Interview with ACE Team’s founder & developer, Carlos Bordeu

An Interview with ACE Team’s founder & developer, Carlos Bordeu:

ACE Team, founded by Andres, Carlos, & Edmundo, is a game development studio. The studio is one of the best in Latin America. It has received several awards for creating exceptional games. ACE Team is a certified developer by Microsoft & Sony.

Since January 2020, we are interviewing talented & aspiring streamers, & game developers / publishers. Presently, we approached Carlos Bordeu, a worthy developer, and founder of ACE Team. He obliged us by sharing his success story.

Carlos Bordeu

The interview session follows as:

 

Q1. Please tell us a little about yourself and ACE Team. Also what motivates you to start your own studio?

A. ACE Team was founded many years ago as a MOD development studio. We were a small team working on mods of existing games and that hobby turned to something more professional and that was the starting point of our studio.

 

Q2. Please tell us how do you plan projects and organize work?

A. We use traditional ways of game development to organize our tasks. We have milestones & we have our projects organized properly. We have a pretty standard format. Though our games tend to be a little bit weirder & experimental, so we go through a lot of iteration.

 

Q3. What difficulties do you come across while designing game design?

A. I think balancing the aspects of mixing two things that have not been traditionally mixed. In Rock of Ages, you do tower defense mixed with a rolling boulder sort of game. You have to figure out how to mix those two ingredients in the best possible way.

 

Q4. I appreciate your game Rock of Ages III. Please tell its story to the readers.

Rock of Ages 3

Image Credit: ACE Team

A. Rock of Ages is one of our most successful projects. So it was pretty natural to propose a third iteration. Though it was a co-production with another studio as majority of ACE Team was working on Eternal Cylinder as it is the leading project in the company at the moment. So it was for the first time that we worked with another studio to produce one of our games. Rock of Ages II was also a big success for us. So making a third one felt reasonable.

 

Q5. How do you handle art?

A. We always try to take inspiration from sources that are not commonly seen in the game industry. You can see that with the Monty Python thing from Rock of Ages like classical art inspiration or perhaps classical musical inspiration. This can be seen in many of our projects such as Zeno Clash which has punk fantasy rather than traditional fantasy. So we are always looking for sources of inspiration for the art that we do that tends to be a little bit outside what you commonly see in the game industry. That is where we are going.  

 

Q6. What challenges did you face during Rock of Ages III?

Rock of Ages 3 Animation

Credit: ACE Team

A. The biggest challenge was developing this project with another studio Giant Monkey Robot. We underestimated the complexity of working with someone else. You are comfortable working with your own team. When you talk about a sequel or third version of a game, you already know very well about your own project. So when it comes down to passing on that knowledge to another studio, it involves a lot of challenges from a technical & design point of view. So the co-production was the biggest challenge.

 

Q7. Which part of the game development do you enjoy?

A. We enjoy every part of game development. We are very much interested in world creation, level designs, animations & just bringing all these elements together to develop something that is completely new. We are always striving to achieve something that will impress people by taking players to magical new locations or giving them to experience the fun match of ridiculous boulder crushing multiplier. Like being able to provide people with unique new experiences that we really enjoy being a part of.

 

Q8. Which one of your games receives the biggest success?

A. Rock of Ages & Zeno Clash titles still probably remain as the most successful titles. Both video games earned notable awards, particularly the first Zeno Clash.

 

Q9. Please tell us a little about your creative capabilities?

A. You tend to mix a lot of different things. We are a small studio, so sometimes we have to break down different tasks and I feel sad if I have to devote all of my time working on one area (for instance level design). There is huge satisfaction when I work in multiple areas of the game. We are a multi-disciplinary team. We have very talented programmers, designers, artists of all sorts.  

 

Q10. Does Video Game development fatigue you at times? If Yes, then how you manage it?

A. I have worked on game development for over ten years. In the end of projects we get a little bit tired. Since we always go from one project to another. The process of releasing titles is a very exciting thing and then see how people react to it. Fatigue can be managed well with taking vacations.

Carlos, it is an honor to interview and I appreciate the time you took with us.  Moreover, I highly appreciate your abilities, and passion for games. I believe we will have marvelous games from ACE Team in future too.

The Eternal Cylinder

Image Credit: ACE Team

The Eternal Cylinder game is the studio’s ongoing project. It is a very unique one. They are working hard on it. I believe it will impress majority of the fans because of its unusual design. So I highly recommend you to check www.eternalcylinder.com