On our Patreon Page, we publish Indie Dev Interviews for our Patrons. The last one published is our interview with Diego Freire from Chibig, all the way from sunny Valencia Spain!
I was pretty happy that Diego agreed to do an interview with us: Chibig is the studio behind Summer in Mara, which started life as a kickstarter and hit the Switch this year with a bang. Interesting to take a look behind the screens, especially since they recently funded a new Kickstarter project for Deiland Pocket Planet Edition!
As I know many of our readers are big fans of Summer in Mara as well, I couldn’t resist sharing part of the interview with you in this Shorts.
Chibig: Small and Big Combined
How did Chibig come to life, and what’s behind the name Chibig?
Chibig started as a one-man-studio. Abraham, in his room, started making mobile games, just to try it and see what could happen. In 2016, he released Tiny Planet and Ankora for iOS and Android. These games are very important for the studio and for us, because they started the “Chibig Universe”.
After that, he decided to leave his room and break out into the world. A team was made and Deiland for PS4 was developed in less than a year. PS4 and PC came next in 2018. Deiland was also a huge success for a relatively small team. Until now, it sold over 30 thousand copies, but we distributed over 100 thousand.
The team grew bigger and we established a 8-person team in order to make Summer in Mara. I guess you already know the story of how Mara came to be: we had an idea, we made Kickstarter and everything explode from there. Right now, there are still 8 people in our team, but they are not all the same people as those that made Summer in Mara.
Enter: Summer in Mara!
Summer in Mara landed on the Switch with a bang. Over at LadiesGamers we have a lot of readers who absolutely love the game. What was your inspiration to make it?
Our main inspiration was, ironically, Deiland. We wanted to make something bigger and free to explore for the player. In Deiland you’re there on your planet and you go to different locations, but you can’t explore as freely as in Mara. Then, we had the idea to make an open ocean with islands. And we started to look for different references.
We started with watching Studio Ghibli movies, like Ponyo, but also Spirited Away. On new projects, we always get inspiration about style and art from movies or anime shows that we like. Once we need to think about the mechanics we take inspiration from games like Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon.
Deiland Pocket Planet Edition in the Chibig Universe
Can you tell us a bit about that?
We have this idea of the “Chibig Universe”, where every game we made is connected with each other. The catch is not to make a sequel or prequel, rather stories more like spin-offs. If you start our Universe with Ankora, you will meet an adult Mûn in Deiland and a teenager Mûn in Summer in Mara, for example. And you can play them in any order.
Also, we want to make games that you can recognize instantly. We would really like to get to that sweet spot when someone see a glimpse of a game and say: “Oh, that’s a Chibig game!”
Want to Read More?
Would you like to read more on the challenges in making Summer in Mara and how the prototype looked? What plans the studio has after Deiland Pocket Planet Edition is finished? And how the team combines working life with private life while working from home? Or what advice Diego would give aspiring game developers?