Article first published as Our Darker Purpose Developer Interview and Gameplay on Technorati.
I recently conducted an interview with young indie developers David Roth and Will Wu of Avidly Wild Games. Avidly Wild Games started as the brainchild of these two men in graduate school. They realized that they were more interested in finishing their game that would be known as “Our Darker Purpose” than grad school. They decided they needed a company for it so the Wyoming LLC, Avidly Wild Games, was created.
The game itself plays much like The Binding of Isaac, which in turn had many of the same mechanics of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. You play as Cordy, a young child who has suddenly found herself in a school devoid of adults. With the adults gone the para-normally-powered children have taken it upon themselves to make their own disturbing world.
The game also contains RPG elements where you collect items and upgrades for later levels. Many of these are quite necessary for the variety of formidable boss characters you will face along the way.
With barely any connections and extremely limited funds they have turned to crowdfunding and publications. Right now it’s sink or swim for them as they near the last moments on their Kickstarter. At the time of this writing their funding is around $31K and climbing putting it a few thousand away from their goal of $40,000.
As with many Kickstarter projects those who donate amounts of $15 and up are registered for a variety of rewards. These range from copies of the game with in-game bonuses to their own likenesses within the game itself.
If they make their goal then the indie scene will see a new company emerge, one with the backing of major media from Rock Paper Shotgun to Kotaku. If they fail then they do not have enough backup funds and may be forced to scrap not only the project, but their company. While such stories are common in American business they always bring a mark of human tragedy. I hope their story has a happy ending.
