Meet our teams
- On 26 July 2018
At the Indietopia HQ, the first teams have started in our Accelerator year program: Tweetal Studios, Spaghetti Games and Sigil Initiative. Who are they, which games inspired them and what game are they creating?
Tweetal Studios
Tobias van Zanten: “I consider myself an energetic caveman that likes to explore all sorts of things. Small things inspire me; like an old man sitting in the rain with an umbrella while taking sips from his beer, or a mysterious cave, forest or town while travelling. Games that inspired me to create my own games range from Megaman to Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee, Rayman 2, Machinarium and Inside. These titles taught me lessons on what makes a game and its sound design great. I feel like a child again while creating weapons with multiple firing options, combo systems, big lasers, detailed yet old school characters, crumbling caves with distant shreeks, rustling forests with soothing strings and fast paced action packed music. Less is more: designing a game around one or a few key gameplay mechanics while still giving it enough depth to keep the player encouraged and challenged. Over the past years I discovered that I love composing atmospheric sounds, ambiences and music in order to amplify the mood. This is why I am looking forward to working on Crimson Resonance, as this project has room for all the aspects that make a game great to me“.
Lars Warink: “If I had the option to fuse markers with my hands, I would. Drawing stuff is my game, especially if it’s on other surfaces than regular ol’ paper. While Cartoon Network has been the biggest (graphical) influence for me, older mythology and architecture define my style right now. Since I grew up with an MSX attached to my head, games play a huge role in my life. Around age 12 I started tinkering around with game making. The most fun for me is bringing drawings to life in-game with code. Creating a monster with slithering tentacles, glowing eyes, dripping teeth, waving tails and elongated claws is jolly good fun. Nothing beats a good 1v1 Super Smash Bros battle. Other games that influenced me are the older Castlevania games, MMORPG’s like Maplestory and FlyFF, Kirby and Wario. Together with Tobias I aim to create a game which fulfills most of these influences, while cranking up the OMG-factor to make the player way more hyped and enthusiastic than appropriately needed. Also, Rayman 2 is the best game of all time. Fight me“.
Spaghetti Games
This team of students from the Hanzehogeschool in Groningen work together to design and develop games. We are inspired by many different studios and their philosophies; our core tennent is about prototyping. As a team, we work best by getting as many ideas and prototypes up and running as fast as possible and see which ones work best. Although we’ve been doing a fair amount of prototyping, we have yet to produce a game that we truly believe has reached its full potential. With the support of Indietopia and their accelerator program, we want to plant a flourishing seed in the games community.
Alexander Boswell: “I’m one of the developers on the team. I’m originally from Thailand and I’m half British. Aside from developing, I enjoy doing narrative work and world building for the games we make, creating a world that players can emphasize with is a goal I have. In my spare time I enjoy going to different cafes and trying out their coffee and tea. Sometimes I eat spaghetti/pasta for a week“.
Alice Ursu: “I’m one of the artists in the team. I’m Romanian and my hobbies include cosplay, music and making sure my house plants don’t die. I started out as an illustrator and then got interested in game art“.
Deandra Basnawi: “I’m one of the artists for the team. I’m Indonesian and I enjoy drawing, over analyzing media and 3D modelling. In my spare time I enjoy playing multiplayer games with the rest of my team members“.
Ewan Fenwick: “I’m one of the programmers on the team. I enjoy long programming sessions on the beach and Code-a Coladas. More seriously I’m an avid climber, sailor and Magic the Gathering player. When I’m not doing any of that stuff I’m the Dungeon Master for the other nerds featured here“.
Nikolas Lanjouw: “I’m the designer. I’m Malaysian and Dutch. In my free time I enjoy cooking international cuisine and looking at ducks ducks. I make games, so I can play other games“.
Although each of us have different individual aspirations, we do agree that we want to create a game that will truly showcase our skills as a team. We want to create games that bring people together as well as let individuals really express themselves. We hope to become an iconic name in the gaming industry, inspiring others to do what we do as well as being transparent in the process of our development.
Sigil Initiative
Nic Rutherford is a game developer from Luton, United Kingdom. He has been developing for over 25 years and first started with BBC Basic as a child. He has worked exclusively for tech start-ups his entire working life. He started up Sigil Initiative and started to work on game development. A passionate gamer as well as developer he is working on his dream project: Fringe Planet. This game is inspired by many hours of playing RimWorld, Dwarf Fortress and Factorio along with a passion for the works of Lovecraft. The game originally started taking form after experimenting with a voxel landscape and multi-layer pathfinding. A bug caused a randomly drifting untextured artefact to start moving around the landscape in a somewhat creepy fashion, causing the inspiration to combine horror with the sandbox simulator genre. The game is incredibly tough and death (or madness) is never far around the corner. With the contacts and the training provided by Indietopia, Nic hopes to turn Sigil Initiative into more than a solo studio. He has been impressed by the insight that Indietopia has already provided and is learning a lot.
Outside of gaming and game development, Nic is an avid astronomer and enjoys brewing his own beer. Additionally he has a passion for both cooking and consuming Indian cuisine. As a fan of all things musical, he enjoys playing bass guitar and regular visits to the opera.
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