If you like Dinosaurs and you love destruction, you may want to check out intuition games newly released Dinowaurs. Dinowaurs allows players to face off in a one-on-one battle to capture villages with a series of wacky weapons. Read the full interview to find out about Dinowaurs and the team behind it.

GamePlay Unlimited: What is our company and how did it get started?
intuition games: We’re intuition games, we got started in the Summer of 2007 when we all met up at VRAC (Virtual Reality Applications Center). Our plan was to get off the ground by finding funding for a game idea through some of the various web portals offering funding. One of those was Kongregate and they were excited about Dinowaurs and greenlit the project. Then we formed intuition for really reals.

GPU: Where are you based?
ig: We’re in Ames in a techie-type business incubator.

GPU: How long have you been together?
ig: Approaching 2 years.

GPU: Let’s talk about Dinowaurs, what is it about?
ig: Dinowaurs is essentially a real-time 1-on-1 multiplayer worms in Flash but with some big differences. It’s more of an RTS with resources that lead to strategic upgrade decisions. The object of the game is to destroy all of the opponents villages and enemy dino before they destroy yours.

GPU: Is there anything you want gamers to take away from their experience with Dinowaurs?
ig: Dinowaurs is a pretty hardcore game in a casual market. We wanted to test the boundaries of what a flash game could be and hopefully there is some subset of everyone that’s played it that likes that. Our vision was that it could be a hardcore game for gamers with jobs over their lunch hour. Instead of just collecting all the marshmallows in some other game, this would provide something a bit more interesting and engaging. Also, that dinos are cool.

GPU: How long has it been in development?
ig: I think all tolled, it’s been about 1.5 years.

GPU: What were some of the challenges your team came across during the development process?
ig: We faced just about every challenge imaginable, or at least it seemed that way. Dinowaurs is our first “real” game as a team and as individuals as well. We learned many of the lessons that game development has to offer and we learned them the hard way. If we wrote down the whole story it would probably seem like a nightmare for all involved, but looking back we see it as a really positive learning experience. The one thing we know we did do right though, is carrying through on an interesting and fun game by constantly revising the design throughout the process.

GPU: Do you have any interest in console development?
ig: Yes, but really only on XBLA at this point. WiiWare could be cool but we fear the crazy tuning of the WiiMote. I’ve never really played a game other than a 1st party release (Wii Sports, etc.) that felt decent and also relied on the accelerometer.

GPU: What do you guys think about Microsoft’s XNA. Could you see yourselves using it to bring your games to consoles?
ig: Frankly, we haven’t looked into it all the deeply. The XBLA community games market seems to be a little under the radar at the moment. Something we have been looking into is iPhone, downloadable and web-based games with the Unity engine. We all have some shape or form of 3D experience, and having all those platforms at our fingertips would be very exciting.

GPU: Interest in Wiiware or the Playstation Network?
ig: Not all that much. Right now, even the Unity engine is still a bit of a sticking point for us since none of us have experience in it. It may not take too long to get off the ground with it but we finally feel like we have mastered the flash platform and we’re really looking forward to seeing how much further we can push it.

GPU: Do you have anything else in development?
ig: Definitely. A number of smaller single player flash games. Some of them I’ve mentioned on our blog: www.intuitiongames.com (Effing Hail, A Murder at Crowland, The Great Red Herring Chase, Wild and Free: EX, ZigZagZak, and a few others that don’t have names yet) A good amount of the titles there are from a collaboration between Jiggmin and me (Greg). Some of these have been done for awhile and we’re looking for sponsorship and licensing deals, others are in the teenage stages. They are all smaller games and that’s our main aim right now, although we have a dream of a bigger multiplayer game that we’d like to do, but no name, concept art or anything to show for it.

GPU: What games would you say influenced you as game developers?
ig: Dinowaurs certainly borrows from a few favorite games of ours. Starcraft being one, another would be Worms/Scorched Earth of course, and even a little Halo. None of those are any of our absolute “favorite” games, but they were an influence. Otherwise it’s hard to say generally. We try and play a lot of games, just last night Mike and I (Greg) played Air Bucaneers, an old UT2004 mod. That games is amazing, it will probably influence us.

GPU: What games are you playing now?
ig: Sexy Hiking (I have vowed to beat it before I turn 30)

GPU: Where can you be found when you aren’t making games?
ig: alright, prepare for downcount:

• twitter.com/dinowaurs
• twitter.com/aeiowu (Greg)
• twitter.com/torncanvas (Josh)
• twitter.com/wirealbatross (Joe)
• www.intuitiongames.com/forum
• www.intuitiongames.com (our blog)
• also on the tigsource forums: forums.tigsource.com as aeiowu (Greg) and torncanvas (Josh)
• and also on Kongregate as fucrate (Mike), torncanvas (Josh) jjbergeron (Joe) aeiowu (Greg)
• the collective intuition (could be any of us)

GPU: Any last advise for anyone wanting to create their own game development studio?
ig: If you’ve never made a game, just make a game not a studio. And make it small so you can actually make it, as opposed to just talking about making it.

 

Play the game here!

 

Want to learn more about Dinowaurs?
Check out the trailer here or visit Dinowaurs.com