Blue Wizard Digital

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Blue Wizard Digital
Founded2014
FounderJason Kapalka
HeadquartersComox Valley, British Columbia
Websitebluewizard.com

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.

The studio specializes in campy horror puzzle games, humorous first-person shooters and other innovative variations on existing models of gaming.

Popular games[]

Shell Shockers[]

Blue Wizard's most popular game as of October 2020 is Shell Shockers, a browser-based first-person shooter in which players take the form of eggs and "splat" each other. Players can drop in and play anonymously or create persistent accounts and private maps to play with friends, and the game features a variety of pop-culture-influenced, punnishly-named weapons, player skins and items.[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 high school students on Chromebooks provided by schools for educational purposes.[5]

According to current players and longtime enthusiasts of the game, the reigning "goat" is simply known as "d". The player has accumulated 423,690 kills and boasts an impressive kill-to-death ratio of 11.21 as of October, 2021.

Slayaway Camp[]

"A puzzle game for people who hate puzzle games,"[6] 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,"[7] and both Slayaway Camp and Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle, another popular Blue Wizard camp-horror game, serve this goal.

Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle[]

Main article: Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle

Blue 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";[8] its gameplay is also based largely on the sliding-block puzzle genre of game that founder Jason Kapalka helped to invent with Bejeweled.

References[]

  1. ^ "Creating Fun & Games: Jason Kapalka". CVC. 2017-10-20. Retrieved 2019-10-22.
  2. ^ "Ever Wanted to Blast an Egg to Smithereens? Here's Your Chance!". Daily Game. 2018-03-31. Retrieved 2019-10-22.
  3. ^ "My Odyssey from Indie to Billion Dollar Games and Back Again". Escapist Magazine. 2018-11-27. Retrieved 2019-10-22.
  4. ^ "The death of flash and birth of IO games". www.gamasutra.com. Retrieved 2019-10-22.
  5. ^ Chung, Miranda (2018-06-13). "Shell Shockers video game cracks into classrooms". The Observer. Retrieved 2019-10-22.
  6. ^ "Slayaway Camp: Butcher's Cut Is A Puzzle Game Made For People Who Hate Puzzle Games". PlayStation.Blog. 2017-09-29. Retrieved 2019-10-22.
  7. ^ Crowley, D.D. "Interview: Blue Wizard Digital's Jason Kapalka, Creator of 'F13: Killer Puzzle'". Pop Horror. Retrieved October 22, 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  8. ^ Bolt, Neil (2018-10-25). "[Review] 'Friday the 13th Killer Puzzle' is a Fine Sequel to 'Slayaway Camp'". Bloody Disgusting!. Retrieved 2019-10-22.

External links[]

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