Winner’s Circle

This week’s Flash Game Friday winner is Greens Survive Only When Reds Die by Oleksii Zagorodnii!

You have to love a game with instructions in the title, and this title pretty much says it all- Greens Survive Only When Reds Die!

The object is to get the green guy through the door. Problem is, you have to make sure to kill the red guys in order to get the door open…without killing the green guy, of course!

Greens Survive Only When Reds Die is a great platformer witha unique gameplay twist- congratulations Oleksii!

Get To Know Oleksii Zagorodnii

Tell me about yourself- how many people are on your team? Where are you based?

There is one person in my team, this is me :). I live in Kyiv, Ukraine. I do programming and art by myself, but I know nothing about writing music, so the music for most of my games is created by Alexander Ahura. He is a really great composer and I’m happy to work with him.

How long have you been making games? What did you do before?

I’ve been making (actually, trying to make) games since I was in school. Back in those days I used Game Maker and then BlitzMax, but never actually finishing anything. I completed my first Flash game in the summer of 2010, and since then I have created six more games, all of which can be found at my site: friedpixel.com.

What was your inspiration for “Greens Survive Only When Reds Die”?

I really love platform games and wanted to create something original and fun in this genre. The idea of playing with lots of characters at the same time looked promising. However, I saw a few released games where players controlled several characters simultaneously, so I decided to add a twist, and make some of these controlled characters ‘bad’, setting a task for players to kill them.

Any major challenges or hurdles during development?

The main challenge for me is my laziness. I’m not a full-time game developer. I have a dayjob and sometimes it’s very difficult to start working on a game, especially when the prototype and all of the experiments are done and there are lots of things and polishing to be done to complete the final version.

What types of games do you like to create the most? What types of games do you like to play the most?

I love to create different arcade and platform games. I also enjoy playing platform games in Flash and on mobile devices the most. Sometimes I also play some big AAA games on XBox, the last were Gears of War and Skyrim.

How long is your game creation cycle? What is your process?

Usually it takes 2-3 months to finish a game. There is not so much work in the type of games I create, but I can’t spend a lot of time on them. There is no particular process; I just do the things that need to be done to create the game.

Are there any game developers that you admire or consider “rock stars”?

I really admire indie developers who create original and fun games, especially those who share their experience and help less experienced game creators. I would name Adam Atomic (Canabalt and Flixel, my favorite Flash engine) and Johnny-K (Cover Orange, Ragdoll Cannon).

What is it about making a new game that you enjoy most?

At the first stages of development it’s really fun to try new things and see how game mechanic starts working. Later, when the game is released, I like to read reviews from players on different sites. It’s really great to know that some people from the different corners of the Earth like your creation.

Do you have any hot projects you’re working on right now?

Everyone is making mobile games now. I thought that I also may try to create something in this field and started new arcade shooter for iPhone with my friend. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it as quickly as we would have liked, and it’s still a little too early to draw any conclusions about the success of the game.

Thanks Oleksii, and congratulations again on winning Flash Game Friday!