One of the final games to be released commercially for the PS Vita was the critically-acclaimed Astro Aqua Kitty. Dugan Jackson – owner of Tikipod – spared some time to talk to us about the shoot-em-up series and their work on the PS Vita…
Firstly, can you tell us a bit about yourself and Tikipod?
Hello – I have been working in game development since the late 90s, and been fortunate to work on all sorts of hardware formats from PS1 and onward (even Gizmondo!). Tikipod was setup around the time I was contracting on Gravity Crash on PS3.
You’re most known amongst the Vita community for Aqua Kitty, but you’ve also worked for other developers as well. Can you tell us about that?
Yep, well before setting up Tikipod I had worked at various companies who tended to make titles for publishers (rather than self-fund their own projects). And in more recent years I have worked with companies like Curve and Just Add Water in a contractor capacity.
Moving onto Aqua Kitty now… where did the idea come from and beyond the obvious arcade inspiration, what were your influences?
The game began as a puzzle based shooter for XBLIG, we were doing it in our spare time and did not have a clear plan, so were just experimenting about. It was a while ago so I can’t exactly remember all the details of how it ended up as it did, but there were a mix of factors such as the Deepwater oil spill in the US which gave rise to the drilling/mining theme, plus Nyancat was a big thing so we tried adding cats to the mix and so on.
Amiga and PC Engine games were both an influence on the look, plus In The Hunt by Irem.
Aqua Kitty has developed something of a cult following amongst gamers. Did you ever expect it to grow the way it has from its humble beginnings on PlayStation Mobile?
No not at all. PSM gave us an opportunity to get the game completed fast, so we were racing full tilt to just finish the game for the launch date and not really thinking beyond that.
PlayStation Mobile was used by many developers used as an introductory platform to get into the PlayStation eco-system. How did you find it to work with?
Again, it was a while ago so details are a bit vague now. Negatives I remember are that the tablet PSM supported had dire fill rate, and the store tab on PSVita was a bit secluded. But the staff at Sony were a huge help, and we loved being able to develop on a retail PSVita.
Do you think there’s an equivalent to PSM out there anywhere else right now?
No idea I’m afraid.
Many of its supporters compared PlayStation Mobile to the Minis range, praising it for its low-cost approach to bite-sized gaming. Do you think it could have been as successful?
I would have loved to have seen a special boxed PSVita promoting the fact you could develop your own games at home.
Why do you think PSM ultimately failed as a gaming platform?
Not sure really, we didn’t really keep an eye on it once we had access to proper devkits. Maybe it needed more standout titles to keep it going?
Both Aqua Kitty and Rock Boshers pay tribute in their stylings to the 8-bit and 16-bit era. Is it safe to say that you’re something of an old-school gamer at heart?
Yeah I was lucky to grow up in the era of 80s Arcades, the Speccy, Amiga and so on.
Was it that love of retro part of your decision to approach Electric Café to provide the distinctive chip music for most of your games to-date?
I met them whilst working on a different job, they were great to work with and I had been really impressed with the audio they did. So it just made sense to give them a shout so see if they would be interested in helping out with Aqua Kitty.
You’ve worked with several publishers to produce limited physical releases of your games across a range of platforms. How did these come about?
Just by emailing and asking if they were interested 😀
Were there any plans to port your medieval twin-stick shooter Iron Crypticle across to the Vita at any point?
We thought about it, but felt it was too much work and might not recoup. Plus we would have only been able to have single player mode, doing multiplayer would have been a huge task.
You shocked everyone recently with a surprise update to Astro Aqua Kitty, adding the Arcade Mode to the game effectively making it two games in one. What made you decide to add this to the game rather than releasing it as a standalone title?
I always like games that have some extra mode or other, which is a bit different to the main game. So we made a new mode that it a bit R-Type like in how it’s a fixed path side scroller.
The Arcade Mode is much tougher than the standard game. Was that intentional?
Yes, it’s one level, but a challenge like side scrollers from the olden days. You can play by just trying to get to the end, or once more confident then try to rescue all the cats too.
Each difficulty mode adds extra enemies and hazards as well. And although it’s tough, you are given several health hearts (rather than being one hit death) and can collide with walls without taking damage.
You we able to bring us Astro Aqua Kitty as your final release for the PS Vita before Sony closed off submissions, but did you have plans for any further Vita games?
No that was our final planned Vita game. We are very glad we could get it released before the cut off, as that would have been really sad if it had never come out on Vita.
Now the PS Vita isn’t part of your future plans, what’s next for Tikipod?
Not entirely sure at the moment, but once we have some concrete plans we`ll let folks know.
One final question… have we seen the last of the Aqua Kitty series, or will they make a return in the future?
I am sure we will come back to the world of Aqua Kitty again sometime, not sure what sort of game it might be – but probably not a kart racer!
Thanks for your time and for all your support for the Vita community over the years!
Not a problem, we are all very glad to be able to complete one last Vita title for everyone to enjoy.
Tikipod can be found online at www.tikipod.com or on Twitter at @TIKIPODltd
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This interview was originally published in the first issue of Vita Player Magazine
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