20 March, 2013
Hopkinton resident Dan Higgins is off to PAX East, one of the two largest gaming events in North America being held in Boston this weekend. Higgins, along with his team, will be presenting his new Role Playing Game (RPG) Lords of New York which is set in New York City in the 1920s during the height of prohibition.
"We've had this idea for many years, which was how to make poker much more accessible and exciting," said Higgins. "And with everything that we write, we want to put a big story into it. So for us, it just fit perfectly. Lords of New York is a 1920s adventure game where you travel around New York City playing one of three characters and you move through their story lines, but you are, as that character, a gifted poker player.
Lords of New York is a product of Lunchtime Studios which was founded by Higgins and his wife, Courtney Pinnell back in 2009.
"We wanted to bring stories back to games," said Higgins. "Stories that left an impression with us,so that years later we were still remembering them and talking about them. We wanted to do something very similar in today's era of mobile and game technology."
Game Designer Star Fix is proud to be part of the project and looks forward to continuing to work on Lords of New York.
"I hope that there is a Lords of New York 2 and 3," said Fix. "I love Lords of New York, I love Lunchtime Studios, I love doing this. It's the most fun I've ever had, and it's the most work I've ever had, but waking up in the morning, thinking about how to make this game better, how to make it more accessible, how to make it more exciting for my friends, my family and for people that I have never even met. People all over the world are going to play this game and I am just proud to be part of it."
For main artist Rick Bushie, it's all about expression. His primary focus right now is doing the animation and building the master environment; Manhattan itself.
"So, taking these characters and breathing life into them, it's a very expressive genre and a very expressive time in the 1920s," said Bushie.
For now, Higgins says, "We do this at night as a hobby, but this is our passion. We do it every day and involve the whole family."
Higgins estimates that the final product is probably a year and half out. The game has been five years in planning and it took him five years to build his own game technology.
"It takes a number of years," said Higgins, "but when it gets to this point, thing move much more rapidly."
The next steps are doing the art assets and doing the funding so that they will be able to produce to content that will go into the game. For Lunchtime Studios, attending PAX East will be another milestone in the development of the game.
To listen to the interview with Higgins, Fix and Bushie, watch the HCAM News video below.
To learn more about Lunchtime Studios and Lords of New York, visit their website or stop by Pax East from March 22-24. And to help them make their fundraising goal, visit their Kickstarter page.
