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Interview: CrazySoft
April 23, 2004
CrazySoft Focus Week here at PocketGoddess.com concludes with this exclusive feature interview with Giorgos Sarris, the head of CrazySoft. Read on for some insights into handheld game design and a sneak peek at some upcoming products.
Thank you for agreeing to this interview. Let’s get started with an easy question: How did you get started developing games for the Palm OS platform?
First of all I would like to thank you for your invitation. Almost two years ago here in Greece, Palm PDA’s were not very popular. Everybody preferred Pocket PCs. As I always don’t go with the flow, I first bought a Handspring Platinum. At that time I wanted a specific program, a Tarot Card Interpretation program (Don’t ask why!). I searched a lot but I didn’t like any of the existing ones so I decided to create one. At this time I had very little knowledge of programming. I studied a lot and created Best Tarot. I created it for my personal use and later on I offered it for sale. Then I realised that many people liked it and bought it. This way, CrazySoft was created! We still do that. We only create games that we and our friends would play and then I hope others will like them also.
What are the top game genres for the pda (racing? word games? puzzles?) Are they capitalizing on the popular genres or do they seek to revitalize a dying one?
This is a good question. I’m not sure what the top game genres for the PDAs are, because I have no specific data on that. I think that people prefer strategy and puzzle games because it is easy with the touch screen. People with PDAs usually work with it and most of them just find a few minutes every day that they want to relax and play games. Usually the games that they will choose to play are puzzle / strategy games. Like Bejeweled & ‘our’ PaintBall. Other people (usually younger) who bought their PDA for fun would try all the game genres and usually prefer 3D titles or titles with impressive graphics. Big companies indeed usually capitalize on the popular genres because they want to maximize the benefit but we would never do that. We just want to create games that make everybody come back for more. It is easier to achieve that with puzzle games but we have also tried ‘Sports’ and you may see Adventure/RPG games in the future. A dying genre is Adventure games which is very sad for me because I grew up playing them! (Monkey island, Larry, King Quest etc) I hope they seek to revitalize this game genre or even see this kind of games in Palm PDAs. (New games & not emulations)
What would be the ultimate game that uses the Palm touch-screen?
It wouldn’t be fair to choose only one. The touch screen works perfectly for Strategy, puzzle & board games. Of curse it could also be used for 3D shooters like Doom or 3D racing games.
How would you judge the Tapwave Zodiac as a portable gaming platform?
When I first got the Zodiac2 in my hands I was surprised by the fine quality with which it is made. The PDA is fast and has much potential. So Tapwave has managed to create a unique and very nice gaming platform which is the first part of their success. The second and most difficult part (Always according to my opinion) will be to gather hundreds of Zodiac optimized titles for it. This would make it successful. Usually it is not easy for developers to trust and spend hours on supporting a portable gaming platform by a new company. Things would be much easier for Zodiac if Sony or Nintendo had made it. Now Tapwave should somehow give reasons to developers to optimize their games for Zodiac. One reason of course would be if they manage to become globally known and sell as many PDAs as possible. Now things seem quite positive. Zodiac seems to sell a lot and Tapwave’s employees are very helpful and enthusiastic. We have been cooperating with Tapwave since they began and our titles are some of the first that fully supported the Zodiac’s full screen (320x450), Vibration and other nice features.
What changes do you expect following the release of Palm OS 6? I’m especially curious since you work so hard to continue supporting older Palm OS devices.
As I have seen and read Palm OS 6 might change the Palm PDAs as we know them now. The new OS will give more multimedia possibilities to developers. Also the CPUs will be faster and the internal memories bigger. So I think we will see PC Game titles porting to OS6 easily and more 3D games. As you have seen in all our games we always try to support all models! We support from zodiacs Hi-Res+ (320x450) & vibration to the OS3 Greyscale PDAs. We will continue to do that in the future. We will continue to support all the old non-OS5 PDAs and of course we will support OS6 and all its new features. But you may agree with me that if you try and play a game on a new PDA (E.g Zodiac) then you cannot go back to your old PDA!
Do you have plans to develop for other handheld platforms in the future, suchas Windows Mobile, Smartphone, Nokia, etc.?
We look at every direction. Palm is our base but there are some thoughts about other platforms also. The one for sure that we will port some of our games (First Paintball) to Windows PC because our customers repeatedly ask for it. Of course I would love to see PaintBall on my Sony Ericsson T600 mobile phone.
Can you offer us a sneak peek at future CrazySoft releases?
I am proud to say that there are many exciting titles designed for future release. Now we are working on ‘Snake Deluxe’ which is a snake game as you have never seen before! We decided to do that kind of game because me and my colleagues / friends wanted a snake game in our PDAs and couldn’t find anything that we liked so we decided to prepare a snake game with Platform/Adventure elements and full screen smooth animation, HiRes+ cartoon graphics, non-OS5 support & zodiac optimization. You will see images soon on our website, http://www.crazysoft.gr.
After that we have another puzzle game that will be loved as much as PaintBall! You will also see a new version of ‘Crazy Athletics’ with RPG elements (stamina, strength etc), redesigned and with new sports added. PaintBall due to high demand will be created for Windows PC, as I said before.
Stay tuned with CrazySoft and enjoy our future releases that will point to humour, fun and addictiveness. You will see more at: http://www.crazysoft.gr/coming-up.htm
