Tropical Heat - the first game I designed and directed Thread

Hi,

My name is Anton and I designed and directed development of Tropical Heat, a jet ski racing game that takes place in the tropics.

I've been a gamer for as long as I can remember. I played Pong in my big brothers bedroom as a little kid and all of my brothers and sisters went crazy for Pacman when our parents bought the family an Atari for Christmas. My favorite memory playing video games is still as a 20 year old playing the new N64 on the wall with a video projector that my best friend's band let me use between their concerts. I still remember getting a splitting headache after racing with penguin. And 4 player Goldeneye!

This was back before anyone could get a video projector, so, of course, everyone came to my place to play. Especially my older brother, Andre'. He loved video games more than anyone else I had ever met. We would go to arcades and he could play for an hour or longer on one quarter. Then he'd stand for hours watching other people playing. Watching and learning. So, he and I had great times staying up late playing on the wall with the projector. Of course, I'd fall asleep and wake up in the morning and he'd still be playing.

It was pretty cool and at the time I don't think either of us imagined that playing games could get any cooler. But that's because we never imagined that one day we would be working together playing games that we were making for a living. But years later, we entered into the first Unreal game development competition. We were both professional programmers at the time and had been making mods and levels with Unreal for years.

We took off a few months of working as programmers and we tried to make a Robin Hood game, which was WAY too big in scope for a contest and we didn't even finish before the contest was over, but we had tasted what it was like to be game developers. Even if it was just for a contest. There was no going back.

We found the Garage Games indie game development community and learned to make games with the Torque Game Engine. And one day, while I was home sick from work for a week, I applied for a full time job developing a point and click adventure game and was hired! A few games later for a few other companies and I was hired by Somatic Vision (and my brother soon thereafter). We've been working for Somatic Vision for over half a decade and Tropical Heat is the first game that I designed (my brother designed the levels) and directed (my brother created the levels).

A dream neither my brother Andre' nor I would have even imagined that we could dream when we picked up those first game controllers in our older brother's room to play pong against either other. But here we are. Watching people we don't even know play our game. It's an incredible feeling. One I imagine that everyone here at Indie DB can appreciate, which is why I shared it with you for my first post as a new member of this community.

Here's a link to Tropical Heat. Please feel free to check it out and play the demo. Tell me what you think and tell me about the game(s) you have developed!

Indiedb.com