Chinese iPhone Game Developer Goes Global, Leaves No Sheep Untapped

Earlier this week I looked at how Chinese startups are, slowly but steadily, deciding against Beijing and instead spreading across the country. It made me curious to find more startups outside of the capital. Here’s a good one: a young gaming development company called aBit Games, based in Xiamen on the southeastern coast, making globally-oriented and highly-addictive mobile games.

Well, one game so far: Super Sheep Tap, out now for iPhone, which is a cutesy puzzler with a rhythmic twist. The game has an English localization, but no other language yet – not even Chinese. Co-founder Wang Nan tells us that the three-person team at aBit Games is running part time right now as they’re working for some major game companies like Ubisoft. One other challenge is that Nan himself is based in Germany, while fellow co-founder Wu Jie (along with their chief artist) is based in China. Super Sheep Tap has had nigh on 200,000 downloads, allowing the startup to self-sustain as they prep their next game, to be called Money Witches. Nan explains:

Our focus was on the international market from day one. We haven’t created any game in Chinese yet. But we are giving the Chinese market more and more attention. We plan to release Money Witches with Sina [Weibo] social network API support so Chinese user can compare their high-scores with their friends on the Chinese SNS. Also, a localized version of Money Witches is planned.

Thinking globally is a good idea, since Chinese mobile gamers tend to be a very bad source of revenue for developers.

Nan admits that it’s “pretty exhausting” juggling the full-time job with the nascent startup and hopes that the team “can get some funding after the release of Money Witches.” By that time he hopes to be back in Xiamen to be closer to the aBit Games crew.

Money Witches (see the trailer video below) has been in development for almost a year already. “Our goal is to develop the best action puzzle game on iOS, with the most replay value,” Nan says. “We still don’t have a release date yet, but we are getting close on finishing the game.”

As for staying put in Xiamen, a smallish city in Fujian province with “only” 3.5 million people – equidistant but quite far from startup and investment hubs in Shanghai and Shenzhen – Nan muses:

I think if a startup team doesn’t need to recruit a lot of talent there’s no need to be in an international city like Beijing. The living cost and environment is not satisfying in Beijing. In my opinion, a startup team should choose a location with low living costs and a nice environment.

Super Sheep Tap is 99 cents in the iTunes App Store. You can also follow the studio’s progress on Twitter.