Tangle Tower Developers on Their Journey From Flash Games to Working With Nintendo

There’s murder afoot in Tangle Tower, the latest title from SFB Games. The British duo of brothers Tom and Adam Vian were on the PAX East 2020 show floor, demonstrating their murder mystery puzzle game to attendees on Nintendo Switch and iOS. The story has players revisit the eponymous character from an earlier SFB Games title, Detective Grimoire, but Switch owners are probably more familiar with a game that came in between these Grimoire games: Snipperclips.

To that end, I wanted to ask Tom, programmer for Tangle Tower, and Adam, the creative director for the game, about their career path as SFB Games. Their start from Flash titles to collaborations with Nintendo and Apple demonstrates the value of hard work and inspiration from indie game studios—but also chance encounters with the right people at industry events. And with these gaming conventions and expos now at a pause, there isn’t a better time to look back at our PAX East chat, where we discussed the importance of these networking brushes for indie developers.

Chris: So I was doing my due diligence and the name “Super Flash Brothers” came on and I just got hit with a wave in middle school nostalgia. [Flash movie] Decline of Video Gaming, and [Tom’s line from that Flash movie] “Oh my god, I’m on fire” and whatnot.

Adam Vian: I spent my teenage years making those cartoons.

I rewatched them on YouTube as recently as a few months ago.

Adam: I apologize for the writing. I was 16 years old.

Tom Vian: It’s forgivable, right?

Just make the fourth one and then you’ll redeem yourselves. 

Adam: Everyone says that. I would get arrested if I made fun of copyrighted material. These days, that would not fly.

I’m not even sure Flash animation really has a scene these days. 

Adam: We still use Flash.

Tom: Like [in Tangle Tower], the characters are animated in Flash. But yeah, it’s a bit of a different world on YouTube now.

So tell me the arc starting from doing those shorts on Flashplayer to how you got to Grimoire. 

Adam: So the very, very, very first Grimoire game is a Flash game we made a million years ago. Yeah, I was 18, I was in college and we made it directly based on our love of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and Professor Layton. Yeah. So those two games in particular on the DS are like the main inspiration. And we just said, Oh, wouldn’t it be cool if we did a little character-driven mystery game? So the very first one was just a flash game for browsers just like everything else we made. But it was a bigger, bigger effort than what we usually undertook. We didn’t sell the game anywhere, so it was just kind of a one and done deal. And then years later, it was suggested by Armor Games that we make a new one and make it for mobile.

Tom: In 2007, I think? Because the App Store was new at the time.

Adam: Yeah. So suddenly, there was an indie games culture and industry popping up. And we made another game called Detective Grimoire, sometimes subtitled with “Secret in the Swamp.” It was a major reboot, and that was the first one to be fully voice acted. It did pretty well; we released on iOS and then later on Steam. We got it Kickstarted. And it was a moderate success and had a following of people that really liked it. 

And then, years later, we wanted to make another one, but again, so much time had passed that it was more of a reboot again, because we’ve gotten so much better. Quality went up. And now using Unity instead of Flash. So we rebuilt everything from the ground up. And because it was Unity, we’re able to make it for Switch as well as anything else. There are also things in between, but that’s the story of Detective Grimoire, the first one, and what is actually the third one [Tangle Tower]. We want them to be able to come to Tangle Tower fresh and not feel like they’re missing anything.

So Snipperclips was in between that reboot and Tangle Tower?

Adam: It happened in the middle of Tangle Tower. We started Tangle Tower in about six months on end, started making it officially, and then shelved it for about two years. We just put on the shelf because when Nintendo says “let’s make a game,” you do that project first.

Did Grimoire contribute at all to getting you on the map for Nintendo?

Adam: We were made known to Nintendo by attending an EGX Eurogamer Expo in London. There was an indie game showcase similar to this one [at PAX East].

Tom: We were showing off one of our other games.

Adam: We met a Nintendo rep there and he just gave us his business card. He was like, “oh yeah if you guys want to pitch anything, let us know.” And we did pitch things for a year. And then, later on, we pitched a prototype called Friendshapes. And they liked it. They took it on. And it became a launch title for the Nintendo Switch, which is a crazy story. 

And now there’s a Snipperclips song in Smash Bros. [Ultimate].

Adam: Our composer Calum Bowen has his name written in Smash Bros. He’s so excited. It’s a remix by a Japanese composer that none of us have ever met. And they didn’t ask us for it.

Tom: They just sort of they told us later, like, “oh, by the way.” 

Adam: We’re Spirits as well. It’s just amazing. We’re in Smash Bros.

Tom: Like you do. Going from making cartoons about Smash Bros. to—

Adam: I mean, our company name is Super Flash Bros. And now we have a game that’s in Super Smash Bros.

Do you still use “Super Flash Bros.” professionally?

Adam: No, we had to make the company name really quickly for like a legal reason. So, we were just like, “uh, SFB Games.” Yeah, that’s fine. So we didn’t do a real rebrand, we just stayed in the same branding.

How did it feel going from Newgrounds and Flashplayer to being on the iOS store and interfacing with the big names and companies? 

Adam: You never really talk to a real person, certainly not now. So when we were on Steam, we went through the Greenlight system, back when that was a thing. And we’ve already released Grimoire and Haunt the House just off of releasing Grimoire on our own store and had other games on Greenlight at the same time. They rocketed through, which was amazing. And after that process, they did get us hooked with a contact at Valve, which was incredibly helpful. He’s still our Valve contact now. But yeah, generally you don’t sort of have all of that, certainly with Apple as well. You could just release a game on the App Store and never talk to Apple about it.

Tom: Releasing on the App Store always feels like a gamble. Because you may just end up not getting a good feature, or no feature at all. And then nobody knows about your game. And then it’s gone. It’s such a dangerous thing when you have no marketing budget.

Adam: Nintendo was the first big, big company that we had a relationship with. And then with Tangle Tower with Apple Arcade, which is a different beast. Now we have a direct proper relationship with Apple.

So what was the difference between working with the two? What kind of resources they give you, between an established company like Nintendo for decades, as opposed to Apple, which is just now getting waist-deep into games all of a sudden.

Tom: It was a very different proposition because with Nintendo—we made the game with Nintendo.

Adam: They were making a range of decisions with us. They provided resources for us from the NST [Nintendo Software Technology] side.

Tom: Sound effects were typically made by Nintendo themselves in-house.

Adam: That was really a collaboration between the two of us. Whereas with Apple, we came to them with a nearly finished game. And then they weren’t involved in any range of decisions even late stage. We said we made this game. “Well, here it is. 90% done anyway.” 

Tom: Yeah, Apple’s request was that we got it finished on time for Apple Arcade[‘s launch].

Adam: We thought we would have loads of time. Obviously games take longer than you’d think. And it turned out that we had to push a little bit to meet that deadline, but I’m really glad that we did because it meant that we actually got the game done in a healthy timeframe. And, you know, these things could have been dragging on longer than they need to be.

Snipperclips is a very different game—there’s not so much any story or characters with dialogue.

Adam: Yeah, they just have names.

Tom: And it’s a lot of the same team. 

I’m so curious if your experience making Snipperclips somehow made its way into your design philosophy for Tangle Tower, especially like when you’re like working with Grimoire, who you’re more intimate with.

Tom: Just working with Nintendo opened us up to a way of thinking about games. They really helped us focus on what it is that we like about games and how we go about putting that into the game. 

Adam: I think directing Snipperclips, and in particular, designing what is around 100 levels made me a much better puzzle designer. And it made me a much better director. Because there were so many trials and tribulations along the way, so many challenges. So many times I learned about how to listen to feedback better, asked for feedback, or to be more careful about decision making. I feel like I came out of a much stronger developer.

The other distinct element of Snipperclips is the cooperative nature, and Tangle Tower is a single-player story.

Adam: You can still play [Tangle Tower] together. Some people have said they enjoyed having a friend playing with them, discussing ideas and stuff.

Tom: Our mom and dad actually just played through it together.

I know you’re not talking too much about future projects right now, but I’m so curious if you’re itching to do another multiplayer game. 

Adam: I mean, I’ll say we really like making multiplayer games, and we really like making single-player story games. So it’s our intention to do more of them. I think that the Switch exists in the world is like a big open goal for making cooperative stuff that couldn’t exist five years ago. It’d be silly, I think, to not have another go at that.

What I really liked playing Tangle Tower just now was how freeing it was to explore the environment. Usually, you see a dot or a waypoint to indicate the things that you can interact with. I have OCD, so I just like to kind of comb everything and I let my curiosity get the best of me by clicking everything I see.

Tom: There’s a lot of optional details to find in the world. Each room is full of little things that seem insignificant but actually is world-building and storytelling. So the more curious you are, the more you will enjoy the game.

It has a really nice art style, so it’s already pretty to look at, but every little element has something behind it.

Adam: The background artist Catherine Unger wrote the story with me. So when she’s painting the background, it’s at the end of the design process between us. We’ve decided exactly what everything needs to be for story reasons. And as she’s doing it, we’re iterating on it based on story decisions. So the artwork is the storytelling just as much as it is as window dressing. We take that quite seriously. I would never want to have anything in the game that is not helping the story.

I’ve personally been averse to games like Ace Attorney and Professor Layton, but playing Tangle Tower has me thinking otherwise. When I figure things out, even when it doesn’t feel “right” at first, something clicks my head and I get that satisfaction. And I’ve had that feeling shouting with a significant other while playing Snipperclips. How do you find that sweet spot of satisfaction when designing puzzles?

Tom: It’s all about visual communication. Everything on the screen is designed to fill your brain with exactly the information you need and to not distract you with information that you don’t need.

Adam: But also, what we wanted with Tangle Tower is a puzzle that you can solve at first glance. We want you to enter a puzzle, interact with it a little bit to see how this system works. And you’re exploring it, and as you said, you have that moment of “Aha.” That should come a minute or two, at least, into playing the puzzle. It shouldn’t be an immediate, “Oh, I know what I need to do immediately.” 

Tom: You played the shadow puzzle with the planets just now. That’s a good example of a puzzle that’s similar to something you might find in Snipperclips because you play with it as if you were playing with a toy. And 30 seconds in, 50 seconds in, you start thinking, “Okay, I think I can see this solution in my head now.” But that first minute is fun. Even though you’re not solving it, you feel like you’re having a good time just interacting and playing with it. That was our philosophy with Snipperclips: it’s fun just to enjoy the level.

Listening to your career journey thus far, how do you feel now, especially being at a con right now and knowing that you hit it off with Nintendo through a chance encounter at one?

Adam: Yeah, everything’s a chance encounter. Just sheer, dumb luck. But also, we put in the work to be in that room in the first place. We made a game that Nintendo thought was worth stopping and looking at.

Tom: Yeah. It was the work and the hours, and then a huge element of, we could have gone to the bathroom that exact moment and then we would have been somewhere else completely.

Adam: -which just makes me want to make more games. I want to make more games with Nintendo, I want to make more games with Apple Arcade. We want to make more stuff.

With a colorful art style, vibrant character animations, and intriguing puzzles, Tangle Tower was a game I didn’t hesitate to install on my iPad shortly after my conversation, especially after learning the developers’ history and design logic. The Ace Attorney and Professor Layton-like atmosphere and gameplay are attractive, but the antics of Detective Grimoire, his assistant Sally, and the eccentric family members of interest in this murder case are reasons enough to stick with the game.

Along with its release on Apple Arcade and Nintendo Switch, Tangle Tower from SFB Games is also on Itch.io and Steam.