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Many people in the games industry think the word "indie" stands for "financially independent", and indeed this is something that a lot of indie game developers care about a lot. Although it is an important topic, I think we should care about it less: being indie should be about creative independence, not about financial independence. You might argue that one is impossible without the other: if someone is funding your game then of course that someone is also influencing your creative decisions. However, what a lot of people don't seem to realize is that no one funding your game is also a big influence on your creative freedom. You will need some way to get food and pay the rent if you want to spend a significant amount of time making your game the best you can. Disclaimer: this post is only targeted at those who want to make a living making games. If you are making games as a hobby in your spare time, then please ignore this post and do whatever you want! ^_^...

My game Proun was recently 'cloned' by an iOS game called Unpossible . Unpossible isn't the first 'clone' of Proun: games like Synesthetic and Polyrider also copy the core gameplay and many obstacle shapes. Polyrider even goes so far as to copy-paste my main marketing text (DOH!). However, the timing of Unpossible is much more painful as Proun itself is also finally coming to iOS (and Android and 3DS): together with Engine Software I am working on a bigger and better Proun+. Proun+ coming to iOS means that it will be a direct competitor of its alleged clone Unpossible. I saw quite a bit of controversy online about whether Unpossible is a clone or not and whether that would be bad or not, so here is my own take on the matter. I think most people are worrying way too much about most clones. The only clones that should be considered a big problem are direct rips that add nothing and are clearly only intended as a moneygrab. Most infamous clones are not of this typ...

For the extended soundtrack of Proun+ I am composing a series of short sketches for grooves for the new songs. I already posted seven of them a couple of weeks ago and today I present the final six. From here on I will select the best ones and start turning them into real songs. I would love to hear your opinions on these, since that will help us choose which to expand on. Keep in mind that these are quick digital sketches. The final soundtrack will be played entirely by live instruments and produced by professional musician Arno Landsbergen , so they will sound much better just because of the real instruments and good production. The one below is pretty different from the rest. Arno and I wrote " Groove Sketch L " together and Arno recorded it live. This means that the sound is much better right away, making a comparison to the rest difficult. It also shows that everything is better on a real Hammond organ: what an awesome sound these things have! The Mellotron halfway (st...

A short blogpost this time, with a small but valuable lesson that we learned at Ronimo a couple of years ago. At some point we figured it would be wise to make two artists make designs for an important character, and then from all the designs they make choose the best. At first glance this looks like a really good idea: two people will come up with a much wider range of designs and the chances of reaching something really good are a lot higher than with one artist. However, there is a gigantic downside as well: in a sense making this design becomes a competition, and one of the two artists will lose. This can be incredibly demotivating, especially if an artists 'loses' a couple of times in a row. So we decided to not do this again, and just give a single character to a single artist to design. That artist makes a lot of different designs, everyone can give feedback and in the end we choose from his concepts. We can still have variation and something to choose, but whatever is ...

At Ronimo we strongly believe in involving the entire team as much as possible in the creative process of game development. No matter whether someone is a lead, a developer or an intern, everyone's opinion is valuable. This is, however, an incredibly difficult thing to do. In the past months we had 16 people working in our office. That means sixteen different opinions, and even just understanding each of them is already incredibly difficult, especially when it comes to difficult-to-explain graphical concepts. Let alone if you want those 16 people to agree, or to least all feel like their voice has been heard and seriously weighed in. There are two big problems involved in this, and this blogpost outlines a method that tries to work around both: -A decision might be made without really taking everyone's opinion into account. -The process might take endlessly, as everyone has a different opinion and we keep trying to find a middle ground. So today I would like to talk about the ...

Last November my game Proun won a Dutch Game Award for Best Original Game Design. When I received the award, I grabbed the microphone and did a short speech, which Control Magazine then asked me to write that into a column. Which I did! The Dutch version is currently on their website and in the magazine, and here is the English translation. The Dutch games industry is doing really well. More developers than ever before! But still, if you look for truly special Dutch games, you will find painfully few. Testament to this is that at the last Dutch Game Awards, two student games and a hobby game were nominated for Best Original Game Design. Where are the companies? So many developers, so few people who create their own concepts. It's as if we have all become entrepeneurs, and left our passion and creativity at the door. I think this is because many Dutch developers are afraid to follow their heart. With all these talented people, there must be so many good ideas floating around! Yet ...