At the age of 12, Max Trest is already an established independent video game developer who has even created a game with the Unity engine.
that project, Astrolander, which Max developed by himself, currently has a demo on the Steam digital store and is one of the games chosen for the Indie Games Showcase at this weekend’s Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle. Max currently self-publishes the title through his company, Lost Cartridge Creations.
In Astrolander, Two players control different systems on a single rocket ship and must work together to solve puzzles, dodge obstacles and dodge enemies. Max is a big fan of retro gaming and old computer systems, and Astrolander takes a lot of inspiration from the 1979 arcade game Atari lunar lander.
Max has exhibited Astrolander at several virtual and real events this summer, including the Puddle Jump Games and Play festival in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, and the Steam Next Fest.
He is also a member of the Seattle Indies development community and regularly comes from his home in British Columbia to participate. Academically, Max is a homeschooled student who is currently in 10th grade and was one of the participants in this summer’s Mission to Mars competition by the Mars Society.
We caught up with Max to find out more about Astrolander, some of his favorite games and more. The conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
GeekWire: What did you start with? Astrolander in the first place?
Max. hit: The freedom to express myself and turn my ideas into reality. When I was younger I used to do a lot of hardware and stuff making, and this is basically an extension of that.
Game engines today are very easy to use compared to some of the older stuff I’ve studied. Unity and Unreal both have visual script solutions and I don’t know how good they are compared to other options, but they seem pretty good. It’s still a bit hard to work with because you have to know the tools, the art and everything if you want to make custom stuff, but overall it’s a lot easier than it used to be.
I use Blender daily for many things. I am self-taught in this; I started back when it was on 2.8 or something, when that revision came out. I used to be unable to use it because it was super confusing, but they changed it with that revision and I was able to get into it.
So Astrolander is inspired by lunar lander, according to a conversation I had with your father.
Yes, I really enjoyed playing that one, with the vector graphics. It looks really good, and holds up today, honestly.
That would be a deep cut for someone my age, let alone yours. What attracted you to that game, as opposed to something new?
It is mainly the simplicity and repetition. Predict what you will land on and try not to crash. I’ve been to a lot of arcades and they played that game there occasionally. I wanted to make it a modern take.
What are some of your other favorite games?
I’m enjoying Civilization VI, and play that a lot. lemmings, for the Commodore Amiga. Also, densely populated. I like strategy games a lot.
We have a Raspberry Pi running RetroPie, and I play a lot of retro games on it. I wanted to try and release my game on the Intellivision Amico, but it doesn’t look like that will ever come out.
That was something I was curious about, if you had tried running your game on older hardware. I heard you gave former Xbox exec Ed Fries a non-functional Astrolander Atari 2600 cartridge at a New Tech Seattle event in June.
I was thinking of doing something like that. The only problem is coding in Assembly for legacy systems. It’s insane how complicated coding is for older systems. I made some music, but nothing more than that.
What are you thinking about in the long term?
For my next game I’m planning a modern take on something like lemmings, maybe in AR or VR.
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