Especially for our Patrons in Tier 2 and 3 we have made another Indie Dev interview! This time our developer interview is with Sergio Ueta and Marcio Gastaldello and their studio Mens Sana Interactive. Here at LadiesGamers we love a good puzzle game and Mens Sana Interactive makes games that take care of our puzzle cravings. We reviewed some of them, like Floating Farmer, Mini Words and Island Farmer, to name a few.
Our developer interview is with Marcio and Sergio who founded Brazilian studio Mens Sana Interactive in 2017. For both this was a big career change after working for many years in big corporations in another area of expertise. In the past months we have reviewed several of their puzzle games, and it’s time to meet the brains behind the brain teasers.
Of course, LadiesGamers is always about the personal story in any interview, so we asked them how Mens Sana Interactive was founded, why they focus on puzzle games and what cool games we can expect in the future. Plus, they have some tips for aspiring developers!
Mens Sana Interactive
Who are Sergio and Marcio?
Sergio – I am a Brazilian electricity engineer, currently dedicated to my game development studio Mens Sana Interactive. I’m 51, married and a father of two.
Marcio – A philosophy enthusiast who seeks to use my skills to somehow serve humanity, being a husband, father of two boys and at +40 years of age dedicating himself to the world of games with a good vibe.
Tell us about Mens Sana Interactive, and what led to founding the studio?
Sergio – Mens Sana Interactive is an indie studio dedicated to creating games that help people keeping their minds active and healthy.
We are a small team, we’ve created Mens Sana Interactive after long careers in large corporations. I have worked in the IT area in financial corporations, and Marcio has worked in technology and operations in the automotive industry.
Since I was a teenager, I was curious about game development, but at the time it didn’t seem possible, due to the lack of courses, tools and jobs. For some time, I had the idea of starting my own business, and when I left my last job, I decided to really go after that.
Marcio – My motivation was my son who was taking a technical course in games and showed me the Unity engine to clear up some doubts about programming, he dropped out of the course, and I fell in love with Unity.
We opted for career changes and joined to start our own game dev studio four years ago in Sao Paulo, Brazil. In 2019 we started publishing games on Steam and have expanded our portfolio since then.
So far we’ve created logic puzzle games, jigsaw puzzle games, and word puzzle games.
What’s behind the name of your studio?
Sergio – Mens Sana comes from the Latin expression “Mens sana in corpore sano” (“A healthy mind in a healthy body”). The name reflects our aspiration of creating games to keep minds active and healthy.
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