Ahead of this year’s DEBUG INDIE GAMES AWARDS, we were particularly intrigued by the video game Roguecraft – nominated for Retro World Award… A retro-inspired turn-based roguelike – available in physical copy for the Amiga! We reached out to the development team at BADGER PUNCH GAMES in the shape of founders Ricki Sickenger and Henning Ludvigsen who agreed to a catch up via Zoom, all the way from Norway! After a quick show of admiration for Manchester City’s Erling Haaland, we talked all things video games…
BADGER PUNCH GAMES
THE J: So, do your games capture that “Viking spirit” we expect from something to come out of Norway?
RICKI SICKENGER: Well I’m half English, so I only have half a Viking spirit…
HENING LUDVISEN: Well, both of us are kind of big lumbering Vikings. We’re both fairly hard working, I guess.
THE J: What’s in the name Badger Punch?
HENING LUDVISEN: We actually talked about that, we couldn’t really remember. We did come up with the name about 15 years ago, I think? We started doing things and we needed a logo. I always liked badgers so I guess I had a something to say about that… You put two two words together and add a logo with a pixelated badger with boxing gloves. That’s the same logo we’re still using.
THE J: I’m sure badgers do pack a punch. You don’t want to take on a badger at night, they’re huge!
HENING LUDVISEN: At my previous house we had tons of them and they were really loud fighting each other!
FANS THAT MAKE GAMES
THE J: How did you both meet?
RICKI SICKENGER: Me and Hening actually met each other through the Amiga demo scene back in the 90’s. I was a programmer and Hening made the graphics. At some point we met at a party and we got to know each other and started a friendship there. I guess the Amiga times kind of faded after a while but we kept in touch and we ended up starting a game company together. We ended up down in Greece for quite a few years and ended up at some point, pretty recently going back to the Amiga, basically. We have a long history in between this. So we’ve known each other for at least like 30, 35 years, I guess. Quite a long time.
THE J: So is this a full-time thing now?
RICKI SICKENGER: I’ve got a wife and three kids and a regular job. I’m actually an IT consultant. Yeah, so this is just a passion project for us.
HENING LUDVISEN: I work with games as a full-time job. But I now work creating art for board games. So this is a hobby project for us, but we turned it into a side business right now.
ROGUECRAFT
THE J: Tell us a little about the history of Roguecraft… Did it first start on the Commodore 64?
HENING LUDVISEN: Well, it’s kind of an evolution, this game. Ricki can tell you a little bit about it…
RICKI SICKENGER: Well, it actually started with what is called a Cassette 50 “Game Jam”, which is, I don’t know if you remember on the Commodore 64, certain platforms used to have these collections of games on a cassette. To put an extra little bit of spice on it, you couldn’t use any memory over 4000 bytes. And so we tried to make a game in 4000 bytes. As I was looking at it, I couldn’t ask Hening to do anything because there was no space for any graphics or anything. So I ended up making a roguelike in 4K. Over half the space was used to this algorithm generating the dungeons. So there’s no space left for any graphics, hardly any music or sound. Hardly any gameplay or anything! But the game actually ended up in the fourth place in this Cassette 50 competition.
People were telling me, they were playing it all the time and they were wondering how many levels there were. And this thing was just an infinite dungeon. So you could just keep on going forever, actually. And so we were kind of looking at this game and thinking, this has something. We don’t know quite what it is, but it has something. People are kind of enjoying it. We thought, well, what if we were to make a proper Commodore 64 game? And that turned out to be Rogue 64…
AMIGA
THE J: So how did it become what it is today?
RICKI SICKENGER: We were thinking maybe we should go back to the Amiga, because that’s where we originally met and did stuff together. So we thought, OK, we’ll try to make the same game, but an upgraded version of it on the Amiga. And Hening wasn’t quite happy with the Rogue 64 stuff…
HENING LUDVISEN: No I was not because I was not expecting anyone to to play it (!) and if I knew, I would have done better a better job.
THE J: Well hopefully this award nomination proves your reputation has not been tarnished!
DEBUG INDIE GAME AWARDS 2025
THE J: Big congratulations on the nomination for your game Roguecraft! How did you first react to the news?
HENING LUDVISEN: Yeah it’s fantastic! We entered the game and were hoping they would pick us but we really weren’t sure. It’s a good selection, there’s some really good games we’re going up against. So I don’t think we’re going to win or anything. You have Goodboy Galaxy which is a really, really good game. And Flea! 2 is there as well. So we have some really good games we’re going up against. But just being nominated is an honour.
RETROGAMING
THE J: And it feels like retrogaming is ever-expanding!?
HENING LUDVISEN: My biggest surprise is, today, if you release a game for the Commodore 64, there are groups of crackers now waiting for your game to be released so they can crack it. It’s hilarious, a little bit cute. It was a big surprise that this subculture still exists and is that active.
RICKI SICKENGER: A little bit cute, a little bit irritating… I guess it’s a part of the thing.
HENING LUDVISEN: They’ve grown a conscience, though. They wait with a year until they publish the cracks.
THE J: I guess that’s a game in itself, isn’t it?
RICKI SICKENGER: Yeah, so in the past games used to have copy protection and you have to crack it to be able to copy the game. Now, because there’s no copy protection, no one can be bothered with that… So they’ll add an intro and cheats so you can have a little bit extras for the game. The only way to properly combat that stuff is just releasing your game with all the cheats yourself. And I know people have done that, but that’s kind of besides the point for me. If they want to crack it, they can crack it.
HENING LUDVISEN: I remember Ricki left some traps [in Roguecraft] for the crackers in the code to make stuff a little bit harder to crack, but they will of course eventually make it. They have to work for it.
RICKI SICKENGER: Yeah, I added some stuff, but they found out it took them a little longer than expected to crack it!
THE J: Well I’m sure they’ll enjoy that and hopefully stay respectful to the process.
JOGEIR LILJEDAHL
THE J: The game is so atmospheric! Who provided the music?
RICKI SICKENGER: The music is made by a guy called Jogeir Liljedahl. He’s a pretty famous Amiga musician, especially in the demo scene. He’s a fellow Norwegian and makes really, really good music. He has this famous song called Guitar Slinger. You might have heard it…
HENING LUDVISEN: I have a funny story about that. The first demo party I actually attended was in 1993, a rendezvous party in Norway. That’s when Jogeir Liljedahl was out with this song, Guitar Slinger. And that’s also the same party I became a member of the demo group, where I got to know Ricki. So it’s kind of a full circle for me. This is how I got to know Ricki. This is how I got into the demo scene. Now he’s making our music. So that’s kind of awesome, that’s 35 years later or so.
RICKI SICKENGER: It’s pretty awesome. We actually met him at this event called Back in Time. I think they’ve had them in England, where you have these groups, these musicians playing like Amiga and Commodore 64 songs, but as a band with like proper instruments and stuff. And they had one of these, they’ve had it like a few times in Bergen with the group FastLoaders. Jogeir Liljedahl was there. The first time it was like, I was like a little bit of a fanboy! But the second time I was like; we need him to make our music! So I approached him, asked if he still made music and if he would help us make music for our game. And he said yes!
THE FUTURE
THE J: What is next for Badger Punch Games?
HENING LUDVISEN: Well, we do have the next evolution of Roguecraft, possibly a NES version… But we have started planning what’s after as well. We don’t know the platform yet, because it depends. If no one buys the other games, maybe we’ll go back to Amiga. Maybe we want to revisit the Commodore 64. We don’t know that yet, we have loose ideas but haven’t landed on anything yet!
THE J: And we’ll wait with bated breath!
DEBUG INDIE GAMES AWARDS 2025 takes place Fri 21 Nov 2025 in Nottingham – tickets still available.