I have been content about waiting when it comes to whatever game is highly-anticipated and may set to be a big hit to gamers, even towards indie games, but I got such thought about the now-latest game from Atooi, run by only the one founder behind that company, Jools Watsham.
Yes, if you're about to ask, I have heard of him. Watsham's been responsible for "Mutant Mudds" and its tough sequel, "Super Challenge" for the 3DS, along with a couple games, such as the horror game series, "Dementium", "Moon" for DS, and its later episodic redux for the 3DS, "Moon Chronicles", when he and his partner, Gregg Hargrove(who's been long gone from our world. may he rest in peace.), were at Renegade Kid, of which they founded years ago.
That former company's been disbanded for Watsham and Hargrove to begin Atooi and Inifinitizmo(surely shuttered now following his departure), both in respective order. As it now stands, Watsham holds loads of game IP in his hands, by himself, and relied on contractors to do some work, not having one or more devs actually employed at Atooi to help him on his projects.
Now, to the latest game at hand...
The backstory about the game is this...
(apologies for this long post, BTW)
"Hatch Tales", formerly called "Chicken Wiggle Workshop", was conceived as an HD port, later a redoing on the Switch, of Atooi's 3DS game, "Chicken Wiggle", which stars a flightless bird named Chicken, partnered by a helpful worm named Wiggle, and had the duo set out on their adventure to save Chicken's kidnapped friends from a rather generically obvious witch in her sky towers.
The game's original goal was to give it a high-definition makeover while retaining the level editor and providing additional levels to bring more replay value to the game. At first, I was rather a bit impressed and intrigued about that.
The game launched a Kickstarter campaign to provide funds needed to complete it, and was quite successful, but got quite too close to losing the funding in its last hours.
As time went on, the game was formerly promised to deliver an all-new exclusive campaign to "Hatch Tales", called "Holly's Nightmare" which was originally supposed to feature another new playable hero, Holly, and her pal, Squiggle, to confront their own new main villain in her adventure, and another campaign centered on Max from "Mutant Mudds" of his own called "Max's Dreamland". They were both supposed to be unlockable, from my guess.
There were also going to be additional bonus levels from collecting the Super Gems and obtaining all regular gems in each world's level, which was partially inspired by the later post-main game worlds' levels from the likes of "Super Mario 3D World". Would've been really cool to play them.
And it was going to feature the option to switch between the HD visuals and the pixel art visuals any time we wanted. Bit on that shortly.
For years waiting, the game has hit with many delays in concern about the development, and I had been tolerant about that for so long, but I grew worried about when it was ever going to release at all, as others that backed the game have. The unnecessary long periods of radio silence gave us transparency issues about how the game was in between the post updates.
Many people tried to talk to Watsham, but he kept hush-hush about that by any means. I can presume he doesn't want to face such bad publicity and humiliation within the video game industry as a whole.
Clarification was given, though. Doing an HD redoing of Chicken Wiggle took much work of Wastham by himself, even though he rounded up contractors to offload work to them. And, obviously, money was lacking in keeping development going. That set the game back a notch or so. Especially when it came to a game that had no context about a level editor inspired by the likes of "Super Mario Maker" and the DS "Mario VS. Donkey Kong" sequels.
Then... unexpectedly, a bewildering decision hit the game's work real hard and thrashed many backers' goodwill to Watsham...
One not-so crazy day, Watsham got that bizarrely wack notion that the game was "suffering" from its so-called "identity crisis", because he believed that game to be, bear with me on his quoting, "too kiddy" and "not cool enough"! I mean, come on! I can't even think to imagine such a decision that takes away much of the game's original charm for it! A little chicken and a worm counting as "kiddy"? Really bizarre! They may look quite cute, but, that was part of the charm it had!
A game, depending on the tone and setting and so on, is meant to have great appeal to both children AND adults.
That decision led to a lot of work done on the promised campaigns completely scrapped aside to start the work all over from scratch again! And I don't mean the graphics. That decision cost so much goodwill and trust toward Watsham and Atooi as a whole and caused more great delay in the project.
The additional time got spent on re-establishing the idea about what "Hatch Tales" was about again by making a new direction to it. And over through time spent and lack of coherency of its "identity makeover", a new character got made as its one sole protagonist, Hatch, a flightless, more mature and serious-looking hawk with only his hookshot as his weapon.
Yes. Hatch is obviously a slightly mature-ish copy and paste of Chicken, but, rather, a hookshot gadget replaced the worm as his only method of survival against evil and danger.
Once Hatch has been settled as the main hero, a new only campaign got set to be its only main adventure in the game, and its focused on the esteemed kingdom called Talonreach, which was under the threat of the ancient evil frozen wraith, Nazar. Yes, it now has a different main villain instead of a witch.
Fearing Nazar's threat, the unseen and unnamed Queen called on Hatch to stop his evil by undergoing a journey to save the bird people Nazar imprisoned in his frosty prisons, recover the Ember Sprites, the obvious replacement of Super Gems in the former vision, and recover Talonreach's powerful Sacred Artifacts located in the Frozen Dungeons, for they hold the key to his defeat in his frozen mountain he resided upon his awakening.
After SO MUCH WAITING, about almost SIX YEARS to be exact, the game got finally launched, under its changed surname at the last minute, "Hatch Tales: A Heroic Hookshot Adventure". Really? That's the surname needed to better its "identity change"? I've seen games that had better names than that.
And I have to say this, after all this time waiting for it... I am VERY, VERY, VERY DISAPPOINTED about that game.
The levels' artwork as a whole are using the same original setting across all worlds, not one having unique styles to better suit their themes. There was no context on what to do and where to go on that adventure, other than the first level's wordless tutorial. And there was no context on whatever changes were made behind the scenes, such as having one additional HP to Hatch after losing so many times in a level again and again.
If one pays attention, the first world's background layers were repeatedly given color swatches for almost each world, not a one given unique artwork to better distinguish World 1's only original artwork.
Almost all of Chicken Wiggle's enemies are obviously recycled, but given coats of HD paint. I do mean, ALMOST. I can tell not a single new enemy was present in "Hatch Tales" at all.
The Frozen Dungeon levels are nothing more than a very disappointing short run with only a frozen bat as its only enemy to defeat, with a hidden room containing all 100 gems at once changing the room and the hidden path in each world, and unsatisfyingly ending with just grabbing a Sacred Artifact at the end. I mean, REALLY. No unique bosses to defeat before getting them!
And, of course, having done all 8 worlds, I got to face the ONLY boss in the game, Nazar. And, to my utter disappointment, he has the same attacks as the (3DS SPOILERS!) witch from "Chicken Wiggle" does! He only pounds with his hands and does laser eyes! NOTHING ELSE! And, I only have to stun Nazar with the hookshot in order to truly hit him on his head, just like how the (SPOILER) LONESOME witch from "Chicken Wiggle" had to be defeated. Moreover, he takes only THREE HITS to defeat, just like the witch had.
THREE HITS to defeat the ONLY BOSS of the game at the end?! UNSATISFYING.
The ending is NOT what I hoped or expected! It (SPOILERS) just showed the mountain Nazar was in melting down after defeating him and giving out one closing dialogue line before the credits rolled. And there was nothing else. No praise to Hatch for winning against Nazar, no look at the queen that didn't see her rewarding Hatch for his heroics, and no satisfying closing out on that extremely lackluster story.
To make this brief for those of you that don't want to read long, your "tl;dr," if you prefer; I am disappointed in how Hatch Tales went, and its overall presentation as an indie video game... and in Jools Watsham, too, as a game developer. VERY disappointed.
I have lost some goodwill on Watsham's capbilities following this back and forth waiting debacle of a video game he alone made, as the only person leading Atooi with no hired employees, backlogged games in development, even "Treasurenauts", that was shelved again and again after the announcement over TEN YEARS AGO. That game's supposed to come out, but other priorities had forced the game to hold development. NO big surprise.
If Jools keeps up those kind of unnecessarily bizarre decisions that bashes up goodwill to fans of his games, what kind of future does he have as a game developer as a whole, or the company he's trying to manage? Just try to imagine that outcome.
I do have this bit of wisdom Shigeru Miyamoto shared about how game development can actually get done right as a reminder to game devs all over the world and their home regions and countries. Shigeru said these words I really need to share, "If you believe in your idea, and that it's something people will want, then all that remains is for you to polish and raise it to a sufficient level of quality. So no matter how talented of a staff you've been blessed with, if you don't have a clear direction for your idea, I don't think a good game will come out of it.". Shigeru also said that, to quote, "each staff member should contribute to the overall product and that the lead should
keep everyone on course and
hold on to that initial vision".
If you want see where he said such words, there this NintendoLife post link about that here, for those that may want a read -
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2022/09/random-miyamoto-had-some-sage-advice-on-game-industry-success-in-1989Miyamoto's wise words couldn't have been more well-spoken today, even when it comes to game development in all vantages. I believe that completely.
If any of you want to play "Hatch Tales" to see how it is, go ahead. But fair warning, you may feel some dissatisfaction about the presentation.
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