With the sumptuous looking Critter Crunch having just hit the European PSN Store, Nathan Vella, president of developer Capybara Games, spoke at Montreal Game Summit about the company managed to create its Miyazaki-quality artwork on the shoestring budget of an independent development studio.

"One of the best things about being an indie studio is you don’t have an HR manager," he said. "The problem with HR managers is that they’re against nepotism, and nepotism is the indie studios' best asset; recruiting from your friends is a benefit. In fact, we’ve only ever hired two people without recommendations from within the studio."

The reason to work with friends? "It means you have people right away that you trust and can talk to without communication barriers, and if they're decided to work with you on a project they'll be as dedicated as you are. We have artists that have never left, and that's even during the lean periods when we've only been able to pay in high fives and hugs."



Another benefit that Vella espoused was that existing friendships could defuse potential conflicts. "Artists will already be comfortable talking to the rest of the team, will be more understanding about receiving or providing criticism, especially if they already respect their co-workers. Artists just don't recommend bad artists, so it's been important for us to empower our best to recruit others they thing are talented."

The artists that Capybara hired to work on Critter Crunch were Nick "Qiqo" Stephan for characters and Sylvain "Sylve" Coutouly for backgrounds, with Vella praising the duo's importance to the project and noting that thanks to prior relationships were producing art "from the very first day we hired them; they had already been hanging out and became comfortable by that point."

Yet due to indie budgets and timescales, just having the right staff isn't enough—having the right scope is, too. "The first thing [Capybara Creative Director] Kris [Piotrowski] pitches is a game design, then it's an art style. From that very first idea, while designers are making the design the artists working on what the game looks like, boiled down into one single screenshot—that's everything, from UI to particle effects. It's something that the entire team needs to sign off on; if someone thinks it looks like crap, we move them on to another team; you can’t have people creating an indie game they don't believe in."



"Projects that are figured out on the fly always take longer and always cost more, and indie games already go over time and over budget because we just want to make cool shit," he ruminated, "and one artist isn't going to be able to create a Nathan Drake or a Ratchet and Clank on their own. However, Qiqo drew and animated Biggs and all the other characters in Critter Crunch in under one and a half years."

"You don’t want to try and compete with Nathan Drake. You need to find a style that is unique and you are passionate about, because not only is that more feasible, but the passion will show and gamers will understand that you give a shit."

Vella had advice for teams during projects, too. "Prioritising is ultra-important. To use Metanet's N+ as an example, the ninja has two moves, running and jumping. You should spend most all your time on making sure that's right, because it's all the players are going to do."



Taking that advice to heart, Vella revealed the team had iterated on Critter Crunch lead character Biggs' abilities, in particular his movement and tongue grab, as they were the actions that need the best "feel".

"We went through countless different movements for Biggs. We had him running, rolling, doing twinkle toes like Luigi in Super Mario Bros. 2; even floating!"

Otherwise, he argued for indies to remember to never be afraid to cut things for the good of the project. "For a long time Biggs had antennas, in fact we liked him better that way. But one day Qiqo revealed it was going to add a month to production to keep them in, so we scrapped them in a heartbeat."