About
My name is Arvi Teikari, and I’m known in the internets as Hempuli. I’ve been creating games since I was 10-11, and I use Multimedia Fusion 2 to create my games. This blog was created so that I could put some news up more easily, this far I’ve needed other pages to do this.
Hi Hempuli,
just wanted to tell you I like your games very much! You really do know how to come up with original ideas. Floating Island is an outstanding game, really. I also enjoy browsing your blog as I have been toying with game development since.. well, ashamed to say so, but I started at about the same age as you, on an Atari 800XE back then. But because of long pauzes, laziness, lack of math knowledge and.. yes, lack of skill, I never got too far. Its still interesting to read blogs like yours and tutorials concerning game development. If only I had invested more time into coding, but its always fun to try something usind C and SDL.
Wish you best of luck, keep up the perfect work you have been doing
WhiteFalcon
Hello Hempuli!
I have been recently browsing through your work, and I must say, you have a fantastic vision of the artistic part of the game. The mechanics of the games aren’t that complicated, but I guess that is in some cases not the most important part. I’ve been browsing your games, and am now trying to play them whenever possible, as I find a certain charm in them all.
I’m farily new to the indie/art game scene, but it appears to me that what counts is not the brutally efficient graphics and awesome gameplay made to please the millions out of a team of hundreds of people, rather than one person, or a group of them, that transmits their “artistic vision” to the game. They dictate how the gameplay works, and what should be in it. I think that’s somehow parallel to the jazz evolution, the way it went from the jam bands to the free-experimental sounds, from the vision of a group of individuals, to the mind of one…
I have noticed you do a lot of games to competitions, if I got it right, like this Ludum Dare thing. I would like to know, don’t you think it can affect the outcome of the game to work with a competition in mind? I don’t mean to pry or anything, I’m just curious…
Anyway, besides the snob impression I might cause, I actually love your games!
Don’t know if you’d care to answer, but either way, cheers mate!
Rodrigo
Thanks for the comment!
Well, one significant thing about competitions is that they have deadlines. Having a real deadline and only a small amount of time to work on the game helps me concentrate on whatever I think to be the ‘important thing’ in the game, be it a gimmick or a game mechanic. None of the competitions I’ve participated in have had real prizes, so I don’t think the way they’re supposed to make people compete for victory has really affected the games. Mind you, usually I’ll come up with a game idea beforehands and then get into working on it as soon as possible (with the theme in mind as well if there’s one).
Oh, I didn’t understand that there were no monetary or similar prizes. In that sense, I suppose competitions can actually get a person to work! :D
As I understand you are not signed to any game label, or anything of sorts. I’m not really surprised, seeing so many musicians and mostly visual artists share their work for free, but I must ask, wouldn’t you prefer it that way? Don’t understand this as any sort of advocating of the mainstream working etc., it’s just I think artists (hope you don’t mind if I call you an artist) sometimes could make better work if they had more tools to their disposal.
Oh, and I forgot to mention, your cartoonish drawings are just delightful! ;)
Thanks for the compliments! I didn’t quite get your question, though – what do you mean by ‘game labels’ in this case?
Oh…game companies then? I mean the sort of companies that provide you with a team and all. There are even a couple independent brands out there…
I don’t know if I’m making myself clear, but that’s all my English allows…:P
Oh yeah, I don’t think I could ever work with a team bigger than me ans a musician, at least unless for some reason me and the other members managed to somehow work together. I generally want to hold as many of the threads as possible by myself. That’s selfish and dumb thinking when it comes to bigger projects, but I can’t really help it. I also wouldn’t want to make games for a living, so there’s that too.
Hum, I suppose that makes sense, regarding what I said earlier about artistic vision and all.
(I used to be like that, until I found that my incompetence brought me to the need to find help)
Hum, now that is curious. You don’t want to make games for a living? So it’s more like a hobby? :P
Hum, and I’ve been playing notepad and flickerstrings, I must say, this experimental vein of games is completely different from what I’ve seen until now. Such a peculiar treatment of the gaming scheme!
Also, I don’t mean to get to your privacy in any way, but you wouldn’t have any sort of place where we could talk? I understand if you’d prefer not to give it though…
Dear Arvi,
This is Iris at youyouwin.com, the leading flash game distributor and sponsor located in China. I played “Once in Space” created by you, and it`s a cool games. Thus, we’d like to invite you to try our service which is free and help you to make money. If you want to know more details about us, you can check from this link: http://www.youyouwin.com/index.php
So far we have developed partnership with more than 600 developers and a lot of game portals such as Disney games, bubblebox.com, bored.com, notdoppler.com, dolidoli.com.
We also have developed partnership with about 200 channel partners, including some hot flash game websites such as 7k7k.com ( over 100million pv, pr7), game.com.cn (belongs to spilgames), yx007.com (over 8million pv, pr7), etc. and a lot of famous media portals such as sina.com (pr8), sohu.com (pr8), ifeng.com (pr8) etc.
If you are looking for sponsor or distributor for your games, please do not hesitate to contact us. I sincerely hope we would do business and get revenue together.
I am looking forward to your reply. Thanks and regards!
Email Address: youyouwin.com@gmail.com
MSN: youyouwin.com@hotmail.com
My skype: morningsmile515
Iris
I like doing mind power!!!
Hello, Hempuli!
I HATE You and Mikko Kaksonen, my “day & nightmare” :):) – “WOA really CONSUMED my life”!!
Of course, I’M JOKING – but, You see, there are still some people addicted on World of Abstractica… and hopelessly stuck at Journey 4 – levels: “Smiley in ASCII” (54), “Wrath of the missing answer box” (37) and “Multicrypt2″ (95)… :(:(… Is any help possible?
Anyway, I congratulate You on Your wonderful games and wish You all the best in 2012.!
I haven’t worked with Mikko Kaksonen for years, and unfortunately I don’t remember any of those solutions anymore. Sorry about that! I’m glad to hear that you’ve been enjoying the series, though.
Hey there Arvi,
I was looking around other indies that I could contact and I found your site. Do you remember acoders by any chance? I am skn3 the leader of that, Gotta say hello to clickers of course :D
I hope you don’t mind me contacting you. Basically I really need some help from other indies. I have this tool I have created called Objecty. It is not finished, but is still in development. There is an alpha demo to download on the project page so go have a look if you want. I took a massive gamble and put it up on kickstarter. Before you groan and close the email, I am not begging for backers!
More then anything I need to get the word out about Objecty. It can do some really cool stuff but it hasn’t seemed to pick up a lot of attention. So can you help? Tweet, blog post, forum post, reddit post.. anything!
Id be happy to hear your thoughts on Objecty (if you tried the demo). It would be interesting to get some positive (or negative) feedback.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/skn3/objecty-2d-game-development-made-easier
Thanks,
Jon
Hey Hempuli,
I’m Eldin, I’m a CS major, aspiring to be an indie dev, and one of the things that I’ve been learning lately was pixel art.
What I wanted to ask was, how did you learn pixel art? Where were the sites that taught you more about pixel art?
Would be grateful for your help, thanks for your time mate!
Unfortunately I might not have any proper answer for your inquiry. :(
I’ve learned my pixel art skills by trying over and over over the years (over over), and I’m not that good at it in any case, mind you. I guess a very important part of the learning process has been looking at other people’s works, because that has taught me some important things about using colours and expressing things with very low resolution. However, most of the learning progress has been trail-and-error-ish undescribable mess.
If you need specific help, just ask! I’ll send you an e-mail :)
Hi, I recently discovered Enviromental Station Alpha and it looks amazing so far!!, I hope you can complete it soon and is has a rich and big map (with map option like Metroid of course). How’s the music going, need a composer or something? hit me up.
Hi
Oops, last comment was submitted by accident. :) Sorry about that.
Hi Hempuli,
I really love the look of ESA. If you are interested in bringing this game to the Nintendo 3DS eShop, please email me. Perhaps my company, Renegade Kid, can help somehow.
I look forward to playing the game when it is released.
Thanks,
Jools
Very interesting! Expect some e-mail sometime in the near future!
Hi Hempuli,
I have been keeping tabs on ESA because I think it looks great, I downloaded Officer Alfred and found it pretty enjoyable. Anyway I run a games blog and if you wouldn’t mind I’d to email you some interview questions for a post. If that’s ok then just email me so I can send them over. Thanks :)
I’ll get in contact with you! :)