When Colby Breidenstein first reached out to us, he prefaced his query with “I know most people are very surprised to hear commercial video games being designed, developed, and published in Buffalo.”
The first thing that I thought was, yes, the general populace probably assumes that game developers must be sitting behind their assigned desks at large tech corporations. While that is probably true in many cases, there are still plenty of opportunities for rogue developers to create their own games, in hopes of being published to a console.
One of the beautiful things about the video game industry is that it is accessible to programmers from all over the world, who can develop their own games from the comfort of their own cities. “I’m born and raised in Buffalo, and hired a Buffalo musician and a 3D artist to work on this game,” Colby mentioned. “I’m not aware of any other Xbox One games that are made in Buffalo right now – I could be wrong, but I certainly don’t know of one.”
According to Breidenstein, he is launching a sci-fi action game on Xbox One that is now available for pre-order and will be available on Jan 17th.
Hovership Havoc is a sci-fi twin stick shooter with 3rd person boss battles. Blast through rooms of a futuristic robotic factory filled with robot enemies. Equip your Hovership with randomly dropped abilities and upgrade your stats during and before each playthrough.
Breidenstein, a software developer in Orchard Park, stated that he has been working on the game for four years, and is now happy to say that all of the long hours have finally paid off. “The ultimate goal was getting the game published to a console,” he said. “I designed, developed, marketed, and published the game myself under my company named Snow Day Software. As a hobby in my free time I work as a game developer and after launching my game on PC earlier this year, I am launching my game, Hovership Havoc, on Xbox One.”
Breidenstein mentioned that he was not only proud to be releasing the game, he was equally happy to utilize the talents of other Buffalo creatives in other industries. “I worked with a local Buffalo musician by the name of Tyson R. Prince, from the band The Spin Wires. The main 3D artist for the game, Brian Russ, is also from Buffalo. There is a local group called Buffalo Game Space, where I met Tyson and Brian. Buffalo Game Space is a great place to meet like minded game developers, artists, and musicians.”
Congrats to Breidenstein and his crew for pulling off this awesome feat, which has finally coming to fruition. Hopefully this team will inspire others in the area who are interested in getting their own games to market.
In the meantime, if you’re into these types of video games, and you want to support one of your own, be sure to visit www.microsoft.com to pre-order Hovership Havoc.
