![]() So much so that Sky Island Treasure Hunters doesn’t actually exist. Big, kid-friendly stuff like Scooby-Doo!, Monster Jam, Zoo Hospital, and Sky Island Treasure Hunters. At Torus, this core group are working almost exclusively on licensed games. Ty Carey, Trent Kusters, Blake Mizzi, and Jacek Tuschewski – the guys that would go on to form League of Geeks - are all working at Melbourne-based studio Torus Games. It's 2008 and Myspace is a thing that exists. It’s sometime in 2008: a new Fallout game is on the horizon and cinema goers are excited about the return of a certain Lucasfilm franchise. Issue # 01 – The Origin StoryLet’s jump back though. An adventure where players are in direct control over their own hero and try to become the one. Which naturally sets the scene for a competitive turn-based adventure full of adventure, questing, back-stabbery, and dice rolls. Wait, so all the clans do this at the same time? Yep. So what’s their big plan? Well, they each decide to send their bravest heroes to put an end to the Mad King, once and for all. You see, it’s now up to the clans to sort out this whole mess. And it’s during this dark time in the Kingdom of Armello, a land where the anthropomorphic Bear, Rabbit, Rat, and Wolf Clans used to co-exist in a state of quasi-peace, where the game takes place. In a way it’s kind of like the Dark Side of the Force versus the Light Side. ![]() So the King’s problems go well beyond a simple visit to the local Rot Clinic. Rot is the polar opposite of Wyld, the life-force that binds all living things together. A sickness that is not only affecting his ability to govern properly, but one that also imbues him with the sort of unnatural abilities that wouldn’t feel out of place at an Evil Wizard Convention. A vivid and colourful fantasy land where the King has been infected with something called the Rot. Wait, What’s an Armello?Armello takes place in the land of, err, Armello. So, armed with an animated trailer, a large banner, and some recently purchased Bluetooth speakers for his iPad, Trent would begin telling the world about Armello. Staying at the Handlery Hotel in San Francisco, Trent had booked back-to-back appointments with press for pretty much the entirety of the conference. Prior to this showing the only real funding that League of Geeks had applied for was for marketing purposes. The team had implemented a profit-share system best described as points-driven, where someone’s percentage was relative to their input. What was being shown, although basic, was also made almost entirely out of pocket. Although a piece of background detail, the animated birds were one the first things added to the digital game. ![]() It had beautiful music, it had animated characters, and even had birds flying around the world.” That last bit in particular is telling - in a way, selling a vision is all about creating a specific type of atmosphere. “This was more about proving that we could bring a board game to life. But none of that was there in the demo,” Trent says. “We had a tabletop prototype where everything worked and had all the systems and depth in place. Now, you may be wondering if League of Geeks was jumping the gun a little bit, and should have waited until it had more to show. Everything else was on the long list of things that still needed to be added to the game. One where players could only really move around a rudimentary board and battle another character. At this point Armello was in a state best described as a tech demo. Plus, selling the vision kind of had to be the focal point.
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