Hamilton start-up’s video game readies for wide release

Hamilton-base Wraith Games did not capture enough online votes to move on to the second round of a competition for best apps of the year.

But Wraith Games, which operates out of the city’s Hamilton Mill business accelerator at the former municipal building, soon will be releasing the game, Collapsus, that was part of the competition.

About one year ago Wraith Games was hoping to release Collapsus — a game where players win points by destroying blocks to connect four of the same kind in a row —in time for last Christmas.

Instead, founder Jay Kidd, 27, and others at the company have spent the past year releasing updated versions of the game online for free and then tweaking them to meet their own standards and also refining the game with the online players’ suggestions.

But now, Kidd said, it’s time for a wider release.

“The plan is to have the entire thing finished before January,” he said.

After that, it goes to the publisher, which will do quality-assurance testing. It also must go out to various countries’ software-ratings boards, which Kidd said likely will happen between January and March.

Unlike most games of the kind in which the blocks slide toward the bottom of the screen, when players turn Collapsus 90 degrees or 180 degrees on a phone or tablet, blocks begin sliding toward the “new” bottom of the screen. Also unique: Eight players can compete simultaneously. Wraith Games have another feature that stands out from others: Their games are playable by people who are color blind.

While the game did not move on in the online competition, “ at least we got a lot of people talking about it, got a lot of support on social media,” Kidd said.

While Collapsus didn’t win this year in the competition, last year it won a smaller competition for up-and-coming games by the same sponsoring organization.

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