Featured Developer: Get Set Games: The Hard Work Pays Off

This week we interviewed Matthew Coombe from a small mobile development company in Canada called Get Set Games. These guys are true gamers and have been in the gaming space for a decade, something that obviously gave them a big head start when they began developing for the iPhone. Their game, Addicus, is a number-based puzzle that incorporates a simple and fun concept with great graphics and entertaining bonuses, which will get you hooked in no time.

Addicus is Get Set Games’ first app release, but judging from its success, it wont be their last. This company’s background and ongoing success with Apple customers should show developers all over the world that you do not need money or a huge team to develop a winning app, all you need is some passion and talent, two things that are very present with the Get Set team. The interview can be read in full below.

“We are Get Set Games, an independent studio based in Toronto, Canada. The company is a team of four friends who have worked together professionally in the games and 3D industry for several years. Recently the four of us began developing small games for our own entertainment on the PC platform, often at Indie Game Jam events. Toronto has a great indie scene and the city is fostering some exciting new creative companies. We had so much fun doing that and worked so well as a team that we decided to incorporate a company and start creating games full time as Get Set Games.”

“We’ve all been involved in making games in various capacities for almost a decade now. In the past we have all worked as full time employees, freelancers, or web game creators for some very well known players in the games market.  We have two artists and two coders on the team and the wide ranges of experiences we’ve all had in the industry has really helped to get things moving quickly at Get Set. As a small company each person has to wear a lot of hats and every one of us will share many more tasks than our core skills. We all get involved in our game designs from initial concepts to final tweaking, art style, presentation, UI, and documentation. Building the game is just one small part of the process for an indie company and we all take on roles in developing our web presence, marketing our games, communications with other developers and businesses, as well as all the other things we need to do to get our games out to as many people as possible.”

“Get Set Games is currently developing for the iPhone/iPod Touch platform but we are excited about the growing presence of Android as well as other well known mobile devices like the PSP Mini and DSiWare. In the future we would love to develop games for any mobile platform that is a good fit for the type of games we like to make. We’re focused on Apple’s devices at the moment because it’s exceptionally well set up for small shops like ours to create games quickly, get them approved, and then distributed to a worldwide audience with as few headaches as possible and very small overhead costs.”

“Addicus is the first release from Get Set Games. We’re really excited to have the game out on the App Store which has already generated a lot of interest and great reviews so far. Addicus is a number-based puzzle game with a strong emphasis on fast and addictive arcade-style gameplay combined with great graphics and as much polish as we can deliver. The core of the game is very simple – the player is given a goal number and must tap on a play field of bouncing numbered mushrooms to add up to that goal number before the timer runs out. When the goal number is reached a new larger goal number appears. The game gets real exciting with features like color matching goal numbers to colored mushrooms, extra points for number sequences like pairs, straights and flushes, along with chain multipliers and speed bonuses, and the mega point explosion called Overdrive Mode.

Addicus has only been on the App Store since the beginning of November but we’re already impressed at the incredible scores our players are achieving. It’s great to check out the worldwide score leaderboard in Addicus to see what other people around the world are doing. We used the OpenFeint social networking system to provide our players with online leaderboards, rankings, the ability to challenge friends, and coming in our next update, over 70 achievements to be unlocked in the game.”

“The guys at Get Set are all big arcade fans. We love fast-paced action and instant entertainment and we really just want to make the kinds of games we love – the kind you can just pick up and instantly have a blast. We also wanted to make the most of the touch interface of the iPhone and iPod touch and began designing a simple but addictive arcade game that would make the most of the tap interface. We actually had a couple of different prototype games in development using a similar interface but one of our coders had a stroke of genius one night and easily convinced the rest of us to take a new direction with the number-based gameplay. We never looked back and several weeks later we submitted Addicus to Apple.”

“It’s fascinating to imagine where the mobile industry might be in the next few years. Things are moving so quickly at the moment that it seems like big game changers are announced almost weekly. It’s clear that smart phones are going to dominate completely in a short amount of time and the sheer processing power behind them is going to be immense – combine that with the introduction of high definition screens and ubiquitous touch screen controls and we are going to see an explosive growth in gaming across all mobile markets. This means a growth in the quantity and quality of games as well as more opportunities for indie companies to get involved.”

“We’ve really enjoying developing for the iPhone platform so far. After the initial hump of getting used to a new framework the speed of development has been really fast. The iPhone sports some very impressive hardware and has given us a lot of freedom to create games that look great and play fast. To be honest, the only other mobile phone platform we’ve looked at seriously is Android. We’re a gaming company and we need the hardware to let us to make the type of games we want to play. In terms of horsepower the only other platform that we consider viable for our games are the new phones based on Google’s mobile OS. The Droid phone from Motorolla for example looks stunning!”

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