Blue Wizard Digital is a Canadian video game development studio and game publisher founded in 2014 by Jason Kapalka, one of the founders of PopCap Games and an early pioneer in the mobile casual gaming space. It is based in the Comox Valley, British Columbia, and is the only video game studio currently headquartered in Comox,[1] as The Long Dark studio Hinterland is now based in Vancouver.
| Founded | 2014 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Jason Kapalka |
| Headquarters | Comox Valley, British Columbia |
| Website | bluewizard |
The studio specializes in campy horror puzzle games, humorous first-person shooters and other innovative variations on existing models of gaming.
Popular games
editShell Shockers
editBlue Wizard's most popular game as of August 2024 is Shell Shockers (https://shellshock.io), a browser-based first-person shooter in which players take the form of weaponized eggs and attempt to kill each other. Players can drop in and play anonymously in public lobbies or create persistent accounts and private maps to play with friends. The game features a variety of pop culture-influenced, punnishly-named features, including 4 gamemodes: Free For All, Teams, Captula the Spatula, and King of the Coop (based on King of the Hill). The game also holds 7 guns: the EggK-47 (based on the AK-47), the Scrambler (based on a break action shotgun), the Free Ranger (based on the SVD), the RPEGG (based on the RPG-7), the Whipper (based on the FN P90), the Crackshot (based on the M24), and the Tri-Hard (based on the Steyr Aug). There are thousands of player and item skins, most of which can be bought with Eggs, the in-game currency.[2]
As of mid-2019, the game had almost 40 million players worldwide, and is one of the most popular .io games available online.[3][4]
Shell Shockers has been the target of some controversy, as it is commonly played by school students on Chromebooks provided by schools for educational purposes.[5] Some of the gaming platforms offering the browser-based game, such as CrazyGames,[6] have therefore been blocked by American schools.[7]
Slayaway Camp
edit"A puzzle game for people who hate puzzle games,"[8] Slayaway Camp is set at a summer camp that's been set upon by a serial killer. Its blocky chibi-like style of character art makes it "adorably gruesome" and perhaps more palatable for those who would otherwise shy away from a horror game. Originally released in 2016 for PC, its success led to a console port of the game in 2017, with releases for Xbox One and PS4.
Kapalka has stated that one of his intentions in running Blue Wizard is to "find a way to make... puzzle games less boring, more viscerally exciting,"[9] and both Slayaway Camp and Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle, another popular Blue Wizard camp-horror game, serve this goal.
Slayaway Camp II: Netflix and Kill is in development and will be released on Steam at a currently unknown date.[10]
Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle
editBlue Wizard's only license-based game thus far, F13 is based on the popular Friday the 13th franchise and, similar to Slayaway Camp, has been called "adorable and violent";[11] its gameplay is also based largely on the sliding-block puzzle genre of game that founder Jason Kapalka helped to invent with Bejeweled.
References
edit- ^ "Creating Fun & Games: Jason Kapalka". CVC. October 20, 2017. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
- ^ "Ever Wanted to Blast an Egg to Smithereens? Here's Your Chance!". Daily Game. March 31, 2018. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
- ^ "My Odyssey from Indie to Billion Dollar Games and Back Again". Escapist Magazine. November 27, 2018. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
- ^ "The death of flash and birth of IO games". www.gamasutra.com. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
- ^ Chung, Miranda (June 13, 2018). "Shell Shockers video game cracks into classrooms". The Observer. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
- ^ Miller, George (August 20, 2021). "Shell Shockers passes 35 million game plays on CrazyGames' web portals". European Gaming Industry News. Retrieved August 26, 2022.
- ^ "The 2018 Benchmark Report: An Analysis of Emerging Trends In Student Chromebook Usage" (PDF). GoGuardian. 2018. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 15, 2018. Retrieved August 26, 2022.
- ^ "Slayaway Camp: Butcher's Cut Is A Puzzle Game Made For People Who Hate Puzzle Games". PlayStation.Blog. September 29, 2017. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
- ^ Crowley, D.D. "Interview: Blue Wizard Digital's Jason Kapalka, Creator of 'F13: Killer Puzzle'". Pop Horror. Archived from the original on May 5, 2019. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
- ^ "Slayaway Camp 2 on Steam". store.steampowered.com. Retrieved August 16, 2024.
- ^ Bolt, Neil (October 25, 2018). "[Review] 'Friday the 13th Killer Puzzle' is a Fine Sequel to 'Slayaway Camp'". Bloody Disgusting!. Retrieved October 22, 2019.