About Us

FACTSHEET Developer: Oh, a Rock! Studios Based in Ithaca, NY Founding date: March 24, 2014 Head Boy: Paul Franzen Press/business contact paul AT oharock DOT com Website: oharock.com Social: Facebook Twitter YouTube Podcast RELEASES: The Francy Droo & Friends Collection The Awkward Steve Duology Cat President: A More Purrfect Union The Beard in the Mirror

DESCRIPTION Oh, a Rock! Studios is an indie videogame studio/loosely connected group of friends that makes funny, weird, and sincere adventure games, visual novels, and live-action FMV games. HISTORY Our studio was founded by the wife-and-husband team of Lizo Medina-Gray and Paul Franzen, two life-long adventure game fans from opposite sides of the tracks. (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, beautiful 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 has 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 like Boston FIG and RetroGameCon and exhibited inside the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which the founder’s mom was very impressed by. Our latest project is The Francy Droo & Friends Collection, an anthology of short visual novelettes ranging from a silly game about falling in love with your e-mail spammer, to a silly game about getting transported to a fictional soap opera world.

VIDEOS

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SCREENSHOTS

The Francy Droo & Friends Collection: Francy-Droo-and-Friends.zip The Awkward Steve Duology: The-Awkward-Steve-Duology-screenshots.zip Cat President: A More Purrfect Union: Cat-President-screenshots.zip The Beard in the Mirror: The-Beard-in-the-Mirror-screenshots.zip

TEAM PHOTOS

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PRESS RELEASES

Francy Droo brings friends to Steam for a new visual novel anthology! (11/21/2017) FMV and absurdist arthouse cinema collide in THE AWKWARD STEVE DUOLOGY (7/03/2017) Retro point-and-click adventure game “The Beard in the Mirror” hits Steam on Oct. 25! (10/6/2016) Handsome cats declare their candidacy in “Cat President”, coming to Steam August 23! (8/9/2016) Solve this thrilling mystery tale with FRANCY DROO! (4/22/2015) Beard champion and YouTube personality release visual novelette about spam (12/4/2014) Teaser trailer for neo-retro adventure game, The Beard in the Mirror (6/24/2013)

SELECTED ARTICLES

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

INTERVIEWS

“Awkward Steve at the Smithsonian – Paul Franzen Interview” – GameCola (11/06/2017) “This Awkward FMV Game Will Be Shown at the Smithsonian” – Waypoint (7/21/2017) “Building an in-game hint hotline for The Beard In The Mirror” – Gamasutra (1/27/2017) “Interview with Paul Franzen” – FMV World (12/16/2015) “Mixing suspense, absurdity and FMV in A Stranger Comes Calling” – Gamasutra (10/12/2015)

presskit() by Rami Ismail (Vlambeer) – also thanks to these fine folks

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