We sat down with Ross Pateman of Rozz Games to get the lowdown on his new arcade racer that is currently in development. Ross starts by telling us he’s “been into games since the early 80s and enjoyed dabbling with basic programming on my ZX Spectrum as a child all those years ago. I ended up following a different path for many years, but after a series of redundancies a couple of years ago decided it was time to rekindle that childhood dream of making games. It felt a bit like a now or never moment.”
His new game is called “SPGP, short for Super Polygon Grand Prix, and is a 90’s style arcade racing game that aims to evoke the feeling of the arcade experience utilizing modern graphics and additional features such as VR and online leaderboards.”
Ross decided on developing an arcade racer because “since playing arcade games as a child, starting with Pole Position back in the Early 80s, I’ve always dreamed about creating my own arcade style racing game, so it’s a life long dream or ambition.”
The game is getting ready to launch on Steam and Ross tells Fusion that “the promotion and marketing bit is the most scary aspect for me and quite a mindset change from doing the dev work. Releasing stuff publicly can feel quite exposing and Steam is a very big and busy place. At the same time it’s exciting and I’m really enjoy interacting with the community and gaining feedback to make the game better.”
There are plenty of challenges to getting a new game out and Ross says the biggest ones are “cash flow, juggling development, marketing and life in general. Quite often it’s a twelve or more hour day, seven days a week. But I’m learning to take a few more breaks and be a bit more relaxed and retrospective.”
On life as a sole developer, Ross says “at the end of the day its following a dream and allowing me to put my creative and technical skills to the test. Everyday I’m learning new things. The feedback and interaction with the community is also amazing. The retro and indie dev scenes are generally really great places to be and I’m making lots of friends along the way.
When asked about when we can expect to be playing SPGP, Ross explains “SPGP is available to wish list now on Steam, with a demo planned for release in December or January. With a full release to follow shortly afterwards.”
And on his plans for the future? “My ambition is to be a full time indie developer, but of course that depends on how well this release goes. I don’t have any ambitions to make lots of money, but if I can become self sustainable that would be amazing. I have a long list of ideas for updates to SPGP and a whole load of other games in my head I would like to make reality.”
We can’t wait to get our hands on SPGP and wish Ross well in getting it out as well as thanks for his time to chat to us.
