An interview with Charlie Knight, creator of Bullet Candy

This week, we have an interview with Charlie Knight, owner of http://www.charliesgames.com and creator of Bullet Candy and space phallus (warning! space phallus contains images of the organ in question, if you are easily offended, why are you reading this!).

Bullet Candy

Phil:
I remember playing Bullet Candy a while ago and thinking to myself that it was like a natural extension of all the shooters that we used to create back in the heyday of British games. Did you ever play any of the old British shooter games that were out for the amiga say?

Charlie:

I intended Bullet Candy to be a retro-ish shooter combined with a fireworks display, and yes, there was a bit of an ST/Amiga influence on Bullet Candy I guess. I certainly played a lot of them when i was younger, although i was more of an Atari fan than Commodore. I had loads of disks, I can remember that, although I can’t remember many of the games aside from xenon and it’s sequel, Llamatron and revenge of the Mutant Camels, and R-Type was prety good on the ST if I remember correctly.

Phil:I have to ask about your game Space Phallus. Again it brings back some nostalgic moments for me, I remember a similar game back on the old Atari ST. What made you create a game involving a theme that might be considered a little controversial?

Charlie:

What sort of “nostalgic moments”? Space Phallus was invented as a joke with my brother when we lived together about 3 years ago. It was just a collection of rather crappy animations on a scrolling background and i never really intended to finish it as a game, but in about january this year i was having a bit of a motivation crisis with another project and decided i needed to concentrate on something else for a while, the result of which was the first level of Space Phallus. I released it in late febuary and people seemed to like it, so i made another couple of levels. Once i’ve finished what i’m working on at the moment i’ll go back and finish it.

As far as controversy goes, I haven’t heard any one complaining that they find it totally offensive. It’s too blocky and daft looking to go that far i think.

Space Phallus Logo

Phil:You seem to be heavily into shmups (shoot em ups) as a theme for your games. Is that deliberate? Do you plan on tackling some other type of games, or are you aiming to keep pushing the limits of the shmup genre?

Charlie:

I like playing shooters so i guess that’s why i tend to get further with shooter projects i start. I’d really like to write a platformer though, i started to do one a couple of years back, but i couldn’t really find the time to make the levels for it – it didn’t use tiles so i had to draw the platforms etc. out by hand (in Photoshop), which looked nice, but would have taken far to long. I’m also not great at animating people. Maybe i should look for someone else to help with that one, or use 3D graphics…

Phil:How do you compare the British style shmups (I’m thinking here of something like Geometry Wars or Bullet Candy) to the more japanese style shmups, like Ikaruga or Radiant Silvergun? The former to me feels a lot like a sort of sandbox gameplay remeniscent of things like Robotron?

Space Phallus

Charlie:

Yeah, I think that the japanese in general like their games a bit more linear that us western types. Their shooters tend to be very pattern based so that players can learn the game inside out, there are some pretty amazing videos on youtube of someone playing both players in Ikaruga, one stick in each hand. Over here though, i think maybe we like more open games with a few random elements, ones where we can learn the skills to play the game well rather than just learn the game inside out.

Phil:I would imagine that hardcore schmups like Bullet Candy have a fairly small audience these days. Does selling to that type of audience present any unique challenges? Are you able to make a living developing just those games?

Charlie:

The audience is definately not as big as it was 20 years ago that’s for sure, but there are still enough people about to make it viable commercially i think. Really it depends on getting your game in front of people who like to shoot things, and for Bullet Candy, Steam has been pretty good at this. Other distributors selling Bullet Candy that typically sell casual titles haven’t been so great.

I doubt i’d be surprising anyone if i said that Bullet Candy isn’t selling so well now as it did a couple of years ago, so i’m not earning a complete living from the game. I have a part-time job at the moment that i work for a day and a half a week. I’m hoping i can give this the boot in the not too distant future though, as my current project draws closer to completion.

Bullet Candy 2

Phil:Has being a British indie developer affected the way you make or sell games in any way? Are there any advantages or disadvantages? How do you find life as an indie developer here in Britain?

Charlie:

I don’t suppose that it’s affected the way i work, but i’ve been stung pretty badly by exchange rates over the last few years – it’s been pretty unsteady. Life’s good, i work from my office at home, which is good and bad, probably in equal measures.

Phil:Finally, is there anything you would like to say about your games, indie development, living in Britain or anything in general to readers of this interview?

Charlie:

Buy Bullet Candy!

Thanks for reading, you can visit Charlies site for more information on his games at www.charliesgames.com

Tags: Interviews

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 13th, 2009 at 9:43 am and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.