Ari Gibson is the Co-Founder & Co-Director of Team Cherry, a video game studio in Adelaide Australia. They created the video game success known as Hollow Knight. They launched Hollow Knight as a Kickstarter project and asked about $35,000 Australian dollars but they got $57,138 AUD and through that they were able to complete the game through hard work and dedication. He previously ran the animation studio Mechanical Apple and has worked on countless projects across film, games and music videos. Ari’s been modding games from before computers were colour and has loved them since his first ever game rental: Faxanadu for NES.
(Be sure to watch the video interview below!)
William Pellen also joined our interview for a bit. William has been designing and building games for years, and loves to create silly little worlds for people to poke around in and explore. He’s been enraptured with games ever since his Dad found the wing boots for him in Zelda 2, and wants to recreate that experience of adventure and excitement for other people.
Ari Gibson also talks to us about the challenges that it took to make Hollow Knight, the challenges to take this game into multiple platforms like the Nintendo Switch, a bit about the previous DLC called Hidden Dreams and the new Halloween DLC incoming called The Grimm Troupe, Team Cherry is a team of 5 people, yet they created a great and huge video game with many details to explore. There’s much to learn from them specially when starting out with limited resources.
You can check their work here:
Team Cherry
Hollow Knight
Hollow Knight Kickstarter
Team Cherry Fanpage
Hollow Knight Fanpage
Their Twitter
Hollow Knight Trailer:
The Grimm Troupe Trailer:
Interview with Ari Gibson:
(Click the play button to watch the video interview above)
Click here to watch in a new Tab: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlrtpDqDJbI
In this Episode, You Will Learn:
- Ari Gibson & Team Cherry Story.
- How Hollow Knight was made.
- How to make great games with few resources.
- Learning the skills you need online.
- Resources to use in the creation of a video game.
Actionable Steps
- Learn how to Google things, some random username in some website or forum has written an extensive and detailed answer to whatever problem you’re facing.
- Learn to do GOOD GAMES, you can create a video game that’s one hour long, and that’s completely acceptable as long as it’s good.
- Use video game jams to start creating ideas, use the internet to find the Jams and get involved and start creating.
- Choose what kind of video games you want to do and find the communities around that, you can even find communities for the video game engines.
- Do things you enjoy doing, we did Hollow Knight because we loved doing so and we did it, having a character drawing on a white board and 6 hours later having it take life is amazing for us.
“YOU ONLY NEED YOURSELF AND A COMPUTER TO START CREATING GREAT VIDEO GAMES”
Did You Enjoy This Interview? Let Us Know On Twitter!
If you enjoyed this interview, please let Ari and I know on Twitter by clicking on the link below:
Click here to let us know you loved the show!
Extra – Christopher Larking on Hollow Knight Music:
Extra – Hidden Dreams Trailer:
Extra – Gods & Glory Trailer:
Now it’s Your Turn!
Got questions or any advice or thoughts you want to share about this interview or anything you learned that helped you on your way to freedom? What’s one thing you can take from Ari Gibson’s Journey? Please feel free to share in the comments section below!
Thanks so much for watching the interview with Ari Gibson, I truly appreciate YOU!
Until Next Time!
Rodrigo
