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unTied Games is our Featured Creator for October and the next GDM account to be put under the Member Spotlight. A developer and pixel artist from the USA, they’ve got a great selection of tilesets, characters and objects available on the store, you can check out their full
set of listings here and their
Featured Creator bundle here.
Read on to find out more about unTied Games…
GDM Username: unTiedgames
Name/Nickname: Will Tice
Age: 32
Country: USA
Developer, Asset Creator or are you a bit of both?:
A bit of both! I develop games and tools as well as create pixel art assets.
Full Time, Part Time or Hobby?:
Full time! I was part time for the past couple years while doing some programming freelance work for a product on Nintendo Switch, and have recently returned to working on my own games and art full time. I’m so excited to be back!
How long have you been doing this?:
I’ve been a professional programmer and indie developer for 10 years, and a professional pixel artist for 6 years.
What made you become a dev/artist?:
I’ve kind of always known I wanted to make games, ever since I was a kid playing all those amazing Super Nintendo games. Back then, there wasn’t much of an indie developer scene, and it seemed like all the best games out there came from Japan. I studied computer science and Japanese in college, and was fortunate to be able to study abroad and have the opportunity to attend Tokyo Game Show 2009, including the developer-only portion. That left a lasting impression and I vowed that one day, I’d be standing up there giving a talk!
I lived and worked in Japan briefly as an English teacher after college, which was an amazing experience. At that point, the indie developer scene was really starting to flourish and become more of a reality, so in 2012 I decided to come home and make it my full-time career! In 2015 I branched out into pixel art, to both create asset packs and to create art for my own games. The best is yet to come!
Favourite software/tools to use?:
I use Aseprite for drawing and animating sprites, and Pyxel Edit for drawing tilesets. I’m currently working on a few tools of my own, but they’re still under wraps for now.
For game development I’ve used libGDX (Java) and SFML (C++), among others.
What’s one tip you would give to someone starting out?:
Never give up! There are lots of roadblocks and pitfalls in game development, art, and life in general. Don’t let them get you down.
As an indie developer, you’ll find yourself wearing a lot of hats all the time: Programmer, artist, musician, marketer, planner, and more. Not every part of the job is going to be fun, and that’s okay.
Put your passion and dedication into your efforts. Learn from failures- Everyone has them! Never give up, and you can keep moving forward to success and be proud.
How do you promote your work (games or assets)?:
- I found a lot of success in building a fanbase on YouTube, where I post development logs and time-lapse pixel art videos.
- I share my art and game screenshots on Twitter with various hashtags like #pixelart, #screenshotsaturday, and #indiedev.
- I share my art and game screenshots on Facebook not just on my own page, but also in various pixel art and indie dev groups.
- I also share art on Reddit in /r/pixelart.
- I attend local video game conventions (VGM Con, 2D Con) and exhibit my games. It’s always a great experience and I get good feedback!
What project are you working on now?:
Any completed projects/work you want to promote?
I’m still working on my largest projects, but aside from them and aside from pixel art I could give a shoutout to a couple of my free minigames:
- Demon’s Hymn (A free platformer game for Low Rez Jam 2017. Windows recommended.)
- Demon’s Hymn 2 (A free platformer game for Low Rez Jam 2018. Windows recommended.)
And finally, favourite game ever & why?:
I can’t narrow it down to just one! My all-time favorites are:
- Mega Man X2, because of the fast-paced, skill-based action. Mega Man is my favorite series overall!
- Final Fantasy Tactics, because of the gripping story, deep gameplay mechanics, and the fantastic blend of low-poly PS1 environments and polished pixel art sprites that still holds up today.
- and Chrono Trigger, because of its perfect unison of Toriyama’s art, Mitsuda’s music, and Squaresoft’s classic RPG know-how.
You can connect with unTiedgames here:
Check out some of unTiedgames’ assets…
