Hi everybody!
Here is Ivan Venturi, founder of IV Productions and Project Director of Pride Run!
Firstly, let me apologize for my rough english!
With a superbig pleasure, let me present you the team and in the meanwhile let me tell you a bit of the story of the development till now.
START
The 11th of october 2016 I had the very first idea and a very rough picture of what the game could be, and I spoke with Giacomo Guccinelli about it. He was immediately hitten and immediately he told me "YES, let's do it!". Then, thanks to the president of the LGBTQ+ cultural centre of Bologna (the city where I live and where IV Productions is), we got in touch with Hard Ton, AKA Mauro.
So, the base was there! Under a production point of view, Pride Run has three pillars. One of us for every pillar:
- tech, design, gameplay, production: Ivan
- art: Giacomo
- music: Mauro
We started prototyping. I programmed a couple of prototypes in Game Maker to see if the mechanics we imagined were good to fit with the music. We found our way!
PRE-PRODUCTION
We began prototyping in Unity, while abandoning a first mechanics (a sort of initial game phase with the crowd movement through a tiled map) to enforce the other, called Street View.
Here the team in that moment (from left to right): Mauro, Davide, Max (in pixel art! Hard Ton singer), me, Giacomo, Katalin, Michele.
We produced a first playable version of the musical RTS game mode, now called PLAY HARD, and of the Dance Duel. We showed it in Lucca Comics & Games, just to understand what real players liked more or less. Moreover, we wanted to understand: how people will react to a game on the LGBTQ+ Prides?
People loved it. We were there with a lot of friends and it was something like a party! But we discovered also that the RTS gameplay, as we implemented, was not in the right direction.
So, we threw away everything and we began to code from scratch.
Me, Giacomo and Mauro funded the project by ourselves and we produced the two game modes, this time working well, and 4 scenarios, even if not complete as they are now in the game. Anyway, it was enough to go to Paris to the Game Connection looking for a publisher.
Here, we met Jonny of Green Man Gaming!
Overally, the game had a huge success with publishers, everyone was interested and even we won two prizes. But we were looking to a specific publisher. One that would be able (and having the will) to deal with the unovoidable issues from haters and toxic people in the videogame market.
Just one thing: One Man Gaming changes its logo in a rainbow version for the Pride season. And more. To cut the long story short, we understood that GMG was our perfect publisher. The needed extension of our team.
We signed!
PRODUCTION
We started the production, with additional collaborators working on graphics, musics, FX, data structures etc.
Here a picture we took with David, director of Green Man Gaming Publishing, who came in Bologna (after a supergreat lunch of tortellini in brodo).
From left to right: Kyle, Davide, Michele, Luisa Maria, David, Marianna, Daniele, Giacomo, Massimo, me. Mauro is not in the picture as after lunch had to go somewhere. Moreover, we need to add Simone, Paride, Elena, Ilaria, who are not in the picture.
We can really say that we are a diverse team, under a LGBTQ+ point of view. We have all the colors of the rainbow in our team!
NOW
These pictures were taken some day ago, while the team was trying the Vanilla mode with the Dance Pad, where you push buttons with your feet. (btw: FANTASTIC!).
We are working hard to give you the best game as possible, for this autumn!
I'll keep you updated as I can, giving you a lot of info, but without doing too much spoiler about the game. We want you to be 200% surprised the first time you'll play the game!
Talk soon, and RUN PRIDE RUN!