Gregzilla Games

Aniol: About the videogame industry, I have to say at the beginning we were a bit skeptical about how successfully commercial an indie game could be. Everyone was talking about casual and social gaming for mobile and Facebook, but after our experience with Nihilumbra (that's making a game we would love to play as traditional videogame players), things changed very favorably! Now we trust that keeping our efforts and passion, we can make our own road as part of this vibrant indie scene.

J: Nowadays, BeautiFun Games has grown and added three members more, so it almost doubled its size since it was funded, back in early 2011. How those changes have affected your roles at the company and what are the biggest challenges you faced?

A: I started to work as a producer without noticing that "producer" was the name for that kind of task. Focused on coordinating everyone's work so we all can get all done with the least possible delay. I also make sure that the result has the level of quality needed. More than order "what" we have to do, my main task is about the "how" we have to do it and what to change in order to get it on time.

About challenges, as programmer, I think one of the most difficult situations we had to face happened while developing Nihilumbra. Firstly getting used to work with the tech capabilities of a cellphone, since we couldn't read the textures from scenarios pixel by pixel, we had to sort-of invent a method using tables in RAM memory. After this issue was solved, we had to program the game physics and also create a realistic "painting effect" when the player touched the screen.  The painting effect was specially tricky, since we had to recur to use polygons to represent paint stains, also those polygons had to be small enough in a way when the user is painting close to any surface border, there won't be any stain "half floating" where that border ends. Something curious that not many people know is that we had to add a limit to the amount of painting you had in the game. The purpose of this feature was to avoid a potential performance slowdown if the player started painting -filling with polygons- on all the surface available.

A: Surely we could have chosen an easier path to go and try to avoid facing those challenges, but in the end we followed the hard path since we believed that those features were sort of unique and nobody had technically created such experience with a touching device until that moment. In addition, the gameplay demanded it and it made full sense to all of us. Finally, we got our effort rewarded with good sales, and it was not only because of the technical achievements in the game, I believe it was thanks to the combination of great art, level design and narrative.

A: I specially enjoy the starting and closing of projects. To create a solid technical base, and then polishing the details during last weeks of the development.

A: A videogame project is subject to many changes, that means you may need to adapt the implementation of some parts of the game depending on the variable needs of an artist, the game designer or even the musician. So to try to diminish the negative impact those changes have, as a programmer you have to code in a very tricky and strategic way with the goal of making your code as reusable as possible. This hability is very important here at BeautiFun Games, because our projects main direction are driven by the artists and designers, more than the programmers.

A: We received messages from people telling it was the best iOS game they ever played, that was mind-blowing. Also we got great comments about the PC version, something amazing who nobody expected was a fanart by a Russian fan called "~Nemesis~fierce", it mixes both universes from Nihilumbra and Journey! It is been a true honor to be compared with ThatGameCompany's masterpiece.

We try to leave a mark in gamers, like those movies you remember for a long time, if we achieve that, that will be a success.

A: About Pol, as I explained before, I met him before thanks to our shared fondness for poker, but it was a coincidence that he also entered the same Videogame Development Course as me. In that same course I met Lourdes and Kevin... for the final project Pol went to work with Kevin's group and Lourdes was in the same working group as me. So it was only a matter of time until the core team of BeautiFun Games was born. 

A: Kevin always gets his way. That's not a bad thing, because I always put a lot of spokes on his wheels, and consequently we end up approving only the best of his ideas.

Pol is always making your day easier, he hasn't only good mood, he also knows when is the best time to use it. 

Suey works hard as hell, always running the extra mile to make a project go forward.

Lourdes is kind of a mother for everybody. I know it may seem weird to you, but its somehow like that. Aside of working really hard, she also takes care of the whole team. Something that makes her unique is that she is very versatile, working with the same passion on scenarios or an options menu.

Jordi is the fastests hand in the painting western! In a very short time he can draw something amazing.

And lastly you, Jesús, I think one of your best qualities is to be insistent and always wanting to get to the heart of each matter. I think that is a very good, since your job is to be like an explorer, somebody who stays alert about what we can do to spread the word out about our games and the studio, and at the same time putting an eye on the community to get feedback about how the world feels about us.

A: I would say I work too much and also some people from the team tell me I have the bad habit of being tedious because I always remind them what is left to do. But I need to be like that, to try to establish a discipline that can be valid for everybody and some common rules in the team. This is the only way that, in the end, the processes will be streamlined. So my bad quality can be also my best one, since the purpose of that insistence is always to facilitate the work to others.

A: I can say we are going to showcase a few things about the game this March. Megamagic is nothing like Nihilumbra, well, somehow yes, since magic powers will be key. Gameplay-wise, it is going to be a mixture of action-RPG Zelda-like games and strategy mechanics... and also tons of awesome Magic! Won't be as dark and depressing as Nihilumbra, but we can warantee that the same "spirit" will somehow remain there. As it happened with Nihilumbra, we want to make the game accesible to all kinds of audiences. From the beginning, we will consider the casual and the hardcore gamer experience. Sorry, I cannot say many more things at the moment. 

A: Nihilumbra was a closed title, and we don't discard a sequel at the moment. With Megamagic we are creating a world that we can expand in this and future games, so all the feedback we get along the development process will be used to try to improve the experience.

Today we start a series of in-depth interviews called "The BeautiFun Team Stories" in which members of BeautiFun Games will be talking about their past, present and future from quite a personal perspective. Jesús Fabre, our community and PR guy, will be doing and publishing one of them per week. So lets start with Aniol Alcaraz, our producer and one of our programmers, talking about how BeautiFun Games started, back in 2011.

Aniol: At the beginning we were only four people, and our most important goal was developing Nihilumbra, so we put all our efforts in that task. We needed an extra artist so hired Freya Horn, and that new addition to the team changed a bit the rhythm of our daily work. Somedays she came to the office, where we commisioned her the tasks she had to do and the rest of the days she was drawing at her own art studio.

When Nihilumbra's development was in the final stages, we thought our workload was slowing down, but no! We needed to prepare all the marketing material, send out press releases, answer tons of emails, etc. It was a super busy time! Then we started to work on our new project, and in paralel we were porting Nihilumbra to other platforms. Now with the recent success on Steam Holiday Sales and having our next project Megamagic on track, we can say the studio is enjoying one of its best moments ever! We proved ourselves we can make a living out of our games, and that makes us really excited about what this 2014 holds for us!

Nihilumbra's BeautiFun Games team back in 2011

A: Nihilumbra was expected to be finished in four months, but we didn't fully closed the project until the fourteenth! That was because we were unexperienced, but also its a proof of our philosophy as studio and an important factor that has brought us to be still here today: try to polish things to the maximum until we are truly satisfied with the result.

A: After some weeks of meetings, most people started to leave for several reasons. Ones found a job, others started to lose interest, and finally we were four people left, but still had the big problem that is the lack time to develop any full game with no money. Then I suggested I could invest my own savings to kickstart the studio. That phrase was something nobody was expecting, but as they gladly accepted, I did what I promised and in a month BeautiFun Games was born. Only four people composed the team: Pol, Kevin, Lourdes and me. We were quite lucky since we started seriously as studio once we had covered almost every position we needed, and also we were filled with lots of passion and dedication!

A: "Once Upon a Night" was an ambitious project, clearly remember it was a hell of a work when we tried to close it. We used Ogre Engine, coding was done in C++, we had AI, shaders, I think they were too many new things to deal with at the same time! The main hurdle we faced during that project was the lack of coordination and timing. In addition, and as an advice to students that may be reading this, I would recommend everyone who is doing a game development course to always experiment with new ideas, and when it comes the time to create a full game, try to work on the features that can showcase your skills the better.

Also, one curious thing I discovered in that course was the role of the game designer and how important the design is as a discipline on its own. I clearly remember when Kevin (our writer and game designer) came up with a full design of a game he had been working at home, and that later became "The Creature".

While doing the MD course, one of the most important things I learned was how to technically polish a project and prepare it to reach the market. Also I enjoyed -aside of the game programming related subjects-, the 3D design and animation classes, in spite of not being my area. As programmer and producer it's always beneficial to know how this works in order to adapt yourself  in the best possible way to the particular difficulties that can emerge.

A: Since I was a very young kid I loved to play card games and board games. Was pretty good at one in particular called Magic, so started to participate in several qualifier tournaments for the World Cup. If you were good enough and got in, they flew you to the States to play with the best players worldwide, that was really a great experience! 

A: Then a few close friends noticed that some Magic players were jumping into Poker, and convinced me to try it along with them. The first thought that came to my mind was that negative and dark image we all have from movies of mafia guys smoky rooms. But I started reading some books and found out it could be done if I practiced a lot. So decided to try it seriously and after a few months our team was progressing quite well in the tournaments. Up to the point that we earned quite a good money and even found an sponsor that covered all the costs to be in the European Poker Series, live tournaments... so I kept playing until I started the videogame development Masters Degree.

I want to remark that Poker is hard, you need lots of practice, and also enjoy playing it is a must if you want to win. I kept studying my Computer Science degree and playing Poker, until I finished my degree, and a bit later I decided I didn't want to play Poker for all my life, as wasn't enjoying as much as when I started and also didn't win or lose anything that year. In Magic, every now and then you can see new cards being released, but in Poker, in spite of being a deep and complex game, there was a point where it was too repetitive for me. So I started losing the enthusiasm, and in consequence decided it was better to quit and take on new challenges.

I know it is hard to find funding for your game. You need to find out how to convince your potential investors to believe in your project and that, if they put money, its gonna make them get enough profits in return. Easy to say but hard to do, but never impossible, Aniol admits.

I cannot find the concrete reason why I decided to start studying Computer Science... As I loved games, I always loved computers too. When I was 13 or 14 years old (that's around 1999), I remember having developed a website where I posted game reviews. Also, due to my passion for videogames, I started to learn programming since my dream was to create my own game. I developed my own version of Mastermind, the problem was that I didn't know function parameters existed and it was quite harder than it could have been! -Aniol laughs- the programmers reading this surely will know how needlessly hard that was.

A: Videogames entered my life thanks to a Game Boy with two cartridges: Tetris and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, both of them really good! I also had a Nintendo 64. I remember Super Mario 64 was one of the games I was more impressed with. I loved those 3D graphics and how fluid everything was handled on screen, even today the game keeps its charm unbelievably well. But if there is a game from my youth that left me the most memorable times, it undoubtedly is Super Smash Bros and its multiplayer mode. You can imagine how exciting and disputed every match was when I played with my friends, whom I also played Magic and Poker with. That was real rivalry!

Maybe, after the titles I said, you can think I was a big Nintendo fan, but not really! For example, I never had a Super Nintendo, since I was enjoying my Mega Drive. I remember playing Sonic games a lot, specially Sonic & Knuckles with Sonic 3 (by the way, at the office we still listen to Sonic music, Chemical Plant FTW!). Remember the originality and freshness of Dynamite Headdy or Streets of Rage with its amazing multiplayer. Also I had a PSX, where I played gems like Wipeout, with its amazing soundtrack that fits perfectly with the frantic gameplay and it's futuristic universe. More games I truly enjoyed are Final Fantasy VII, Tekken, I can tell you I like practically every game genre, as long as the game is well made!

A: My background as a gamer helps me a lot, makes it easier to visualize if something I program will work once added to the game. Also, like everyone, I have game ideas. Here at BeautiFun we listen to Kevin's (sometimes crazy) game ideas and then everyone of us adds his personal touch to the main purposal.

J: Curiously, Aniol is not the only Magic and Poker player in our team...

[The rest of this interview is available in Part II, where Aniol talks about the hardest technical challenges at Nihilumbra, and also will give us his feedback about the rest of the team and our future project, Megamagic.]