Frima Studio's independent thinking in a 350-person company
Given just how big the world of iOS development is, it's hard to find a truly unique gaming company. Each has its own approach, but I find most companies fall into two categories: The young, small firms eager for a hit and the huge companies working with iOS's smaller scale.
Frima Studio is a unique mixture of the two. With 350 employees its no small firm. Frima has done work-for-hire on traditional video games for years, releasing collaborative titles across brands and properties. But there's a small team of three developers within Frima Studio who are working on original games. The company describes this group as "an indie game company working inside a big corporation."
You'd be be forgiven for thinking that the studio's first iOS title, A Space Shooter For Free, was the work of one developer. However, Frima's original games team begs, borrows, and all but steals company resources to complete its titles. "If we want to make our games, we need to say to the biz dev guys that we already have the money," Frima's IP manager Jerome Dumont told me.
Originally released with Sony as a PSP mini game, A Space Shooter for Free (formerly A Space Shooter For Two Bucks) has over a million players on all of its platforms. That's earned Frima the opportunity to work on more original games, like the one Dumont showed me called Nun Attack.
Nun Attack is exactly what you're thinking: Cartoon-style, heavily-armed nuns fight off the bad guys. Due later this year, Nun Attack looks great. It's essentially a clone of the very popular BattleHeart. Given that game's age, I'm happy to have a new tactical RPG to look forward to.
The build of Nun Attack that I saw is simpler than BattleHeart, and includes an interesting overworld map to explore, several mechanics to play with (think dodging bullets) and gesture-driven abilities, which Dumont calls "miracles." The game will feature four upgradeable characters with strengths like ranged attacks, healing powers and other usual, fantasy-style abilities.
Frima isn't sure how the title will be monetized yet. A Space Shooter for Free is funded by in-app purchases of a virtual currency, and while that seems like a distinct possibility for Nun Attack, Frima wouldn't commit to it just yet.
Even at this early stage, the app looked quite good. Frima's in an interesting place in terms of being able to do some indie thinking with some larger resources, and that should put it in a nice position to develop for iOS going forward.
