This year, at the Toronto Comicon, we met two very cool guys, Ryan Miller and Simon Paquette, who are the Technical Director and Creative Director respectively of Reptoid Games, an up and coming gaming studio with some great new titles at the show.
The first is a free-to-play simple game currently available on Itch.io. Spilltender is a game where you have to successfully distribute beer across the table to the customers. Broken glasses will diminish your tips, so will not serving the customers in a timely fashion. It’s a game of accuracy and especially addictive to play because, like many game of this type, is essentially simple to learn but hard to master.
Their second game was presented as “Digging Game Alpha” (now called Fossil Hunters), with a first look at the multiplayer mode for convention goers to test. “Fossil Hunters” is a game exactly as its early title is: an archaeological dig for fossils. Player(s) have to be wary of the stability of the mine to make sure it doesn’t collapse and then escape in time if it does. There are threats of digging up enemies such as spiders who can destroy the fossils you discover. However, the objective of the game is to dig up fossils and piece them together into dinosaur looking creatures. You can be as creative as you’d like. First impressions of this is really good. It was fun to play and easy to learn. Check out this exclusive prototype footage:
Ryan Miller spoke with us about Reptoid and what is in store for “Fossil Hunters”. We thank Ryan (and Simon), both gracious and great guys with a lot of talent.
When did Reptoid Games start?
We started Reptoid Games in September 2015.
Was Spilltender the first game developed?
Sorta. When we started Reptoid Games, we decided to jam out several prototypes quickly, so we built 5 games in one month. Spilltender was one of them. There are 4 other game prototypes that we haven’t released (yet).
When do you expect Fossil Hunters to be launched?
We’re currently securing funding for the project, so it’s a bit too early to say. Sometime in 2018, most likely.
What inspired Fossil Hunters?
Fossil Hunters started off as a fighting game about Minotaurs in a level of breakable blocks. it was also one of our 5 prototypes. It was a fun local PvP game, but needed more depth. We added in humans and made it a game about greed and getting gold. Fossils showed up in the game at some point and they just sort of took over. It was immediately fun to find and connect them together, so the game shifted away from the “kill each other and get gold” trope and into a one about running around and building really cool skeletons.
What is the vision for it?
At its core, our game is about discovery and experimentation. We’re leaning on the paleontology theme and throwing it into a made up fantasy world. We’re capturing the excitement of discovering the shuffled up bones of a creature that nobody has ever heard of and trying to match it together in every which way. We’re doing all that in the context of a fun action-adventure game reminiscent of games like Zelda and Bomberman.
Will Fossil Hunters, have a single player mode?
We’re working on an Adventure Mode to deliver a strong single player experience. You’ll progress through different environments, discover new fossil sets, encounter new creatures, build up a base and all that good stuff. The game plays really well with friends, so we’re going to work in multiplayer to the adventure mode as well.
Is there a general storyline you’re working on?
We’re not ready to talk about the details of our story (because we’re still writing it), but I can say you’ll be playing as a fossil hunter, digging through progressively more challenging and interesting environments. There will probably be pets, too.
Who is the audience you are aiming for?
We watched a lot of people play our game at the convention; parents and kids, male and female, and they all got really excited for different reasons. We think the game has something for everybody.
