Blue Wizard Digital is a Canadian video game development studio and game publisher founded in 2014 by Jason Kapalka, one of the founders of PopCap Games and an early pioneer in the mobile casual gaming space. It is based in the

Comox Valley The Comox Valley is a region on the east coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, that includes the city of Courtenay, the town of Comox, the village of Cumberland, and the unincorporated settlements of Royston, Union Bay, Fann ...

British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...

, and is the only video game studio currently headquartered in Comox, as '' The Long Dark'' studio Hinterland is now based in

Vancouver Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...

. The studio specializes in campy horror puzzle games, humorous first-person shooters and other innovative variations on existing models of gaming.

Popular games

''Shell Shockers''

Blue Wizard's most popular game as of August 2024 is ''Shell Shockers'' (https://shellshock.io), a browser-based

first-person shooter A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game genre, video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a First person (video games), first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through t ...

in which players take the form of weaponized eggs and attempt to kill each other. Players can drop in and play anonymously in public lobbies or create persistent accounts and private maps to play with friends. The game features a variety of pop culture-influenced, punnishly-named features, including 4 gamemodes: Free For All, Teams, Captula the Spatula, and King of the Coop (based on

King of the Hill ''King of the Hill'' is an American animated sitcom created by Mike Judge and Greg Daniels that initially aired on Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox from January 12, 1997, to September 13, 2009, with four more episodes airing in First-run syndicati ...

). The game also holds 7 guns: the EggK-47 (based on the

AK-47 The AK-47, officially known as the Avtomat Kalashnikova (; also known as the Kalashnikov or just AK), is an assault rifle that is chambered for the 7.62×39mm cartridge. Developed in the Soviet Union by Russian small-arms designer Mikhail Kala ...

), the Scrambler (based on a

break action Break action is a type of firearm action in which the barrel(s) are hinged much like a door and rotate perpendicularly to the bore axis to expose the breech and allow loading and unloading of cartridges. A separate operation may be required for ...

shotgun A shotgun (also known as a scattergun, peppergun, or historically as a fowling piece) is a long gun, long-barreled firearm designed to shoot a straight-walled cartridge (firearms), cartridge known as a shotshell, which discharges numerous small ...

), the Free Ranger (based on the SVD), the RPEGG (based on the

RPG-7 The RPG-7 is a portable, reusable, unguided, shoulder-launched, anti-tank, rocket launcher. The RPG-7 and its predecessor, the RPG-2, were designed by the Soviet Union, and are now manufactured by the Russian company Bazalt. The weapon has t ...

), the Whipper (based on the

FN P90 The FN P90 is a personal defense weapon chambered for the 5.7×28mm cartridge, also classified as a submachine gun, designed and manufactured by FN Herstal in Belgium. Created in response to NATO requests for a replacement for 9×19mm Parabe ...

), the Crackshot (based on the

M24 M24, M.24 or M-24 may refer to: Military * HMS ''M24'', a Royal Navy M15 class monitor * HMS ''M24'', Royal Swedish Navy ship, (see List of mine warfare vessels of the Royal Swedish Navy) * M24 Chaffee, an American light tank * M24 mine, an America ...

), and the Tri-Hard (based on the

Steyr Aug The Steyr AUG () is an Austrian bullpup assault rifle chambered for the 5.56×45mm NATO intermediate cartridge, designed in the 1960s by Steyr-Daimler-Puch, and now manufactured by Steyr Arms GmbH & Co KG. The AUG was adopted by the Austri ...

). There are thousands of player and item skins, most of which can be bought with Eggs, the in-game currency. As of mid-2019, the game had almost 40 million players worldwide, and is one of the most popular .io games available online. ''Shell Shockers'' has been the target of some controversy, as it is commonly played by school students on

Chromebook Chromebook (sometimes stylized in lowercase as chromebook) is a line of laptops, desktops, tablets and all-in-one computers that run ChromeOS, a proprietary operating system developed by Google. Chromebooks are optimised for web access. They al ...

s provided by schools for educational purposes. However, Blue Wizard has also created many proxy domains, such as freegames.io, meaning that blocking it would not always help. Many other gaming platforms also offer the browser-based game, such as CrazyGames, have therefore been blocked by American schools.

''Slayaway Camp''

"A puzzle game for people who hate puzzle games," ''Slayaway Camp'' is set at a summer camp that's been set upon by a serial killer. Its blocky chibi-like style of character art makes it "adorably gruesome" and perhaps more palatable for those who would otherwise shy away from a horror game. Originally released in 2016 for PC, its success led to a console port of the game in 2017, with releases for

Xbox One The Xbox One is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. Announced in May 2013, it is the successor to Xbox 360 and the third console in the Xbox#Consoles, Xbox series. It was first released in North America, parts of Europe, Austra ...

and PS4. Kapalka has stated that one of his intentions in running Blue Wizard is to "find a way to make... puzzle games less boring, more viscerally exciting," and both ''Slayaway Camp'' and ''Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle,'' another popular Blue Wizard camp-horror game, serve this goal. Slayaway Camp II: Netflix and Kill is in development and will be released on Steam at a currently unknown date.

''Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle''

Blue Wizard's only license-based game thus far, ''F13'' is based on the popular Friday the 13th franchise and, similar to ''Slayaway Camp'', has been called "adorable and violent"; its

gameplay Gameplay is the specific way in which players interact with a game. The term applies to both video games and Tabletop game, tabletop games. Gameplay is the connection between the player and the game, the player's overcoming of challenges, and t ...

is also based largely on the sliding-block puzzle genre of game that founder Jason Kapalka helped to invent with ''

Bejeweled Bejeweled may refer to: * ''Bejeweled'' (series), a series of tile-matching puzzle video games ** ''Bejeweled'' (video game), the first game in the series, released in 2000 * "Bejeweled" (song), a 2022 song by Taylor Swift {{disambiguation ...

''.

References

External links

* {{Official website, https://bluewizard.com/ Video game development companies Video game companies of Canada Video game companies established in 2014 Companies based in British Columbia 2014 establishments in British Columbia