Kenshō is releasing tomorrow on Nintendo Switch, so I got in touch with indie team FIFTYTWO to talk about the game’s development for its release on Nintendo’s console.
PS4Blog: Welcome to PS4Blog.net! Thank you for joining us today. Could you please get us started by telling our readers a bit about yourself and your work?
We are FIFTYTWO — a team of three guys making games. We are based in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. We have already created two games — Jellies and Kenshō, and now working on the third one.
PS4B: Kenshō is making its way to Nintendo Switch this week. How would you describe the game to someone who’s never heard about it before?
Kenshō is a Japanese term from the Zen tradition. Ken means “seeing,” and shō means “nature.”
Kenshō is a puzzle game full of rich visual effects and addictive gameplay. It tells the story about restoring the balance of nature. Mysterious things happen in a surreal room. Doors inside that room lead to different worlds and beautiful landscapes.
Swedish musician Oscar Rydelius composed the Kenshō soundtrack. In order to build a unique atmosphere, Oscar created 11 original songs. He used real instruments: pump organ, violin, piano, accordion, guitar, electric bass, melodica & harmonica.
PS4B: How long did it take to develop the game for Nintendo’s hybrid console? Where there any particular challenges or hurdles you had to overcome?
We started working on Kenshō more than two years ago. It was a long way of constant redesigning and searching for our own unique style. In the beginning, we wanted to make a minimalistic puzzle game, but finally, we moved from a simple 2D game to a truly rich visual experience.
When starting this project, we wanted to make Kenshō be nice for any gaming platform. We made truly adaptive UI, controls and so on. It didn’t take a lot of time for us to adapt the game for Nintendo Switch.
All I’d like to mention is how the Nintendo team treats the games published on their platform. They really test every small detail in the game and do it very carefully. A game’s quality is the most crucial point, and it’s so cool. We were surprised about that after working with the App Store and Google Play.
PS4B: Are you considering bringing over Jellies as well or are you now working on a new game that could find its way to the Nintendo Switch?
Jellies is a game built for touchscreens. Nintendo Switch has a touchscreen, but all games must also support Joy-Con controllers. So, we won’t port this game to Switch, but I have good news about our new project called Populus Run.
Populus Run is a running game, where you should control the crowd of runners. They all hustle, fall and behave absurdly. This game will definitely be available on Nintendo Switch. To say more, we really loved this platform while porting Kenshō and now we always keep in mind about how our new game will look on Switch.
PS4B: And now it’s time for us to go. Would you like to add anything else before we end this one?
I’m sure that your readers will love our game! We put so much effort to make it look, feel, and sound brilliant. Download Kenshō and begin your journey through a surreal world.
