Episode: 1428
Title: HPR1428: Coffee Stain Studios and the Sanctum games
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1428/hpr1428.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 02:10:11

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Have you heard of the sanctum games? No? Then this is a treat for you.
Listen to Armin from Kovistane Studios on today's episode of Hacker Public Radio.
In 2010, a few students from the University of HIFT created the Indigame Developing Company
Kovistane Studios. In 2011, they released a game, Sanctum, on Steam, and in May of 2013,
they released Sanctum 2. These games are most often described as a mix between first-person
shooter and tower defence. You find yourself in a futuristic setting, fighting aliens with
a fair bit of humour. The player chooses how much resources to distribute on automatic
towers or his or her own weapons. Both games featured the possibility to collaborate
with your friends to beat the levels.
One of the founders, Armin Ibrisagic, was at DreamHack in November 2013, where I got a chance
to talk to him. What is DreamHack, you ask? Well, it's only the world's largest computer
festival held multiple times a year in junshurping Sweden. According to Wikipedia, it holds the
world record, as recognised by the Guinness Booker Records and Twin Galaxies, for the world's
largest land party and computer festival, and has held the record for the world's fastest
internet connection and the record in most generated traffic.
And I also got an interview with one of the organisers of DreamHack, but that you will
hear another day. Today we focus on Sanctum and how the market looks for smaller game developers.
People to DreamHack winter 2013, where I've just caught Armin coming from one of his speaking
engagements.
My name is Armin Ibrisagic, I work as a game designer and PR manager at Coffee St Studios,
and I just talked a little about the game industry.
And what are you best known for in the game industry?
Me or Coffee St Studios? Well, we're both best known for the Sanctum games, of course.
If you don't have Sanctum on Steam, you should definitely buy it.
Yeah, and I concur, it's two great games, absolutely.
How long have they been in development? When did the Sanctum saga start?
The Sanctum saga started when we graduated college, where we just studied game development,
and we figured we wanted to make a game. So we played a lot of different tardifense games,
but we felt that you only have fun half of the game. So we thought that if we give the
player a gun, throw the player inside all the action and let him shoot stuff. That's
where it started. It took us nine months to finish Sanctum 1, and our lives changed forever.
Usually when you create something that you think is new, people pop up from the woodworks
and say, well, that's been done, actually. Have you experienced that?
No, we were very lucky to be the first FPS tower defense hybrid game in history, and that's
probably why we managed to do so well on Steam. How well have you done?
Sanctum 1 has sold over 700,000 copies, so it's been really great for us.
We recently released Sanctum 2 this summer, and it's been doing about twice as good. So
it's great for us. And in Sanctum 2, what was there to improve on, actually?
Well, when we released Sanctum 1, we sold really well, but we still kind of felt bad, because
the game only had like three levels. It had two or three different weapons. It was really
small. So we patched up Sanctum 1 a long time. We listened to player feedback, and then when
we sat down and designed Sanctum 2, we rebuilt the game entirely from scratch, but we added
all the things that players have asked for in Sanctum 1, that our old game could never support,
like multiple different classes. We had four player co-op on day one. We had to patch in
four player co-op in Sanctum 1. It was pretty buggy even then. So there was a lot of new stuff,
and of course, new guns, new towers, new everything.
What's the technology behind it? What do you use?
We use Unreal Engine. We're really lucky that we have very good relations with Epic.
They've been helping us so much, and we're really thankful. So it's really helped.
The Unreal Engine has helped us so much in making the game look good.
What's the next step?
Right now, we're actually in the most exciting process that we've ever been in. We're basically sitting
at the office and making up new stuff. We're making up new games, where everyone has a chance to
pitch their own game to the studio, and at the end, we're going to vote for the game that we want
to develop the most. And it's going to be a totally different IP, new everything. It's not going to
be Sanctum at all. Will there ever be a Sanctum 3? I don't know. Maybe.
We'll see. When there's something new to give to the IP?
Yeah, definitely. Right now, we feel we're really satisfied with Sanctum 2.
If there's a Sanctum 3, then maybe after a game or two. Because right now, we've worked with Sanctum
franchise for like four years. So we're really looking forward to making something new.
What kind of involvement do you have with your fans? How do you interact with the people
playing your games? It's actually a pretty interesting story. When we released Sanctum 2,
we had a lot of players that were disappointed with some of the changes we made. And it was a
little bit of a sidestep for us. We felt that and we listened to them and we were like, yeah,
well, maybe you're right. So we did a patch after two days, so we changed almost everything the
players were complaining. Because we really have no marketing budget. We're not a AAA studio,
so we rely completely on our fans to spread the word about our game. And that means that we have
to be best friends with our fans. So that's something we strive for all the time.
You created for Sanctum 1, I believe, a special game mode with the Yogs cost?
Yeah, we did. Yogs cost has actually helped us so much as well. They did a let's play video
Sanctum 1. I got like two million views or something. It's totally ridiculous. They paid
our salary for months. So we felt that, of course, we have to give them a job of cake still see.
And that's where I found out about the games. So I'm thankful to them as well, of course.
But I've had a bit of problem, a bad luck with running this on my operating system since I run
Linux. What can you do about that? We're actually working on Linux port. I don't know if I'm
supposed to say that. Because if something would go wrong, then I don't want to like promise people
that it's going to be a Linux support. But we're working on it right now, mainly because of
the humble bundle. If it wasn't for the humble bundle, we probably wouldn't have worked at
Linux. So you have the humble bundle, so you thank for that.
And it's interesting. You're really mentioning the things that makes a great difference for
indie developers. How do you view the new game consoles, which also have something of an idea
that it would be easier for indie developers to release games, both the PlayStation 4 and the
Xbox One? I think that is awesome. I've heard from Microsoft that the Xbox One is actually going
to be, you can turn it into a development kit at home. So you can actually develop games
at the Xbox One if you own an Xbox One, which is really great. Because right now, if you want
want to develop games for Xbox, you need to order special Xboxes from Microsoft. So I think
they're really great that they're focusing on indie developers. And I hope that will
will sometime work for porting our games to the new consoles as well. Right now, we're only looking at
PC, but it's definitely possible. Are you looking at any other consoles and hills, perhaps?
I myself personally am really looking forward to Valve's Steam Box. It looks really great,
but other than that, no, it would be awesome to have Sangdom 2 on Nintendo DS or something,
but I know that's never gonna happen. What's the idea for the future of Sangdom 1?
Now that you released number two, are you just going to let that sit and rot on the shelf,
or do you have plans for the old game? That totally depends on what our players want. If there's
demand for new stuff for Sangdom 1, then absolutely. But so far, most players have been transferred
for Sangdom 1 to Sangdom 2. So right now, we're looking at more Sangdom 2 support.
All right, so let's round this interview up. And if you have something you want to plug,
if you have an URL that you want to send the listeners to, or perhaps something you would like to share
with them at the end of this interview, what would that be? Well, if you haven't played Sangdom,
you should really just Google... Well, no, don't Google the Sangdom game, because if you Google
Sangdom, you get to some really bad David Cameron movie. It's terrible. And they release like
the same time as us. It's ridiculous. But if you want to follow me on Twitter, then that will be
definitely awesome. Type in Armin Posts at Twitter, and you can read my good tweets. I got good tweets.
Wonderful. Thank you very much. Thank you. It was awesome to be here.
And that's our indie developer report for today. The globalization of the world through internet
and social media really makes it possible for indie game studios that is independent from
the larger companies to create truly unique games. Armin mentioned Humblebondle,
an initiative to primarily offer DRM-free games for both Mac, Windows, and Linux,
giving the buyer a choice of how the money should be spent. You pay what you want,
and give it to charity, the game developer, or the Humblebondle organization.
In the show notes, you will find all the references mentioned. Go and follow Armin on Twitter,
and perhaps tell him how much we would appreciate if they continued working on the Linux version of
Sangdom too, just so that they hopefully do not abandon that line of thought. And watch the
Yogs costs play through of the games, or perhaps go to Steam and buy them yourself.
All the references you need will be in the show notes as usual. This is CT, signing off.
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