Yesterday, we had an incredible AMA (Ask Me Anything) with our good friends Ratalaika Games. They opened themselves up and responded to pretty much every question they were asked (there were a Lot of questions) by us and the many participants that came along for the ride. We thank everyone for taking part and for all the interesting questions you all asked.
Here below, we have the highlights from the AMA.
Probably not a chance… Their support for HTML5 seems to have stayed on the WiiU only. We haven't seen anything that would point otherwise :(. It is indeed more accessible, but you lose a lot of performance there! Even with Unity we're seen performance bottlenecks on some games
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
1. I think 3DS due to the low specs it was always a great challenge to work with it!!
2. As a user I really liked the old DS! It was great been able to play both GBA games and DS games hehe— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
I think it's really remarkable, also it's understandable as it's a great system with great support
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
Yeah I know :(, we're porting some construct2 games to Switch but it's really time consuming due to convert from html5 to C++ is pretty annoying XD
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
Probably not… We tried to add it to Spacejacked but it didn't worked out. It's really complex to & time consuming to get such licenses
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
Amiboo won't probably happen due to it's super complex & time consuming to get agreements in place. For HD rumble probably yes for some of our future games!
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
Nah, we're a small team and we work from home, that way we can reduce costs. The rest of people are contractors :).
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
Probably not gonna happen… We check into it for one game and the costs for an unknown brand are just too high
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
2017 was really good from June and beyond :), before it was a bit slow :(. For 2018 we're hoping a bunch of new games! Probably more than what we had on 2017!
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
We won't release Dustoff directly, but yeah we ported it. For this year probably more than 6 for sure!
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
I think it really depends, each game has it's ups and it's downs, I couldn't pick a particular game I think
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
Not really, everything seems to be stable now as it was a few months ago no new problems have been found hehe
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
I think it remains the same as a system it's great but I miss more co-op games XD that's what I seek to port a lot!
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
We, as Ratalaika Games, don't have license to do physical editions yet, only digital :(, so all our retail releases will be with a 3rd party involved like with Count Lucanor 🙂
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
Regarding indie titles, mostly everything is welcome but we've a huge preference for co-op games. Games that can be 100% completed in coop like Overcooked or Diablo 3 (we're playing this one ps4 now)
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
It's a German Sheppard dog with a bold rat over it.
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
it's mixture of "rata" spanish word for rat, and "laika" name of my old German Shepard dog
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
I'm really looking forward for the Dark Souls remaster on Switch, I've not played any yet and I think the remaster will be a great time to start!!
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
Actually yeah, we've working on a "tech" that will allow us to port from GameMaker to Switch much more easy than before so we're aiming at using it with Metagal once ready 🙂
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
I couldn't tell cause I've never spoken with the developer directly. Maybe @indienovacn could add some more light there 🙂
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
I highly doubt it, because we're focused in porting not developing ourselves so the original game should have done such deals themselves
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
Really good! All our games are selling really good and the critics are been really positive 🙂
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
I studied IT in university, and been working on games for ~6y already. It took me ~3 years of practice till I made my 1st game 🙂
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
Probably yes 🙂
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
Ahhh can't get into details 😛
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
Thank you very much!! I'm sure you will be seen many more chinese developed games like I and Me 🙂
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
Yeah hehe so true! We're really like small adventures, like Hellblade Senua´s Sacrifice that u can complete in a few hours!
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
Hahahahah that's great! You know we had Plantera running for 3 months non stop on one of our 3DS here XDDD
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
Mine was plugged into AC 24/7 XD
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
they should!! It what they do haha no holidays for them
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
We will study it for the very big titles, but themes normally do really bad we considered it for 3DS and at the end avoid it due to only Nintendo IPs seems to sell themes
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
I think Plantera, because it's on more platforms, but One More Dungeon is getting close really fast 😛
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
It has been great!! we're working on an update for it these days but sales wise I think it sold more in 1 month than all Plantera sales in EU&NA in 3ds and wii u till today 🙂
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
Yeah, I think it will be great for the system, but I also doubt it would happen…. Many players have more than one system these days, all our "not nintendo" games are doing better in sony so I guess the average public prefers to buy nintendo-like games on switch :/
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
It was just out of luck speaking long time ago on twitter, it has been a port we've been cooking for a while because it's one of our most complex works by far…
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
Hopefully soon ;), before Q2 if things go as planned
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
That's really hard, I'm not 100% sure, I think it's a bunch of factors what determines the success of a game, besides gameplay, art or sound, it's also time and expectation.
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
So-so, not so many developers working for it, but also we always try to increase the quality of our ports so that's a good way to get better support!
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
That's true! But I think one of the most limiting factors for Switch is it has only 32GB of internal disc so u need to squeeze a lot of size because no-one want to fill their console with just 2 games and big products tend to be bigger than Nintendo titles
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
So true… Time will tell!
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
Probably yes! it was a great time there and it was super great to meet rainy frog people face to face!
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
Yeah we've more games together in the near future, Distraint for example, but as non-announced titles I cant say much 🙂
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
It's progressing as expected but still too soon for a date
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
For 0000 we're porting levels, there are 100 of them and we need to port them by hand! You can imagine the rest haha
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
I highly doubt it, because we're focused in porting not developing ourselves so the original game should have done such deals themselves
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
It depends, some people contact us, some we seek. Also we've agreements with some companies for porting their titles and them to release in some regions and we on others.
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
Pixel art for sure! Great pixel art is always my prevered art that's why we do so many pixel games hehe
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
We really liked working on it, but as a personal preference I don't like that type of game XD. Too much text and too slow for me
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
I think probably the 2nd one! Also working on many games help because you keep increasing you fan base from one to the next
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
We will be doing 1 update to fix some issues but nothing more probably… You will need to wait for a Plantera 2 if that ever happens!
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
Yes we want to fix some typos in the translations and some minor particle effects, and maybe add a demo but not much beyond that
— Ratalaika Games (@RatalaikaGames) January 15, 2018
