Antioch Man Launches “Buluk Mayan Warfare” Video Game

It may have taken 8-years, but Traevon Taylor’s dream of releasing a video game has come true after the release of “Buluk Mayan Warfare”.

Taylor, an Antioch High School graduate, says it was his debut title and is available on Steam with plans to eventually release on PlayStation — purchase game on Steam.

Ninja5, an independent game development team comprised of five former college friends and coworkers, presents “Buluk Mayan Warfare,” a Hack n Slash adventure that takes players on a captivating journey through ancient Aztec and Mayan civilizations. As the Nacom, an elite Mayan warrior skilled in both magic and weaponry, players can take down Conquistadors, Mayans, and Aztecs alike with devastating force. The game features a versatile arsenal of weapons, including the Macuahutil, Spear, Greatsword, and Knife, and spells that master the elements of Fire, Wind, Water, Lightning, and more. Set in 1521, players will experience the vibrant culture and rich history of the Aztec and Mayan world come to life.

“I am proud to bring our passion project to life. Our team has poured our hearts and souls into this game, and we can’t wait for players to experience the vibrant and rich history of the Aztec and Mayan world come to life as the Nacom in ‘Buluk Mayan Warfare’,” says Taylor.

Here is a Q&A with Taylor:

How did you get into wanting to work on video games?

I have always been an artist since I was a child. I would get in trouble in elementary and middle school for drawing comics in class. My stepmom often bought me sketchbooks and I would draw in them. Anime and manga were a big influence too. I began reading the manga magazine Shonen Jump back in 5th grade.

In the back of my mind there was always a curiosity about how video games were made. Various art colleges had come to my school for college fairs and showed off student game development projects during my sophomore year. That’s when I decided I wanted to go to school for game development. I ended up going to the Art Institute of California Sacramento three weeks after high school in 2011 and graduated in 2014 with my Bachelors of Science in Game Art and Design.

It took 7 years to create, what are some of the lessons you had to learn?

Don’t burn out trying to build the game in one night. In the early years of development, I would stay up late working on the game even though I had to wake up at 4:50 am the next day for work. It was also a long journey of getting my skills to the appropriate level for a commercial product release.

It was a process of constantly upgrading my knowledge of the game development pipeline and different software. I would reach out to other game developers had reached out to when I had specific issues.

Buluk was rebuilt three to four times. We would get to a point where we thought we were ready to go to market. We even had a failed Kickstarter back in 2018. We viewed the failure as an opportunity to get Buluk closer to our vision of what it should be.

What was the biggest take away in the process of creating/launching a game?

The last 8 years of development has shown me that in life nothing is handed to you and if you want something you must go for it.

Biggest challenges?

Getting the game to the stage where I thought it was ready for commercial release only to realize that it still needed major improvements. This was at least four times. The other biggest challenge was balancing my work schedule with building Buluk. I was working over 70 hours in a row per week at my job and that was one of the years where I had to rebuild the game. I had to learn to pace myself over these last 7-8 years.

Where did the idea come from?

I have enjoyed reading about history since playing Sid Meier’s civilization revolution and taking world history in 10th grade. I saw Apocalypto in college and was amazed by the Mayan architecture. From there I began reading and researching about mesoamerican history. The more I read, the more I could envision what their cities and civilizations looked like at their height.

I was shocked that there were no video games about Mesoamerican protagonists. At that point I decided that one day I would create a game that would bring that world to life.

Can you share some thoughts on your team?

I have known Radacal Alexander, our Animator since high school. We had the same 3D animation class. We would often talk about working for big tech companies. He has worked on the Elder Scrolls games.

Samuel Goreiter is our programmer. He’s a wizard. Years ago at a convention it took him under 10 minutes to fix bugs that were being reported by the players at the event.

Stephanie Goreiter is our Ui Artist and Translator. Her attention to detail is unrivaled. She trained me back when we were working on 3D Maps at Apple.

Tharon Green is our Character Artist. I remember back in college he had created a character model and I thought to myself, that would be very cool in a video game. Jeffrey Woodward is also our Animator. We’ve worked with each other on various projects back in college.

Calvin Saephanh is our Illustrator and he came up with the iconic Jaguar Knight design for the game. He created concept art for me back in college. He is also a children’s book illustrator.

Douglas Bartolme, our Sound Designer/ Musician, created our awesome soundtrack.

What do you hope people get from playing the game?

I hope they enjoy the blend of magic spells with melee weapons as well as seeing ancient Mesoamerica brought to life.

Can you speak on following your passion?

Following your passions makes it easier to set goals and go after them. It makes the day to day actions make more sense. It allows you to put things into perspective. It helped me get home everyday to work on the game and then go to work the next day with only 5 hours of sleep. You start to evaluate situations and actions based on how relevant it is to your goal.

I would wake up at 4:50 AM go to work in Sunnyvale and come home around 6:30 and work on Buluk until 12:00 am at night. It was no different from me staying up until 1 in the morning to work on my high school animated senior project. I was able to do all of that because of my passion for this field.

What is next?

We will immediately begin porting Buluk to the Playstation 5 console, release the PS5 version in early winter 2024, and develop a sequel or a new game

 

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To stay updated on the release of “Buluk Mayan Warfare” on Playstation 5, players can follow Ninja5 on social media or sign up for the studio’s newsletter on their website at https://www.bulukgame.com/.