When developer Yummy Games dropped the debut trailer of their newest game, Project Tower, 2 things came to mind. Who is Yummy Games and why isn't this amazing looking game coming to my preferred platform of Xbox. Well hopefully by the end of this interview you will have the answer to both questions and your interest in the fame will skyrocket.

First off, who are Yummy Games? They are a group of 4 life long friends from Paris, France. If you game on mobile chances are you've heard of them as they made the very popular mobile game Samurai Flash. Yes that's right, a game that looks this good is the debut console/pc game of 4 guys who come from a mobile game background. And it's on Unreal Engine 5 to boot. The game is currently expected to release in Q3 2024 for PlayStation 5 and Steam

But enough from me, you are here to read what the devs have to say about their game. This is a fantastic interview so I hope you enjoy.

You've made some incredibly popular mobile games already yet you've decided to make a console and pc game this time. What made you want to tackle a new space rather than stick with what you know?

To get to our hit game Samurai Flash (june 2020) ,we made a huge amount of other hyper Casual Games during a couple of years. That period was a real crash course for us . It was all about learning how to make a fun and innovative game. Indeed we were making prototype games every week. So we were able to learn fast and fortunately got to Samurai Flash. The hyper Casual market was more like a learning process for us and we were lucky to be part of its golden time. That’s why as soon as we made some serious money thanks to that we directly switched to our childhood dream: make a PC/Console game. Invest in our studio and jump into the unknown. That’s what we wanted in our heart . 

From what you've shown so far Project Tower is quite ambitious for such a small team of 4. It's getting a lot of comparisons to Returnal by fans. Was that a big inspiration?

Returnal is one of most well known games in the bullet hell genre. Of course it’s one of our inspirations! We really liked the fast paced gameplay and the quality of the bosses’ fight. So for all the bullet part of Project Tower it was a good reference. But let’s not forget that our game is more than bullet hell, the morphing mechanic adds an enormous dimension to the gameplay + all the puzzles. So we understand the comparison but people will see when they play that it’s got its own identity. 

But it's not a roguelite is it?

It’s not a roguelite, it’s a linear action-adventure 3rd person shooter with a story progression and bosses at each level. We like the fact that the learning curve of the player is nice and smooth,  to make the experience as pleasant as possible and make him progress at his own pace. 

Can you tell us a bit more about the story. We know you play a character who's trapped in an alien tower. Is there a big emphasis on the story or is it shooter first, story second?

The story is driven by the in-game cinematics and a few elements that you  get to discover throughout the game. We really try to provide quality cinematics, all made in house with our mocap suit. We are big fans of action adventure games with a good story so we know people are eager for an interesting story. 

The story begins when the Hiks invaded Earth in search of manpower. This life form took every survivor of the human race prisoner. The Hiks want to conquer the universe. For this, they have created a program: Project Tower. This program consists of training their army by making it fight against prisoners in towers. By fighting against them the Hiks get some relevant data. You play as one of these inmates. The only way to regain your freedom is to reach the top of the tower. 

One of the big gameplay mechanics is the ability to transform into enemies. Can you speak on how that works a bit more, is it strictly to help with puzzles and use that enemies moves or can you potentially blend in and stealth your way through sections?

As you said the morphing mechanic is for us one of the main mechanic of our game. We really like the fact that it adds a whole new perspective to your gameplay everytime you morph into a creature or an object. Indeed when morphed you are able to use all the abilities of the object/creature you’ve transformed in. That means that yes stealth is one of your options to avoid getting noticed if you are surrounded by the same type of creatures. 

There's been a lot of talk lately about frames per second, is Project Tower aiming for 60fps on both console and PC?

It will depend on how good our performance optimization is going to go. We’d like to get to 60 FPS. For the moment we’re securing 30 FPS and we’ll see very soon what the final count is gonna be. 

I know you've said the focus right now is PlayStation and PC and will potentially look at Xbox later. Was that just a budget thing or is there something creatively that just made it easier to focus there?

As you can imagine PC was not a question, indeed Steam was our go to and we’re also aiming for the Epic store, that’s getting better visibility. For the moment we haven’t really been in contact with Xbox. However we got in contact with Playstation pretty early during development and we secured the dev kit so that’s why we’re confident about launching on PS5. Plus we met some of  Playstation team at PAX west in 2023 and they showed some interest in Project Tower.

Here's the games trailer as well incase you haven't seen it