Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts

Stay tuned at gungumgame.com for your download. From the website:

GumGun, which is the hero in the game, shoots when you move. You collect gum from bonus boxes that increases your firepower. As you shoot, the firepower gets weaker until you find more gum, so there is a really nice dynamic between weak and powerful shots. You will also pick up bubble gum bombs that inflates and fires automatically. Combos you get from hitting enemies with bombs, builds up the score “multiplier”. The multiplier is a value that is multiplied with your points. The movement pattern of the enemies are unique every time you play, so new games will never be the same. Adding to a long list of inspirational titles alongside obvious titles like Geometry Wars, Space Invaders and Galaga, Tetris is a main source of inspiration. Not the main mechanics, but the way Tetris progresses with speed. Where typical bullet hell shooters fills the screen with alot of dangerous bullets, the bullets from the enemies in GumGun moves faster and faster as you progress. So instead of navigating narrow paths between bullets, you have to move fast to avoid them on higher stages. GumGun is also made to be easy to pick up for everyone. Easy controls and a soft start should make it welcoming for all ages and skill level.

About GumGun and Stian Remvik
On Stian Remvik’s last year of his bachelor in design and visual communication in 2010 from Bergen academy of Arts and Design (now KMD), he got interrested in visualising sound. He then started experimenting with Cycling 74’s Max software. Max is a creative toolkit where you make logic by connecting boxes with wires on screen. When browsing for places to learn Max, he discovered BEK, Bergen center for Electronic Arts. BEK was a great resource for Stian for learning more about programming and art. Most of the development of GumGun Stian did at BEK. But before he started on his game, he was making animations in Max. When he was fooling around with some iOS interface tools for Max, he made a small game on his phone. The game actually ran in Max on a computer, with the iOS device only operating as an interface connected to the computer through a network. He then realised he had made a computer game and wanted to make it better. Max was (obviously) not the right environment to continue developing the game, so he looked for alternatives. He didn’t know how to program, so he landed on Gamesalad. He continued to learn code logic and game design. He was also into programming animations in Max. But Max is not very well suited for that either, so he finally started learning C++ through the creative coding toolkit openFrameworks. He did other app development and became more competent and found shortcomings in Gamesalad too, so he started using Cocos2D-X and C++ for his game development. Since the game development was done in his spare time, and he needed to learn both programming and game design, he spent several years interating on his game. He also tried to do the art himself, but after a few years he realised his shortcomings and contacted an old friend. “The Gum Team” was started in 2017 when he hired Tore Holmem to do the visuals. Through Stian’s involvement in Bergen Center for Electronic Art, he met Thorolf Thuestad who was a sound designer and artist. Thorolf joined the team around the same time as Tore. Tore Holmem lives in Ålesund, Norway, which is also Remvik’s hometown. Thorolf got really busy with his full time job, so we contacted Jørn Lavoll to assist on sound design, and to make the music for the game. Lavoll, Thuestad and Remvik are based in Bergen, Norway.