Reading Time: 4 minutes In the Indie Corner Spotlight, this week is The Voxel Agents.  They are an Indie Dev Team based in Melbourne, Australia.  Read on to find out about the development of their latest game, The Gardens Between, and the team’s thoughts on the future of gaming. How long have you been a developer? 12 Years How many years has your team been developing games? 10 Years! Who, or what, inspired you to become a games developer? My earliest memory where I tried to design a game, I sat down with a friend, and we drew out a bunch of levels for a platformer. Looking back it was basically a rip-off of Donkey Kong Country but with different characters. So you could say I was inspired by Donkey Kong!  Also, the original Game & Watch version was amazing. What was the inspiration for your team’s name? The Voxel Agents – in 2009 (pre-Minecraft explosion) Voxel was a “dead-technology” (LOL). We were making 2D games at the time, and I figured that our pixels had volume/emotion. And we chose Agents because we liked the idea that anyone could be an agent, and X Studios or X Games is so cliche. But mainly it’s just because Voxel is just a cool word, and we liked James Bond. Describe a day in the life of an Indie Development Team. We all work full time in an office. So really it’s like any other job, except we get to make whatever we like and there are a lot more heated discussions! Can you describe the process/timeline of developing a game? We spend a very long time to make games! The Gardens Between took us over 4.5 years from the first prototype through to release. We spend a lot of time prototyping ideas to prove they’re worth. I don’t subscribe to the notion of a key ‘visionary’ – everyone on our team has their say, and I believe there’s always a right answer… so we have big discussions, and if we can’t all agree, then someone makes a prototype to prove why their idea is best. It’s not a very efficient way of making games, but I think we get good outcomes. How do you juggle all of the aspects of games development? Trello! We put all the tasks on a Trello board and assign a priority and importance. Then we assign people or allow people to pick off the next job they can do best. Our board is pretty flexible, and we regularly play the game, discuss, and add or extract tasks from the board. What is your ambition as a games developer? I want to make games for people who don’t classify as ‘Gamers’. And I want to build a sustainable business that allows me to do so. What advice would you give to someone who wants to get into the games industry? Build games and RELEASE them. Shipping a product is half the effort. And DON’T ship anything you’re not proud of – if you’re not proud of it, why are you working on it? Where do you see gaming heading in the next decade? If I knew this answer I’d be rich! But I want to see virtual games we play in the real world. Like physically running around playing with Tron style light-frisbees. With computers, we can remove umpires and refs and equipment and specific fields from sports, and design entirely new sports. Give the tech to kids on the playground and see what crazy games they come up with! You can support The Voxel Agents by using the links below to purchase their latest game, The Gardens Between. Nintendo Switch – https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/The-Gardens-Between-1423649.html PS4 – https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/games/the-gardens-between-ps4/ Once again, a massive thanks for the Team at The Voxel Agents for giving some of their precious time to take part in my Indie Corner Spotlight Series.  If you’re Indie Team would like to join in, please contact me.