Sian Yue Tan is the creator of the Rocketbirds series and is one of the four co-founders of Ratloop / Ratloop Asia.
History
Sian Yue Tan has always been about drawing and painting things as well as capturing stuff from his imagination. When he wanted more, he got into animation so he could watch his creations move around. His next natural step was writing games, and he did enjoy seeing his characters think and shoot each other. The next time, he would be starting to farm stuff in big incubators and do it for real.
In 1997, he co-founded Ratloop, Inc. with co-creator James Anderson, Lucas Pope and Pete Gonzalez. The set up of Ratloop Asia was more than 10 years later in Singapore to make Rocketbirds: Revolution!. Yue have been making games on and off for a while now, mostly for himself in complete secrecy (with the team). Although, the project Rocketbirds: Revolution! would be the one he wanted to make before he passes away.
The reason for the creation of the game was because he just wanted to make a game that could show off the Rocketbirds and for his goal to have the game as easy for people to do as possible. He felt early non-scrolling games as such with Flashback, Oddworld and Blackthorne could all carry a story because of their screen based nature and he thought the format was well suited for a flash based engine.
In 2010, IGF (Independent Games Festival) would be the first time that Yue and his team have entered a game. Their effort on the Adobe Flash-based game paid off the following year when Rocketbirds: Revolution! received a triple nomination for Excellence in Audio, Excellence in Visual Art and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize. Sian Yue Tan was well pleased with it. On the topic of the IGF, he experienced his feelings with survivor guilt but didn't want to sound ungrateful on that comment.
Partnership
In 2011, Sony approached Sian Yue Tan and his team with a partnership of having their game to appear on the Sony platform, the PlayStation 3. The team agreed and it led to the birth of Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken. The game iterated and innovated from the original flash game. On 2012, the game was revealed to appear on the PlayStation Vita and was then released on the same year in the shops on Hong Kong with a worldwide release on 2013.
The partnership evidently continues with the sequel Rocketbirds 2: Evolution on the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita.
Works
- Malice (1997) — Coordinator, player/enemy models, enemy code, extra models
- Gearhead Garage (2000) — Vehicle Models
- Rocketbirds: Revolution! (2009)
- Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken (2011) — Director, Game Designer, Art Lead/Animation, Voice Actor
- Rocketbirds 2: Evolution (2015)
Trivia
- Yue is the voice behind all the ten main characters in Rocketbirds.