Local men launch iPhone game with the help of Kickstarter funding

Athens natives Eli Burke and Zack Wood spent a lot of time playing video games when they were growing up, and they're now on the brink of turning that passion for games into a livelihood.

Wood and Burke plan to launch their first video game, Cafe Murder, for the iPhone in February.

They've been working on the game for years but only were able to complete it this winter after they raised capital through Kickstarter.com, a website that allows people to raise capital for specific projects by asking strangers to donate small amounts of money.

When they started the project, Burke and Wood liked the concept of the restaurant service games that seem to have flooded the iPhone App Store over the last few years, but thought they could make something more exciting. While most the other restaurant games can be addictive, they're not much fun, Wood said.

"There's a whole genre of restaurant simulation games, like Cafe World on Facebook or Diner Dash - all these games where you run a restaurant or cafe," Wood said. "I don't especially think they're that fun. They just have a lot of generic characters and generic graphics, and they don't have much of a sense of humor or originality, in my opinion."

The partners decided to add a murderous chef to the storyline.

In Cafe Murder, a brother - the crazy chef - and a sister - the harried waitress - serve sandwiches to a cast of humorous customers. As the waitress, the game player has to make sure the customers get their sandwiches, but she also guards them against her brother's unprovoked knife attacks.

It's a challenge because the player has to be aware of what's happening in all parts of the sandwich shop in order to stay on top of both tasks.

Burke and Wood are hoping that Cafe Murder will be the first in a line of video games that features Wood's art and Burke's coding skill produced by their company, BeaverToad Software.

They decided to create their first game for the iPhone because games for the tiny computers can be fairly simple and still appealing to audiences. It also cuts down on coding problems, since the game only has to work on one or two pieces of hardware.

Creating a game that could be played on multiple platforms would have been a lot more time-consuming and complicated and probably wouldn't have increased their audience share that much, Wood said.

"We just wanted to start a little bit small, I guess," Wood said. "It's a smaller platform, but you also can reach a lot of people on it. In the future, we would like to work on games for other platforms and maybe do some bigger games with other people, too. But for the two of us, for our first game, we thought this was good platform for us."

Until recently, Burke has been developing mobile phone apps for local businesses on a contract basis and working at a local restaurant while Wood, who is a few years younger, just finished a stint as an English teacher and doing some post-graduate work at an art school in Kyoto, Japan.

"We started a variety of games that we never really finished; (we were) just playing around," Burke said. "We came up with the idea for Cafe Murder a few years ago, so when he came back to the States we thought we would just give it a go and try to put out a full game."

The $7,600 they raised through their 71 Kickstarter contributors has allowed them to focus on the game full-time for a few months so they can get the game ready for the Apple App Store.

They've been working on the game nearly every day in the community room at the FourAthens technology incubator on College Avenue.

"They're definitely what we're trying to encourage in this space," said Jim Flannery, project director for FourAthens. "They're part of the tech community were trying to build here ... I'm excited for it, and I think it's going to be great as soon as they get it launched."

While the people who invested in the game through Kickstarter don't get an equity stake in BeaverToad Software, they do get plenty of swag, like a free copy of Cafe Murder after its release and limited-edition Cafe Murder T-shirts. That keeps the individual contributions small, but it does entice more people to give.

Flannery has seen people use sites like a Kickstarter and other crowd-funding sites to help launch hobbies into viable small companies.

"I think the way they went about finding funding is an innovative way to do that," Flannery said. "I think this will be the way more projects are funded in the future as opposed to asking friends and grandparents for startup money."

Those interested in previewing Burke and Wood's game can view it at www.beavertoad.com.