We are Two Tribes, creators of Toki Tori 2+, AMA

I quit my day job just a week ago, and trying to make a living as an indie developer. I find it very frustrating to reach the right audience for playtesting, everyone around me plays/likes only super casual games like temple run, angry birds, fruit ninja etc. To be blunt, it breaks my confidence often that I will be able to release at least semi-decent games some day. Mine is definitely targeted towards better gamers (who are okay with controls tougher than very casual games, loves to experiment, love puzzles etc.)

I made an alpha version and posted on newgrounds, it received very good comments from people who are able to play it and enjoyed it. But I also noticed there is a huge number of people who ignored the game. I hope its not offensive to plug it here, in case you were interested. http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/617733?updated=1

So here is where I need advice from you guys, how do you play test certain genre of games? How to reach the right audience for it? Because I believe especially for inexperienced indie game developers like me, play testing really helps improve a game. Or Am I wrong? Thanks!

We don't playtest genres to test which genre we should develop for: we simply make games that we feel are fun to play. That's why, most probably, we haven't made a FPS or an RTS. Most designers here don't like those type of games. I think it is very important to make a game that you would enjoy yourself as well.

Once you decide in which direction you want to go, playtesting your WIP game really helps to determine if you're still heading in the right direction. We often invite people over to our office and we record their playsessions. Not only can we watch how they solve the puzzles, we also watch their expression on their faces. Are they happy? Thrilled? Sad? Frustrated? We changed a ton of things in Toki Tori 2+ just based on feedback we got from playsessions here at the office. Of course playtesting at your office is not always possible, that's why we asked if people would be part of the Toki Tori 2 development beta. Basically we gave them a beta version of Toki Tori 2 (obviously be careful not to give away too much!) and asked them if they would play a certain part of the game. We built an internal recording system that saves the gamestate, RNG seeds and captures all the input. Once the player is finished, they send us their recording file. We boot the game with that recording file and can watch them play the game! Furthermore since we couldn't watch them play, we asked them about their experiences. We ask for feedback and suggestions as well. This helped us enormously. Added bonus: you can potentially reach a lot of people, even before your game is released. I believe we sent out more than 7000 beta keys for Toki Tori 2+. It definitely helps you build awareness.

Finding the next Angry Birds or Temple Run or whatever is of course the holy grail. But we haven't found it either. In fact, I think a lot of those successes are based on luck as well. To give you an example: when Angry Birds released back in 2009, its initial success was quite limited. In fact its publisher, Chillingo, contacted me to see if there were possibilities to put an Angry Bird in Toki Tori to raise awareness of their game. Back then Toki Tori was a success for Chillingo, whereas Angry Birds (which was released on their B-label: Clickgamer), was not (yet). The idea was to put an Angry Bird in Toki Tori and they would then put Toki Tori in Angry Birds. But when I played the game, I strongly felt that it wasn't a right fit to put in Toki Tori. And I declined. A couple of months later, the sales suddenly picked up massively. The rest is history. In retrospect, it has been my worst decision ever :) Anyhow, the point is: it is very difficult to predict success. When AB released there were already a ton of physics based games on the App Store. When Temple Run hit the store, there were a lot of infinite runners on there as well. Why did they succeed where others failed? Part of it is being lucky. Releasing the game at the right time. Being featured at the right time.

The other part, and this is something you actually do have control over, is being vocal about your game. Make sure everyone and their pet dog knows about you and your game. Of course without being spammy or annoying. Make sure people understand what drives you. Keep them updated on the progress. Show them details on your development process. Be humble, not arrogant. Set up a Twitter account, Facebook and say interesting stuff. Gather followers. Post dev movies on YouTube. Try to see if you can attend a nearby gameconference to meet other developers and gamers. Also, try to get in touch with the platform holders (Apple, Google, Valve, Nintendo etc). If they know you and your game, they might just feature your game in their store. I think you get the point now :)

So there is no silver bullet to success. If there is, please let me know because I'm looking for it as well :) The only thing you can do is to go for it, completely. If it then still fails, bad luck, but at least you tried!

Good luck!

You deserve a proper answer, I'll definitely get back to with a proper reply tomorrow!

Maybe you cant answer this but, Why does it take longer for games such as toki tori and others of the like to get to Wii U then other consoles/computer? Does nintendo make you go threw a longer process checking for bugs and the such or is it a licence agreement thing? I just keep seeing really great games come out for my 360 but check the wii and it always say "coming soon" by soon like a month.

The approval process on Steam and consoles is very different. On Steam I can release a game without any approval (after the concept has been approved by Valve). Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony require the game to go through a checking procedure. This procedure might take weeks (or sometimes even months). They do this to ensure no crashing games ever hit their stores.

Would you prefer they not check for crashes/bugs/etc and just let you do the testing yourselves? Or do you think it's a useful service that has helped in the past?

Thanks for the games. :]

I like the fact that they at least some basic testing. It forces the developers not to be lazy and let the users QA for them when it is live. It makes sure that when people buy a game, they know that it will at the very least boot without a crash :)

Hum... Microsoft did it well with FEZ. If you know what i mean.

Haha, yes Microsoft has an "interesting" policy when it comes to updates. Luckily we can update TT2 on the Wii U as many times as we want to, without being charged ridiculous amounts of money. At this point I don't know Sony's update policy on the PS4, but please let it be as far away from the XBLA update policy as possible.

Do you think releasing your game on the day the Steam Summer Sale starts is a good idea?

It could be easily overlooked.

Perhaps it is a stupid idea, perhaps it is not. We don't have any experience with it

Summer sale confirmed!

Toki Toki 3 confirmed!

Half Life 3 confirmed!

I haven't played your games yet, but which is your favorite from the ones you guys have developed? :)

Good question, for me it would be Toki Tori 2+. And I'm being honest now :)

I can't decided between Toki Tori 1 and 2. I like both.

I guess this means I need to go buy Toki Tori now. Haha

You are awesome! :D

Edge is super creative and fun, how did you guys come up with the idea for it?

Credit is given where credit is due: we only did the Steam (PC/Mac/Linux) version of EDGE. The original game was made by Mobigame.

How was it like to work on a 'port' of a game to other platforms, then? What challenges did you guys face?

A LOT! The original game was fake 2D. The Steam version is completely 3D. So apart from the game-logic, we had to rewrite the rest.

You mean 2D, fake 3D not fake 2D :P

You're sharp! Correct, it was 2D (Fake 3D)

I I got EDGE on iOS way back in 2008 when it came out. It's still my favorite iOS game!

How was it fake 3D?

The game only used sprites. There wasn't a single 3D rendered object in the game :)

There is a EDGE Port for Steam4Linux? I still miss it in my Library. Mostly i play it on my Tablet ... Adding another Game to my Linux Library is always welcome ;)

We're working on a Linux Steam version of EDGE/RUSH and Toki Tori 1!

Okay, grabbing a pizza... Keep on asking. BBIAB!

What do you get on your pizza?

it's a veggie pizza! Well... it was a veggie pizza :D

My 4 year old daughter loves Toki Tori - the cute art direction and subtle animations (getting dizzy) make her laugh, she loves beating the easier levels. The chicken is as much a recognized character for her as Super Mario is for me. Good luck with the release! Instabuy.

Thanks a lot for the kind words, I hope you and your daughter will enjoy Toki 2 as much as we did making it :)

What do you consider an indie game? With minecraft reaching epic proportions lately and now under fire whether it is an indie game or not, I'd love to hear your opinion/definition on what an indie game is.

personally I'm not too fond of the word "indie". It has been used too much now and I think people tend to use it as some kind of measure. "You are indie? You are cool and make awesome games! You are not indie? The hell with you. Your games probably suck"

In the traditional sense, an indie developer is a developer that can independently create his own games. And independently means: without a publisher. But let's be honest; (almost) every indie developer needs to have a platform like Steam or PSN or App Store or whatever to distribute their games. In that sense I think Valve, Nintendo, Sony etc have become the new publishers. So unless you sell your own games on your website (like Mojang does), how indie are you really?

Question is: does it really matter? Does it matter if you're backed by a publisher or investor, by Kickstarter or by money you made from previous games? No! What matters are the games; their quality and the amount fun.

/end of rant ;)

• How was the Potato Sack ARG set up? Was the overall structure (logo + 16 word phrase + letter for each game for phase one, then password-protected .zip files for phase 2, "play all the games" for phase 3) of the game done by Valve, or did you guys contribute to that too?

• What was it like making puzzles for an ARG?

• Was there anything we missed? =)

All the ARG developers were invited by Valve to come over to come up with these ideas. So the ARG was the result of several meetings and a gazilion emails.

Working on the ARG has been the most fun for me in years!

I think there were a couple of missed clues, but we implemented fail-safe mechanisms for that, to ensure you didn't get stuck.

Also we watched your every move through your IRC channels :)

It was awesome. I miss it :)

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I don't think chiptunes and 8-bit art will ever go away. As a matter of fact, we added the EDGE and Toki Tori GBC chiptunes to this humble bundle!

Hey! Considering that you're a small studio that seems to invest a lot of time and effort into making indie games with a smaller-than-average reach, do you have any concerns or thoughts on how these games are sold, and whether your current strategy could sustain your company financially for much longer? Great work on the games, looking forward to TT2+ on Steam!

Great question. Honest answer: I don't know if that strategy will hold and I do have my concerns indeed. With the amount of games being released lately (yesterday's game is already "old") and the number of developers (everyone can create/publish games) these days, it has become increasingly difficult. Add to that the "Race to the bottom" mentality and the fact that people expect too much content, gameplay and originality for almost no money (some consider a game expensive if it costs more than a dollar). So, yes, I do have my concerns and are hoping that Toki 2+ will do well :)

Hi there. Congrats on the latest Toki Tori 2, played it on the WiiU, great game. I'm a developer myself and I'm interested in knowing a couple of things. How many people worked on it? Also what kind of tools and languages do you guys use?

Hi there co-developer! :D Our core team has about 10 persons, excluding 4 audio peeps and 1 story telling guy. We write everything in C++ and use Squirrel as scripting language. But I'm sure Eelke can detail more on the tech-side!

Hi Martin, thanks for replying. I've been playing around with some scripting languages too and am inclined to use AngelScript. Maybe Eelke can tell more about that choice, maybe because Squirrel has no GC, but I'm just making assumptions.

There is GC in Squirrel, but you can do it manually. I believe we don't use it since we're using weakrefs as much as possible. But Eelke can detail on all that stuff :D Squirrel is nice, but unfortunately it isn't as well supported as compared to other languages such as LUA or even JavaScript

i have toki tori gbc! sorry to say i have it used. but i did purchase toki tori for steam.

what was the vibe of making a game for gbc at the time vs. making one for anything being released now?

to be honest; back then it was all new and super exciting; there was a new world opening for us. Suddenly people played a game that we'd been working on for years. It was awesome!

These days it is still super exciting (and sometimes scary) to create something that will be played by thousands of others, but it also tends to be more business oriented as well. We ask ourselves question such as what is our metacritic score, why isn't Kotaku covering our game, do we make enough money, what are our medium and long term goals, is our staff still happy etc. That's all part of business I guess, but personally I sometimes wish I could go back to 1999/2000 :)

Hey, will Toki Tori 2 see a Linux release (incl. Steam) ?

I would say: yes, but it might take some time to port.

Thank you for the positive answer ;) i played Toki Tori 1 and really liked it so i hope i can the second part someday to my library. (hopefully on steam ;) )

Is there a status on TokiTori 1 for Steam4Linux?

Working on it! Hopefully it'll be live in a matter of weeks (perhaps even this week!)

Are you affiliated with Two Chainz?

Two what? I guess that's a no :)

How did you guys get into the business of developing?

we started working on Toki Tori GBC when Collin and I we're still living at our parents. We developed on homebrew GBC hardware in our spare time. Over 13 years ago. I'm getting old :D

Thanks for the awesome games! Will Toki Tori be made available through the Google Play store in the future?

Toki Tori 1: yes! As a matter of fact the Android version is already part of the Humble Weekly Sale. We need to bring the app size to below 50 MB to re-launch it on Google Play. Working on that :)

But...app sizes can be above 50MB. Just package the extra bit into an OBB data file.

I'm forward that info to the guys that make the port, thanks :D

http://developer.android.com/google/play/expansion-files.html

That is the actual information on how it works. Enjoy, and can't wait to see it in the play store :)

Tnx! Forwarded it to the porting guys!

No question, just wanted to say I loved Toki Tori

And I love comments like these!

What is your opinion on the Oculus Rift and do you own one? As a fellow dutchman I enjoy my Oculus Rift, but I do not have the skills to make anything with it :P

I would love to play with it, but unfortunately we don't have one.

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Thanks! Hope you will enjoy Toki Tori 2+ as well :)

Is anyone on the Two Tribes team a fan of Naruto?

I'm sure Jay is

Tell Jay he's all right

Ha, I will!

When will Toki Tori work in Android devices with ICS and up? Got it as part of the Humble Android Bundle and it hasn't worked since day one.

It has been updated already! The updated version is part of the current humble weekly bundle

What do I do in Toki Tori 2+ right now? I just got the bit where a bird swoops me up and I'm lost.

Also, holy shit the presentation of Toki Tori 2+ is just phenomenal, the way the camera zooms out and zooms in and changes around is brilliant, and the use of no tutorials yet still understanding how to play is so goddamn fucking amazing, I haven't felt this amazed by a game since Half-Life 1.

But yeah, where do I go? I went to a club and rocked out with a bird for a little bit, that was unique, and fun.

Also another question I suppose, what is your opinion on the hit 1978 musical film, grease?

Thanks for all the kudos :D After you left the club, where did you go? Are you playing a review copy?

Grease... sorry, I know I must be the only person alive who can say this: but I... haven't seen it :D

I think I just went back to the overworld with the bird, and yeah I'm playing a review copy.

D: Never seen Grease?! Well, after Toki Tori 2+ launches you should all celebrate by watching it :P

Have you seen any golden frogs yet? Thanks for the movie tip, I'll give it a thought :)

So, what's coming after Toki 2? Do you guys have anything already in the works, or is your guy's focus solely on Toki 2 right now?

At the moment: Toki 2+. Up next (probably): Two Tribes classics (TT1, EDGE and RUSH) for Wii U and Toki Tori 2+ for PS4. We have been working on TT2+ for almost 2 years now, so we can't simply release it and move on to a next project. First we need to make sure everyone is able to enjoy TT2+ on his favorite platform.

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WOW... R.E.S.P.E.C.T! My god, did you use some kind of infinite money and infinite time cheat?

Why you should play Toki Tori 1 & 2? Because I think they're great puzzle games that almost everyone that love puzzle games, would enjoy. And Toki 1 is now part of the Humble Weekly Bundle and Toki Tori 2+ will be launching on July 11th with a massive discount! So now you know why :)

Hey guys I gotta say I love your games I have 2 questions :P 1. What is going to be the price of toki tori 2 2. Any chance of giving us a hint on your next big game after toki tori 2?

TT2+ price is $15. But when it's launched on the 11th on Steam, there will be a big discount. You can give yourself even more discount if you use a coupon. We'll hand out a 10% discount coupon for each Two Tribes game you own.

1. We don't know either. We'll first focus on getting TT2+ to other platforms as well. But who know what the future will bring...

Why are you handing out coupons for each game if you can only use 1 :P

We'd like to embrace the social aspect of sharing :P

What do you guys do to keep morale up in the workplace?

drink beer! lot's of it :)

Seriously, we tend to let everyone be part of the creative process. There are no "bosses" in the traditional sense. We have a team that is self supporting and everyone is more of less equal. Also we always lunch together and make sure we don't push people. I think stuff like this helps.

Can I come work for you? Currently a bored office programmer.

Hahaha... sorry, but at the moment we don't hire anyone :(

just finished toki tori earlier today on my android phone and now i find out that you made a second one.

please tell me that are similr to 1 in that it doesnt have time limits.

Time limits? Which version on Android did you play? The time limit was only present in Toki Tori GBC.

When will you update TT2 for the Wii U to include the level editor? Will Wii U owners be able to share levels? Will PC owners?

The Steam version will have Steam Workshop integration for level sharing from day 1. The Wii U version will follow later this year

Aside from your own games, what are your favorite games?

Monkey Island(!!!), Day of the Tentacle (Maniac Mansion), Zelda Windwaker, GTA series, Resident Evil... and probably a whole bunch of other OLD games :)

Will there be any options for computers that run Toki Tori 2 like ass?

I'm in the beta and I had to stop playing because each new version of the beta ran slower than the last. It's in the unplayable FPS ranges now.

And now it should be quicker than ever. When did you play the last beta?

Sorry guys, need to catch train. Thanks for all your questions! Be back in a bit!

How did you guys get off the ground initially, was it an 'all-in' process on your first title, where you worked full time. Or did you work in your spare time, then as it grew, you took it to a full time venture?

I'd be interested to hear how you tackled the initial hurdle of breaking in, so to speak.

We made Toki Tori GBC mosly in our spare time using Bung cartridges we bought from Lik Sang (an online Hong Kong retailer). We worked on it for about two years and then we "talked" to a guy on ICQ who had his own game company. We showed him our game and he demoed it on E3 back in 2000. Capcom and Konami showed immediate interest. We signed a contract with them and they released it a year later. We never ever actually met someone or even talked to someone. So for a long time we actually thought it was all a big hoax. But when the first payment was made, we knew it wasn't a hoax :)

Hello, how much better is Nintendo's treatment of indie game developers on WiiU compared to all the bad things we heard about Wiiware?

Loved EDGE, currently enjoying Toki Tori 2, good luck with everything guys!

I'd say 75% of infinitely better!

I have so many great childhood memories of my brother and I trying to get through Toki Tori

^_^

Have you guys ever tried using Unity?

Some at the office have, but we never made a game with it

Any tips for getting my lazy but to work on my own game?

Well you can start by kicking that lazy butt of yours :) Learn a programming language and/or how to use an engine like Unity. Find someone that can make cool art (or do it yourself). Make something original (no, another angry birds is not original). Be creative and have a lot of fun when you create the game. That's a start :)

I really like the look of Toki Tori, and considered getting it on the Humble Bundle Weekly, but realistically I know I probably won't get chance to play it, and my wife is complaining that I'm buying too many games.

My question is... I would buy the game for about £0.40 (or $0.70), but I'd feel guilty doing that, like it's abusing the system. Would you still want my sale, or are people that would only play this much a scourge to the system?

Also, whats the process of getting on the Humble Bundle? Do they approach you?

It is pay what YOU want. If you think it is worth that amount or if you don't have more money to spend: no problem. You decide! We won't flame you if you buy it at a low price: it's the other way around, we're happy that you are interested in us and our games! So pay whatever you want! And I hope your wife will love our games as well :)

The humble guys contacted us

Was Toki Tori profitable?

It was so damn cute and I saw it on steam forever...but I only ended up owning it due to the humble sale

It has been pretty okay. But we spent all of it on Toki Tori 2 :)

Why so casual?

Casual? I think our puzzles are pretty hardcore :)

I recall buying Toki Tori as part of the Humble Bundle and could never get it to work on a Samsung Galaxy SII or even when I upgraded to the S4. It just froze up and then crashed, never even saw a home screen. All other games in the bundle worked fine. So while I don't expect you to answer my specific technical issue, I want you to know that I am unaware of your work, except that it won't run on a fairly powerful phone.

We updated it! The updated version is now in the humble weekly sale. I think you can simply update your current version. Give it a try

Do you have any plans for your next title? What genre will you aim towards?

No plans for a new IP yet. We first need to release toki 2+ on Steam and then I need a vacation :)

Do you fear that the release of your game being so close to the time when the steam summer sale normally starts(mid July) will affect your sales?

Hopefully a summer sale will affect it, positively

Do you plan on doing more with the Wii U? We don't have nearly enough people releasing games for this awesome platform.

We are planning on getting Toki 1, EDGE and RUSH to Wii U as well. But first I think Nintendo should release some of their system sellers to attract a bigger audience. I am really fond of the Wii U as well and I'd love to see it succeed

No salami though :)

A technical artist contractor from the netherlands that I used to be a roommate of spoke very fondly of his time at Two Tribes. His initials are H.H. I've heard all about the late nights, it sounds pretty satisfying to work at your studio.

So anyway, my question is how many fulltime employee's do you have and how much do you have contracted out? How many of the founders are still at the studio?

Hajo! Awesome, please send him my regards. We miss his weird sense of humor every day :) We have 10 people working for us, 9 FT. And we outsource all audio and Linux/Android/3DS porting work. Two of the original founders are still at Two Tribes.

With Valve working with smaller studios alot more (CS:GO being a good example) would you consider working with them on a project in the future?

I would love to work with them again, especially on a new project (half-life 3? :)). So if someone at Valve is reading this, please take notice :)

Did u ever go to war? Knowing that money was all that you could score?

We definitely went to war at some point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QmSykVRz38

Did you like developing for the Wii U?

Yes, we did! It was actually pretty easy to get something working on the Wii U.

I'm not so much of a PC gamer, but am a full blooded Android gamer (if that makes any sense).

Anyway, what's going to be ported to Android next? Or perhaps, an Android/mobile original game?

Unfortunately, we haven't got anything planned for Android (other than Toki Tori 1) atm. We're totally swamped with Toki Tori 2+ for Steam...

What system is the hardest to make games for, and why?

The systems with the lowest specs are always the hardest to develop for in terms of technical challenges. So I've to go for the GBC

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Yes.. But! If you have a system with hardly any boundaries, it is easy to keep on adding until eventually you'll hit that boundary. And then you still need to profile, tweak, optimize etc...

As an independent developer, what do you think is the hardest part of developing a game, whether it be coming up with a concept or actually following through?

What would you describe your development process as being like, as far as when you focus on gameplay, graphics, sound, etc. or do you tend to flow more naturally with each project?

The hardest part? Staying within the projected timeframe! We tend to 'go with the flow'; sound/gfx/gameplay etc all flow naturally from the design

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I don't think we have cheatz... Eelke... Do we?

Why did you decide to start development on Toki Tori 2 when you did?

It's been almost 12 years since Toki Tori 1, so we felt it was time for a successor

Did you feel the use of Indie Bundles aided the sales of your games, not just during the period of the bundle, but afterwards as well?

The bundles definitely aided in terms of direct sales. I'm not sure what the long term effect is though

Hello, fellow game developer here.

How did you guys get started on making new IPs, as opposed to do contracted work/projects for larger companies?

Hi there co-developer! We were kinda forced into it. Back in 2008 we finished our last work-for-hire project (Rubik's) and then it became very difficult to find new WFH projects. That's when we decided to take matters into our own hands

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We created some non-platform games in the past: Rubik's, RUSH, Swap This!, Worms Open Warfare 2. So we're always open to new ideas. But we only have one focus, which is Toki Tori 2+. Once we released that, we'll take a long deep breath and see what's next...

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Well, we are shipping a level-editor with Toki Tori 2+, so you are able to create your own levels. Perhaps in the (near) future we'll enable people to write their own mods/custom scripts for the game, allowing them to create their own (mini) game within the Toki Tori 2+ world. Other than that, we currently don't have any plans for a sandbox game.

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It is definitely more developer friendly than the Wii was. They have Visual Studio integration and an awesome profiler, which really helped the development of TT2. But from what I've seen, my bet is on the PS4 development environment. They seem to be really dev friendly. But... I only touched it briefly so far.

How many people were working at Two Tribes when you started the original Toki Tori for GBC?

Two Tribes didn't even exist when we started working on it. The initial dev team included 4 people. Two left and Collin and I are still part of the company

How do you feel about speedruns of your games? Have you seen any?

No, not that I'm aware of. But it would be amazing to see a speedruns of our games!

I've done a few of EDGE, myself, haha

Sorry! I did see those! They're awesome! ^_^

Will it be on Humble Bundle?

Perhaps it will, at some point. But it's not up to us

[deleted]

I personally like the Wii U and are really interested in the PS4, mainly because I already played with the dev-kit. Food: authentic italian and asian. But right now I need a pizza! :D

Who was the target audience for Toki Tori?

Back then we didn't think about Target Audiences. We simply wanted to make an awesome game on the GBC that looked and played great.

Not really a question--just wanted to tell you guys I loved RUSH, it was a lot of fun.

Tnx :D

I picked up the game Toki Tori 2 day one for wii U, and heavily regretted it due to it's slow pacing. While I understand it's a puzzle game, other games don't feel too taxing in terms of its pacing but toki tori stood out to me. did you ever have a problem finding the correct pacing for the game in it's development phase? (i do intend on picking up the game again)

Can you be more specific on what you felt was too slow? Were the puzzles too obvious? Did the character move too slow?

Since the Wii U version, a lot has been improved. See: Design Improvements which hopefully addresses some of your pacing issues.

Are any of the changes from Toki Tori 2+ going to end up back in the Wii U version? I heard Nintendo allows updates on digital games much more easily now than they did with the Wii.

Yes, we'll do our best to put all changes in the Wii U version as well!

I'm referring to the player character being awfully slow, and seemingly puzzles being built around that. like the birds that grasp on to you and bring you to higher places. was very tedious for me and my sister.

Too bad too hear. We always love to hear feedback and I do understand your position on this. In Toki 1 the character runs around like crazy. In Toki 2 this changed. But we did this intentionally because T2 is not the type of game to be running around like a headless chicken. It requires you to absorb your environment. Look around you. Watch the animal behavior etc. The game is much more about thinking than it is about acting. That's why we strongly felt that a fast moving protagonist was inappropriate for this type of game.

Not a question, but just letting you know that the android version of Toki Tori via Humble Bundle crashes on launch on every android device I've tested on (Nexus 4, Galaxy Note 2, Galaxy S4)

Thanks for the report. Is there any way you can provide us with some kind of error log?

Why don't you have more tribes? Are you some kind of casual?

More tribes? Well, when we started 13/14 years ago the original members were part of two demo groups. Hence the name :)

How would you describe the atmosphere of your office?

relaxed with a lot of humor, especially during lunch

When you get an idea for a game. Do you target a specific audience? Such as age, gender,play style? I played tokitori 1 and edge and they are very different 'feels'. Edge is more mature and precision where as tokitori is just playful ad childish.

What engine do you use to port/create/develop your games? If multiple, which do you prefer?

Finally, would you take interns? I am greatly interested in getting my hands dirty as many other friends of mine in college. And thankfully I don't have the necessity of a full fledged salary as of yet. Win win as they say.

TT1 just happened; we were very young when we made it and I don't think we ever heard about "target audience" before. I'm sure we didn't, otherwise we didn't make an overly cute puzzle game with devilish hardcore levels :)

We use our internal engine.

We do take interns yes. Check out our site: Two Tribes Jobs So feel free to apply, but do note that we hardly hire interns from abroad. But thanks a lot for your interest!

Really enjoyed Toki Tori. I cant wait to play Toki Tori 2 and I still need to play Edge. What made you want to make Toki Tori 2 a metroidvania?

We wanted to get rid of the linear level structure and do something completely different. Want to know more? Read our blog on it.

Why are you releasing Toki Tori 2+ on the first day of the Steam Summer Sale?

Ha! A trick question! Sorry, cannot comment on anything related to the Steam Summer Sale. It's all up to Valve