![]() We listened to over 200 voice submissions before finding Maya Wolosyn, who stars as our tough but lovable Rogue. This required extra time in casting and recording but it was worth it. Some very experienced voice actors were able to take on multiple parts and some naturally talented non-actors filled in the ethnic backgrounds we needed. We were equally lucky with our casting call for VO. The number one comment we received when demoing Rollers was "I love the character art!" The 2D art was supplied by a talented group of young contractors who were willing and able to take the time to develop interesting characters fitting the quirky nature of the game. The playable characters were given a lot of attention in production and we think they came together nicely on all levels. Our pinball heroes were pulled from the margins: a young girl, an old drunk, an elderly woman, a mother, an Arab-esque fighter, an African-style mystic. The game narrative was purposely kept simple and familiar to place focus on our odd array of misfit playable characters. Once we caught people's attention with "RPG pinball," our characters sustained interest. Both funders value innovation: being weird paid off, and we received production funding to turn our small 2D portfolio project into our first major 3D game. This turned out to be a great recipe to start dialogue and get to know publishers, press, and other like-minded devs.īolstered by the interest and encouragement from that first GDC showing, we decided to pursue production funding from two major Canadian funds, the CMF Experimental program and the OMDC Interactive Digital Media Fund. Almost all were immediately intrigued by the concept, yet couldn't wrap their heads around how it would work. We set up meetings with potential publishers and barked "RPG pinball" to any passers by with a press badge. We managed to pull together a 2D XNA vertical slice prototype of the game in time for GDC 2012 and got ready to show our weird little game to the world. This offbeat high concept opened a lot of doors. Pinball Quest was an RPG pinball game for the NES in the early '90s. Our friend, Tom Beirnes, brought up Pinball Quest as something that hadn't really been done in a while. We needed an idea that was easy to get behind and small enough in scope to produce over 3-6 months. The original idea for Rollers of the Realm came out of a group brainstorming meeting between Phantom Compass and our laid-off triple-A friends. Here are the high scores and gutter balls of that adventure. What we ended up with three years, two funding rounds, and nearly 50 extended team members later exceeded everyone's expectations. We took a big risk in combining two distinct teams and fittingly chose an unlikely mash-up of pinball and role-playing games. Our mission was to bring both sides together in creating a small game for Xbox Live Indie Games - a six-month project where we could learn from each other, provide our triple-A friends with a unique portfolio piece, and shift Phantom Compass into high gear. On the indie side, we had rapid development know-how, agility, and experience running distributed teams (Phantom Compass operates out of Toronto and nearby St. The triple-A side came to us with high production values and experience with shipping large titles. Phantom Compass founder, Tony Walsh and production head, Ericka Evans, saw an opportunity in this and brought some of the best industry vets into a meeting with our tiny indie team. Many of them had years of industry experience, but few or no shipped titles and needed to build their portfolios before finding work. In late 2011, a local triple-A studio laid off dozens of staff.
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