The sequel to hit game Temple Run has just been released, and in an interesting interview with AllThingsD, the game’s co-creator Keith Shepherd talked about Imangi Studios staying small, and how he never expected Temple Run to go viral.
Shepherd, who runs Imangi with his partner and wife Natalia Luckyanova, explained why a sequel was needed:
It was just a really small team of us that built the first one (Shepherd, Luckyanova, and artist Kiril Tchangov), and we had no idea that it was going to go on to become this worldwide phenomenon. It wasn’t designed to be ported to other platforms or to be continually added to over the next couple of years. We wanted a fresh start.
He also mentioned how the game was rebuilt, using a new engine called Unity:
The first game, we built on our own with our own engine in-house. But we wanted to have a more vibrant, rich environment with curves and hills and better graphics, so we rewrote the game in Unity.
Finally, he stated that Imangi’s focus for now was purely on Temple Run, even though there is a long term desire to make more games, as well as to stay as small as possible.
At some point, we would like to make new games, but right now it’s all just focused on Temple Run.
[…]
We do want to stay small. Natalia and I made a conscious choice: This is a lifestyle. We really love actually making the games and developing the games, and we feel that if we grew the team a lot and tried to grow the company, we’d wind up doing more things that we’re not as excited about, managing teams and being less involved.
Temple Run’s simplicity is what makes it so addictive, and as mentioned in the interview, in app purchases have been the main source of revenue for Imangi. You can download the new Temple Run 2 game here.
