When Xbox Live Arcade game The Splatters launched in April of 2012, my first look at the game was a launch trailer, the trailer persuaded me to download the demo, and the demo convinced me to buy the game. I played it with my 11 year old son and we loved trying to beat our best scores and we marveled at the top scores on each of the levels. The Splatters features some really cool “jelly physics” and some brilliant use of slow motion effects. It also features a replay theater similar to the Trials games and allows you to see how the insane scores at the top of the leaderboard were achieved.
The Splatters also has a cute and humorous charm to it. It’s got a wide variety of levels and several modes of play. It also reviewed well. Many of the larger video game review sites scored it 80/100 or above, and the Metacritic user reviews put it at a respectable 8.7 out of 10. So then why is The Splatters developer and indie game studio SpikySnail more than a little concerned about their financial state? Despite The Splatters being a generally well received game, it didn’t sell well enough to make all of their money problems go away. So they labor on. Doing that which they love most, making fun games.
Being a small team is a big job (just ask anyone at fizmarble). SpikySnail co-founder Sagi Koren shed some light on how an indie developer gets it done.
Fizmarble: How many people make up your team at this time?
Sagi Koren: We’re a small 4-person team here at SpikySnail. We all work from our homes.
Fiz: What is it like to develop a game with such a small team? Do you outsource aspects of development? Does everyone have to play multiple roles?
Sagi: I see a lot of advantage in working in a small team. You’re very close to each team member and we all know what to expect from each other so there are also no surprises. Also, whenever we meet or talk, we know that everybody’s in the meeting has a valuable opinion so it’s not like we have a big 10 people meeting where 5 of them might be bored or just feel like they’re wasting their time.
The downside, as you’ve mentioned it, is that each one of us is playing multiple roles. Some roles aren’t even related to game design at all. Niv and myself, who started SpikySnail, also manage all the money issues, legal stuff and so on. Niv coded The Splatters from scratch but he’s also in charge of game design along with Alon and myself. I’m in charge of graphics but also game design, money stuff, marketing stuff, sound, music and so on. So it’s a lot to handle.
But coming back to the positive side, I think that a small team gives the entire thing a very personal feeling. You feel like you’re working hard for something that is your own. And it’s a great feeling for all of us.
We outsourced sound related stuff. Music design was done by Idan Egozy. A super talented sound designer who created most of the music for our XBLA release (and will do the entire music track for our PC release); and Somatone Interactivewho did an amazing job on the sound design (sound FX).
Fiz: Recently, you were part of an Xbox Live Deal of the Week. How did you become part of it? Did Microsoft ask you if you wanted to be involved in the promotion, or did you apply with them to be included?
Sagi: The XBOX market place is very tough in terms of promotions. It’s not as easy as Steam, for example, where you can just decide to yourself to go on a sale an hour from now. They have a list of games set for each promotion, they have certain rules that don’t let you be on two consecutive Deal of the Week sales if not enough time had passed between each sale and so on.
Fortunately, we have a very close relations with Microsoft Games Studio, who were our publisher for the XBOX release. So it was just a matter of emailing and asking ‘when’s the next DOTW?’ and they will do the rest.
Fiz: Have you seen the numbers from that promotion yet? Has the Deal of the Week been good to you?
Sagi: We had a bigger sale a couple of months back where we’ve sold in a week the same amount as we did during 3 months prior to that. It was very successful. This time around the numbers weren’t as high, but it wasn’t a real surprise. It’s what we thought we would sell more or less. XBOX market is very tough these days. Mainly high profile games do well there and the sale itself was only visible to Gold Members only.
Fiz: What was the inspiration for The Splatters? How did the core ideas change over the course of development?
Sagi:Niv is a ninja of liquid and soft bodies simulation. So when we first sat down, we decided to try and create something around those elements. But what we started with is totally different than what we ended up with at the end. The game actually change dozens of times during the course of development and on some occasions the shift was really 180 degrees to the other side.
We didn’t have any storyboard or concept when we started. We just sat down at Niv’s apartment and start throwing out ideas that might seem fun for us. Then, Niv would quickly program a prototype for the concept and after 2-3 days we had something to test. Then we sat again and discussed what could be fun in what we have in front of us. If the concept had potential, we’d continue to improve it. If not, we threw it away. We really developed the entire game through iterations.
We did this for about a year and a half, until we suddenly felt that we really have something great in our hands. I clearly remember one day that I couldn’t stop playing and I remember that the feeling was like a huge stone off my chest. Until that moment, I didn’t know if we would ever reach that ‘fun’ part we were looking for.
Fiz: You are located in Israel, but you develop for a world-wide market. How was The Splatters received in your own country?
Sagi: We have a very small community in Israel that are very supportive. However, our XBLA market is very very small. Israel is not even listed (yet) in the list of countries in the XBOX LIVE system so you can’t even buy points directly from your XBOX. You need to go online and get a redeem code from someone who bought a gift card in a retail store. It’s crazy. So all that hassle doesn’t bring many players to the XBOX platform especially not to XBOX Live Arcade where our game is.
I’m hoping that soon, when we’ll release the game on PC, we will get a larger Israeli crowd to enjoy the game.
Fiz: I understand you are working on the PC version of The Splatters. What is next for SpikySnail?
Sagi: Well, actually it’s not really a regular PC port. We decided to ‘shake’ the game and upgrade it with tons of new stuff. The XBLA game is out on the market for a while and we’ve really learned what we can do better to make it easier to get into and play through. We also have tons of stuff we always wanted to include but didn’t have time due to tight schedule for the XBOX release. We’ve already started testing these new features and responses so far are very positive.
As for the future of SpikySnail, I really think that The Splatters has some long way to go. I really wish that we will have enough players to continue and support the game. I have a dream to have multi player mode and an awesome game editor where others could create amazing levels and compete with each others for the first place. I hope we’ll be lucky enough to get there. After that – who knows.
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