It seems fitting that Colibri Games takes its name from a tiny yet beautiful bird. The indie studio from Russia is literally an army of two that has created The Tiny Bang Story, a delicate and inspired point-and-click adventure that’s currently basking in well-deserved praise. We sat down with Colibri Games to learn more about the studio and the making of their first indie gem.
It seems fitting that Colibri Games takes its name from a tiny yet beautiful bird. The indie studio from Russia is literally an army of two that has created The Tiny Bang Story, a delicate and inspired point-and-click adventure that’s currently basking in well-deserved praise. We sat down with Colibri Games to learn more about the studio and the making of their first indie gem.
Tell us more about your studio, Colibri Games.
Colibri Games is independent game development studio based in Russia. We started in early 2010. We’re a really tiny company – only two men with experience in casual games development. Dmitry Sannikov is the tech-guy and Eduard Arutyunyan is the artist.
The Tiny Bang Story is our first point-and-click casual adventure game for PC and Mac, and it will soon be out on iPad.
Where does the name Colibri Games come from?
When we decided to create a company, it was time to choose the name. There was a lot of variants and we could not choose. We needed a name to convey the features of our company. In the end we focused on the fact that we are very small studio. One day, while sitting in a pub, we joked about the company’s name and Eduard said that there were really only two choices: Elephant Games or Colibri Games. [Editor’s note: “colibri” is a type of hummingbird.] We decided to chose the second.
What was the inspiration for The Tiny Bang Story?
We are always inspired by the masterpieces of Dutch classic art, but the first impulse for the creation of The Tiny Bang Story was Machinarium – a very beautiful game. We realized that a beautiful art in games is not so bad. And, as our artist really wanted to draw by hand, we get what we called The Tiny Bang Story.
Two inspirations for The Tiny Bang Story were classic Dutch paintings like Jacob van Ruisdael’s The Windmill at Wijk (above), and Amanita Design’s Machinarium (below)
Are there any funny or interesting stories about the game’s development that you can share?
The most funny and tragic at the same time story was the situation with the creation of “Making Of” video. We wanted to make a cool video which would have been about a process of creation of location for the game from beginning to the end. We started doing it three times. The first time we’ve recorded a video a few days. It was almost ready but in the last step we accidentally erased it (It’s actually our fault and we cried and laughed simultaneously). A few days recording went nowhere. The second time the artist painted about half the location when remembered that it is necessary to switch on the video recording. And only when we create a third location we were able to shoot video with from beginning to end. We were very happy with it!
What was the biggest challenge you faced while developing the game?
It certainly is amount of content that we need to do to tell our story. It was a challenge for two people. We have drawn about 60 full screen images plus a lot of effects and animations. But if you really like what you do – you enjoy it. And we did.
Can you give us any hints about your upcoming projects?
Currently we are working on iPad version of The Tiny Bang Story, but we have ideas about our next project. All I can say for now is that it will be art-driven game with a lot of content, a cool story, great music and a strong atmosphere. We like family gaming and the new project will be for the whole family. I even don’t know now how long the development will take, but we really want to do it.
