Topher Cyll

Okay, that's a lie. I'm not really an indie game developer. In fact, it's never even been on my radar. Game developers work long hours and get paid rubbish. Not my bag, baby.

But, well, indie game developer...? Now that's something else.

Months ago Ben and I hit on the idea of making a DHTML/Javascript Turn Based Strategy game in our spare time. The genre's constraints are almost perfectly suited for the technology. Full of ambition, we barely got past the realization that we were sucky artists before giving up.

Well, Ben dove back into the problem a week or so ago. Working to implement a Blood Bowl play system, he solved some of the tricky interface issues we'd bumped into. He was also lucky enough to acquire a set of visual assests for Blood Bowl, thus punting on the need for new art.

This coincided with me picking up my Nintendo DS again and getting re-addicted to the TBS genre. So I decided to get in on the fun too. I've put together a pretty good architecture that lets me separate the game logic from the web UI. (The backend is sufficient for testing now, and I've switched to work on the UI).

My original idea was to develop a non-violent turn based strategy game based on political campaigning. You'd recruit volunteers, acquire donations and resources, etc. I could totally see it working with in the framework of the TBS genre. Just as interesting, since it would be played over the web, you could have the results of each campaign affect the legislative composition of a persistent virtual community.

Pretty cool, all in all, and I was all set to get started with it, when Ben reminded me that I already had a great plot for a game...

I did? I did.

Back in November, I wrote a 50,115 novel for National Novel Writing Month. About dinosaurs. And the westward exploration. It was pretty awesome, and totally unfit to be read. But what a great plot for a video game!

And so, here I am. With all sorts of things I should be spending my free time on (more about that later), working on a video game. That will be played through the web. And is about dinosaurs. What a world!

Ben assures me that as long as I prefix it with "indie," I'm good to use the Indie Game Developer title even though I've never released a game. "Topher Cyll: Indie Attorney at Law" anyone?

Anyways that's the story of how I became an indie game developer. At least until reality reasserts itself and reminds me that I have other things to be working on...

Oh, and I still really suck at art.

posted on: 06/20/2006 | path: /life