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Topdown view: Rodeo Games on the making of Hunters: Episode One

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Topdown view: Rodeo Games on the making of Hunters: Episode One
By Jon Jordan
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| Hunters: Episode One
Over the past year, there have been plenty of developers moving - voluntarily or otherwise - towards mobile gaming. One example of a succcessful transition is UK studio Rodeo Games, which started 12 months ago, releasing its debut, the topdown turn-based squad shooter Hunters: Episode One at the end of February. Downloaded over 550,000 times since, and the number 1 RPG in 18 countries, we caught up with co-founders Ben Murch and Laurent Maguire to find out some more about the game's concept, development and deployment. Pocket Gamer: What's the background to Rodeo Games? Ben Murch: So... the Icelandic volcano had just erupted and we were stranded ... in Vegas. Amongst all the fun, we talked about what sort of games we'd like to play on the iPhone. By the time we got back to England a week later, we'd pretty much outlined our first game. Laurent Maguire: We'd been batting around ideas for a while between the two of us, but once we had fleshed out Hunters into something that worked, the rest just followed. Can you explain the inspiration behind Hunters' gameplay, and why do it episodically? LM: We're all huge fans of strategy boardgames and turn-based strategy titles. Looking back at all the games we loved and lost hundreds of hours to was a really big part of gathering old ideas and coming up with new ones. BM: Then, when we'd actually finished designing Hunters, it was huge. There was enough work to keep us busy for years! So we scoped the project into what we thought were the core features and called it Episode One. Future episodes will build on what we already have. Another reason for doing things episodically was so we could get feedback from our players and react to what they want. We're currently getting lots of questions about Campaign mode, so that's one of the areas we're focusing on next. How did you get the combat right? BM: With lots of practice. Our first version of Hunters consisted of a paper board, dice and trivia pursuit counters. We spent weeks trying out different combat types, and finally settled on the Action Points system. LM: The first working iPad prototype was a multiplayer pass and play version: we spent a lot of time playing that at the end of each day. We'd make changes the following day and test out the changes that night. This process went on and on until we'd refined the system and had something that worked. Were there any features or elements that didn't work or that you didn't have time or resources to complete? BM: Ummmm, Multiplayer! We actually started Hunters off as a multiplayer game, but soon realised it was stronger as a single player experience. We'd go and sit in our local pub to do pass and play against one another, which was loads of fun. However, it presented a whole ton of online issues. What if someone didn't take their turn in a game for a week? How would character levelling work if you had more than one game on the go? All sorts! LM: Loads of features from the original design didn't make it in. We're a small, self-funded studio so we had to be brutal and cut a lot for the first episode. Otherwise we would have run out of money and would never have released the game. We wanted to build our own game engine too, so that took a major slice out of our dev time. What were the biggest obstacles you had to overcome through the development process? BM: Most of the development tasks were fine. The hardest aspect for me was all the stress of actually starting a business. Slowly burning through savings, knowing that you had enough to last until a certain date, then game over. It was like this great constant shadow was hanging over us driving things on. It's weird going from a fairly well paid position to having nothing, whilst working harder than you have in your life. Totally worth it though! How did the design change throughout the games development? BM:Aside from the whole multiplayer thing, it wasn't too bad. Once we pretty much had our overall structure figured out at the start, it all remained fairly fixed for the duration. Obviously little things changed here and there. I still remember the heated debate on a sunny Friday afternoon on the merits of putting the melee class Hammer guy in. Thankfully we made the right call on that one. At what point did you realise you had come up with something special? BM: Ha, when I got into trouble with my girlfriend at Christmas for playing too much Hunters. So, I showed her how to play and didn't see my phone for the rest of the break. There's a certain draw with turn-based mechanics, that no matter how they are dressed up, speak to a huge audience. What part of Hunters are you most happy with? LM: There is so much I want to change, redesign and add, I'm happy with the game we created given the time and resource we had, but there's so much cool stuff being designed right now that I just can't wait for the next version to be ready. If there's one area I'm most happy about, I'd probably say the way we designed and built the controls. It's the area we got closest to having exactly as we wanted. BM: I know it's highly self-indulgent, but for me it's the art. Every other game I've worked on has been a huge group effort, but this time it was just me. Loads and loads of pressure, but it's the greatest feeling to have people writing to us saying they love the game, especially the graphics. What most surprised you about the audience feedback? LM: The amount of it. In the first few weeks after launch we must have been getting 50+ emails a day, so keeping on top it was pretty much a full time job. Bug reports needed to be checked and passed on to the programmers. Suggestion and feedback emails were all reviewed and the strong ideas were added to the future dev wish list. We respond to every email we get: in the 70 days after launch, we got over 1,400 of them, which for now is just about manageable, if people take the time to get in touch with us then we want to respond, even if it's just a thanks for letting us know. Can you give a rough breakdown of the development time? BM:We started properly in August 2010. Pre-production and our six week vertical slice demo lasted until September. Then it was four-ish months of full on production taking us to January 2011, which left February for testing, press and release... we're going to make more time for that last stage next time. LM: By full on, Ben means six days a week 14+ hours a day, it was pretty brutal. We've learned a lot about the post production stage this time round. Things are going to be smoother on that side of things going forward. Thanks to Ben and Laurent for their time. Hunters: Episode One: is available for iPhone, currently priced 99c, €0.79 or 69p [iTunes link], and $4.99, €3.99 or £2.99 for the iPad version [iTunes link].
Jon Jordan
Jon Jordan
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon can turn his hand to anything except hand turning. He is editor-at-large at PG.biz which means he can arrive anywhere in the world, acting like a slightly confused uncle looking for the way out. He likes letters, cameras, imaginary numbers and legumes.