Ask the Developer! Mad Head Games Chat With GameBoomer Members!

Hey everyone! Ever want to find out what goes on behind the scenes of your favorite developers? Here is your chance to ask what's on your mind and the developer will answer!

If you have any feedback you'd like to give as to what you like or dislike in casual games, you can also join in the chat, but please be respectful.

I also have a coupon code good for one regular game to give away to one lucky participant of the chat. I will give that away on Sunday February 5th at 9PM. Thank you to the generous anonymous donor for that!

Follow MadHead Games here:

Visit the Madhead Games website: http://www.madheadgames.com
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I will start off the chat with a question.

How do you decide what subject matter you will base your game around?

And......we are off!

Ana

Do you already know what puzzles you will put into a game or do you decide as you go along?

Playing Adam Wolfe, I felt some adventure game influences such as Tex Murphy and Gabriel Knight. Am I right? If correct, are there any other games/books/movies that influenced you/inspired you to make Adam Wolfe?

BrownEyedTiger, thanks for indroducing us to the forum!

We are very excited to have found yet another way of communicating with the ones who love our games. Feel free to ask us anything, and we will do our best to reply as quickly as possible!

Let's start!

Deciding what subject matter to base the game around is one of the most taxing, brain-wracking experiences because we all have such a wide variety of interests and inspirations. Many a brainstorming session has been wasted in making melting-pot over melting-pot of ideas that all cancel each other out. In our experience, sometimes it's better to go with a gut feeling or instinct and then just run with it - only change if your initial idea is so broken, you have to change in order not to lose time.

The puzzles are usually decided and designed by feeling "the moment" - what kind of puzzle would be good for the scene and the pacing. Some puzzles, however, we feel are good enough to warrant writing 'around' - we would design a segment of a scene specifically tailored to fit that particular puzzle.

Which puzzles did you find most interesting? Which were the hardest?

Hi Marian,

You are among the few who got the reference to Gabriel Knight!

We were heavily inspired by graphic novel Dylan Dog, tv shows such as Angel and Supernatural, Max Payne and games by Sierra.

I felt the number of puzzles and the difficulty levels of them was just right for the game.

How do you determine the difficulty levels ??

Anyway, I absolutely enjoyed the whole package from start to finish. Yeah !! And as well as the Gabriel Knight influence, the story promoting comic book style graphics reminded me very much of Noctropolis - that splendid 1994 DOS game

Determining difficulty is a tricky proposition; too hard and it can bog down the gameplay...too easy, and the whole ordeal becomes a glorified storybook without much gameplay. Luckily for us, we have plenty of us willing to play-test meticulously, but also our dedicated play-testers that are much more in line with what our audience prefers. Long story short - we try over and over again until we get it just right.

We are so glad to hear you loved Adam Wolfe!

Thanks for your response

You are welcome!

Feel free to aks us anything, we are more than happy to share more about our work and games, and to discuss ideas with you!

I would be interested to know how you came up with the idea for the Cadenza series and what inspired you - it was such a refreshing change in content as compared to what we had been seeing previously in the HOPA genre. I remember loading up the first Cadenza, and listening to the music (such an important part of a game) and thinking that I had rarely seen it so well-implemented before as a way of enhancing the story and the setting.

I liked the touch of humor in Adam Wolfe's hog screen at the bar collecting decidedly odd items; the humor reinforced the connection to Gabriel Knight and Tex Murphy. Will you be continuing that element?

Like a lot of people, I play casual games in-between replaying old favorite full length adventure games and finding promising new ones or when life's stresses and obligations make escape into the fast pace of a HOPA just the ticket. For the latter reasons, I rarely enjoy HOPAs with depressing settings. "Shadowplay" is an exception to this preference. I am only just past the ventilation ducts, and I even enjoyed the maze, which reminded me a bit of a Nancy Drew puzzle without the tedium. Good work.

Thanks for participating MadHeadGames!

Here's a couple more questions:

How long does it take for you to develop a game after you have decided on a basic theme?

Also, will we be seeing more of Adam Wolfe?

Ana

Would you say Maze The Broken tower is significantly different to most other of your games, in concept and mood? I found it to be a masterpeace although I have enjoyed all the Madhead games I've played. (I've only played a few and am looking forward to exploring the others)
What inspired it and do you intend to make more of this sort?
I'm not very sure what i mean by this sort but it is one of the few casual games in which i bacame totally immersed and felt a real sense of personal jeopardy.

I like that!

Hi Meryl,

The Broken Tower was inspired by a plethora of 'AI-gone-rogue' movies and books, but also by a lot of more classic horror movies meant to invoke a feeling of unease that is not generated by a character, but a location - such as The Shining. The idea was that the very building itself is the antagonist, not a single villain. For S.A.R.A - Glados from Portal was an obvious inspiration. For The Architect, there was an unlikely inspiration of sorts in Tom Hiddleston's character from the movie "Crimson Peak" - he is, ultimately, a tragic, flawed figure secretly seeking a form of redemption from his 'evil'.

Hope that answer wasn't too long, and really gratified you enjoyed the game!

Thanks for the interesting question Marian! The inspiration for Cadenza came from two distinctive points. First is our endless love for all kinds of music, good, bad and even the really weird Visiting any of our offices first includes hearing the music blasting there, which can be any genre, including jazz many of us really love. Secondly, when Cadenza: Music, Betrayal, and Death started to be developed, there was a huge void of any reality-based HOPA games. That is why we wanted to produce a realistic, hard-boiled detective tale that was soaked both in mystery and great tunes.

A few months later, an important part of Mad Head history was made!

We carefully collect feedback from the players, so each part of the game which was impressionable, will definitely find its way into the next title

Thanks for sharing the thoughts about Shadowplay and Maze - we saw the genre was lacking diversity, and decided it for time to act!

Will we be seeing more of Adam Wolfe? I enjoy all of your games, but that one is my absolute favorite. Thanks for giving us this chance to learn more about Mad Head Games.

We are glad to be here!

It usually takes us about nine months to create the game from scratch. It is never a linear process, we always discuss ideas along the way (there is always room for improvement!) and like to take our time in order to deliver a different, exciting game.

As for the Adam Wolfe sequel, we are still gathering all the impressions of the game and will discuss it later. However, we are working on a number of games, so you have a lot to look forward to in 2017!

Hi Connie, thank you for sharing how much you love Adam Wolfe!

As we said, due to number games we are developing at the moment and the fact that we are still collecting feedback on Adam Wolfe, we can't share any exact information on the sequel right now.

One thing is for sure though - we have learned a lot from developing Adam, and will implement a lot of that into our new titles

I would be interested in hearing more about your Beyond series and the inspiration behind the games. I thought it was fantastic that you offered the players a game that was science fiction (yet another theme that we rarely see in hidden object puzzle adventure games). I thought the opening of Beyond: Light Advent was fantastic and set the mood perfectly - the music and the initial scene were very reminiscent of a good science fiction movie from the 1950s. There aren't many games that I am convinced that I want to purchase within the first three minutes of play, but this was one of them.

I like the fact that you take risks with your subject matter. I assume that there are fans of science fiction at Mad Head? Did you feel that you were taking a risk at the time? Did you wonder whether or not players would respond favorably to the subject matter? For me, it was a breath of fresh air.

We are huge SF nerds! From the golden age of American fiction to experimental genres, we binge on it all!

The initial idea with Beyond series was to implement SF elements we love into the hidden object games, but within the attributes of the genre. The risks were big, we were aware of them, but believed we could pull it off . In the end, each our game brings something risky, innovative, and we are not afraid to explore our ideas.
Looking back, the risk paid off since we learned so much from developing the game, and the ones who like SF as much as we do, got the taste of it wrapped in their favorite game genre. Every time we hear a praise, we are more determined to continue to take risks.

Do you have any plans for what we refer to here as an "adventure lite" game. A casual game with no Hidden Object scenes?

Ana

I am on the 3rd chapter right now... I think it is very close to an "adventure lite" game.... also finding it just a little to easy..

I loved the Cadenza series because of the incorporation of the African American culture and characters. This
is so rare in the gaming world and you did it so expertly. Have you thought about creating other series with an African American hero? I have every game you made and I think you guys are awesome. Keep 'em coming and I'll keep buying.

Thanks to those that asked questions and much thanks to Mad Head Games for answering! I will unsticky the thread but feel free to ask a question and Mad Head will stop in when they can!

The winner of the game code is 8dognight! I am PM'ing it to you now! Congrats!

Ana

Congratulations, 8dognight.

And I have been enjoying the chat with Mad Head.

Interesting questions and answers.
Thanks.

Thanks Mad Head Games, I love your games.

We have indeed, but it it far too early to share further information about it at the moment.

Also, we are working on two shooter games, and a hack&slash - we are brancing out im many genres

Dear all,

Thank you for all the questions, comments, suggestions you have shared with us over the past few days. We are so happy to have become a part of the forum, and look forward to new topics we could discuss!

Your questions have truly been refreshing - keep them coming!

That is really interesting news! I would definitely give the hack and slash a try.

We will launch a game dev blog soon, and will let you know how you can contribute to the game as well!

Thanks for letting us know. It would be fun to be able to participate.

I would be interested in knowing where you came up with the name for your company - it's very distinctive and it did stick in my mind right away.

Actually, we don't have any crazy story behind it!

Because we were very devoted to what we did (and still do!), a lot of people thought we were mad since we would spend hours and hours in front of the computer...we lived and breathed games, so the name came naturally

Dear Madhead guys-
I love your games so much, and I have secretly wanted to learn how to make games for a long time. I would love to know how you learned to make games and how a newbie like myself might find a path into game making? (For example, I would love to know what degrees you guys pursued, what it takes to eventually work with a game developer, etc.)

I know you are probably very busy, but I couldn't resist asking while you all are here!

Thank-you so much for your time and for your wonderful games as well!

Tracy

Hi Tracy, thanks for sharing how much you love our games! We hope they attributed to your wish to become more involved in the games industry

As for us, the degree is not what makes a developer - but the skills, talent, and all the hard work put into constant improvement.

Firstly, it is important to know what exactly you would like to do. Is it game design, concept art, modeling, animation, programming?

There are many free softwares, courses, youtube tutorials you can learn from - just decide what interests you the most.

All we can say is - work hard, study a lot, follow what is happening in the industry, and never give up!