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Blendo Games
Company typePrivate
IndustryInteractive entertainment
Founded2010 (2010)
FounderBrendon Chung
Headquarters,
ProductsGravity Bone, Flotilla, Air Forte, Atom Zombie Smasher, Quadrilateral Cowboy, Flotilla 2
Websiteblendogames.com

Blendo Games is an American independent video game development company based in Culver City, California. It was founded by Brendon Chung in 2010 and is primarily a one person effort. Blendo Games gained widespread exposure with the short form stand alone title Gravity Bone; and the following games Flotilla and Atom Zombie Smasher were met with critical praise. The studio has also released other games in several genres.

Background

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Chung has indicated that he was programming his own projects "in a hobby capacity for about a decade"  before being hired as a designer at Pandemic Studios.[1] While there, he worked on The Lord of the Rings: Conquest and Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers, although he continued to work on personal projects including first-person espionage game Gravity Bone, which was released in 2008.[2][3][4] In November 2009, Electronic Arts shut down Pandemic Studios, and Chung began development on Flotilla, a space combat game that takes cues from an abandoned personal project Chung had worked on previously.[5] Flotilla was released in 2010.[6][7]

Brendon Chung at the 2017 Game Developers Choice Awards

Later that same year, Blendo Games released Air Forte, an edutainment game in which the player indicates their knowledge about math, geography, and vocabulary by flying a plane in response to prompts.[8][9][10] In 2011, Chung released real-time strategy game Atom Zombie Smasher, which received critical praise from several outlets and was featured at the 2011 Penny Arcade Expo. It was also part of the 3rd Humble Indie Bundle charity drive.[11][12][13][14]

A sequel to Gravity Bone, Thirty Flights of Loving, was developed to support a Kickstarter project for the Idle Thumbs podcast, and released in 2012.[15][5][16] Following Thirty Flights of Loving, Chung began what would become over four years of development on Quadrilateral Cowboy, which released in 2016.[1][17][18] Flotilla 2, a virtual reality sequel to Flotilla, was released in August 2018.[19] In October of 2018, a new project titled Skin Deep was revealed to be in development at Blendo Games although no release date has yet been announced.[20][21]

Culture

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Blendo Games remains a one-man studio, though according to a 2016 feature in Gamasutra, Chung spends some time working in a shared office space called Glitch City .[22] He has also directly collaborated with several individuals on several projects. The musical score of Thirty Flights of Loving was composed by Chris Remo, and the design of Quadrilateral Cowboy was a joint effort between Chung and Tynan Wales. The Mac and Linux ports of Quadrilateral Cowboy were done by Aaron Melcher, and the game's art book was ported to those same platforms by Ethan Lee. Chung has also indicated he gets play testing help from his friends and family.[23]

Barista

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Barista is a series of four first-person games for Microsoft Windows by Brendon Chung. All of the games involve the player character waking up.[24]

The first game is a modification for Doom II: Hell on Earth. In an interview, Chung stated that his inspirations for the first game included the Doom Bible and Bungie's Marathon.[3][24]

The second game is not a modification, but its own application running on a modified id Tech 2 engine. Chung has indicated the game was an independent study project developed while he was in college.[3] It centers on a nameless spaceship pilot, and features a disjointed story line. There are several characters featured, including a talking skull and an unidentified woman. The skull mentions a person named Hannah, though when an interviewer suggested the unidentified woman was Hannah, Chung said "she's not Hanna. You never meet Hanna."[3][24]

The third game is a modification for Doom 3.[24]

The fourth game is a modification for Half-Life 2. Chung has indicated he developed the game so he could learn the constraints of the Id Tech 4 engine before using it on a larger project.[25]

Games

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References

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  1. ^ a b Wawro, Alex. "Road to the IGF: Blendo Games' Quadrilateral Cowboy". www.gamasutra.com. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  2. ^ "Brendon Chung". insights from the greatest minds in video games. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  3. ^ a b c d "Level With Me, Brendon Chung". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Retrieved 2019-03-03.
  4. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2009-04-06. Retrieved 2010-02-12.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  5. ^ a b Blendo Games. Retrieved March 7, 2012.
  6. ^ "The Making Of: Flotilla | Features | Edge Online". Edge. 2014-03-16. Archived from the original on 2014-03-16. Retrieved 2019-03-12.
  7. ^ Macgregor, Jody (2018-08-20). "Five new Steam games you probably missed this week (August 19, 2018)". PC Gamer. Retrieved 2019-03-09.
  8. ^ "AIR FORTE Official Site". blendogames.com. Retrieved 2019-03-11.
  9. ^ "Air Forte on Game and Player". www.gameandplayer.net. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  10. ^ "Air Forte Review | bit-tech.net". bit-tech.net. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  11. ^ Curtis, Tom (2011-12-19). "Gamasutra Best Of 2011: Top 5 PC Games". Gamasutra. Retrieved 2011-12-19.
  12. ^ "2012 Independent Games Festival Announces Main Competition Finalists". Independent Games Festival. 2012-01-10. Archived from the original on 2012-01-13. Retrieved 2012-01-10.
  13. ^ Schrier, Jason (2011-07-13). "10 Clever Indie Games Ready to Shine at PAX". Wired. Retrieved 2011-08-05.
  14. ^ de Matos, Xav (2011-08-05). "Humble Indie Bundle 3 adds 'Atom Zombie Smasher'". Shacknews. Retrieved 2011-08-05.
  15. ^ Caoili, Eric (2012-02-28). "Kickstarter drive offers exclusive game from Atom Zombie Smasher dev". Gamasutra. Retrieved 2012-02-28.
  16. ^ Meer, Alec (February 28, 2012). "Gravity Bone’s Sequel: Thirty Flights Of Loving". Rock Paper Shotgun. Retrieved March 7, 2012.
  17. ^ "The curious case of 'Quadrilateral Cowboy'". Engadget. Retrieved 2019-03-12.
  18. ^ "Become a 1980s hacker in 'Quadrilateral Cowboy' on July 25th". Engadget. Retrieved 2019-03-09.
  19. ^ O'Connor, Alice (2018-08-20). "Flotilla 2 jacks in to blast off". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Retrieved 2019-03-12.
  20. ^ a b Tarason, Dominic (2018-10-17). "Skin Deep is Die Hard in space from the creator of Quadrilateral Cowboy". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  21. ^ "Blendo's sneaky shooter Skin Deep draws from Die Hard and Far Cry 2". Destructoid. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  22. ^ Parkin, Simon. "WorkStation: The spaces where 22 different game-makers build worlds". www.gamasutra.com. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  23. ^ "Quadrilateral Cowboy FAQ". blendogames.com. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  24. ^ a b c d "BLENDO: Older Projects". Blendogames.com. Retrieved 2013-10-08.
  25. ^ Alexander, Leigh. "Quadrilateral Cowboy : Good old-fashioned digital bliss". www.gamasutra.com. Retrieved 2019-03-11.
  26. ^ Brown, Fraser (April 26, 2018). "Flotilla 2 will fling you into tactical space battles in VR". PC Gamer. Retrieved April 26, 2018.