Newsletter 11/2009
Petri Purho makes a game in a week
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Purho, who was interested in role-plays and conjuring tricks even as a small boy, derived his enthusiasm for making his own games from Super Mario Bros. In 2006 Purho became interested in quick-time programming when he bumped into an online student project in which entire games had been programmed in a week.
“I woke up to the fact that I knew nothing about designing games. In order to correct the situation I decided to start making small games every month. The idea was that the best way to learn anything is to do it a lot and often,” Purho says.
Surprised by popularity
Purho brought out the first game on his Kloonigames blog in September 2006. It took a week to do the design, programming and graphics of the game. In June 2007 Purho’s tenth game, Crayon Physics, appeared and increased the traffic on the web pages enormously.
“The free prototype that I had cobbled together in five days proved to be so popular that it brought the web server down. I had to make a bigger and more commercial version of the game,” Purho says.
“Crayon Physics is a Finnish game of physics problems in which objects drawn become real. The aim is to get the ball to collide with stars by drawing various squares."
Purho sent Crayon Physics Deluxe to the Independent Games Festival, the biggest of its kind in the world. The game was accepted as one of the 173 entries and in February 2008 – much to Purho’s surprise – it won the main prize of 20,000 dollars.
Something new on the way
Some time ago independent game-makers were barely seen outside their own circles. Megagames, which were the outcome chiefly of development work costing tens of millions of euros?? and lasting several years, climbed into the sales lists. Today there is considerable commercial demand for the creations of independent game-makers.
After winning the main prize, Crayon Physics Deluxe has, Purhonen says, sold well. He has been approached by both Finnish and foreign game companies. This year Crayon Physics Deluxe was brought out in an iPhone version.
Purho has produced more than 25 games in a few years and new prototypes are being created all the time. “At this moment I’m making a small iPhone game. After that I may make something bigger. The future will show what will happen,” Purho states.
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