The growth of Birmingham-based developer VooFoo has been a slow burn to say the least. It started out with just three men and a dream to make indie games. It’s since grown to seven employees in six years, and shows no sign – or intention – of speeding up. How fitting, then, that the games VooFoo meticulously labours over in its cosy abode reward slow, careful and strategic locomotion themselves.
Pool and chess may not be the sexiest choices for videogame subject matter, but the small outfit drew in a cult following with Hustle Kings and Pure Chess on PSN, proving that there’s an audience for games that hark back to the very roots of competitive gaming in the real world, even in the age of instant-gratification mini-games and on-the-go apps.
“It’s been difficult in the past, up to this point, to get any real grasp on the telemetry of our players’ demographics,” explains technology director Mark Williams in a suitably slow, quiet drawl. “I personally see it being people just like us [at the studio], people who maybe grew up hanging out in pool halls but now perhaps don’t have the time or the facilities aren’t around to support that. So we’re offering it on consoles and I think the popularity of our games is also showing that the new generation are happy to be discovering these older games, if you want to call them that, for the first time, at home. A long time ago you’d play chess in school and that was it, you’d never play it again, with something like Pure Chess we extend that, we open it up so you can make it your hobby regardless of age or where you are.”
Transferring games with established and long-standing rules to consoles may sound like a light workload, but VooFoo’s slow and steady approach is reflective of the deceptively high demand such a ‘porting job’ places on a developer, with the team keen to capture the look and feel of the real games they’re based on while subtly adding their own design flair and flourishes.
“These are games close to peoples’ hearts,” adds Williams, “we have to get it right. The feel, sound, look – that’s why we go to such lengths in polishing and detailing these games; it has to feel right and a lot of that comes down to the style.”
The team’s latest project, Backgammon, aims to continue and add to the studio’s design tradition with the added brunt of next-gen tech. There’s cross-play on offer for Vita, PS3 and PS4 users and with the launch on PS4 next month VooFoo’s hoping to offer the equivalent go-to strategy experience that Solitaire did for the desktop PC crowd back in the day.
“We’re hoping it’ll fill that void, that gap, for people between those big blockbuster experiences,” says Williams. Big, blockbuster experiences are something VooFoo’s seventh member knows something about. Shaun Read, the studio’s creative producer of five weeks long, left Rare after 18 years working on everything from Bond to Kong. “The thing I’ve been really shocked, really amazed by, is how much work you can actually get done in a small team,” he says of the experience so far. “In many ways you can do as much as a twenty-man team here with under ten.”
When pressed if VooFoo is scared of scaling up – it does, after all, have a string of digital titles under its belt and no doubt the means to move beyond its humble surroundings – Read chips in with his own observations. “Can you grow too big? I mean at Rare we got to about 230 but I don’t think it was a major problem. Now can you grow too quickly? I think that’s the question. You see a lot of teams bite off more than they can chew after a couple of successes and end up having to shed staff when it doesn’t go to plan down the road.”
VooFoo’s Hustle Kings.
VooFoo’s small but economical and well-oiled workflow is something that’s been crucial to its favouritism with publishers and producers thus far. One such producer, Rob Karp, helped guide the team through the high-powered waters of working with Sony for the first time on Hustle Kings. “The thing that impressed me was always the streamlined nature of their productions – nothing was ever wasted,” he says. “And it’s been great to see the team carefully creep towards something a little more gutsy and arcadey with Backgammon.”
Backgammon may sound like business as usual for the studio – an established, some might say ‘plain’ boardgame – but it’s actually the team’s first overt move into more arcade gameplay, dramatically changing the underlying mechanics of the age-old rules and potentially a sign of things to come. “We’re testing the water a bit with this one,” says Williams, reminding that the team trades in caution and care not frivolity or frills. “The Blitz mode is where we’ve really sort of let the leash off – there were hints of it in Hustle Kings but we’re moving closer to that sort of experience now.”
Backgammon and the rest of the VooFoo canon may at first sight appear to be back-to-basics, but Williams is adamant that the new wave of Sony’s tactile tech will serve its humble aims well. “We’re definitely excited about the next-gen tech,” says Williams, “and we’re doing some interesting things with the trackpad on DualShock 4 to really give a sense of involvement.”
As the next generation of consoles dawns on us, it’s refreshing to find a studio built on patience and craftsmanship rather than headline-grabbing risk. But with Read onboard, the future for VooFoo may be injected with a little more gusto and ambition: “We’re carefully pushing into new waters with Backgammon,” says Read, “and if it works out for us, it could well be a sign of things to come. I’m certainly very excited to be on board now.”
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