YarnCat and Brueh Games (203) - Keep the Heroes Out
Hi everyone and welcome to today’s episode of the Indie Dev Game Break Podcast. I’m excited today to introduce our two guests, we have Daniel Snd, the founder of Yarncat Games, and Luis Brueh, Game Designer and Artist. Both hail from lovely Brazil and have found each other in Canada and recently collaborated on digitizing Keep the Heroes Out. Daniel has a growing list of published games including Garden Paws and Rocket Fist. Luis created the board game Keep the Heroes, and after a successful kickstarter, had the game published in 2022. In Keep the Heroes out you play as the monsters keeping your loot safe from the Heroes. Keep the Heroes out will be out in 2025.
Our conversation included:
Board and card games and their conversion to digital
Their upcoming collaboration with Keep the Heroes Out!
The godot game engine: https://godotengine.org/
Their top 5 games that influenced them including: Pokemon on the Game Boy, Warcraft 3, Ragnarok Online, Constructor, Dominion a Deck Builder, and Dungeon Defenders
More on YarnCat and Brueh Games:
YarnCat Games: https://www.yarncatgames.com/
YarnCat on Twitter: https://x.com/DYarncat
Brueh Games: https://luisbrueh.com/games/
YarnCat Games on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/search/?publisher=YarnCat%20Games
Keep the Heroes out on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2592340/Keep_the_Heroes_Out/
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Follow Stray Voltage Games / Podcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/strayvoltageca
Stray Voltage Games on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2221440/Kip_and_Odosan
Stray Voltage Games on Itch: https://strayvoltage.itch.io/
Martin Hanses (202) - Clam Man 2 Headliner Update
Martin released Clam Man in 2019 to very positive reviews. Clam Man is a combatless, narrative, stand up comedy RPG. He is currently hard at work on Clam Man 2 Headliner, with a release likely in late 2025 or 2026. We had Martin on the show last season, and are checking in on progress on Clam Man 2 Headliner!!
Our conversation included:
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Hi everyone, and welcome to today’s episode of the Indie Dev Game Break Podcast. Today’s guest is Kai Oliver. Kai hails from the United Kingdom originally and now moves between Halifax, Nova Scotia and the UK. Kai is a Game Designer and Developer with a range of skills and projects behind him. Kai is also a co-founder of the participatory theater partnership BAGEL+BALLOON.
Among his professional pursuits Kai also found the time to enter the Just Play Jam in 2023, focused on themes of justice and accountability, where their team's game Drawing up Dust won an award, and he traveled down to SXSW, Texas to accept and showcase the game.
The recent devastating rounds of layoffs in the game industry has inspired Kai to dig deeper into co-operatives, specifically worker-owned organizations with highly democratic governance, minimal pay gaps, and a focus on growing the working conditions over profits as a metric of success.
Our conversation included:
Moving to Nova Scotia from the UK
His journey into the indie game industry
Party games and handcrafted games
Interactive theater and VR combined with real world spaces
Indie Game Co-Operatives
SXSW and his award for the game Drawing Up Dust
His trip through the the Dust Bowl of America to SXSW
And of course, the top 5 games that influenced him
Resource Links:
Affinity Photo / Designer - https://affinity.serif.com/
Audacity Audio Editing - https://www.audacityteam.org/
Freesound: https://freesound.org/
Trello Project Management: https://trello.com/
More on Kai Oliver and BAGEL+BALLOON:
Website: https://kaioliver.co.uk/
BAGEL+BALLOON: https://bagelandballoon.org/
Drawing up Dust on Itch: https://gradiustheguide.itch.io/drawing-up-dust
Twitter or Twitch: @Kraydius
Discord: @Kai_McDulover
Indie Dev Game Break Podcast Links:
Join our newsletter and follow us on substack - https://indiedevgamebreak.substack.com
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Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6IqmIBrbUudh0rSzem9b9w
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-indie-dev-game-break/id1660382228
Follow Stray Voltage Games / Podcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/strayvoltageca
Stray Voltage Games on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2221440/Kip_and_Odosan
Our guest today is Heidy Motta, Operations Manager from Extremely OK Games, based out of Vancouver, Canada.
With the success of Celeste, Extremely OK Games was formed in 2019, bringing the entire Celeste team under one company and to one location in their new head office in Vancouver, BC.
The same team of course, also made the popular local multiplayer game TowerFall, which many first learnt of from the Ouya. Towerfall has since made its way to all major consoles and Steam with many updates and new content.
EXOK Games are working hard on their next major release after Celeste, Earthblade. A 2D explor-action game in a seamless pixel art world coming in 2024.
Our conversation included:
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Our guest today is Martin Hanses from the Studio Team Clam. Currently based out of beautiful British Columbia, Team Clam makes narrative driven role playing games among other interesting genres. Their game Clam Man on Steam, released back in 2019, as well as their free prologue Clam Man 2: Open Mic, both enjoy a Very Positive rating on steam and feature a unique non-combat, narrative driven RPG style of game play. Martin hails from Finland originally, and has a series of narrative driven games on Itch.Io as well to enjoy. He has recently secured funding and is working full time on Clam Man 2: Headliner.
Our conversation included:
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Skull Commando Labs (107) - Single Screen Platformers, Pushing Pixels, and Indie World Order
Our guest today is Raul Martinez, known as Skull on Twitter. His ominous sounding Studio, Skull Commando Labs, is based out of beautiful El Salvador. Raul is very active in the indie game community. He is a co-founder of the Indie World Order and runs the SideScrollerMagazine, an online magazine featuring indie games. As well Raul is part of the IWOCon team, a virtual gaming conference hosted by the Indie World Order. Raul himself has published several games in the 1 bit retro pixel art style including Mouse and Cheese, a precision single screen platformer and Dr. Brown an arcade arena shooter. He is currently working on a new single screen precision platformer dubbed Gusanito Joe - which translates roughly to Little Worm Joe, in English!
Our conversation included:
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81monkeys (106) - World of Anterra, Kickstarters, and Mobile
Our guest today is Stephane Cotichini, the CEO and Founder of the game studio 81monkeys. 81 Monkeys is a mobile and now desktop and console game studio located on the West Coast of Canada in Port Moody, British Columbia. Their mobile games include the popular Sudoku Scramble, holding a 4.1 star rating on iOS, and the Chore App which gamify’s chores for the whole family.
In August 2022 Stephane and the team launched a very successful Kickstarter for their upcoming game, the World of Anterra. World of Anterra is an open world, non-linear, retro inspired RPG. With almost 6000 backers they have raised just under $400,000, and are building towards launch on all major platforms! The game was in development for three years prior to the kickstarter campaign and looks impressive in both game play and scope!
Our conversation included:
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Myke Wills (@enfenyx) is a solo indie developer with Enfenyx Games and headquartered in the lovely Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia Canada. Enfenyx creates 2d and 3d games for the PC and has several titles under their belt including Devastation: Annihilate the Alien Race and its 3d sequel Devastation 2: Repatriation, both are available on steam. Myke’s current project is Virvius, a first person horror shooter.
Our conversation included:
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Tomas Guinan is a full time indie developer with Spoony Bard Productions headquartered in Truro, Nova Scotia, Canada. The Spoony Bard specializes in retro games. They have released an original NES game on physical cartridge and digitally for NES and Steam through their successful kickstarter called Eskimo Bob in 2017. They shipped a sequel in 2019, called Alfonzo's Arctic Adventure, backed by a second successful Kickstarter. This was published as an NES ROM, and was later published on the Switch and XBox One as well. Spoony Bard and Interabang collaborated on the 2020 release, Jay and Silent Bob, Mall brawl for the NES. This game is now ported to most platforms and Tomas is currently working on a new title with Interabang targeting modern consoles and Steam titled Jay and Silent Bob: Chronic Blunt Punch with a target release date of late 2023.
Our conversation included:
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Max Inferno is a two person indie game studio out of Halifax, Nova Scotia consisting of Anne Macmillan and Lukas Steinman. Their first game A Little to the Left, started in 2020 as a 48 hour game jam entry, and has since evolved into a major release for Steam and Nintendo Switch.. The game's commercial success has allowed the pair to make game creation their full time gig!
Our conversation included:
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Correction Notice:
Matt Hughson (@matthughson) is a Triple AAA game developer and an indie dev specializing in NES Homebrew and retro platformers. He has published several games for the NES including Witch N’ Wiz, From Below, and MineKart Madness. He helped host this year’s (2022) Nesdev competition, an annual game development competition for the NES.
Our conversation included:
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Nathan van der Stoep (@studio_vds) based out of the Netherlands, is a psychologist working on multi-sensory research by day, and in what time is left to him, a freelance illustrator operating as Studio VDS. His artwork has appeared in several Orange Pixel games including Residual for the Nintendo Switch, and Regulator City. Recently he collaborated with Cosmocat Games and released a new game from the ground up called Astral Flux. This game was just released in October 2022 on Steam, and is a 2D Pixel Art style Roguelike. Nathan continues to collaborate with Orange Pixel and other studios to create more games with another upcoming release next year still unnamed, so watch out for more details on that coming next year!
Our conversation included:
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Welcome to the Indie Dev Game Break Podcast, the podcast where we interview Indie Game Creators about their journey into video game creation, their process and technology, and the top 5 games that influenced them.
We are all set to launch our first season on Wednesday February 8th, 2023, with two episodes to drop on launch day. The remaining 6 episodes will drop every Wednesday following.
We can't wait, see you in February!
Indie Dev Game Break Podcast Links:
