Here we are, back with another developer interview! This time with KneeHat Games
the creator of Space Color Bird. Before we start we’d like to thank the KneeHat Games
Team for participating in our interview and for answering all of our geeky questions! Thanks!
…and without further ado, our interview begins…
The Interview
/// Thanks for taking the time to talk to us about Space Color Bird! Could you kick-start this interview by telling us a little about your studio, yourself, and what drew you into the gaming industry?
Hi, my name is Nihat and I decided to call my studio Kneehat Games which is a play on words with my name. From this name comes the pixel art logo, which was my first attempt at trying to draw a character using pixel art.
I’m a big lover of games, I collected lots of consoles over the years and the fun I get from gaming has always stayed. During this time I kept asking myself how hard it could be to create a game, from this interest I started studying Computer Science and finished my first game.
/// Ok, let’s start talking about Space Color Bird. What are the highlights of your latest release?
Space Color Bird is my first ever published game. This game challenges the player to be quick in decision making and be fast with their fingers in order to match colors with obstacles.
The interesting fact is, everyone can play it, but in order to achieve high scores, there is a global multiplier that gets incremented only with the ring obstacle and with a green powerup star. The game is very easy to pick up but hard to master.
/// What was the core idea or inspiration behind Space Color Bird? And perhaps more importantly, where do you find inspiration for your games in general?
The core idea was taken from the very successful game “Flappy Bird”, which is a great start for a first game when learning to create one.
Since I already had experience with other unpublished games, I had the idea of making a color matching game (I like colors in games 😃) using this mechanic.
The first game was actually only rings and a bird. From there the iterative process started, and I changed up the game many, many times adding features that made it a completely new game. Power-ups allow the endless experience to change and affects the world as well as the characters. Lots of birds can be bought using the golden coins collectible during gameplay.
In general, I don’t have a formula when it comes to coming up with new ideas, but a helpful exercise for me is to open a blank Unity project and write down an idea I had during the day. Sometimes interesting mechanics become a reality and from there a fully fledged game can be born.
/// How long was Space Color Bird in development for? And are there any interesting and/or exciting moments or experiences you would like to share with us from that time?
The idea started one year ago. From there the first prototype came along in 3 weeks. After that, I had taken some time for school and started again some months later. I added new features whenever possible and I just decided to keep doing this until I had something I was satisfied with. An interesting experience was when I first showed the game to some friends. Their reaction was helpful to continue the process since they already found the game interesting and fun to play.
/// What software, developer-tools, or black-magic(?) did you use when making Space Color Bird? Is there anything you would like to share with the developers who read Edamame Reviews?
I used Unity3D as the game engine, Audacity to record some audio, and Photoshop for the assets. Unfortunately no black-magic was involved, otherwise, I would have published the game immediately after I came up with the idea 😅
Some advice I have would be to use .psd files in the project since that would allow faster changes in the assets when necessary.
/// Is there any secret “developer-advice” you can give our lucky players who read this interview?
I would advise developers to start early in the process of creating a game starting from an idea, because if you want it or not the game is gonna change a lot of times, so you better start early and get to work.
But please before starting consider all the main features of your game and every time you implement new features spend some time making a scalable architecture for your game.
One problem I had was going from having only one obstacle to wanting to add new ones. I didn’t think of adding so many, and this made my code a bit messy and it became hard to change. So I had to spend some time to refactor all that, which I could have avoided by thinking beforehand (but not everyone is perfect).
/// What can we expect to see in Space Color Bird or from KneeHat Games
in the not so distant future? What do we have to look forward to next?
Since I love creating games, and I always come up with very interesting ideas you can surely expect to see new games from me. Since I also would like to help others creating games I might also add more content to my YouTube channel (which has only the trailer of my first game right now).
I was also getting a lot of feedback from Space Color Bird, so updates can be expected 😃
/// Lastly, is there anything you would like to say to our awesome team of Writers, Developers, and Supporters who keep Edamame Reviews up and running?
First of all, I’m really thankful to be able to be part of this community and having such a beautiful opportunity to express myself through this interview.
I thank all the writers, developers and supporters for the great work they are doing and I hope to be able to give more support in the future to show all my appreciation. Thanks ❤️
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