Champlin at the Bit Blot: Aquaria, Multiwinia, Ambrosia think mash up

Ah, obscure in-joke article titles. Everyone loves them. You see, John ‘Magnus’ Champlin (yes, in his spare time he is the World’s Strongest Man) from Ambrosia was kind enough to chat to me for 3% of the day about Aquaria, Multiwinia, Ambrosia, smoking jackets and other goodies. He’s called Champlin, for some reason we talked about champing at the bit, Bit Blot developed Aquaria, which is similar to champing (or chomping, depending on your region) at the bit. It all makes sense! Perfect sense! Onward, to Madness!

TMG: How do you guys work at Ambrosia? I know you hire people to do artwork and sound and all that lot - are you all split up all over the place?

John: We have one big office building that’s an old farmhouse. You walk in and my office has a giant fire place in there. Everyone is hidden away in a nook here and there. Nice big kitchen, big lounge, large building - very fun.

TMG: I’m picturing you sitting on a red leather chair in front of a fire with a pipe.

John: You know, that’s my normal attire. I’m from my desk right now, but I normally have my smoking jacket on and two hounds next to me as I’m reading a book.

TMG: [Laughs] It sounds like a really cool place to work…

John: I love it! I’ve been here almost ten years.

TMG: Down to the goods - Aquaria! Is it done?

John: Yes, almost done. We’re just doing some final testing, making sure it’ll work on all systems we say it’ll work on. Right now it’s double checking a zillion things. Ambrosia makes sure that everything is up to our standard before we ship it. We don’t really give dates, which bothers some people, but it lets us release titles that are deserving of the Ambrosia name.

TMG: That’s a really good way to be. I really do applaud you for that. I’ve noticed that a lot of companies now release the beta version of games for fans to test. You didn’t get this a few years ago, but now it’s a huge marketing thing.

John: I was at PAX in Seattle last month and it’s so weird to see how many dates there were for beta releases. They give out codes for people to download first, it’s a great way to market it.

TMG: Do you have an in house team that do testing?

John: Yeah, we actually have a Q&A department. We’re a small company, we only have 13 people working for Ambrosia at the moment. We do have a tech support guy and a Q&A department that double check the games. I was testing Aquaria like crazy and everyone in the office plays it too.

TMG: I love that you say you have a ‘tech support guy’. That speaks volumes about the quality of software you produce, that you just have one person.

John: Everyone at Ambrosia is very talented. Andrew Welch is really good at choosing people who are at the top of their game. The programmers are top notch, the IT guys are phenomenal, the tech support crew are at the top of their game. We have a lot of people working solidly on it.

TMG: Why do you think Bit Blot decided to bring Aquaria to the Mac? I didn’t hear about it until you guys mentioned it, so I had a read around. It’s got a neat fan base, it’s won a few awards and then you sent me the picture of the fan dressed as Naija, so it’s obviously gone down well! Did they want to bring it out for as many platforms as possible?

John: Actually we approached them. We were at the Independent Games Festival and they won that one, I think Andrew and our marketing guy saw them at a following game convention and our marketing guy tracked them down, told them what we are about and said it was up our alley. Old school, great visuals, phenomenal sound - very distinct in the world of games. They wanted to do it, but didn’t know how. We were in the right place at the right time. I mean, there’s only two of them in Bit Blot, Derek and Alec.

TMG: And they did the whole game for PC?

John: Yes.

TMG: Oh my word! That’s impressive, I have to say.

John: Yeah, it’s amazing. The guy who programmed it wrote the music, which is incredible. The artwork is amazing too.

TMG: I was reading on their progress log that they did all of this research into sea dwelling creatures, how to get it just right. The coral, the bosses, it’s really quite astounding that they’ve hand done the lot.

John: The artist took real life photos of creatures and made his own style. I used to work with Marine Biologists and I used to SCUBA dive and study fish and other animals, so there’s a lot of ones I recognise, ones that you’d never expect to be included. There’s one creature called a Pistol Shrimp that has pincers that can strike faster than the speed of sound, so in the game there’s a Pistol Shrimp that has a nose that fires a bullet. I got the joke - the drawing is right on - and he was glad someone got the joke!

TMG: It does look gorgeous. What sort of hardware will it run on? Every Mac?

John: 10.3 is our minimum right now. People are using G4’s, Sunflower iMacs. A lot of our testers run new hardware, which isn’t always the best for complete testing!

TMG: So it’ll work on PPC as well?

John: That’s the hope.

TMG: That’s good news for PPC gamers. Most games are Intel now, so good news for those still using older hardware. Have you ever thought about bringing stuff like Escape Velocity over to Intel?

John: It’s a thought. Trouble with being a small company is that we have limited resources. We’d love to have everything up and running to the current machines, but it’s a balance. We like new games!

TMG: Back to Aquaria…you said you love it and you’ve played it to death. What’s so special about it?

John: If you play for 30-45 minutes a time, once you get into it, it’s a beyond-epic game. I’m a huge 2D side scroller fan. I love new games - like Halo on the 360 - but I miss using the keyboard; left key, right key, jump. I’m an old school gamer. Aquaria is an old school game but has very unique method of playing.

TMG: I love that you can use the mouse for all controls if you want to, instead of the keyboard. I like the simplicity of side scrollers, three dimensions just don’t work sometimes. Aquaria wouldn’t work as a 3D game, you couldn’t have the artistic side for a 3D game. Two people couldn’t do that amount of work. It’s lovely to see that they’ve funnelled all that artistic goodness into the 2D world…

John: They wanted to have the innovative, intuitive way of controlling the game. You can travel across these huge maps just by using your mouse. The first time playing it through was something like 20 hours of straight gameplay. It’s large! We went to Macworld a while ago and my goal was to win it while I was there. I’ve probably won the game about 16 times and when I played it through at Macworld I couldn’t win it…I couldn’t get to the end. I know certain melodies for doors and I know the routes, but it’s so huge I couldn’t get through it. You know, I’m 6″2, 280 pound guy swimming around as a mermaid singing and I love it!

TMG: [Laughs] The Mac version has extra bits and pieces compared to the PC version?

John: Tweaking to make it work on the Mac and extra art for the widescreen Macs. Actually, if you buy a Mac with a Mighty Mouse, well, Mighty Mouse won’t let you click both left and right buttons at the same time. In part of the game you have to click the buttons at the same time, we had to work around that. I found that out while demoing it to someone!

TMG: It sounds like a classic. How do you expect it to sell?

John: It’s going to sell amazing. We’re going to make a billion dollars. It’s a Billion American Dollars, in UK pounds, about $30.

TMG: I’ll buy Ambrosia when you make your billion.

John: [Laughs] Nice. It’s got a great fan base and we’ll hope it’ll sell really well. When we were at Macworld, some people got so into it they’d come back every day just to play it. I gave some of them spots as Beta testers.

TMG: Congratulations on developing it. I know it’s been in development for ages.

John: It has been in development for a while. There are some 360 games that aren’t as in depth as Aquaria in terms of maps, character development and artwork and they’d have whole teams of people working on it! We’re really proud of it.

TMG: I love that you guys are keeping the game going. I got my first Mac when I was about 12 (I’m now 24) and I’ve been playing Ambrosia games since then. GooBall, EV - I can’t remember what I was playing when I was 12 - but I love that Ambrosia are keeping the old school, high quality gaming alive. It’s not just old school though, you’ve got this way of making high quality games in the right way. And they always work - no problem. 

You said you’d been at Ambrosia nearly 10 years. In those 10 years, what’s changed? First it was side scrollers, now it’s games like Redline that have physics engines.

John: Back in the day we’d have a few $10-$15 games come out a year. Back then we had 5 employees. We’d have small games and utilities here and there. As we expanded we realised, why not make some larger games?

TMG: You have Multiwinia coming up for Mac soon, that’ll be great. I’d heard that the PC version wasn’t selling that well, even though it got awesome feedback and reviews?

John: Yeah, it’s really weird. When I was at PAX they were showing it to people at a LAN party and everyone loved it. I’d go to colleges around the area here and do a lot of LAN groups - talk to upcoming developers, that sort of thing - and everyone loved it - multiplayer Darwinia! They were excited. You show it to people, they play it, they love it. But for some reason, they just don’t pick it up. We can learn from what happened on the PC release and hopefully improve on it, though.

 

Stay tuned for the release of Aquaria and Multiwinia. Thanks to John for taking the time out to answer my questions.