Snake Time - Interview with Those Six Faces on Edamame Reviews

Do you remember our review of an incredibly challenging game about snakes, casual time travel, and frustration? Snake Time is one hell of a puzzle game to solve without crying! 😭😭😭 Which is why we would like to share our interview with the developer of this extra challenging game for iOS and Android.

If you have yet to check out our review of Snake Time, you can do so here!

Before we start we’d like to thank Those Six Faces (this is actually the name of the studio) for participating in our interview and for answering all of our geeky questions! Thanks!

…and without further ado, our interview begins…

The Interview

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us about Snake Time! Could you kick-start this interview by telling us a little about your studio, yourself, and what drew you into the gaming industry?

Hello Edamame Reviews!

My name is Sean Simon and I am a 19-year-old game developer and graphic designer. From the age of 9, I have had a shared passion for programming and art. My supportive friends and family have always encouraged me to pursue my dream, so a couple of years ago I set up a little studio called Those Six Faces which I release my titles under. It has been a hobby I do on the side of work and university.

Ok, let’s start talking about Snake Time… What are the highlights of your latest release?

This release of Snake Time features the first three exciting worlds with over 50 mind-bending puzzles! Since this is the initial release, later updates will bring more worlds and mechanics to the game.

What was the core idea or inspiration behind Snake Time? And perhaps more importantly, where do you find inspiration for your games in general?

Snake Time’s most notable source of inspiration is Saul Bass. His graphic design work on movie titles in the late 1950’s has a very bold and jarring style which I thought would work perfectly for a modern game.

I get most of my inspiration from asking the what-ifs. For example, the inspiration for the gameplay came from Jonathan Blow’s hit indie Braid, where I asked the ‘what if I made a turn-based version of this game?’

How long was Snake Time in development for? And are there any interesting and/or exciting moments or experiences you would like to share with us from that time?

Snake Time has been a year-long project. It was originally a 3D platformer by the name of ‘Strailton’. Like most early prototypes, I had over-scoped the project and after two years of work, the game was losing its direction.

I ended up scrapping Strailton, but recycled the idea into a new 2D version (which came to be Snake Time). The exciting part was watching how players were much more engaged with Snake Time than they were with Strailton, telling me that extra year of work was well worth it.

Do some levels have more than 1 solution? We haven’t played many puzzle games that feel quite as abstract as Snake Time, and we almost felt as though there may be more than one way to solve some of the levels.

I have designed most of the levels to have more than one solution. Even if you want to take the gold route and collect all the gold platforms, there are still plenty of ways to solve each level. Snake Time is ultimately a game about persistence, so if you make a mistake do not go straight for the restart button. Keep playing and you might surprise yourself.

What software, developer-tools, or black-magic(?) did you use when making Snake Time? Is there anything you would like to share with the developers who read Edamame Reviews?

Snake Time was done with Unity and C#. All the vector shapes were done by hand within the Unity Engine. Before I started working on the gameplay, I designed my own developer-handy level editor. This proved extremely useful as I would design all the levels on my iPad during the long daily commute to university and back.

Is there any secret “developer-advice” you can give our lucky players who read this interview?

If you get stuck at a level, try a completely different solution. More often than not it’s just a matter of looking at the puzzles from a different angle. I’ve added a little secret room in the ‘?’ section on the main menu.

(Edamame Reviews) We’ll give it a try! 😆

What can we expect to see in Snake Time or from Those Six Faces in the not so distant future? What do we have to look forward to next?

The next big update for Snake Time is set for release in September.
The Green Update: “Glide through a world of lush hills, floating valleys, dense jungles, and more. Snake your way through an all-new adventure on this mystical green planet!”