The Hamburg Indie Studio Tiny Roar released its new game "Bomb Bots Arena" on June 1, 2020. The game is a free to play online multiplayer brawler for up to eight players across different platforms, in which they can compete against other players as robots/bots and defeat them in different ways. After more than nine months of work and with the support of the German Games Funding the game is finally released as early access version.

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We talked about the release and the development process with Co-Founder and Game Director Maurice Hagelstein.

Tiny Roar is a Hamburg Indie Studio that has already released several titles. What are you doing right from your point of view and what tips do you have for studios that want to get started?

Maurice Hagelstein: "The only thing we do right is to learn from our many mistakes and ask ourselves regularly "Does this make sense the way we are doing it right now?" Don't look too much at the success stories of others, don't take too much at once, but make a realistic, reflected plan with many small goals and follow them one by one and be ready to change things. It also helped us a lot to have formulated company principles. These include points such as absolute transparency on issues like planning, finances, and worries, as well as the fact that crunch is forbidden and we have a very open and constructive communication strategy within the studio. No one is placed above anyone in terms of argument - the best argument wins."   

You are one of the first studios to be awarded the German Games Funding, how did the funding help you to realize your game? What is important from your point of view about such funding?  

Maurice Hagelstein: "We founded in Hamburg in 2015, when the last nail in the coffin of local games sponsorship was sunk deep. For us, the fact that 70% (!) of our game budget is supported by funding is still incomprehensible. Before that, we had to do a lot of contract work to have at least some time and money left for our projects. That never really worked out because there is no focus and you need the buffer for bridging between jobs. Now, for the first time, we were able to concentrate on our completely own game and even hire additional staff. The pressure is still high, of course, because you don't want to disappoint the players, the industry, and the taxpayers."  

Bomb Bots Arena is released for PC and mobile, what are the decision processes behind the choice of platforms for you?    

Maurice Hagelstein: "Our goal is to release BBA on as many platforms as possible. It's a multiplayer game that supports crossplay and we want everyone to see and play with our baby. In June we will first release the Steam and Mobile versions. This is clearly due to the non-existent barrier (keyword Devkit) between studio and player. Furthermore, these communities are very vocal and often like to participate in the improvement of the games. The Switch version is our next absolute priority, because a) we already have a version running on it and b) we simply have a lot of Nintendo fans in the team and the console is perfect for this title."   

Find out more about Tiny Roar on their Website: www.tinyroar.de  

Join the Bomb Bots Arena Discord here:  Discord.gg/BombBotsArena