Finalist Interview: Bork’s Adventure

February 9 2010, 9:09pm

Bork's Adventure, a Finalist in the Macworld 2010 GameSalad Challenge. Bork’s Adventure was selected by our panel of judges as one of five Finalist games in the Macworld 2010 GameSalad Challenge. In the second of a series of interviews with the Finalists and Featured International Exhibitors, the game’s creator Elie Hang (eliehang) shares the story of XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. Haven’t played Bork’s Adventure yet? Try it now! Who are the people behind Bork’s Adventure? My name is Elie Hang and I reside in Alpharetta, Georgia. I also have Justin Knapich here, who is also a huge part of this game. As of now, we are trying to create our own games and hoping to have our own company sometime soon. Speaking of that, we just recently got the rights to a studio name called Black Grass Games. I started working in the game industry back in 2005. I worked as a 3D artist for companies like Tripwire Interactive who made “Red Orchestra”, I also worked at Hirez Studios who just released a MMO called “Global Agenda.” Justin was also an animator at Hirez Studios. My last job was at Gorilla Systems who focused more on games for the Nintendo DS and Wii games. Have you been using GameSalad for long? What advantage do you feel it gives you over other development tools? I’ve only been using GameSalad for a little over a month after I found out there was going to be a competition, and so far it’s been real fun! The advantage that Gamesalad offers is that you don’t really need any programmers. If you are an artist like myself and have no experience in programming, then this is your program. It does require a little logic here and there but it’s nothing too extreme. Other than that, it’s pretty easy to pick up and use. How did you come up with the idea for Bork’s Adventure? (Is it Adventure, or Adventures?) Haha! For now, it would be Adventure. Hopefully if the game goes well, you will definitely see Adventures. Well, the original idea was to have a ninja instead of an alien, but aliens seem to be more interesting and fun to play with so we went with that. Growing up playing platformers and shoot-em-ups always inspired me to make game like Bork. We wanted to have a mix of Lifeforce for the NES and Megaman combined, where you switch perspective in different levels and pick up weapons as you beat bosses. How were all the members of your team involved in making Bork’s Adventure? The game was made by a small team of me, Justin, and three other guys. I did the main Bork design, the backgrounds for the game, and worked on the program logic. Justin is the full-time animator, and the other guys helped with GameSalad content, concepts, and music editing. It took us from the start of the competition till the deadline, and we worked from the moment we woke up until sleep time. You could say we worked for a month straight. It was hard at first because we had to get used to the program as fast as we could. I watched tutorial videos and looked at a few examples from the web. I also asked a few questions on the forum, which I really thank you for and truly helped me finish the game on time. There was a lot of trial and error with both the gameplay and the filesize. We were trying to release a version that was under 10MB and ended up going over, so we sacrificed a lot of content. But no worries as everything will be shown in the full version. A different perspective on Bork's Adventure. I notice that your title screen shows Bork sitting in his captain’s chair playing a more “primitive” shoot-em-up game. Any comment on this? Haha! Well Justin actually made it to add some humor to the character, but at the same time, we were thinking of many ideas from it. Ideas like a mini game where you can win prizes or maybe a tutorial, but you’ll see that real soon. What was the most fun part about making this game? What was the most challenging part? The fun part of making this game is knowing that you’re making a game for everyone to enjoy, as well as making the game that you always wanted to make. I think the most challenging part would be trying to fit too much content into so little time. You tend to lose a lot of time trying to figure out what you want in and out when it comes down to limitations.
Where do you see Bork’s Adventure going in the future? Definitely to the App Store after we finish the game and get it stable. We are trying to polish the game to make it as clean and fun as possible. We’re also planning to add free updates to keep the game interesting. More planets, more weapons, and more upgrades for the ship. Anyone you’d like to thank? Well first I would like to thank GameSalad for this great program, Bork’s Adventure wouldn’t exist without you. I would like to thank the GameSalad forum members for their great help and I would like to thank my friends for working really hard on this project with me. Thank you! Thanks, Elie! Play Bork’s Adventure online. Like Bork’s Adventure? Vote for this game to win the Macworld 2010 GameSalad Challenge by tweeting #gamesalad #bork along with why you think it’s awesome!