NOPALGAMES

Two people · one game · a cactus · several tacos

We grow games in bad ground.

Nopal Games is a very serious game studio. Everything here is grown from nothing, in dry dirt, and nothing leaves until the spines are off.

We are two people: one who writes the code and one who sends it back because a button is two pixels off centre. Between us we have made one game, five company names and one mission statement, which is mostly spines.

Meet the two of us Our games
A nopal cactus in sunglasses, a flower on top, while a machete shaves its spines off onto a clay plate.
Our logo, mid-shift, in Carlos’s sunglasses. It does this every day.

The studio

A cactus is a reasonable business model

A nopal grows where the soil is a rumour. Nobody plants it, nobody feeds it, nothing about the situation is encouraging, and it comes up thick and green and armed. Then a person sits down with a knife and takes the spines off, because that is the only way it becomes dinner.

That is the order of operations here too. Make the difficult thing first, in the conditions that are actually available. Spend the evenings taking the sharp parts off it. Serve it to people who never have to hear about either half.

So: no publisher, no roadmap poster, no department that exists to talk about the departments. Two people, a lot of evenings, and whatever is on the cutting board this week getting a little less sharp.

We are not going to pretend a small studio is a large one. When we say “the team”, we mean both of us, and usually one of us is up a mountain.

The spines are the mission statement.

— asked for a mission statement, once

Why a cactus

  1. Nopal Games Grows anywhere, defends itself, becomes dinner if you are patient. It stuck. Mostly because it has spines.

Who “we” is

There are two of us. One wears sunglasses indoors.

The other one is outdoors, so she does not count as a contradiction.

Carlos “NxGTR” Huertas

Founder · Lead Developer

  • Legend says he was born in Mexico wearing sunglasses, which made the delivery very complicated and extremely cool.
  • He goes by NxGTR because it sounds like a race car, and he insists he too is fast, aerodynamic and expensive to maintain.
  • He founded Nopal Games because every good thing he has ever made grew the same way: in bad ground, with nobody watering it, covered in spines. Somebody still has to scrape the spines off before dinner. That was him, most nights.
  • He debugged an entire game with one hand while holding a taco with the other. Neither the taco nor the bugs survived.
  • Asked for a company mission statement, he said “lol”, put his sunglasses back on, and shipped another build.

He will return your call after this next game.

Paty

UX Designer · Pixel Police · Part-Time Gamer

  • Yes, that Paty. The food collector who keeps the clan fed in our first game is named after her. She has notes on the walk.
  • A smart blond from Poland, she is passionate about small details. Slightly too passionate. Every misaligned pixel here has met her, and lost.
  • She once sent back a button because it was two pixels off centre. Carlos said nobody would ever notice. She noticed, and so did the button, which has been perfectly centred ever since and now looks nervous whenever she opens the game.
  • She loves nature and hiking more than video games. Much more. Her best play session so far lasted nine hours and went up a mountain.
  • She is a vegetarian (mostly). She let Carlos keep the taco in his biography, but she would still like to know what was in it.

She will reply after this hike. Maybe the next one.

The org chart

Two boxes and a taco. We had it professionally drawn by one of the boxes.

The Taco

Chief Morale Officer. Not an employee. Has been asked.

Carlos

Reports to: the taco. Writes the code. Overruled on pixels.

Paty

Reports to: the pixels. Vegetarian (mostly), which makes the top of this chart awkward.

Company values

Six values, each one bought with a disaster

Not a methodology. Things that stopped a specific catastrophe, all of which happened at least once first.

01

The spines are the mission statement

Whatever we make comes out sharp. The job is taking the sharp parts off before anybody else has to touch it. That is the whole statement, and it is shorter than most.

02

Plain words first, silly words second

“You lost.” That is the sentence. The joke goes after it, where it belongs, and it has to earn the spot. Somebody unsure whether they won is not in the mood for our wordplay.

03

Nobody loses an afternoon to a stray tap

Every button that can undo real progress stops and asks first. This sounds obvious, almost nobody does it, and that is why we keep saying it out loud like it is a big idea.

04

A pixel two off centre gets sent back

Not “flagged for later”. Sent back. There is a button in our first game that learned this the hard way, and it has not moved a pixel since.

05

Understandable in eleven seconds

Not mastered. Understood. If a person cannot tell what the screen wants from them before the kettle boils, we did the hard part wrong and then put a tutorial on top to hide the evidence.

06

Guessing is not balancing

Thousands of simulated matches stand behind every change to a number. If one side starts winning more than it should, we would rather hear it from arithmetic than from a stranger’s review.

How a game gets made here

The recipe, unchanged since the cactus

Serves: anybody with a screen. Preparation time: please do not ask.

  1. 1

    Grow it in bad ground

    Start with an idea nobody asked for and no good reason to exist. Leave it alone until it is too big to ignore.

  2. 2

    Shave the spines

    Play it until it hurts, then find out why it hurts. Most evenings are spent here. Paty has the knife.

  3. 3

    Dice it

    Cut it into pieces a person can actually swallow: one rule, one lesson, one button at a time.

  4. 4

    Serve it

    Put it on the plate and step back. Do not mention the spines. Nobody wants to hear about the spines.

Our games

One so far. It has its own house.

Lane Strike

A bright, silly lane battler: two armies, five roads, and snacks for money. Everything else about it lives on its own site.

Visit lanestrike.com

The next one is currently a folder with a bad name in it, which is how all of them start.

Questions

Things people have asked, or would

Are you hiring?

No. The org chart has two boxes and a taco, and the taco is not leaving. If that ever changes, it will say so on this page, in plain words.

Why a cactus?

It grows where nothing else will, it defends itself, and it is delicious once somebody does the work. We could not find a better description of making games.

Can you actually eat a nopal?

Yes. Nopalitos are a real dish and a good one. Take the spines off first. We cannot stress the order of those two steps enough.

Who decides when something is finished?

Carlos says it is finished. Paty opens it. Then it is finished.

I found a bug. Do you want to hear about it?

Yes, genuinely. Use the button at the bottom of the page. Carlos will fix it after this next game, and Paty will want to know exactly how many pixels it was off.

Where do I find out about Lane Strike?

At lanestrike.com. Screenshots, the trailer, the armies and where to get it all live there, and they are kept up to date there and only there.

Press

Writing about us?

Studio Nopal Games People two Games one, Lane Strike

For the game’s trailer, screenshots and facts, go to lanestrike.com, which is where they are kept current. A few full-size screens are here too, no form and no gate. Take what you need and credit Nopal Games.

Say hello

Press, players, and people who found a bug at two in the morning: all welcome, all read, answered in whatever order the day and the hiking trail allow.

contact [at] nopalgames [dot] com