FACTSHEETDeveloper: Founding date: Head Boy: Press/business contact Website: Social: RELEASES: |
DESCRIPTIONOh, a Rock! Studios is a small indie games studio that makes funny, weird, and sincere adventure games, visual novels, and live-action FMV games. HISTORYOur studio was founded by the wife-and-husband team of Lizo Medina-Gray and Paul Franzen, two life-long adventure game fans with wildly different design principles, even from a young age (she’s a Sierra fangirl, and he’s a LucasArts fanboy). They got their start making up interactive text adventure games through AOL Instant Messenger—one person would IM the other, saying something like “You wake up in the middle of the night to see a strange woman hovering over your bed. What do you do?”, and the other person would type out responses and try to “win” the game, without getting themselves killed in some spectacularly unlikely fashion. These early games formed the basis for Oh, a Rock!’s first major project, the point-and-click adventure game The Beard in the Mirror. As Lizo’s focus turned more toward the academic side of gaming, Paul started reaching out to some of his close friends to expand the scope of the studio to include not just point-and-clickers, but visual novels and FMV games, too. He’s since partnered with writer/YouTuber Michael “Arglefumph” Gray on a number of titles, including Cat President: A More Purrfect Union, which Kotaku described as “an actual PC video game.” Together, Michael and Paul also host a podcast on indie game development called “Oh, a Podcast!”. Our games have been shown at conventions such as Boston FIG and RetroGameCon and exhibited inside the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which our moms were very impressed by. Our latest project is Internet Court, a live-action courtroom comedy about dispensing justice on the Information Superhighway. |
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SELECTED ARTICLES
The Pizza Delivery Boy Who Saved the World:
- “It might seem odd that a game about a pizza delivery boy who saves the world is also a pretty profound game at depicting the struggle of work in our contemporary period, but this is something that the production team at Oh, A Rock! Studios has been doing for quite a while. ” – Cameron Kunzelman, Vice
The Awkward Steve Duology:
- “I assure you, you’ll have never experienced anything like it before.” – Rich, GameSpew
- “Like Steve, this little title just deserves a chance to shine. They both have it in them—they just need the opportunity to prove it.” – Heather Johnson, Hey Poor Player
The Beard in the Mirror:
- “A LucasArts/Sierra-inspired point-and-click style, a story of modern adult malaise-meets-childlike fantasy, and an absolutely charming husband-and-wife team that are infectiously passionate about their creation.”
– Jillian Werner, GameZebo - “I fell in love with The Beard in the Mirror. As an homage to a much-loved genre, it succeeds stupendously. ” – Phoebe Knight, The Overpowered Noobs
Cat President
- “This game is definitely one to keep out of the litter box, and should be set atop the scratching posts of fame for just how much fun you can have with it after a few drinks with some purrfect company.” – Respawning
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Oh, a Rock! Studios 