And thus, Twoplus Games was born

About two years ago, I went to AMAZE, joined MakeGamesSA.
Nine months ago, I showed a prototype (my first substantial one) at a meetup for the first time, Battle Blocks Bear Chuck.
Five months ago, I showed Bear Chuck at rAge Expo.
A month ago, we presented Dead Run to MakeGamesSA.
Today, Dead Run is on its way to completion and release.

It’s been such an incredible journey, and there’s so much more to do, so much further to go:

Much of the wisdom in MakeGamesSA taught us that we needed to take Dead Run to the world under a brand - because no matter whether you make money or not from creating your game, the most valuable thing you can build your act of creation, is a brand. It’s the thing that builds the story and continuity around creations, and not individuals. It allows the games to flow from one to another, and not live or die by an individual.

And thus, Twoplus Games was born.

Twoplus Games site
@TwoplusGames on Twitter
TwoplusGames on Facebook

What does Twoplus mean? Besides the obvious link to my name (let’s just get the pun out of the way, it had to be done :P), it means several important things to me.

Twoplus players

I’ve always loved the old days of gaming - do you remember Bomberman? Tetris Attack? Super Puzzle Fighter? Those games on your old SNES, where you spend hours perfecting that perfect move so you can beat your buddie/s one more time in those 5am marathon sessions? When you screamed and groaned when your perfect strategy was foiled by either dumb luck or superior play?

I loved the spirit of what I call couch versus gaming. Two people, or more, duking it out. I wanna make THAT. Modern examples like Towerfall and Samurai Gunn really captured the essence of that, and I wanna make experiences like those.

Twoplus ideas

Then I’ve always wondered about genres and mashups. Bear Chuck came from mashing Angry Bird style tossing of things with my favourite versus game genre, the arcade puzzler, as well as throwing platformers for good measure. Alchemically combining two or more ideas together? That’s also what Twoplus is about.

Twoplus spirit

There’s also a bit of a philosophical thing going here - I’ve never believed in being number one. I wanna be number two. Being number one often means playing dirty and doing “whatever it takes”, and the idea of it to me lacks “balance”. I’d much rather be pretty damn good and not have to be unnecessarily perfectionist, as diminishing returns guarantee that your time will be better spent on creating something else than to take that 99% that you’re working on to 100% with another 2 years of your life.

Come visit Twoplus Games on our (under construction) site, on Twitter and on Facebook 🙂

A toast - to gaming excellence! 🙂