Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Product not yet rated.
[Japanese koto music]
[Banging on door]
[Jibberish]
Welcome to Haunted Temple!
[Koto music continues]
They call me Grampa. I'm the fixer.
My name is Jake Kazdal. I'm the founder of Haunted Temple Studios.
I'm the director, lead designer, and artist on Skulls of the Shogun.
I'm Ben Vance. I'm a programmer, sometimes designer...
...and...
Sometimes I write things.
I'm Borut, and I'm a designer-slash-programmer on Skulls of the Shogun...
Slash a few other things, but I guess aren't we all.
Haunted Temple Studios is only a couple guys. There are four of us altogether, three in production.
We're a great team, we've all got a variety of strengths and weaknesses,
Between the four of us, we've basically been able to make this game on our own.
We have the benefit of experience of working for big game companies and that kind of thing.
A lot of lessons learned of what not to do.
I believe our game's at Indiecade because we were allowed to make the game we wanted to make.
We had a clarity of vision and a small team that didn't need a lot of time or money.
What it needed was a lot of love and care, and time and effort given to prototyping.
Being able to try the crazy things that we never would have gotten permission to do at a bigger studio.
Only by going through this entire process on our own two wings
we were able to come up with a game we're proud of.
We think it represents a step forward in the genre that we're very proud of.
This game has a lot of heart, a lot of soul, and a lot of love.
Indiecade's kinda like that.
It's funny. In hindsight, it turns out that working at a big studio's easier than indie stuff.
You've got people taking care of everything in every direction.
Here, between the four of us, we've got to do everything.
Much less the game creation, the art, the music, the level design.
Direction, gameplay...you've also got to think about trade shows, and who's running what,
and when and how, and what's that taking away from on the other end...
Who's gonna manage these interviews, and who's getting the press --
Making a small game like this, we can do interesting things a lot faster.
Things that would need meetings with many people attached to them are just three-sentence conversations.
We just get stuff done. Then we talk to each other.
We figure stuff out. And we get mad at each other.
And then we make up. And we hug.
Virtual hugs, usually.
I'm not gonna explain how that works.
We're not afraid to die with honor for the game we want to make!
Kill us, and we won't finish the game and you can't take over the samurai afterlife.
I'm working too hard to answer that question!
Thank you for staying your sword, sir!