Q. Your site is awesome! Can you tell me how to make my site so awesome?
A. No. You’ll have to figure that out for yourself. But I can tell you that we use WordPress as a base, using a modified Thirty Ten child theme. The site in its current form took about 40 hours for someone with web experience to produce. It also helps if you have a bunch of cool art you can repurpose, like we have for all the games currently on the site. If you want to install WordPress on your site you can find instructions here.
Q. I’d like to work for Brawsome. Can I send you my resume?
A. That’s fantastic, but please don’t. I hate to be a jerk about it but Brawsome is currently a small operation and we don’t have the capacity to check and store lots of resumes, so sending your resume out of the blue will be a waste of everyone’s time. From time to time we will be looking for people, and will announce that via the site and twitter feeds, so if you’re REALLY desperate to work for Brawsome, please subscribe to those and check there. It’s likely that I’ll find you, so make sure you have a good portfolio online somewhere and make some noise.
Q. I’m trying to break into the games industry, how can I do that?
A. Make games. Start small. No matter what your skillset, if you’re creative enough and have the drive you’ll find a way to make games, there are oodles of tools out there and you should really do your own digging. Go to conferences and events where games people are likely to be. Check out the IGDA, there’s probably a chapter near you! Hang out on forums where gamers might hang out, like indiegamer.com. Focus on why you want to be in this industry and the games you really want to make, the more focus you have the more likely you’ll be able to achieve that. But if you want to get your foot in the door, hit up companies for QA roles, that’s how many people get their start.
Q. Jolly Rover was awesome, when can I expect a sequel?
A. We’ve got the overview of the sequel ready to go, and it’s even better than the original! But alas, we need to sell a few more copies first. So if you’d like to buy it, or another copy for a friend, you can do so here.
Q. Regarding sequels, how about MacGuffin’s Curse?
A. We loved making MacGuffin’s Curse, and care deeply about the world and characters. Though the simple reality is MacGuffin’s Curse was a significantly more expensive development in terms of time and money, but did not make the return of Jolly Rover, so in terms of where to focus time, games more like Jolly Rover, i.e. traditional point and click adventures, will most likely be the focus of Brawsome. Unfortunately the Venn Diagram of people who like deep puzzles plus narrative-adventure is smaller than first thought. That being said, traditional point and click adventures are Brawsome’s favourite games to make!
Q. What are you working on now?
A. Warp Frontier is the current release from Brawsome! To find out more, please go here!
Q. Where does the name Brawsome come from?
A. It comes from the words Braw and Awesome. I came up with it when I was living in the UK for a time. I wanted a word that didn’t come up with many hits when I typed it into Google that couldn’t be confused with any other company or thing, which also sounded awesome.
Q. Where is Brawsome located?
We’re in Victoria, Australia. Currently anyone that works for Brawsome works out of their own home, which is really the only way we can afford to make awesome independent games rather than some licensed crap just to keep the doors open.
Q. How do you afford to keep making games?
Well the big ones like Jolly Rover can only be done with some investment. The Victorian government has thus far been pretty ace in supporting Brawsome’s endeavours thus far, which is lucky because raising private investment for games in Australia is both very hard and ultimately not worth it, especially for the kinds of game we want to produce, which are fun as opposed to just making money. But most people working on Brawsome projects have to have other things going on to make ends meet. Being able to work on an independent game project full time is a massive luxury not many of us can afford.
Q. I’d like to pay Brawsome money to make a game for me.
And we’d like to let you! But if you look at our portfolio you’ll see we like to focus on humorous non-action games with fun characters and stories, so if you’re contacting us to make a dress-up game or a FarmVille rip off we hope you’re not disappointed when we politely decline the offer. However if the game looks like it’s going to be genuinely hilarious and fun to work on we’ll definitely consider it. If you’re after a point and click adventure, you’ve come to the right place, oh my yes!
