Quarantine inspired the Lithuanian to create a game that attracted the interest of the biggest gaming platforms | Business

The developer, who worked as a programmer, quit his job following interest in his game and last year started his own game studio, JollyBits Games, which is already working on more than one game.

The secret of the success of the game “Ready, Steady, Ship!” became the relevance of shipments noticed during the quarantine and the well-thought-out possibility to play with several people. As game developer Martynas Cibulis notes, these two elements helped attract the attention of major foreign game platforms the most – “Ready, Steady, Ship!” is presented on Steam, PlayStation Store, Microsoft Store and Nintendo eShop on the day of release .

Photo by Gintarė Sakalytė/Martynas Cibulis

“At the initial stage of game development, I didn’t know exactly which direction I would go, but the main idea came from the current events of the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, we all started buying everything online en masse, and couriers and parcels became the main heroes. I thought it would be interesting to convey not only the behind-the-scenes of this work in the form of a game, but also to allow players to experience what it means to have huge volumes of shipments, sort them and work in such a field.

I also decided to make the game accessible to the whole family – it can be played both by two and by one, and everything is based on humor and puzzles that use the game’s physics in various ways. It was these game ideas and genre choices that helped attract the attention of both the publisher and the big game stores,” says Martynas Cibulis, game developer and founder of JollyBits Games studio.

From a programmer to the founder of his own studio

According to the designer and developer of the new game, attracting a big publisher gave him the opportunity to quit his job and start his own game studio, but creating games is not as easy as it might seem from the outside.

“To be honest, it’s really not easy to create computer games, especially if you’re a team of just a few people or you’re working alone. It is a process that requires multifaceted skills, including programming, graphic design and drawing, 3D modeling, animation, marketing and entrepreneurship. And although I started creating the game completely alone, currently there are four of us in the studio founded last year – two programmers, an artist and a 3D modeler.

On Ready, Steady, Ship!, I had to work alone most of the time, and as the development process accelerated, there was a need to expand the team. We have planned to continue creating updates and additions to the game, but currently most of the team is already working on another project”, Martynas Cibulis points out.

Special attention to the Lithuanian language

According to M.Cibulis, when creating games, he always has an additional goal – to necessarily offer the opportunity to play not only in the main foreign languages, but also in Lithuanian.

“For me personally, the presence of the Lithuanian language in the game is important and even a matter of principle. Yes, maybe the audience of Lithuanian players is not very big and sometimes introducing our native language into the game can become more of a loss than a profit, but we don’t do everything for money. Therefore, our game supports the Lithuanian language and I tend to look at it more as a respect for the language I speak every day. I think that many Lithuanians will be pleased and surprised to find their native language among the main language selection settings”, emphasizes Martynas Cibulis.

The game “Ready, Steady, Ship!” appeared on April 19 of this year. and is available on major PC gaming platforms: “Steam“, „PlayStation Store“, „Microsoft Store“ ir „Nintendo eShop“. The price of the game will be 15 euros on the day of release.