When Victor Burgos founded Burgos Games, the indie studio developingNeko Ghost, Jump!, the 12-year Marine Corps veteran thought he could lead his team like a Parris Island boot camp. “My initial thinking was, oh, I’ll just run them like I did as a sergeant in the Marine Corps. These guys are like my PFCs, my privates,” Burgos said. “It does not work like that.”
A longtime gamer, Burgos has learned a lot about what it takes to be a leader in the games industry since he formed his namesake studio in 2019. Under his watch, Burgos Games is in the late stages of development forNeko Ghost,Jump!,its first major foray onto the indie game scene. The cat-themed puzzle platformer, currently available forEarly Access on Steamand on the Epic Games Store, is aimed at gamers of all stripes, from speedrunners to combat aficionados. Game Rant talked with Burgos about his experience transitioning from the military to game development and how that informed his studio’s work.
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From the Corps to Burgos Games, and the Birth of Neko Ghost, Jump!
Burgos has always been interested in video games and programming, he said. A child of the 1980s, he grew upplaying on his Atari 2600during what he called “the big boom of modern-day video games.” By the time he graduated from high school, Burgos was on his way to pursuing a computer science degree at the University of Central Florida. “But then, 9/11 happened.”
After the 2001 terrorist attacks, Burgos enlisted in the Marine Corps. Until 2005 or so, he was stationed at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni on mainland Japan as an aviation ordnance systems technician. Living in Japan was “like karma,” Burgos said - the country’svideo game culture, which at the time was centered around arcades, made him realize that he wanted to get back into the industry.
Burgos applied to attend Westwood College Online, a Denver-based online university that offered a game programming degree. However, his plans to earn a degree were put on hold when he was deployed to Kuwait in 2003 as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. After leaving the Corps in 2013, Burgos decided to pursue programming once again. He attended the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2014, and freelanced after graduating in 2017 before landing his first major dev job working on Monochrome Games’s 2018virtual reality zombie shooterContagion VR: Outbreak.
“That was a really awesome project,” Burgos said, but after some time at Monochrome, funding issues at the indie developer forced him to strike out on his own. “Basically, they couldn’t pay me, so I said, ‘well, if you’re able to’t pay me, I might as well just work on my own anyway.’”
Burgos founded Burgos Games in 2018, and after a short-lived attempt at developing a VR title,Neko Ghost, Jump!was born as the submission to a five-day game jam contest in May 2019. Since then, Burgos and a team of eight contracted developers have been working to get the platformer through Early Access onPCand into the hands of gamers - hopefully, he said, by this summer.
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Neko Ghost, Jump! is an Indie Game for All Players
Neko Ghost, Jump!aims to appeal to a broad spectrum of gamers. At its core,the puzzle platformer has players take controlof Nekoman as they traverse dozens of unique levels in a quest to defeat a cabal of dog space pirates. All the while, players interact with the game’s two core mechanics to solve puzzles and find secrets: the ability to switch from two-dimensional to three-dimensional perspective; and “ghost form,” a spectral Nekoman armed with a swordfish.
Burgos wanted to give players options for approachingNeko Ghost’sgameplay. “There are three different play styles that, once you start a new game, you may choose,” Burgos said. The game can be played with afocus on speedrunnng levelsor battling enemies. Players can also select a casual mode for a more laid-back experience.
Depending on the playstyle selected,Neko Ghostalters its gameplay mechanics to suit the experience. For example, a cinematic camera transition used in casual mode when switching from 2D to 3D perspectives is removed when playing on the speedrunner setting, Burgos said.
“You don’t want to waste a second just to see this cool little camera transition.”
Neko Ghostalso features leaderboards on all of its levels as an extra incentive to would-be speedrunners. Even as it’s in the midst of development, some players are already pretty invested in that feature, Burgos said. He noted that one Early Access player has already logged around 25 hours in the game trying to whittle down their level times and hold rank.
For completionists and achievement hunters,Neko Ghostisn’t short on collectibles or achievements, Burgos said. Players will be tasked with finding Nekoman’s friends, abducted by the dog pirates at the beginning of the narrative and hidden throughout the game’s levels. “There’s going to be a lot of hidden stuff,” he said. “There’s going to be a crap ton of achievements."
Ultimately, Burgos has applied a “you do you” philosophy toNeko Ghost, Jump!“The game is really suited to speedrunners, casual players, or just action junkies,” he said. “You can play however you want to play.”
Patience and Empathy are Key For Ghost Neko, Jump!
Learning to manage a small team of developers didn’t come easily at first, Burgos said. “It took me a while to really get into the mindset."
“I can’t run things like I did in the military. I have to think of how to be a leader in the gaming industry, which I think a lot of people actually struggle with.”
The number one required quality for game dev leadership is patience, Burgos said, “which, admittedly, I’ve never had any abundance of, but I’ve gotten better at that.” Another major facet of leading a game studio is empathy: “There are a lot ofmental health issues in the game industry, even on my team,” he said. “Every once while you’ll slip out, somebody will have a bad day, and they don’t vent about it.” Burgos said that he wants to be there for his team.
Although Burgos had to make an adjustment from military leader to game studio head, the leadership dilemma in the games industry isn’t just limited to former service members. “Leadership is tough. It’s different when you have to like lead creatives, just a different mindset,” Burgos said. “It’s a problem, I think, in game development in general.”
Neko Ghost, Jump!is currently available in Early Access for PC, and is in development for PC, PlayStation, Switch, and Xbox.
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