Andrew Braybrook

The creator of Paradroid and Uridium tells Rory Milne about his new games

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Given that Andrew Braybrook helped define 8-bit and 16-bit gaming by pushing the C64 and Amiga to their limits he could be forgiven for relaxing during his well-earned retirement. Instead, he's been spending his time working on a series of new games: Astierods, Rock Stars, Monster Molecules and Wreckie.

Why did you develop Astierods after retiring, Andrew?

I had moved mainly into quality control and activities relating to releasing software, and I wanted to get back to programming. So I created a new version of our 16-bit game system in C. Someone helpfully suggested I look at SFML, and it was just what I needed. I thought it would be easy to write an Asteroids tribute, and a few weeks of setup and a couple of all-nighter sessions later I had some rocks traversing the screen.

How did Jeff Minter help out?

I let Jeff take a look and he thought it was a bit easy, as one could accumulate tens of lives in the early stages. Jeff then put me in contact with Atari US, and I let them have a look at the game. But they were planning a new version of Asteroids themselves, so that was that. The only way the game will come out is with their blessing.

How did Astierods morph into Rock Stars?