Old School Gamer Magazine chats with Michael Silverman (Silverware Games Lead Designer. Studio owner, programming) and Say Mistage (Silverware Games Derpy Wasabi. Art, community), who detail their new virtual pet experience that harkens back to the days of Rob Fulop’s Petz series, as well as Tamagotchi, but takes the genre to fun new levels.
About the Game:
MatchyGotchy Z is a colorful digital pet experience that combines idle clicker elements with a new take on pet-raising simulation: trainable personalities. The pets can have jobs based on their natural skills, but only you get to define your pet’s personality through gameplay – not itemization or goal oriented milestones.
Old School Gamer Magazine: How was this game born?
Michael: Everything starts from an original game character “Matchy Star.†I came up with an idea based on the feel of cartoon heroes I like: Sponge Bob, Johnny Bravo, Gumball Watterson, Andy from Advance Wars, and even the invincibility star from Mario. I did multiple tries of this star character and it was sort of a weird, long and experience for me – but very rewarding at the end! Eventually, Matchy Star became a game of its own and took over into a universe of many games. This is where MatchyGotchy Z comes from, one of the many casual and fun games from this world.
Say: When Michael and I started working together, he had almost wrapped up Matchy Star at the time. It was when we joined in ideas that Matchy Star went from one game to a series of games – we started last year with MatchyGotchy, which was initially meant to be a promotional game, but got quite the positive response from steam players and from all that feedback we created a sequel game called MachyGotchy Z, which we are launching next week via Early Access. Matchy Star is still in development, we are hoping to have more news on that soon enough too.
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports.
Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders.
His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023.
Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief.
Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale.
Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.
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