Development was already under way on Chasing Aurora, and Clemens Scott couldn't settle on an art style for Broken Rules' Wii U launch title. You could, perhaps, attribute this to second-game jitters, but for the fact that this was Scott's first project after joining the studio as art director. And nothing he was drawing seemed to fit the concept: a multiplayer action game about the dream of flight.
All it took was a particularly unproductive day while working from home, the door of an overstuffed wooden wardrobe constantly banging off his arm, for Scott to snap. "At some point, I burst and I just kicked that wardrobe," he laughs. "It fell apart. Everything started slanting slowly, and then collapsing."
Yet, among the fragments, something caught his eye: the shelves. With a background in analogue art, Scott turned the wood into a canvas, cross-hatching landscapes with a black marker. Over a decade later, he still remembers the reaction from his colleagues after bringing the decorated shelf into the office: "This is it".
That act of breaking down and rebuilding could serve as a metaphor for the way Broken Rules itself has changed over the years. Today, it operates as something closer to a creative hub than a traditional game studio. Based out of a shared office in Vienna's Museumsquartier alongside two other indie developers, an animator, and an architectural visualiser - its five co-founders work independently of each other, collaborating on certain projects and relying on external contractors for larger games. An atypical structure, for sure, but one that kept Broken Rules going when closure seemed all but inevitable.
Its origins can be traced to the Vienna University of Technology, where computer science students Peter Vorlaufer, Jan Hackl and Felix Bohatsch were part of a joint thesis project that grew into the puzzle platformer And Yet It Moves.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/I_3W8xsrM1662983120196/2156545476.jpg]
Their initial goal was to create a playable prototype to submit to the Independent Games Festival - no mean feat, considering that Bohatsch had no game development experience outside of the course, while Hackl's softography at that point consisted primarily of a Snake clone.
University mentors were instrumental in guiding development, encouraging the team to create a design-driven 2D experience, rather than a graphically intensive 3D project that would have been more common for their course. Over time, their game came to life as a puzzle-platformer built around a screen-rotation mechanic, its distinctive photo-collage aesthetic born from the lack of an experienced artist on the team.
Winning a Student Showcase award at IGF 2007 helped to kickstart interest in And Yet It Moves, but it was a trip to San Francisco for GDC 2007 that proved particularly inspirational. The indie scene as we know it today was just starting to form, bolstered by the advent of digital game distribution, and the students dove in headfirst they remember making connections with the future creators of the Humble Bundle over a few games of disc golf. "The indie scene was very inviting. There was a sense of community," Bohatsch says. "It's still there, but it's not as strong any more because it's way bigger."
Riding this wave of enthusiasm, they decided to expand And Yet It Moves into a fully featured game, working full-time for the final ten months in a sublet office. After its successful PC launch, Hackl, Bohatsch and Vorlaufer officially founded Broken Rules in 2009. "We were already sold: it was fun, we wanted to be doing that as long as possible," Hackl says. "But as for how we continued with the company, and how the projects came later - it happened as we went, more or less."
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/I_3W8xsrM1662983120196/dCecyUz6X1662983282640.jpg]
The studio's next break would come through yet another convention, this time as part of the IndieCade booth at E3 2009. A demo of And Yet It Moves caught the eye of former Nintendo Of America indie headhunter Dan Adelman, leading to an opportunity to create a Wii port as a downloadable title. While Hackl was primarily responsible for creating art assets in Photoshop, the studio lacked a bona-fide artist - which is where our destroyer of furniture enters the picture.
"We met Clemens Scott at a local game jam,' Bohatsch begins, before a knowing smile breaks across his face. "Well, the truth is, we organised the game jam to get to know Clemens Scott." For his part, Scott remembers the game jam as a fairly modest affair, consisting of just ten people crowded into a university classroom. With a background in Web and graphic design, alongside urban graffiti projects, he was the only artist in the room. "In German, you say 'hahn im korb': the rooster in the basket," Scott laughs. "You're in the spotlight - everybody wants to do their game jam project with you."
Despite the added pressure, Scott was impressed by Broken Rules' work, eventually buying into the company as a co-founder. And with the addition of fifth co-founder Martin Pichlmair a mentor for their original university prototype the stage was set for their next project.
While the WiiWare port of And Yet It Moves had underperformed financially, Nintendo approached Broken Rules about developing a launch title for its next console. The team leapt at the chance, embracing the unique game mechanics afforded by Wii U's GamePad to create a range of asymmetrical multiplayer modes. But developing for an unreleased console was a new challenge, and proved tricky.
"When we started, we weren't sure how much memory the Wii U would have, or exactly what processor would be in there," Bohatsch recalls. "There were things that we had to adapt to." A tight schedule and the addition of three employees only increased the pressure. "We've grown and we've also struggled with that: managing a team, creating a new game," Bohatsch says. "It was definitely stressful."
Chasing Aurora underperformed critically and commercially, a demotivating experience for the studio, though Scott's aesthetics were widely praised. Undeterred, the group began work on a single-player-only follow-up, Secrets Of Ratikon. This ambitious project featured free-form exploration, an interactive ecosystem, and a runic language system, its scattershot design reflecting a turbulent development process. Much of the team had become parents, giving the former students less time to dedicate to development, while creative differences became more prominent as the team grew. "We had huge group discussions that would lead nowhere - except to bad feelings," Hackl recalls. "That's the point where we had to learn the h...
All it took was a particularly unproductive day while working from home, the door of an overstuffed wooden wardrobe constantly banging off his arm, for Scott to snap. "At some point, I burst and I just kicked that wardrobe," he laughs. "It fell apart. Everything started slanting slowly, and then collapsing."
Yet, among the fragments, something caught his eye: the shelves. With a background in analogue art, Scott turned the wood into a canvas, cross-hatching landscapes with a black marker. Over a decade later, he still remembers the reaction from his colleagues after bringing the decorated shelf into the office: "This is it".
That act of breaking down and rebuilding could serve as a metaphor for the way Broken Rules itself has changed over the years. Today, it operates as something closer to a creative hub than a traditional game studio. Based out of a shared office in Vienna's Museumsquartier alongside two other indie developers, an animator, and an architectural visualiser - its five co-founders work independently of each other, collaborating on certain projects and relying on external contractors for larger games. An atypical structure, for sure, but one that kept Broken Rules going when closure seemed all but inevitable.
Its origins can be traced to the Vienna University of Technology, where computer science students Peter Vorlaufer, Jan Hackl and Felix Bohatsch were part of a joint thesis project that grew into the puzzle platformer And Yet It Moves.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/I_3W8xsrM1662983120196/2156545476.jpg]
Their initial goal was to create a playable prototype to submit to the Independent Games Festival - no mean feat, considering that Bohatsch had no game development experience outside of the course, while Hackl's softography at that point consisted primarily of a Snake clone.
University mentors were instrumental in guiding development, encouraging the team to create a design-driven 2D experience, rather than a graphically intensive 3D project that would have been more common for their course. Over time, their game came to life as a puzzle-platformer built around a screen-rotation mechanic, its distinctive photo-collage aesthetic born from the lack of an experienced artist on the team.
Winning a Student Showcase award at IGF 2007 helped to kickstart interest in And Yet It Moves, but it was a trip to San Francisco for GDC 2007 that proved particularly inspirational. The indie scene as we know it today was just starting to form, bolstered by the advent of digital game distribution, and the students dove in headfirst they remember making connections with the future creators of the Humble Bundle over a few games of disc golf. "The indie scene was very inviting. There was a sense of community," Bohatsch says. "It's still there, but it's not as strong any more because it's way bigger."
Riding this wave of enthusiasm, they decided to expand And Yet It Moves into a fully featured game, working full-time for the final ten months in a sublet office. After its successful PC launch, Hackl, Bohatsch and Vorlaufer officially founded Broken Rules in 2009. "We were already sold: it was fun, we wanted to be doing that as long as possible," Hackl says. "But as for how we continued with the company, and how the projects came later - it happened as we went, more or less."
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1662560442/articles/I_3W8xsrM1662983120196/dCecyUz6X1662983282640.jpg]
The studio's next break would come through yet another convention, this time as part of the IndieCade booth at E3 2009. A demo of And Yet It Moves caught the eye of former Nintendo Of America indie headhunter Dan Adelman, leading to an opportunity to create a Wii port as a downloadable title. While Hackl was primarily responsible for creating art assets in Photoshop, the studio lacked a bona-fide artist - which is where our destroyer of furniture enters the picture.
"We met Clemens Scott at a local game jam,' Bohatsch begins, before a knowing smile breaks across his face. "Well, the truth is, we organised the game jam to get to know Clemens Scott." For his part, Scott remembers the game jam as a fairly modest affair, consisting of just ten people crowded into a university classroom. With a background in Web and graphic design, alongside urban graffiti projects, he was the only artist in the room. "In German, you say 'hahn im korb': the rooster in the basket," Scott laughs. "You're in the spotlight - everybody wants to do their game jam project with you."
Despite the added pressure, Scott was impressed by Broken Rules' work, eventually buying into the company as a co-founder. And with the addition of fifth co-founder Martin Pichlmair a mentor for their original university prototype the stage was set for their next project.
While the WiiWare port of And Yet It Moves had underperformed financially, Nintendo approached Broken Rules about developing a launch title for its next console. The team leapt at the chance, embracing the unique game mechanics afforded by Wii U's GamePad to create a range of asymmetrical multiplayer modes. But developing for an unreleased console was a new challenge, and proved tricky.
"When we started, we weren't sure how much memory the Wii U would have, or exactly what processor would be in there," Bohatsch recalls. "There were things that we had to adapt to." A tight schedule and the addition of three employees only increased the pressure. "We've grown and we've also struggled with that: managing a team, creating a new game," Bohatsch says. "It was definitely stressful."
Chasing Aurora underperformed critically and commercially, a demotivating experience for the studio, though Scott's aesthetics were widely praised. Undeterred, the group began work on a single-player-only follow-up, Secrets Of Ratikon. This ambitious project featured free-form exploration, an interactive ecosystem, and a runic language system, its scattershot design reflecting a turbulent development process. Much of the team had become parents, giving the former students less time to dedicate to development, while creative differences became more prominent as the team grew. "We had huge group discussions that would lead nowhere - except to bad feelings," Hackl recalls. "That's the point where we had to learn the h...
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Edge Uk (Digital) - 1 Issue, November 2022