Paper Wars: Cannon Fodder

Games developer and publisher iFun4all is quick to expand his portfolio of game series in most bizarre way one could think of. To achieve such horrible quality company CEOs limited the budget to equivalent of 500 Russian Roubles and tried to combine remote work of “cost effective” workers worldwide.

“With this title instead of being bad at making good game we tried to be good at making bad game

said Laszlo Kovács, Hungary–based project manager and lead programmer (the cheapest one iFun4all were able to find _worldwide_).

“Our idea was to make tower–of–defense type of game and reverse the concept” says Fülöp Mészáros, one of most world–renown Hungarian designers (out of two). “Innormal ToD game you place the towers and they're being shot automatically. In our game you have your tower already placed and you shoot it yourself. It has to be fun!” continues Fülöp, who was fired from the company as soon as beta tests proved correctness of his assumptions (or rather lack of it).

The unique, artistic old-fashioned graphic “paper” style of the game is an effect of long-term search of the proper artist. iFun4all found it in the person of young genius painter from exotic East. “Work on this game was extremely hard. We don’t have computers in our village, so I had to paint everything on paper, hence the style” mentions Zhro Wáng, young freelance artist from China.

Unusual music style of the game immediately reminds us of old USSR military anthems. “It’s because the last thing our composer Boris Czernienko had heard before he became deaf 20 years ago was Soviet National Anthem” says Laszlo. “We tried to tell him that it would be better if he would move on and compose something different, but he won’t listen”, Laszlo complains. “Well, maybe that’s because he technically can’t hear” arguments Fülöp, who was re-hired because no other designer wanted to continue his work. “Boris is the cheapest person in the team. He actually paid us so we would use his music. Without him we couldn’t afford to finish the production” talks back Laszlo.

“We believe we are opening new chapter in gaming history”, comments CEO of company.

Last updated on 02 March 2011