Interview by Ninichi | Contact | Follow
Who loves challenging platformer games? Crumbling Towers is definitely a game worth bookmarking and having a go at. I'm really pleased to introduce you to one of the makers of this delightful game and to have created some of the game music that you will hear in it when you try it out! Let's hear from Ricane @R1cane...
Who are you and introduce us to your team!
'Hello, we are Scintilla Arts - a two-man team from Russia, Voronezh, developing mobile Android games. I am Ricane and mainly work on the programming part, whilst my friend, Kx, does arts/modeling. We had our first release in April, 2014 and so far we finished 3 games and a match-3 tetris clone (I often refer to our "portfolio" as three and a half games :) ).'
How did you get into Game Development?
'I got hooked by programming kinda early - I guess I made something playable around 25 years ago. By playable I mean a simple symbol controlled by keyboard game, evading other symbols, made on Spectrum with Basic :). After school, though, I got into web-development and never really did much gamedev as a profession or had any intentions to release something to the world. Kx, on the other hand, worked as a gamedev artist for a while and has some actual experience making games in large studios.'
Describe your game Crumbling Towers! How do you play it?
'Currently we are working on an Android platformer, where you need to climb up the tower with a lot of dynamic and tricky jumps. Tower parts collapse while you move further so the level changes (sometimes drastically) and presents more challenges. That feature pretty much gave our game a name - Crumbling Towers.
The controls are really simple - no buttons or swipes, just screen-taps to jump around, while character moves forward in endless-runner pattern, turning around after colliding into anything. The trick is in well-timed double/wall-jumps and it is quite challenging. And it's nothing like moving forward and just jumping over things - as levels get harder the path becomes less obvious and requires some thinking. Different doors, levers, collapsing walls, deadly crystals and moving elevators (not sure if latter ones will be in beta, though) make it even more complicated.'
How did you come up with the idea for this game?
'The idea for this game came out of blue - we were thinking about making something small. Kx just messaged me with "let's try this"! I prototyped it and that idea turned out pretty fun. So much so, that making it in a "minimalistic" style seemed like a waste of an awesome idea, so instead of going for something short and simple we went all-out :). So far we've been working on it for 10 months, though work was kind of lazy-paced in 2016 year.'
'We picked a medieval/fantasy cartoonish theme, which gives a kind of relaxing vibe, though gameplay itself is challenging and intense.'
What can you tell us about the music? I was honoured to be a part of this...
'At least for 3 months I've been thinking about what kind of music would be work for the game and have been listening to a lot of different styles.
The goal of mixing two opposite ideas, intense and relaxing, turned out to be pretty tricky.
So far, we've decided to go with a relaxing style, and I think the music you wrote (Ninichi) totally gives that feeling. And it was done way faster I expected! Light, nice music which you'd like to listen to while walking in some bright and colorful place. Though collapsing walls and falling rocks kinda break the mood :). So, I'm still thinking about more tracks that will juggle that mood between intense and relaxing feelings, combined with couple more art themes. Which requires some more work to be done. We'll to see how our beta does and make decisions based on that.'
Here's the game music we worked on together...
Where can we get hold of your wonderful game?
'The beta version of the game is live NOW (since March 30th) and the full game release will be probably done in two months, closer to June.'
So keep an eye on Scintilla Arts website to stay up to date!
About the author: Ninichi is a game music composer who specialises in creating melodic, memorable music for games.
If you would like some custom music for your game or indie project, email her: ninichimusic@email.com. Explore some of her game music & view her credits. Follow @ninichimusic
