Sine Mora Interview
Our very own May Jahjah caught up with legendary developer Grasshopper Manufacture to talk about new side-scrolling shooter Sine Mora.
May also managed to chat to them about the Middle East market and why the game won't be available...
A side scrolling shoot-em up game is very much of the old skool, why did you decide to take that route?
There are all fans of the genre, it makes us sad that there are no recent titles in the genre and that is what we wanted to change.
What made you decide to release this digitally? Why wouldn't you release a boxed copy (that means a disc and not a downloadable version)?
Ok, there are multiple reasons. Digital Reality has two departments one is Digital Reality Software that creates and develops games, and on the other side we have a publishing team, but that publishing team only focuses on digital titles and we at Digital Reality publishing aim to raise the bar of what is available on digital downloads, it’s not a chance to go retail because we’re focusing on digital, but at the same time we want to push it, we want to raise the bar higher on what’s available in digital, on the other hand digital distribution for this amount of content that we have in SINE MORA we believe fits this price point that we set for this and this available digitally we make possible so that we reach the audiences that we aim for, you know bringing more people playing shoot-em ups and that’s the right platform for doing that.
How have European audiences responded to the game?
We’ve just launched it. We lifted the review at midnight so far the score is 92 we got really really high score, we’re kind of trying to take it all in, it’s just launched today so we’re here to see what the first reaction is and it’s amazing.
What about releasing the game in the Middle East?
You don’t have Xbox live arcade. You know that’s the only platform it exclusive which means if you don’t have the Xbox accessible then it’s not possible.
Arabic audiences have a great influence from Manga (capt Majid and Rami al saiyad al sagheer), have you explored that market much?
Originally we wanted to create a comic book explaining further the complex story in universe that SINE MORA explaining and the approach of couple of artists for who could deliver quality to fit the game. We believe that the universe and the whole world of SINE MORA is exciting enough that maybe later we’ll do something like that. Probably if it would be a comic book created for SINE MORA it would probably be more European, more European artist instead of a Manga or a Japanese artist.
Do you think there is room for more games like Sine Mora?
We have that secret wish that SINE MORA opens a floodgate so that other companies will realise that there is an opportunity and want to see more companies created just because of the selfish thing that we love the genre and we want to play more games and we want to see how other companies approach it and how they push it further and further so we have this secret idea of maybe it will open up the gate for more games like that.
What do you think is Sine Mora's most unique attribute, or your favourite thing about it?
I think what we love about this game is that it goes against all trends all odds from the highly unlikely coproduction of a Hungarian and a Japanese team to create the shoot-em up for the wide audience which is a genre loved by friends and you know this whole concept of having Hungarian voice over and no other language is just going against trends and we’re following our own vision and our own ideas and that’s what we love most about the game.
Sine Mora is available now exclusively on Xbox LIVE Arcade
