This week's GTKYD features Paul Smith, from Strawdog Studios. They're an indie game developer from the UK who create some unique and addictive games for the Xbox 360, Wii, PlayStation 3, iPhone and PC. Space Ark is a new Xbox LIVE Arcade game you can look forward to soon from Strawdog Studios. Read on below to learn more about Paul's role in Strawdog Studios and get a sneak peek at what games are the works and coming soon!

Who are you and what do you do in the gaming industry?

Paul Smith - and I have a few roles within the studio since we are a small indie dev team, but I spend much of my production time as game designer and animator.

What are you currently working on or just released?

Our previous project was ‘Geon’, for XBLA & PSN (Nintendo Wii version is due out this month & an iPhone version is in the pipeline). We are currently put the finishing touches to ‘Space Ark’ for Xbox Live Arcade which will hopefully be released before the end of the year.

What were some of the inspirations for Space Ark?

‘Space Ark’ was born out of the team’s love of retro arcade games of the 80’s and 90’s, with their colourful and vibrant game worlds and addictive game play.

When designing the game we decided that it should have simple rules and intuitive game controls. The game was originally called ‘Bounce’, which really summed up the action within the game but unfortunately someone already had the trademark for that name so Space Ark was born.

One of the other motivations for ‘Space Ark’ was the desire to create a game with characters that people could relate to. Our first XBLA/PSN game ‘Geon’ was very abstract, with the player controlling multicoloured cubes! This time we wanted characters with arms, legs, heads and faces.

What was the highlight of creating Space Ark for you?

Working within a tight and well integrated team means that you have a real input into the game creation process. We loosely use a scrum type development philosophy. Basically we communicate, know what each other is doing, take ownership and constantly iterate the design.

What kind of gamer would enjoy playing Space Ark?

The game is colourful and cute and obviously looks attractive to a younger audience with unlockable characters and colourful environments but we want it to reach out to the hardcore gamers too. The game is pretty challenging, especially if you want to be top of the highscore leaderboards and has a cool feature where you can track your score against your friends. This makes the game really competitive and will hopefully make the game appeal to a broader audience. ‘Space Ark’ will appeal to anyone who is old enough to remember the 80s arcade games, or young enough to have missed them the first time around.

How long has Space Ark been in development?

Like most of our concepts they spend a fair amount of time in pre-production. We often have several game concepts being worked on at anyone time and ‘Space Ark’ bubbled up to the surface. The initial idea was seeded in 2006 at which point a visual demo was created which was shown internally to the team to gauge opinion and get feedback. We showed the demo to Microsoft whilst at GDC in 2007 and soon after that we received concept approval for XBLA.

Shifting to a bit of your personal experiences, how did you get into the games industry?

After finishing Art school I spent 10 years working within the traditional animation industry, I worked for Disney/Warner Bros as an animator before moving into videogames. These skills have proved to be really useful for both game design concepts and also for game animation.

What is your favorite game you have every played on any console and why?

My favourite game is probably ‘Shadow of the Colussus’ on the PS2. It was a great mix of action and exploration and had a real cinematic feel to it…. and the giants were awesome!

What are you currently playing?

I’m currently playing ‘Arkham Asylum’ on PS3 and Peggle on iPhone. Many of the games I play are for research purposes, so I tend to play them for different reasons.

Which games are you looking forward to playing in the next year and why?

I’m really looking forward to playing ‘Little Big Planet’ on the PSP since I loved the PS3 version for it creativity. I’m really keen to see how it translates to a smaller screen and portable device.

What was the last game that you finished?

I think it was ‘Shadow Complex’ on XBLA or Peggle on the iPhone but to be honest I’m not good at finishing games. My job means that I tend to jump from one game to another and rarely have time to finish them. This is one of the reasons why the XBLA and PSN are such great game services, since they deliver the kind of game I can actually dip in and out of.

What is next for you?

We’ll be doing other versions of Space Ark, hopefully on PSN and Wii. We also have a concept in pre-production that we’re really excited about, so watch this space!

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Many thanks to Paul Smith, Dan Marchant and Strawdog Studios for making this interview possible. Support Strawdog Studios with their future game releases, sure to bring some fun and unique gameplay! See more on Space Ark here at the official website.

See more of our exclusive GTKYD interviews here.

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