles online for those who have finished the game and are looking for more.

IGR: What’s next for Lazy 8?

RJ: Just about everyone who plays Cogs for the first time has the same reaction: “Wow, I’d love to have this on my iPhone.” So that port is in the works. After that, I have a few ideas for other casual games, but our next project, which is still a secret, will be something totally different. The one thing you can expect is that Lazy 8 Studios will always aim for same level of care and polish that we poured into Cogs.

Download Cogs now at Direct2Drive

Culver City, California — “I feel like we are starting to be where we should be,” said Celia Pearce, Festival Chair of Indiecade 2009 before an intimate gathering of independent game developers, graphics artists and publishers at the The Rush restaurant in Culver City, California as the international independent games festival wrapped up Sunday, October 4th.

Osmos has a long list of critically favorable acclamation including top marks from IGN and IndieGames.com among others. The game can add another notch in its belt as the winner of the Indiecade award for Game of the Year. The Canadian-made ambient osmotic space shooter was developed by Hemisphere Games, led by Eddy Boxerman, who spent several years at Ubisoft working on the Splinter Cell franchise. Congratulations to the Osmos team.

Audience Choice and Finalists Votes Unanimous

This year both the main prize and the first runner up for both The People’s Choice Award and the Finalists’ Choice Awards were unanimously voted in both categories.

The first runner up went to The Deep Sleep Initiative from developer Arx (Tracy Kobedo Brown, Nicole Epps, Karin Ray, Hee Jun Kim, Brad Michael and Allison Theus), an experimental, casual alternative reality game (“ARG”) designed to lead players on a journey through a cross-media landscape.

The Deep Sleep Intiative - Journal

Using a collection of fifty-one individually unique, hand-crafted journals, the game steers players to a variety of websites to paint an original world wherein every area the player uncovers brings them closer to solving the final mystery.

First place in People’s Choice and Finalists’ vote went to Minor Battle (lead designer Andre Clark, producer Drew Moxon), an innovative capture-the-flag scenario wherein team members, who can switch from tank to defender to runner on the fly, attempt to carry a bomb, like a football, in order to drop it on the opponents key targets. What makes the gameplay so interesting is that it is designed to be played on multiple screens. To clarify: this is not an online multiplayer game per se, but rather a live multiplayer action game comprising four outward facing screens in a box configuration that display a contiguous playing field that forces the participants to move around the perimeter in order to follow their avatar and lay waste to the complete landscape.

Minor Battle uses four screens to play capture the flag

We asked the team how they saw this positioned in the marketplace and they implied that it would be best suited for public gaming areas like cinemas or theme parks. Though effectively a prototype, anyone who could pony up for a set of four 22″ wide screen LCD’s could easily set this up at home.

The Singularity and a New Model For the Indie Game Label

At the end of the ceremony, in an interesting twist, Jesse Vigil of Psychic Bunny and Indiecade Festival Director Sam Roberts along with Celia Pearce (Festival Chair) announced a partnership venture to form The Singularity – a new independent game label.

Celia Pearce (second from L), Jessie Vigil, Sam Roberts announce The Singularity indie game label

We spoke briefly with Sam about the announcement and asked if he felt any affinity with SubPop and its model for releasing indie music in the early 1990’s.

“We plan on following the Motown label template wherein talented artists worked on a salary and participated in the revenue share but in this case would keep 100% of their intellectual property. The idea is to work almost as an A&R function, finding the most promising young developers and aligning them with [the equivalent of what would have then been] the best recording engineers and producers.”

The the bread has just gone into the proverbial oven, The Singularity plans on releasing two to four titles per year.