The #indiedev landscape of Belgrade is very vibrant. There are many talented designers and developers with great ideas and this, together with a great will to emerge, makes the Serbian capital city one of the most important development centers in Europe. Laki (Lazar Arsić, developer) and Kirf (Nenad Milošević, graphic and sound designer) are the living proof of all of this. The two friends setup bipbop games, an #gamedev studio dedicated to #mobilegame. Reflect Yoself is their first title.
Paolo: How did you get the idea to setup Bipbop?
Laki: I wanted to see if I could create a quality and fun game. We live in a time that is “very kind” with software developers, I decided to try doing something that would please me but also other people all around the world. Hearing stories like the Flappy Birds one was the final push.
Kirf: I smelled the adventure and I jumped in without too much thinking. In my career, I have always worked on UI/UX design and music, never with video games. It’s a challenge and it requires all the skills I learnt so far, a lot of creativity and a little magic. Actually, it’s a dream job! I wonder why I did not think about it before! Our heroes worked on their first game after the normal working hours and confessed to me that they have many ideas for the versions to come, but what is really missing is time.
Paolo: You have chosen to develop in Unity because you already knew it, to publish immediately on different platforms, or because of other reasons?
Laki: Unity was a natural choice, I’ve heard good things from other colleagues, I read a couple of articles online and I realized it had everything I needed. I had no idea how to make a game with Unity, but it wasn’t difficult to learn. I do not regret this choice at all.
The game consists in placing an invisible barrier in front of a purple monster (by drawing it on the screen with your finger) to force him a change of direction during his walk. The goal is to ensure that this little fella collects as much fruit as possible and avoids a stormy cloud that, at the slightest touch, causes him a lethal electric shock!
Paolo: Can you describe the creative process that led you to Reflect Yoself?
Laki: The basic idea came thinking about how a user interacts with the screen. It’s a bit like drawing in the sand, isn’t it? The idea of the cloud came to me while I was rushing home from work!
Kirf: I remember when, about a year ago, Laki showed me a prototype that had created. I thought it was a game downloaded from Google Play. It was something he created in just a few days, instead! I quickly realized that, together, we could create a great game out of that prototype.
The game is designed to be a classic endless #casualgame where you can challenge your friends (I am still at 16 points… I won’t even ask you to challenge me this time). For the moment, no special missions or play modes have been introduced.
Paolo: Do you have a next step in mind? For example, when the iPhone version?
Kirf: Windows Phone 8 and iPhone versions will come soon. For now, though, we want to focus on the pure game experience and experiment something new with music, sound effects, graphics.
The game is free, no advertisement and no in-App purchase. It is certainly coming from the pure passion that these two guys put in the project and it is not just an attempt to earn some easy money.
Paolo: What is your goal for this game? How will you acquire users?
Laki: Our main goal is to have happy users. We want to have many of them, if some money will come happy days but that’s not a goal. This is our first game.
Kirf: User acquisition is a complex subject. The other day, for example, I posted on an indie developers page on Facebook the link to our game and, the next day, there were already 70 more titles advertised after ours! What we will do, for now, is to ask everyone we know to try it and talk about us, to do some interviews like this one and to get into some competitions. We will also try to make some different things, to jump out from the crowd.
I do hope this first interview will bring them some good luck! A classic one for the closing…
Paolo: Tell us three reasons why a user should download #ReflectYoself!
Laki: Unique game mechanics, high quality (and we are very proud of it), so many cool things to come!
Kirf: You never played a game like this! It is not a clone and… My friend Dule has a record of 233! Simply unbeatable! Try to beat even my 66 as a start.
January 2015, Interview takken from Paolo's blog
