Burton & Becca Posey on Robots Love Ice Cream, Forming Addo Games, and Promoting Indies
With numerous small independent gaming studios popping up throughout the world, making a game stand out is as much of a challenge as creating the game itself. Great games over the years have suffered from a lack of sales, often resulting from minimal exposure. One of the biggest challenges for an up-and-coming independent developer is to create a sense of familiarity amongst players.
This is the challenge facing Addo Games, a studio based in Atlanta, GA, recently founded by the husband and wife team of Burton and Becca Posey. They look to catch players’ eyes with the unique and off-the-wall concept of their upcoming debut title. Robots Love Ice Cream, coming soon for the iPad, will task players with defending the planet from an invading robotic force using the power of sweet, frozen treats.
The game sounds like fun and the Poseys want to spread the word about their confection-based combat title as much as possible. The Poseys were kind enough to stop and talk to us about Robots Love Ice Cream, the challenges of starting up their own studio, and their plan to spread the joy that comes with uniting large killing machines with frozen sweets.
IGC: Tell us a little bit about Robots Love Ice Cream. What can people expect to see when they play it for the first time?
Becca: Robots Love Ice Cream is an upcoming iPad game in which players assume the role of an ice cream truck driver, traveling across the galaxy and defending planets from robotic invaders. Players will employ an arsenal of tasty weaponized ice cream treats, launching them at the robots. As we all know, robots love ice cream — when they are stuffed with enough ice cream, they’ll short-circuit and explode from joy!
We’re really trying to create a visually unique experience with Robots Love Ice Cream in addition to the unique game mechanic. Vibrant colors, cute character designs, and memorable music are all key ingredients in evoking the feelings of adventure and wonder that we’re striving to draw from the player.
IGC: The idea of fighting off robots with ice cream sounds both bizarre and fun. What inspired you two to create this game?
Burton: Robots Love Ice Cream is honestly one part the result of bottled up frustration of working on other people’s projects and not a game project of my own, and another part all of the games I loved to pick up and play from my childhood; games like Missile Command, Space Invaders, and U.N. Squadron, Mega Man, and a lot more. The ones I mentioned all have elements that Robots Love Ice Cream pays homage to in one way or another.
When the game idea was conceived, I didn’t even have an iPad. I had come up with a design for a game mechanic that involved rotating the game world and having the protagonist stationary on the screen firing at things that are coming down towards the planet. I started thinking about the best way to really showcase that “spin the world and the action around you” mechanic and a touch interface really made a lot of sense. The “touch on what you want to shoot at” firing mechanic is also a given for a touch device with a lot of space.
The game actually started out as a game that was going to involve fireworks, ice cream truck, and, even for a little while, maybe some anthropomorphized zoo animals. Becca’s always been an awesome voice of reason with my ideas. She was able to point out that the idea was getting pretty complex and we’d have trouble executing on it. We started adopting a philosophy of just keeping it sort of wacky and not really giving the player a lot of backstory; the more accessible the better, without compromising visual or gameplay quality. I think that decision has helped us enjoy making the game more and I think it will help the player enjoy it more as well.
IGC: People that buy this game are going to be hungry for ice cream and robots. Describe the different types of robots that players will run into and the different kinds of ice cream that will fend those robots off.
Becca: The idea is that each planet (level) in the game will carry a theme. The robots that are invading the level will echo that theme. One of the first levels we’re going to showcase will have a feudal Japan theme. So today, Burton has been modeling, unwrapping, and rigging a robotic koi fish.
As for the weapons, we’ve got a lot of ideas we’re tossing around as well. We’re trying to really play off of the flavors and color/theme connections with the ice cream as to what they’ll do. We’d like to keep the process kind of loose and see what works well in our testing.
Some of the ideas that we’re currently tossing around include:
• Soursicle – acid pop damages the robot over time.
• Brain Freeze – slows enemies down by chilling them.
Some of the more obscure (and ambitious to develop) ideas we’ve got include:
• Clown-Cone – rainbow sno-cone that puts a clown wig on the robots. Frankly, I’m not sure it would even hurt them, but it makes me laugh every time I think about it.
• The Sprinkler – sucks up a robot into the ice cream cannon and spits it out in a barrage of colorful sprinkles.
We’ve had a ton of fun dreaming up crazy ideas for weapons and effects. One of the things I’d really like to establish is a dialogue with our prospective fans. We’d love it if some of the best ideas in the game, robots, ice cream, boss robots, whatever, are the product of our fans’ imaginations. This is sort our baby, but the players are adopting it and spending time with it (and hopefully loving it!).
IGC: What made you decide to bring Robots Love Ice Cream to the iPad? If the game is successful, would you consider bringing it to other platforms?
Becca: The gameplay mechanic lends itself well to a touch screen. One of the core mechanics of the game involves manipulating the world, much like a DJ would spin a record. Having the iPad’s larger screen on which to do this helps players to draw that connection.
As for the other platforms, we’re definitely interested in looking at other tablets and smartphones. One of the things we want to make sure of is that we’re getting the game right, the way we’ve planned it, with this first release to the iPad. Taking on multiple platforms the first go-round would probably impact the quality of the game. If we need to make a version for the iPhone with a different mechanic, then we can take a look at that once we’ve (hopefully) hit our first home-run.
IGC: The game will also feature a soundtrack from game composers Disasterpeace (Rescue: The Beagles, Cat Astro Phi) and MisfitChris, who composed the Robots Love Ice Cream theme song. How did these collaborations come about?
Burton: I had actually lined up to do work with another chiptune artist and when his schedule got slammed, he referred me to Rich (Disasterpeace). I shot an email over to him, hoping he would get hooked on the whimsical nature of the game. Luckily, it worked and we’ve really hit it off. We’ve really lucked out with the fact that Chris (MisfitChris) is working with us as well, writing the hooks. Rich takes that and develops the idea around the instrumentation that I’ve got in my head and it all exceeds my expectations. I’m blessed to be working with the guys whose music I’ve been listening to for the past few years while I’ve held onto my dream of making my own games. And if you want to hear a sample of what they’ve created for us so far, you can download the Robots Love Ice Cream theme song from our Kickstarter page.
IGC: You’ve had years of experience as an interactive developer, but Addo Games represents your first endeavor as an independent developer. What challenges have you encountered while forming your studio?
Burton: I’ve been working some crazy hours. Because I’m so emotionally invested in the game, sometimes I’ll take a nap on the couch in the evening, wake up at 1 or 2am, and my mind will be filled with ideas about the game and what I need to be doing on the project.
Becca’s been great about keeping the trains running on time for this venture, managing promotions and outreach, making sure we’re able to meet our obligations for freelancers and software purchases (ouch: Maya), so I’m really fortunate to have her as a partner in Addo Games. Still, we’re working against the clock with our limited resources. I’m still doing a little independent work to bring in funds when time permits, but we’re essentially operating on what we’ve saved up over the past year or so. That’s one of the reasons why the fulfillment of our Kickstarter project is really important to our being able to execute on this game in a timely manner and get it in everyone’s hands this year.
IGC: One of your focuses this summer is on a large promotional blitz to make people aware of Robots Love Ice Cream. What does the promotional strategy include?
Becca: We have three different communities we’re looking to reach out to, to help us get our message out and bring Robots Love Ice Cream to life. The first is our immediate circle — our family, friends, and professional colleagues. They’ve responded amazingly and constitute the base of our support right now. They tend to give most of the bigger gifts, and we appreciate that demonstration of their belief in us since they know us the best. The second is the design community who have been excited by the creative aspect of Robots Love Ice Cream–especially the beautiful art and the quirky aesthetic. The third is the gaming and game development community, from within which we’ve encountered a lot of curiosity and enthusiastic support for what we’ve shown so far.
In terms of media, we’re going through the usual social media routes of Twitter and Facebook, using our own accounts and encouraging friends and colleagues to help spread the message. We’re also both blogging about the whole experience over at AltDevBlogADay, sharing content on our Addo Games Tumblr site, and offering up the game for critique and feedback in forums on sites like IndieDB, Unity, TIGSource, TouchArcade, and others.
What we’re seeing is that each of these communities is drawing a different audience of fans, backers, and observers to our game. What they have in common is their enthusiasm for the Robots Love Ice Cream idea and their admiration for the determination, creativity, and teamwork that it takes to launch an indie studio and ship your first original title. And as we try to inspire them to pledge and share, they’re motivating us to make this the best possible game that we can.
IGC: What advice can you offer to smaller developers like yourselves, as far as promoting their games?
Becca: Make sure to plan enough time in your schedule to promote the game. Putting up a Kickstarter project and just walking away from it as a new studio is probably a fast-track to failure. You’ve got to be a shameless promoter. It’s your dream and you ultimately have to be ready to do whatever you can–ethically, of course–to make it happen. That said, make sure you’re promoting something more than just an idea, because the credibility gap between having an idea that you think sounds cool and actually executing on that idea is broad.
IGC: What’s the current target release date for Robots Love Ice Cream?
Becca: Robots Love Ice Cream for the iPad is planned for release to the Apple app store this fall. That timeframe is really dependent upon having a successful Kickstarter project, but we expect good things.
IGC: Thank you, Burton and Becca Posey, for talking to us about Robots Love Ice Cream!
At the time of this writing, Addo Games continues to raise funds for the development of Robots Love Ice Cream through the studio’s Kickstarter page. Indie Games Channel will continue to follow the progress of Addo Games and the ongoing development of Robots Love Ice Cream.
