STUDIO PROFILE
suddenly the game industry sat up and took
notice. Sony’s then-head of strategic content,
Shahid Ahmad, was particularly taken with
Velocity, and asked if Marsden had any other
ideas. He replied with a variation on the game’s
original pitch, in which the ship’s pilot would
occasionally dock and run around in side-
scrolling platforming sections. “Nobody was
sold on the idea of this two-tier game, because
it had been tried before and wasn’t successful,”
Marsden says. But doors that had previously
been closed were now beginning to open. “He
just said, ‘Signed.’ And that was it, really. We
put together a plan for a team and a schedule
and got back to him with the budget, and he
said, ‘Yep, fine, I can make this happen.‘”
As contract negotiations began, Ahmad
wondered if Futurlab might have anything in
mind for Sony’s PlayStation Mobile initiative.
Three puzzlers with their origins in Flash came
to mind: Surge, Fuel Tiracas and Beat Slider.
Then Ahmad suggested an enhanced version of
Velocity for Vita – Velocity Ultra. Futurlab hired
veteran pixel artist John Steels and chiptune
composer Joris de Man to address one of the
few complaints about the original game: that
it lacked the style to match its undoubted
substance. “It was a bit of a turning point for us
in the studio, because our production values
shot through the roof,” Marsden says. Not to
mention the fact that Futurlab suddenly found
itself making five games for Sony all at once –
six, if you include Surge Deluxe. “It was a crazy
time,” he says with a wistful grin.
Futurlab had reached the peak of its bell
curve, but now came the down slope. After
Velocity 2X, Sony was keen on a third game,
but the prototype it sought was beyond the
studio’s capacity. By the time it had raised the
funds and put together the prototype, a year
had passed and the publisher was no longer
interested. Marsden has since posted footage
of what was set to be called Velocity Supernova
on Twitter, to a positive reception. “If the
chapter of Futurlab closes sometime in the
future, I’ll be very sad if we haven’t made
a third Velocity game.” Another project,
a platformer signed by an unnamed publisher,
was cancelled when the publisher was shut
down. But a year after the disappointment of
Supernova, Sony offered the studio a lifeline.
With PSVR’s arrival imminent, the platform
holder wanted games from its most reliable
development partners. The Scalextric-inspiredTiny Trax and Mini-Mech Mayhem – for which
the creative spark was ignited when Marsden
visited friends for a boardgame night – were
the results, and though neither was Velocity
standard, both proved Futurlab could turn its
hand to any genre.Its latest projects perhaps shouldn’t come
as a surprise, then. Peaky Blinders: Mastermind
is a fascinating top-down tactical puzzler based
on a speech by protagonist Tommy Shelby at
the end of the show’s first season. “It’s this
concept of the ‘soldier’s minute’, where anything
can happen to decide the course of a battle
within a single minute,” Marsden says. “It fits
with our idea of orchestrating family members
to pull off a robbery or a jailbreak, where that
synchronisation of those characters comingtogether is the critical moment.” Then there’s the
self-explanatory Power Wash Simulator –
inspired by the subreddit Power Washing Porn,
which has close to a million subscribers – which
Marsden believes is particularly well-timed.
“It’s a great opportunity to capitalise on the fact
that we’re all stuck inside: the idea of seeing
a sunny day and being able to do this satisfying
thing outdoors to give people a release.”
Are these games a deliberate choice to
avoid being pigeonholed? Has it benefited the
studio to have broken out from its apparent
niche? It has, Marsden says, though deciding
to work on these projects wasn’t about trying todiversify Futurlab’s output so much as trying to
find where the market is in such a fast-moving
industry. “You have to be able to pivot quickly,
spot opportunities and jump on them when
they’re there. If you’d asked me five years ago
whether we’d make a Peaky Blinders game,
I would have said probably not. I would have
seen us make Velocity Supernova.” And then
that game? He laughs ruefully. “Only two
days ago, I came up with a new vehicle to
pitch that idea. So I’m going to keep working
until I can make it. Every different type of
game we make, including Power Wash
Simulator, is a way to develop the team’s skills,
to continue doing what we love, so that
eventually the right window will open. And
when it does, we’ll be in a position where
we’re ready to take that opportunity.” QMarsden on Futurlab: “We call ourselves a genre-agnostic boutique studio, which means we
don’t care about the genre so much as the idea. We have a team of amazing people who are
at the top of their game, and with a good concept you can really galvanise a team”
“YOU HAVE TO BE ABLE TO PIVOT
QUICKLY, SPOT OPPORTUNITIES AND
JUMP ON THEM WHEN THEY’RE THERE”