Interview

Indie Spotlight: Knife-wielding crabs star in Robot Squid's new mobile battle royale game King of Crabs

"It's a great achievement for the team but launching is just the start. We know the challenges will keep coming"

Indie Spotlight: Knife-wielding crabs star in Robot Squid's new mobile battle royale game King of Crabs

Breaking into the mobile games market is always a difficult task, no matter your background. With so many IP out in the wild, the notion of introducing a brand-new property into the mix can be a scary one.

Hoping to succeed with its first release is London-based independent studio Robot Squid. Many interpretations of the battle royale genre have been released so far, however the studio's King of Crabs looks set to be unlike anything we’ve seen before.

Acting as feisty crab, you must fight it out with all manner of crustacea for dominance in this 100 crab battle. The captivating title launches on iOS and Android from March 7th, 2019,

We spoke with Robot Squid’s co-founder and creative director Chris Dawson about the upcoming crab brawler as part of our Indie Spotlight serie and discussed the trials and tribulations of being an indie developer.

PocketGamer.Biz: How did you get started as an indie games developer?

Chris Dawson: After working at a few (less than successful) start-ups, I co-founded Future Games of London where I designed the Hungry Shark games and other original IP.

It's a great achievement for the team but launching is just the start. We know the challenges will keep coming.
Chris Dawson

We set up Robot Squid specifically to make real-time multiplayer games on mobile which we see as a growing trend. I prefer working in small teams and enjoy the roller coaster ride that is indie games development.

What is a typical day in your life as an indie?

Not surprisingly it’s mostly a heads down development, a quick catch up with the team and crack on. Some days we meet up at the office but often work remotely.

Before we got the office we used to meet up in pubs which we would not recommend long-term.

What have been the biggest challenges you’ve faced so far as an indie?

It's been a big challenge to get King of Crabs from prototype to market in a year, especially with the extra complexity of using our own server-side tech.

It's a great achievement for the team but launching is just the start. We know the challenges will keep coming.

King of Crabs launches on March 7th, 2019 across the App Store and Google Play

How do you define ‘success’?

From a company point of view, the greatest measure of success is the number of people playing and enjoying our games.

Secondly, it’s to make enough revenue to support our live games and invest in new ones. From a personal point of view, it's to be able to continue having fun making games which is something we don't take for granted.

What is your opinion of the mobile games market for indies right now?

It’s the best of times, it’s the worst of times. However, overall we think it's exciting to be a small independent studio right now.

There's still plenty of opportunities in the mobile games market because it’s constantly evolving. Middleware such as Unity has matured and have sped up development. App stores provide you with the ability to reach a huge audience and give fantastic support to indies.

The downside of course is that it's a crowded market which has become saturated with hyper-casual games, making it difficult to gain visibility. Gaining traction without user acquisition gets harder by the year but it's not impossible.

Our aim is to release a new game every year and continue to create unique offerings centred around multiplayer gameplay.
Chris Dawson

Could you tell us about Kings of Crabs?

King of Crabs is a free real-time multiplayer crab brawler game, where you fight against up to 100 players on a massive tropical island. There are lots of different crab species to collect and amusing weapons to use.

We’ve tried to authentically capture the behaviour of crabs within a world where crustaceans rule and anything goes.

Graphically, the game has been developed to take advantage of latest hardware to create a rich visual experience.

What are your current plans for the future?

Supporting King of Crabs long-term is our priority, adding new game modes and content to keep players engaged.

Beyond that we’ve some great ideas for game two, so we’ll be starting production once King of Crabs is fully established on the market. Our aim is to release a new game every year and continue to create unique offerings centred around multiplayer gameplay.

If you had an unlimited budget, what game would you most like to make?

Small budget games are more my thing but a humorous alien invasion game would be fun. I had fun designing one called Grabatron where you come down in your flying saucer and cause chaos with a retractable claw a bit like the film Mars Attacks.

So, a super high budget version of that with a Grand Theft Auto level of detail. But I wouldn't want to spend more than two years on it and it's likely to lose money!

What advice would you give other developers on ‘making it’ as an indie?

Keep the game simple, polished and unique. Make games that you enjoy developing and playing but also have commercial potential.

Get your basic beta version out into the market as early as possible to help gauge how much more development effort to put in, then iterate based on player feedback.

Avoid endless prototyping, sit with an idea for a while before doing any development then commit to it and get it out. If it’s good enough it’ll get noticed - if not take the learning to the next one.

Try not to fall foul of the sunk cost fallacy by spending years on a game that's clearly going to fail. Better to make smaller bets and work up to something more ambitious once you've had some success.

Deputy Editor

Matthew Forde is the deputy editor at PocketGamer.biz and also a member of the Pocket Gamer Podcast. You can find him on Twitter @MattForde64 talking about stats, data and everything pop culture related - particularly superheroes.