Houston Game Dev

Paul Pridham aka Madgarden | September 30, 2013

TweetInspiring Indie Devs Outside of Houston!

Keeping with the tradition of exploring Devs outside of Houston… HGD was lucky enough to score an interview with every developer’s favorite Canadian, Paul Pridham, also known as  Madgarden. Paul’s recent release Chillaxian has entertained us for hours. His work has been on our radar ever since the nail biting Fargol 2 Kickstarter and we figured there could not be a better outside of Houston Indie developer to investigate. So without further ado we present the Madgarden interview…

HGD:Paul, it is great to virtually hangout with you in Canada on this email page! Huge fan of your work. From Glitch Machine  to the mega punching sensation PunchQuest.  I especially enjoyed your *Vote My Next Project* game called Chillaxian.  The game definitely has a solid retro feel to it with nice motion blur to really give you the feel you are looking at an old CRT monitor. So I have to ask, when is the first time you played a video, computer or electronic game?

MADGARDEN:Thanks!

Hmm, the first time I played a video game, was *probably* at my cousins’ house, they had some sort of PONG machine hooked up to the TV. I was young, so it’s hard to be sure of the timelines. And then again, I very likely played Space Invaders at “some place” in the town I lived in at the time, a little town called Corunna which is just outside of Sarnia, Ontario. And then beyond that I played intermittently whenever I had the chance! Arcade cabinets and cocktail tables in diners and bowling alleys… Space Invaders, Asteroids, Galaxian… those are my earliest memories.

 

HGD:When did you start making games?

MADGARDEN:I was probably around… 10 or so when I started making games on my C64 which we’d gotten for Christmas. I learned BASIC out of the user’s manual that came with it, and started with the simple stuff like Guess A Number etc. Once I learned how to get sprites on the screen and make sounds, it was heaven. Used to hack on my game-idea-of-the-week every weekend and spare moment I had. Text adventures, dungeon games, arcade games (tried cloning Rygar once) and kung fu games were my favorite to try to make.

 

HGD:You just came out with Chillaxian. You have a nice amount of Game Center activity on that game. If I remember right, you made that one in a really good amount of time and had people vote on it. Do you plan to set up other fan request votes?

MADGARDEN:Oh yeah absolutely I want to do more game polls to decide the little game I will make. That was really fun. I’m enjoying the little 1-2 week game projects, it reminds me of my C64 days in a way, heh. 🙂 My next poll will be beatemup-heavy.

 

HGD:Knight Rider or Airwolf? Sorry need this on record.

MADGARDEN:AIRWOLF

 

HGD: This latest teaser for Death Road to Canada, looks fantastic. I believe that is a Rocketcat Games production? Can you tell us anything more about it?

MADGARDEN:Hmm, well the teaser makes it look sort of “action heavy” but it’s not just all about gibbing zombies… in fact that attitude will surely get you killed in the game. These are the classic Dawn of the Dead style zombie hordes, if they get on top of you, you’re pretty much spaghetti. So it is a lot of cautious exploration inside abandoned cities and buildings, searching for supplies, and the ROAD TRIP aspects which has a lot to do with the other team members interacting and making Choose Your Own Adventure style choices that are coloured by individual personalities.

HGD: Perhaps you could show us some more from Death Road to Canada? A special Phone pic of the screen/sprite reveal for DRtC?!?

MADGARDEN:Well I have been posting some little vine snippets of my work on Death Road To Canada… mostly zombie behaviours and animation at this point… here’s my latest one: http://t.co/8TH103HiiK Fairly “Dawn of the Dead” right? Once the zombies finish feeding we’ll probably leave a piranha-style clean-picked skeleton behind, heh.

 

HGD: Thanks for taking the time out to introduce yourself to Houston Game Developers!

MADGARDEN:Thanks guys!

 

In conclusion: 

Paul represents the best of the best when it comes to friendly approachable devs and we are so glad he could take some time to visit with Houston Game Dev about his work. We highly recommend you follow him on twitter @madgarden and support this indie dev, amazing coder, father of 3 and all around bad ass dude by purchasing his work in the app store. You won’t regret a cent of it!

furthermore:

go upvote Death Road to Canada on STEAM!

 

 

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