Meet Kirsten and Rebecca, business leads at Landfall Games

Quirky and ingenious, Stockholm-based Landfall Games’ delivers games that are both amusing and incredibly fun to play. Its physics-based battle simulator, TABS (Totally Awesome Battle Simulator), is now available on mobile – meaning you can see for yourself whether a horde of skeletons could hold their own against a pirate crew.

We had the chance to chat with Landfall’s Chief Business Officer Rebecca Lautner, and Head of Publishing Kirsten-Lee Naidoo, to ask all about their development process and the inspirations behind Landfall’s games.

Kirsten-Lee Naidoo: I studied game development at university and thought I’d be a dev, but after my first internship I realized it wasn’t for me. I pivoted to business development which was a lot more interesting to me.

Becca Lautner: I took a bit of a different route to enter the industry. I studied in Germany and China, and always had a big interest in intercultural communication and building networks. I’d also worked in event management, and based on that I was offered a job in Berlin to head an initiative funded by the EU to build up a network and business opportunities for the games industry across borders. After a couple of years getting to know all parts of the industry, it became clear that this was what I wanted to do. Now I’ve been in the industry for 10 years, and 6 of them with Landfall.

Kirsten: Landfall approached Becca 6 years ago because they wanted someone to lead their business efforts and knew her from her previous work in the European games scene. Becca had seen my work assisting other indie studios to self-publish, and then – 3 years later – asked me to assist with Landfall’s business and investment.

Kirsten: Ever since TABS, there’s been a desire to make smaller and quicker games. Content Warning and Peak were made in about 2 months, and that scope is how we want to make games going forward. TABS and Haste took several years, and it was difficult for the team to stay motivated on longer projects like that. The smaller projects are proving to be a lot more fun for us to work on!

Becca: We realized very early on that we have a specific way in which we want to work with and engage our community. We want to be in charge of every step along the way, from development to release, which is why we decided to shift to self-publishing after our first title. It takes a lot of effort to figure out the whole process, from community building to platform relationships, marketing strategies, and release management. We’ve gotten better with experience.

Kirsten: TABS was conjured up during a week-long game jam in a castle in 2016. It quickly became apparent to the team that physics-based fighting was an amazing concept, and it didn't take long before the rest of the world caught on.

Becca: It was kind of a “one thing leads to another” type of situation. Before the game jam, Wilhelm was playing around with the idea of doing something with cubes. The team then decided to add physics into the mix, and since the game jam was happening inside a castle, the idea of the cubes fighting came up. The rest is history.

Becca: It’s safe to say that the decision to make TABS what it is manifested very early on. The attention the game got from the public encouraged the team to get more and more creative in adding content and factions. We released videos on Youtube throughout the development process, and sometimes those videos would get thousands or millions of views. Getting those reactions from the community helped the team dive deeper into the creative process. Also: wobbly physics are the best physics.

Kirsten: We created TABS in close contact with the community. We uploaded development videos, along with trailers of new units and game mechanics to YouTube. We also uploaded gifs to Twitter and videos on TikTok, and used our Discord server to gather feedback on TABS. A lot of the suggestions that came from there made it into the full game.

Becca: Our community has always been an important factor in how we make games, apart from the projects that we developed as April Fools’ surprises (such as TABG, Knightfall: A Daring Journey, Rounds, and Content Warning f.e.). We are very open with how our games are progressing, and we let the community be a part of that journey.

Kirsten: We’ve had a few people tell us that TABS was a big part of their childhood, and parents telling us that their kids love TABS. It’s amazing that people get so much joy from playing our games, because our team also has a lot of fun making them! It makes all the time and energy that went into development worth it.