2-man duo Turtle Cream looks to break out of Korea’s indie shell

Formed in 2009, Turtle Cream hasn’t exactly grown in the traditional sense. It’s still a two-man operation, and only got serious about professional development in 2012. The studio has, however, made great efforts to expand its reach beyond Korea. It also continues to experiment with different platforms. In that sense, they exhibit an intangible sort of growth, not yet common among other domestic indies.

See : Despite growing up on PC games, Korea’s indie scene is all about Android

Turtle Cream’s creative director Sun Park has been with the project since its early days. It was formed by students at the Game Education Center of Korea’s Sogang University. (Sogang, incidentally, is a fine place to study Korean language if you’re considering it.) His partner left behind a career working for other local developers to join him in indie development in 2011. Prior to that, the student team saw some turnover within its ranks.

The team released its first commercial game, Sugar Cube: Bittersweet Factory in 2012. Between commercial releases, they’ve kept busy with a few free games. Speaking with Sun, he talked a little about the team’s well-grounded philosophy, in which they try to embody the simple motto, “small but unique.” He explained it:

We’re just a two man team, so we can’t make big scale games. But we love to experiment. We always want to find brand new mechanics whenever we can.

He went on to say that whether a player enjoyed the game or not, he wants her to feel like she’s playing something new. For their game 6180: the moon the team chose an interesting approach to the mechanics. The game relies on exiting the screen at the top or bottom, and re-entering at the opposite as a core component, while leveraging sound and atmosphere in the process. It’s also not one that’s easily explained, so I encourage you to view the video below to get a sense of the game.

The game was featured in the indie lineup of the latest Nintendo Direct. These are the semi-regular events where Nintendo showcases first and third party games coming to its hardware. 6180 will be heading to the Wii U sometime this winter.

In my exchange with Sun last week, he was still giddy about Turtle Cream’s experience at Tokyo Game Show earlier this fall. Having never been, he was impressed by the “passion of Japanese gamers.” The presence at TGC and the Japanese localization of its title are clearly in line with the team’s rather counterintuitive approach of “focusing outside of Korea.” With their home country mad for mobile, it certainly makes sense to target their latest game to other regions for now. The game is also available in English.

Sun was also noticeably excited as he recalled meeting Xbox head Phil Spencer at the same event. The excitement may not simply be that of an awestruck fan. Turtle Cream would like to see its game appear on the Xbox One in the future, and is in talks to make that happen. Having a Korean indie to highlight would certainly makes sense for platform holders like Microsoft. It may help somewhat in their effort to get Korean gamers to trade in some of their online or mobile game time for offline PC or console, regardless of whether Sun and co. are targeting them or not. For the studio, it’s a chance to be in front of more players that it thinks will appreciate its work.

6180 is currently available on Steam. It joins platformer Sugar Cube: Bittersweet Factory on Valve’s digital marketplace as the studio’s available titles for the platform.

When asked about future projects and mobile, Sun was quick to assure Games in Asia that the studio was in fact open to any platform. “We make ideas first, and just choose the proper platform for those ideas. If we find a great idea for mobile, we’ll make a mobile game as well.”

The team’s latest project, dubbed Long Take was born at the Global Game Jam 2014. It’s a second-person platformer. A demo can be played for free on Kongregate. They are making a “full version” of that game at present. The premise is certainly unique, so it’s clear that they are sticking to their philosophical guns on this one.