Max Gaming Hits Pay Dirt With Kachinko

written by Brad Cook

Rows of machines beckon, their neon lights flashing rhythmic patterns. A typical Las Vegas casino? No, it's a Japanese pachinko parlor, where customers gather to play games that are part pinball, part slot machine. Taking that as inspiration, Adrian Wright and his team at Max Gaming Technologies employed Torque Game Builder to create Kachinko.

Wright describes Kachinko as a combination of pachinko and the color-matching schemes found in such games as Tetris. The action is frenetic, challenging players to think fast as they fire different colored balls into the playing field. Four action-packed levels-Cool Blue, Treasure Hunt, Pipe Dream, and Inferno-await.

The game is nearly ready to go, and Kachinko 2 is already waiting in the wings for a spring 2007 release. December will see Max Gaming release a sequel to Dark Horizons: Lore Invasion, the 2004 Torque-based game that puts players in the drivers' seats of futuristic mechanized assault vehicles (MAVs) as they battle for control of a war-torn Earth in the year 2155.

In on the Ground Floor

Max Gaming was one of the first Torque licensees, employing Torque Game Engine for Dark Horizons because "the price of entry was attractive," according to Wright. "We've become very proficient in using it since then. They have a lot of good features that allow us to make the games we want to make."

In particular, he points to its "superb" networking abilities, which were vital to the development of Dark Horizons and its persistent online conflict. The game offers squad and character management, a "balance of power" map that visualizes the conflict in real time, and more. All of it was made possible by Torque's advanced networking functionality.

"Having the source code lets us address any graphical needs that arise," Wright points out.

A Torque For Every Need

When it came time to work on a new project, however, "we said, 'Let's do something different,'" he recalls. "Torque Game Builder was perfect for our needs when we started working on Kachinko. The physics worked, which was important, and it was easy to use, even when it was in its alpha stage."

Like Max Gaming's previous effort, Kachinko is slated for release on Windows, Mac and Linux. Such parallel creation was "easy to get done," Wright says. "That's one of the great things about Torque: they support cross-platform development."

The company is so proficient with all shades of Torque that its six full-time developers fill in any schedule gaps with contract work for companies also using the engine. At the end of August, Max Gaming launched a Web site, MGTGames.com, through which it sells not only Dark Horizons but also 21-6 Productions' Orbz and TubeTwist, as well as the upcoming Torque-created game Hack-It, a 3D puzzle title created by The Core Team.

Torque has enabled Max Gaming to grow by leaps and bounds, an upward trajectory that Kachinko will only serve to fuel.