Gaslamp Games, Inc. was an independent game developer based in

Victoria, British Columbia Victoria is the capital city of the Canadian province of British Columbia, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of 91,867, and the Greater Victoria area has a population of 397,237. T ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...

which designed

video games Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedb ...

for the Microsoft Windows,

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

, and

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

operating systems.Gaslamp Games official site
/ref> Their first game, '' Dungeons of Dredmor'', was released in 2011. Their most recent game, ''Clockwork Empires'', was released in 2016. While the company did not appear to announce it was no longer operating, employees posted on social media that they no longer worked there after the Christmas holiday in 2016. There have also been no social media posts by the company and no further developments to their games after that time. In May 2019 they confirmed that the company had ceased all operations and officially removed Clockwork Empires from sale on all platforms.

Staff

Nicholas Vining, Gaslamp's technical director, has been involved in the game industry since the age of sixteen, when he got his

Linux gaming Linux gaming refers to playing video games on a Linux operating system. History Linux gaming started largely as an extension of the already present Unix gaming scene, with both systems sharing many similar titles. These games were either m ...

start working for

Loki Software Loki Software, Inc. (Loki Entertainment) was an American video game developer based in Tustin, California, that porting, ported several video games from Microsoft Windows to Linux. It took its name from the Norse deity Loki. Although successful ...

. Since then, he has contributed to games developed by

Piranha Games Piranha Games Inc. is a Canadian video game developer based in Vancouver, British Columbia. The company was founded by Russ Bullock, President and Executive Producer, and Bryan Ekman, VP and Creative Director. Piranha Games is one of the oldest ...

, 3000AD Inc., Destineer Studios, and TimeGate Studios. He has also written for

Game Developer Magazine ''Game Developer'' was a magazine for video game creators, originally started in March 1994 by Miller Freeman, Inc as quarterly, later bimonthly, and finally monthly. In each issue, industry leaders and experts shared technical solutions, reviewed ...

, and is listed as a contributor to the

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve ha ...

Rendering API specification. He has also worked with prolific coder Ryan C. Gordon on various open source and Linux-related projects. David Baumgart, Gaslamp's art director, has previously worked as a contractor specialising in 2-D artwork for video games. His list of credited titles includes work for Niels Bauer Games, Hexwar Games, Data Spire, and Tactic Studios. He also created the logo for the FatELF project. Daniel Jacobsen, Gaslamp's CEO, co-founded the company while working on his undergraduate in physics at the

University of Victoria The University of Victoria (UVic or Victoria) is a public research university located in the municipalities of Oak Bay and Saanich, British Columbia, Canada. The university traces its roots to Victoria College, the first post-secondary insti ...

, and their first release, '' Dungeons of Dredmor'', was his first commercial video game project. In addition to programming and company management, he has also lectured with Nicholas Vining at the University of Victoria on game design, and contributes actively to Australian National University's

SkyMapper SkyMapper is a fully automated 1.35 m (4.4 ft) wide-angle optical telescope at Siding Spring Observatory in northern New South Wales, Australia. It is one of the telescopes of the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics of the ...

project.

Releases

Their first project, ''Dungeons of Dredmor'', was released on July 13, 2011. ''Dungeons of Dredmor'' is a Rogue-inspired

dungeon crawl A dungeon crawl is a type of scenario in fantasy role-playing games in which heroes navigate a labyrinth environment (a " dungeon"), battling various monsters, avoiding traps, solving puzzles, and looting any treasure they may find. Video games ...

er which embraces procedural content generation. Gaslamp's second game, ''Clockwork Empires'', a

steampunk Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction that incorporates retrofuturistic technology and aesthetics inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery. Steampunk works are often set in an alternative history of the Victorian era ...

city-building game A city-building game, or town-building game, is a genre of simulation video game where players act as the overall planner and leader of a city or town, looking down on it from above, and being responsible for its growth and management strategy. ...

, was released on

Steam Early Access Early access, also known as alpha access, alpha founding, paid alpha, or game preview, is a funding model in the video game industry by which consumers can purchase and play a game in the various pre-release development cycles, such as pre-alp ...

on August 15, 2014. Version 1.0 of ''Clockwork Empires'' launched on October 26, 2016.

References

{{reflist

External links

Gaslamp Games - Official WebsiteGaslamp Games at YouTubeGaslamp Games at Facebook
Defunct video game companies of Canada Video game companies established in 2010 Video game companies disestablished in 2017 2010 establishments in British Columbia 2017 disestablishments in British Columbia Video game development companies Companies based in Victoria, British Columbia Defunct companies of British Columbia