In the north of Australia, nestled within the sunshine state of Queensland is one of Australia’s premiere independent game developers. Nestled amongst a hive of incredibly talented game developers including Team WIBY (Phantom Abyss, Mr. Shifty), Half Brick (Jetpack Joyride, Fruit Ninja), Prideful Sloth (Yonder The Cloudcatcher Chronicles, Grow: Song Of The Evertree), and even one of the indie scene’s most anticipated titles from All Possible Futures (The Plucky Squire) is one of the countries biggest and best gaming exports. Having gotten off to a sensational start with their work on the acclaimed twin-stick shooter Assault Android Cactus, Queensland-based developer Witchbeam Games returned to the well only to produce one of 2021’s most awarded and celebrated titles, Unpacking, a game about unpacking the live of a character by quite literally unpacking their life. Well, not content with just putting out one of the best games of the year, they’re already back at it on their next title, and thanks to Japan’s BitSummit event this weekend, we now know much more about the game.
The team at Witchbeam debuted their new title, TemPoPo at BitSummit this weekend for the masses to try out, with key figures Tim Dawson, Wren Brier, Sanatana Mishra, and more all on-site to lend a hand to any prospective new fans, of which, if anecdotal evidence is anything to go by, there were plenty of.
TemPoPo is the team’s newest work, and has already been receiving the support of local financers with Screen Queensland offering geneous financial grants in Round 2 of their funding in 2020. The game was then known as “Foolproof” before getting it’s official name ahead of this weekend’s public showcase. Interestingly the team had been teasing TemPoPo prior to this weekend in their last work, Unpacking, where the team had slyly slipped the game’s keyart into the game, presented on television sets. For quite a while this detail had gone either unnoticed, or unrecognised before the team teased this fact, and it was then ultimately found by Twitter user @xGarbett.
Based upon the description of the title outlined in 2020 when TemPoPo received its funding, the game is “a gleeful puzzle game, where players guide a flock of silly, lovable garden sprites through treasure-filled ruins, in order to build a sky island garden.” according to Design and Production lead Sanatana Mishra, and was inspired by titles such as “Lemmings and Chu Chu Rocket that focus on planning and having endearing characters co-operate to achieve their goals”
Mishra is being supported in the development of TemPoPo by BAFTA award winning audio director and composer, Jeff van Dyck and development partner at Microsoft Seiji Tanaka. Speaking about the way the game showed at BitSummit, Mishra stated the following:
Meanwhile, Unpacking came to PlayStation in May following it’s initial launch on Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PC in 2021.
