Winner’s Circle
This week’s Flash Game Friday winner is It Takes A Village: Summer of Bandits by Berzee!
The king is away, and the bandits want to play! It is your job to protect your people while the king is off fighting the war. In this unique (if not pint-sized) take on the RTS genre, you make your way through a map. Each location on the map presents a different challenge. Some challenges are more RTS-based, some more puzzle-based. In all scenarios, your job is to keep your people safe!
It Takes A Village: Summer of Bandits has great game design and addicting gameplay, as well as a fun storyline to keep it interesting. Congratulations Berzee!
Get To Know Berzee
Tell me about yourself- how many people are on your team? Where are you based?
I mostly make games by myself, from my Ohio-based office — which is secretly a comfy chair in my living room. My wife helps with art, music, sounds, playtesting, common sense, good taste, etc…everything but the coding!
How long have you been making games? What did you do before?
I have been making playable games for about a year, and it’s still something of a side project for me. My main occupation is as a creator of fine, gigantic online stores.
What was your inspiration for “It Takes A Village: Summer Bandits”?
The Age of Empires influences should be pretty obvious within a few minutes. =) Those were the RTSes that loom largest in my experience, and one of the main reasons I made this game was so that something Age-like could be available as a quick browser game.
Did you encounter any major challenges or hurdles during development?
Mainly my own mopey behavior! The toughest thing about game development is that every couple of weeks, I start slipping into a belief that my creations are shamefully bad and need to be rebuilt from the ground up. Having some genuine technical challenges (like the pathfinding and artificial intelligence for this game) is a welcome relief and helps to free me from the less productive obstacle of Fretting About Nothing.
What types of games do you like to create the most? What types of games do you like to play the most?
I just like making Something New! The easiest way to be best at a thing is to do something that nobody else is doing — and I find probably too much happiness in filling niches. Hence I try to stuff complicated genres like RTS into a browser window, or squeeze a game out of a G.K. Chesterton poem. ;)
My favorite kind of games to play are ones with lovely writing and a positive outlook on life, and something interesting to do as I travel from one bit of story to the next. Also: ninjas, wizards, swords, witty banter, and mindless multiplayer shooters at three in the morning.
How long is your game creation cycle? What is your process?
Haha, I don’t presume to have a cycle or a process. I try for one or two hours of game-making time each evening. The best results come from that slow and steady progress, neither getting discouraged nor pouring obsessive hours into it — though of course both of those things happen regularly anyway! “It Takes A Village” was created over about four months of free time on nights and weekends.
Are there any game developers that you admire or consider “rock stars”?
I don’t even consider rock stars to be rock stars! But there are at least a few names that will get me to sit up and take special interest, such as Zillix, Chris Avellone, Adam Atomic, and even a couple of publishers: Carpe Fulgur and Paradox.
What is it about making a new game that you enjoy most?
Three things! Trying out new graphical styles; seeing the source code pristine and beautiful because I haven’t actually typed anything yet; and spending unreasonably many hours pondering the best thing to name it.
Do you have any hot projects you’re working on right now?
Yep! Currently in the works is something full of RPG-ish strategery and…tower defenciness…except not really…it’s complicated to describe, but will be simple to play! I need something simple, after Summer of Bandits. o_O Mayhaps I will also continue to work on the resurrection-themed game that I didn’t get out in time for Easter. =)
Congratulations Berzee, and good luck with your strategery-defenciness!
