TANK TROOPERS

Developer Vitei, Nintendo EAD Publisher Nintendo Format 3DS Release 2016

We wanted to make an extension of Steel Diver almost, in the same world, to build up a new world out of the two games. We tried various things rather than tanks – we tried boats and planes and stuff like that – but tanks are the most fun. You can make really cute characters pop out of the turrets. We were basically an extension of EAD at that point, so we had a couple of people from Nintendo in the office every day.

We wanted to make a [World Of Tanksstyle game]. You’re in your own squadron and you’re fighting against the enemy: battle royale with tanks. Quite early on, we found that it was really good fun playing it in the same room with a load of other people through local network play. We actually had online multiplayer working and we had a Switch version working at some point, but we had to take the online multiplayer out. That was an awful mistake, an awful decision. We really pushed back against it, but I think Nintendo baulked at the idea of having to have a server running, and they didn’t think it would be popular enough to justify the expense. I don’t think it was really about the QA time or anything like that, because we already had local multiplayer working and online multiplayer isn’t very different, it’s just slightly laggier. It was quite baffling why they took that out.

We made our own engine for the game and called it Usagi. It was basically a multiplatform 3D engine. We did most of the development on PC, so the Switch port was almost free – we actually went a bit further and upped the resolution of the textures. Again, I think Nintendo couldn’t justify the costs for releasing it on the Switch. I think they just thought the Switch version just wouldn’t sell enough. It was very frustrating, because it looked really nice on the Switch. It was one of my favourite games, and it was also really good fun – but the lack of online multiplayer was a real downer.