I recently reviewed Game Of Watchcraft: Spawn Of Squishy, and loved it to bits. It’s developed right here in Australia, so I tracked down the developers for a brief email interview, covering why LCD games are wonderful, why Blizzard are easy to work with, and what’s next for this talented team.
Shaun Britton and Bill Trikojus are the two man team behind Clicker Interactive and the developers of Game Of Watchcraft: Spawn Of Squishy. Both lecture at Swinburne University alongside freelance roles, including running Clicker Interactive.
Fat Duck Tech: So, which came first — a love of LCD games, or a love of World Of Warcraft?
Shaun Britton: Definitely a love of LCD games.
We both grew up playing the original LCD hand-held consoles, and when we decided to work together to make these games, it was an easy decision to work within the constraints of those original titles. That nostalgia was a big part of our decision to make these!
Fat Duck Tech: You’re a small Aussie dev team. Who takes which parts of your coding and design work?
Shaun Britton: Bill and I both work on the initial concept and game play. Then we branch off and work in our areas of expertise. I design the characters and environments, and Bill builds and codes the game.
We continue to communicate throughout the entire game development, tweaking designs, problem-solving, and brainstorming ideas. It’s a very fluid process and we’re both very open to each other’s feedback and criticism.
Fat Duck Tech: Game Of Watchcraft: Spawn Of Squishy is iPad only. Any plans for other iOS devices, or Android?
Shaun Britton: We may launch on other platforms at some stage. There is more work to be done to get it ready for Android devices. We have to consider that there are different screen resolutions and sizes for these devices.
The game does look great on an iPad mini, as well as the larger models, so even with the title only on iPad there are plenty of options. We will look at games for iPhone in the future, so stay tuned for that!
Fat Duck Tech: Were there any concerns from your side in terms of copyright?
Shaun Britton: Our first logo was very similar to the World of Warcraft logo, and we spoke with Blizzard about how close we could get to theirs and still make this a parody.
They were really great about coming up with a solution with the game logo you see now. The game itself is a parody, so we are not worried about copyright infringement. The Game and Watch style perfectly parodies the grinding of the more complicated RPG game. The whole nature of those original games was about repeating some actions!
Fat Duck Tech: The LCDemakes page talks about “each” LCDemake. What’s next?
Shaun Britton: That would spoil the surprise!
We have a few titles as work-in-progress. A crafting game may be good, and I think a first person shooter or physics game would be really challenging as a Game and Watch title!