We recently wrote about a game we came across at Rezzed last month called Sneaksneak, an original co-op platform title by Frambosa. The new developers have been kind enough to take some time out of their busy schedules to answer a few of our questions.
In Sneaksneak, a savage race of beings called the Roboquistadors have arrived on your shores with the overwhelming desire to claim your land as their own. With these monsters totally surrounding you, players must sneak their way to safety and try to discover how to banish the opposition from their homeland.
The developer’s website explains that the game is based on four main points: never play alone, be sneaky, be swift and stare endlessly. We were lucky enough to get our hands on a copy of the version showcased at Rezzed and a gameplay video can be found below – each point has been created perfectly with obviously a lot of time, care and attention.
Frambosa is a new, ambitious and talented game studio based in Amsterdam, founded by Jonathan Barbosa Dijkstra. The team of talented developers work to bring us this future classic whilst also going to university. Jonathan was kind enough to take some time out of his busy schedule recently to answer a few questions for us.
Could you tell us a little more about the storyline and its inspiration? Do we get to meet any other characters along the journey?
Sneaksneak tells the story of a land and its natives which are being overrun by the Roboquistadores, a race of robotic conquerors. The player takes control of two of these natives who have to work together to find out how to save their kin from robotic domination. Along the way you will meet a ‘guide’ type character who will help you reach your goal.
The setting in a way was inspired by the Age of Discovery. We chose this setting for a stealth game because it was something no stealth game had done before. We were looking to go in a different direction with Sneaksneak and eventually landed on a sort of alternate robotic Columbus era.
The graphic style reminds us of classic titles such as Flashback, with the colour palette and clean style – and the frogs are great! Were you inspired by any games in particular and what made you decide to go in this visual direction?
Actually our visual style is heavily inspired by our animator’s personal style. When he joined our team we looked through some of his work and loved the stylish simple shapes and vibrant colors and thus decided to make Sneaksneak like that.
Sneaksneak initially caught our eye at Rezzed because of the co-op gameplay; this certainly got us talking and working together when we created our gameplay video. Where did the idea for this enforced style of gameplay come from and will you ever consider single-player or online modes?
Actually when we started with Sneaksneak the only thing we knew for sure was that we wanted to give people a great co-op experience. So basically we built the game with co-op at its base. Something we really wanted to enforce was communication between players because we felt that this would really strengthen the player’s engagement with the game. I don’t think a single-player mode will ever be in the game as that would make it an entirely different experience, an experience we did not set out to make. Online co-op will probably be in it eventually, we are looking in to how to make this work well.
The bit that’s stumped us the most so far is level 4 of block 1, where it’s necessary to break through the rocks to reach the checkpoint. How long does it take on average to come up with a level? How many will there be once the title is completed and which are you most proud of?
Designing new challenges sometimes takes an entire day to perfect, other times it’s done within the hour. It all depends on how complex it has to be, how many game elements you want to incorporate in it etc. The current version of the game has 12 levels, for a final version we are aiming towards 40. And as to which level I’m proudest of, I’m honestly not sure. They were all so fun to make and I feel each has its own ‘spice’ to it.
It must have been extremely disappointing to not be able to attend Game Connection Asia. How did the team react to this, and are you confident for Game Connection Europe?
It was a bit of a bummer but we also saw it as another sign that we were doing pretty good with Sneaksneak. Plus we had some other events we were going to so eventually we didn’t mind all that much. When Game Connection Europe comes along we’ll give it another go and with a bit of luck we’ll make it. Looking at the games that made it previous years I think we might actually stand a chance.
Can you tell us which component of the game you’re currently working on? How are you feeling about its upcoming release?
Currently we are working on reprogramming the entire thing in Unity (the original was in XNA). But we are restarting with a bigger better Sneaksneak in mind. We are not even thinking about its release yet though. We all work part time on this project so making Sneaksneak into a finished product will take quite a while.
Sneaksneak seems to be shaping up quite well, and if the team reach their goal of forty levels we’ll no doubt be glued to this original title for weeks. We can’t wait for it to be released and genuinely believe Frambosa have something special here; although it may be a little while yet, the game will no doubt be worth the wait.
Thank you to Jonathan and the rest of the Frambosa team for giving us their time. They certainly have a bright future ahead.
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