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The brave new world of Cydonia BY JIM DAVIS ASHLAND -- You're stranded and alone. Your space capsule has crash-landed on Mars, on the first manned mission to the red planet in the year 2012. Your fellow astronauts are injured and can't leave the capsule. And you find an alien culture that you need to explore. You're part of "Cydonia," a new computer game in which players explore the Cydonia Mensae region of Mars and find a make-believe alien civilization. The game is the first product of Aneiva, an Ashland software company launched by a group of Ashland teens and 20-somethings who have no previous experience in producing software. "We're happy with it and so are a lot of the reviewers," said Ferhad Erdogan, the company's 27-year-old president. "In this industry, it's a big deal if the reviewers like a game and we are getting some good reviews." The game draws ideas from science and science fiction, from NASA schematics and pictures to crop circles and UFOs. The biggest adventure involved, however, may have been just putting the game out. "Cydonia" was built on a shoestring budget. Its creators devoted three years of their lives to the product, said Will Shepherd, 26, Aneiva's creative director. "We were lucky to have pulled it off," Shepherd said. DreamCatcher, the game's Toronto-based publishing company, sent 25,000 copies of the game in late September to shelves in stores across the country. Both companies are still waiting to learn how sales have gone. "Cydonia" is similar to popular hits such as "Riven" and "Myst," in which players explore unknown worlds while solving puzzles to unravel a greater mystery. Like those two games, "Cydonia" is nonviolent. "Naturally we would want to produce a nonviolent game rather than a violent game," Shepherd said. "But we wanted a non-violent game that's still fun to play." The scenes from the game are computer-animated graphics with more than 55,000 frames, including shots from inside the spacecraft and from alien landscapes. Shepherd created a storehouse of information and clips of manned and unmanned space expeditions for the game. For instance, a player can look up a panoramic view of the Mars landscape taken last year by the unmanned NASA spacecraft Pathfinder. "I'm really into pushing kids into finding out about space," Shepherd said. "We just stuck it in to get kids interested in NASA." In addition to good reviews, Aneiva has been getting compliments from players -- most players, anyway. Shepherd had one complaint about a sound puzzle that's part of the game. "Of course, I get e-mails from a deaf girl who couldn't get through this puzzle," Shepherd said. "So I e-mailed her back and walked her through it." Shepherd also worried that the game would be too difficult to solve. That proved not to be a problem. "I had an old guy -- he was over 60 -- call me and he said he got through it in eight hours," Shepherd said. "He had used the hints that are in the game, but other people don't need to use the hints." Shepherd and Erdogan said they hope people will play the game for 70 to 80 hours before solving it. Aneiva started as the brainchild of Erdogan, and the company began in his living room three years ago. Erdogan is from Turkey and moved to the Rogue Valley to attend the American Language Academy in Ashland and eventually became a computer science major at Southern Oregon University. In 1995, Erdogan said he's always played computer games and decided he wanted to make a space game. "A lot of people want to make a game," Erdogan said. "I guess I was just crazy enough to try it." Erdogan couldn't do it by himself, so he hooked up with Shepherd. Slowly, they brought more people into the project -- including Oregon Shakespeare Festival actors who provided voices for characters. Shepherd, who was a computer science and theater major at SOU, taught the others how to use a 3-D art program. The group scraped together as many computers as they could -- mainly slow PCs with little memory. During the three-year project, the artists and programmers -- about nine total -- spent 60 to 80 hours a week working on the game. "It was ugly," Shepherd said. "If you look at any other games of this type, companies have 30 or more experienced people working on the project." Most people worked on the game for little or no money, hoping to collect royalties after its release. At times, Erdogan said, they had some doubts. "There were a few times where I was scared that this project may not get finished and all that work may go to waste," Erdogan said. A year and half ago, Aneiva got the contract with Dreamcatcher, which helped pay to get the game published. In all, Aneiva spent about $500,000 on the project, a fraction of what more established companies spend on building adventure games. Likewise, the number of copies produced is a drop in the bucket compared to what many others produce. Medford's Trilobyte, for example, sold 1 million copies of its hit "7th Guest" and 500,000 copies of the sequel, "The 11th Hour." Kylie Clement, a Trilobyte spokeswoman, said that the people at Aneiva made quite an accomplishment. She said that Aneiva may have to wait for a little time before the game catches on at the market. "The 7th Guest started selling slowly and then word of mouth hit and it started selling in the biggest way," Clement said. Erdogan and Shepherd said that the first few months will show how the game does. And they're already thinking about possible new projects, including an animated movie. "We loved doing this stuff," Erdogan said. "Especially at the beginning when it was so exciting. It's not exactly like we were stuck at a job we didn't like." The game retails for $49.95. Today's Business Index Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA