Interview: Taylor Hajash from Arcane Pixel

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I recently got a chance to catch up with Taylor Hajash from Arcane Pixel to discuss the release of his new game Tiny Galaxy.  Tiny Galaxy will hit the Nintendo Wii U eShop early 2015 and looks to be a treat for Nintendo Platformer fans.  Here’s what Taylor had to say:

1.  How long have you been developing games?

I started out about 2 years ago, teaching myself through online tutorials. I had bought my girlfriend a tablet and she kept playing all these games on it, but they were all the “freemium” buy more lives or wait 24 hours garbage (those games really tick me off). So I looked into how to start making my own games wanting to make a game she could just play. I credit BlinkWorks Media for helping me seriously get into making games after I watched Indie Game: The Movie. The next day after watching the film I found out my school had opened up a video game development degree. It all happened relatively fast, over about a week, where I went from not knowing anything about making games to starting to make my own games.

2.  How many developers are working on Tiny Galaxy?

Technically Im the only developer working on Tiny Galaxy. Im currently in talks with someone to work on the music for the game. I just got his samples in and they’re all pretty awesome, so its looking like Ill be bringing him on board for the music. But as far as art, programming, concept, level design, marketing, PR, the business side and anything else that needs doing… thats all on me haha.

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3.  At first glance, When I look at Tiny Galaxy, I see inspiration from Katamari Damacy and Mario Galaxy.  What games inspired you for Tiny Galaxy?

Ive actually never played Katamari Damacy but I’ve heard good things. Super Mario Galaxy however is a big inspiration, a long with Sonic the Hedgehog and Mega Man. Most of my concepts for games have all focused around space. You can even see it in my website, the horse head nebula is my header image, so that played a pretty big role in the design of Tiny Galaxy.

4.  How would you describe the gameplay of Tiny Galaxy?

Game play for Tiny Galaxy at its heart is a platformer game. If you’re a fan of platformers then you’ll love Tiny Galaxy. When you look at most platformer games, you start at point A, the beginning of the level and run towards the right side of the screen until you reach the end, while avoiding obstacles along the way. In Tiny Galaxy I’ve taken that and basically bent it into a bunch of circular planets. So the player can move 360 degrees around the planets and find different approaches to the levels. Its pretty cool too when you run around a planet and jump to the next planet, the screen rotates to keep the player up right, and the way it looks and moves is pretty awesome!

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5.  What game engine does Tiny Galaxy run on?

Tiny Galaxy is being built in Construct 2, which is an HTML5 engine. The game will run through Nintendo Web Framework.

6.  Do you have any other Wii U games in the works?

Right now aside from Tiny Galaxy, I have 3 games all in the pre-planning stage. I have a small puzzle platformer, a rogue like in the vein of the Legend of Zelda games, and then a big open world full 3d RPG. The RPG game wont be seeing the light of day for a few years though haha.

 

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Author: Anthony DeVirgilis View all posts by
Managing Partner / Editor for Sony/Nintendo I prefer Indies to AAA titles... unless it's Nintendo or Sony Google+ Author