Had the pleasure to talk with the talented Benjamin Lochmann. Let’s learn more about him, his studio Pixel Maniacs, and their game, ChromaGun and ChromaGun VR. You can pick up the game right now for the PlayStation VR, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Steam.
Thank you Ben for taking the time to speak with me today for this interview. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
My Name is Benjamin Lochmann, I am CEO of the Pixel Maniacs.
I’ve founded the company behind the Pixel Maniacs about 16 years ago. At the beginning I built websites and created projects like www.own-free-website.com, as soon as the iPhone launched I switched to app development for iOS and later for Android.
My focus in our company is backend coding in php, Marketing and all of the stuff that a CEO has to do (HR, finance, taxes, daily business stuff etc.)
Can you tell us a little bit about the history of Pixel Maniacs, how was it formed?
About 4 years ago a collegue suggested to take part in a gamejam called “Ludum Dare” in our free time.
This wasn’t a job related thing for us as we were completely focussed on app development at that time.
The theme of that gamejam was “An unconventional weapon” – we had so much fun in that gamejam and even created a small prototype of a game within 72 hours which we then named “ChromaGun”.
As app developers we thought about launching it on the app store, but then quickly realized that the concept was a quite shitty one for mobile devices, so we thought “why not release the game on Steam?”.
A couple of months later (of course much more time than we had expected) our first game was online on Steam, which made us very proud 🙂
After that, we fell in love with the game industry and started to call us the “Pixel Maniacs”.
You’re the CEO of Pixel Maniacs. Can you explain your role and responsibilities?
As we’re a small team, I have several roles in the company: Marketing, Producing, Finances and Human Resources. I am also still coding a lot, mainly backend tools in PHP.
Can you explain to our audience what the game ChromaGun VR is to those that are not familiar with it.
Chroma Gun is a first person puzzle game in which you progress by manipulating and directing Worker Droids through chambers with the use of colors, all combined with a witty background narrative.
Some people say it’s “Portal with Colors” 🙂
How many people were involved in making ChromaGun & ChromaGun VR. What are there various roles.
The core team consisted of 7 people.
We had 3 Programmers, 3 Artists with one of them also being the Game Designer and myself as the producer.
Were there any challenges or difficulties when making ChromaGun VR for the Playstation VR and ChromaGun for the Nintendo Switch?
We had quite a few problems with the frame rate of the PS VR version as in VR you need to double the fps of the “flat” game on a PS4.
In order to achieve this we had to change a few things, for instance we switched from dynamic lighting to baked lighting which heavily increased the performance.
In another case a tall transparent obstacle was too performance heavy so we reduced the height and appearance of that obstacle.
The Switch version after that was pretty straight forward, we only had to pay attention to performance issues here.
Do you believe that ChromaGun VR is the spiritual successor to a game like Portal?
We don’t think so, no. Portal is a different brand, we rather see ChromaGun as an homage to Portal.
Will ChromaGun or ChromaGun VR get a physical release on any home consoles? Is this something you can currently discuss?
Unfortunately we don’t think so, as ChromaGun was not as successful as we had hoped it could be.
Right now we are focusing our resources on the completion of our upcoming titles Can’t Drive This and Escape the Loop, where we see the potential of a physical version.
What does the future hold for Pixel Maniacs for games on the Nintendo Switch & Playstation 4?
As mentioned before right now we are working on finalizing Can’t Drive This for Xbox, PS4 and Switch and also started the development of Escape the Loop, an episodic, story driven game which also will be released on those consoles.
Do you have any advice for Video game developers who are hoping to create a high quality game on a home console.
I’d say it is really important to keep an eye on your scope. Especially in the beginning you should not start out with huge ideas but rather keep it small. It’s better to have a small polished game with a few features than a big messy one. Also it’s really important that you and your team communicate well with each other and everyone feels comfortable to speak their mind and give feedback.
