Format: DSi
Release: TBC
Publisher: TBC
Developer: Goodbye Galaxy Games

One of the less explored consequences of digital distribution is the different types of narratives that it allows for. No longer must developers justify a double-digit price point with a story that takes you to the edges of the universe or the end of the world. Oceans don’t necessarily have to rise, humanity no longer has to be flung out along the brink of disaster, and design teams can leave their city-sinking worms back in the kennels. For the price of a few hundred Nintendo points, audiences have different expectations, and a quirkier kind of agenda becomes possible.

Take Flipper, a forthcoming DSiWare title from Netherlands-based developer Hugo Smits. “The game is called Flipper because the player needs to rescue his goldfish,” explains Smits. “The goldfish keeps on getting kidnapped by evil things like spooks, pirates and robots.” You know, a bit like Gears of War. In order to rescue the goldfish in each level, the player has to use a range of power-ups to modify the landscape and avoid enemies, blowing up walls, building staircases, and piecing missing bridges into existence.

A large part of Flipper’s not inconsiderable charm is down to the chunky art design. “I had a clear mission,” says Smits, who has recently joined forces with pixel artist Paul Veer to finalise Flipper’s look. “I wanted to bring back the feeling of early '90s games. I wanted to make something that felt, looked, and played like a real game. It seems like most games these days are divided into either art-games or Hollywood movie games. I don’t think it’s wrong to make anything in those categories, but I just really miss the old titles.”



The results were largely made possible by Smits’ home-baked voxel engine. “We were kind of pushed into this direction from a technical standpoint,” he suggests. “Because we use true 3D voxels, which are basically cubes, it already has this pixel-feel to it. That’s why I settled for voxels: they’re totally different than polygons, and in many ways much better. With my new engine we can dynamically change everything. Blow holes in the ground, restore it, or build new models.” Better it may be, but it was still a tricky piece of coding: “Normally voxels are done on big medical computers at the hospital,” admits Smits. “We’re doing them on a handheld. I feel pretty good about it.”

Despite the fact that Flipper seems uniquely at home as a downloadable title, the project started life as a standalone DS release. “In the summer of 2008 I made a prototype, which was very fun to play,” says Smits. “I found a publisher and everything was looking good. Unfortunately it was also the time that most of those companies really started to feel the results of the financial crisis. My publisher went bankrupt, and I was alone with my game. I refused to give up, though, because I could totally see the potential. Some friends at Nintendo played the prototype, and advised me to bring it to DSiWare.  I thought about it, and decided to go for it. Shifting platforms was really easy technically speaking, since the DSi’s pretty much the same as a normal DS, but with more RAM and a faster CPU.”



With a publisher now signed up (but not yet revealed), Smits is busy tweaking the game for a release later this year. With multiple puzzle worlds and a sequence of bespoke mini-challenges, it’s a surprisingly large undertaking for a one-man design team, but with glorious retro art and a charming concept, Flipper looks likely to provide a delicate counterpoint to some of the slicker products slowly piling up on DSiWare. And that, of course, would be another pleasant story digital distribution has made possible.