The Future is Gaming: Introducing Night Owl Digital

March 12, 2021 Dave Bernasibo

“Our prime goal is to ‘Inspire, Create, and Innovate’. We aim to inspire our fellow men that we, too, can develop games create games, and as well as innovate.”

These are the words of the people behind the Cebu-based game development company Night Owl Digital. The team was founded in 2018, with three people, and originally going under the name of “Light of Dawn Interactive”, this team of game developers are set out to make a name for Cebu in the game development scene.

“We opted for Night Owl Digital because the former name, Light of Dawn Interactive, sounded too long and haughty and we didn’t want that,” said Irvin Bernarte, one of the developers of Night Owl. “We also coined this term as we are just like owls, nocturnal, as we have day jobs on top of our game dev responsibilities.”

The team is currently working on Atom Blitz, a mobile game inspired by the famous Nokia 3310 game “Space Impact”.

 

 

Atom Blitz as seen on the Google Play Store

Sample gameplay of the game could be seen on their Twitter account:

 

Originally, Atom Blitz was supposed to be based on another classic game by the name of Metal Slug, but after a thorough team discussion, they decided to go with the space shooter inspiration. The game is currently in the early access stage, and the team would gladly accept any constructive comments with regards to the game. The South.gg News team tested it out, and upon a few tries, we found the game interesting, fun, and light play. It could do better with the addition of missions, daily quests, a story mode, and other content to prevent it from being linear.

The team is also in talks about developing a PC game once Atom Blitz is fully released, although the decision is still heavily in the planning phase.

“As of now, our team is focused on releasing and self-publishing our very first game, Atom Blitz,” said Bernarte.

The team is made up of four people who have day jobs separate from their game development project for Night Owl Digital. These four people are:

  • Mhelward Ely N. Tandingan, an IT specialist, and the game designer for Atom Blitz
  • Junn Dobit Paras, an app developer for a banking company, and the programmer for Atom Blitz
  • Irvin Rufo Bernarte, a gam artist for another game development company and also the VFX artist for Atom Blitz, and finally,
  • Cristine Khate Nadela, a game artist and animator in the same company as Irvin, and is also the marketing assistant for Atom Blitz.

The team speaks of the struggles of a game company in the Philippines, saying, “The industry has gained a lot of attention and respect from people overseas. However, if we’re talking locally, that’s a different story.” Currently, game development in the Philippines remains to be a rather unturned stone in the business industry, as while some investors have seen an interest in it, the interest has not grown enough to be one on the same scale as those in Western and developing countries.

When asked what they would want to say to those who perpetuate the idea that video games get you nowhere, here is what they had to say:

“Making video games earn you money, and global statistics already prove so, whether it be done independently or on a service-based entity/platform. Playing video games, however, is a different story, though making content out of it is pretty viable venture.”