Developer Spotlight: Lady Shotgun

Having recently released its first title, Buddha Finger, which gained a respectable 3.5 stars from us, we felt it was about time we got to know more about developer, Lady Shotgun.

Who is Lady Shotgun?
Doing things a little differently from the rest, Lady Shotgun considers itself as a co-operative of freelance game developers, with the team working remotely from each other rather than through a central office. It might be unorthodox but this team is made up of folks with some extensive experience in the game industry. Uniqueness continues through the fact that Lady Shotgun is made up, predominantly, of female game designers and coders with men forming the minority here.

What is Lady Shotgun most famous for?
Only the one game has come from them, so far: Buddha Finger, a rather crazy rhythm action game with a soundtrack inspired by the 1970s and 1980s. Rightly or wrongly, its female weighted team has also garnered Lady Shotgun some extra headlines, within an industry so well known for its gender divide.

What's next on the horizon?
Nothing has been officially announced but design director, Anna Marsh, did have some news to share with us, "…we’d still really like to bring Buddha Finger to other mobile platforms, and do a couple of updates." She also discussed plans to release a lite version of the game, ensuring that anyone can try it out without having to commit to a purchase.

Other plans are slightly more secretive, but certainly varied: "There’s 3 projects…we're…considering for [the] future, one is a very slow paced “transmedia” thing, very narrative led and totally different to Buddha Finger, one is another crazy action title and one is a children’s game"

What else is there to know about the developer?
We love to get to know more about interesting developers, and Anna was all too happy to oblige!

148apps: What's your favorite thing about iOS development?
Anna Marsh: I love the touchscreen. I love the immediateness of it, that the player doesn’t have to learn the connection between a controller and the game but can just touch the game elements directly. We’ve given Buddha Finger to someone who literally has never played any game before but in 30 seconds they got it, and love it! That’s what I wanted to do, something completely different from the console, Triple A stuff I’d been working on. Of course there’s other devices with touchscreens, focusing on iOS was really just so that we didn’t stretch ourselves too far by trying to tackle multiple platforms with our first game. The coders who worked on the game all had a lot of iOS experience so we plumped for Apple. We’re looking at moving onto other platforms now.

148apps: Lady Shotgun is known for working remotely from each other. What challenges have you faced by not being in the same office?

Anna: Well not too many actually, and that’s largely because the bulk of us all had a fair amount of freelance experience prior to doing this. We’re all comfortable with working this way, in fact, we prefer working this way which was the whole impetus for starting up the company really. We didn’t want standard office jobs. Some of us have kids, some of us have other personal projects, some are studying – some of us are just plain misanthropes who prefer being alone, ha ha :) We use online tools like Assembla and Dropbox to co-ordinate, and we’re pretty organised. I guess that’s our strength really. Myself, Sarah (Executive Producer) and Derek, our lead coder, can break down the game into its smallest components which can then be easily tasked to the team. I suppose that’s the challenge - but we’re all fairly persnickety people who like doing that kind of thing!

148apps: How much of a change of pace is it going from working for major developers to working in a smaller, and virtual, environment?
Anna: Things go much faster if you want them to! We don’t have the many different meetings to attend and approval processes to get through which slows down a big console project. Plus of course, creating the tech for a mobile project is much less time consuming than for a big console or PC game. We got a game done in 10 months, even with us all being part time, whereas a console project it’s not unusual for it to take 3, 4 years or more. Its refreshing :)

Where can I find out more about Lady Shotgun?
Lady Shotgun are no strangers to social media! There are plenty of places to learn more. There's the official site, Twitter account, Facebook page, YouTube channel and Flickr account.

We'll also be keeping a keen eye on any further developments.