Liquorious: Rene Baumgartner and Fabian Bergner

So as you probably already know Liquorious is a fast arcade style platform game with quite unique audiovisual style. It was developed by two 21-year-old students from Salzburg, Austria: Rene Baumgartner and Fabian Bergner.

Rene is a 21 years old and he's studying Multimedia technology at the Unversity of Applied Sciences in Salzburg, Austria. He started he's studies in 2008.

He is intrested in the field of mobile applications, innovative interfaces, computer vision and creative coding.

This term he's doing he's internship at Sony DADC in Salzburg as a Objective-C developer.

Fabian is also a 21 year-old Multimedia Technology student at the University of Applied Sciences in Salzburg. He's majors are "Augmented Reality & Games" and "Mobile Development".

He's interested in the fields of Creative Coding, Augmented Reality, Mobile Devices, Visualizations (Artcore Visuals) and Augmented Architecture Projections which he's realizing at his internship at Strukt in Vienna.

Where did you get the idea for Liquorious?

"We were inspired by games with simple gameplay like canabalt for instance. But most of the ideas came to us during the develoing process. The idea from the pictures of the developers shifting in during the game is originally from the old mortal combat games on the NES - thumbs up for that guys!"

How long did it take to make the game? What was the most challenging part?

"It took us 4 months, but during that time we also had to make other projects for the university. So we had some very long nights working.

One of the problems was that we tried really hard to get designers and 3D artists into the project (we have Multimedia Arts programme at the university), but they had to do their own projects. And also, there was no actual benefit (or budget) for them.

Actually, the problem of not having 3D artists turned out to be somehow our success. It gave us the chance - no - it forced us to develope our own style. Some other people really called it aesthetics!"

What inspired you the most while working with the game?

"I think one of the main influences during the process was our (sick) mental state of mind. Being totally exhausted and sleep-less is somehow totally inspiring!

The thing was we just tried to do what we wanted to do and we didn't try to live up to other's expectations. This fact was inspiring and motivating at the same time."

What will be your next project?

"We have several projects we're working on. These days we're creating a video of our recent "Guitars project", where you can play Guitar Hero on the facade of the Ars Electronica Center in Linz.

We are also planning to develop Liquorious for the iPhone.

But we also have to do our bachelor projects & thesis now, so there is not much time. Rene is doing an interactive museum/exhibition guide for the iPhone/iPad at the moment, Fabian is working on 3D projections and visualizations for architectural spaces and buildings."

What's your favorite game?

Fabian: Tetris and Mario Kart 64. With Liquorious I have some sort of love-hate relationship!

Rene: Braid, Half Life, Zelda and Metal Slug"

Rene and Fabian would love to come to Finland. They would be very interested in giving us some workshops here in TAMK. They would also like to perform in finnish clubs/music festivals, so if you know someone looking for cool VJs, spread the word!