Jordan Rivas has been writing professionally for about six years, starting as a sportswriter and working his way into video games.
When Arcen rolled out the Tidalis beta, I tried it on a whim, and was surprised how much I enjoyed it. I don’t normally dig on puzzle games, but I found this one clever, and addictive.
JordanRivas.com is committed to covering the kind of content Jordan wants, including covering indie games and developers, He, like GDN thinks these guys don’t get enough coverage.
When asked about the interview with Chris Park and Arcen Games, and the reason behind it, Jordan said, "I’m doing it because I think people, especially aspiring game designers, will get a tremendous amount of value out of hearing the story of someone who basically just started making games, selling them, and is having success. It’s valuable experience to learn from, and it’s entertaining. That’s all I want, for people to get value out of listening to it. "
Arcen Games first release was AI War, a cooperative space-based RTS game, but they have no intention of being pegged as just a strategy developer. To that end they have now also released Tidalis, which received a 9.0/10 in the GDN review. While they have continued to expand AI War with a long series of free DLC updates and at least a few paid expansion packs (the first of which is already out), other upcoming titles are in completely different genres: Tidalis is a puzzle game; Alden Ridge is a puzzle/adventure game about being chased by zombies and thwarting them with unusual tools; A Valley Without Wind will be an innovative story-driven twist on the tower defense genre; Cayenne will be a story-focused quasi-Japanese-style action RPG. Beyond that, there are a lot of other genres of which we are fans and for which we have game ideas.
Here’s the interview. Runtime: approximately 69 minutes
