Interviews

Vivid Games explains the reasons behind Samurai Puzzle Battle revamp on iPhone

'We knew exactly what we wanted to deliver'

Vivid Games explains the reasons behind Samurai Puzzle Battle revamp on iPhone

One of the reasons that thousands of developer have jumped on the iPhone craze is the ability to keep refining a game through simple and effective updates. Every day your catalogue of iPhone games and apps receive updates - some minor, some major.

There aren't many iPhone games that are taken down from the App Store while the developer gets to work at giving it a complete overhaul and tune up. But that's what Vivid Games did recently with its crowning title, Samurai Puzzle Battle.

Having picked up numerous awards, the Polish developer decided it was time to revamp and refresh its flagship game, and recently relaunched it on the App Store as Samurai Puzzle Battle: Game of the Year Edition.

We got in touch with Vivid Games's Patryk Bukowiecki to discuss the new version.

Pocket Gamer: What was your motivation behind revamping the game?

Samurai Puzzle Battle is our most acclaimed title to date. We made others that are successful as well, but only Samurai got so many game of the year (GOTY) awards, medals and high ratings whenever being reviewed.

With that said and after receiving so many fans feedback, we decided to publish the game once more, as GOTY Edition. We will be pioneers with that kind of approach to mobile games.

What new features does the GOTY edition have?

The GOTY Edition is packed with new features. Some of them are nicely hidden (AI tweaks), some are more obvious, like revamped graphics. Fans will definitely enjoy a “Making of” section, where people behind Samurai Puzzle Battle tell their story from development process.

For those who have their battle songs on in their Media Library on the device we prepared the option to listen to own music during the game. I think we made the game more up to date with modern standards preserving the unique feel of Samurai Puzzle Battle.

Will this version include any online content?

We are aware how important it became to share all your achievements scored in games with your friends, so yes – Samurai Puzzle Battle GOTY Edition offers Facebook functionality that allows players to publish their results online.

What was the most challenging aspect of the redesign?

Actually it wasn’t that challenging, because we knew exactly what we wanted to deliver. The game can still compete with largest iPhone games in terms of lasting appeal, variations of gameplay and even graphics.

We wanted to remind players, that there is a game that can easily steal them tens of hours and that it got so many rewards, that all players who missed it have to make it up. Adding the features I spoke about was rather fun, than hard work. We are great fans of Samurai Puzzle Battle ourselves!

How well has the game performed to date?

As I mentioned, Samurai Puzzle Battle is the best what Vivid Games has to offer. It got so many awards I can’t even count them all. We ported the game to Android and are thinking about further expansion of Samurai Puzzle Battle phenomena. But let’s not go into more details just yet.

We have hundreds of thousands of players across all platforms. It makes us very satisfied and pushes us further with plans to expand Samurai Puzzle Battle brand.

What are the future plans for the Samurai Puzzle Battle franchise?

I think that this is the perfect opportunity to announce, that Samurai Puzzle Battle 2 is in concept work since quite some time. As soon as GOTY Edition will hit the App Store we will – as always – pay attention to fans feedback, but also concentrate on development of Samurai Puzzle Battle 2.

You can expect to be blown away by game’s scale. It will be at least twice as big as Samurai Puzzle Battle and offer tons of new features. Don’t ask us about release date – we don’t have a statement about it yet.

Do you have any other game ideas for the future floating around?

Of course we do. We are having brainstorming sessions almost every month. At the moment a queue of incoming games is pretty long, about ten titles long, to be precise. We will be publishing more and more information about every single game starting January 2010.

We hope to keep the highest quality that our fans are used to and deliver unique experience. What I can tell right now: it will be extreme at first.

Finally do you have anything else you would like to tell our readers at Pocket Gamer?

We are very pleased to have the Pocket Gamer staff among our fans. It would be great if readers at Pocket Gamer continue to support us by giving their valuable feedback on our games just like they do right now. Keep us informed if you like what we do, what you like and don’t like about our games. You will be hearing about our games really soon!

Thanks very much to Patryk for taking the time to chat to us. Hit the App Store button to go and check out Samurai Puzzle Battle: Game of the Year Edition.
Tom Love
Tom Love
Tom has recently migrated south for the winter after blagging his way through university. Living alone and diagnosed with an extreme case of post-study depression, Tom joins the Pocket Gamer staff in a futile attempt to become a functioning member of society.