Tortuga Team o Spaceland: "By a happy coincidence, the development has already paid off"
September turned out to be successful for the domestic Spaceland game. In the middle of the month, the project entered the launch line of games for Apple Arcade, and at the end it was released on Steam. We talked about the history of the game with the creative director of the studio Anton Mikhailov.
About business
Alexander Semenov, Senior Editor App2Top.ru : The most important question — about the terms of cooperation with Apple Arcade — I can’t ask you. I know that NDA. However, I can’t completely bypass this topic either. Tell me, please, how much does Arcade now change the history of Tortuga Team?
Anton Mikhailov
Anton Mikhailov, Creative Director of Spaceland: For us, this is a unique opportunity to give players access to our Spaceland story strategy without advertising and microtransactions.
Besides us, Amanita Design, Annapurna Interactive and other guys have already released their games on Apple Arcade. I think it will only get more interesting.
Spaceland is a premium game. Why premium again? Two years ago, you released Braveland Heroes — a freeplay, which today brings you the main cash register on mobile. Why go back to paid games?
Mikhailov: A certain fatigue from fritupley has accumulated. I wanted a bright and pleasant page development. However, as it turned out during the years of our absence, a lot has changed in the page. The release has become more complicated, has found many pitfalls. Anyway, we are still happy with the new experience and the result obtained.
When Spaceland was announced in April, it was generally said that you refuse not only frituplay, but also mobile. Do I understand correctly that before Apple’s offer, you wanted to limit yourself only to the desktop?
Mikhailov: It’s true. We wanted to release the game at first only on the desktop. We planned to publish the mobile version of the game only if successful on PC.
But in May, for luck, we sent an application to appear in Apple Arcade by filling it out on the Apple website. We were lucky. We were contacted and made a very tempting offer, because of which we postponed the release of the desktop version for three months and took up porting Spaceland to three platforms at once – iOS, Apple TV and Mac. By the way, we also added support for gamepads, Siri Remote, touch and other interesting things at this stage.
One more question about business. If, in general, we are now talking about the distribution of income, then what is their share — for mobile, what is for Steam?
Mikhailov: Let’s just say it’s harder to work with Steam now. You can earn money there, but it’s better to collaborate with a publisher. Just releasing a good game now is sometimes not enough.
In a year or two, which platform do you see as the main one for yourself and in general for teams like Tortuga Team?
Mikhailov: We’ll see. The market is changing very quickly. Now a lot depends not on where you want to be, but where they want to see you. I can’t make a guess right now, but I want to be where the audience is happy to see our games.
About the beginning of development
You’ve been doing Braveland for at least five years. What happened, after which you realized: it’s time to make a new big title from scratch. Was there a fateful conversation or meeting after which you decided it was time to change?
Mikhailov: There was no special meeting. Sometimes there are all sorts of interesting collaborations with our friends. It was from one of them that the Spaceland prototype was born. It developed with varying degrees of intensity and reached release four years later.
Now it seems that the idea of “making sci-fi in the spirit of Laser Squad” for a team that has spent many years on a series of turn-based games is something very obvious. But is this really the case? Perhaps there were some other possible scenarios?
Mikhailov: It only seems that the genre of the new game is similar to the genre of Braveland.
Spaceland required much more level design than the classical mathematics of game balance. Here we are faced with many new difficulties, which, we hope, we have successfully overcome.
Yes, there were scenarios to make the Spaceland game much more difficult (Spaceland in general was born from an ambitious and large project). But, having sensibly assessed our strength, we stopped at the current volume of the game. When working on it closer to the final, about 10 people were already involved.
Development
What composition did you start developing?
Mikhailov: Initially , we started with a line – up:
- 2 artists;
- 1 programmer;
- 1 game designer/producer.
Approximately such a core has been preserved until this spring. But with the connection to the Apple Arcade process, we have increased our strike force to 10 people. Added:
- 2 artists;
- 2 programmers;
- 1-3 testers.
Somewhere like that. Probably, at the peak, the number of those involved even reached 15 people.
You have moved to 3D. How painful was this transition?
Mikhailov: The art director of the project is an experienced 3D modeler and animator, so there were no special problems. Plus, while working with the prototype, we gained experience in 3D. At the time of the transition to sales, we were ready for full-fledged development in 3D.
What tools had to be finished for Unity?
Mikhailov: For Braveland Heroes, I had to finish quite a lot. In Spaceland, we switched more to Unity’s built-in capabilities (for example, we used a UI solution built into the engine).
We took the map editor from Braveland, but we wrote the mission editor from scratch. We wanted our game to have an in-game editor that could be passed on to those who want to help us with creating levels.
How long did the prototype take to prepare and how much did it differ from the final gameplay?
Mikhailov: We started making a prototype four years ago and, as I said, initially the project was much more ambitious. The basis of Spaceland is, I think, the third prototype, which went into pre—production, and then into full-fledged production. The base of the fighting plus or minus has been preserved from the very beginning.
Your levels are not drawn, but are assembled from tiles. How many assets had to be prepared? How big are your volumes?
Mikhailov: The volumes are average. Assets were made by five people (modellers and animators).
Modest volumes by modern standards. Although someone probably thinks that it is possible to “develop such a game in two man-months.” Maybe someone will even succeed. Who knows.
How much did it take on average to assemble the final level already?
Mikhailov: It took a lot of time to create logic of the same level. Each of them should bring something new to the gameplay.
It took me from two to four weeks to create one level. They were given to me very hard.
The game is content-based rather than based on generation and dramatic situations associated with sudden misses.
Visualization of the level as a whole was easy. Probably in the region of 3-5 days per level, if the elements are already prepared in advance.
Considering that you’ve got your hands full on the project. How fast, according to your estimates, will you be able to prepare sequels or similar games based on Spaceland?
Mikhailov: It will not be possible to make a continuation very quickly. A lot of effort goes into inventing the logic of the level. But if there is a plot DLC, then we will figure out how to speed up this process.
Yes, anyone who wants to try their hand at level design for Spaceland can contact us — spaceland@tortugateam.com . I think we can come up with interesting options for cooperation.
About game design
The main innovation in mechanics, when compared with other tactical sims, is a limited and very small number of cartridges. How was this solution implemented and how difficult was its balance already with the level design?
Mikhailov: This is a pretty risky mechanic today. The players are used to a different approach. To endless recharging, sitting in shelters. This approach is also called “Save-load” or “Save-scam”.
We decided to try new mechanics, added a risky element to the gameplay. The game immediately became more dynamic after that. Now it doesn’t make much sense to sit far away, wasting ammo (the farther the enemy is, the higher the chance of a miss, and the ammo is finite). In close combat, the chance of hitting is 100%, so it is more profitable to go forward.
It seems to me that Spaceland is more like a turn-based Doom than a turn-based Battlefield with sitting in shelters.
When promoting the game, it sounded like you were inspired by XCOM, Incubation and Laser Squad. What exactly was borrowed from these titles?
Mikhailov: Most of all there was to take from Incubation in terms of combat mechanics: running out of ammo, monsters crawling out of the ground. The atmosphere, however, is somewhat more positive.
As for XCOM, this is where the system of shelters, grenades of various types, exploring rooms, knocking out doors is taken from. It’s impossible to list everything.
What is taken from Laser Squad, given that XCOM was inspired by it, an attentive reader, I think, will determine for himself.
After getting acquainted with the game, I was surprised that no games were mentioned during the promotion (and they are not even on the More like this list on Steam), like Halfway and Into the Breach. It seemed to me that these games are much closer to Spaceland, not only in format, but also in mechanics. Don’t you think so?
Mikhailov: Yes. We were also inspired by these games. But Steam is constantly redesigning the recommendation system now. Therefore, it is not surprising that they are not in the list of similar titles with us. But I’m sure there are other games there. Maybe not so similar, but something more interesting from the point of view of Steam. A holy place is never empty.
About the present and the future
Against the background of the announcement of Apple Arcade, how was the launch on Steam?
Mikhailov: Surprisingly, the launch on Steam went somewhat better than we expected. But success is very far away. Plus, to our surprise, modern players have become even more demanding and picky.
We plan to release a number of improvements and updates on both Steam and Apple Arcade. Let’s see where this leads. By the way, our game is greeted much warmer at Arcade. The average rating around the world is 4.5 out of 5, and in Russia at the time of answering the questions even 4.9.
Can you tell me if the game has already paid off?
Mikhailov: By a happy coincidence, yes. :)
What to expect from the project in the near future?
Mikhailov: I don’t think I can disclose all the plans for Spaceland for various reasons, but we plan to develop the game. Additional levels and even online duels have already been announced. But I don’t think we’ll stop there.
I see. Thank you very much for the interview!
