2024’s Finest: The Creative Journey from Lemmings and ChuChu Rocket to the Next Innovative Game by the Unpacking Team

Throughout this shuttle season, we are reissuing one of the most significant and captivating articles from Nintendo Life writers and contributors as part of our Best of 2024 series. This piece was originally published in June. Enjoy!

The developer Witch Beam is not inclined to rest on its achievements. After creating two dramatically different games — the twin-stick shooter Assault Android Cactus and the BAFTA award-winning, heartfelt puzzler Unpacking — it is poised to venture out again and engage with something far more delightful.

We found ourselves tapping our feet the entire time through the trailer for the Brisbane-based studio’s third title, Tempopo. This game merges music with the external world, showcasing Hana — a young magical girl residing in the clouds — who is revitalizing her musical garden of plants. All her Tempopo creatures possess magical abilities and exude personality, but only Hana can instruct them where to go and guide them along the ideal path.

The game presents as exceptionally inviting, boasting an eclectic mix of music and an engaging gameplay loop. However, given that the puzzle genre often leans towards brain teasers that can occasionally stress players out a bit, Tempopo aims to infuse calm, unity, and elegance into the genre.

We convened with the game’s director, Sanatana Mishra, to discuss those delightful small diorama elements, the significance of music and inclusivity, and how to create a relaxing puzzle game revolving around guiding small creatures.

Nintendo Life: Can you share the idea behind Tempopo and the inspiration behind its concept, especially given its distinct style compared to your previous works?

Sanatana Mishra, designer & director: Tempopo came about when I was visiting my friend Seiji [Tanaka], who is an incredible animator. The last game he shipped was indeed Journey. At that time, he was assisting his family in managing their dental equipment business in Japan, so he had transitioned out of the gaming industry to focus on that. We got together and discussed, “Oh, it would be fantastic if we could collaborate on a game.”

Like Love Tracker, I mean, that’s extremely fascinating, isn’t it?

We envisioned exploring evolutionary, playful elements in game design. I was inspired by those classic puzzle games that I absolutely love — Lemmings and ChuChu Rocket! and The Incredible Machine. I can still enjoy playing them because of my fondness for those challenges, but it’s difficult to reintroduce them as they are to a contemporary audience. We aim to bring that joy to more players by making things more enjoyable and accessible. I believe that puzzle games have, for me, undeniably lost their essence. When you figure them out, you often feel scrutinized and overwhelmed while playing them.

I’ve conducted playtests for Tempopo where participants arrive and they almost hesitate to engage and see it, thinking, “Oh, it’s a puzzle game, I’m terrible at those, I feel foolish when I try.” Well, I aim to create a game that makes you feel wonderful, guiding you to that “aha” moment and instilling a sense of calm and tranquility while you play.

ChuChu Rocket is quite the notable reference there.

It’s an utterly captivating game, but it’s one that induces pressure when you play it, especially if you introduce it to someone who plays more mainstream games. ChuChu Rocket is quite challenging and not very user-friendly.

There are some more contemporary puzzle games like Captain Toad: Love Tracker or music-based games like Crypt of the NecroDancer and Cadence of Hyrule that we considered while envisioning Tempopo for the first time. Did any of those influence the development process?

I enjoy all three of those titles. I’d argue that while Crypt of the Necrodancer and Cadence of Hyrule aren’t direct inspirations, there are many similarities in how you utilize music’s rhythm and timing to navigate through spaces.

It’s precisely the aspect that I believe Nintendo excels in across all their games; they understand how to convey information to you.

Like Love Tracker, I mean, that’s exceptionally intriguing, isn’t it? When it was a minigame in Super Mario 3D World, it was remarkable. Once they transformed it into a full game, it became incredible. When they updated it for the Switch with additional content, it was even better all over again. Tempopo doesn’t resemble Captain Toad, but I’ve endeavored to learn from what Nintendo has accomplished effectively. They know how to communicate ideas to you.

In Toad Love Tracker, you explore a level, see a form, and detect a pattern for navigating, and you immediately understand where you can go, what you can do, and what the expectations are. This is incredibly important for me with puzzles. In Tempopo, it revolves largely around identifying the appropriate harmony of the sequence. If you can utilize small 3D dioramas, you’ll be able to convey much of that same information throughout.

I would argue that Love Tracker is indeed an inspiration in the way it presents information. Unfortunately, there are no parallels in how the games operate! If someone is hoping for a Love Tracker sequel — I’m really wishing that game gets created — I believe Nintendo should spearhead that effort. I seriously doubt anyone else should endeavor to create a clone of Toad’s Love Tracker.

It is incredibly important to develop a game that is approachable beyond a traditional core audience. Having grown up with video games and nearing 40, I recognize the fundamental mechanics of gaming; however, when I play with my family, they prefer games that present information in an immediately comprehensible manner. I strive to learn from the approach that [Nintendo] takes since they create games that are designed for everyone. This cannot be said for many of even the most acclaimed and beloved games out there right now.

Following Unpacking, did you incorporate any insights from that game into Tempopo?

Definitely. Creative director Wren [Brier] contributed many diverse skills that Tim [Dawson, technical director] and I lack. It’s fantastic to enhance our design and philosophy on various elements, particularly regarding accessibility and connecting with players in puzzle design.

There were many aspects in Unpacking where players feel neither intimidated nor foolish while engaging in that experience. At its essence, it’s a puzzle game. There are no fail states, and it imposes no form of punishment, yet it still features engaging puzzles to solve.

People talk to us after that game and wonder if we’re going to be the studio known for wordless narratives; that’s not precisely what interests us, as we don’t simply want to replicate an aspect of a game that was incredibly successful. However, I do believe that the broadly accessible nature of Unpacking is something I’ll always admire and think, “Wow, that was really impressive.” I truly appreciate Wren and Tim for managing and developing that.

You were able to take what many consider to be a truly challenging experience and transform it into an incredibly accessible and engaging mechanic while allowing the actions to drive the story.

Exactly. It’s always gratifying to observe people working through an experience and being genuinely engaged by it. I often think about this in the context of movies; I might watch something terrible on Netflix because I don’t care to revisit it, or I might rush to the cinema.

A little while ago, I went with my wife to see a film titled Perfect Days, and afterward, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Each day for a week, it lingered in my mind, and it’s one of those things that lives rent-free in your head. That’s the kind of experience I want everyone to have while playing this game.

For Tempopo, you’ve transitioned from the pixel art style of Unpacking to 3D visuals. What has that shift been like? Do you find it easy to work with, or did you face any challenges?

I’ve been creating video games for 15 years; that’s the shortest tenure of anyone on the core Witch Beam team. Jeff [van Dyck, composer and sound designer] has been doing this for most of his adult life, and Tim has a few years on top of that. So we have a solid understanding of game development. A lot of that time was spent on projects that were canceled or never came to fruition. It’s not as though your gameography is thousands of titles long or anything like that. It’s just the nature of our industry.

It’s always a beautiful thing to witness when people navigate an experience and are genuinely engaged by it.

Specifically, working in 3D, our first game, [Assault Android] Cactus, was a full 3D shoot ’em up, using visuals in an extravagant way that worked exceptionally well for that title. There are always trade-offs between utilizing three-dimensional perspectives and cameras versus 2D regarding positional accuracy. It ultimately comes down to what serves the game best.

For Unpacking, the charm came from the ability to arrange things precisely as you go, which works better in 2D with pixel art. For Tempopo, we’ve embraced 3D as it is all about spatial awareness. You can’t achieve a certain level of verticality, perspective, and dynamic camera movement otherwise.

When you choose a perspective, it must be about maximizing its advantages, especially as a small team. Now we’ve leaned into animation to ensure that everything feels synchronized and moves joyfully. To some extent, it’s much simpler than achieving that in 2D, where you’d need to create each individual frame, making animation a very costly and intricate aspect of a 2D game.

Music and movement are clearly significant components of Tempopo. Why was music chosen as a focal point of the game?

There is a beauty in having audio as a central pillar of your game, stemming from the fact that we founded this company alongside Jeff Van Dyke. He is genuinely a genius. With Jeff as a full partner, it enabled us from the very beginning to discuss how audio can be intricately involved in everything from the first steps of development.

We now have very strong accessibility goals for our games.

With Tempopo, we’re utilizing harmonies and musical elements as an underlying heartbeat that assists with the puzzles and the 3D spatial aspects because you feel the rhythm of everything, even if you can’t hear the music. Each object in the game moves synchronously with others. You end up with a sense of observing something and thinking, “Okay, it’s moving at this pace, this is the beat, I can feel it, and now I know it’s two turns away from this point, and how long those turns take…” You start to perceive in sync with the rhythm, which I find incredibly captivating.

When looking at Unpacking, the audio soundscape and the whole project became one of the most ambitious undertakings that an indie team has ever done, I would argue. I can’t recall how many hundreds of sounds were involved, but it’s one of those aspects where we are deeply committed to ensuring that the audio soundscape of our games receives the same level of attention as everything else.

Indeed, and it connects with what you were saying about clarity and messaging. Music is kind of a universal language, isn’t it? Everyone understands rhythm—even if you lack rhythm, most people can follow a beat.

We really emphasize that constant heartbeat that runs through Tempopo via various soundtracks and ensure that the actions performed by the characters occur on or off half beats or full beats. They synchronize perfectly, and the elements within the levels align with that rhythm. It all flows together in such a way that even if you are primarily observing the visuals, you can almost feel the timing.

We have very strong accessibility goals with our games. Whenever we include an audio element, we ensure there is a corresponding visual component that carries equal weight. It’s utterly pointless to design something that excludes a segment of the population. That’s why this game is musical, yet it’s not strictly a rhythm game.

And while there isn’t really a visible three-dimensional grid, I believe that this audio-visual synchronization aids you in…