Team
House on Fire is an indie games developer located in Copenhagen, Denmark. The company was formed in January 2011 by Linda Randazzo, Uni Dahl and Thomas Ryder. Our target platforms are iPhones and iPads as well as Android phones and tablets.
Before House on Fire was formed, Linda and Thomas were making games for set top boxes at NDS Denmark, a subdivision of the NDS Group. When the NDS Group decided to shut down NDS Denmark in December 2010, Linda suggested Thomas to form a small games company. Linda's boyfriend Uni joined the company in January 2011, and since then the three have been the heart of House on Fire.
Linda Randazzo
Linda is the lead programmer on Neon Zone. Without her there would be nothing on the screen. She has turned a loose idea into a real game by connecting all the nuts and bolts. Linda has also been taking on a side role as game designer. She has been the one tweaking the slipperiness of the floor, the weight of the cube and the screen transitions until it felt awesome. It was her idea to use noble gasses as world themes as well as using the noble gas emission line colors as inspiration for the look of the game. Linda has also designed a huge number of levels, some of which are brilliant, some of which are just plain crazy...
Thomas Ryder
Thomas came up with the idea for Neon Zone and has been the main game designer on the project. He has been the one insisting on rigid simpleness throughout the game production. He has been the one insisting that the hero character should be a featureless cube and that only one typeface should be used. Thomas has designed most of the levels and done most of the QA testing. Thomas has also made the ambient soundtrack in collaboration with Nevin, the sound designer.
Uni Dahl
Uni is the producer. He has been the one taking care of the time, people and budget throughout the game production. Uni has also assisted with programming tasks, as well as creating the teaser video. He has even created a level or two, and has been in charge of the technical aspects such as App Store approval etc.
Mikkel Christensen
Mikkel is the graphics artist. Mikkel made the flourescent neon look throughout the game and all the little sparkle effects that makes you come back for more. Mikkel and Linda are also the masterminds behind the dreamy glowing effect on the platforms in the game. You can see more of Mikkel's work on his personal blog.
Nevin Eronde
For the sound effects we got none other then Nevin of nevin sound. She's the one thinking up the use of different pickup sounds. She initially made 99 sounds for the game, and it was a heartbreaking exercise to cut away 80 of them to keep the game below 20 megabyte.
Daan Berckenkamp
Daan takes care of marketing. He joined our team all the way from the Netherlands, doing a full 6 month internship. He is the one responsible for telling the World about our existence. For some reason Daan loves fish, and is always on the look out for new exotic dishes.
Hard Deadline
On a side note, it turned out that Linda was pregnant during the development of the game. At first, this did not seem to be a problem, but time quickly passed, and we started running out of time.
The game production started roughly around mid April, and the baby was due 2nd of August.
Although some in the team were joking that the baby could help out in finishing up the game, everyone quickly realized that the game had to be done before the due date, and the producer, Uni, started putting some hard deadlines in the calendar in order to make sure the game would be finished on time.
Linda continued programming, and coming to the office until the very last week before the birth. The baby was nice enough to arrive 1 week later, so her mommy could finish up the last details of the game. Although Linda managed to make the game feature complete, there were still some bugs to fix, but luckily the producer also happened to be a programmer, so Uni could take care of those afterwards.
There were some talks in the office about naming the baby girl Neon, like the game, for example if the game would get a million likes on Facebook, but after having received the cutest of babies, Uni and Linda decided to call her Giana, inspired by ”the Great Giana Sisters” game for the Commodore 64 and Amiga. Two computers that heavily inspired the parents during their childhood.
