Super Space Club’s Smooth, Celestial Vibes Have Won My Heart

ign.com:

When Super Space Club creator Graham Reid was a child growing up in Jamaica, he couldn’t even conceive of video game development as a career possibility.

“I thought that game development was just Nintendo and Sony and the big companies making things,” he tells me. “And of course I played games on Newgrounds and that kind of stuff, but I never actually thought that I could just make that. Looking back, I think, of course I could have made a Flash game. But in Jamaica, they don't teach any of that stuff. All the jobs are about being a doctor or a lawyer. One of those traditional, stable jobs.”

But many years, a motion graphics degree, a move to New York, and a major game release later, Reid seems to finally believe that he might be a game developer. He introduces himself to me alternatively as a “Jamaican game dev,” a “solo indie game developer,” and a “creative director,” saying that he changes his intro every time - it’s still a bit hard for him to believe, even now that he’s launched his arcade shooter Super Space Club on PC to positive reception, with an Xbox release on the way.

Reid’s path to video games began in college, when a friend in the game design program invited Reid to join him for a game jam. Through the jam, Reid was introduced to mobile game development, which in the early 2010s was widely accessible for many developers who would have otherwise struggled to get a game released on a console or even PC. “Mobile allowed anybody to make a game,” he recalls.

“People still paid for mobile games back then. I could [release] a $2 game and people would actually buy it… I couldn't try that now. People would laugh at me.”

After the game jam, Reid went on to make an arcade mobile game based loosely on Pong called