Ghost Town Games: ‘we’ve no interest in being a big studio’

In an interview with Gamesindustry, Ghost Town Games founders Phil Duncan and Oli DeVine explained that – despite Overcooked’s massive success and the money it has brought in – things aren’t changing much for the two… now three… person indie studio.

"We just want to make stuff that’s weird and experimental," said DeVine. "We would certainly like to do stuff that is way off to the side of what Overcooked is like… We will be more ambitious about where we go next. Because Overcooked has been so nicely received, it’s actually given us a bit of freedom to experiment. Hopefully, going forward, we will do something a little bit crazier."

Duncan added that he didn’t see the studio becoming a ‘big 20 or 30 person studio’, “We have no interest in that. We’ve done the AAA thing. We’ve done smaller 30-person teams within that. This works so well. It gives us all the perks without all the stress."

Since the release of Overcooked, the team has relocated to Manchester from Cambridge, employed Gemma Langford full-time as a writer/community manager/multitasker (she worked on the first game, though not full-time), and have increased office space. Beyond that? The plans aren’t to go much bigger.

This is in part thanks to the help publisher Team17 provides, with the veteran company taking over many of the nitty gritty aspects, allowing Ghost Town Games to get on with making Overcooked 2. Beyond that, the positive experience – and hugely positive reception – from the original Overcooked is feeding into the sequel’s development nicely.

"In terms of how we develop games, and the things we are passionate about, that’s the same,” Duncan explained, “But I guess there’s a bit more confidence now in terms of the basics of making a game from scratch."