Back in April we reported that Sega was planning on releasing a few games to Helio. Here it is August and they’ve finally got one of them out of the vault. Sonic at the Olympic Games was released a few days ago, along with the most awesomely revamped Oregon Trail from Gameloft, so check ‘em out!

We also had the chance to do a mini-interview with the Vice-President of Your World Games, Robert Sprogis. To read, click the link at the end of this post!

Heliocity: Please state your name, and what you do at Your World Games.

Robert: Robert Sprogis, I’m the VP and studio head at YWG in charge of game development and pretty much everything else.

Heliocity: How long have you been in the games business? What was the first commercial game that you worked on?

Robert: I’ve been doing this for almost 6 years The Shroud being my first commercial game. Unfortunately we’ve been working on The Shroud for close to 3 years now. The game being as deep and involved as it is resulted in an unusually long dev time, but compounding that were a number of roadblocks that resulted in further delays. As a company we decided to put a hold on any other potential development projects until we were comfortable that we had done everything possible to ensure the success of The Shroud.

Heliocity: Did you always expect to be working somewhere in the gaming/mobile industry?

Robert: No, I expected to be working in PR, journalism or politics. I have a degree in journalism and political science, I also went to law school before helping start Your World Games. Entering the game business was by pure coincidence.

Heliocity: What are some of your favorite games of all time and current favorite games?

Robert: Favorite game of all time, and the game that really got me thinking about the real potential of video games was the PC Privateer series, part of the Wing Commander series. A lot of those games were linear but they still had an open world that assuming you were not on a mission enabled you to go off and do whatever you wanted to do. I thought the freedom to do what you wanted to do in a video game, not having to follow a set game plan was amazing. I would spend hours flying the same trade routes to earn enough cash to upgrade my ships. Current favorites would have to be a tossup between COD4 and Battlefield Bad Company. I’m big into multiplayer online games now. But Oblivion holds a very special place in my heart as being one of the best RPG’s I’ve played in many years, apart from The Shroud of course.

Heliocity: The Shroud’s GPS feature is currently exclusive to Helio’s handsets. Can you explain to the users how the GPS side of the game works, and how to access it?

Robert: There are a couple of ways the GPS portion of the game works. If the user is near a designated GPS hotspot, (YWG uses lat and lon coordinates to create a location in the real world that activates the GPS challenges) the game will tell the user they are near a GPS hotspot and assuming the user follows the on screen instructions they get to experience the fun of a GPS challenge. If however, the player is not near a GPS hotspot and the game does not automatically start a challenge, the user can manually start a challenge by hitting the “9″ key. This will create a random GPS hotspot that will be located within walking distance of the user. Important side note - we have a post on our forums www.yourworldgames.com/forum where players can have YWG add specific GPS hotspots. All we need is the address, city, state and the latitude and longitude coordinates and players can have their house, favorite coffee shop, really anywhere included in the game.

Back to the game, once the player is informed of a GPS hotspot, a compass will pop up on the phone screen directing the player to the GPS hotspot. Once the player physically moves close enough Taro will get warped off to another part of the map, more often than not the hidden north pond where he has to perform some kind of challenge such as catch a fish or find a mineral in the mines. If the player is successful they get a reward. If the player is really lucky they might even get the star flower gem. If the player uses the star flower gem and has enough of them they can stop The Shroud I.E. the black slime from attacking their farm either indefinitely or at least for a few days. For those of you out there that need an ending to the game this is as close as it comes, The Shroud otherwise has no ending and is a persistent game as we can and plan to add new FREE quests periodically.

Heliocity: We’ve heard a bit about downloadable content for The Shroud such as new quests. Can you explain what kind of things you guys will be creating for the game in these updates?

Robert: I hinted to this in the previous question but adding new quests is key to The Shroud. Presently the game has 10+ quests to mess around with however, YWG can add new quests to the game that will not only add new elements of gameplay but also further the story of The Shroud. For those of you who have looked at the game map on our site www.shroudgame.com (check it out) you will have noticed there are 5 mine entrances that presently are not even being used. On top of that Kay and Mel have yet to give out any quests. If we have our way we will have quests that make use of these 5 unused mine areas and introduce Kay and Mel into the mix. It does go without saying though that our incentive to keep adding quests is only there if people keep subscribing to the game. So if people out there enjoy The Shroud and feel there is value in continuing to play, we will continue to reward their loyalty. With that being said we will come out with our first pack of new quests this month! Yes all quests for The Shroud are 100% FREE.

As to the kind of stuff we can add, well we can do anything we want and have the player do again pretty much anything we want. We’ve got a few cool new quests planned for the next pack, and we are going to open up some new areas and introduce a new NPC/quest giver into the mix. With all of that said, we do have a post in our forums www.yourworldgames.com/forum dedicated to the new quests, where players can vote for the type of quests they want to see added. Taking it a bit further we want people to actually write us a message and tell us exactly what they want to see happen. How often are gamers given a voice to have something added into a game they are playing and see those comments taken directly into account. Let me be the first to say, we are listening and I visit the forums daily.

Heliocity: What kind of feedback are you interested in from our users?

Robert: Simple and short answer, any kind of feedback. As a developer good feedback telling us how great the game is, is the kind of stuff we love to see but even constructive critical feedback is welcome. We hope The Shroud does well enough to warrant a second game, of course we plan to learn from any mistakes we made and make a better game.

Heliocity: Are there any plans to bring out any other games from your company to Helio?

Robert: Right now we are 100% committed to supporting The Shroud so we don’t have any new projects presently green lit. I’m hoping that this will change in the coming weeks but as is often the case a lot does depend on the success of The Shroud. If The Shroud does well I see many more revolutionary GPS games on the horizon with Helio playing a key role in our future plans.

Heliocity: Any closing words for the Heliocity users?

Robert: Only that we hope Heliocity users enjoy the game, provide us with useful feedback, tell us what GPS hotspots they would like to see added, as well as what kind of quests they want to play in the future. The more Helio gamers playing The Shroud, the more Your World Games will continue to support the game. This is a symbiotic relationship.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 14th, 2008 at 12:26 am You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.