Who’s Who: Fun Punch Games

Hi, please tell me about yourself and how long have you been making games?

We are a team consisting of two independent game developers from the city of Lisbon (Portugal). We met in high school about 11 years ago. I, Tiago Franco, do art and animation.

I remember how I created board and card games for my friends and family when I was a child and then, as a teenager, experimented with RPG Maker 2000. Then I got a degree in Multimedia Design and, after finishing my education, became a web designer.

Participating in game jams as a two-dimensional artist and animator (in my spare time) gave me very valuable lessons in development and led to the desire to build a career as a video game developer.

Philip’s path into the industry is much more unorthodox. He was on his way to get a degree in architecture and urban planning, but in the fourth year he realized that it was not his, and dropped out. Then he began to develop his interest in programming. Adoring games, he began experimenting with developing small Flash projects. We had been living together for several months at that time – and so the friendship turned into a strong team with a bunch of ideas. One of them was Strikers Edge.

By now, we both have full-time jobs: I work as a web designer, Philip is a developer, but we plan to start developing games already as part of a full-time job and so finish Strikers Edge.

Why did they take up indie development after all?

We have played a lot since childhood.

Now we are constantly talking about games, we often exchange their ideas with each other. I’m also used to writing about games and have always wanted to do something related to them. Only in Portugal there are not so many “traditional” opportunities to get a job as a developer. It is unlikely for us to become a professional in this field, so we have chosen safer careers and participation in game jams until we get more knowledge. Plus, we wanted to implement our own ideas, not the ideas of corporate guys based on market research. Therefore, we decided that developing our game as independent developers is the best way.

Independent development is having a hard time right now (some experts believe that we are on the verge of a new gaming crisis). What, in your opinion, is the biggest problem of indidev at the moment?

For us personally, the most difficult thing is to stand out from the crowd. The market offers a very wide choice, and it becomes very difficult to make the game interesting when so many games compete for attention. Even if your game is amazing, it’s very difficult to reach your audience. At the same time, prices are falling and the values of games for the market are also falling. We fear that Steam is turning into the next App Store/Google Play, where free-to-play will be the most appropriate business model. Getting an audience and retaining players is hard. Living without it is even more difficult.

From the industry to the game. Tell us about your first project – Strikers Edge.

Strikers Edge is an intense multiplayer arcade game about arena battles where you fight as an ancient warrior. Imagine a game of bouncers with real weapons and ancient heroes: from valkyrie to Spartan and barbarian. Each with its own characteristics and capabilities. And, of course, numerous arenas with different layouts, obstacles and bonuses.

The game began as a bid for Global Game Jam, a 48-hour gaming competition. We quickly realized its potential as a competitive game, and how and what exactly we could add to the key mechanics that we already had.

As I said, we are currently working on it in our spare time and hope to start working on it full-time soon. The game will be available on PC, Mac, Linux and possibly also on consoles.

Why did you choose the antique setting?

When the game was only a prototype, there were only two spearmen in it. It quickly became clear that the game should be about remote weapon battles. We have compiled a list of throwing weapons and what types of fighters can use them. We had a huge number of ideas about characters, weapons, capabilities… And we decided to stick to the antique setting so that everything fits together.

Today there are a lot of “pixel” games, but, unfortunately, not all of them are drawn correctly. However, you did it perfectly. Can you tell me how you draw, what techniques you use?

Thanks! I don’t consider myself a professional artist or pixel artist, but I am inspired by other pixel artists and games that I like. I have to say that before you take up pixelart, you must first become well acquainted with art as such.

As part of my creative process, I like to analyze retro games from an artistic and technical point of view. Then I work with aesthetics, trying to bring something new, possible only with modern resources and technologies. For example, I do not limit myself in the number of colors and we play with modern effects, see how they can improve the game.

However, there are a few rules: frame-by-frame animation helps to give a retro look. Keep the resolution low without affecting gameplay [apparently, we are talking about low resolution not affecting performance, – approx. editorial offices]. Change the size of the graphics (scale) proportionally without using “smoothing” and taking into account the pixel grid (pixel grid). Use the same pixel density among all your assets.

Another technical question: what tools do you use?

We use Photoshop for pixelart and animation and Illustrator for vector art. Then we put everything in Unity using C#. We use Trello as a task manager, and Google Docs to work on documents and tables. Dropbox is used by us for file sharing and for version control – Bitbucket.

And the last question: when will the game be over?

We hope that it will be ready sometime around next year.

Thanks for the interview!