Our Approach
Playing games should be fun, but so should making games. Life is too short for suits and ties, and the rat race is a race that no one ever wins, so I make the games I would like to play, and I hope you enjoy playing them.
My Studio
One Little Serf is located in Dublin, Ireland, in the world's smallest game studio office. The first game, Into The Valley, was made entirely on a eight-year-old i3 computer on a budget of "am I eating beans on toast again today?".
So, an update. I have doubled the size of One Little Serf Studios, while somehow still managing to maintain my world-wide reputation as the smallest game studio in the world.
A studio update: On the right is my old steam powered PC, made in 1854 and famously used by Custer to plan his last stand. On the left is Leviathan, my new PC, made from the shin bone of an Orc by a old man with a grey beard and a staff. It is powered by a small neutron star and cooled by frozen methane I teleport in from Saturn. It weighs about as much as my car and the graphics card uses elven magic or something. The new monitor is five by four kilometres and is capable of displaying the yet unknown fifth dimension. I also upgraded my medieval torture device mistakenly labelled a chair for a 21st century seating arrangement that makes me feel like I am flying a starfighter.
Meet the Team
Currently my team consists of me, but I would not be able to do what I do without some help.
Helgard de Barros
Founder & CEO
I was born in South Africa, where I started life as a self proclaimed child genius. My careers to date have included being a paratrooper in the South African Special Forces, and after studying journalism, working as a journalist, photographer, media officer and book editor, At various stages I then worked as the manager of a CD shop, a nightclub owner, a band manager, record company owner and deejay,
I relocated to Ireland in 2001, and worked in the 3D modelling and animation industry before becoming the one little worker at One Little Serf, a start-up games company. Aside from writing books, working on a self produced film, and working on a game, I spend my time reading too many books and watching too many films, while on a constant hunt for the perfect chocolate.
If anyone would like to purchase my novel, it is available on Amazon.
Other serfs
This game would not have been possible without the help of many people, to numerous too mention, who have helped me on forums and by e-mail. A big thanks to the people who gave their time freely to play test my bug ridden game, without your imput it would not have happened.
A special mention for help with programming and technical advice goes out to:
Leslie Young, Alex Burzal, Marshall Heffernan.
And for play testing, my eternal gratitude to:
Dale Buckett, Robin Bantjies, Steven Sharkey, Sheila Manogue and Frank Dawson.
And for my super cool company logo:
Anne Sexton
And for the work on the voice acting:
Andre Hurter (Montana Studios, South Africa)
Future Employees
TBA
Hopefully, at some point in the future, One Little Serf will grow and be in a position to employ an army of serfs. Then we can take on the system. Viva la revolución.
Our Approach
What the future holds
The first game was made over a six year period on a shoe string budget financed by working night shifts and as such there were a lot of features which I was not able to add, due to time and money constraints.
The second game, as yet unnamed, is an ambitious project and about four times the size of Into The Valley in area and the number of NPCs and locations of interest.