Apeirogon Entertainment is hiring

[TorQueMoD]

Apeirogon Entertainment is a brand new indie game company located in Vancouver, BC, Canada. We are currently in the early prototyping stage of our first project JetForce - a Sci-Fi first person shooter with a twist; every player has a constant flight jet pack ala The Rocketeer or Dark Void.

At this point in time we're looking for an environment artist who would be willing to volunteer some of their free time towards creating some environment prop models for the game. This job is on a Volunteer basis with possibility for Royalties after passing the probation period. If interested please contact info[AT]torquemod.com

We are also hiring for several other positions which can be seen on our jobs page http://apeirogon-games.com/jobs.html

For more info on the company visit our website at http://apeirogon-games.com/

To view our infrequently updated JetForce art dump gallery visit http://apeirogon-games.com/jetforce/

At the behest of my concept artist, I'm posting our "agreement" that we're signing with all of the team members. He thinks its a good idea to point out that anyone volunteering to help us out retains ownership of their work and if we do get funding, a new contract will be required. http://www.apeirogon-games.com/apeirogon_agreement.pdf

[LordDz]

Not to be rude, but a game where everyone have a jetpack?... :>
http://store.steampowered.com/app/18110/

[cashed]

not to be rude either but the website looks 10+ years old

also Hybrid for XBLA

[TorQueMoD]

The website was purposely made to look old because we're trying to give the whole company that retro vibe from the 90s.

And you're comparing Shattered Horizon to The Rocketeer? (Our main inspiration) We're not talking about slowly drifting through space here.

Also, why does a game have to be 100% unique to be fun? Are you telling me Call of Duty sucks because Counter-Strike or Swat 4 already did urban warfare?

Hybrid looks awesome though, have to try it out. Still much slower paced than what we're doing.

[kraid]

By the title of the game i was hoping for a Jetforce Gemini remake or something along the lines.

You're also missing out a lot of vital information such as the engine you're using to create this game on.
I allmost thought it'll be Torque 3D, because of your email adress.
But by further looking on your portfolio it could be also Source or even UDK.

[Stormy]

The website was purposely made to look old because we're trying to give the whole company that retro vibe from the 90s.

I totally dig this idea, but what you've chosen there is a bad design from the 90s. I think you're going for the dark reign or kknd design. The buttons and stuff look like that but I hate hat HATE the brown text on black background. Not that you asked me. I think the greatest way to celebrate the tacky design of the 90s would be to parody it, not directly mirror it. Otherwise, just as cashed did, people will assume it actually is a shitty old website. It actually reminds me of dark artz entertainment, and I don;t think that's a comparison you want to invite.

I think you want to emulate the 90s era of green-on-black screens more than the "java... script?" era. Have a look at the original alien movie, gremlins 1 or short circuit to see what I mean. I think the style of the rocketeer was based more on noir or art noveau with a bit of punk, if that's what you're chasing.

Looks like you have a pretty well educated and diverse team, hope you find someone to fill the gap, although I reckon you'd be more likely to find a good level/environment designer on lopers, and artists on polycount.

On a side note, when I hire I am totally going to be looking for people with no formal education. If they're top notch without school, imagine what they'll do with some actual training?

[cashed]

i agree with black_stormy, it really turned me off as something I would want to take part in, especially if its volunteering.

I wish you luck as free to plays are quite difficult to build and get a following.

[TorQueMoD]

Thanks for all the feedback Stormy, I'll take a look into redesigning the website when I get some free time. You know of any websites that capture the retro look without looking too dated that you could maybe point me in for reference? Or at the least, what developer's websites do you like? I'm not the best website designer

@kraid all the vital info you're talking about is on the News and games pages of the site. I figured I didn't want to overwhelm people with the ad so I'd let them read more about the project if they were interested. I was missing the link to the design doc on the games page though so thanks for making me double check
And you do know that Torque is a force in physics right? I've been using this name since long before Garage games re-named their engine. And MoD is my clan tag Mercenaries of Death.

@cashed - any game project is difficult to make and get a following F2P is really just a distribution method in my opinion though there are obviously some different challenges to making a profit from them.

[cashed]

you have to remember also, everyone and their sister is entering the F2P right now, and even though games can be good, they will get drowned with the cash flow and advertisement of the premier developers/publishers

[TorQueMoD]

I'm not worried. Good games get played bad games don't. If we make a bad game then its a learning experience and we have to figure out how to make it better. If we make a good game then we won't have to worry. It may take some time to get noticed, but it'll happen.

I spent 2 hours last night working on a new design concept for the website and then photoshop crashed, deleted my file somehow and didn't autorestore/save anything. So freaking mad!

[Stormy]

OH SHIT! Well, like you said, a valuable learning experience.

As for website designs I like to read SmashingMagazine. They occasionally have some good articles on there. Maybe it's better left until you have a firmer grasp on your games visual design so you can move around that, much like strangeloopgames did with vessel.

Or maybe you could go an extra step and make it seem like a really old school intranet BBS or something, back when HTML was used to simply markup documents for easier reading, which were hosted on local networks. Back when the internet was in its infancy at CERN and the general populace hadn't thought of it yet. It's a bit cliche but you could make it an "in character" website which might exist in your game world. Actually that's a little too cliche.

I am actually no good at designing websites myself. I'm great at picking what I do and don't like out of existing designs though, which is why I go through freelancers for my website designs. Specifically freelancer.com. Find a guy called logonation and tell him blackstormy sent ya

[cashed]

SmashingMagazine is a great site, I always read it from time to time.

[Epifire]

Interesting read through all this. I really like the idea of a 90's throwback design but I agree that it still looks like you are gonna need more work in that area before it really fits the role well.

Learning experiences are good though, be sure to keep us posted on the company's progress as you improve stuff more.

[TorQueMoD]

Definitely will. I'll be working on the second re-design tonight and make sure to save multiple iterations this time Also had the concept artist whip up a cool background for the site so I think you guys will prefer the new version a lot over the last design.

[Epifire]

Definitely will. I'll be working on the second re-design tonight and make sure to save multiple iterations this time Also had the concept artist whip up a cool background for the site so I think you guys will prefer the new version a lot over the last design.

Well simplicity and sheer awesomeness of the nineties imo, is inspiring. Also inspiring for the fact that there are still people who appreciate and pursue designing off of that era. I might have been to young to remember over half of that decade but I still have many fond memories of that time.