In this series I’ll talk about the development of Call of Carlos. Everything here is a reflection of my own personal opinions. The first part is dedicated to all the people who helped in some form of it’s development.
Call of… what?
Call of Carlos is a 2D platformer game for Windows Phone 7, in which the player uses a grappling hook to swing across platforms.
It’s now available worldwide in the Windows Phone Marketplace, for free!
» Go grab it here
As of now, Call of Carlos has been downloaded over 20.000 times from around the globe and received well over 200 reviews with an total rating of 4.65 / 5 stars! Additionally, it’s on the first place in the German Windows Phone Marketplace for free games right now.
Be sure to check out the Facebook page for Call of Carlos here! (Don’t forget to like it! ;) )
Meet the team!
The team behind Call of Carlos was called Team Tachyon, and consisted of five great guys:
- Steve Haßenpflug – Team Lead & Game Design
- Chris Hoffmann – Programming
- Ciril Helbock – Art & Animation
- Manuel Marhenke – Producing
- Patrick Doyle – Level Design
It was great time with you guys, really. Sure, there were ups and downs, but I’ll totally miss these last two weeks of development between piled-up coffee mugs, energy drinks and pizza boxes. I hope we can work again together sometime in the future!
The sound effects and the great main theme was realized externally by the professional sound designer Daniel Pharos from “Knights of Soundtrack”. It was a pleasure to be working with you, thanks again! Go check out his awesome works here!
Personal thanks
But not enough! This post is also dedicated as my personal expression of thanks to all the people who helped making Call of Carlos happen.
First, thanks to the Games Academy who believed in us (a bunch of crazy guys) with the realization of our game for a mobile platform, a debut project for this college.
But what’s the Games Academy in Frankfurt without our beloved branch manager Heico Purwin? I owe you a great deal personally, and i really appreciate your commitment to affect the well-being of us students.
And of course our great lecturers, for facing our nearly endless questions, play tests and opinions about our work and studies:
Thomas Nickel, freelancer for various gaming sites (and a walking encyclopedia of video gaming history), for his heartfelt support, and on-spot advices. He also wrote a splendid article about Call of Carlos here (German).
Christoph Krumnow, freelance digital artist, for his great lectures, firm but fair critique and some really sublime conversations about nearly everything game related. Check out his homepage and portfolio here!
Frank Fay is a project management evangelist and also a great guy personally. He taught me literally everything i know about SCRUM today. In a rapid-fire, machine gun speaking rate. Just kidding, his lectures were awesome. He was always interested in our progress and assisted me even in his free time, if i had any questions. Hope we meet (drink beer) again soon!
I couldn’t possibly know how much student projects Patrick Lehrmann has seen in his Games Academy career as a project manager, really. But I’m sure he can’t either. ;) Anyhow, he accompanied us through the whole development process, constructively criticized us in minute detail (a great thing!) and was always open-minded about the things we (the students) had to say. Thanks for your work!
Last but not least, Tom Wendel from Microsoft, for “evangelizing” us with his lecture about the Windows Phone and it’s development. Your speech sparked the idea to develop Call of Carlos for a mobile platform!
There we’re also some people who contributed indirectly, thanks to you too!
This concludes the first part of my retrospective. Hope you liked it! Stay tuned for the second part, where I’ll go into more detail of the development process.
Thanks for reading!