We push ourselves to the limit with every single game Vlambeer creates. It’s a struggle that can be best described as slow suicide, as the two of us work on too many projects for unreasonable hours during unreasonable periods of time. Sometimes we wonder whether we should’ve become good at something easier. One of us will find himself staring at the ceiling during a sleepless night and wonder why we are even struggling to create these games. We don’t even like playing games that much.
To give you an idea of the madness here, in the past month we’ve released Super Crate Box iOS, we’re gearing up for Ridiculous Fishing and we’re writing this because we just wrapped up GUN GODZ. We went to visit the Nordic Game Jam, we gave a few talks for upcoming indie developers, developers and other things. When we returned from Copenhagen completely drained, we decided to take our first week off since we started Vlambeer.
Two days into that week, Jan Willem had created two new game prototypes and Rami was working on a little game and a tool to help him out with managing Vlambeer. We’ve recently realized that the thing that keeps us alive during all this shit is appreciation.
The amount of love we get for making something special is amazing. People that actually understand the design of a game like Super Crate Box & want to talk about it easily make all the headaches and sleepless nights worth it. Appreciation pushed us to the best things that have happened to us and pulled us through the sometimes crushing reality of the things that happen to Vlambeer. Appreciation makes us get up in the morning, thinking of new ideas to give to the world. People who understand the relevance of what we make are the reason we keep on going. Venus Patrol is something that’ll help us & those like us to get out of bed each morning, shake that feeling of doubt and create things even though it destroys us.
We went all out on GUN GODZ to show our appreciation for all of you that have spent time and money to make Venus Patrol a reality. It is a new-age gangster-rap inspired first person shooter – probably not the best example of a game with cultural relevance – which was exactly the reason we chose to create this and prove that assumption wrong. We assembled a team of wonderful people and let them do what they do best – we’d like to introduce all of you to them for a moment.
Our main man & artist-in-crime Paul ‘Pietepiet’ Veer hates shooters, which made him create a graphical style unlike any we’ve seen before. Jukio ‘KOZILEK’ Kallio used to make soft guitar music and Finnish metal until he decided to make terribly wrong and lovely electro music last year. We had him make gangster rap and we think GUN GODZ’ soundtrack could’ve easily been an album release played in ghettos all around the world. Finally, Brandon introduced us to Adam ‘Doseone’ Drucker, who was making beautiful things long before the two of us here at Vlambeer ever met. Adam wrote and rapped the incredible poetry for the title track and created all the sound effects in an amazing tempo. All of those influences, backgrounds and people mixed together accounted for the most interesting combinations of aesthetics we have ever created.
In that spirit, we think it’s important that Brandon himself gets the appreciation he deserves for what he does. He will fight for every single soul about to give up making beautiful things. Without people like Brandon a lot of amazing things would’ve never happened. The effort we happily spent on GUN GODZ is a testament to how much we appreciate him & we hope that ever so slightly, it’ll help Brandon get out of bed on those tough days.
We’re not really good with words, so it is tough for us to explain what drives us as eloquently as Douglas or Adam do. We can’t put into words exactly why Venus Patrol is so important to us, nor exactly why we believe that Venus Patrol and its readers will make tons of people not give up doing the things they love. We’re not writers, we make games. We make games and it is a struggle that, thanks to you, we love to dive into day in, day out.
Rami Ismail & Jan Willem Nijman
HELLOOOOO VenusPatrolPartyPeoples…..
i am utterly proud and pleased to a part of what you read, play, support, and think about…
i was jumped into GunGodz like one would imagine, a handful of game designers, bloggers and other high level minds encircled then promptly punched and kicked my lights out in an east los angeles alley, and after i came to and found my way to a payphone….
actually, many years ago now, while recording subtle albums, i met a man named chris dahlen, i knew him through the music business, he a writer and i a writer… and between you me and the world, besides becoming my friend, to me chris will always be the guy i knew at pitchfork who was “not” a prick….however thats a very rap and rounded down way to put it….chris is one of the few writers i met as people, and i must say, after ten years in music world, you are introduced to so many, yet feel you “meet” so few….and happily our friendship persists…Big Ups to CD…
so…a few months ago chris and i corresponded after a brief winter (consisting of several winters) of no emails….and when we caught up, i relayed my recent walk into the world of making videogame music and doing sound design….which is his other/only.org love as well…
and he in turn, turned the friend dial toward brandon….who looks exactly like my soul mate, producer, and best friend jel…. but that’s just a bonus of the flesh and sheer coincidence….
not two pieces of electronic mail later, and brandon chris and myself, had closed the friendship gap….one more electric letter later, and brandon asked me to meet the vlambeer brothers in code, and join the GunGodz for all digital intents and purposes…
the rest was some bourbon, medium point pen, a half dozen sheets of printer paper, jukio‘s big beat buzzing in my one bedroom apartment, and poof a hand full of wrongrootsmanuvas with guns for brains emerged… it was also a painless pleasure to fashion all the SFX for such a noble graphic happy crude capture for my favorite thing aside from video games…rap….
Most importantly though, venus patrol, and the new friends/creative coils it has opened up gives me some light, where there has other wise been little….to find folks who make games, that function in the same complicated and natural ways my music and other art’s mates do….making things for the sake of making them, exploring avenues out of hunger and ideas out of intuit…such is largely a function of the freelance existence, but on deeper levels, and with certain individuals it is actually the kind of people they are, there is something “beacon” about them, and the things they take the time to make….i have been lucky to collect and keep friends like these over the years of life on “the make”, and its inspiring to finally find them in the realm of game design and birth…
so yeah, like i once repped a set of dog tags in a newark only known rap battle crew of cypher rats, i now rep knowing kind cool creative people who offer the complicated blossom of a bright brain bent over a keyboards ledge…Shoot at the sky for Venus Patrol….
as we enjoy what we play, and nevermind the terrible tedium that constitutes the construction of a video game…
i am no burning man type of guy…but building a video game is a lot like i imagine this “wood man” feels/lives….it takes many humans many hours and layers of work spread through decision, design and caffeinated beverages…..and then its burned in a flash, unpredictably, perfectly, and just as it was imagined in plans….like the brief bang to a beautiful game of GALAGA or SMASH TV or…GUN GODZ…
thanks to those who play, and thanks to those who let me make parts of it tick…. its an honor to do what i love amongst people who love what they do…. i imagine this is what people who were really jumped into a gang say to themselves over a slice of mirror and blackening eye…
love, the man-nun who runs with the Godz of the Gunz…
Mr.one
