Amazing Soul Games Studio: Earning your own identity
A country known for their beautiful people, amazing coffee, athleticism and historic sites. Colombia has suffered misspelling issues on the country’s name even till today and they launched a campaign about this particular issue. “It’s Colombia Not Columbia” a 2013 campaign which was for wanting to revise the imperfect vision numerous people across the globe have of their country. This crusade was for the thought that individuals incorrectly spell the nation’s’ name. Colombians made this campaign as a result of the progress that the nation was experiencing in its economy, governmental issues, gaming industry and other businesses however outside, individuals are still centered around their past – on issues like brutality and drug trafficking. There are people who are aware that Colombia has produced artists like Shakira and Juanes, widely acclaimed painters like Fernando Botero, scholars like Gabriel García Marquez and soccer star James Rodríguez and cyclist Nairo Quintana.
As a nation of under 50 million people, Colombia is moderately large country but its game development scene is substantially smaller. The gaming industry in Colombia is now seeing its success in the recent years. Colombia’s game talent hasn’t had much international recognition yet, but that’s starting to change as more of this talent are ready to take the gaming industry to another level. This brings to the interview at hand with our own Colombian team not Columbian. We sat down with the game developers from the Colombian team – Jorge Castaño (Game Designer/Producer), Daniel Escorce (3D Artist/Game Designer), Juan Pablo Urango (Programmer) and Diego Ossa (Programmer).
How did you guys become a team?
Daniel : In the beginning me and Jorge became friends because we had group of friends playing role playing games and tabletop war games and we have been friends for 15 years and then met Juan in a workshop for video games in a university , becoming a small group together but this was years before the business part. We met Diego during diploma, he joined the team after that.
Diego : I met Jorge when he was just 12 year’s old that time we played role play games such as lord of the rings then we met again after a while in Diploma for video game development and started working together.
How did you come up with the name Amazing souls games?
Jorge : At first we tried to call ourselves Soul games because we wanted to make games with soul and those games that have all the content we use to dream of, when we were kid such as dragon fighter or wizard etc. and as game developers we wanted to recreate that with our games. So at that time we started pitching with the team name Soul games but once there was a client that said our name didn’t portray a strong picture, we just joke around and said our games not only have souls, they have amazing souls. We noticed the name was catchy, so we decided to keep the name and called ourselves Amazing Souls games as we are amazing people and we make amazing games.
Tell us about your game?
Jorge : We have couple of games in our catalogue but right now we are working in a mobile runner game. The story is about a warrior and his princess gets kidnapped by an evil arch enemy and he runs around the kingdom trying to save her from different situations and this is also a path of growing for the character and this game is called Warrior Rush.
How long did it take to create this game and what is the concept of the game?
Jorge : Form the early concept of the game, it took around 8 months. We started thinking about making a really simple game but always the evolution of games come from let’s make a simple game then turns out to be not so simple. So we came up with the idea, to make the simplest runner game, basically a two month game and for the story we wanted a fantasy theme. The story is cliché for a reason because even though it is cliché, people still love the story about the prince saving a princess and fighting evil to do it.
Daniel : The twist is the humor in the storyline, it is still catchy and cheesy but you get humor in the characters, they say funny things while playing.
How did you find out about gamefounders?
Jorge : We saw a Facebook post online that said ‘’Apply Now” and also because someone in Brazil told us to apply for it as they already did.
What do you want to learn and have learned from gamefounders?
Jorge : We were not expecting a lot of things from GameFounders beside the connections. We thought GameFounders was like, just meet the mentors and that’s it because we have experience with other accelerator programs and those were very simple. We were gladly surprised when we arrived at the GameFounders that it was not simply meeting mentors and insights on the business part of the industry but more about keeping the contacts and nurturing the relationships with those around you and having contacts to avoid future problems and getting through them.
Daniel : So far we learned a big scope of the business not just the technical part that we sort of we knew beforehand but now we know more about not only how the game functions on mobile but also the business part which is important. For now we are trying to grasp the knowledge to approach the publishers and the investors. We were not focused on monetizing before but after few sessions with mentors, we are a bit concerned now and we are trying to search, implement and compare in the market so yeah it is important.k,
So if you were not a game developer, what would you be?
Diego: If I’m not a game developer, I would be a mad scientist or maybe a genetic scientist.
Daniel: I would be mix between a sailor and artist.
Juan: I would like to be a musician and that would be cool.
Jorge: My dream was always to be writer, toy designer, astronaut and many things.