***Disclaimer: We have no association with River Tails or the developers beyond being extremely excited fans and supporters.***

On Friday, some of the people working on River Tails hosted a Twitch stream, where viewers got a behind-the-scenes look at some of the game’s designs, the creative process, and more. Some of the River Tails team (“Frenzy,” Gabriele, and Amadeo) answered questions in between showing us what the process has been like for them so far.

The Beginning

Frenzy: “This is where it all started. So, you can see this really, really ugly fish. …This one was the first fish that we [did], and it was me and Gabriele…in a house in Naples. And we said, okay, we should make a video game. And we said, what kind of video game can we make? …and we were talking and said okay, let’s make a game about a fish. Why? Because we couldn’t afford to add any animation to the game, and the fish works even just by laying it in the water. …And yeah, this is where River Tails started.”

Frenzy: “One day, I came back home and I said okay, let’s do a couple of drawings, and this is when everything started to click. So I remember I’d done this really, really bad drawing about a cat on a little platform – a little piece of wood – and a little fish that’s dragging him in the water. And we said, oh, that could be a nice thing for a game. Like, why don’t we try and experiment? As you can see, we like the idea of having cute animals. So, this is where everything started – the first name was Cat & Koi, but we said okay, no, we are gonna change it, and also, the subtitle is A Friendship Story 2021.”

The game went through several different name changes before the final name of River Tails. They also considered A River Tale and Upstream: A Journey For Two. I really like the final name because it’s cute and puns make me happy.

Design Process

Amadeo: “May I ask a question about this? How come you drew a cat?”

Frenzy: “I used to live in Catania also, and I think that morning, I saw a cat – a white cat, like in my garden, and that’s probably where it all started. But we wanted to have a river, we wanted to have a fish, and then at some point we decided we wanted to do a co-op game, so it was like every idea clicked that day…It’s very organic, how the idea of the game came up.”

One viewer wanted to know why they decided to make Furple the Cat purple.

Frenzy: “The first idea was already a purple cat. And I’m gonna give you a very, very easy question…So, if you have a game that has got two elements, and we say that the elements are the water, and then you have the grass, right? You know that the fish is a red fish, right? So, you’re gonna have this nice red on top of the blue of the water, and that’s amazing because you have so much contrast here, and as soon as you see the screen, you see where the character is. …We had decided that the best color of the other character was the opposite of the red. It’s not exactly the opposite but it’s almost the opposite. And the color of it was very visible on grass…The purple of the cat is informed by the fact that we want every character to stand out.”

Frenzy: “What do we want from this game? …The main core needs to be the collaboration. So this is the main core – as you can see I’ve done a huge heart…”

“What are your artistic inspirations for the game?”

Frenzy: “I think the main inspirations were Crash Bandicoot, Rayman Origins, and Rayman Legends. In terms of artistic style, we are nineties kids, and we grew up with Spyro, with Crash Bandicoot, with Rayman – also the very first Rayman. So lots of inspiration comes from that place. …If you pay attention, you’re gonna notice the kind of Crash Bandicoot inspiration – not even the Crash Bandicoot that is happening now (Crash Bandicoot 4). It’s more about Crash Bandicoot 1.”

Timeline

Another viewer asked them, “…when did you guys start working on the game?” Frenzy indicated that they started on the very first prototype in around summer 2020, with Gabriele clarifying that they began working on the game in late September or early October 2020. Frenzy said that it’s been about a year since they began using Unity for the game’s development. The last alpha demo was started in July 2021; June or July 2021 was when they built the team and really got to work.

“Would you say that the pandemic and the inability to see friends in person inspired the themes [of friendship and collaboration] for River Tails?”

Frenzy: “I think it inspired us a lot because…first of all, what the pandemic did was giving us – at least me and Gabriele – the strength to leave our job, and for some reason, I think it made – and this is a very sad note – but it gave us the feeling…say, okay if I’m working from home for another studio, maybe we can work from home for our stuff. So that’s where everything started, and also, we said, like we wanna create an experience that could work with lockdown…we wanted to stay on the same sofa and play a game, so absolutely, the pandemic was so, so a part of this. And we can say it’s a bright side of something bad that was happening.”

Amadeo: “I think it’s worth reminding people that neither Gabriele or Francesco have any experience in video games – I mean, you never worked in video games before, right?”

Gabriele: “Yeah, absolutely. Never.”

Amadeo: “So something that is trivial for a seasoned programmer is not as trivial for you guys, let alone me.”

Frenzy: “It was probably one year ago that we started touching Unity…We have [taken] a course [in] game design.”

I’m so impressed by how far they’ve come from the initial designs and gameplay!

Animation

During the stream, there was also a question about whether the game had dialogue; Frenzy responded that “for an indie team, [they] have a very limited budget, and having the dialogue means that you need to maybe translate it and you need to dub it or maybe just put the subtitles…” Gabriele added, “Adding dialogue comes with a cost…[without dialogue] the story has to be really well-acted by the characters…you have to communicate just by action and facial expressions…”

Amadeo handles the animation for the game. Amadeo said that “for the in-game stuff, we found out that [doing] an in-game clip…actually takes very little…[an animation of the cat jumping after taking damage] you can do easily in three hours maybe – maybe four but maybe even less…In a day you can put out a couple of clips or even more…I think initially we estimated it would take about fifty days or so to do all the animations…Eventually of course…it took longer, and it’s taking longer…”

Demo Impressions

***Please note that the commentary below is about the Alpha Demo version available on itch.io, and may not reflect the state of the final version of the game.***

While I don’t use my computer too often at home (I tend to prefer gaming on portable consoles like the Switch), I decided to download the River Tails demo and try it out myself! I’m not too good at gaming with a keyboard and mouse, so I was happy to plug in my PS3 controller and get started with the demo on my computer.

It took me a few minutes to get used to playing the “lone wolf”/single player mode, where you control both Finn and Furple. The left side of my controller was used to move Furple, and Finn was controlled by the right side. I had to use the L1/L2 and R1/R2 buttons to make each character jump or grab onto each other. That was a bit difficult for me personally; I’m hoping that it’ll work a little differently on Switch in terms of the controls (or that we can remap them). I also wish that we could adjust the camera somehow. They said during the stream that they may or may not change up the camera; I didn’t have too much trouble but there were some occasional awkward angles.

The graphics are lovely, and I’m so impressed by how far the game has come from its initial graphics as shown at the beginning of this article! The music is whimsical and yet relaxing. There are cute collectible feathers from rainbow birds for you to find. Checkpoints are not too far apart, which I appreciated. The Kickstarter page indicates that they “want River Tails to adapt to the needs of different players…it can be finished by anyone, regardless of their skill level (as long as they’re determined enough).”

It took some trial and error to get used to controlling both Finn and Furple at once. I tried to make both of them jump at the same time, with varying success on them sticking the landing based on my lack of coordination. When I tried making them jump one at a time, it went more smoothly for me. I also took a while to figure out what to do if Furple started to drown after I inadvertently made him face-plant into the water. You have to have Finn grab him and I guess you need to have Furple jump at the same time? I didn’t seem to have as much of an issue with Finn accidentally ending up on land, so I only had to save him once or twice.

There were some incredibly amusing glitches like the ones above, but it really doesn’t affect the game much from what I experienced (and again, this is the alpha DEMO version to give us a first look at the game). Once either character lands on the terrain they can’t handle, there’s a meter indicating how much time they have to get on their home turf. If the meter runs out of time, you’re sent back to the last checkpoint.

While failing like that could potentially be annoying, the checkpoints were fairly frequent and close together. The loading times seemed pretty short to me, and if you get stuck and don’t want to waste time you can pause the game and click “return to last checkpoint.” Overall I thought it ran pretty smoothly. I’m really looking forward to River Tails coming to Switch as well. 🥰

During the Twitch stream, we found out that the Kickstarter reached 100% of its funding goal as the River Tails team was talking about the game live on the stream. That was incredibly exciting! The latest Kickstarter update for the campaign says that there’s a stretch goal of €15,000 (around $17,000 USD) that will allow them to work on a time trial mode for those who enjoy speed runs! As of right now, they’re sitting at a little over $14,500 USD – hopefully they will hit the stretch goal as well with six days remaining in the campaign! Congratulations to the River Tails team!