Tag: Tank Nation

Sometimes the biggest explosions onto the mobile gaming scene come in the form of the newcomers. Wormhole Games is a new mobile development studio formed by two ex-employees and visionaries of Funzio, the studio responsible for smash successes like Crime City and Modern War before being sold to GREE last year in a multi-million dollar deal. I recently had a chance to speak with Jamil Moledina, CEO and Creative Director, and James Kelm, COO and Executive Producer at Wormhole Games, to find out about the studio's debut game, Tank Nation, and what it was like to start over from scratch with all of the vigor and innovation of a brand new startup studio.Now working within a small development team of only 12 people, Moledina and Kelm are embracing their new status as a startup company, as they prepare to release their first game into the world today. As they tell me, startup companies like Wormhole Games have an extra advantage being new to the scene: in that they are better able to take calculated risks, and to experiment with new and different ideas that seasoned companies might start to shy away from once a few titles get under their belts."But rather than trying to recreate something that's already been done, or copying the latest game to hit #1 on the App Store, Moledina and Kelm's goal with their first game was to take an already successful concept in gaming, and introduce it into a brand new area of the industry: in this case, the mobile platform. They point out Rovio's Angry Birds as an example of taking a gameplay mechanic like artillery firing and making it so simple that everyone from your grandma to your little nephew can understand it within minutes of playing. To this end, their first game would need to be broadly accessible, while still offering a long-term level of depth to satisfy the hardcore gaming crowd.