Games
Snakeybus is the debut indie game by longtime friends and developers Frank Han and Jeff Zhu. Here's how they created this engrossing cross between Snake and Crazy Taxi.
Snakeybus, available now on Steam, is the game you never knew you wanted. Take the classic Snake game, where you navigate a grid without bumping into yourself, add the anarchic, devil-may-care premise of Crazy Taxi and you have Snakeybus. You pick up passengers. You drop them off at a different location. Every time you do, the bus grows in length.
Do this enough times and the bus becomes the obstacle. You have to avoid crashing into yourself whilst making your rounds. Eventually, you're making the bus jump over itself to avoid collision. You do these things against a variety of environmental backdrops, from a sci-fi dreamscape to an idealised depiction of Paris, France.
Stovetop, the development studio behind Snakeybus, is a two-man DIY operation. Frank Han (coding) and Jeff Zhu (environment and art) have known each other since childhood and both attended the University of Washington. Han was in the game development club and knew programming; Zhu was studying architecture and could make 3D art.
"It was just obvious that we should collaborate," said Han. "Since teaming up, we've prototyped around a dozen games while at college, most of them unfinished, but we learned and improved after each game."
"One weekend in college, we got together and brainstormed a game idea that was small in scope," Han continued. "We bounced wacky ideas back and forth, while taking inspiration from successful games like Crazy Taxi and ClusterTruck, which released around the time. We got close to a somewhat finished game, but never released it. We still think it's funny that the idea of Snakeybus sat in our hard drives for a couple of years."
Han and Zhu began work on the official version of Snakeybus last July. They started from scratch, generating all-new code and 3D art for the game, rather than reusing their earlier models. One of the main challenges, according to Han, was narrowing the scope of the game to something manageable and focused. There were lots of ideas and possibilities, and not enough room for all of them. The entire process of coding, even post-launch, has been fluid, based on both trial and error and player feedback. A two-person team means creative freedom, but a lot of work and responsibility comes with it.
"Another major challenge is designing levels that play well and look good," Zhu added. "Map design has been constantly evolving, as we figure out what's fun and challenging versus what's tedious. The first maps we made were basically the traditional snake game, reinterpreted in the context of city blocks. They're flat and grid-like. Later maps have gotten more abstract, more vertical and smaller to create more of that 'A ha' moment of realising that it's you who's arcing through the air and bouncing off buildings."
Han and Zhu's current priority is optimising and perfecting the base game and then padding out the content with additional maps, buses and game modes. They're currently in talks with publishers to create console ports. The Nintendo Switch is their biggest target and, if possible, Xbox One and Playstation 4.
As for their long-term plans, Han and Zhu are hesitant to commit fully to gaming. They're both a year out of college and have full-time jobs. Han is a software developer. Zhu is an architect at a firm and he'll be starting graduate school at Cornell this August.
Entering a field where success and stability are not guaranteed gives them pause. For now, gaming development remains a passion project, restricted to the weekends and the hours after work.
"When we first started making Snakeybus in July, our goal was 1,000 downloads," said Han. "We didn't really care about a price point at the time. We just wanted to make something cool and share it with 1,000 people. For us, this was about the journey and our game development dreams, not the destination."
