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Exclusive Interview with Winter Competition winner

A week ago YoYoGames announced the results of their $1750 winter games competition, the winner of which was “Frozzd” by 2DCube.

Courtesy of GMKing’s open forum policy information submitted by applicants for positions at the MarkUp magazine can be viewed by any member of the public – you don’t even have to be registered. A recent application by Dragon Lord included an interview with the maker of Frozzd as a sample article.

Whilst I like to think that information on the Internet is freely available I feel that it would perhaps be in MarkUp’s best interest not to continue to leave sample articles or applicants details in the public domain.

1. What inspired you with the concept of Frozzd?
As is obvious, my inspiration came from Super Mario Galaxy. I thought running around on planets in 2D would be fun. It was fun, but I couldn’t do much with the concept, and I couldn’t think of something else for the character to do that wouldn’t be too dificult to make or too frustrating to control. So I thought I should give him (or her ofcourse) a buddy that would follow you and that had special abilities you could use to solve puzzles. Not long after I thought of making more of these creatures so you could build up an army, and the concept came together.

2. Did you expect it to be such a success?
I did expect people to like it but I wasn’t sure about the difficulty and length of the game. I’m glad everyone seems to enjoy it. I really believe in the originality of the game, the visual style, and the cute Mubbly creatures, but it’s difficult to tell beforehand whether other people will think the same way.

3. Will this be the end of the Mubbly creatures or will we see them again in a new game?
I don’t think we will see them again, unfortunately.

4. What do you think of the other winning entrants?
Garden Gnome Carnage was my favorite of the entries because of it’s quirkyness, originality, and style of control. I think Ultimortal could have added another mode or maybe specific missions, to add more variety. Granny & Snowmen is a very well made game with a lot of content, but it’s just not really my type of game. It did very well in the community so I’m sure it deserves a prize.

5. How long did it take you to make Frozzd?
About 4 to 5 weeks. Especially in the last week I worked many many hours on it.

6. Who would you choose to win?
Apart from myself? Haha. I would choose Garden Gnome Carnage. Besides that, I also thought White Sheet was pretty well done.

7. What are you going to do with the $1000?
I’m not sure yet. This year I will probably buy a PS3, but I think I will wait a few months. So I guess I wont spend it on something immediately.

8. Do you have any advice to be successful game designer?
I think it’s a good idea to look at other games when you play them, and try to understand why exactly the creators made certain choices. In good games, every single thing is there for a reason. I think every designer has their own ways of creating and solving problems, and especially in the case of game design it’s difficult to give a clear answer to this question. Experiment a lot and try things out you’ve never seen before.

Source: MarkUp Application forums.

What do you think?

6 Comments

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  1. Robin: I have a big one coming up, but I haven’t received “yes, publish it” from Phil yet (and I’m not sure if I still have something to add to it) 😉

  2. I don’t mind having the interview here as well. After all, this isn’t “MarkUp Content”, but instead a sample article that _CAN_ be included in MarkUp Magazine _IF_ the applicant is accepted.

    Its a cool interview, but I must say it isn’t exactly what we’re looking for (I’m not blaming the applicant, we usually give a short orientation to accepted applicants about the nature of our interviews AFTER they are accepted, not before); most of it what about non-game development issues, but rather, personal issues relating to the winner, such as 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7. This is usually something that we depreciate at MarkUp Magazine, as we generally prefer to go through more detailed game devleopment issues (even in interviews) rather than such questions — however, this got me thinking as to the fact that it might be a bit “entertaining” for users to see some lightweight content that is not strictly related to game development “in between”. What do you guys think?

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