Get in the Game

Blasting through asteroids can be a pastime for any University of Memphis student with a smartphone thanks to one student who is starting up his own independent video game team.

Joseph Luebbe, a senior history major, partnered with Matthew Seligman, who attended The U of M for a short time then continued his education at an entertainment technology school in Florida.

They call themselves Nephilim Games after the biblical creatures from the Old Testament who are born of the "sons of God" and the "daughters of men." Their first project, a recreation of the original 1979 classic Atari game "Lunar Lander," started as a hobby over Christmas break.

"We wanted to bring an old idea to a new platform," Seligman said.

Nephilim Games is turning the flat, black-and-white image of a ship landing on the moon into an all-new, 3D game for Apple devices such as iPod, iPhone and iPad.

"The older game is more about a lander. We changed the concept to piloting an actual spacecraft," Seligman said.

The game consists of 18 levels and adds power-ups and acceleration boosts to crash through asteroids.

The accelerometers present in iPhone Operating System platforms enable the player to direct the ship by tilting the device.

"This game manages to take advantage of a modern phone's impressive 3D capacity and uses an intuitive and powerful control scheme; it's the best of both worlds," said Jeremiah Humphries, Nephilim Games' concept artist.

Luebbe and Seligman initially called the game "3D Lander," but after it was approved by kickstarter.com, a website designed to help people fund their creative projects, the duo let site visitors vote on the name. "Nebula Sector" received the most votes.

After "Nebula Sector" was approved, Nephilim Games set up a goal of raising $8,000 by March 1 to fund their project. If their goal isn't reached, the pledged donations are never charged to the donors and Nephilim Games does not get any of the money.

If they exceed their goal, they will be able to release "Nebula Sector" for Android devices as well.

"There are certain licenses we need to get and we're working with a concept artist. Plus we need to purchase the IOS devices because, in order to debug the game, we have to play it," Luebbe said.   

Nephilim Games plans to purchase software licenses with game engines to consolidate aspects of the game, such as audio, into one user-friendly platform that will bring costs down, Seligman said.   

Luebbe and Seligman plan to release a free abridged version first to test the market, followed by the full version priced at 99 cents.

An avid gamer, Luebbe contributes to the creative thinking of the team, debugging the game and serving as head of public relations for Nephilim Games. Seligman applies skills gained through his bachelor's degree in game development to plan, design and program the game.  

Nephilim Games plans to let their backers vote on more decisions in the game design process through kickstarter.com.

"We've been hoping to get more people interested in the project. We want to leave the decisions up to people who are interested in the game to inspire more entrepreneurship into this," Seligman said.