We’ve interviewed many people now, but up until this point, they have mostly been programmers, or indie developers. Today we’d like to share with you our interview with Oliver Awat the lead designer for Petricore Games, and one of the key players in the creation of Gelato Flicker.
In this first ever interview with a designer, we were astounded at how much programing knowledge, and devotion toward making not just a pretty game, but a good game he expresses. For anyone wanting to become a designer, this is an interview you should read and remember.
Before we start, I’d like to thank Oliver Awat for participating in this interview, and for spending some of his valuable time in answering our questions. Thank you very much Oliver.
Now without any further ado our interview begins.
Ok first up, why did you decide to make Gelato Flicker?
We like to do these brainstorming “pow-wow” once in awhile where we basically partner up and come up with random ideas for games. The first prompt for the first ever “idea sesh,” was ice cream, and I was paired up with our artist when we came up with this endless ice cream truck driving game. After hearing the other ideas, for some reason I just felt the need to say “Oh, wait; I have one more,” for an idea that came into my head last minute, and then proceeded to describe and eventually name the game “Gelato… Flicker” as a descriptive, yet nonsensical way of titling the game.
A real burst of inspiration there, so what programming language and or software did you use when making Gelato Flicker?
We primarily worked with Unity using C# as the main language with a little bit of native Objective-C and Java for specific iOS and Android functionalities. It’s the engine we’re most familiar with, so it was a fairly positive experience overall, though it would’ve been nice if we had tried to keep the file size smaller since it wasn’t until closer to launch that the actually installed size of the app became really apparent.
Ok, here is a mean question. What was the hardest problem you needed to overcome when developing Gelato Flicker?
I think the toughest part was just coding the base functionality of the scoop flicking actually. Wanting a variety of flavors and multiple scoops for each cone right from the start was a pretty hefty task on its own. Spawning each of the scoops, having those scoops be a part of someone’s order, and timing everything properly so that animations don’t get interrupted all the while pushing served scoops back into the original pool (we were only working with a set number of scoops), it was a lot to handle and took several iterations not just to work properly but to actually “feel” right.
Last question. Where do you get your inspiration or ideas from?
With “Mind the Arrow” and “Gelato Flicker” being more bite-sized experiences, it’s a lot more important to make sure each of those bites have enough of an impact and leave players wanting to play more which naturally is drastically different from more campaign/story-driven games. Keeping a lot of that in mind, we still obviously want a sense of progression, so a lot of the design is necessitated by having a low-skill entry point while still allowing more adamant/passionate players an outlet to really show off what they can do. That said, “Mind the Arrow” stemmed from something that I know I wanted to play personally while “Gelato Flicker” was more of something that I thought other people would want to play.
A few words to Gelato Flicker fans on Edamame Reviews.
We’re releasing our first big update to Mind the Arrow in the near future which will add a levelling system, dozens of new customization options (including backgrounds), and 4 new modes each of which will have their own leaderboards for people to compete in.
Lastly a few words on how you feel about Edamame Reviews and our service.
It’s been awesome so far! We love getting reviews from people playing our games, and the interview after is a great touch.
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