Introducing Ourselves: Wonderbelly Games

[wonderbelly_bob]

Hi everyone! Thank you for having us here for the PC Gamer Spotlight. We’re excited to share our love of bouncy physics, dungeon crawling, and face-palming puns with all of you!

Wonderbelly Games is a Seattle-based, three-person studio founded by Andrea Roberts, Bob Roberts, and Kurt Loidl. We’re a tiny team of close friends who spent a decade working on AAA games: Bob led the design team on Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War, while Kurt and Andrea worked on the Fable series and more at Microsoft. Now we follow our hearts and our bellies to make the kind of games we love: bright, cheeky games with tons of strategic depth.

Roundguard is our first release as Wonderbelly Games. Inspired by the physics-based fun of Peggle, the strategy and surprise of classic roguelikes, and the quirky humor of Adventure Time and the Adventure Zone, Roundguard is the bounciest dungeon-crawler (dungeon-baller?) you’ve ever played. The game was selected for the PAX 10, Indie MegaBOOTH, Day of the Devs, and more!

We shipped March 13th, 2020 simultaneously on Steam, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Apple Arcade (aka iPhone, iPad, AppleTV, and Mac) in 16 languages around the world… and then promptly collapsed from exhaustion. Fun fact: Andrea and Bob are married and have a four-year-old daughter. Turns out shipping a game in a burgeoning pandemic while preschool is shut down is tough! Who knew?

We’ve recovered, though, and we’ve been hard at work on our first major content update for Roundguard. It just released last Friday! In our Treasure Hunter update, we’ve added Daily Puzzles and Weekly Run modes, tons of new rewards to unlock, and most importantly… mimics.

Did I mention we’re huge D&D nerds?

We’re obsessed with game design, so this week, we’ll be talking about a few of our favorite topics: designing procedural systems, building levels in Roundguard, and brainstorming a new character class. We’ll also be giving away an enchanted set of Roundguard swag, sure to improve your bounce stats next time you drop into a dungeon.

Let us know if you have any questions about Roundguard, our backgrounds, or anything else! We’re looking forward to chatting with everyone.

<3
Bob & Andrea

Oh, and you can hang out with us more over here too:

• Discord: https://discord.gg/roundguard
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/roundguardgame
• Wonderbelly Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/cYbdL1

 

[MaddMann]

My niece was telling me about this game, she loves it! I'll definitely give it a try!

On a separate question, could you regale is with your favorite memory of playing DND? That scene with friends that always brings a smile and odd looks from non dnd players when you tell the story over a few pints (back when we were able to do that)

 

[wonderbelly_bob]

On a separate question, could you regale is with your favorite memory of playing DND? That scene with friends that always brings a smile and odd looks from non dnd players when you tell the story over a few pints (back when we were able to do that)

Andrea might have a good "how Bob accidentally thwarted all my DM plans" story, but here's a little nugget from my time playing DnD on the Monolith twitch stream with friends from work before I left to do Wonderbelly full time...

Matt Allen, our Director of Technical Art, was a paladin named J'Flash. He was always trying to talk us out of conflict anyway, but in the middle of one precarious battle against a displacer beast he rolled so abysmally every time he tried to use his sword that he said "Screw it! I don't need this anyway!" and threw his only weapon through an interdimensional portal, lost forever. We all had a good laugh.

A couple months later, in a climactic battle on the other side of the world, an enemy emerges that doesn't seem to have control over himself, and cannot speak... instead we hear the voice of his gloriously cursed sword, who has held a grudge for millennia and returned to exact revenge on his unfaithful former wielder J'Flash, who cast him into the void what seemed like a few weeks ago for us, but has been a thousand lifetimes for this animated sword... he has led armies and conquered civilizations and brooded over his betrayal for ages.

Since we had all been neck deep in creating Shadow of Mordor's "nemesis system" for years at that point, Mark Jessup (our DM) had decided he had to bring back a truly personal nemesis, and found the silliest way to do it. We defeated our enemy, the nemesword, and J'Flash just wrapped him up in a thick cloth and stuffed him in a bag as the sword continued to spew insults and demands at us... Mark brilliantly kept the angry muffled insult spew going perfectly as the party discussed what to do with him. Matt insisted that at the next opportunity, he would melt him down and turn him into a shield.

 

[MaddMann]

I just accidentally erased my own quotes and original message by editing the wrong thread... I need to not forum hop while at work. Too many tabs, not enough concentration at the end of the day.