One of the great things about being an indie publisher is the stories that come up with all the teams we work with. In this case, Fluffy Jump creator David Marquardt (developer of Pull My Tongue), decided to team up with his wife Cathy (who works in HR for a dentist) to make the game. What transpired is a tale of fun, fights and relationship building as the games development consumed their home life.
After 6 months of development this tiny one touch jumping game ended up having more polish, depth and flair than most big studio mobile games.
I recently chatted with David about the development process and what it was like working with his wife on the game. Here is what he had to say.
“Well it all started with us wanting to make a simple game that our kids or anyone could play. I got Cathy to draw characters on paper since she has a lot more imagination than me with that stuff. So she did that and drew like 20 some characters in a few days. I took the first ones and tried to recreate them in Photoshop, but when she saw them she said “No! I didn’t imagine them like that, this one should be more like that…” and so on. I couldn’t get her vision right and she ended up with her learning Photoshop from scratch just so that the characters would be like she wanted them. Apparently I wasn’t good enough! 😀
I must admit that at first working together wasn’t that easy. She got angry at Photoshop, then at me when I tried to teach her how to so stuff because she didn’t want her hand held. But after a while it got a lot easier, I mean she still basically said “f**k you” whenever I had some comment on something I didnt like. But that’s just because we are so close she could be candid. But we would compromise and come up with a fix. And same went for me when I made some features she hated.
Eventually she got more and more into the process and started drawing backgrounds and everything. I basically told her what I needed and she made a few concepts and we picked the best ones. It was a really collaboration from start to finish.
When all art was done and I was in the middle of the whole code frenzy trying to get it all wrapped up, she played the game all the time. Finding bugs and pestering me until I fixed them. She was my own personal QA specialist.
The game has been our whole world. It’s all we talked about. We got home from work, made dinner and as soon as the kids were asleep we started working on the game. Everyday. We have had a lot of fun with it, and it was a real bonding experience. And not just working on Fluffy Jump, but potentially new game ideas as well.”
So what is Fluffy Jump? Well simply it is a one touch, high score chaser with an insane amount of content and polish. It has over 80 adorable characters to unlock through a unique “hatching system”. Players can use their coins to buy eggs and hatch new characters that have unique levels and effects. For example there is a Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas themed character that has bats flying around it after each landing.
There is also a cannon system to aid high score chasers who might get bored of the first part of the game. How it works is after you hit 25 platforms 5 times, a cannon will appear at the start of the game to boost you up to 25 so you can start there. It works in 25 point increments so, 50, 75 etc. The game really gets challenging around the 75 mark so it is a life saver when you’re looking to best your friends scores.
Fluffy Jump is free on iOS and Android and available right now! If you are looking for press kit info please visit this page.