Biohex Studios: Alon Kaplan and Alon Tzarafi

Alon Kaplan, a well-known figure in Israel’s indie scene, entered game development through music. He graduated from the Rimon School of Music in 2010, but Kaplan always wanted to make games himself.

“As a kid I learned QBasic and made small games where I did everything, programming and art. I didn’t just want to make music for games; I wanted to make the games themselves,” he says. So he joined the growing community of local developers. “That’s where I met Alon (Tzarafi),” he recalls. “I reached out and suggested we make something together. I had no idea it would take ten whole years.”

Kaplan describes Moduwar as “a classic RTS game, inspired by the greatest in the genre’s history: StarCraft, Red Alert, NetStorm, even Spore and Lego, but with our own biological twist. You start with the heart, and expand your creature with different functional organs. You can split your alien into different pieces, expand it and reattach them as you like, like Lego. Those mechanics create basically endless possibilities to build your army: one huge alien, or many smaller ones, each with different combinations of modular organs with different functionalities.”

Meanwhile, Alon Tzarafi, the lead developer and game designer, brought his experience and wrote much of the code that brought Moduwar to life. Prior to Moduwar, he created countless Flash and indie games. Projects for game jams, art exhibitions, and more, and over the years became an expert in Unity and Unreal. Apart from writing much of the code, he is also responsible for many of the innovative mechanics that came from the concept of modular aliens.

“It was really hard to imagine what this game would look like because it’s so different from anything else. We had to invent a lot of ideas, such as mechanics that are very different from every other game,” Tzarafi says.

“Tzarafi also voiced many of the game’s creatures,” Kaplan emphasizes. “When you hear an alien cry out,” Kaplan laughs, “that’s mostly him.”

A Team That Grew Organically

While the two Alons are at the center of Moduwar, they’re far from alone. “When we started making Moduwar I became the producer and project manager.” Kaplan says. “I made things happen, recruited people, let people go and was in charge of the art pipline, I did marketing and planned ahead looking for opportunities to showcase our team and the game.”