The Gentlebros is a 3-people team based in Singapore. It was founded by Desmond Wong, Leon Ho and Nursyazana. Part gentlemen, part bros, the goal of the company is to constantly make unique games that stand out from the crowd. They share the story of Slashy Hero, a game about a great evil that has stolen all the sweets for Halloween. At Casual Connect the Slashy Hero game has won the Best Game Design and Best Mobile Game awards.
Secret mission
We all met each other in Koei Tecmo (Dynasty Warriors, Dead or Alive, Fatal Frame). Life in a big studio isn’t all its cracked up to be, and it got pretty mundane after a while. We thought it would be fun to get together to make a small app and see how it would do.
Obviously, we weren’t supposed to be too loud about doing this part time, but we clarified it with our leads and directors whether it was alright for us to work on this part time. They gave us the ok, and so our secret mission to make our own game began.
What’s the difference?
That was the question we asked ourselves when we started work on Slashy Hero. We knew we didn’t want to make another match-3 or endless runner. There are already thousands (maybe more!) of those kinds of games, no point adding to an ever-increasing pile.
We all liked rogue-likes and RPGs, and when we had the idea of drawing a path to slash enemies, we knew we had something going. Rogue-likes were few and far between in the app store, probably due to their more hardcore nature, so we saw a space for us. It was a relatively less crowded genre that we felt we could break into and be a success!
Let’s Kongregate together
Roughly 6 months later at Casual Connect Singapore 2015, we got incredibly lucky and managed to demo our game to a few Kongregate reps. They loved the idea and wanted to see more. Mind you, the game was already 80% done and had a ton of polish. We don’t recommend showing off your game to any publisher or media outlet unless you’re really proud of how it looks and plays. First impressions are everything.
Fast forward a few weeks, and we got a publishing deal! We were ecstatic! This was, in a way, confirmation for us that our game was great and we didn’t waste all those months working on it. Most of us left our jobs at Koei and decided to go full time. The Gentlebros was born.
The Final Stretch
Since our game was Halloween-themed, we needed to hit an October 29th release date. This was roughly 6 more months away, and this was probably the toughest part of the production. We knew the mechanics were fun, but most of the levels weren’t. They were either too difficult, or too easy and boring. In addition, we had a whole list of monetization features Kongregate wanted us to implement.
We practically rebuilt the levels and certain mechanics from scratch multiple times during that last 6 months. It was really tough for both the designer and programmers, but worked out well in the end. It’s funny to go back and see how the game played when we first started, and how the final product shipped.
Launch off
After a month of test markets, the game was ready to launch. We were nervous wrecks, constantly worried if the game would do good. We knew the game wouldn’t make us a whole lot of money, but we were hoping to make enough to so we could at least make the next game.
The game eventually got more downloads than we ever thought we’d have! We also made enough to last us a while(enough to hopefully finish our next title).
We’re not going to sugar coat our situation, but we are in no way sustainable just as yet. We don’t have much room to fail, and we’re way too inexperienced in the business aspects. However, we got a ticket to make our next game, and that’s all we can ever ask for.
The team is now working on getting Slashy Hero ready for China markets, and also on their second title which is going to be an open world RPG for mobile devices. While Slashy Hero can now be played on any iOS or Android device.
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