ST. JOHN'S, N.L. — Imagine a world where cats wear wizards’ hats — not collars — and where they carry wands around and can magically clean up their litter box with just a quick magical spell.
A game creator in Portugal Cove-St. Philip’s has created a world where you don’t have to imagine all that cat sorcery. It’s called “Spell Casting: Purrfectly Portable Edition” and is set to be released on Nintendo Switch on Friday.
Gordon Little, creator of Gord Games, is married with three kids and has an obsession with cats and wizards that he decided to put into a game.
The line drawing puzzle game is a family friendly, accessible game where the player helps their cat, who is also a wizard, learn new spells through distance education.
"...it just came together very quickly. Cats and wizards seem to fit naturally." — Gordon Little
Players trace a line puzzle with their finger and take exams on the spell puzzles to complete books.
So, technically, you’re doing your cat’s homework.
“I’ve always loved video games since I was a kid. Me and my brother, we had a Nintendo from when we were wee youngsters,” Little said. “Even from, like, high school, I always wanted to make them.”
The game was brought to life under a time crunch, Little says, but coming up with the idea was as quick as magic.
“It actually came out of an October game jam challenge, where it was basically try to make a game in a month. And, trying to imagine what I could do in a month, I thought, let’s try a puzzle drawing game,” Little said. “It’s rare to find something that requires you to trace out shapes and stuff, so then I was like, what kind of shapes can I do? Spells! Who’s going to do it? I love drawing cats! So, it just came together very quickly. Cats and wizards seem to fit naturally.”
‘Purrfect’ for everyone
Little said his values when making the game were making it family friendly and accessible, using touch-screen technology.
Sergio Alonso worked with the porting company NoobO Games as project director. He helped Little get the game onto the Nintendo Switch platform.
“'Spell Casting’ is a fun, family friendly game. It’s the kind of game I’d expect a parent to play with their son while imagining a whole extended narrative about it,” Alonso said. “Gordon is a really optimistic person. I believe that he genuinely cares about the people who play his games.”
Little released "Spell Casting" on Steam, a computer-based gaming system, in 2014.
Players trace lines by clicking on the mouse and dragging.
He learned through his experience with that game that accessibility and family friendliness are huge factors for him.
“I put out a demo with four of five spells, and one of the first pieces of feedback I got was from a woman on the internet who had mobility issues in her hand. She was like, I want to play this but I can’t keep the mouse clicked while dragging.”
Little adjusted the game so it could be played by pressing on the spacebar while moving the mouse. He also makes sure all the speech has subtitles, texts are in a larger font and all special effects — like screen shake — can be adjusted to the player’s preference.
“Imagine how many hundreds of people you have just allowed access to this game?” he says of the tweaks he made.
Little says he wants the audience for his game to be everybody, and it was especially important to him that it was child- and family friendly. The game platform Nintendo Switch is aimed at children.
“At the time, I had three little kids and I wanted them to be able to play whatever I make,” Little said. “It’s a kid-friendly console. It’s meant to be used by kids or the young at heart.”
“My girl is eight and she is into the third book, and she’s getting frustrated because all she ever plays are those mobile games that are designed to make you sit there, not to challenge you. She’s not used to playing things that have real puzzles and real failures.
“And by the time you get to the later levels, it will make you upset,” Little said. “The first book is basically straight lines and curves and introductions. Then by the fourth or fifth book, it’s mazes and stuff. So for kids, they are learning memorization.”
Besides the game’s platform being kid-friendly, Little sprinkles each level with pop culture references that children will know, like Jack Skeleton from "The Night before Christmas," but there are also a couple of references that adults may know, like the comic book hero, Captain Newfoundland.
Magic in Newfoundland
Captain Newfoundland made enough of an impact on Little for him to incorporate the character into his game, but that’s not the only aspect of Newfoundland and Labrador culture that has influenced him.
“I’ve been here basically my whole life, and everything here is storytelling, and maybe a bit of the village-comes-together sort of thing.”
Little acknowledged that while Newfoundland is a distance from most main game development studios, that’s not really an issue for Newfoundlanders, since they are people who “just depend on each other and get stuff done.”
“It doesn’t matter out here. Digitally, we can do everything we want from the basement,” he said. “The good thing about now is that all the tools are available and they’re free. You only give them money if you make money.”
The gaming community is definitely growing, and it has to do with the video game art and design program at College of the North Atlantic, Little says.
“I did my psych degree over at MUN, then I did my IT diploma, but if game development was here I would have been all over that.”
Village of gamers
Kent Calcutt, manager at Game Exchange, has customers who are big into the game-creating community in St. John’s and says the community is alive and well.
“I know a few customers that work at Bluedrop (Performance Learning) downtown who are creating app games,” Calcutt said. “And I know a few people who created the Puffin game that was created here in Newfoundland for Nintendo DS. (Nintendo) Switch brings a lot of families together” Calcutt said. “It’s what families want these days.”
When told what the game was about, Calcutt said it sounded cool and he is “glad that Newfoundland is being portrayed by the good things we offer, like Captain Newfoundland.”
“You need a lot of different variety in your games, and there’s going to somebody who is looking for a game like that,” Calcutt said. “I probably will try it out when it comes out and I’m sure I got a few friends that are definitely going to try it out. Everybody loves to support local people as well.”
Despite the support for buying local, Little says he feels Newfoundland has a long way to go in terms of the gaming community.
“I feel like we are very, very behind in terms of promoting digital economy, and that. If you look at the numbers, the video game industry is bigger than the movie industry in terms of sales,” he said. “And what do we tap into? We made 'Republic of Doyle’ for TV, but do we support game developers?
“There’s enough people making bloody violent stuff. I like playing those kind of things, but I want to do something different, too."
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