Charlottetown game developer announces 1st major launch

Mighty Pebble Games of Charlottetown will release its first video game next month, and is hoping for a financial success that will allow it to expand.

Miner Meltdown is a multi-player game, where two teams battle to extract the most precious resources from an underground mine. Mighty Pebble Games is James O'Halloran.

O'Halloran works alone in Charlottetown, contracting out work internationally. The artist for Miner Meltdown lives in France, the sound engineer is in the U.S. O'Halloran was able to find them through a close-knit social media community.

"The gaming community is pretty big on Twitter, posting their screen shots or their sound clips," said O'Halloran.

"It was pretty cool getting to work with some of my biggest inspirations in the community."

Greenlight on Steam

O'Halloran has been working on the game since July 2015, and got his first big break on it a year ago, when it was Greenlit by the gaming website Steam.

Steam selects games for the site through a voting process of the Steam community called Greenlight.

"Steam is pretty huge for the gaming industry," said O'Halloran.

"I kind of knew if my game didn't get Greenlit a year ago, it's the end of the road then."

The leadup to the launch has gone well, he said, with thousands signing up for a beta launch a few weeks ago.

If Miner Meltdown is a financial success, O'Halloran plans to hire a local artist and another developer locally to work on new games and new versions of Miner Meltdown.

O'Halloran developed the game with financial assistance from Skills PEI and Innovation PEI.

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