Interview | Image & Form Discusses SteamWorld Dig for Nintendo 3DS eShop

Brjann Sigurgeirsson: I founded Image & Form in 1997, and we started out as a 2-person multimedia and web company. The reason for founding the company was that I had developed multimedia experiences while living in Tokyo (90-95) and San Francisco (95-97), and when I got back to Gothenburg I applied for a few jobs - and got them all. So I decided there must be a market for the things we did, and started Image & Form instead. We went from multimedia, web and small games to web development on a bigger scale. In 2002 we were asked to "save" a capsizing "edutainment" game project for a Norwegian publisher, and then got asked to do games from scratch for them. It still felt like a side business until 2007, when we were asked to increase the production speed from one game in 18 months to 8 games per year... then we didn't have time for anything else.
 
Cubed3:  With many years of PC/Mac development, what made the team switch to mobile, DSiWare and now Nintendo 3DS?

Brjann Sigurgeirsson: We created some 30 unique full-length edutainment titles in the same franchise from 2007 until early 2010, and then we decided that enough was enough. We had a lot of "grownup" game ideas and were creatively starved, and had also slid to the rear of the pack by using the same old framework for the same old platforms (CD-ROM games for Mac/PC). So we thought that in order to survive we would have to come up with good game ideas and develop IPs for new platforms. It was a huge leap out of our comfort zone, going from the safe but fragile state as a completely work-for-hire developer to a self-publisher. Would we make it in this new role?

In late 2009 we decided to pull ahead and started developing our first iOS title, Gyro the Sheepdog. It's a nice little game, but we really were rookies on the Apple iOS scene, as were many others. We didn't know at all how to spread the word about the game, what we could expect in terms of ROI, or even how we should limit the scope of the game. We decided to release it just to learn the mechanics of the App Store, reviews etc, but generally it was a failure.

In parallel we developed SteamWorld Tower Defense for Nintendo DSiWare. Already at that time we were eyeing the blue ocean third-party titles for the Nintendo DS, comparing it to the congestion of the AppStore. We thought it should be possible to make money off a game on the DSiWare store. We thought the storefront itself was terrible, but we got a couple of good reviews, most notably from IGN who decided that the game was "Great", and SteamWorld Tower Defense paid for itself pretty soon after launch. It was a great experience, since we always "knew" that we could try developing for the Nintendo 3DS and the eShop.

Also, by the end of 2010 we were awarded a grant from the Nordic Game Program for a game idea that we called Anthill. Since we got the money we felt obliged to produce a game, and to be honest our initial thoughts - for which we got a grant - were sketchy, to say the least. We really had no idea how Anthill would work, and reading the game pitch now is a great source for laughs. They must have seen something that definitely wasn't there.
 
We continued to do work for hire, among others a game called Mariachi Hero, which was really cool but got terrible reviews in the US. The game was set in the Mexican desert, where the protagonist was either a Mexican-looking man or woman. The game graphics were very cartoonish, and so were "our heroes". We had no bad intentions at all, but some US reviewers decided that we were poking fun at Mexicans, and labelled the game "incredibly racist". The shock and horror! I guess there must be a collective bad conscience swimming about, and we ended up paying for historical figures like Speedy Gonzales and the "ugly" guy from "The good, the bad and the ugly".

After that we concentrated fiercely on Anthill, and after a while we realised it would be a stunner of a game. We were still marketing rookies, we were almost completely unknown, didn't really know where to turn to get noticed, and in desperation - a month prior to launch - decided to contact Apple and really flaunt the game. We were surprised and lucky: they thought Anthill was awesome, and decided to feature it as iPad Game of the Week - which was a huge break for us when we released it in October 2011.
 
Since then we've developed an iOS game called Hugo Troll Race, a 3D horizontal runner reminiscent of Temple Run and similar. That was probably the last work-for-hire game we'll ever do. And now we're focusing all our efforts on SteamWorld Dig for the Nintendo 3DS.
 
Cubed3: SteamWorld Dig looks and sounds really intriguing, please tell us a bit more about the concept.
 
Brjann Sigurgeirsson: We call SteamWorld Dig a "platform mining adventure". That means that the controls are like a platform game, the objective is mining, and the emergent gameplay makes it an adventure. We believe that mixing game genres makes for a deeper game experience - a lesson learned from the success of Anthill, which was a mix of castle defence, real-time strategy, resource management and line drawing. In SteamWorld Dig, we aim to mix platform play with puzzles and emergent elements.

The alternate-reality (and in the game largely untold) background is this: Humanity made a great technology leap around the turn of the 20th century, and among others managed to create steam-driven robots who could replace the working class. Not long after, humankind self-destructed in a great war, and the remaining quarrelsome, desperate lowlives - the very bottom of the barrel - live and huddle underground. These people are neither role models nor heroes. In fact, the robots are the good guys; hard-working, everyday "people" who strive to make things work.

Our protagonist Rusty, a lone robot (or "cowbot", as we call him) comes to a small Western mining town called Tumbleton, after having received a deed for a mine from his long-forgotten uncle. Although the inhabitants are friendly and helpful, there's something very wrong with the town. Rusty will find out what it is... towards the end of the game.

The objective of the game is to mine, sell, upgrade equipment, watch the town recover - and dig ever deeper to find what evil lurks below. Since the game maps are generated procedurally, no two game sessions will ever be the same. There are a lot of quirky mechanics that help you navigate the underground, things that may be obvious to a robot but which require some mastery for humans.
 
Cubed3: The game's art direction looks gorgeous, how does the 3D effect/Nintendo 3DS technology come into play?
 
Brjann Sigurgeirsson: SteamWorld Dig is played in a side-view 2D landscape. However, since there is the Z axis as well, backgrounds are revealed as you dig down - which makes use of the stereoscopic effect and looks very nice, although we want to be sure that the game works just as well with and without the 3D effect. The game is definitely a D-pad experience - it'll be a tricky port to touch-screen devices, but should work just as well on other D-pad devices.

 
Cubed3: Are there any gameplay mechanics that use other Nintendo 3DS technology, like motion control or touch screen?
 
Brjann Sigurgeirsson: No, not really. Obviously the click buttons are on the touch screen, and can be used as such, but since so much of the game is played via the D-pad, we believe that players won't want to take their thumbs away to click the screen. In that sense, it's quite traditional.
 
Cubed3: Please tell us a bit more about protagonist Rusty, is he considered one of the good guys and what's his relationship with humans?
 
Brjann Sigurgeirsson: Rusty is your token lone Western cowbot hero, who doesn't really like to talk too much, and definitely doesn't complain about the workload. He's fearless, handsome in a robot-ish way, and has an adequately-sized coal furnace for a belly. He's definitely one of the good guys, and perhaps the robotic equivalent of Clint Eastwood's character in Unforgiven. His objective is to get the town back on its feet, and helping the townsfolk in the process. Rusty isn't prone to violence, unless it seeks him out. He really has nothing against humans, but they have something against him. Bad mistake and their loss (we hope). He's not that curious, but here is a real mystery. And someone's got to solve it.
 
Cubed3: We find Rusty gathering treasure and minerals throughout SteamWorld Dig, what would these be used for?
 
Brjann Sigurgeirsson: They're used for trading. As all treasure hidden underground, it needs to be converted into cold, hard cash before you can buy things with them. A steam-driven robot has use for other things than humans - coal for light and energy, and water to produce steam. Luckily, this can be found - as long as one has something to trade for it.

 
Cubed3: Are there any direct links to SteamWorld: Tower Defense, would this be considered a sequel?

Brjann Sigurgeirsson: Yes and no. When we made SteamWorld TD, we felt that we only scratched the surface on this twisted world where humans are the thieving, dynamite-wielding bad guys, and robots need to defend their mines. It was enough for a story, but it was never told. However, the game mechanics are obviously totally different in SteamWorld Dig, so it's not a real sequel, but it's a continuation of the same universe. At the same time, we don't want to reveal the entire story and universe in SteamWorld Dig, because we've got more plans for SteamWorld in the future - new games, with new and different game mechanics.
 
Cubed3: It's interesting to find robots being pitched as the good guys with humans left as villains, why the switch in convention?

Brjann Sigurgeirsson: It makes for an interesting setup - for example, you wouldn't stop to ask questions in this interview about the relation between humans and robots if we'd made a conventional game. We're quite used to humans being outnumbered and outgunned by evil automatons, where a lone hero or a small group manage to rebel their way to the finishing line like in, say, Terminator, Star Wars or even the Alien franchise, where the bad guys are biological but might as well have been made out of metal. It's intriguing to make the robots the good guys. After all, they have all the traits of your everyday hero. They work hard and are selfless, whereas you could argue that we humans actually are driven by laziness and greed.
 

Cubed3: Are there multiplayer/online options for SteamWorld Dig? Multiple robot action would be great fun!

Brjann Sigurgeirsson: Yes it would, wouldn't it? But SteamWorld Dig is a lonely cowbot's game. It is single player all the way. However, we've discussed and want to implement multiplayer features in coming SteamWorld games. Remember that we are a pretty small outfit; adding multiplayer functionality multiplies the complexity of any gameplay. A lot of happy Anthill users would like to see multiplayer modes there, but it's a much bigger task than it perhaps seems.
 
Cubed3: Defence/strategy games seems to be a popular choice from Image & Form - what is it about the genre that is so appealing?

Brjann Sigurgeirsson: Well, we love strategy games. SteamWorld Dig is not a defence game, but on the contrary it has layers of strategy. Strategy is clean, humbling and unforgiving. I guess we're all strategy buffs - many of the guys play strategy games in their spare time, and I myself play chess whenever I have a spare minute. The thing about chess (or any strategy game) is that there's much more skill than random luck. And we develop games that we like to play ourselves. Otherwise we'd be back to creative starvation.
 
Cubed3: What would be your ideal role model/inspiration in the development world?

Brjann Sigurgeirsson: Exactly the above: people who develop games that they love to play, who are creative and have the tenacity to keep believing in and arguing for their ideas. I think that many game developers create games they don't believe in, deep down. It can be because of the harsh reality of having to do work for hire in order to pay salaries. But on a bigger scale it can also be greed, which is a trend in free-to-play games - design that seeks to make as much money as possible from a player during the course of a game. I think you make really good games by putting your heart into the game itself, not by starting with "this quarter we need to make a game that will earn us this much." It can't last. Offering quality games for a price versus getting people hooked on paying for the privilege to continue playing is as different as selling single-malt whisky and peddling crack.

There are brilliant companies that let great, creative ideas start their development processes - such as Thatgamecompany or Swedish studio Simogo. They are incapable of making bad games, since they know that they're brilliant and that their ideas are strong enough.

Now, this all sounds dandy. Day-to-day economics can of course make it very hard even for geniuses. But great ideas deserve to be developed, and will be, as long as they're great enough and the developer is ready to go through hell and high water to see them through.
 
Cubed3: How has working with Nintendo been so far? Would you consider more projects for Nintendo 3DS?

Brjann Sigurgeirsson: Working with Nintendo on SteamWorld Dig has been very nice so far. They promptly answer our questions, and are both very professional and personal. I do think they've evolved, and their tools and processes are easier to work with. Obviously we are also better at asking for their help than before. When we made SteamWorld Tower Defense, we were very aware of the huge difference between tiny Image & Form and enormous Nintendo. But they're naturally friendly people who do all they can to help.
 
Cubed3: SteamWorld Dig seems to be a great fit for Nintendo 3DS, would you consider bringing the project to Wii U?

Brjann Sigurgeirsson: Well, the step is not that huge. Both consoles are D-pad-friendly, and Nintendo is taking measures to make it easier to port 3DS titles to Nintendo Wii U.