By JENNIFER AMATO
Staff Writer
Staff Writer
NORTH BRUNSWICK – A local resident has returned to his roots to pursue his dreams.
Brett Taylor has been developing video games for the past nine years. He graduated from The College of New Jersey with an Interactive Multimedia major and went on to attend the Teachers College of Columbia for his masters in Cognitive Studies in Development.
He worked at Arkadium, a casual gaming company in New York for three years before deciding to go on his own. The 27-year-old returned home to North Brunswick to develop Linelight, an elegant, minimalist puzzle game that takes place in a world of lines.
“It’s zen-inducing music and visuals simulate the experience of receiving an A+ on a super hard test while receiving a back massage,” Taylor said. “The only control is to move, so it’s immediately accessible to everybody.”
Linelight took a year-and-a-half to develop under his company, My Dog Zorro.
“Game development combines so many things I love doing all into one,” Taylor said. [T]he workload [has been] distributed between me and my dog, Zorro. I did everything, and he wagged his tail at all my ideas. It’s a great team dynamic.”
Linelight launched for Steam and PlayStation 4 on Jan. 31. Taylor attended the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco at the end of February to officially show Linelight.
“Linelight stands out in its design. Picture a room full of developers facing the same direction, all reaching forward for innovation. Rather than joining the crowd, I’ve turned around and instead explored how much there is between me and the wall behind us. What if we removed mechanics? How simple could we get? What would happen if we stripped the design of a game to the bone? Linelight does so much with so little.
“I didn’t really know what the result of this experiment would be when I started out, and I’ve truly been blown away by the results. Linelight is unlike any other game – it’s nearly an equal challenge for first-time gamers as well as puzzle-game enthusiasts,” he said.
Crediting his home to be a “clear space for my thoughts and ideas to develop,” it’s also where he becomes part of a larger, highly evolving industry.
“Like the tech industry, the video game landscape is constantly shifting and evolving. Video games are only a few decades old. The video game industry is an infant, and we live in an era of wild possibilities and discovery. There are two major players in the industry: large companies and small indie studios. There are many teams in the middle, but most developers are on one end of the spectrum. Large companies have far more at stake, so they tend to make games that are familiar, less innovative and highly polished. But indie studios don’t have nearly as much to lose: they can afford to take wild risks, so indie games are known for innovation and experimentation. Linelight is this kind of game,” Taylor said.
Visit linelightgame.com for the trailer and download links.
Contact Jennifer Amato at [email protected].