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Blendo Games is an American independent video game development company based in Culver City, California. It was founded by Brendon Chung in 2010 and is primarily a one-person effort. Blendo Games gained more widespread exposure with the short form stand alone title Gravity Bone; the following games Flotilla and Atom Zombie Smasher were met with critical praise. The studio has also released several other games in several genres.

Background

Chung had done hobbyist programming, such as modding for games like Quake 2 and Half-Life, for about a decade before being hired as a designer at Pandemic Studios. While there, he worked on The Lord of the Rings: Conquest and Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers, although he continued to work on personal projects including an episodic Citizen Abel series that toyed with traditional mechanics of first-person shooters. Chung considered his first officially released game to be the espionage game Gravity Bone in 2008. In November 2009, Electronic Arts shut down Pandemic Studios and Chung began development on Flotilla, a space combat game that takes cues from an abandoned personal project Chung had worked on previously. Flotilla was released in 2010.

Later that same year, Blendo Games released Air Forte, an edutainment game in which the player indicates their knowledge about math, geography, and vocabulary by flying a plane in response to prompts. In 2011, Chung released real-time strategy game Atom Zombie Smasher, which received critical praise from several outlets and was featured at the 2011 Penny Arcade Expo, as well as being part of the 3rd Humble Indie Bundle charity drive.

A sequel to Gravity Bone, Thirty Flights of Loving, was developed to support a Kickstarter project for the Idle Thumbs podcast, and released in 2012. Following Thirty Flights of Loving, Chung began what would become over four years of development on Quadrilateral Cowboy, which released in 2016. Flotilla 2, a virtual reality sequel to Flotilla, was released in August 2018. In October 2018, a new project titled Skin Deep was revealed to be in development at Blendo Games although no release date has yet been announced. Blendo Games later announced in April 2021 that Skin Deep would be published through Annapurna Interactive.

Culture

Blendo Games remains a one-man studio, though according to a 2016 feature in Gamasutra, Chung spends some time working in a shared office space called Glitch City . He has also directly collaborated with several individuals on several projects. The musical score of Thirty Flights of Loving was composed by Chris Remo, and the design of Quadrilateral Cowboy was a joint effort between Chung and Tynan Wales. The Mac and Linux ports of Quadrilateral Cowboy were done by Aaron Melcher, and the game's art book was ported to those same platforms by Ethan Lee. Chung has also indicated he gets play testing help from his friends and family.

Barista

Barista is a series of four first-person games for Microsoft Windows by Brendon Chung. All of the games involve the player character waking up.

The first game is a modification for Doom II: Hell on Earth. In an interview, Chung stated that his inspirations for the first game included the Doom Bible and Bungie's Marathon.

Chung has indicated the second game was an independent study project developed while he was in college. It centers on a nameless spaceship pilot, and features a disjointed story line. There are several characters featured, including a talking skull and an unidentified woman. The skull mentions a person named Hannah, though when an interviewer suggested the unidentified woman was Hannah, Chung said "she's not Hanna. You never meet Hanna."

The third game is a modification for Doom 3. Chung has indicated he developed the game so he could learn the constraints of the Id Tech 4 engine before using it on a larger project.

The fourth game is a modification for Half-Life 2.

Games

References

1. ^ Wawro, Alex (23 February 2017). "Road to the IGF: Blendo Games' Quadrilateral Cowboy". www.gamasutra.com. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
2. ^ Alexander, Heather (January 3, 2020). "Blendo Games Has Been At It For 10 Years, And Has Consistently Kicked Ass". Kotaku. Retrieved January 14, 2020.
3. "Brendon Chung". insights from the greatest minds in video games. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
4. ^ Yang, Robert (15 November 2011). "Level With Me, Brendon Chung". Rock Paper Shotgun. Retrieved 2019-03-03.
5. "Gimme Indie Game: Gravity Bone - Offworld". Archived from the original on 2009-04-06. Retrieved 2010-02-12.
6. "The Making Of: Flotilla | Features | Edge Online". Edge. 2014-03-16. Archived from the original on 2014-03-16. Retrieved 2019-03-12.
7. Macgregor, Jody (2018-08-20). "Five new Steam games you probably missed this week (August 19, 2018)". PC Gamer. Retrieved 2019-03-09.
8. "AIR FORTE Official Site". blendogames.com. Retrieved 2019-03-11.
9. "Air Forte on Game and Player". www.gameandplayer.net. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
10. "Air Forte Review | bit-tech.net". bit-tech.net. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
11. Curtis, Tom (2011-12-19). "Gamasutra Best Of 2011: Top 5 PC Games". Gamasutra. Retrieved 2011-12-19.
12. "2012 Independent Games Festival Announces Main Competition Finalists". Independent Games Festival. 2012-01-10. Archived from the original on 2012-01-13. Retrieved 2012-01-10.
13. Schrier, Jason (2011-07-13). "10 Clever Indie Games Ready to Shine at PAX". Wired. Retrieved 2011-08-05.
14. de Matos, Xav (2011-08-05). "Humble Indie Bundle 3 adds 'Atom Zombie Smasher'". Shacknews. Retrieved 2011-08-05.
15. Caoili, Eric (2012-02-28). "Kickstarter drive offers exclusive game from Atom Zombie Smasher dev". Gamasutra. Retrieved 2012-02-28.
16. Blendo Games. Retrieved March 7, 2012.
17. Meer, Alec (February 28, 2012). "Gravity Bone’s Sequel: Thirty Flights Of Loving". Rock Paper Shotgun. Retrieved March 7, 2012.
18. "The curious case of 'Quadrilateral Cowboy'". Engadget. 29 April 2016. Retrieved 2019-03-12.
19. "Become a 1980s hacker in 'Quadrilateral Cowboy' on July 25th". Engadget. 12 July 2016. Retrieved 2019-03-09.
20. O'Connor, Alice (2018-08-20). "Flotilla 2 jacks in to blast off". Rock Paper Shotgun. Retrieved 2019-03-12.
21. ^ Tarason, Dominic (2018-10-17). "Skin Deep is Die Hard in space from the creator of Quadrilateral Cowboy". Rock Paper Shotgun. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
22. "Blendo's sneaky shooter Skin Deep draws from Die Hard and Far Cry 2". Destructoid. 17 October 2018. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
23. Van Allen, Eric (April 20, 2021). "Blendo Games partners with Annapurna for its immersive space FPS Skin Deep". Destructoid. Retrieved April 21, 2021.
24. Parkin, Simon (August 2016). "WorkStation: The spaces where 22 different game-makers build worlds". www.gamasutra.com. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
25. "Quadrilateral Cowboy FAQ". blendogames.com. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
26. ^ "BLENDO: Older Projects". Blendogames.com. Retrieved 2013-10-08.
27. Alexander, Leigh (23 June 2014). "Quadrilateral Cowboy : Good old-fashioned digital bliss". www.gamasutra.com. Retrieved 2019-03-11.
28. Brown, Fraser (April 26, 2018). "Flotilla 2 will fling you into tactical space battles in VR". PC Gamer. Retrieved April 26, 2018.

External links

• Official website
• Interview with Brendon Chung

• American companies established in 2010
• Video game companies established in 2010
• Companies based in Culver City, California
• Privately held companies based in California
• Video game companies of the United States
• Video game development companies
• 2010 establishments in California
• Indie game developers