The Indie Scene | Tanukii Studios Page 1

Focusing on independent developers on Nintendo platforms, The Indie Scene takes a monthly look at small companies that are hard at work on titles destined for either download or retail. This month The Indie Scene peers at DSiWare developer Tanukii Studios and speaks to its founder and sole member, Keith Webb. Be sure to click the audio links throughout for further information...

Once upon a time there lived a white cat. Previously a stray, it found itself homed by the parents of an artist, where it would happily allow itself to be petted...though its occasional psychotic episodes and fits of rage would stick in the back of the concept artist's mind. Evolving into an idea over a number of years, the unsuspecting feline would find itself mixed with inspirations ranging from Sam & Max to Taito classics such as New Zealand Story to become the lead character of DSiWare arcade-action title Go! Go! Kokopolo.

Kokopolo's Origins

That concept artist would be Keith Webb, the sole member of independent developer Tanukii Studios and the man responsible for the Hyper 8-Bit Memories artwork that you might have seen around the big bad internet. Go! Go! Kokopolo is the first game from Tanukii, pitting players as a highly irritable mog, awoken from his slumber by some misplaced bongos. Determined to get some shut-eye - and a little revenge - Kokopolo charges around a series of mazes, infuriating a variety of animals and anthropomorphic vegetables by scratching at them. When sufficiently goaded they will chase Kokopolo, matching him step for step, who must dart around the maze frantically, searching for a Snap Snap Plant to leap over to deposit foes inside. "He was originally quite a nice character, with a big smile and stuff, and then I thought 'let’s turn him a little more mischievous'," Keith explains.

Keith Webb's Hyper 8-Bit Memories. Click for full image.
Before Tanukii Studios was formed, however, Webb worked in a small development team at Traveller's Tales Oxford for around five years. An off-shoot of the main studio in Knutsford, it housed only 20 - 30 employees at a time, and was created initially to build Crash Bandicoot title Crash Twinsanity. Webb worked as concept artist and character designer on the game. "Quite a few people like it, which is good...but it is full of bugs," Keith laughs. "It’s got some interesting YouTube videos about it because of that." Later the team were responsible for SEGA's Super Monkey Ball Adventure, and worked on the prototype of LEGO Batman: The Videogame.

On Traveller's Tales Oxford

As they were taking up development duties on LEGO Batman, though, TT Games acquired a studio closer to their Cheshire base, and the Oxford branch of Traveller's Tales was shut down. Keith recalls that "[Traveller's Tales Oxford] was a really good group of people, really good bunch of mates. We worked really well together." However, despite the unfortunate circumstances, Webb took advantage of the situation. Still incubating ideas of crazy cats, he took on contract work with the likes of Codemasters, Sony and Rebellion - where he was responsible for storyboards and some cutscene / setpiece design on The Simpsons Game - while simultaneously looking into the possibility of setting up his own company. "When I first got in the industry, I thought 'a lot of people are gonna want to set up their own company,' and not many people did. So when Traveller’s Tales was going, I was all the time thinking, 'I want to have a try and do my own thing.' So when it all closed down I did a bit of contract work for other studios, like Codemasters. But in my spare time, [I had to] figure out how to set up my own company, and all the legal stuff behind all that as well." Initially intending to work with ex-colleagues at Tanukii Studios, Keith found himself going solo after the others landed jobs elsewhere.

The prospect of becoming an independent developer was made slightly less daunting thanks to Keith's experiences with Traveller's Tales Oxford. Since it was a tiny team, Webb was able to observe how things worked throughout the development process. "With Traveller’s Tales [Oxford] being such a small company, it meant that you could see how it was run. You could see the management point of view, so I picked up some stuff from that." Despite this, he had only been fully involved in the beginning stages as a concept artist, plus creating promotional materials towards the end of the process. It was surely a relief, then, that Webb was able to consult past bosses and colleagues while feeling his way through setting up a company. Steve Riding and Graham Monk, both studio managers at Traveller's Tales Oxford at various times, offered advice and helpful contacts. "I had a lot of people to talk to about certain things: contracts and setting up and stuff like that."

Setting Up

While dealing with the legalities of setting up Tanukii Studios and juggling contract work, Webb was busying himself by filling out Go! Go! Kokopolo, the idea that had been bouncing around in his head for years. Drawing up the characters, developing the gameplay concepts and designing the levels, Webb planned out the entire title, drawing inspiration from Pac-Man, Snake and Bubble Bobble. "A lot of the maze layouts were inspired by New Zealand Story. With Mario you go from left to right, but with other games you loop around, and the levels are a little more complexly put together." There was one problem, though - he had no programming experience. That Traveller's Tales past came in handy once more when Webb hooked up with Room4Games through shared colleagues. The Hungary-based company, itself consisting of only two staff, gameplay programmer Gergo Kiss and engine programmer Szilard Peteri, had just become licenced DSiWare developers after working on numerous Game Boy Advance games individually. With much of the design complete, Tanukii Studios and Room4Games combined their forces to develop Go! Go! Kokopolo. "I came in with the character, the basic concept of the game, all the levels, all the artwork - basically the entire design, but they handled all the programming side. Tanukii Studios basically owns the IP, Room4Games has the engine code which we used," Keith explains the divide of rights.

Go! Go! Kokopolo's development was not typical, though you would not realise it if you were to look at the game alone. With director, producer, designer and artist Webb based in the UK, and the programmers living in Hungary, most of the communication was via email or messages exchanged on their online bug database. In fact, Webb and Peteri only met a single time during the year and a half of core development - for just half an hour. Webb's artistry certainly helped the process. "Because I had the sprites already done I could show, in terms of the animation, how [the characters] would move, the speed and how the chains would work and things like that. So I gave them that before we even started the project, and they could look at that so they had a clear idea, bang, straight away, of how it was going to work."

Working Remotely

Go! Go! Kokopolo was originally meant to be a retail title, but DSiWare was a good fit after an unsuccessful search for a publisher. Amazingly, given the amount of content in the game, no cuts had to be made - it just about squeezed into the DSiWare filesize limit after some clever arrangement of sprites and audio compression. Small music outfit 2db Music, another contact gained through Traveller's Tales after past collaboration on Super Monkey Ball Adventure, added the title's sound. "I met them a couple of times when they came down to work on Monkey Ball, but again this was a case of one of the managers getting me in touch with them, saying 'look, this guy needs some music for his game'. We talked it over, sent them a load of YouTube videos of music from other games that I really liked. There were a couple of changes, because some of them sounded a little bit...too familiar to the original tracks," Keith laughs. Without musical background, he had to put his faith in the company. "I was really pleased with the music. I guess out of the whole design - I don’t have much musical background - the music was the one thing I didn’t really have that much control over. But it came out really well."

With Go! Go! Kokopolo now unleashed into the wild, Webb and Tanukii Studios are looking to the future, including expansion to merchandising outside of gaming. While more DSiWare titles very much depend upon how well Go! Go! Kokopolo sells, 3DS and iPhone certainly play into those plans for the moment. "Kokopolo might not have worked too well on iPhone, because you need the D-pad and buttons to control it. That’s the only thing that stopped me from doing an iPhone port straight away." There's also an urge to take Tanukii games to the big screen on HD console download services, and Keith already has a "very simple" idea in mind. "There’ll be a lot going on on the screen, so it couldn’t be on a handheld," he notes, also ruling out any possibility of a WiiWare release.

The Future

While Webb notes working on the Crash Bandicoot IP as a career highlight, it's pleasing to see him settle upon Go! Go! Kokopolo as his favourite experience in the gaming industry so far. "I think it’s been this. It’s been Kokopolo. It’s been something I’ve always wanted to do, to get my own project out there. [...] Because when I set it up I didn’t know if it was going to work or not, whether I’d be able to actually get a game out there. And I did, so that’s good." Tanukii Studios' next game probably won't involve Kokopolo, though, and Webb playfully mentions building up a portfolio of different characters. "Maybe ten years down the line, [we'll] have a big kind of Smash Brothers sort of thing and get all the different characters together and mash them all up." With his choleric complexion and punishing paws, we wouldn't rule Kokopolo out of winning that theoretical competition...

Go! Go! Kokopolo website.
Keith Webb's website.

Thanks to Keith Webb for giving his time to speak to us. Go! Go! Kokopolo is available for purchase right now on Nintendo DSiWare and eShop and is well worth supporting. Go on - you don't want to make Kokopolo mad...

Also be on the look out for future issues of The Indie Scene coming monthly on Cubed3. If there are any independent developers on Nintendo platforms that you'd like us to take a closer look at, please feel free to get in touch...

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