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Oklahoma’s Indie Game Development Scene

Welcome to the final installment in our series covering some of the key players in the Oklahoma City video game development community. In this series, I introduce companies and independent developers alike, with the intent of educating and inspiring future artists, programmers, and storytellers who create the virtual worlds in which we love to play.

logo for divine knight studios
Divine Knight’s Gaming’s logo

Games like Minecraft and Super Meat Boy punched, jumped, and squished their way onto the gaming scene back in 2009 and ’10, and their monumental successes changed the landscape of gaming forever. Markus “Notch” Persson and Team Meat proved to the world that small teams of one or two can build a game worth of its own LEGO set, or one that’s regarded by many as one of the finest platformers ever made. Oklahoma is host to its own share of independent game developers as well, with indie studios like WinterStories and Divine Knight Gaming cropping up around central Oklahoma in the past few years.

gameplay of WinterStories' Run Frosty Run
WinterStories’ Run Frosty Run was recently released on major mobile platforms

“We’re as indie as it gets,” Zachary Knight told me with a shrug and a smile. Zachary is a web developer by day and a game developer by night, at least since he started Divine Knight Gaming with his brother Willis in 2010. Since then, the duo have been making games on a monthly basis with the aid and encouragement of One Game A Month, a “training ground” for game developers to become acquainted with the challenges of everyday game development. Developers involved in the program pledge to create one unique game per month for a full year, and Divine Knight has built seven this year. Zachary also founded the OK Game Dev blog, following and featuring up-and-coming developers from around the state.

I also spoke to Michael Kolb, the founder of WinterStories which launched Run Frosty Run, an iOS and Android game featuring the appropriately named Frosty the snowman, dodging obstacles and picking up powerups while on the run from the heat of the sun. Michael, a graduate of the Meridian Technology Center’s game design program, thrives on games with a memorable and well-conveyed story and hopes to grow the studio to a team of around 5 people.

Oklahoma still doesn’t have a huge reputation for game development, but just like indie games themselves, this kind of thing starts small. Developers like WinterStories and Divine Knight Gaming are helping put Oklahoma on the gaming map. For more information on either developer’s games, follow and tweet at @dk_gaming or @Winter_Stories. Don’t forget to follow @ConfluenceCon for news and information about this year’s conference, happening tomorrow, September 6!

If you’re interested in Oklahoma Game Development, you’ll want to check out the other entries in our series!