Brandonite launching video game

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This article was published 28/09/2019 (2186 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Brandon man is ready to launch the video game he made with a friend.

Shea Kennedy, 28, works at Maple Leaf Foods as a maintenance planner by day, but has been making a role-playing video game called “Alien Squatter” with his friend, Andrew Hagen, for the last year.

Kennedy has handled the music, sound effect, art and minor programming duties while the Chicago-based Hagen has taken care of the story and the bulk of the programming.

The pair first met on an Internet forum for game developers about a decade ago.

This is the second game they’ve made together. The first, called “Void Pyramid,” was released for free in 2016. That game is set in a future where the Egypt has reclaimed the status of its ancient kingdoms and spread its civilization to space.

According to Kennedy, “Void Pyramid” had a small online following he hopes comes along for his new project.

“Since it was a free game, a lot of people tried it out,” Kennedy said. “Some people made fan art for it. Last time I checked, which was a couple months ago, I think it had 60,000 downloads.”

“Alien Squatter” is set on an alien planet. The player plays as one of three different characters, all with the goal of escaping the slums they live in and reaching the part of the planet where privileged people live.

Gameplay is described by Kennedy as narrative-focused rather than combat-focused as some role-playing games are.

“The new game is more about building relationships with other characters in the game,” Kennedy said.

A play-through of the game can be completed in two hours, but Kennedy said completionists who want to experience everything the game has to offer will probably need between six to eight hours to get through all the content and multiple endings.

The game’s artwork is greatly inspired by the Mother series of role-playing games by Nintendo, Kennedy said. Modern gamers have been exposed to characters and locales from the games through appearances in the “Super Smash Bros.” series.

Those games have had a cult following in North America, with dedicated fans translating “Mother 3” from Japanese into English because it never received a release outside Japan.

The three games in the Mother series take a surrealist look at North American culture through the lens of its Japanese developers, which is reflected in the games’ art.

Narratively, Kennedy described the game as dark but with a lot of comedic elements.

Hagen and Kennedy’s game is scheduled for launch as soon as online game storefront Steam processes their request to go live, which Kennedy expects to happen sometime around Oct. 1. “Void Pyramid” is still available for free on Steam.

Windows, macOS and Linux users will be able to play the game. Kennedy said the price for the game will be US$5 and then converted into the equivalent price for countries outside the United States.

When “Void Pyramid” was released, Steam had a system where indie gamers had to submit their games to a polling site where users could vote on what they thought should be allowed to enter the storefront.

It was easier to get “Alien Squatter” to get on Steam. All it required was a $100 fee to submit their game for consideration by the platform.

The next step will be to release the game for smartphones running the Android operating system. Kennedy hopes it will soon be available on the Google Play store.

At this point, Kennedy doesn’t foresee the game being ported to game consoles.

While Kennedy hopes the game is successful, he’s not sure he wants to become a full-time video game developer right away. He plans on taking a year off from development and would like to develop a game by himself in the future.

» cslark@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @ColinSlark