James Silva isn't your ordinary independent developer. After winning Microsoft's Dream, Build, Play contest  acclaimed with his critically and commercially the Dishwasher: Dead Samurai, the young developer received a contract to see the game published on The Xbox Live Arcade. 

Now Silva has returned with the quirky, retro and equally impressive I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMBIES 1IN IT!!1. The game, a twin-stick shooter with cartoony graphics and one hell of a soundtrack is a bit of a word of mouth title -- the type of game you're more than likely going to recieve a text message from your freinds about at three in the morning. But make no mistake about it, it's worth the loss of sleep.

Silva recently sat down and talked exclusivley with XBFF about his games, becoming a minor celebrity...and...Bruce Lee...

 

Hit the jump for the ful linterview

Xbox Live Arcade screens on GamePro.com

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 If there ever was a blockbuster title to come from Microsoft's XNA driven Indie Games line -- it would be Clover. To be blunt -- if you haven't played Clover yet, you're missing out on something major. Mixing Simplistic yet addictive gameplay with unique watercolor visuals and less than subtle political undertones, Clover is like nothing else you've played.

Selected by IGN as one of the top ten games on the service and  -- Clover has been the subject of a wide variety of national media attention becoming the face of the movement.

But what happens when that face is a reluctant one? We sat down with Clover's Lead Developer Daniel "Deejay" Jones and discussed everything from his game, to problems with the Indie Game line and even proper mustache technique.

XBFF: Tell us about your background. How did you get started as a game designer and where did Binary Tweed come from. Is clover your first game?

Deejay: Up until last year I was Head Of Web Development (Europe/Americas) at a multinational online derivatives trading company - in a nutshell, doing a nerd job for a finance company. As you can probably guess things weren't going to well in finance around that time, and it just so happened that the ability to sell Community Games was announced then too. I set up Binary Tweed immediately after leaving the finance sector, and started work on Clover.
 
I'd always wanted to get into the games business. I studied to that end, but along came the dot.com boom and I suddenly realised I knew more about web technologies than games programming. I visited my parents not long ago and whilst clearing out some cupboards I found a load of old maps I'd drawn for games I'd designed as a kid, so really I guess I'm going after a lifelong ambition.
 
XBFF: What was the inspiration behind Clover?
 
Deejay: Clover came into being for a number of reasons. First and foremost, we had to look at how to make a compelling experience that worked to our strengths. There were tons of twin-stick shooters at XBLCG's launch, and nothing with a plot. As I don't come from a games development background, I knew we weren't going to be able to do fancy 3D games with lush effects, so we needed to take the fight to somewhere we could win - artwork and plot. So, that defined what kind of gameplay experience we were aiming for, but the actual tone and plot of the game were much more influenced by music than anything else, specifically the work of bands like Pink Punk and One Minute Silence.
 
 
XBFF: The water color ascetics of Clover are like nothing we've seen before. What led to the decision to go this route? Was it a hard process implementing them?
 
Deejay: This was again a matter of playing to our strengths. Jeanette does a lot of art in various physical media, and it made sense to try and do something different rather than another 'me-too' kinda game. There's also supposed to be a certain amount of naivety suggested by the art style, which is important for setting the mood and setting up the plot.
 

 

 

I'll bet you use your NXE Avatar pretty much everyday, but have you ever stopped to think about just where they came from? The good folks over at Kotaku sure have -- and they're going to tell everyone. In The Untold Story of the Xbox 360 Avatars, Rare spills the beans on where the idea for the avatars came from, as well as gives a few hints as to where they might be going next.

Most interesting is the concept art from the different stages of the avatar's development -- including the Oblong inspired creatures in the image above. It's really quite an interesting read and shows you how this:

 

  

can lead to this: 

 

 So I was watching that new G4 Underground show the other day, and they were profiling a group of activists that are actively preparing for the zombie apocalypse. That got me thinking about zombies, which of course brought me to Left 4 Dead; and that's how I stumbled across these beauties.

 
Over at the Night Zero (a photographic comic book that is pretty cool in its own right) webpage,  the series creators have paid homage to Valve's zombie frag fest with a series of awesomely realistic Left 4 Dead pictures. Created using a mixture of old fashioned photography tricks and the latest HDR technology, the Night Zero team did an incredible job recreating the look, feel and characters of the acclaimed FPS (more than I bet any movie studio could do.)
 
 
 
Night Zero's Flickr account lists the pictures as "early promo stills for the live-action Left 4 Dead Movie, featuring a fifth survivor." Not sure how much stock to put into that, but hey - it does explain the awkward pirate in a few of the photos. Check out our gallery of a few of the images, and then check out the Night Zero page for more goodies including an explanation on how it was done and some pretty cool behind the scenes photos.
 

Night Zero's "Left 5 Dead Images" (9 images)

Created using a mixture of old fashioned photography tricks and the latest HDR technology, the Night Zero team did an incredible job recreating the look, feel and characters of the acclaimed FPS (more than I bet any movie studio could do.

Left 4 Dead screens on GamePro.com

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