The Toukana team: Back from left: Sandro Heuberger and Luca Langenberg. Front from left: Zwi Zausch and Timo Falcke.

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«Dorfromantik» developer: «success has opened a lot of doors for us»

20/5/2022

Hailing from our very own Switzerland, Sandro Heuberger is co-developer of the indie gaming hit «Dorfromantik». In this interview, he explains how his master’s thesis turned into a full-time project.

The word «Dorfromantik», literally «village romance», has even the best translation apps begging for mercy. The term has any player outside of the German speaking world scratching their head. Nevertheless, the Berlin game studio Toukana Interactive made the decision to keep the original name for its debut work. Even if the majority of the gaming community pronounces it wrong, it’s definitely memorable and fitting to boot. «Dorfromantik» is a PC game that draws on similarities with «The Settlers of Catan» or «Carcassonne». It’s all about building an ever-growing world out of hexagonal cards and letting the high score mount up with perfect card placement. Each little card contains one or more elements such as trees, houses or lakes and ideally should be put on cards with the same elements.

The launch of the early access version a year ago brought the young studio unexpected success. This has created a lot of joy, but also a great deal of work, as ex-Winterthur resident and co-founder Sandro Heuberger tells us.

The interview is also available in audio or video format, starting at 1:28:00.

«Dorfromantik» was an early access surprise hit. You actually intended to do a classic launch with version 1.0, didn’t you?
Sandro Heuberger, co-founder of Toukana: Originally, we wanted to work on the game for a year and then release it. We presented the first content within six months, including a playable demo. There has already been a lot of positive and touching feedback. At the time, we were right in the middle of Covid lockdown. And a lot of people were writing in to tell us that «Dorfromantik» helped them to quieten down and relax. We were really chuffed about this. In fact, it’s what gave us the idea to release the game as early access six months prior to what was planned. During this launch, the store practically blew up in our face – in a positive sense. I still remember opening the Discord server. And you could watch new users joining almost every second. The thing was on fire. It was great, but a lot to take at once.

At the same time, you cleaned up at the DCP, the German Video Game Awards.
That’s right. We won the award for the best debut and also, something that was even more prestigious for us, the prize for the best game design.

Can you say how many copies of «Dorfromantik» you’ve sold?
Put it like this, we were able to repay our funding from the Berlin state in one go. That’s very unusual. Most people manage it, but it takes a long time. We can now stay afloat for two to four years, which is already pretty cool.

«Dorfromantik» was born out of a degree project. Can you tell me more about that?
All four of us completed our bachelor’s in Game Design at HTW Berlin, the University of Applied Sciences. Meanwhile, the master’s course focuses on the entrepreneurial and implementation part of a project. As part of that, we wanted to build a pipeline in order to work on a game for about a year. This included an ideation phase where we developed a new prototype every two or three days within a time frame that was just under three weeks. One of these prototypes was «Dorfromantik».

For the first few weeks, we did nothing but community management.

But what took you to Berlin in the first place? I mean, you could have studied game design in Switzerland.
I applied to the ZHdK (Zurich University of the Arts). But at that time, you needed to have a preparatory design course under your belt and financially, that just wasn’t an option for me. Once I discovered that, I looked around and, with hindsight, I found the perfect place for me at the HTW in Berlin.

You sell Dorfromantik through your own channels, without a publisher. Was that never up for discussion?
We had the option to work with very well-known and renowned agents. But we made the conscious decision not to take that route because we could already do a lot of the work ourselves in our team of four. For us, it was important to gain as much experience as possible. Our motto is «win or learn». That means we set out to do something and either it works and we’re happy or it goes belly up and we learn from it. It’s like when your mum would tell you a gazillion times not to touch the hot stove. And the lesson only sunk in when the burning feeling sunk into your finger.

You can also play the game without a time or tile limit.

After the success of your launch, you must been inundated with partnership requests or even offers to buy you out.
Yes – to both those things (laughs). We’ve learnt to get a better handle on it. Initially, we were replying to everything. Now, I ignore repeated requests if I said the first time around that we’d get back to them if we were interested. Success has opened a lot of doors for us.

Is there still anything where you think you overestimated your abilities?
In terms of marketing, we quickly noticed that we needed help. And so, we got someone on board. He’s actually from Switzerland – hey, Marco. Once he got stuck in, we soon felt at ease. Marco has the same ideas as us and was able to give a good impression of us to the outside world.

I also imagine the topic of community must be very labour-intensive.
The community beat a path straight to our door. Don’t get me wrong. It’s nice, but in the first few weeks the four of us did nothing but community management. Of course, it wasn’t a permanent thing. One way or another we also had to finish developing the game. That’s why we have Dom as our dedicated community manager.

What’s the biggest change the game has seen since early access?
We altered the game a lot and added a tonne of content, such as creative mode, which lets you build freely without a high score. That’s especially for players who prefer to build in peace. Our 1.0 launch saw the biggest update yet with the addition of four extra modes, including custom mode. This was our way of thanking the community and letting them create their own modes.

Now there’s even an undo button. I hear it was incredibly controversial.
Requests for an undo button cropped up very early on. Having the option to go a step back – it made sense and was justified. You see, it’s easy to mistype and put down the wrong tile. That can be really annoying when you don’t have 800 tiles spare. But on a technical level, it was difficult to implement because we hadn’t planned this feature from the outset. The undo button was the only thing we never had in beta. And so, we kept it secret until the live release. It was definitely the most popular feature.

«Dorfromantik» takes its inspiration from board games. Have you ever thought about going in the opposite direction and turning «Dorfromantik» into a board game?
We have considered it. Who knows. Maybe there will be something along those lines (laughs).

Header image: The Toukana team: Back from left: Sandro Heuberger and Luca Langenberg. Front from left: Zwi Zausch and Timo Falcke.

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Philipp Rüegg

Senior Editor

Philipp.Rueegg@digitecgalaxus.ch

As a child, I wasn't allowed to have any consoles. It was only with the arrival of the family's 486 PC that the magical world of gaming opened up to me. Today, I'm overcompensating accordingly. Only a lack of time and money prevents me from trying out every game there is and decorating my shelf with rare retro consoles.

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