Making TMNT: Splintered Fate more than a port

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise has been captivating audiences for four decades.

Each generation has grown up with different iterations of the characters across mixed media, including comics, animated shows, live-action movies, and, of course, video games.

The most recent iteration comes from Super Evil Megacorp, who partnered up with Paramount Game Studios to launch TMNT: Splintered Fate on iOS last year.

Super Evil's director of product management Tom Westall tells GamesIndustry.biz that working with Paramount on such a big IP has been very rewarding creatively.

"Paramount have been really supportive as partners – they know what they're talking about when it comes to TMNT and have been investing a lot in the IP recently," says Westall. "They've been interested and keen to get involved with what we're doing."

Splintered Fate was initially made for Apple Arcade, but Westall says internally the studio "always wanted the game to be something more than that," leading to a multiplatform release this year.

Porting Splintered Fate to other platforms began at the beginning of February this year. It was launched on Switch in July and on PC earlier this month.

While the timeframe for porting the game may seem short, Westall says there was no external pressure from Paramount. He says any pressure they felt was internal, especially since they self-published the game for these ports.

"We hold ourselves to high standards. This is the first game for Super Evil on Switch and our first proper foray on PC. We wanted to make sure we made a great impression with the players, so the quality belt was always really high for us.

"There's always those pressures; being a smaller studio, we have to jump on every opportunity that makes sense for us."

Super Evil's lead game designer Daniel Stansens is especially proud of what the team accomplished in successfully producing a cross-platform title.

"It's great to see a game that we have put a lot of care and time into going onto the PC market. Players can tell we've adjusted how the game controls – it's nice to stretch and flex our muscles on the different platforms and feel like the game belongs on all of them, even from day one."

Westall adds that they "couldn't resist" catering to each platform and that each iteration of the game has different quicks for the platform it's running on.

"Super Evil can't just walk into a new platform," he explains. "We had to really enhance the game each time. On Switch, we put a lot of effort into bringing couch co-op – it has to have four controllers and players sitting around the TV playing together. As for PC, it has to have online matchmaking; we need to make sure the game feels great with a mouse and keyboard and to support all the different windowed modes and graphics cards.

"It was never a case of simply bringing the game to those platforms, we always wanted to make sure it felt great as well."

As for the potential pressure that comes with working on such a well-known and established franchise, Stansen clarifies that the joy of making a TMNT game outweighed any anxiety.

"If you're having fun making what you love in the TMNT universe, it resonates with people. There's obviously pressure to get things right. But it turns out loving and paying attention to the franchise, knowing the turtles, and getting to work with a lot of the folks who have built the franchise [helps ease the pressure]."

One such person was Tom Waltz, a senior editor and writer for IDW Publishing. Waltz was one of the leading writers of the ongoing TMNT series that launched in 2011 and worked on Splintered Fate as a consultant.

"Being a smaller studio, we have to jump on every opportunity that makes sense for us"

Tom Westall

Stansen lights up when talking about Waltz, noting that getting his "stamp of approval" on their vision of the franchise and its characters was a relief.

"It helps when you've got good partners along the way; you don't feel the pressure if you're having fun. When you bring up ideas, and they're not getting knocked down, it feels like you're in the right place."

Westall notes that Waltz is very close to the TMNT fanbase, which provided even more information for Super Evil to use as they could gauge what fans would want to see out of Splintered Fate as the team were developing it.

Waltz was also on hand to remind them that, at its core, TMNT is "all about mutated turtles that wield ninja weapons."

"It's really wholesome, with stories about family and working together," Westall adds. "But it's also really silly, so you can have a lot of fun with it."

With Waltz on board, both Stansens and Westall agree that the IDW world of TMNT was a significant influence on Splintered Fate. However, Stansens emphasises that Super Evil wanted to create its own branch of that universe.

"We definitely don't go anywhere near as dark as the IDW world does, but we take tones from that universe and go slightly above the [child-orientated] stories that some of the TMNT franchises go for," he explains.

"We've been able to pick and choose what we want in Splintered Fate, as we're not beholden to one particular TMNT universe – we had the freedom to do our own thing."

Westall smiles in agreement, adding that they dropped little hints and Easter eggs from their childhood here and there. He continues: "We love games like Shredder's Revenge. But we wanted to make sure that visually and gameplay-wise, we could distinguish ourselves from those."

To that end, Splintered Fate is a roguelike instead of a beat-em-up, as are most other recent TMNT games. The team felt that the genre fit well with the story they wanted to tell, especially the multiplayer aspect.

"There's a lot that goes into considering how to implement co-op in a game like this"

Daniel Stansens

"Making co-op action games is in our DNA at Super Evil," says Westall. "As we were exploring the co-op genre, roguelikes really stood out. We felt that at the time, there certainly hadn't been any great co-op roguelike experiences – that was an area we thought we could explore and make our own mark."

Stansen notes that while they're certainly not the only studio with a co-op roguelike, they like to call themselves "pioneers" of the genre.

"Our game, in particular, works really well with the turtles. You'll find that when you play with friends, there's a brawler element to it that you don't get in some of the other action roguelikes where it's still pretty difficult. For us, it's really nice to evoke that arcade brawler feel."

Adding co-op to Splintered Fate came with its own challenges, however – particularly since it was added towards the end of development.

"It's always a challenge to make sure that the overall game holds up the same way," Stansens adds. "It's not just the online and control scheme considerations, but now you've got four characters on the same camera, so you have to consider what's going on with the setup.

"Then there's the gameplay itself – the difficulty changes as you play together. There's a lot that goes into considering how to implement co-op in a game like this. We took a lot of time and care to think about what adding co-op would do, and we're really pleased with the result. Because it does take a lot of careful thinking to add such a huge feature after we've completed the core gameplay and as we're taking it to more platforms."

Following the success of Splintered Fate, Stansens and Westall agree that co-op and crossplay are something that Super Evil wants to continue to implement in their games.

"I'm sure we will do it better every time, but I'm really proud of what we produced in this situation," Westall concludes.