We are Ronimo Games, creators of Awesomenauts and working on Awesomenauts: Starstorm. Ask us anything!

Ideally, how many awesomenauts would you like there to be? I really enjoy the fact that you guys release a new one every so often, and I'm excited to see how many there will end up being.

I'd love to see the roster grow quite a bit more, but have no idea what a good spot would be. We want them all to feel unique, so we probably won't end up with a roster the size of DotA or games like that. As long as we can come up with unique characters and skills that we haven't done on any others, I'd love to see the roster grow. We could probably double the roster though, without running short of ideas!

Hey Ronimo! Just thought I's mention that Awesomenauts is one of my favorite games ever!

Ok, so I understand and agree with the logic behind removing league icons from the scoreboard. Is there any way we can convince you guys to put the symbols back in, maybe only on the scoreboard at the end of the match to prevent the rq? It's just that a huge source of excitement for me in the past was knowing I beat a team of people ranked in higher leagues. As it stands, I find myself questioning whether winning games is really a worthwhile accomplishment at all. Thanks for your time!

SET LASER TO EXTRA CRISPY

Showing them at the end would be cool, and that's definitely something we consider to do. We've been looking closely at all the feedback we got upon removing the icons, and most of it has been postive so far. This has definitely been a recurring question though and I'm not 100% sure what our stance on it is right now. We'll discuss it!

How long until you add Hats?

Hats were destroyed in an intergalactic war long before the era in which Awesomenauts is set. Turns out that they were aliens blending in to our society and they just tried to take over one day. Even though hats can't do all that much, we barely came out of that war alive and vowed never to wear hats again. So yeah, that's not gonna happen.

Lonestar is actually wearing a dead alien corpse on his head.

He's a rebel like that.

Hey guys. I play a lot of Awesomenauts (over 400 hours. I think it's a great game.), and while playing, probably the number one thing highly-ranked people have a problem with is lag. A person who is lagging often does things that are impossible, like hit enemies who are currently safe. And as a player, you sometimes cannot tell the difference between lagging and cheating.

My question is this: Why make the replay goal such a high stretch goal, at 380,000? Replays would go a long way towards solving this problem. I would be able to review the game afterwards and see that it was just lag, and cheating would be much easier to spot and report. I can understand why you wouldn't include replays in the original game, but it seems like a crucial feature for competitive play.

Having a solid replay system would definitely solve a bunch of issues, and spotting cheaters would be a very important one of those. It would be great for competitive play, but we feel there are other things we need to improve as well. There are more things the community needs, and we felt like the order for that was the order they're included in the Kickstarter.

We want to improve the game for everybody, and the reason we included spectator mode at the very first tier is because we wanted to make that step for the competitive community first. Adding custom games will be a similar step, we hope, for the more casual-oriented community that just like to mess around. Once the game has been carrier to a higher level for both casuals and hardcore players like that, we want to take another step for the competitive community. Hence the replays feature is included at that point.

Sorry about the messy reply, but I hope that makes sense :)

Who is this well designed new naut?

You know very well who that is, because you gave me a picture of him at PAX ;) It's Oink, and I still love him <3

Hypothetical time. It's less then one year in the future. After the successful release of Starstorm, Awesomenauts has suddenly become a massive sensation among youth after it's revealed that popular singing and dancing unit One Direction love to play the game on their downtime in a magazine interview.

Having taken note of the game's aesthetic, you are approached by a TV executive who wants to create an actual Awesomenauts Saturday morning cartoon, and he wants the team at Ronimo to set the direction of the show. He wants you to come to him and pitch your ideas. What do you bring to this meeting? What happens in the pilot? Who are the main characters? How do you picture a typical episode going? What shows would be your inspirations? And most importantly, who will be the breakout star all the kids want on their T-shirts?

What do we bring to the meeting? I don't know, but the TV Executive better bring a couple bags of money.

The pilot will probably just be the theme song, and if it doesn't get approved by the time the chorus comes around for the second time then it's probably because the audience was still stunned by its awesomeness.

About the actual episodes, I reckon Lonestar will be the main character together with Clunk, who serves as the man-of-little-words / comic relief. A typical episode will see Lonestar being contracted for a mercenary job along with several other Nauts. Those would act as the cast for the show, so it'd always be Lonestar, almost always Clunk, and random other members of the cast. They'd go somewhere, blow stuff up, find out a mystery, blow that up as well, do a couple of one-liners, group-hug, learn something about each-others' past, then move on and enjoy the money. As an overarching plot, Lonestar actually struggles with his own existence, as he was created by the Bovinians and they built a theme park around him and he never had a loving family. He's actually just trying to find a place in this world. Eventually, it turns out all Awesomenauts struggle with their past, but it doesn't really matter because they all love eachother and will be BFFs for life. AWESOMENAAAAAAAUTS!

Inspiration would be the game, obviously.

It'll be Froggy G. on the shirts for the boys, because he'll just be the cool guy in the show that talks funny and takes out 20 guys with a single Splash Dash, while listening to hiphop. Raelynn for the girls, because she's a pretty girl with big gun, and I've been told they dig that.

Do you guys have any plans to improve the competitive aspect of Awesomenauts? In terms of a 3v3 ladder and tournaments for instance.

PS: Utrecht de gekste!!!

We don't have any plans to specifically create ladders for teams or something like that, but we hope the Spectator Mode that's included with the Starstorm expansion will be a boost to our competitive community. The APL has been doing a great job at setting up an awesome tournament, and we'll do what we can to support them for tournaments and help them expand in the future. We don't plan on taking this into our own hands though.

Are you more interested in making a fun game, or a competitive game? Are there other MOBAs that you look at for ideas/inspiration?

Are any of these in the pipeline:

• Recognition for assists
• A death screen that lets you see what killed you and how much damage people did
• A screen before the game so you can talk to your team and pick good nauts based on the map

It might be a bit of a lame answer, but we want Awesomenauts to be a fun, competitive game. We don't strive to be as super hardcore like League of Legends or Dota, but kind of want the game to be a similar experience. A more casual MOBA, though that kind of seems contradictive if I write it out like that.

We don't look actively look to other MOBAs right now, but a couple of people on our team play DotA a lot. I picked up League of Legends again recently, and almost everybody here has been an avid player of either game at some point. So there's probably been a lot of influence from those games over the years.

None of those ideas are in the pipeline unfortunately, though they would be cool. The last one would definitely be a major contribution, but it's also one of the most technologically complex items on our wishlist.

1. How have the game's sales been trending lately, particularly pre-vs-post Humble Bundle and pre-vs-post Kickstarter launch?

2. Once Starstorm is feature-complete as described by the terms of the Kickstarter, will Awesomenauts resume receiving free updates, or will all future content be locked behind the DLC paywall?

3. While on the topic of Starstorm, what do you expect the price of the DLC to be on release?

4. Does Ronimo intend to continue supporting Awesomenauts at all into the future, in a post-Starstorm world?

5. Have you considered a free-to-play business model?

6. How have sales of the character skins been trending since they launched? More interestingly, how have sales of Premium skins fared against their cheaper counterparts?

7. What's the deal with the Call of Duty Lonestar skin? You teased it at PAX last year, but nothing was ever seen of it.

8. In terms of balance, the three most frequently brought-up issues are Froggy G's Ice Cubes (and, to a lesser extent, invincibility on Splash Dash), the sheer amount of damage Vinnie & Spike's Spike Dive does (arguably unavoidably, when combined with Speed+Invisibility on his cloud), and just Lonestar as a concept. Are there any plans for tweaks to these characters in the near future?

9. Any chance of an ETA for a bugfix to the assorted Admiral Swiggins bugs? (http://www.awesomenauts.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=19855)

10. Admiral Swiggins was the result of a community character-building competition. Are there any plans for doing another such competition in the future, post-Starstorm?

11. Genji's cocoon removing Derpl's CC Immunity: what's up with that, and why has the company been so defensive of the "mechanic" whenever someone addresses it?

12. The game has several robots, and a monkey. Why no ninjas or ninja skins yet? You could build an actual Ronimo team. Also, Ninja Vinnie as a skin would be far too appropriate.

13. If each of you personally could make one change to the game, what would it be?

3) We honestly don't know yet. We haven't decided and will look at what ends up in the actual package before we decide. To be honest, it hasn't come up much since we launched the Kickstarter because things have been so crazy, but we'll get a fix on it before the content goes live :)

4) We want to keep supporting the game as long as the community is alive and there is room to grow. We don't know when we'll be finished with the Starstorm content, or how the community will be at that time... so we just take things as they come. I definitely hope we keep doing this for a long time though!

5) Yes, the idea has come up a couple of times. We're happy with where we're at right now though, so have no plans to transform the game into a F2P title at all.

6) Skins have been doing pretty well, and they seem to just keep going over time. There is obviously a big spike at the start, and things just kind of keep going at a lower pace then. Not all skins do as well, as some characters or particular skins just happen to be more popular than others. Premium skins do fine as well, and they're a lot of fun to make for us because we get to mess around with the audio. Unfortunately, we don't have enough of them live to really determine whether they do better or worse than the regular skins, but get more data over time. Looks pretty even so far.

9) No ETA, but we usually try to fix all new bugs in time for the next big update.

10) No specific plans, but it was a ton of fun. Maybe later :)

12) The game has millions of Ninjas, you just don't see them because Ninjas.

13) I'd like to get pre-game lobbies. That would require us to overhaul pretty much the entire networking system currently in place, and I think it would be better to focus on other things instead, but it would just be awesome.

I know it's been asked quite a few times, but I wonder if there are any plans (secret or not) to directing the game in the PvE direction as well. I know it would take a huge amount of time for you guys to do something like that, but the feedback from the community thus far, even regarding something as little as the story-driven tutorial that is in-game now, was amazingly good. (and oddly enough the comment before mine was speaking about the same thing and I just saw it! ;) )

We don't have any plans for that, I'm afraid. We'd love to do it but we're just a small team so have to be quite specific in picking the content to focus our attention on. Doing a campaign to flesh out the backstory of our characters is something we've been wanting to do since we started working on this, but the heart & soul of the game is multiplayer. We are entirely focused on that, so no PvE content planned... not even secretly.

Any plans for cross platform play (pc vs ps3 vs xbox) or larger maps (4v4, 6v6, etc). Or perhaps a story mode so that you can try out all the awesomenauts without sucking online first?

We don't have any plans for cross-platform play, I'm afraid. It's simply not possible for the current-generation consoles and PC because of the huge difference in content, and not planned for the upcoming PS4 version because it would be almost to impossible to maintain with the amount of updates we do.

Maps with a larger number of players aren't planned either, but we did some tests with this early on in the development of the game. Turns out that the game becomes almost unplayable with more than 6 players because effects begin to overlap, characters get obscured, and it just becomes a glorious, colorful mess. It can get pretty confusing already, at times, even with 3 vs. 3.

Who are your favorite 'nauts and why?

SkØlldir for me... he's just awesome. I love his skins, the voice, and the massive fists of fury ^{^}

What is your favourite Saturday morning cartoon.

If Pokémon could count as a Saturday-morning cartoon it'd probably be that, if not... Eek! The Cat.

Just want to say that I really like the game. The music is cute and catchy and the community is nice and friendly. Thanks for making an awesome game!

You're welcome! Thanks for playing :)

Do you think that in the end, the intensive interaction with the community has been cause of your succes? You oncetold me that it took a lot of time and was not easy to be so interactive with the community.

Yes, Awesomenauts wouldn't have grown to be as big without all the input from the community. Betanauts have helped us balance the game, which is something that we really weren't able to do on our own anymore, and things like the APL, Summernauts, and people making tons of videos about our game has done more for us than we could ever have done on our own.

3 years from now - do you believe Awesomenauts will be a legitimate eSport, or do you want to preserve the more casual feeling the game has now?

I don't know, but I definitely hope so! I actually think we can do it while keeping the more casual feel though. I think the most important thing for an eSport is that it's fun to watch, can sustain a competitive community, and allows for VERY high level play as well as more casual play. I think Awesomenauts fits the bill, so there might be a place for us at the top!

We will have spectator mode in the expansion, and I hope it'll boost our legitimacy as an eSport :)

Which is easier: Making a new Naut or a new Map?

Like Tim said, they're both hard to get right, so I can't say which is easier. However, a lot more work goes into a map than making a new Naut...

Where do you get the inspiration for all of the new awesomenauts?

Different places really. The suggestions and fan art forum is obviously a huge inspiration for us, and we only have to take a look at the list of entries for the Design Your Naut competition for hundreds of cool ideas :)

We started off a little more structured, with the original six, but now we just go with an awesome idea if we have it.

Any chance of upgrades being moved passed 6 for each skill to diversify more?

Nope, that's not planned. Would be cool, but it'll probably get confusing if not all characters have it, and six just feels right for us. Not having as many items to choose from is one of the most important things that we did to make the game more accessible, compared to other MOBAs.

This goes out to anyone, are there any ideas for future Awesomenauts? I personally would love to see a 'Naut that can transform from good to bad with different modes! So any cool new 'Nauts with unique ideas coming out?

We had a "Design Your Awesomenaut" contest a while ago, of which Admiral Swiggins was picked as a winner. We actually received around 650 entries though, if I remember correctly, and it's superfun to read through those. If you like to see other ideas, check them out over here: http://www.ronimo-games.com/olidee/contestentries.pdf

I loved Swords and Soldiers and how you guys blended 2D platform and strategy.

Is there any chance of sequels?

We loved Swords & Soldiers as well, and still do. It'd be awesome to do a sequel on it some day, and over the years we've accumulated many cool ideas for it, but we're focusing on Awesomenauts right now. Maybe it'll happen some day, but today is not that day.

What was the most amazing idea for a naut ever scrapped?

We usually work in iterations, so if something doesn't work we just turn it into something else. Because of that, I don't think we've ever outright scrapped a Naut, but the coolest ability that we scrapped was one for Lonestar: he used to be able to grow in size and become much bigger than the other Nauts. That's why he's called the Giant in our codebase :)

What is one feature that was planned in the development of Awesomenauts but didn't quite make it into the final release?

A single-player mode. We wanted to do that for a long time, but the more we played against eachotherand the further along we got with the multiplayer aspect, we realised that we really needed to focus all our attention on that.

It would have been awesome, but I don't regret that we decided to cut it... the game probably would still be in development if we kept it in!

I love this game! Why do I suck so badly at it?

I often wonder that myself ;)