Game jams are “where it’s at” for Malaysian developer Shawn Beck

While the game development scene in Kuala Lumpur (KL) is arguably small given the city’s size and economic status, it is certainly home to Malaysia’s most vibrant game development community, and the focal point of government and private efforts to promote the industry.

I reached out to an independent developer in West Malaysia, Velocibox creator Shawn Beck, who candidly discussed his life as a solo game developer in the nation’s capital.

Shawn at Casual Connect 2014

The 27-year-old Beck first began working on games in his spare time, teaching himself the Unity engine and Javascript while working as an animator and Autodesk Maya instructor. He took the plunge into game development full-time at the age of 24, when the opportunity arose to help a friend with a project.

While the game was a recipient of funding from Malaysia’s Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC), the move was still a bold one for someone with no previous industry experience. Given Beck’s lifelong passion for making games, however, it is hard to imagine someone like him having passed up the opportunity:

I think it was something I’ve always wanted to do since I was a child. I remember a time when I used to doodle scenes and puzzle scenarios for adventure games when I was five. At 13 years old I learned HTML from my brother and made hyperlink text adventures. When I was 15, I made my own JRPGs using RPGMaker. I began making action games on Gamemaker when I was 16.

(See: Deadline approaching for Malaysian game dev grant.)

Beck’s first project, Dreamcatcher, was completed and received positive reception. He and his partner at the time showed enough promise to receive funding for another project through MDeC later, which, though never released, was part of a valuable learning experience offered to IPCC grant recipients. He now sees that the scope of the followup project, a mobile hack-and-slash, was far too big for a team of two. But he hasn’t let this discourage him from his passion of designing games

Even a short two-month holiday in New Zealand to visit his brother’s family resulted in some quality game design time, as he teamed up with his 7-year-old niece to work on a cute platformer. His niece even helped design the panda pixel art.

Along the way Beck has made himself at home in the West Malaysian indie landscape. He presently helps organize the International Game Developers Association’s Malaysia chapter, and has routinely participated in game jams since first joining a Unity-organized jam in Cyberjaya, an area in KL’s suburbs established in the 1990s to support IT ventures.

While a few of Beck’s previous projects are available for free online, including PewPewPewPew and Steampuff on his website, it was the Ludum Dare #24 game jam back in April 2013 that marked the genesis of what would become Velocibox.

Velocibox was shelved for over a year until Beck realized that gamers did share his love of insanely hard endless runners like the ubiquitous Flappy Bird and one of his key inspirations for the game, the equally polygonal Super Hexagon. It was then that he decided to revisit the concept.