Rovio on balancing luck and skill in Nibblers

so we're here at Pocket Gamer connects in Helsinki and who are you worried from what you do hi I'm demo hämäläinen I come from Rovio i'm actually a gamer i make games and I love what I do okay yeah that's what actually I'm really soon launching why would we actually as Robbie we really soon launching our next title called the nibblers actually doing this week I'm super excited about their I work as an executive producer for that title excellent so nibblers is a not to get too reductive but it is a match-three puzzler free-to-play and very much aimed towards a casual audience oh can you give me a little bit of insight into who the audience's that's playing at the moment in the soft launch versions absolutely i mean we really aim for their that getting the audience that is playing this type of games and it's mainly about the female audience and the age group is starting from up to 25 mainly yeah you previously

worked on one of the stellar games and there's a bit of a perception that the stellar games tend to be a little bit more focused towards women do you do you enjoy making games aimed at that demographic do you personally enjoy making games into that demographic yeah actually I do a lot do like it a lot because actually I have a background doing the hub or hotel for seven years before joining the rovio and actually in habbo hotel our democratic from 5050 pml-n 15 a person audience male so I really have a background of thinking also how to place the female audience I think it's really interesting challenge so let's talk a little bit about the back story of how nibblers got maids obviously is new IP and was there any temptation to bring the big Angry Birds brand into the game yes of course there was temptation I mean if you have a brand-new call an angry birds with the victims the biggest brand I mean on mobile I mean why wouldn't you always

use it that's all as a big question and I mean if you go back to the about the creation of the gaming first we asked what is really the poor of tiroteo onwards the power of the angry birds of course the characters and minutes the birds and the bigs so kind of I mean then we were waiting we really want to take the most common gaming mechanics Matt's trip so we asked ourselves how do we combine these two things the characters in the magistrate the way it's never seen in the industry I mean typically what you see in there that the character you have the characters in the match three games but they are the statistics and on this network game you see them at the top of the game board on in the side but they are not active elements in the game board itself and that was the kind of challenge we said in there so we really started doing a lot of experimentation we did more than 20 different prototypes thinking that I mean how does it feel we use your characters during the game board and how do we find their balance but it's a proper balance between the lock and the skill so the kind of the basic idea of having the puzzle game should break up do you feel luck and skill is a rovio

trait I did it's a really definite but it's not really alone I I think I think because I mean luck and skill is just a nice combination i mean i mean you pretty much seen that in excellent all the games but it's always just hidden there underneath the gaming mechanics and everything that I mean so there's do things how the clock and skill actually is balance in the game and how does it feel always do the player those are two different things so obviously you are working with this new IP does that give you more creative freedom absolutely i mean that's been the nice thing that working with the new IP lemon I mean not working with the Angry Birds gives us the total freedom of you think I mean doing whatever we want to do with the characters we don't need to be careful at all because there's always used to pressure when you do in an angry bird style I mean there are certain kind of expect this expectation from the brand perspective so it's been actually really nice and it's been giving us so much freedom and housed i said less presser working with the new IP there and in

this time so we talked a little bit about this off camera but there was a little while ago a brand called rovio level 11 and it was kind of seen as a way for rovio to experiment with new IPS that weren't angry birds and yet you're publishing through just rovio vanilla or i suppose and has the level 11 spirits affected the way that this game has been made I think definitely yeah I mean definitely me I think we have been treating this and we're looking for my road maps and stuff like that I've been leaving reading this like level 11 title it's kind of has been really nice from actually our perspective giving us more freedom in with the company just do the things we really want to put their the game and put things there that we kind of feel we love ourselves and not talking depressor from the brand or other departments and finally just looking a little bit into the future rovio's been absolutely fantastic in the the paid area absolutely the you know the the top of

its game in that in that way there's a feeling that Rovio's really looking for it it's big free-to-play title his nibblers it's big free-to-play title oh that's tough question let's be honest I mean the competition is huge out there of course we hope that I mean this study is going to be as big as it can be I mean you never know in advance to be completely honest I think we just need to give these little fellows the best possible chance they have just actually after all rose from the sea so we're really going to see that I mean how far this is going to be of course we want to get it last big as possible and I mean we also have to have the realistic expectations