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Feb 11 2011

Interview Vlambeer – Unboxing the crate

Posted by Shifty in Game Design, indie, Interview, tags: , , , , , ,

supercratebox_3

Time has come for a great change on ShiftyBlog ! I decided to make it goes English … for several reasons but it doesn’t matter. To celebrate this, here comes a great interview : Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman answered my questions about their studio Vlambeer and Super Crate Box (SCB) right after their nomination to the Excellence in Design at the 2011′s edition of the Independent Game Festival.

If you don’t know what is SCB you must play it now ! However here is a trailer and let me explain it a bit : SCB is a plateform shooting game inside a closed arena where you have to survive in front of enemies waves.

To defend your self you have several weapons at disposal, each one with different effects (fire range, amount of damages, etc). You can wear one weapon at a time. If you want to change it you have to pick up a crate. No score, the score is the number of crates you have picked up. Are you starting to understand ? Well, let’s get started with the interview :)

Shifty: First of all can you present who is behind Vlambeer and what is your respective background ?
Vlambeer exists out of business guy and developer Rami Ismail and designer Jan Willem Nijman. Rami started playing games since the original Commander Keen, and from there developed his skills through space simulations and adventure games. Jan Willem has started playing games since the likes of Half Life and Warcraft II and recently began a life as as prolific indie game designer. He has a preference for minimalistic gamedesign, creating games with names as ’10800 zombies’ and ‘pro killer man’. He loves games with names like ‘Nikujin’ and ‘Flywrench’.

What is the story of Super Crate Box ? How did everything starts ?SuperCrateBox_01
Super Crate Box started 8 months ago with a really simple prototype. Actually, Super Crate Box is the main reason for the existence of Vlambeer. One day, while Jan Willem was playtesting his prototype of a really ugly, very difficult but really unique game called ‘Crates’, Rami ran into him and proposed a cooperation to further the development of the game. For six months we were busy with our education as a game designer and other projects – after those months we decided to take a plunge and start our studio. We worked really hard on the game, its accessibility and its progression – for the polish we got freelancer artists Paul Veer and Roy Nathan de Groot and musician Eirik Suhrke aboard to help out. That’s when the game started coming together as it is now.

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