BLENDO GAMES

The one calm voice amid this fracas, he says, was that of Embark's owner. “Nexon were the ones saying, ‘Relax. Here's why this is happening, and here's what you need to do about it'.” The Korean gaming giant has form here: its 1999 title

- CHRISTIAN DONLAN

Brendon Chung, the founder and historically the sole developer at Blendo Games, is fond of old technology. The games he makes are filled with 35mm cameras, cage lifts and mechanical museum exhibits. The airport in Thirty Flights Of Loving has twin-props on the runway and is built around a rattly split-flap destination board. Even cutting-edge gadgets such as the VR goggles in Quadrilateral Cowboy have a display that utilises little cross-hair fiducial markers, a nod to the Réseau plates fitted on the Hasselblad cameras that NASA astronauts once used on the Moon.

So it makes sense that for years Chung's design methodology was based on a very old technology indeed: cardboard boxes, specifically tissue boxes, the kind with a slot on top.

"Oh god," he begins when asked about this unusual project-management tool. "I'm trying to remember how it works." He pauses for a few seconds. "I think it was index cards," he says speculatively. "You write down a task on them, such as 'Make particle effects when you do footsteps, and then you just arrange the cards on a wall. And then, when you're done with the task, you throw the card in a tissue box?" He pauses again, clearly doubting himself. "I don't use the tissue-box method any more," he says eventually, with a touch of regret. "Now it's all digital." The complexity of Blendo's games has grown steadily. While Chung still likes old technology, he's upgraded to new old technology, graduating from the Id Tech 2 engine that once powered the second Quake game up to Id Tech 4, the immediately recognisable, dynamic lighting showcase used to build Doom 3. Chung has also recruited new colleagues, a rolling cast of developers who stop by to work on individual projects. Blendo's most recent game, Skin Deep, had a team that could have packed out a small conference room if everyone didn't work remotely.