Working on fan projects and small indie games is a way to attract attention and stand a chance of prominent roles in the industry. Toby Fox came up with the idea to work on projects such as: EarthBound Halloween Hackbut after making it big with undertale he got the chance to officially team up with Nintendo – getting a Mii Fighter costume Super Smash Bros. and contribute music to the pokemon franchisee. However, the opposite transition also has merit, as demonstrated by projects such as ZOR: Pilgrimage of the Slorfen.
ZOR is a mishmash of genres, a rogue-like deck-building with survival and crafting elements on tabletop-inspired grids. Developer Righteous Hammer Games – 2016 known Solitairicaa roguelike RPG version Solitary – is relatively small for the size of the current project. Only two people work on most of ZOR from their garages: studio founder and creative director Clint Jorgenson alongside artist Gavin Yastremski (with some contractors committed). However, Game Rant spoke to Jorgenson and Yastremski about the duo’s previous experience at studios like EA and how those skills have translated to the indie space.
Jorgenson got his first computer in the 1980s and said he immediately became interested in graphics and programming. He was unable to tackle this professionally while working at a sawmill in the 90s, but the dotcom era led him to realize a career could be made in digital artistic pursuits. After leaving electrical engineering, he studied programs such as ActionScript and Flash at the Vancouver Film School before embarking on a short film career. One of his first projects was making the fake computer screens in the 2002 live action Scooby Doo (a practice he called “fantasy UI”).
Shortly after, Jorgenson landed his first appearance in the game industry: EA’s Def jam fights for New York. That started a 13-year career with the company, during which Jorgenson worked on every… Skate title, a few SSX games, and Plants VS Zombies Garden War. It was during his time on the PvZ spin-off that met Jorgenson Yastremski, who similarly transitioned from a brief stint on film and television to a nine-year career at EA thanks to connections with a professor at the Art Institute of Vancouver who previously worked on SSX.
Yastremski said he was “blessed” to study 3D software in high school, which allowed him to dip his toes into the world of video game art. “It has amazed me,” he said. “I knew this was what I had to do when I got out of high school.” he touched Warfare in the Garden, GW2and Battle for Neighborville while at PopCap Games, Yastremski had the opportunity to create environmental art on Respawn Entertainment’s Apex Legends about nine months.
While Jorgenson said he was happy at EA, “happy” to be working on some great games, he was starting to feel burned out. A few years before, Bully and Skate alumnus Kevin Ng started working on independent mobile games, eventually founding Wonderful Lasers in 2014. Ng’s success was inspirational to Jorgenson, who said he was interested in moving away from the specialization of AAA development to become more of a generalist. He and Joe Van Zeipel, who also collaborated on Warfare in the Gardenstarted Righteous Hammer Games in 2015.
From Solitairica to ZOR
Jorgenson and Zeipel were stuck with ideas before leaving EA, but decided to start recreating solitary to learn Unreal Engine. During that process, Jorgenson came up with the “mechanical mash-up” of solitary using the kind of skills found in iPad games like Puzzle Quest. With audio support from colleague Warfare in the Garden veteran Rob Blake (aka Mass effect), managed the game on its “over-the-top and unbridled” energy.
“It was really fun because we were so excited to do our own project for the first time, we decided to go wild. But yeah, it was a bit of an accident, not everything was planned in advance.”
Prototyping for ZOR started shortly after Solitairicathough Zeipel would leave Righteous Hammer to join Phoenix Labs as a UI designer on fearless. After seeing colleagues receiving government grants, Jorgenson “threw my fate” and asked for funding through British Colombia’s Creative BC organization. The grant he received could only be used for hiring people, and over the next few months he worked with concept artists and 3D animators to create a “vertical disk.” Yastremski left Respawn shortly after hearing about this project, “always blown away” by Jorgenson’s UI work on Plants vs Zombies and interested in more creative freedom from the confidence of a ‘giant, highly polished product’.
Yastremski helped solidify ZOR‘s artistic vision, inspired by the work of Jim Henson and Don Bluth – specifically the “dark, kind of creepy and cute” worlds of The dark crystal, Labyrinthand The never ending story. With a more complex 3D style and additional funding for roles such as QA and audio through Epic Games’ MegaGrants program, ZOR explosive in size. The project was intended to last two years, but is moving through to the Early Access launch this month. ZOR was first announced with a teaser trailer in October 2019, although Jorgenson said “we definitely announced it too early” given the snowball ambition that made it difficult to judge the game’s timeline.
“This scared me at times, but I’m really happy now because I can’t believe what we’ve done with such a small budget.”
ZOR and Indie Passion Projects
Righteous Hammer has worked on numerous iterations of the game, trying to balance not only the charming yet “freaky” atmosphere, but also a gameplay loop where each turn has a To play chess-like puzzle. ZOR: Pilgrimage of the Slorfen has appeared at events like Steam Next Fest and the Yogscast’s week-long Tiny Teams, but Jorgenson thinks it’s a new concept that people need to play to understand — something the team has struggled to convey through marketing alone.
He hopes the launch of Steam Early Access will generate strong word of mouth, as Righteous Hammer aims to release a “polished, replayable, tight game” with frequent updates rather than “years of noodles”. if ZOR is supported, Jorgenson wants the team to make it “the ultimate version it deserves to be”, although there is also talk of a return to the world of solitary. “I think it deserves another game.”
Both Jorgenson and Yastremski are interested in continuing to work on smaller passion projects, although they don’t know what the future will bring. They still fondly look back on their time at AAA studios, with Jorgenson being particularly impressed when EA gave Skate another try. Yastremski is “super excited” to see the passion in games like Apex Legends and Skatewhere some of his former teammates are on PvZ have been withdrawn. Still, he feels that “after a while you need a break from the giant teams.”
“I was very fortunate to have Clint let me work on this project, and the dream for me is to continue what we are doing. To be able to explore uncharted territory and be free to move, , the look at what we’re doing. That’s the dream.”
ZOR: Pilgrimage of the Slorfen is in development for PC, with a Steam Early Access launch scheduled for August 30.
0 Comments