Catchee, the earworm game that might just save its designers from bankruptcy
Just before Laser Dog Games released Catchee on iOS and Android, it shared a wonderful video of the game design process. Sadly – and we’ll get to this – the gist of the video was that the studio might be about to go bankrupt. But yes, we’ll get to that.
What stood out at the time, aside from the looming financial threat, was the way the team worked. Laser Dog is two people, Simon Renshaw and Rob Allison. Since 2013 they’ve been making astonishingly brisk and playable arcade games, generally for smartphones. Two people made all these games? How? Watch the video and you sense a partnership where the individuals are starting to blend a bit. Who does what? It’s hard to tell.
“Well that’s nice, and great that it comes across, cause it’s true.” Who said that? Simon or Rob? Fittingly I can’t tell you that either. Due to everyone being busy – we’ll get to this – I had to interview Laser Dog over a Google Doc. And very quickly it became impossible to tell the duo apart. So for most of the time I was talking to the Laser Dog hivemind. I suspect it would have felt like this over Skype anyway, tbh. These games are clearly made by people who finish each others’ sentences.
“We can make very quick decisions,” says Laser Dog when asked about the way they work. “Often completely overhauling significant parts of games in what feels like an instant! We know our games inside and out, top to bottom.W e have too because we’re both involved at every step and that of course means we know each other the same.”
Exhausting? It sounds like it. “We do everything, not just ‘make a fun game’, but manage a business (kinda!), promotion, manage translations, seek out new contracts/investment, respond to reviews, fix bugs, maintain back catalogue (kinda!), take out the rubbish (sometimes) and make coffee, Vodka & Lemonades, particularly when we’re crunching and strictly no earlier than 2pm.” Simon emerges briefly from the hivemind here. “I wouldn’t swap a single part of it and I’m sure Rob feels the same (*Hears Rob shout ‘Nope,’ over the top of my screen).
