Octopus58 (Developer)

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Octopus58
Aliases:	Michael, MG, M.O.G., Octo
Born:	December 25th, 1999
Occupation:	Game developer, musician, artist, video editor, programmer, writer
Residence:	Israel (former) Canada (current)
Languages:	English, French, Hebrew, Russian, Arabic
Works
Projects:	Super Hard Quiz P1!! Royal Squared Guppy's Quest MEOS

Octopus58 (or Michael) is a developer who started working on small projects since 2008. He is currently most known for working on ME-OS and Guppy's Quest, his first major project. Michael has partnered up together with Spicy Coffee to work on many projects together, and both aim to create media that others can enjoy and gain happiness from.

Biography

Michael was born in Israel on December 25th, 1999. There he had learnt to speak Russian and a bit of Hebrew. After living there for 3 years, he has moved to Canada and has lived there since. He later on learnt English, and forgot a lot of the Hebrew he learnt as a very young child. Since he felt lonely from being separated from his extended family, Michael has always taken an interest for artistic things such as sketching, painting, and modelling on his free time. Later on, he started playing a lot of games on the computer, mostly flash games on sites like Newgrounds and so on. He particularly enjoyed adventure/action games such as Sonic Heroes, which still remains as his favorite game to this day. Due to being very lonely when he first started school in 2005, he has often talked to himself and has eventually came up with an imaginary friend, Gontaper, who he'd play with during recess. However, playtime with his made up friend eventually extended into a made up world, SP, and things seemed to go much beyond just his imagination all up until now, and still going.

Michael was into trying to make music and play it since he was still very young. He has started piano lessons around five years old, which have allowed him to learn more essentials that would allow him to play more instruments later on such as the accordion, alto saxophone, ocarina, pan flute, recorder, guitar, and so on. Essentials such as scales and chords helped him develop song ideas later on.

Michael has started off programming in early 2008 in scripting languages such as Batch and Visual Basic Script. His childhood hobby was to make fake "viruses" and install them on school computers. Through that small hobby came learning more about other languages such as Actionscript 2 and 3, Java, C# and C++. Michael also started to get more into image, music, and video editing software. After a few years, multi media became his main hobby, where he would try to combine multiple types of media into one piece. This is what slowly started to get him into making games.

For his works, he has taken series such as Sonic, Kirby, Mario, and Zelda for inspiration. Additionally, he was inspired from web animations and games such as Salad Fingers, Pico, and some games made by Tom Fulp and Dan Paladin. The art he has seen in the series has inspired him in making his own locations and characters. As much as he takes inspiration, he still sticks to his own original concepts and ideas for works such as his games.

In late September 2015, Michael got interested in a game he found called Indie Game Battle from a Facebook post revealing Salad Fingers as a playable character. He wanted to see if he could somehow assist in development after seeing the full cast of characters at the time. He became friends with the main developer Felixblobdev (Felix), who at the time was an up and coming game developer who has been known most from his featured Happy Wheels levels. From late 2015 to May 2017, Michael made remixes/original tracks for the game, as well as some graphical assets including skins, and some stages. Felix has also helped out Michael with Guppy's Quest, giving Squared Palace (at the time Water Temple) tiles and animated objects better shading, as well as revamped assets. Felix has added Gontaper as a playable character in Indie Game Battle. However, in mid 2017, the game has got canceled. Felix and Michael still speak with each other in regards to development of other games and on other matters as well.

In May 2017, Michael has met Rosemaryy (Emily), who he has quickly became very close with. She joined MGFlow58 and after some time, had become one of the Co-Owners. They have started to draw a lot together, and try to make small things together out of a shared hobby and passion for multimedia and art. Emily was very proficient with art, which eventually resulted in her starting to collaborate with Michael in remaking Guppy's Quest assets for the Unity remake (character sprites and animations, tiles, backgrounds, etc.). Her characters from Star Dust have also been added as main characters in the game, along with shared locations/characters between SP and Star Dust such as Somniamor, Sleepy Bridge, and so on. They have also started working on a brand new project called MEOS (Michael and Emily Operating System) which is designed to be a spoof game of operating systems.

Since September 2017, Michael has been attending university for a degree in Computer Science, but still intends to focus on his game development and eventually make a living from it with Emily

Works

Discography

Michael has made numerous tracks public since 2013. Some are very old and poor quality, others are more up to date.

Album	Track Number	Song Name	Year
Aquatic Techno	01	Green Waters	2013
Aquatic Techno	02	Caved in Caverns	2013
Aquatic Techno	03	Acidic Ice Cap	2013
Aquatic Techno	04	Octopus Legions	2014
Aquatic Techno	05	Sunshine Bubble Army	2014
Aquatic Techno	06	Octopus00's Theme - Fly to Rescue	2014
Aquatic Techno	07	Coral Maze	2014
Aquatic Techno	08	Beach Mist	2014
Aquatic Techno	09	Octopus01's Theme - Highway in the Stars	2014
Aquatic Techno	10	Aquatic Techno	2015
Climate Climaxity	01	Cacti Rush	2015
Climate Climaxity	02	The Stampede of Fire	2015
Climate Climaxity	03	Octopus02's Theme - Sparking Rock	2015
Climate Climaxity	04	Octopus04's Theme - Riding the Molten Ash	2015
Climate Climaxity	05	Turbulent Ash Ocean	2015
Climate Climaxity	06	Slithering Chill	2015
Climate Climaxity	07	River of Dew	2015
Climate Climaxity	08	Octopus04's Theme - Mixed Up Storm	2015
Climate Climaxity	09	Where The Sun is Always Shining	2015
Climate Climaxity	10	Climate Climaxity	2015
Unstoppable Pulse	01	Windy Flowers	2015
Unstoppable Pulse	02	The Smashing Trees	2015
Unstoppable Pulse	03	Mind Boggle	2015
Unstoppable Pulse	04	Adrenalyn Heat	2015
Unstoppable Pulse	05	Save Rush	2015
Unstoppable Pulse	06	Arial Bombard	2015
Unstoppable Pulse	07	Blizzard Whip	2015
Unstoppable Pulse	08	Plot for Devastation	2015
Unstoppable Pulse	09	Octopus05's Theme - Speedless Isolation	2015
Ëvropa	01	The Mediterranean Rail	2016
Ëvropa	02	Octopus06's Theme - Cotton Winds	2016
Ëvropa	03	Tide Luminescence	2016
Ëvropa	04	Dancing Rays	2016
Ëvropa	05	Reflection Over the Sand	2016
Ëvropa	06	Roah Midvar	2016
Ëvropa	07	Night Light Joyride	2016
Ëvropa	08	Shore Call	2017
Sleeping Blossom	01	Past the Midnight Sun	2016
Sleeping Blossom	02	Sleepy Destination	2017
Turquoise Summer	01	Kamen	2017
Turquoise Summer	02	Nostalgic Grains	2017
Turquoise Summer	03	Pragulka	2017
Turquoise Summer	04	Ecstatic Days	2017
Turquoise Summer	05	She Smiles Back	2017
Turquoise Summer	06	Dawning Years	2018
Dreamy	01	Emmy	2017
Dreamy	02	Space Princess	2018
Dreamy	03	Hold Me	2018
Dreamy	04	Beyond The Bounds of Time	2019
Dreamy	05	Safe With You	2019
Guppy's Quest OST	01	The Depths	2018
Guppy's Quest OST	02	Where the Sun is Always Shining	2018
Guppy's Quest OST	03	Reality Generator	2018
Guppy's Quest OST	04	Bird Brains	2018
Guppy's Quest OST	05	Watching Clouds	2018
Guppy's Quest OST	06	Green Tides	2018
Guppy's Quest OST	07	Snegopad	2018
Guppy's Quest OST	08	Boundless	2019
Guppy's Quest OST	09	Petal Breeze	2019
Guppy's Quest OST	10	Windy Flowers	2019
Guppy's Quest OST (Night)	01	The Depths	2018
Guppy's Quest OST (Night)	02	Where the Sun is Always Shining	2018
Guppy's Quest OST (Night)	03	Reality Generator	2018
Guppy's Quest OST (Night)	04	Bird Brains	2018
Guppy's Quest OST (Night)	05	Watching Clouds	2018
Guppy's Quest OST (Night)	06	Green Tides	2018
Guppy's Quest OST (Night)	07	Snegopad	2018
Guppy's Quest OST (Night)	08	Boundless	2019
Guppy's Quest OST (Night)	09	Petal Breeze	2019
Guppy's Quest OST (Night)	10	Windy Flowers	2019

Newgrounds

Michael has started making his first public works on Newgrounds in 2012, uploading his first flash animation "Octo's loop collection!" (now unpublished) on March 30th 2013. His first flash game was "Super Hard Quiz P1!!". Lastly, he uploaded a lot of his music onto the site as well to try to gain some recognition. The most viewed item of his was the flash game, with over 5000 views. At the time, Michael didn't have time to make more animations and flash games, as much as he wanted to, so that's mostly all he has contributed.

Guppy's Quest

Michael has started planning his first large scale game in 2013, but it wouldn't start coming to life until November 2014, when he started publishing his first beta builds. This project has over time allowed Michael to learn how to program more in Java, and heavily introduced object oriented programming. Additionally, this has taught him how to take feedback from others as he would send beta tests to very early beta testers (such as Ryan McKay), and how to balance music from sounding too ear grating. In 2016, he'd get help from Felixblobdev in terms of adding shading to the first stage, and in 2018, Rosemaryy took over the art role, remaking all existing sprites and tile assets to look better, as Michael did not have a lot of experience in pixel art and not a lot of time to get the results he wanted. Her characters became main characters available from the start of the game due to the close connection between her and Michael.

Collaboration with Felixblobdev

Since finding Indie Game Battle in 2015, Michael was interested in helping Felix by providing music (remixes and originals) and some graphical assets, as well as ideas and some music for other games. Since then both Michael and Felix share a lot of character appearances between their works, as Gontaper and Guppy appeared publicly in Indie Game Battle (along with a Squared Palace stage) and Matthew Favson appears in Guppy's Quest as a playable character and in MEOS easter eggs.

Royal Squared

Royal Squared was a Game Boy Jam game submitted in October 2016, and while being short and simple, was his first complete platformer game. It was based on difficulty and patience, and had mixed reception from those who played it. The game is eventually planned to have a full length version featuring returning characters Kvarol and Soverdat, as well as Karbik, Kusik, and more.

MEOS

MEOS was a project started by Michael and Spicy Coffee. It was meant to be a spoof of operating systems with its own progressive flow and subtle story. This was the project that got both of them familiarized with collaborating and how Unity works in general, allowing for a smoother start to the Unity remake of Guppy's Quest in mid 2018.

Links

• Music channel: OctoNote
• Newgrounds: Octopus58 NG