Popular Mechanics (South Africa)
RETRO ADVENTURE GAMES
Forget Call of Duty – RAGS are making a big comeback!
E3 2018 is behind us, and one of the annual event’s most important game announcements, CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077, left us all wanting more. It also, however, left some of us wanting, well, less. Less in the sense that we’re longing for the days when video games weren’t all about bullets, blood and explosions. The level of cringeworthy violence in video games is casting a shadow on the industry, and research has shown that 18+ video games can sometimes lead to antisocial behaviour, including increased aggression and decreased empathy.
But gaming has so much more to offer. Adventure games, for one, teach puzzle solving, and offer interactive stories, exploration, mini-games, and the clever manipulation of inventories and objects in the world around you. They create an immersive space where a player can return to scenes to speak to the characters they may not have talked to on their first playthrough, or investigate anything they may have missed.
Popular Mechanics sat down with Graeme Selvan, a game developer and the co- owner of Robot Wizard. d. replaced good storytelling with bullets and explosions. People wanted to be taken away on a fantastic adventure; point-and- click adventures are the perfect medium for that. It’s also a way to showcase great art and music, and that’s what we’re aiming to do with Jengo.’
Selvan grew up playing legendary point-and- click adventures: The Curse of Monkey Island and Full Throttle, and says he is inspired by gaming greats like Shigeru Miyamoto, Ron Gilbert, and Tim Schafer (who tweeted about bout Jengo and said that it had ad ‘crazy cool art’ – a huge moment oment for the Robo Robot Wizard team).
bursting with colour. Following on from the art is the storytelling. It is a crying shame we don’t see more point-and- click adventures in today’s gaming world. The medium does not really suit violence. The world is full of it, so sometimes it’s a nice breath of fresh air to get something different. As a studio, we want to keep our games accessible. We want people to think again and solve interesting puzzles. Mankind has been telling stories for ages, so let’s continue the tradition.’
Jengo is a point-and- click in the purest old-school tradition, packed full of puzzles and mysteries. You put your mouse pointer somewhere, clickety- click and something cool happens. But the idea game actually came to life when Selvan read the 2011 science-fiction novel Ready Player One, the debut of American author Ernest Cline, and saw the resemblance to stories like Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz.
Creating a game in South Africa hasn’t been easy for the Robot Wizard team. Their crowd-funded campaign on Fig failed to reach its target. ‘It was very unfortunate for us and a massive setback for the team. We managed to raise $42 900 out of our projected $140 000. Thanks to not hitting the mark, we get nothing,’ says Selvan. ‘Game development in South Africa isn’t an easy task. The biggest problem we face is time and money. I am a father with a full-time day job. My business partner, Louis du Pisani finds himself in a similar situation, minus the child. We make the game after work into the early hours. It is brutal!’
What has worked for Jengo is marketing. Selvan, with his eight years of experience working in the video-game industry, and Du Pisani, who has worked in broadcast media his entire career, work well here. ‘ You really must sell your product offshore and not focus on building up your audience in South Africa. Thankfully, we were picked up internationally by a publisher called Playdius Entertainment, which is based in France.’
As a dad with little time to game, Selvan loves the flexibly of Nintendo’s Switch and sees how it could be the perfect console for future point-andclick adventure properties. The Robot Wizard team engaged with Nintendo and will be concentrating on bringing Jengo to the handheld console. ‘ The Nintendo Switch is a stunning piece of hardware. Being a parent affords me less time to get in front of the TV to game. The Switch allows me to game on the go and fits perfectly into my busy schedule. Nintendo is a lot friendlier to developers these days,’ explains Selvan, ‘so it’s easier to port our game to it’.