Edge - UK (2020-10)

RADIO THE UNIVERSE

Developer/

publisher 6E6E6E

Format PC

Origin US

Release Winter

This crowdfunded adventure emerges from its development cocoon

Y

uno Park was not long out of high

school when he started work on his

debut commercial game. As a 19-year-

old with no industry experience (“Well, any

kind of professional experience”, he admits), he

nevertheless had more than enough self-belief

to compensate. And so, with the Kickstarter

gold rush at its peak, he chanced his arm on the

crowdfunding platform, hoping to raise the

$12,000 he believed would be enough to get his

game made. By the time his campaign was over,

he had amassed nearly seven times that amount;

as a first-generation immigrant in the US, he

says, this was more money than he’d ever seen

in his life. And that’s when his problems began.

At first, of course, he was delighted. Though

almost eight years on, he’s unable to pinpoint

what it was that made Radio The Universe quite

so appealing to backers. He pauses for a while

before answering. “I think part of it was the

fact that my online presence was a little bit

unusual,” he says (for his lowest pledge amount,

Park promises to “pray to a star” on his backers’

behalf, to “no discernible effect”). “That always

seems to get people’s attention – if you see

something strange on the Internet, you tend to

Park: “I knew there was
going to be a lot of pixel
art games by the time
I finished, so I tried to make
it look distinctive without
it becoming a sort of
special-effects soup”

Yuno Park, developer