This week, we have an interview conducted by Kalex. He would not reveal how he got the interview, but rumor is that he used his updated forum pic in the negotiations.
For all you people hiding under the rock that is mainstream games, and haven't bothered to stick your head into the bottomless cesspool that is shareware, you may not have heard of Wolfire Software.
Wolfire was started by mad scientist and future prophet David Rosen. It started with David as an innocent young lad, entering into the iDev games contest. The first entrance made by David was in 2001 with GLFighters. Inspired by games like Marshmellow Duel, GLFighters featured two players in a variety of mazes trying to murder each other with a variety weapons: swords, lightsabers, laser guns, and a large collection of automatic weapons that would put the NRA to shame. While fun, it usually devolved into matches between siblings killing each other and tea-bagging their brother's corpse before they could respawn.
A year later, David submitted another freeware game by the name of Black Shades. In this you played a psychic bodyguard with the ability to slow down time and have an out-of-body experience, which the game Prey later ripped off. The point of Black Shades was to protect a VIP from armed assassins for a certain amount of time. The player would, at the last second shoot, him in the kneecaps, and laugh satanically as the pansy man in a white suit crumpled to the ground.
The last Wolfire game to be submitted to iDev was Lightning's Shadow in 2003. Lightning's Shadow was a Worms-style game in which you played a crazed monk out to kill other crazed monks in a contest to see who was the most mentally disturbed. Of course, the monks were all magic users, so to kill each other you had a few spells that fell into three categorys: ZAP, BURN, or FREEZE. Each round was only over when all but one of the monks had been suitably roasted, toasted, flayed, blown up, electrocuted, or heavily lobotomized due to chronic frostbite.
All of these games got critical acclaim in their respective years, so of course all the fame and fortune went to the creators head. The next project was a shareware game named Lugaru (pronounced Loo-GAR-oo), a freeform hand-to-hand combat game in which you played a bipedal bunny rabbit named Turner with superhuman martial arts skill and a surprisingly low IQ to match. After being tricked into leaving his village, Turner returns to find his friends and family slaughtered by the local raiders. So with nothing better to do, Turner swears vengeance on those who did this and sets out to find the raiders and brutally murder them in their dreamless sleep. Turner logically takes the next step down this road and commits regicide on the rabbit monarchy in order to save the island of Lugaru, as well as having to kill off a bunch of wolves who want to dine on the delicious inhabitants of the island.
The game did well for a shareware game, especially in Mac communities that thought it was the best thing since EV Nova. Now, David Rosen has started the end of days. By rallying together a group of talented people, he now sets out to take on the world with his new game, the sequel to Lugaru which now has an official name: Overgrowth. You will again play Turner, and when asked how the sequel will be different, Jeff Rosen of Wolfire Software said "Lugaru was kindergarten, Overgrowth will be grad school." Interesting, but how much of the Lugaru style violence will we get? "Overgrowth puts the DIE in indie!" Which better mean I'll be able to kill enough people to fill a small country.
Recently I had the chance to sit down and talk with John Graham, COO and QA Grunt of Wolfire Software. While much of Overgrowth is still under wraps, I managed to get some answers out of him. I would like to thank John, and by extension Wolfire, who took time out of the day to be kidnapped and tortured in a grizzly fashion at Best Damn Podcast Ever HQ.
Best Damn Podcast Ever: So what made you think of the name Overgrowth?
John Graham the QA Grunt: Phillip (Isola, Programmer) came up with the name Overgrowth I believe, while we were having trouble figuring out a name
BDPE: Really? Well tell Phillip to ask for a raise.
John: (Laughs) We discussed names for a while when we weren't busy working. We feel that it's at least a triple entendre but won't say why yet
BDPE: Is Turner's hair going to grow in real-time? When it grows long enough you get the Overgrowth bonus, complete with dandruff?
John: That's an interesting idea, I'll forward that to David and see what he thinks about it, I'm not sure Overgrowth will have hair care technology but we will have some kind of fur shader
BDPE: From what I've seen of the technology you guys are putting into this, so far I'm impressed.
John: We think we're doing a lot of things that other companies might not think of, all our developers are good at coming up with new ideas. We've noticed mainstream games tend to recycle the same old features a lot, it's part of their business model, but us indie guys can take some risks.
BDPE: What are your feelings though if Wolfire ever gets big? If Overgrowth turns into a breakout hit instead of a cult classic, what will happen?
John: Oh gosh, that's pretty far down the road. If we have the good fortune to be able to expand we want to do it slowly and carefully. The last thing we want is for wolfire [sic] to turn into another gamedev beaurocracy [sic].
BDPE: Final question. What are your words to people who think you should 'Get a real job'?
John: Two parts I guess. If you mean that start-ups aren't real jobs: It's surprisingly hard to work for yourself. Building a company out an amorphous blob of an idea is a very daunting task. However, I think Wolfire fortunately has great focus and an extremely experienced team. So we're optimistic and we're working harder than we did when we had "real jobs".
If you mean making video games isn't a real job: We think that video games are the up and coming entertainment industry. Technology is always improving and along with it so will the experience that can be created by game developers. I think in the long run the video game industry will be the major entertainment industry.
BDPE: Thank you for sitting down with us to answer our questions.
John: No problem, have a good one.
BDPE: You too.
Wolfire is now accepting pre-orders for Overgrowth, which allows for early beta-testing to the game, and a super-secret Bat Cave forum to discuss Overgrowth. So head over to their site at http://www.wolfire.com to pre-order or keep up with their blog, which they update often about graphics plateaus.
In closing, keep the wise words of Jeff in mind:
"Give us money," Wolfire, LLC
