Retrola K Ase (By Undercoders) – Indie Feature

I caught up with David to find out more about him, Undercoders, and what drives him to produce such great titles:

Since we started Undercoders we’ve done a little bit of everything, but I guess the genres we’ve covered most have been action (such as the recent Retrola k ase or Angry Ramos), puzzle (Battle of the Elements and iSpot Japan were two titles we had the luck to publish on Nintendo DSi) and quizzes (our Video Games Quiz saga has around 7 sequels!).

On the personal side I’ve always been a big fan of platformers and JRPGs, but having less and less time to game recently I’ve abandoned RPGs and I play fighters instead.

Truth is, the original Ola K ase was more a joke than a game, that we programmed in a couple of days following a silly ongoing joke we had around.  Its popularity took us completely by surprise and we found out that people were achieving crazy scores, so I always thought it would be a good idea to take that game mechanic and make a full-featured game.

I’m a big retrogaming fan and love drawing pixelart, so I recently started making mockups of a retro version of Ola K Ase mixed with some of my favourite classics.  We thought the result was hilarious and maybe it could work as a real game, so we started making it a real game.

Q3.  What makes Retrola different from other platformers?  What special features are there?

Since it’s a touchscreen based game we wanted to keep the simple controls, but at the same time give it all those things we love about our favourite platforming classics: challenging stages; different worlds with a game map; a storyline; an original soundtrack enemies with personality; boss fights etc.  Unfortunately most of these things seem to lack in the smartphone market, so we thought it would be great to have them back in Retrola K Ase.

And also, lots of humour!

 

Q4. The trailer hints that there may be Street Fighter 2-like boss fights – is this true?There are boss fights indeed, but the Street Fighter homage is more on an aesthetic level. Boss battles are actually similar to those found in Alex Kidd in Miracle World, but non-random and with a more contemporary twist 😉

 

Q5.  I’m sure a lot of our readers couldn’t live in a world without burgers, what inspired you to have this as the game’s main theme?

 

We just LOVE burgers.  We actually love them so much that the biggest Spanish indie developer association (which we created a few years ago together with some fellow indie studios) is called Indie Burger Developer and all of the meetings are held in burger joints!  I don’t really know why, but if there’s something that we have in common indie devs here is our unconditional love for burgers! (you can check our homepage at www.burgerdeveloper.com ; ) )

 

Q6.  When is the game out for release and how can we get our hands on it?

 

The game is out now for iOS on the AppStore. We’re preparing versions of other platforms though, which we home to have ready soon!

 

Q7.  What one tip would you give to any Indie Developer?

 

To make whatever they really want to do.  In all our years of experience, the games which have been better received have been those which we had more fun making and those we made without thinking about the market. Whenever we tried to follow a market trend, a monetizing standard or some of the established rules of a determined platform, we’ve failed miserably.  I guess there are too many big companies making games to stand out with something “conventional” and no real investment behind us.

 

Q8.  What was your first video game console and which is your favourite?

 

Actually I started gaming as a kid with an MSX computer, which were very popular around here together with the Spectum!  My first console didn’t come until the original GameBoy was launched, but my all time favorite is still the SNES.  So many great games!  (You won’t hear us disagreeing! – Ed)

 

Q9.  The inevitable Barcelona question, do you like football and who do you support?

 

And the almost inevitable answer:  Barça! 😉  It’s been such a great year for us!!!

 

Q10.  If you could choose one video game character to go for a drink with, who would it be and why?

 

That’s a tough one… I never really thought about it, but many of my favourite characters don’t have much of a conversation in their games!  Maybe I’d go for Snatcher’s Gillian Seed: he can drink, is good at jokes and would inevitably try to hit on some of the girls at the bar!

 

www.undercoders.com

 

– Dylan