Developer Spotlight - Kongregate Developers Blog

Developer Spotlight Aug 28, 2018
Words with Devs: A Conversation with 'Ultrabit'

Ultrabit, a San Diego-based developer sitting at a dozen team members, was acquired last year by Kongregate. With four published titles and millions of downloads and plays across both PC and mobile, Ultrabit is extending their genre reach with their latest title Crossword Safari: Word Hunt. In this interview, Ultrabit discusses their roots, trying new things, what makes a good word game, and how to keep a small team happy. KONGREGATE: Today we are chatting with Ultrabit, creators of Crossword Safari: Word Hunt, Pocket Politics, and Office Space: Idle Profits. Ultrabit was founded in 2014 by veterans from Zynga, Kongregate, Sony Online Entertainment, and Red 5 Studios. How did Ultrabit first come to be? How did the team meet and start working together? ULTRABIT: The majority of the early Ultrabit folks had worked together previously at companies in San Diego, most notably Kongregate and Zynga. Our co-founders were passionate about taking their game expertise into the indie space and so began gathering a team of industry veterans. Over the course of 12-16 months, the team grew to about 10 people

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Mobile Publishing Aug 07, 2018
Taking a Swim with Sharkbite Games: A 'BeSwitched' Q&A

KONG: Today we are chatting with Sharkbite Games, creators of Kongregate’s latest mobile release BeSwitched (available now on Android and iOS devices). Sharkbite Games, founded in 2016 and staffed by industry veterans, is led by Rick Ellis and Susan Mackey-Ellis. For those who are unfamiliar with the startup, can you tell us a bit about your backgrounds and how Sharkbite Games came to be? RICK: Our studio is made up of game industry veterans, people who have been making games for upwards of 25 years. Our current team has all worked together in the past on various projects so we don’t have many of the startup “growing pains” trying to learn each other’s personalities and strengths/weakness, which has been nice. Individuals on the team have worked on some of the industry’s most amazing and popular titles: Steam, Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike, Guild Wars 2, F.E.A.R., Condemned, Paradise Bay, Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, and Deer Hunter to name a few. As a group, we decided that we wanted to build highly social games

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Developer Spotlight Apr 17, 2018
'Heroes of Rings: Dragons War' Dev Q&A with Codigames

Heroes of Rings: Dragons War is the latest mobile game published by Kongregate, now available on iOS and Android devices. We sat down with Francisco Martínez, President & Co-founder of Codigames to talk about their development process. KONGREGATE: Codigames is a small team based in Spain. Can you tell us a little bit about your team’s background and how the company was formed? FRANCISCO: The idea of Codigames was born in 2012, two years after Apple released the iPhone, and revolutionized the mobile games industry forever. That year, Francisco Marínez and Zacarías Gómez decided to follow their passion and start working on video games. They believed that mobile video games were the next big thing, and they wanted to create a company that could evolve the mobile games and bring great game experiences to smartphones. A year later, the studio joined Lanzadera, a privately funded start-up accelerator program funded by Angels, a Spanish private investor company. The award granted Codigames with private funds and the assistance of private investors, and allowed the company to create titles like Empires of

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Developer Spotlight Nov 23, 2017
On the Front Line: A 'Wartide' Dev Q&A

We sat down with gaming studio Outact to talk about their new game, Wartide: Heroes of Atlantis, now available for Android and iOS devices! KONG: Outact formed in 2014; can you tell us a bit more about how the studio came to be and what inspired your direction as a studio? Outact: Many of us have been working together for nearly a decade and some over two decades. As a team, our history can trace back to Iron Lore Entertainment, where some of us developed the highly acclaimed ARPG Titan Quest. Prior to forming Outact, we spent 5 years at Tencent, where our core cross-continent team was formed and strengthened. In summer 2014, when the concept of Wartide came up, it took us no time to build the company and begin this journey... KONG: Your team is spread across different countries. Does working from multiple locations have an impact on the way you do business? Why did you decide to stay so international? Outact: We believe the quality of a studio, and therefore the quality of the games we create,

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Developer Spotlight Nov 09, 2017
'AdVenture Communist' Dev Q&A: Digging into a Dynasty

KONG: Hyper Hippo is a Canadian-based independent game developer best known for the hit idle game AdVenture Capitalist. How did you all meet and start making games together? CODY: Hyper Hippo sprang out of the imagination of Lance Priebe, the creator of Club Penguin. He assembled what he felt was a "dream team" for game development, then opened the floodgates and said, "GO!" TRISTAN: We all met while working on the virtual world "Disney’s Club Penguin." We wanted to try our hand at some new game experiments, create new IPs (Mech Mice, AdVenture Capitalist, etc.), develop for leading platforms (mobile, PS4, Xbox), and move away from the processes and politics of larger companies. KONG: For those of us not familiar, what type of game dev culture does Canada have? What sets Canada apart from other development hubs? CODY: Canada is similar to a lot of other "game" or tech hubs, but maybe just more apologetic? We’ve got our big guys like EA, BioWare and WB Montreal. But there’s also

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Developer Spotlight Sep 05, 2017
'Castaway Cove' Q&A: How Synapse's New Tidal Idle Came to Be

We sat down with the co-founder of Synapse Games, Alex Reeve, to explore their newest launch Castaway Cove, an idle game set on a far-off deserted island. Synapse is responsible for hit titles like Animation Throwdown: The Quest for Cards, Spellstone, and Tyrant Unleashed. When not developing games, he’s busy playing Dominions 4 and XCOM. KONG: Even though many people reading here on Kongregate may be aware of Synapse and the games you have developed over the years, do you mind reintroducing yourself? What is the short history of Synapse? ALEX: Sure! We started making Facebook games way back in 2008. The first of our games to gain a significant amount of traction was called War Metal, which was a multiplayer web RPG game set in a dark, futuristic world. It was a lot of fun to work on, so we ended up making a spin-off/sequel called War Metal: Tyrant. This was a CCG built in the same world. We ended up launching this on Kongregate, and we fell in love with Kongregate and the community right away.

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Developer Spotlight Feb 16, 2017
'Burrito Bison' Q&A with Juicy Beast

Burrito Bison is one of the most popular series on Kongregate, and we're proud to be publishing the third game in the series, Launcha Libre, available now on web, Android, and iOS. We could say that this Q&A is in celebration of this week's massive 2.00 game update, but really, who needs a special reason to talk about the awesomeness of Burrito Bison_?_ Q. What pushed you to become indie developers and how did you all meet and form the core team at Juicy Beast? A. It all started back in school, circa 2009, where we had to create a valid business plan for a fictional company. We even had to find a real office that was available for rent. My business plan got the teacher’s attention and I received a lot of comments telling me that I should give it a try for real. So I contacted my good friend Dom, who had been working at Gameloft for a year since he finished school before I did, and asked him if he wanted to quit

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Developer Spotlight Jan 05, 2017
'BattleHand' Q&A with Another Place Productions

To celebrate the 1-year anniversary of the charming fantasy RPG BattleHand, we sat down with the extremely talented development team behind the game, Another Place Productions, to discuss inspiration, process, and, of course, BattleHand! The London-based indie development studio started surprisingly enough at Lionhead Studios when the 3 founders, who were working on the Fable franchise, decided to create their own games. After forming in 2012, they quickly realized that developing mobile games would give them more freedom to take risks and innovate. Their latest mobile game, BattleHand, is a return to their fantasy roots where players enter the world of FellCrest to rescue the kingdom from darkness. And after 1 year, the game is still going strong! Q. BattleHand is celebrating its 1-year anniversary today! It’s amazing how quickly the year flew by, and we’re super excited to say that not only was BattleHand chosen as an Apple Editor’s Choice title at launch, but Apple also just included it in its Best of App Store 2016! How did the team react when you found out? A.

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Developer Spotlight Sep 02, 2011
Q&A with Jon, creator of Stencyl

Jon, creator of the new Stencyl free Flash game development suite, was kind enough to answer some questions and talk a bit more about his project. As a quick terminology note, "Stencyl" is a general term for the product, while StencylWorks is the creation tool that works along side other tools like StencylForge. Kongregate: So, what exactly is StencylWorks? Jon: StencylWorks is the tool that brings game creation to everybody. We take out everything that isn't fun about game creation, so that you can focus on “finding the fun” by creating great games. In addition to the tool itself, we provide a marketplace for sharing and downloading game assets as well as frameworks that facilitate building common game genres such as platformers. Our goal is to provide tools that grow along with the user, from humble beginnings to mastery. Everybody starts somewhere. I personally started game creation editing campaigns and maps for Starcraft and Warcraft before moving on to bigger and better things. Many indies I know started with game creation tools rather than programming. At the end

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