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Interface
Interactivet’s the little details that caught our eye:
the way enemy creatures shudder and
wobble as they’re struck by bullets;
the little casings that eject from the
hero’s gun as he lets off another salvo.
This is Revita, a twin-stick roguelite platformer
currently being made by Germany’s Benjamin
Kiefer – better known online as BenStar. Like
a lot of indie games,
Revita came to our
attention while
we were browsing
through Twitter one
evening, and we were
immediately struck by
the fluid, chunky nature of its pixel art. In still
images, Kiefer’s character designs are bold and
colourful; in animated GIFs, they positively fizz
with movement.
For Kiefer, work first began about 18 months
ago, as a series of older ideas began to coalesce
into what would become Revita: a fast-paced
action game where, in true roguelite fashion, you
fight your way through enemy-infested levels
that change each time you play. “Before I worked
on Revita, I was working on fan games and the
occasional game jam,” Kiefer tells us. “When I
was a lot younger, I always wanted to make my
own video games, so at some point, I foundout about GameMaker, a tool that made game
development relatively approachable, and I’ve
stuck with it since.”
In the years since YoYo Games’ GameMaker
first emerged in 1999, it’s gained a reputation
as a low-cost and easy-to-use platform for
making 2D games; by using GameMaker Studio
as its engine, Revita, therefore, joins such indie
darlings as Hotline
Miami, Undertale,
Downwell, and Spelunky.
“GameMaker is
extremely useful when
it comes to making
2D games,” Kiefer
enthuses, “and Aseprite might be the best pixel
art software out there when it comes to pixel art
and animation.”MEMORY TEST
Kiefer won’t be drawn on the specifics of Revita’s
story, but then, that’s because much of the
game is presented to the player as an unfolding
mystery. “I don’t want to say too much on that
note, since I think it should be up to players
to discover,” he says. “But what I can say is
that you’re playing a nameless child who has
lost all their memories, with their only point of
reference being a giant, mysterious clock tower.I
“GameMaker made game
development relatively
approachable, and
I’ve stuck with it since”Interface
InteractiveAre you a solo
developer working
on a game you
want to share with
Wireframe? If you’d
like to have your
project featured in
these pages, get
in touch with us at
wfmag.cc/helloInteractive
Revita
The bullets fly in solo developer Benjamin
‘BenStar’ Kiefer’s roguelite action platformer