Interview: Andújar González

It has been a long time since the last interview. But I have finally gotten a new one together. This interview is with Andújar González, you may know him as Alexitrón. Since you have waited a long time for this interview already, I will make you wait no more:

Introduce yourself:
I am Alexis Andújar González AKA Alexitrón . I live in a small town named Florida in Puerto Rico with my wife and my cat .

How long have you been making games?
Since 2006 if I don’t count the times when I used to mess with RPG makers on the PC, and even the one that came to the PSX. I never really made anything with those but I liked messing around with them. That was back in the 1990. I also remember having a really old computer at home and there were some books about programming with example code in them, I think the language was Basic, I used to sit down and write all that code from the book to the computer and execute those programs, some where games, some where like random graphics appearing on the screen accompanied by some tunes and then sometimes I just got error messages. Of course I really didn’t know what I was doing so I didn’t care. This was back in the 1980s. I was probably around 8 back then .

What gave you the interest to start making video games? Playing them. I wanted to make my own games ever since I started playing them, I just didn’t have the resources to do so. I made lots and lots of dream games in my head, on paper, and on comics. I just loved games and was very addicted to them too, but I’d rather not elaborate on that.

Do you ever like to look back on games you have created and play them? If so, which are your favorite to do so?
I haven’t done so in a while, but I do like to do so just to see how I have grown over time and what I have accomplished and how can I keep on improving. I usually go for the small ones like Jet Pod, Shocker, and In a Dungeon. Sometimes I also do so because I need to copy/paste some code.

How has your “journey” from GM to flash been? And why did you decide to do it?
It’s been a difficult journey, I pretty much restarted the other day. I was eagerly anticipating the release of FlashPunk since I tried Flixel and didn’t really get it at all. When it was finally released I quickly got it working and after some tutorials I started working on a Flash version of Jet Pod. I had to ask for assistance for nearly everything, it was so frustrating not being able to figure things out on my own, I am way to used to GM. Good thing that the guys at the FlashPunk forums are all awesome and very helpful. ChevyRay himself, even though he was obviously busy dealing with the release of the FP library, he was always very willing to help us all and gave us much-needed assistance to get us going.
Why make the jump to FlashPunk? Well, when one spends a good chunk of spare time making games just to give them away for free the highest reward that one gets is that people actually play what you just gave them. Game Maker is Windows only and even in this single platform it doesn’t work properly for everybody. So I guess the biggest deciding factor is the fact that with flash games I can reach more people and get more motivation in return. There is also the possibility of making some cash without selling the games.

How is Jet Pod FP coming along?
Jet Pod FP is done, it just have awfully bad graphics. A fellow member from the Poppenkast, Nathan, offered to make graphics for it and is doing a fantastic job but he is a busy guy so is gonna take him awhile. Also, at the time that I was making the project I had a serious family situation and my game making came to a full stop for some time. Since there was a big chance that I was not going to be able to make games for a long time, if at all, I gave the project to Nathan and he said he was going to finish and release it. But again, he is a busy guy so that is gonna take some time.

Besides Jet Pod FP, are you working on any other projects? If so, care to share any info on them?
I was working on 3 adventure games on GM : Flowers for my love, The Planet Below and an unnamed game about some treasure hunter, adventurer guy. I say was because the other day I got mad at GM and its kinks and the way it refuses to do one thing right without screwing the other and just quit it for good, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I will not make these games, just maybe not in GM. I went back to developing with FlashPunk and I’m taking really small baby steps with it and this time I want to stick to it.

Once you “fully” understand Flashpunk, what type of games do you plan on creating?
I want to make games that I really like, Metroidvanias and Zelda-likes. But I want to keep on delivering small casual stuff too, my wife loves that and I want her to like what I do.

In your opinion, who do you think is a good, under-rated game developer? And why?
I do not play to many games. I don’t have that much spare time, if I play games I cannot make them and vise versa. I usually settle with reading about games and watching videos. Right now everyone that came to my mind is fairly well-known.

Any other comments you would like to add?
I want to thank all the people who appreciate what I do. I really want to thank those who, when I was in real need, sent some donations down my way and helped to spread the word about my family situation. I will never forget that.

Thank you for doing this interview.
Thank you.

For more info on Alexitrón or his games, you can visit his site here. Hope you enjoyed this interview.

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