After the tireless effort put in by the small Finnish company to get their debut PSP title Super Hind into the hands of PAL-region gamers, the road ahead gave Mountain Sheep some exciting choices. Even in the face of a global financial meltdown, Timo Vihola and his team learned from their experiences and have come up with something new.
As stated in the previous Mountain Sheep story on the trials and tribulations of getting their terrific Super Hind title from a concept to a tangible commercial product, a small developer faces incredible challenges when undertaking a project. As yet,
Super Hind remains unreleased in both Japanese and North American markets. Timo Vihola, co-founder and creative director of Mountain Sheep, as well as being a good friend of 4X.Scope, has granted a wonderful insight into where a small development house can go after a a major production and what was learned along the way.
The first question posed to Timo was that of Mountain Sheep in the face of the current financial turmoil; with the situation of development studios going under or being closed, was the plucky Finnish studio riding it out or facing the fiscal reaper?
“…We’re doing fine regardless of the recession, very very busy though! A few months ago we were absolutely hypnotized by the iPhone. Now we’re testing the ice by developing a small shooter for the iPhone called Minigore. After that we’re doing a slightly bigger tower defence game called Hardgore. Actually, part of the inspiration for Minigore came from your suggestion about enemy waves in Super Hind! We first started testing that type of gameplay on the Super Hind prototype and practically just switched the helicopter to a human.”
With the recent proliferation of direct-download services, Xbox Live Arcade, Sony’s PSN store, Nintendo’s Virtual Console and various other options on PC, it makes perfect sense for smaller developers to test the waters and deliver something with a small but nevertheless interesting scope. As a plus, these forms of distribution are a godsend to small studios, as Timo eludes to:
“…When developing this latest game I’ve really started to value the lessons learned on Super Hind. When you’re a small developer you have to pay lots of attention to everything from production pipeline, marketing to contract negotiations. This one has been a breeze compared to Super Hind!”
While the iPhone platform and the PSP may be similar in some
respects, the games are, to a large extent, chalk and cheese. The PSP seems to run on a mandate of providing a console experience in the palms of a gamer’s hands. The iPhone is, for the moment at least, a platform that primarily deals in short and sharp experiences, puzzle games and experimental titles engaging the touch and tilt facets of the device. However, developing for one does not negate experience when moving onto another platform. Timo outlines:
“…We’re doing lots of things differently:
- Really focus on marketing. People NEED to know about your game and what it is about. Interestingly, visibility also gives you leverage to get other stuff done. This is something we really messed up on Super Hind! Everything from forum visibility to Mobygames or wikipedia entry counts as marketing. Here’s an example of Minigore “trench marketing“, the thread is at over 200 replies already with several thousand views! We have a Minigore teaser trailer out which has been viewed about 30 000 times at several different sites. Super Hind trailer has been out for almost a year and is at a bit over 10 000 views to this day, and budget wise it was a huge project compared to Minigore! The exposure difference is very large and we haven’t even released the game yet.
- People have to be able to buy the game. Super Hind had good sales in the UK but it still isn’t released in US or Japan – so there’s two big markets for PSP that are giving us zero sales at the moment. In comparison, the iPhone’s AppStore is worldwide, which is awesome for developers because you don’t have to worry about getting a distribution deal in certain region – just translate and you’re more than good to go. Speaking of which we have full Finnish translation in Super Hind and it’s not even on sale in Finland.
- Having a feedback system with the gamers during development, figuring out directly what features people want to see.
- Know the hardware. Our dev friend spilled the beans on the iPhone so we had a pretty accurate idea about it when we started Minigore. Speaking of hardware iPhone has really good virtual dual sticks!
- Only create assets you KNOW you can use, be it writing, audio, images or video. On Super Hind we had lots of cool story snippets that we couldn’t properly implement.”
Timo supplied an example of one part of Super Hind’s back story to reiterate just how much Mountain Sheep had in the title’s canon. While it was a tough climb to get Super Hind into the air, with an alleged sequel currently being stalled in favour of a more focused iPhone/iTouch production project, Timo does leave a glimmer of hope for Super Hind fans in the promo below. Who knows, with the release of the PSP Go direct-download machine and the imminent booming of the PSN Store, gamers might very well see more helicopters on the horizon.
Thanks again to Timo Vihola for his time.
The Minigore Teaser Trailer can be found HERE
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