If there’s one thing Game Maker’s done, it’s bringing out talent in young developers. Today we have an interview with Elijah Spiro, who operates under the profile Spirox at sandbox.yoyogames.com. He’s not well-known, but he’s 15 years old and makes 3D games, a stunning achievement in itself. His latest work is Paradox, a platformer with similarities to Marble Madness. Let’s have a look at what this promising young developer has to say for himself.
Yudhanjaya: Introduce yourself to our readers, and tell us about Paradox 2.
My name’s Elijah Spiro, I’m a 15 year old swimmer from Ohio, and I love making games! A little over a year ago, I began to teach myself how to code in 3D. Slowly, the experiments that I made began to turn in to a game with an objective: reach a goal to progress through each level. Thus the Paradox series was born! Paradox 2 is the sequel to Paradox 3D, released about 13 months ago. In Paradox 2, the player controls a ball that he or she must roll across a variety of different types of tiles, each presenting their own challenge, and attempt to reach the Goal Cube in each level.
As someone who’s been releasing on Yoyogames for some time, what do you think about it? Has it been difficult or easy to gather attention to your games?
Don’t get me wrong, I love YoYo Games– I watched my brother develop games way back with gamemaker 3.0, before I could even type on a keyboard! This being said, it’s not the best website for releasing your games. The vast majority of the games released on the site never break 1,000 plays, so it’s considered quite the accomplishment to do so. Nowadays, a lot of developers like myself see these massive game industries like Bungie and Treyarch releasing games to millions of paying customers like it’s no big deal. It kind of makes us set up an unfair expectation for ourselves. Gathering attention to the games I make has never been easy, but I’m hoping that Paradox 2 can change that.
So what was the inspiration behind Paradox? 
Like I said, the series was never intentional. It began as me teaching myself 3D coding, when it sort of modeled itself in to a game! The rest just followed suit.
I notice you release Paradox in WIP stages, gathering feedback while in the development process itself. Is this better than the traditional method of developing behind closed doors until beta and then testing with a select set of players?
In my opinion, when you develop a game for the people, you want the people to tell you what they want! What better way to do that than to let them try what you’ve got so far? Usually, when I have a first playable draft of a game that is relatively bug-free, I release it and advertise it. From there, players can try it out and tell me how to improve what I’ve already got, and what features to add to improve the game. For instance, with Paradox 2, the initial version only had 10 levels and a few tile types, but it was playable– that is to say, the game aspects were all there. After its release, I added more levels, more tile types, did whatever my fellow developers advised me to. I understand that with larger companies, they can afford to ‘develop behind closed doors’, but when you’re a one-man company, you don’t have an unlimited supply of game testers at your disposal. I prefer to turn my projects in to community-fueled games with frequent updates.
Overall, if you could improve certain areas of your game-making skill, which ones would you choose to develop further?
I’d have to go with online coding. I once tried to make a simple online pong game, it took me days to set up! If any big projects of mine ever end up needing an online component, I’m going to have to bring in other developers to help me out!
What new additions have you got in mind for Paradox 2?
Well, the goal behind each update is to release a new map pack (consisting of 10 levels) and at least two new tile types. Version 4 is gonna have a little something extra, though! The next version of Paradox 2, set to be released on 12/28/2011, is gonna have a big surprise. You’ll have to wait and see!
What are your plans for the future?
Eventually, after I finish school, I hope to officially create Spirox Productions, which has kind of been my online alias for game developing for a few years now. The market changes rapidly, and by that time there could be entirely new consoles on the market– for the time being, though, I’m looking to start developing for iPod/iPhone and XBox Live Arcade.
And that’s from Elijah, aka Spirox. Paradox 2 is, as he mentions, a work in progress – personally, it’s extremely rough around the edges. I’ll be general here, since Spirox has this all planned: in it’s current state, the graphics could use an upgrade – the textures are a bit too dark and sharp around the edges, and the background / skybox is a disturbing black; and gameplay-wise, the ball lacks a noticeable amount of bounce. But given time and effort, there could be truly excellent 3D platformer in here. Spirox certainly has the talent to make it happen.
IndieGraph 
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