Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
We’re really a diverse bunch here at Daylight Studios, with an age range from 19 to 30-odd, so it’s pretty hard to say for sure. I think the one thing that definitely holds true, though, is the fact that we really enjoy what we do – be it cramming in every last pun, or laughing at dancing potatoes. It’s safe to say that we play just as hard as we work.
What was the first console/game you ever owned?’
It’s pretty hard to say, but some games we remember playing include: Digimon World 1 (on PS1), Tetris, Pong and Window’s Solitaire (ha).
Do you have any fond childhood memories based around gaming?
Me, personally? I just couldn’t wait to get back home from school to play video games especially when a friend would lend me a new game on one of those cartridges. Another one would be arguing with friends on who would be player 1, haha.
Before we discuss one of the cutest and quite possibly hilarious sims series out there, Holy Potatoes!, let’s learn more about Daylight Studios. How did the studio form and what was life like before spuds?
What was life like before spuds? In short, not too exciting!
Daylight Studios started as a mobile game company after the success of this game created by our founders called Reign of Heroes. This was way back! The game was not even for smartphones (they called it feature phones) as they weren’t that popular yet. It did superbly well in South-East Asia with a million players. Backed by the success of this game, Daylight Studios raised its first funding to make more such games with a bigger team.
Later, we jumped on the bandwagon with the rest of the world to make Free-to-Play MMORPG games for smartphones. Our main title was called Conquest Age and later renamed to Swords of Fate. We had fun doing it initially, but at some point it became all about maintaining numbers and operations, doing events to keep players engaged, planning features around KPIs such as DAU, ARPPU, retention, LTV etc. It got boring and tough to sustain and compete with the bigger companies spending loads of money on marketing.
We started on a ‘secret project’ in early 2014 with only a small team conceptualizing on a new game idea as a potential premium (mobile) game at first. It was something fresh and it got us all excited. And what happened next is history!
In July 2015, Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?! was released on Steam, followed two years later (July 2017) on mobile. Rather than do an injustice to this franchise, can you explain the concept behind the first Holy Potatoes! release and what ultimately became the first in this franchise?
We always wanted to make a simulation game. Even while working on our mobile project we threw ideas around about how we would do a Sim game. Our team members really loved games like Game Dev Story, Weapon Shop De Omasse and Game Dev Tycoon. It was around April/May 2014 when we were reaching the end of our other projects that we decided to really work on one! It all began with our Executive Producer (Don), Producer (myself) and Art Director (Julian) sitting at a coffee shop discussing new possibilities and what we all agreed on was that a team simulation game about making and selling weapons would be awesome. The RPG references was a natural part of it since heroes in any RPG world needed weapons! The Potatoes came later, when we were trying to figure out the right art style.
There is a very interesting blog post from our lead artist about how we came up with using adorable potatoes in the game. And once we decided on this wacky potato guys the team went crazy with amazing game ideas and we knew it was the right choice. The very next day, Don came to the office and told the team that the game’s name was going to be Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?! and that sealed its fate. We settled on it because we thought the ‘Dancing Potatoes’ by our lead artist looked cute, unique and colorful! It just opened up this door to so many possibilities. We created a whole RPG potato universe. We started to get so serious about the whole potato thing, that we set it as a long term goal to expand this universe further! We had cool ideas about games, merchandise and even theme parks (no kidding!).
We didn’t really know if the art would work out but over the next few months we started posting our potato people on social media and to our surprise, we gathered a large following of people who had no idea why we were posting pictures about potatoes! The first affirmation we had though was when our Steam Greenlight campaign was greenlit in 7 days. We knew that people really wanted this game to be made.
Recently, Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?! was released on the PS4 and Nintendo Switch. What were the feelings within the team of seeing your title on current gen consoles?
After Weapon Shop released on PC, we thought about potential console versions especially for the 3DS, but it never materialized. I guess we were too busy with the newer titles and didn’t have much experience with consoles anyway.
However, when Rising Star Games offered to be our publisher and support us in developing on consoles, we went ahead with it. I think an additional reason behind doing it was the release of Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo’s strategy of making it much easier (compared to 3DS) to bring games to their platform. It was still technically challenging but it was comforting to have an experienced console publisher on our side.
Once the game was released (just two weeks ago as of this interview), it was incredibly exciting for us because in a way it is a milestone in our studio’s history! Our first ever title on both Playstation and Nintendo Switch; which means a whole new audience who will love our games!
We’re also working on the release of our other titles, We’re in Space?! and What the Hell?!, on PS4 and Switch right now. It’s great to be switching things up and going forth to console; we’re always refining the controls and user interface!
How did Daylight Studios and Rising Star Games come together to release Holy Potatoes?!
We were at Gamescom in Germany when two representatives from Rising Star Games came over and told us that they wanted to bring the series to console. They really enjoyed our games and wanted to pitch it to their own company! It was an amazing opportunity and we knew we had to seize it. At first, it was just about Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?!, but later we thought why not all the titles? And we all agreed that it will be best for players to enjoy all of them on their favorite console.
From its first release, the Holy Potatoes! IP has had two additional games released and a fourth on the way. What is the mission with each new title and how does the studio continue to innovate the series?
In short, it’s to have fun; our Holy Potatoes! series is famous for its puns and references. The potatoes, too, show that we don’t take ourselves too seriously. All we want are our players to have a good laugh or snort at cameos from their favourite characters and chill out with some potato puns.
Everytime, we get together and brainstorm about the kind of games that we want to make – be it sci-fi space exploration (We’re in Space?!) or Greek mythology references (What the Hell?!). Then we pick the theme that can allow us to reference as many jokes and pop-culture references, and at the same time offer a fresh new experience to our players.
It’s going to be quite a discussion after A Spy Story?! – we’ll be looking into different possibilities following the Holy Potatoes! series, such as changing up the art style, genre, or even the franchise as a whole. It’s up to our passion to guide us, and that’s the best bet we’ve got.
What is the current status of Holy Potatoes! A Spy Story?!
It’s going! Everything – the art, the gameplay and the story – is close to completion. We’re still testing the game out in the meantime and logging any issues we run into or coming up with suggestions to make the game even more engaging.
Besides your own, what upcoming games are you most looking forward to playing?
This definitely calls to mind the PlayStation E3 showcase; Last of Us 2 looked really grand, as did Spider-Man’s open-world web-swinging. Beyond that, there are a couple of promising indie games like Ooblets and The Gardens Between that I’m looking forward to!
Finally, is there anything else you’d like to share?
Today, Daylight Studios strives to make good quality premium games, with captivating storyline, eye-catching graphics, alluring and innovative game mechanics.
We feel our decision to move from freemium to premium was a great move as premium games allow us to focus on creativity and innovation rather than keeping players buy in-app items. In fact, we think that freemium games today take away the real gaming experience as we loved from games in the last 20 years with engaging storylines and interesting mechanics.
Being an indie game developer today is tough with many games coming out every day and it’s challenging to get visibility. However, we still want to make a difference by creating games that are unique, and be passionate about what we are doing.
Follow Daylight Studios!
www.day-lightstudios.com
www.facebook.com/DaylightStudios
www.twitter.com/daylightgames
