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Hutchence spent ten years working in the games industry in London, Ont., and recently moved back to the city. Since then, he’s become an advocate for the industry, teaching coding classes at schools and trying to raise awareness of the economic benefits developing the industry in the city could bring.

Hutchence had to temporarily leave the province to realize his dream to make video games for a living. He doesn’t want future game developers to feel like they’ll have to do the same. By making a video game about Regina with local talent, he’s hoping to show what’s possible when developers in the province work together.

“You don’t have to leave town, you don’t have to be ashamed of Regina, or fear that there isn’t the opportunity here or interesting things happening here, there are, and Regina is what we make of it. So I wanted to really showcase that and invest in Regina, both as a company and emotionally through this game,” said Hutchence.

Hutchence is doing the design and programming for the game. Finding someone to help create the art has been a challenge. He could easily hire someone outside Saskatchewan, but the point of the project is to make the game entirely with local residents.

“I really want to help build the game industry here in Regina. So a big part of Massive is going to be investing in our local scene and trying to get to find them and grow that talent pool here,” said Hutchence.

One of the people helping make Queen City Chaos is Saskatoon-based composer Emma Kramer-Rodger, who composed and produced the game’s soundtrack. Kramer-Rodger has done sound design in the film industry, and currently works at CBC Saskatchewan as an audio technician.

Kramer-Rodger worked to give Queen City Chaos the authentic sound of an old-school Nintendo game. She described the game’s soundtrack as “feel-good energetic hype music” to make the game’s battles exciting for players.

Growing up in a home where she was only allowed to watch TV for one hour on the weekends, Kramer-Rodger didn’t discover her love for video games until she attended a Video Games Live concert in Regina six years ago. It not only inspired her to get into video games, but to start composing music for them. She’s also created the music for another local independent game called Mighty Chameleon Brothers.

“I was convinced I was going to have to leave the province if I ever wanted that opportunity,” said Kramer-Rodger during a phone interview.

“So the fact that I’ve gotten to work on two games with local developers and that will hopefully just continue to grow and expand, that’s really exciting.”

Hutchence is hoping to release a demo of the game in about a month. He’s expecting work on it to continue over the course of next year. There’s not a release date set for Queen City Chaos yet, but it will launch on personal computers through the online store Steam.

Photo by TROY FLEECE / Regina Leader-Post