Ayngaran Vamatheva from Neptune Interactive was kind enough to answer a few questions about their latest game the Castle Game, as well as developing games in Toronto. You can purchase Castle Game on PS4 right now in North America, and the game launches in Europe on August 19th.
TorontoGameDevs: Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and Neptune Interactive? How big are you guys, where did you get your start?
Ayngaran: My name is Ayngaran Vamatheva, though I usually go by Seelan so most people know me by that. Neptune Interactive Inc. is my company which I started back in March 2009 after making the first game we ever released, called 7 Cities TD. It was a tower defense game for the iPhone and iPod Touch, back when there weren't too many of those. The cool thing about it was that it had RPG-like stats and experience levels, which were not found in any other tower defense games at the time. The game was featured by Apple and a lot of people seemed to really liked it. I developed the game with a couple of artist friends on the side, while working at a film production studio on a feature film as a software developer. I been wanting to develop and release games for a long time, with doing mods for Unreal, Starcraft, my own game engines, and even worked at triple A studios before the film gig. After the surprising success of 7 Cities TD, we released another game called Tap-Fu, again for iPhone, which was inspired Karateka. The cool thing about Tap-Fu was the gesture-based fighting using touch controls. I also developed and released few more mobile games, all of which were made on the side while I worked as a software developer at bigger firms. For a long time now, I been wanting to dive into making games full-time and finally had a chance to do so with the Castle Game. We partnered with Clapfoot Inc., another indie studio, got some funding from OMDC, and decided to go at it. There were 2 core folks on the development (myself and an artist). We brought in few more folks, all from the Toronto area, to help out with various parts of the game.
TorontoGameDevs.com: What's the elevator pitch for The Castle Game? What has you most excited about it?
The Castle Game has always been about building your castle and defending it. Now that can be understood in many ways, especially with the barrage of Clash of Clans clones out there. But it is at the core, a tower defense game with some unique elements. I've been a long-time fan of strategy and tower defense games, so I wanted to make something that is simple, fun to play, and throws a few curveballs. This idea of taking something and adding some unique elements has been my design philosophy for all my games. The most exciting part about the Castle Game is the many variety of ways to beat each level. All 15 levels are different in terms of layout and available defenses so each level can be beaten in different ways. From watching people play, streaming, YouTube videos, I have seen some interesting and sometimes really clever ways to beat the levels. This has been our goal from the start, to add in a Minecraft-like open playing style. I hope we get to see some more crazy and clever defensive setups in the future.
