The journey is as important as the destination. Taking Super Hind from concept to commercial product was a long and arduous task for the developers at Mountain Sheep Inc. – a Finnish development house that 4X.Scope is heartily fond of. This does not suggest the task was frivolous, as Super Hind was a title that was in dire need of being made. As Timo Vihola, creative director and co-owner of Mountain Sheep, is quoted as saying during an interview at PocketGamer, the genre needed to be reinvigorated, to become “fun again”. There had been something missing since the
last of the EA Strike games was released back in 1997. Super Hind does indeed see to the genre becoming relevant again, but the road to release was a tough one for such a small development house.
With a start-up budget a fraction of that of much larger studios, Mountain Sheep set out to recreate the sheer thrill of the multi-directional isometric shooters that dominated the 16-bit platforms and subsequently though to a lesser extent, the 32-bit platforms. As studios such as Introversion Software have shown, with the right amount of vision and an understanding of a development teams’ limitations, good things can be produced. Undoubtedly, Super Hind was ambitious – but not beyond the developers’ limits. However, a culmination of events did lead to a paring back and pruning of initial ideas and implementations in order for the title to reach the public. Timo was good enough to recount the trials and tribulations of the development phase in this exclusive for 4X.Scope.
“As it turns out on this project our primary problem was funding. In the beginning we thought we had more than enough money.” Timo states. “My brother and I had done two full games before but, as it turns out, when you add many more people the work output decreases considerably because you have to do so much management. The other employees, unlike you, aren’t necessarily working night and day on the project either.”
Going from a two-man operation to a larger organisation was necessary to build the world of 
Super Hind, but at the obvious expense of time, money and management. Although, one hopes that now, with the European release of Super Hind done, the team is centred and ready to build upon the franchise. Timo continues with the impact of finances fast running dry.
“Then the reality hit us that the starting money wasn’t gonna last as long as we hoped. We really, really wanted to have stuff like voice acting but it just was not possible as we looked at our treasury when it was time to decide on it. (Griffin [Super Hind’s protagonist] was designed from the ground up to be played by Leon’s actor from Resident Evil 4) My own opinion about reading text while shooting: “very hard”, but it was the only choice if we wanted to have any story other than briefing screens.”
While 4X.Scope’s review of Super Hind pointed out the aforementioned text-only dialog within the missions, Timo raises a good point about story and, subsequently, its predicted impact if made absent from the game.
“In hindsight – no pun intended – dropping the storytelling would have probably been the better choice for the project, that would have freed so much resources for making additions to the core gameplay – rearming at boats, better functioning environments (landing pads, enemy bases), no constraints what could be where because there’s no complicated story in the way. On the negative side it becomes less interesting to work on – and maybe to play – because story is something that keeps you motivated and focused about the content.”
Super Hind is far from an average game. It is a very entertaining romp that does pose a well-designed challenge throughout. However, Timo recounts just what was sacrificed to get the game out the door.
“To give you some perspective about the last months of development:
- We had to cut features like boats swaying nicely in the waves and rocking violently when sub-target explodes.
- Destroying a sub-target on any unit was supposed to give noticeably brighter and bigger explosion than a normal hit. Also some debris and parts were supposed to fly off the target to give better sense of its health state.
- Harriers were 80% done and cut at the last minute. They were an interesting mixture of jet and helicopter movement, Raven [a sub-boss] was also a Harrier in its movement but had to be turned into a helicopter – which made it a relatively easy kill for an end boss.
- You probably noticed that the enemy jet fighters don’t shoot at the player. They were supposed to be very dangerous on fly-by’s and armed with missiles.
- Aircraft Carriers were supposed to have jets on the deck that could take off. Now they only hold helicopters.
- Pelican transport planes were cut also, mid-air refuels with air tankers and disturbing enemy refuels were cut.
(all the visual assets were done for these too)
…plus lots of small tweaks here and there that were cut at the last minute. I think if we had two extra months it would have had much more replay value with multiple difficulties and overall a much slicker experience with the accessibility tweaks.”
After spending a large amount of time playing Super Hind, the game would have been an absolute hit had it retained the aforementioned details and assets. But, the uphill battle did not stop there, as there was a last hitch at the publishing phase. Timo elaborates:
“And in the end when they ran it from a UMD at the Sony Test Labs, there seemed to be a 20 second load time before the game started, and it was a bug that we didn’t have time to fix. Normally on our development PSP machines, it would load almost instantly. On that, the Publisher said “the game is off to manufacturing, no more fixes”.”
So, in the end, Super Hind was slightly smaller in scope than what Timo and his crew of developers had envisaged and, to a large extent, had actually created and implemented. Add to that the rampant piracy that begot the game during the first few months of release, with an approximation of 40,000 illegal downloads of the game – based sadly on only a few torrent sites.
However, the story does not end badly. Super Hind is yet to release in the US – which means there is time to update the title and hopefully implement a lot of what was shucked in the European version. While a date has not been formalised for its release Stateside, Timo is hopeful that a much more fully-featured title lands when it does eventually reach US consumers.
Even better is this snippet:
“We had a crunch at work over New Year to get our game prototypes up and running – Super Hind 2 and the fellows are looking interested…”
Despite the rotor-zones, the wake vortices and the wind-shears of developing from the grass-roots level, Mountain Sheep are a studio worth keeping an eye on. If the US release of Super Hind is anything like the original version, then just imagine the impact of a bigger, brighter sequel. For the time being, congratulations again and again to one of Finland’s best-kept secrets.
The development house with the armored helicopter gunship parked out front.
Thanks once again to Timo Vihola, for being wonderfully frank, insightful and helpful. An honour to be in contact.
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