Just like last year, LadiesGamers was once again present at GamesCom 2024 in Cologne. Thanks to PiratePR we had a chance to have a little interview with the developers of Streep!
Sticky Table is a little studio based in Belgium with two people, Ben Vanhaelst and Yvette Kooke. It was nice chatting with Yvette at Gamescom to talk about their new game.
How Sticky Table Came About
StickyTable is based in Deinze, Belgium, and is a studio of two indie game developers, each complementary. Both are driven by developing games and finding new ways to iterate on the game’s design. They were just Howest DAE students when they kicked off their game studio. They started it while still in school! Their mission and vision is to craft a captivating game experience by focusing on a single, finely honed mechanic that not only defines the gameplay but also engages the player.
They were challenged during a Valentine’s Day game jam to make a game with the theme was: “continuous without end”. And Yvette and Ben won, and the inspiration of that day led to the idea of Streep.
Prototyping Streep
For Streep, they searched for an object to base their game on and ended up focussing on a pen: how to make that work. You can of course draw lines with a pen, but there’s so much more you can do!
You could also draw the line across things, effectively obliterating them. What if there are elements that don’t belong in the paper world? You could tap them with the pen and try to get them out of the world. That’s the thought behind the prototype of Streep.
Because the world changes based on the way you play the game. If you choose to cross a creature out, the little character will get mad at you and eventually attack. If you choose to be kind and let everything be, your canvas will soon be full of lines. And one of the rules is that can’t cross your own line.
Effectively, in Streep you can play two different games: make the creatures mad, and it will turn into a bullet hell, as the creatures will throw bombs. The second way of playing is evading things without crossing your own line and meanwhile keeping the pen on the paper. This way, it’s a puzzle game.
So Streep invites you to a magical paper world where you, as a pen, hold the power to change everything. You can draw lines to alter the environment, reveal hidden secrets and protect against evildoers. Each decision you make with your pen shapes a unique adventure. What kind of world will you create?
Finetuning Streep
Sticky Table will, for now, keep finetuning Streep. Their goal is to develop it further towards it being a cosy game. There are so many possibilities when you think of drawing: you would also be able to add things and use colours that give a different effect. For example, a bucket of water thrown on a little fire character could make it freeze or go slower, making it easier to overcome.
You will be able to interact with everything in Streep’s 3D world. Starting out, the world and the beings living in it are stressed, and it’s up to you to restore the world. To succeed in the game, you will have to restore things level by level. Yvette mentioned they strive for Streep to be a game like A Short Hike.
There is no release date for Streep yet, but you can already wishlist the game here. Good news for handheld fans: the game is already tested on the Steam Deck and playable with a controller!
Advice For Aspiring Developers
Yvette had some final thoughts of advice for aspiring developers.
Game development is a difficult world, but with enough passion and love for your profession, you will get there. If it is already on your mind every moment of the day, just pour your enthusiasm in and you will surely reach your goal. Remember that, aside from development, you will also have to develop a lot of skills, like marketing, how to run a business, and a lot of soft skills. Don’t think you will be making big bucks, because it’s just as much about the passion for your project!
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