What’s Black, White & Red if you’re playing to win at PAX East!?
AIE Incubator developers Pine Fire Studios recently had their game Kieru selected to be showcased during the second round of the PAX EAST OMEGATHON in Boston.
The Omegathon is a highlight of the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX), where 20 attendees compete to see who is the best at a selection of games. 600 people watched the 20 Omeganaughts compete in person, with even more streaming the showdown live on Twitch.
Kieru is a stealth sword combat game where teams of black and white ninja compete in a black and white environment. Player position and enemy perspective matters as you disappear based on your surrounding environment.
“PAX EAST was fantastic. It was a great opportunity to connect with fans in the US and allow them to play the game for the first time. The size for the crowd really helped motivate us, as a team, to keep working on the project.” Jack Knobel, Project Lead and Programmer, Pine Fire Studios.
The opportunity to be part of the Omegathon came about after an organizer of PAX East saw the game in the PAX Australia Indie Rising section in 2016.
The team was able to use some of the grant funding they had received through the AIE Incubator Program to help get them over to Boston on short notice, “Without the funding we would have missed all the opportunities that PAX East presents. We most definitely would have missed a couple of meals as well ha ha!” – Isaac Walker, Designer and Character Artist, Pine Fire Studios.
Above is the full Omegathon match
Back in Australia, the team is heads down, readying the game for release later in 2017.
The game began its life during the major project of their Advanced Diploma of Professional Game development in 2014. Cast you mind back to the care free times of 2014 with this interview, where we asked Isaac and Jack what it was like to develop the prototype in only 15 weeks.
Since then the team has gone through the Graduate Diploma of Management (Learning) and are now working full time on the game in the co working space Game Plus.