Interviews

Released on January 25, 2012 by Cheerful Ghost

Developed by Cheerful Ghost

Cheerful Ghost interviews people in gaming that do amazing work. We interview video game designers, developers, musicians and find out how they bring the magic to what they do.

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In the PC community Garry's Mod is a well known sandbox game built off the Half-life 2 engine that allows you to do... mostly anything you can think of. The game is still very popular and much awesome strangeness encircles its community. Facepunch Studios, the company behind Garry's Mod has a new game in development called Rust, an open world survival game. Interested in this I hit up Garry Newman to talk to him a bit about Garry's Mod and Rust.

I want to thank him and @Travis for taking part in the interview and I wish Facepunch Godspeed to Rust 1.0!

jdodson: Garry’s Mod was released in 2004 and came to Steam in 2006. Most people don’t work on a project for 9 years,... Read All


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I heard about Analgesic Production's first game Anodyne when it hit the Pirate Bay. When it made it to the popular Torrent site they dropped the price of the game to help promote it and the story of what happened broke in the gaming community. I picked up the Anodyne game+score bundle during the Pirate Bay promotion.

Anodyne is a fantastic game that really immersed me in its landscape and gameplay. To this day when I listen to the score on my iPhone I am immediately transported back into the game and its a really magical experience. When I read on Twitter that Sean and Jon of Analgesic Productions were working on a new game and it was taking shape I contacted them.... Read All


In a world of impossibly difficult rogue-likes FTL ups the challenge but dares to be fun and unique. One large element in the mixture of FTL's awesomery is the score. From the opening track of Ben Prunty's "Space Cruise" to the more etherial "Engi," the score is important to building the overall feel of an open and lonely universe. I picked up an FTL bundle on Steam that included the score and was impressed with Ben's work.

I contacted Ben and he was kind enough to answer some questions I had about FTL and the other stuff he is up to right now. He just launched a pre-order for his new album "Curious Merchandise" and has two preview tracks "Fractal Wheel" and "Swamp... Read All


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For me Awesomenauts is the perfect MOBA. It's accessible, easy to pick up and fun. It takes the MOBA formula, strips it back to its best elements, tosses in humor and some great art to make a seriously addicting game. After picking it up as part of the Humble Bundle 8 I couldn't put it down. As such I wanted to talk to Ronimo about the game and know a bit more about it from behind the scenes.

As luck would have it Ronimo also just announced a new Kickstarter for the new Awesomenauts: Starstorm. The expansion looks to add 3 new classes, spectator mode, global chat, twin-stick controller support & some new music. The backer levels are pretty intense so if you are an... Read All


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I wasn’t winning with the same strategy I used in real life. I figured even if I started out with a bad economic situation I could win on the merits of making the right moral choices alone. I was wrong. The way to win in Paul Vorvick’s newest game isn’t to save and be conservative, you need to swing high and stomp everyone else into the dirt.

When I heard that local game designer Paul Vorvick was showing “Privilege: The Game of Economic Inequality” at the New York at the Games for Change Festival I was very interested in checking it out. When he came back to Portland I contacted him and we met at a local pub so he could show me the game and talk about it. As we chatted... Read All


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Terraria is an amazing world-building game released by Relogic in 2011. It's surprisingly deep, and through many playthroughs I've clocked hundreds of hours into it. We've had a few Cheerful Ghost Terraria servers, and we're all looking forward to the release of 1.2, which promises to change the game more than any update has so far. I recently asked Andrew Spinks (redigit) some questions about the games past and near future.

Thanks for your time Andrew! Terraria is an amazing game, still making news long after release. How did the journey start for you? What was the basic idea that led to the game?
Hey Travis. No problem, man! Really, the basic concept was just me... Read All


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StarQuail Games recently released Tiny Barbarian DX after a successful Kickstarter campaign. After checking out the game I wanted to send some questions to StarQuail Games about the game and all manner of awesomery. I was put in contact with Michael Stearns the lead designer of Tiny Barbarian DX.

jdodson: I want to thank you for taking the time to talk with me. Tiny Barbarian DX was successfully Kickstarted and Chapter 1 was recently delivered to backers and the general public. How are you sitting right now after the dust has settled and people have had a chance to play it and weigh in on the game?

Michael Stearns: I’m finally starting to settle down! Getting ready for... Read All


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Unity is the game engine and set of tools that is widely becoming the game development platform of choice. If you have checked out many of our Cheerful Ghost interviews, Unity is quite popular in new Indie Game Development. Since Unity is becoming a cornerstone of how games are made I decided to contact Unity Technologies and ask them a few questions about what they were up to. I was put in contact with Aurore Dimopoulos the Unity Community Manager.

Since Unity is a engine used by game developers I asked a local game designer to help me with the interview. Clifton is the lead designer of Clobbr, an upcoming mobile puzzle game written in Unity.

jdodson: Unity is an... Read All


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Recently Chris from TRU FUN Entertainment answered some questions for us about Rad Raygun, currently on XBox Live Indie Games, being released for PC soon, and currently in the Greenlight process for a Steam release.

He was also gracious enough to send us along a review copy, which I played through. For the price, anyone with an XBox should check this game out. The gameplay is similar to Mega Man, with some other inspiration here and there from other titles, including Tetris. Yes, Tetris. Getting the hang of placing the pieces takes some time, but it's a great homage.

The art style perfectly represents the visual style of the original GameBoy, with some amusing cutscenes... Read All


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Solar 2 is a beautiful game where you start as an asteroid, gain mass to become and planet and finally a black hole. The game play and score are mesmerizing and after I got it as part of the last bundle I was hooked. The made a pretty large impression on me and as such decided to hit up creator Jay Watts and ask him a few questions.

I want to thank Jay for taking the time to talk with me and wish him well on his next project which at this point, is a secret to everybody. Well, except Jay. :D

jdodson: I just wanted to start by saying “thank you” for making Solar 2. The game is very fluid and as I play it I find myself going to some kind of zen place with the music and... Read All