Discover QUDO’s new game— Time Hardly Waits
Today, we at Block Bastards present you Time Hardly Waits, a game where you manipulate time to your will at any moment to solve challenges, avoid deadly traps and make it to the end of this strange journey. Time Hardly Waits is already available at games.qudo.io.
This week, we had the pleasure to interview Tiaan Gerber, Founder & Game Developer of Time Hardly Waits, developed by Skermunkel (both video and written version below).
1- When did you start developing games, and what made you start?
I became obsessed with video games ever since I was 5 years old, when I picked up that first NES controller, that’s when I knew what I wanted to do with my life.
My journey into development started at around age 8 though, when I started creating Duke Nukem 3D maps (haha, I know, I was a little rebel), Red Alert mods and small games in the Klik ‘n Play engine. At around age 12 I started dabbling in coding a bit with Visual Basic, but got disinterested quickly as I didn’t find it stimulating enough at the time. Just before I turned 15 though, my Mom & Dad got me a team license for 3D Game Studio A6 for Christmas, my first middle-ware engine and that’s where it really popped off. I teamed up with my childhood friend, Alexander Ehlers, who helped me significantly with the art and audio aspects of game making, as I wasn’t as competent yet in those departments, and we started making small games in our spare time after school. This tapered off near the end of High School though, when I got a bit too distracted by anime, punk and girls, hahaha.
After high school and film school in 2013, that’s when I officially picked up the Unity engine and started my first studio, Skobbejak Games, with Alexander and built that up to a small, but reasonably stable studio, where we’ve released a total of 5 games so far across all the major traditional/hardcore platforms, namely Steam (PC, Mac, Linux), PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch.
In 2018, I decided to start Skermunkel as I wanted my own personal studio for my crazy ideas, haha.
As for why, because I feel video games are the ultimate form of the art of game-play, which I think is a respectable and often misunderstood art-form and I just couldn’t pull myself away from not being a part of it.
2- What kind of game is Time Hardly Waits?
I would label Time Hardly Waits as an Abstract Indie Adventure with a strong focus on Action-Puzzles, where the player has the ability to temporarily slow-down time at will and needs to use this ability in order to solve environmental puzzles and overcome timing based obstacles, all while traversing an otherworldly realm where the laws of time, space and gravity have been turned on their collective heads.
After an Apocalyptic event devastates humanity and turns the earth into an in-habitable graveyard, humanity is forced into tiny space colonies, with only small, specialized military units being sent to the surface to investigate a possible cause and an eventual solution towards the catastrophe, in hopes to one day return home. You take on the role of a soldier sent to investigate the disappearance of an engineering crew, sent to Antarctica to investigate a mysterious pyramid that might hold the key towards humanity’s salvation. After the player character picks up a small, enigmatic device, the strange machine inside the pyramid activates unexpectedly and sends the player to a realm far disconnected from our own. Now, trapped in a hostile and ominous dimension, armed with the device previously picked up, the player character can bend time to their will and traverse the mystifying spaces and threats lying ahead.
Ultimately, the player needs to hone their platforming, timing and navigation skills in order to reach the end of this crazy adventure and hopefully find an answer towards humanity’s future.
Time Hardly Waits is strongly focused on a Traditional/Hardcore, Single-Player game-play design and bringing more of that kind of game-play philosophy and identity towards the mobile platform, in hopes to help break the stigma that the platform isn’t viable for Traditional/Hardcore games and to bring that style of game-play to a wider audience and in a more a adapted, approachable form. To help facilitate this, Time Hardly Waits also comes with full external/hardware controller support whether wired or via Bluetooth.
3- Where did the idea of creating Time Hardly Waits come from?
Time Hardly Waits is actually a mobile reworking of one of my other games over at my other studio Skobbejak Games, called Tyd wag vir Niemand (Afrikaans for “Time waits for Nobody”). Alexander didn’t want want to pursue a mobile reworking of the game, but I really wanted to dabble in mobile development and at least give it a try, as I have just been doing PC and Console titles so far, so I got his share of the blessing in order to create a mobile reworking of Tyd wag vir Niemand, titled as, Time Hardly Waits.
As for the game idea itself, it all stemmed from the main mechanic of slowing down and normalizing time and finding that mechanic. At the very start we only sat with cool environments and vague themes of “abstract” and “time”, so I looked to our previous title ‘n Verlore Verstand and tried to identify it’s main flaws and what I would improve, which I felt was a lack of a strong, consistent, core game-play mechanic, with that in mind I tried to find and develop a mechanic that could fit in with the cool themes and environments we had.
After that, the rest just came naturally.
4- Why did you decide to integrate QUDO into your game?
For the last year or so I have been dying to get into the blockchain gaming scene and so I started looking at all the different blockchain gaming solutions out there and I started dabbling in a few of them as the gamer, no-devving yet, just to have some fun and test around. I learned a lot and while there are still multiple blockchain gaming solutions that I love and still keep supporting, none of them seemed approachable or viable to enter for a small indie dev that doesn’t have a massive start-up fuel reserve, so I kept looking.
When I started doing more extensive research and saw QUDO and their unique, powerful blockchain solution, something clicked with me and I just knew I had to approach them and ask them more about what they got cooking. After an initial introduction and the team getting to a more developed state with the SDK, they came back to me with a yay and after that I was ecstatic to start development with the QUDO system and begin my journey into blockchain gaming, a whole new avenue of game-dev that I haven’t travelled before and that I truly believe is the future and the revolution we all will need in this industry, developer, service provider and player alike.
5- Was it hard to integrate QUDO?
Not at all, probably the easiest Unity plug-in integration and learning curve I’ve ever experienced, haha. Along with the stellar support from the dev team and discord channel, it was bliss to integrate.
6- What kind of in-app purchases should we expect from Time Hardly Waits?
Well the premium “Full Unlock” option is a must for all the gamers that want to release all the restrictions of the game and be able to enjoy the game at it’s best, such as removing all In-Game Ads as well as removing the restriction on checkpoints.
For the players that want to take a more granular approach to their game-playing schedule and spending, for a very small fee, they can opt in to turning their latest checkpoint from a temporary one into a permanent one, that way, when they leave the game they can pick up right where they left off, as opposed to only having the first checkpoint of the latest level they unlocked available.«
7- Besides network rewards are you planning to offer achievements or high-scores rewards for your players?
Yes, I already have Achievements worked into the system, I am just tweaking them and trying to find the right balance ;)
As for Highscores Rewards, I don’t have anything planned as of right now as Time Hardly Waits is built as a Traditional/Single-Player game, so I never had stuff like Highscores envisioned in the game, but I really love QUDO’s implementation with their Highscores Rewards, so I might be able to cook something up in the near future.
8- Besides Time Hardly Waits, we know that you already have at least 2 more games. Can you talk a bit more about them?
Operation: BoomSlang! is my next title that I have planned for after the full release of Time Hardly Waits, later in April. I am planning on making Operation: BoomSlang! QUDO’s first hardcore, multi-player title and want to start main development on it in May in order to help the QUDO team test and finalize the PC version and after that the Console versions of the QUDO SDK.
The game will be a Top-Down, Twin-Stick, Multi-player, Action-Arena Shooter, putting players into a small Arena where each player has their own corner and can’t directly access the territories of other players, however, with a criss-crossing centre design and moving walls, players can aim and shoot at other players. On top of this, there is a constant supply of treasure drops and wild creatures to hunt. By building enough treasure and hunt points, players can purchase power-ups to help them get player kills. Ultimately, at the end of the round, players will be awarded on how much treasure they have, how many hunts they have and how many player kills they’ve managed to rack up in the round, this way there are multiple ways for players to achieve success and have more than one goal to work towards.
I seriously cannot wait to start working on this game.
As for SEEDINA, it’s what I would call my eventual Double-I project ;) Its a lot more ambitious in terms of complexity, scope and features than the other two titles and compared to anything that I’ve done before, but its that brain-worm title that I need to be able to do.
I’ve labelled SEEDINA as a Twin-Stick Jump & Gunner as it combines the genres of Twin-Stick Shooter, Platforming and Run ‘n Gun. You take on the role of the last uncorrupted rock golem, who’s realm of nature and organic splendour had been taken over and corrupted by inter-dimensional space pirates and their evil machinery. Now you have to collect and master the 5 Sacred Seeds, each with their own unique uses, in order to defeat the evil invaders. The game is heavily built around a constant symbiotic relationship between the player and the enemies, where the player will need to steal everything from the enemies, from uncorrupting and converting Dark Seeds back to Sacred Seeds, regaining energy and even stealing health, all while the enemies also try to steal from and corrupt the player.
I would really prefer to get a good strong Co-Publisher for SEEDINA though, as I want to be able to approach the game the right way and make it successful.
9- What is the QUDO’s feature that you are more excited about?
That’s an easy one, NFTs, looking at even just the amazing and unique core system the Block Bastards team has worked into QUDO so far, I still can’t believe this is only in Alpha, MainNet is gonna rock!
I can’t wait to hear what they have planned for QUDO 2.0 and their unique NFT solution! I have some NFT ideas planned for Operation: BoomSlang! that I am dying to start working on as soon as I can, haha ;)
On top of that just the general exciting developments planned for QUDO 2.0 such as the on-chain and community voting features and how I can tie everything together and bring everyone together in new, unique and fun ways.
Download Time Hardly Waits here :
Time Hardly Waits is a great and challenging game. We love the complete different scenarios on each level and the game mechanics are unique. We are glad to have Skermunkel with us, and we can’t wait to play the new upcoming games.
We are still accepting more game developers with the possibility to join us as founding partners until we launch QUDO on the Telos main net. There is no need for previous blockchain knowledge or experience, you just need a game that could benefit from QUDO’s features.
To apply, visit our website at qudo.io, or contact us via e-mail at qudo.support@blockbastards.io
If you want to know more about Skermunkel and their game Time Hardly Waits, stay tuned with their social media channels and website:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Skermunkel_ST
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/skermunkel/
