Benjamin Rivers

Last updated

Benjamin Rivers is an independent game developer, illustrator, and comic artist. [1]

Contents

Biography

Rivers was raised in Barry's Bay, Ontario, Canada and is now based out of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is a member of the Hand Eye Society and a graduate of the Artsy Games Incubator program. Rivers has been an active and early member of the Toronto independent gaming scene and has been creating games for download and display since 2008.

His games span multiple genres but often focus on similar visual styles. The various titles have appeared in Edge magazine, Game Developers Magazine and on Gamasutra , GameSetWatch, Destructoid, Maisonneuve , among others.

Destructoid called one of Rivers' games, Snow, "an American Splendor comic delivered by way of Monkey Island ." [2]

His graphic novel Snow is being made into a feature film by Ryan Couldrey. The film stars Nina Iordanova as Dana and is set for a release in October 2014. [3] The film will be free to watch, but there will also be a paid version with bonus content. For the first 90 days of Snow's release, 100% of the proceeds from each purchase will go toward the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, which serves as the premier cancer research institute and hospital in Canada.

Bibliography

Comic Books & Graphic Novels

All self-published

Games

Related Research Articles

<i>Game Developer</i> (magazine) American magazine marketed to video game designers

Game Developer was a magazine for video game creators, originally started in March 1994 by Miller Freeman, Inc as quarterly, later bimonthly, and finally monthly. In each issue, industry leaders and experts shared technical solutions, reviewed new game development tools, and discussed strategies for creating innovative, successful video games. Monthly postmortems dissected the industry's leading games, from AAA console to social and mobile games and beyond, and columns gave insight into deeper development practices from across all disciplines, from design, to programming, to art, to business, and audio. It was closed in 2013 as part of a restructuring at parent company UBM Tech that included the closing of all print publications owned by that company.

A tie-in work is a work of fiction or other product based on a media property such as a film, video game, television series, board game, web site, role-playing game or literary property. Tie-ins are authorized by the owners of the original property, and are a form of cross-promotion used primarily to generate additional income from that property and to promote its visibility.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jordan Mechner</span> American video game designer

Jordan Mechner is an American video game designer, author, screenwriter, and filmmaker. He is best known for designing and programming the Broderbund Apple II games Karateka and Prince of Persia in the 1980s, the latter of which grew into a multi-platform franchise.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rebellion Developments</span> Video game company

Rebellion Developments Limited is a British video game developer based in Oxford, England. Founded by Jason and Chris Kingsley in December 1992, the company is best known for its Sniper Elite series and multiple games in the Alien vs. Predator series. Sister company Rebellion Publishing has published comic books since 2000, when it purchased 2000 AD, the publisher of characters such as Judge Dredd and Rogue Trooper.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adventure Game Studio</span>

Adventure Game Studio (AGS) is an open source development tool primarily used to create graphic adventure games. It is aimed at intermediate-level game designers, and combines an integrated development environment (IDE) with a scripting language based on the C programming language to process game logic.

Tactical role-playing games, also known as strategy role-playing games and in Japan as simulation RPGs, are a video game genre that combines core elements of role-playing video games with those of tactical strategy video games. The formats of tactical RPGs are much like traditional tabletop role-playing games and strategy games in appearance, pacing, and rule structure. Likewise, early tabletop role-playing games are descended from skirmish wargames such as Chainmail, which were primarily concerned with combat.

Game Developer is a website founded in 1997 that focuses on aspects of video game development. It is owned and operated by Informa and acts as the online sister publication to the print magazine Game Developer.

Tina Anderson is an American comic writer. She creates gay comics and women's yaoi, or Boys' Love. Anderson coined the term "GloBL" to encourage fans of yaoi/BL to think about implications of a BL aesthetic outside of Japanese culture. Anderson has written graphic novels and short stories that are included in collections from various publishers such as Class Comics, Yaoi Press, Sin Factory, DramaQueen, and Iris Print. Anderson stated in a November 2010 interview that 2011 would be her final year writing homoerotic graphic novels. Collected episodes of Anderson's online science fiction serial Femitokon debuted in December 2020 as an original English-language light novel called Suffocation. The second volume, titled Tactical Pursuits, released in August 2021.

Prince of Persia is a video game franchise created by Jordan Mechner. It is built around a series of action-adventure games focused on various incarnations of the eponymous Prince, set in ancient and medieval Persia.

<i>The Maw</i> 2009 video game

The Maw is an action-adventure video game developed by Twisted Pixel Games and released for Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. The game centers on the extraterrestrial Frank and a purple, amorphous creature called The Maw, who have crash-landed their spacecraft on an alien planet. The player assumes the role of Frank and directs The Maw—which can take on the abilities of objects and fauna it consumes—via a leash.

<i>Bit.Trip Beat</i> 2009 video game

Bit.Trip Beat, marketed as BIT.TRIP BEAT, is an arcade-style music video game developed by Gaijin Games and published by Aksys Games for the Wii's WiiWare download service. It was released in 2009 in North America, and released in Japan and PAL regions in the same year. It was later released for the Windows and Mac OS X through the download service Steam in 2010, while Namco Bandai published it for iOS on iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad in both Bit.Trip Beat and Bit.Trip Beat HD versions. Android and Linux versions debuted in the Humble Android Bundle 3.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Twisted Pixel Games</span> American video game developer

Twisted Pixel Games, LLC is an American video game developer based in Austin, Texas. Originally a contractor, Twisted Pixel releases games based on its own intellectual properties such as The Maw and 'Splosion Man. The company uses its own proprietary engine, known as Beard, to power its games. On October 12, 2011, it was announced that Twisted Pixel had become part of Microsoft Studios. However, Twisted Pixel separated from Microsoft, and became an independent company again on September 30, 2015. In November 2021, the company became a subsidiary of Oculus Studios.

<i>Destructoid</i> Video game news website

Destructoid is a website that was founded as a video game-focused blog in March 2006 by Yanier Gonzalez, a Cuban-American cartoonist and author. Enthusiast Gaming acquired the website in 2017, and sold it to Gamurs Group in 2022.

<i>Blacklight: Tango Down</i> 2010 video game

Blacklight: Tango Down is a dystopian cyberpunk-themed online multiplayer first-person shooter video game developed by Zombie Studios and published by Ignition Entertainment. The game was released on July 7, 2010 on Xbox 360 as a downloadable title, and was released on Microsoft Windows on July 14, 2010. The game was also released on October 26, 2010 for the PlayStation 3. The PC version is the one to receive all three patches, where as the Xbox 360 received only the first two patches, and the PlayStation 3 version received no patches, being at retail, launch day version.

<i>Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley</i> 2010 video game

Comic Jumper is an action video game developed by Twisted Pixel Games published by Microsoft Game Studios. It was released for the Xbox 360 via the Xbox Live Arcade Marketplace on October 6, 2010. It is the third original game created by Twisted Pixel following The Maw and 'Splosion Man, all three of which are exclusive to Xbox Live Arcade.

<i>Warriors: Legends of Troy</i> 2011 video game

Warriors: Legends of Troy, released in Japan as Troy Musou, is a video game for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 games consoles set during the Trojan War. The game was developed by Koei Canada and is published by Tecmo Koei. While having a Warriors title, this game differs from the Dynasty Warriors series as it features a greater level of graphic violence. The game had a scheduled release date of Q4 2010 in all regions but was pushed back to Q1 2011 after Koei's announcement during Tokyo Game Show 2010.

Playdom was an online social network game developer popular on Facebook, Google+ and Myspace. The company was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area by University of California, Berkeley graduates Ling Xiao and Chris Wang and Swarthmore College graduate Dan Yue. In 2009, the market for games played on social networking sites was valued at $300 million, consisting mostly of online sales of virtual goods.

Nathan Jurevicius is a Canadian/Australian illustrator, director, toy designer, author, and fine artist whose diverse range of work has appeared in numerous publications, advertising campaigns, festivals, and galleries around the world.

GROW is a series of Flash or HTML5-based puzzle games created by On Nakayama, a Japanese indie game developer, and posted to his website, eyezmaze.com. The series, which was launched on February 7, 2002, comprises 12 full games, 7 minigames, and 1 canceled game. The most recently released title was published in June 2018. The games all feature a simple click-button interface requiring the player to determine the correct combination of buttons to click to maximize visual reward and ultimately to achieve the good ending. Graphically spare and minimalist, GROW games employ a cute aesthetic and often include creatures and characters taken from On's other games like those in the Tontie Series.

<i>Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes</i> 2015 video game

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is a puzzle video game developed and published by Canadian studio Steel Crate Games. The game tasks a player with disarming procedurally generated bombs with the assistance of other players who are reading a manual containing instructions. It was designed around virtual reality support, with availability first on Android-driven Samsung Gear VR, with later ports to supported devices on Microsoft Windows, OS X, PlayStation 4, and Linux; though could be played without virtual reality in some cases. An update for the game released in August 2018 removed the virtual reality requirement for these existing systems, as well as included releases for the Nintendo Switch and Xbox One. Non-VR ports for iOS and Android were released in August 2019.

References

  1. Andrew Webster (15 July 2010). "Making Games On The Side: Development In The Real World". Gamasutra . Retrieved 4 September 2010.
  2. Anthony Burch (4 October 2009). "Indie Nation #56: Snow". Destructoid . Retrieved 4 September 2010.
  3. "SNOW - a film by Ryan Couldrey" . Retrieved 1 May 2014.
  4. Snow the Game at Rivers's site
  5. The Ascent at Rivers's site
  6. Drunken Rampage at Rivers's site
  7. Missing at Rivers's site
  8. Home at Rivers's site
  9. Alone with You website