Indie Game Developer

Developer Profile: Kevin Lindeman.

Kevin Lindeman's no-budget game studio BlueTorch Studios just released Open Fire!, a game developed with Unity. Open Fire! received over 30.000 downloads in its first three weeks.

Who are you?

My name is Kevin Lindeman. I am 18 and have been a Mac user for 12 years. Ever since I was little I knew that I wanted to be a computer programmer, doing games. During the uDevGames 2004 contest, I attempted to create my first computer game. While I did not do very well, it gave me some needed background in the subject. Along came Unity and the Widget Contest, and I competed. We came away with first place in The People's Ballot.

What is BlueTorch Studios about?

We just released our first game titled Open Fire in collaboration with BlueGill Flame Game Studios. It is the finished product of what we created for the Unity Dashboard Widget Contest, and in the first three weeks of release accumulated 30,000 downloads.

BlueGill Flame did the 3D-art portion of the project, while BlueTorch does all of the 2D art and programming. BlueTorch is currently made up of one programmer, two artists, and two audio technicians.

We currently have a couple of projects lined up, both shareware and freeware.

What role does Unity play for you?

We use Unity to create our games :)

What does your art pipeline consist of?

We use Maya, Photoshop CS 2, SubEthaEdit, and Cheetah 3D.

What is the best part of the Unity experience?

I think the best part of the Unity experience is being able to have a complete, fully 3D game engine at your fingertips. Having the power of Ageia as well as the amazing Shader system, all nicely integrated, it is possible to do anything that a developer would want.

What are your biggest obstacles?

I think the biggest obstacle was figuring out the concepts behind Unity – pretty much everything you do has an object-oriented mindset to it.