What if you combined UGC like Super Mario Maker with a racing game? Arcade Galaxy, which was showcased at the PlayXpo Taipei Game Show booth, is a game that puts this imagination into practice. By combining the sensibility of arcade racing games with platforming, users must race to claim first place on various courses that are hard to imagine in ordinary racing games.

Not stopping there, it even implemented a feature that allows users to create and distribute their own maps, and aimed to deliver unique fun to users through various modes, such as 'Star Scramble,' where players engage in a brawl to collect three stars in addition to competing for first place. We had the opportunity to hear from Ted Tin, CEO of Number Nine Studios, the developer of 'Arcade Galaxy,' who is meeting with various game industry professionals at the PlayXpo venue following the demo reveal to receive feedback. Number Nine Studios CEO Ted Tin ©INVEN Please introduce Number Nine Studios. Also, what kind of game is 'Arcade Galaxy,' which you are participating in this time? Number Nine Studio is an indie game team from Taiwan composed of people who truly love 90s games, especially Super Nintendo games. We are huge fans of the Mario series, and among them, we deeply enjoy Super Mario and even Super Mario Maker. Speaking of Arcade Galaxy, it is a game that embodies that sentiment. Our own experiences are infused into it. When you think of user-created games, you probably think of something like Minecraft, and of course, we were inspired by that as well. From that to Super Mario Maker, we accumulated knowledge in various ways. We enjoy making games, and we wondered what it would be like to make them even more fun by having users directly participate in the creation process. That is how we are creating 'Arcade Galaxy.' It is both a game and a UGC platform. Users create their own courses, share them, and play together You can play it. Our goal is to make the game more fun and help users create and enjoy their own creations. It is interesting that users can create their own courses, but what is the degree of freedom and accessibility? Initially, we tried to include many features at once. However, now we are focusing on keeping it as simple as possible so that anyone can create easily. You can drag and drop various elements directly from the bottom to paste them, and you can freely adjust the xyz axes. You can easily add a wide variety of elements, including backgrounds, blocks, decorations, obstacles, and boosters. After focusing on making it easy and free to create, we participated in several events in Taiwan, and I was really happy that the kids especially loved it. They embraced it immediately and enjoyed it, just like with Lego. It seems like kids these days are familiar with Roblox or Minecraft, so they picked up the method quickly. Of course, users who have been doing UGC for a long time would be able to delve deeper. Not only can users compete against each other for first place on existing courses, but they can also create and share their own courses to enjoy together. Nine Studio

Is there anything you are preparing to make it easy for beginners to create games, in addition to users who already have an interest in the field?

"We have gameplay tutorials, and for the map editor, there are templates so that you can create games by referring to them. In particular, since the maps in our game are 3D rather than flat, you can go beyond simply driving and jump, run, and climb. They look like vehicles, but we designed them to be closer to animals.

I never imagined that a racing game would have elements like wall climbing or climbing over obstacles. Is there a reason you included these features?