The 2010 IGF Student Winners have been announced and 10 different titles landed in the spotlight. At the festival in March the 10 will compete for an overall Best Student Game prize, but to get to this point they definitely had to be special. We’ve dug through them all and contacted their developers in a series of interviews called The Future of Gaming. Because if anyone is going to take over the industry, it’s these bright minds.

Joshua Nuernberger’s Boryokudan Rue is the only game from this year’s IGF Student Showcase that you can’t play right now. Outside of a few screenshots he’s posted on the Adventure Game Studios’ forums and the recent trailer, the title is shrouded in mystery. I contacted Josh (aka thejburger) after the announcement he made it into IGF and got the chance to take the game for a spin and sit down with this bright young developer in a coffee shop just off the UCLA campus to talk about his experience. I also snagged a few new exclusive screenshots from my own playthrough.

Tell me about UCLA, I asked him.

“It’s great. I’m a second year undergrad in the Design and Media Arts Program. But I’m also looking to other things because I’m trying to find the right degree for me. I’m also looking into a film degree with its different aspects of storytelling. So that’s where I’m at right now, still in school working on projects.”

We quickly get into a discussion on how to pronounce the game, and Josh admits he just learned it himself. To the best of my phonetic spelling, I’d say it’s “BOY-O-KOO-DAWN” Rue, which translates in Japanese to “violent group.”

“Basically the Japanese Mafia,” Josh tells me. “I started working on Boryokudan Rue in January of 2008, so that was my senior year in high school and I’ve been working on it throughout school here.”

And you hand painted everything, programmed everything?

“Yeah, I did all the graphics, just used a tablet.”

I knew he hadn’t said anything about the actual release of the game just yet, but I wanted to see if he had changed his mind at this point.

“I’m considering releasing commercially just because of the amount of time I put into it. Right now I don’t want to say anything, just because I don’t think I could hold to that. I really want to make sure the game is play-tested enough and there’s nothing wrong with it before I release it. So I think I’ll get a lot more play-testing done and then I’ll decide.”

And the price?

“I don’t want to say anything definite yet, but it should be in the $5 to $10 dollar range.”

Can you tell me a little about your earlier games?

“I’ve been making games with Adventure Game Studio for a long time now. Several years. The first one I released is called La Croix Pan. It was basically a short game set in World War II that combined aspects of adventure gameplay with first person shooting. So that was my first game. The second game I released was called Chat Room. It was made for a contest called One Room, One Week. So You have one week to design a one room game, pretty much. So what I did with that was I wanted to create a conversation simulator with an artificial intelligence bot that would reply. The premise of that game was talk to a bot, and it kind of tells a story through it.”

I asked if there were any others he’d made in addition to the two you can play right now.

“Probably, but they’re too embarrassing to mention,” he admits.

I thought that was probably true of any artist. I asked him how he had made the jump from a game that takes thirty minutes to play through to his latest, which has been clocked anywhere from six to eight hours of gameplay.

“Originally, when I first got Adventure Game Studio, I was just like all the other ambitious game developers who wanted to make the best game ever. So I actually did spend two years on a full length gam ebefore deciding that this wasn’t going to work, but I took everything I learned from that and made the smaller game. And once I realized what I needed to complete the smaller game, I took that and put it on a bigger project that become Boryokudan Rue.”

And how did you come up with this story, this world? I inquired.

“I’d say my main inspirations were Cowboy Bebop, Lost and probably a little bit of Blade Runner and Portal as well.”

To further inquire about his inspirations, I asked him about his other favorite adventure games, and games in general.

“It all started with Putt Putt Saves the Zoo, but what ultimately inspired me to make my own games was after I played The Secret of Monkey Island and I knew I wanted to create the same kind of experience for players. After that I’d say Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Outside of that the rest of the [adventure] games kind of lump together.”

And other genres?

“Pretty much everything Valve has done. Half-Life and Portal.”

What was your process as far as the art concepts and the story…how did it come together?

“When I first started coming up with the game idea, there were a couple of things I wanted to do. The first was I wanted to tell a dual narrative. I’d been fishing this idea around in my head about these two stories going on at the same time, and somehow they’re connected and eventually they’re going to intertwine. But each story should be able to independently support itself. So going into the game that was my story goal. On the gameplay end I kind of wanted to do something a little different, so what I tried to do with Boryokudan Rue was I added something called the kick verb, which is somewhat unusual in adventure games, I believe. And add in an action element as well. That’s what I wanted out of the gameplay.”

The kick verb is an interesting addition as it can be frustratingly difficult to solve certain problems, when you don’t realize that all you need to do is kick an item to proceed. I told Josh about my satisfying aggravation with the addition. After admitting I hadn’t beaten the game yet, I asked him if there was any chance of a sequel or other game set in the game’s world.

“Right now I’m not to keen about the idea of a sequel. The story is centered around two specific characters and when you finish the game that story wraps up.”

One element of the game that will really grab you is its sound design and music. I inquired how he first met up with Nathan Allan Pinard who did all the sound work.

“He basically posted on the AGS Forums. Offered his services up there. I asked if he was interested in my game and he asked to see it. And after he saw the demo, he said yeah i want to be a part of this.”

I asked him how UCLA’s media program was for him.

“The Design and Media Arts Program is kind of a broad degree, with focus on graphic design and web design, and we also have some game design classes within, but you can’t really focus on the game design aspect. So because of that I’m also interested in film, as I said before, and more into storytelling.”

I asked him his views on the independent and mainstream sides of gaming.

“I’m not really sure yet. I’ve just kind of been exposed to the indie world right after the IGF. I didn’t know that much about it. Right now I’m interning at a small game company. The more time I spend there, the more time I see how the game business is kind of run. How it kind of limits your creativity in the long run. I guess I have to spend more time to see where I want to be.”

The conversation then turned to his future plans.

“At this point I’m just going to make Boryokudan Rue as best as it can be and then once I get it released I’ll start thinking about what’s next.”

Our conversation continued into other topics, and Josh said he’d be up at IGF manning the booth where the public will have its first opportunity to play Boryokudan Rue. After some further discussion into unrelated topics, we parted ways. Josh is a quiet artist, who from behind his glasses always seems to be pondering his next creative move. And with Boryokudan Rue’s pending release, this creative force is just getting started.

I’ll be attending IGF with all the developers next month, so you’ll be sure to hear more about Boryokudan Rue and all the other titles that made their way to the show then.

Full Series: The Future of Gaming
*Ulitsa Dimitrova
*Puddle
*Devil’s Tuning Fork
*Boryokudan Rue
*Continuity
*Dreamside Maroon
*Igneous
*Paper Cakes
*Puzzle Bloom
*Spectre