In the game

A passion for classic video games brought two entrepreneurs together, and now a work of their own delivers both a look back and a taste of the future, Eric Jou reports.

In a homey three-bedroom apartment in the northern outskirts of Beijing, three programmers type code on dual-monitored computers. An artist dabbles at a digital masterpiece magnified by the computer screen, and on the sidelines, creative director Zhou Lu listens to the latest change in the music.

In this apartment is Onipunks Studios, an independent video-game developer on the verge of shipping its first game. However, unlike traditional developers, whether indies or mainstream, Onipunks crowd-sourced with KickStarter.com to finance its debut.