Fiddlesticks was formed in late-2014 by Dan Da Rocha and Henry Hoffman. Da Rocha previously worked on the award-winning indie game Q.U.B.E, whilst Hoffman worked on the BAFTA-winning Windows Phone game Mush. After this Da Rocha and Hoffman tagged up to form Mudvark and create Mortar Melon, which has had over a million downloads to date. Now under a new banner, Fiddlesticks, the duo is working on multi-award winning game, Hue.
Hue is a stark puzzle platformer where you shift the hue of the world, creating rifts when colours collide. You take control of a boy called Hue and traverse a colorful, silhouetted world, altering the hue of the background environment to make objects appear and disappear in order to solve challenging puzzles.
Securing Funding
The game began as one of three different pitches as we were looking for investment for our next project. One publisher was interested in Hue and asked if we could put together a quick prototype so they could see it in action. We were able to turn around a short demo within a week and a half of development and showed it to the publisher. This really solidified our pitch and they were sold on the concept immediately. We actually ended up using this same demo to showcase at various events throughout 2014 and it garnered a lot of attention from public audiences.
Unity 5 Rebuild
The original demo was created in a 2D HTML5 game engine called Construct 2 which we also used for Mortar Melon. The engine is great for rapid prototyping and creating simple games for desktop and mobile devices.
With Hue, we wanted to target as many platforms as possible, and because Construct 2 doesn’t support Xbox One directly or PS4 at all, we found this would limit us in the long run. So we decided to make the jump to Unity 5 as it’s much more mature for cross-platform development.
This gave us the opportunity to re-create the game from scratch and revisit the art style, making it much more unique and detailed. We’re really happy with the new style and are looking forward to sharing it with the world. Unity 5 has enabled us to have better performance across the board and has given us the ability to target consoles.
Team
What we think is important in delivering a high quality game is having an experienced team and covering all sides of development. Thanks to receiving investment, we have now been able to do this. With my previous experience shipping Q.U.B.E. and a large network of industry contacts, I’m able to take care of the business, PR and marketing aspects of the game. Henry has refined his design, art and code skills over the course of the last few years and is able to take creative control of the project. We have several talented contractors involved with the project too, who are making it possible to finish the game to a high standard.
Competitions & Events
Another important aspect of game promotion, we believe, is entering competitions and showcasing the game at events. So far, we’ve shown the game at over 25 events around the world and have had 12 awards and nominations. We were lucky enough to pick up three awards at Casual Connect earlier this year including “Best Game of the Show,” “Best Game Art” and “Best Kids and Family Game.” Winning awards or at least being nominated really helps with getting your game out there and getting press coverage.
Overall we’re ecstatic to be working on Hue and are excited to see what people think when it comes out. We’re targeting Steam, consoles and mobile.
Meanwhile, the Fiddlesticks team invites to visit the game’s website and follow Dan and Henry for regular updates.
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