MobileTechReview.com Faces Behind the Games: our Interview with Nemanja Bondzulic of iNDUSTRY Entertainment

Formerly pdabuyersguide.com

More Industy Interviews

Faces Behind the Games Interviews

—by Jade Dragon

Have you ever wondered about who the people are behind the games you love? What they look like? What they eat? Well, I came up with 5 questions for my five-minute interview with the leaders of popular game software companies. We will feature one Chief each week. And I've also got a photo of each Chief I've interviewed, so that you can see what they look like. As for what they eat, that's highly classified information.

After playing the addictive and fun game Monsta, I was wondering who developed it and what other games they plan to bring us. So I interviewed Nemanja Bondzulic, the lead developer of Monsta. At PDA Buyer's Guide, we call him "Bondz, Nem Bondz". He gave us some insight on how he got started in PDA game development and what was involved in making Monsta. One thing I'm not allowed to mention is how he likes his martini .

Interview:
Jade Dragon: Tell us how you got into making games for PDAs.

Nemanja Bondzulic: After I got my first PDA, Handspring’s Visor Platinum, I started to investigate various fields where PDAs could be used. I started testing different kinds of software including games. After some time I have realized that the quality of games available for PalmOS handhalds, at that time, was in most cases very poor. Of course, there were several exceptions! Most games you could find were typical examples of coders’ games: programmer did all the job on the game and visual aspect of such games was almost always the last thing he cares about. I always wanted to write games and PalmOS games looked like a good opportunity for that, as they don’t require big teams and investments like games for today’s modern desktop and console systems do. Several friends of mine, who are very talented and skilled graphicians, and I decided to make our first game for PalmOS handhelds. The rest is future ;)

Nemanja Bondzulic of iNDUSTRY

Jade Dragon: A game usually reflects the team that creates it. Monsta is a fun, challenging game with great looking graphics. Does it in some ways reflect your team?

Nemanja Bondzulic: Of course, we all look great and we are fun. Just joking ;)

There is at least one common thing for all of us in iNDUSTRY Entertainment and that is that all of us are involved in computer demo scene. It’s very fun and challenging place where people, mostly organized in groups, are making various forms of audio/visually attractive "presentations" called demos and intros (limited to 64KB), both representing a unique combination of programming techniques and skills in graphics and sound making. One of main points of every demo or intro is to get out the most of the machine it is running on. We have experience in making demos for different platforms like C64, Amiga, Atari, GBC/GBA, PC, even on Palm ("2 my Jazz" is our demo for Palm, can be found on www.indus3.org), so we have a good knowledge base for making games on systems like PalmOS because of their limited resources.

Jade Dragon: There are so many different monsters. How did you come up with these monster models?

Nemanja Bondzulic: We all had some ideas about different monsters, some were realized, some not. Basically, there are several monster types with unique AI and the way they act. But again, there are several subtypes of each monster type, thus making some additional features to these types.

Some interesting monsters came from my girlfriend’s mind. Her name is Jasna and she helped us with some cool ideas about monstas. Most interesting monster for me is Blob and that one was also her idea. Blob is the one who is divided into two small monsters after you shoot him, then those small monsters are trying to run away from Joe until they grow up when they start to attack again.

Jade Dragon: What kind of response have you gotten from game players and what influence does user feedback have on your development?

Nemanja Bondzulic: We have received very positive response from MONSTA players. Although there were some people who don't like this kind of games, turn based strategies. But simply you can't please all the people. :)

Feedback we are getting from our users has big influence on our development. For example, after we got several requests from our registered users we decided to add saving/loading level feature and censored mode into MONSTA. We will continue to listen to the voice of our users as their proposals can make our games only better.

Jade Dragon: Can you give us a sneak peak at games on your drawing board or in development?

Nemanja Bondzulic: All I can say now is that we will make a remake of one game that was very popular in its time and it is still for some older gamers, I suppose. You can also expect some smaller games from us in months ahead.

Jade Dragon: Aside from Monsta, what are your all time favorite games?

Nemanja Bondzulic: The game I was playing very much for last two years or more with my friends is ISS Pro 2 (this game is also called Winning Eleven on Japanese market). It is an awesome football (soccer) game for PSX. I also like driving simulations and lately I've been playing a lot Grand Prix 4 and Colin McRae Rally 2 on PC. There are a lot others games I like, here's a short list of those I can remember: Slicks (C64), Enforcer (C64), Creatures (C64), Sensible Soccer (Amiga), Golden Axe (Arcade machine)...

Back to MobileTechReview.com Home

Questions? Comments? Post them in our Discussion Forum!