64Digits

Before I bore you to death with my sermons, let me first say that I'm an official reviewer at GameMakerGames. Now interested?

First, a little intro on myself. *takes a quick bow* My full name is Dawit Thepchatree. I'm 19 years old, male. I'm Thai, and I live in Bangkok, Thailand. Yeah, I'm one of the few Asians hanging around here. I'm majoring in Computer Science in college, and I'm actually serious about getting into the gaming industry. My specialty is Game Design, though I can do just about everything, except for music composing (I'm beginning work on that right now). I'm also looking at Game Level Design, but personally, I find the design process much more interesting and enjoyable than the production process. I spend about 3 months to 2 years designing and polishing the concepts for each major game project. Unfortunately, none of them are completed yet. Things happen; that's life.

I'm been in the amateur game development community since 2002 (four years ago). I started with the PSX RPGMaker. It is incredibly limited, but I managed to complete a full demo with the game. I also did what most people in that community cannot - creating a fully functional "custom-battle-system". You can find the game, "Abyss of Vinsaga: Chapter One - Aquamoon Pandora", at one of the two PSX RPGMaker official sites, RPGMakerMagazine (www.rpgmmag.com). My game was fortunate enough to be reviewed. <a href="http://www.rpgmmag.com/issues/issue_6/p-reviews/abyss_of_vinsaga_review_i.php">Find it here</a>.

Realizing the potential of GameMaker, I moved to this community in 2004. After a year of experimentation, I established a team of 12 developers and named ourselves, Sapphire Blood Studios. Nine of us are to concentrate on a major project with GameMaker, while the other three continues to use PSX RPGMaker. The major project was titled, VouSei Tactics. It is a strategy RPG, with the focus being a highly abstract and sophisticated storyline. After a year and half of work, it failed miserably. The problem was a general lack of ambition & dedication. I left the team with the programmer (Akaraphan Janetheerapong), deciding that it is too difficult to complete any serious game with team members that are halfway across the globe. After some talk, the rest of the team decided that I should retain the rights to the team name and all the works we've done so far. I plan to finish VouSei Tactics sometime in the far future, as it is my philosophy to never throw away any previous work.

Here's a promotional poster for VouSei Tactics(click to zoom):

Sapphire Blood Studios has a website. However, I don't want to present it as it is in shambles after I've left the original team. I'm planning to create a new one.

That disaster wasn't easy to accept. I decided to take a break from game development and focus on game analysis. Surprising as it may sound, I was offered the reviewer position twice at GameMakerGames. As I was busy with VouSei Tactics, I declined the offer twice. I recently offered to join the staff, and they agreed. I'm now working as a reviewer there. Two of my reviews are already published. One is for <a href="http://gamemakergames.com/?a=view&id=3311">Albero and the Great Blue Emblem</a>. The other is for <a href="http://gamemakergames.com/?a=view&id=2345">The Reaper</a>.

That brings us to the present. I haven't gotten together a new team yet, but I still have a number of works-in-progress to show.

The highlight is VouSei Advent. This side-scrolling flying shooter was started alongside VouSei Tactics as to provide a stronger backstory for the larger game. Consider it as a spinoff-prequel title. This game is not ground-breaking, but it is innovative. I've taken certain concepts, such as charging, overheating and avoiding maneuvers to another level. There is also a huge array of original weapons, each with different uses, strengths and weaknesses. All that said, unlike most flying shooters, the focus of the game is not on gameplay, but on the deep, engaging storyline. Here's an early screenshot (click to zoom):

VouSei Tactics (the strategy RPG) may probably be continued some time next year or the year after that.

Then there's Sapphire Blood Studios Parody (tentative title). This traditional RPG was canceled, but since the engine and the graphics belong to us (me and the programmer), we may create a new game on top of the old materials. Here are some mockups (click to zoom):

I'm also planning to release a simple Go board (Chinese board game). It's nothing fancy, but it's playable. I added a few extra features though. Screenshot below (click to zoom):

At one point, I decided to sharpen my designing skills and focus solely on gameplay. Using the standard Poker deck, I designed 4 card games. "One" is an emulation of the classic "Uno", using the Poker deck. "Duarn IV" is a derivation of "Magic: The Gathering". "Kaed Arkome" is completely original, as is the latest "Seraphic Secant". The last game, "Seraphic Secant", will be released as a full GameMaker game, where you compete with AI opponents. It is in the middle of the design phase right now - and it will take about 2 more months to complete designing it. The rest, however, will only be released via GameMaker as "interactive manuals", such as a page for "Kaed Arkome" in the screen below (click to zoom):

Anyway, that's my story and my works so far.

Introducing Joewoof & Sapphire Blood Studios

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