The core of 17-BIT: Borut Pfeifer, Jake Kazdal and Ben Vance
We recently had a chance to conduct a quick interview with Jake Kazdal of 17-BIT, the creators of the much hyped, turn based strategy game Skulls of the Shogun. Jake told us about his experiences with working on the game, his stance on Windows Phone as a gaming platform, and gave us some hints as to what the future holds for Skulls of the Shogun and 17-BIT.
You’ve been working on three different versions of the game pretty much simultaneously. Have you had any big challenges with this development strategy?
We’ve had to spend a lot of time tuning the 3 different UI’s into account, while developing all three simultaneously. I would prefer to do one at a time next game!
What specific things did you have to consider when designing the Windows Phone version?
We were surprised with the performance, it was much less optimization than we would have forecast. The textures had to be resized lower, but because the resolution of the screen is lower you really can’t tell. A few of our shaders had to be redone but overall its basically the exact same game as the PC/XBLA version!
What are your thoughts on Windows Phone as a platform for video games and game development?
Microsoft is taking the multi-screen approach very seriously, and we’re proud to be part of that first wave. I think the future of the Windows 8 phone being very easy to work cross platform with Xbox and Win 8 will mean more great, console-like experiences on phone. My biggest dream is for Microsoft to release a “Gamers Phone” that has buttons, dpads and access to XBLA! That would be the go-to gaming experience for me over everything!
