Developer Chat – Lorena Casanova on ‘AdventurOS’

Recently, the developers behind Super Tower Rush , Antipodes , and Pixelry have joined together to make AdventurOS , an action platformer which generates level design based on the contents of your computer.

an action platformer which generates level design based on the contents of your computer. Earlier in the month, they launched a $10,000 IndieGoGo campaign for the funding of AdventurOS. At a little over the half-way funded mark, the team has until September 18th to collect the remaining funds.

I was able to chat with developer Lorena Casanova about AdventurOS and what players can expect to find within the action platformer.

IGM: How is the team handling security concerns with AdventurOS? I’d imagine quite a few people may be suspicious of if the game records the files they have on their hard-drives.

Casanova: The game will only read the information on your hard-drives, it will never modify anything but the game’s folder. Since we are all open-source supporters we are considering making the game open so everyone can see how it actually works. It’s going to be very interesting to see what the community can do with it.

IGM: Any plans to allow players to share their own castles, with others?

Casanova: That would be indeed an awesome feature to add. But sharing the entire castle would be a mess, what you can do is to create a zip file with your custom quest and share it with your friends. You will be able to customize the rooms depending on their name too, but we will explain that better on an upcoming Indiegogo update.

IGM: Where did the idea of AdventurOS come from?

Casanova: The idea came when Emilio was working on his open-source project (Stellar). He had to learn how to manage files and folders in a cross-platform way, and after a while working on that he suddenly started thinking that the mechanics of it would be very interesting for a game. So after a few concepts we came up with the idea of the metroidvania. The perfect balance between a fun game play and exploration.

IGM: Will people be able to pick and choose which file folders the game accesses, or will the game do that automatically?

Casanova: When you start a new game you will be able to limit your castle , so the castle will be as big as you want, up to a certain level. There will be also different kinds of settings for difficulty and gameplay.

IGM: Does AdventurOS regulate the number of files accessed per room? For example, if one folder has 40 image or text files, will
the generated room in the game be filled with 40 snakes or enemies?

Casanova: It depends on the entire folder. The size of the room will depend mostly on the number of subfolders, so if you have 40 files and 0 folders, the game will merge those files so the small room is not so crowded.

Follow Lorena Casanova on Twitter, and be sure to check out AdventurOS on IndieGoGo.