However, the developers realized that the project lacked the essence of the franchise, so they made significant changes.
Splatoon Raiders was originally designed to work quite differently until the developers realized that it had lost the essence that defines a Splatoon game. In the latest Ask the Developer interview published on Nintendo’s official website, the developers revealed that the game was initially designed as a tower defense game. In this type of game, players place units on the map to attack the enemy on their behalf. The goal was to recreate the cooperative Salmon Run courses from the main Splatoon games and adapt them for single-player mode. Therefore, the developers started with the idea of placing traps around the course to compensate for the absence of cooperative partners.
In the interview, the developers showed footage from an early prototype of the game in which the player places two small watchtowers on the ground and then watches the weapons take out the approaching group of Salmonids. However, the development team soon realized that the passive nature of tower defense games didn’t align with Splatoon‘s emphasis on coordinating attacks, strategically inking the map, and swiftly navigating the environment. Ito explained that the developers shifted toward a more active action game in which the player takes on all enemies directly and uses various tools to gain the upper hand.
“Salmonids in Salmon Run were designed with four-player co-op in mind, so it would be extremely difficult to deal with them alone. The first thing we tried was building the gameplay around placing traps. The idea was to place traps everywhere and fight alongside them. We created a prototype where you place traps and fend off waves of Salmonids. However, the more we explored this idea, the more it felt like you were just building a fortress with lots of traps and then watching it play out. It didn’t really feel like a Splatoon game. In Splatoon, you perform many different actions in a short period of time: fighting enemies, inking the ground, changing in and out of squid form, and jumping from place to place.
We believe that the intensity of the action is one of the game’s greatest strengths. However, when the core gameplay shifts to building a fortress and fighting off enemies, it becomes difficult to take full advantage of that strength. That realization was a turning point for me. From there, we shifted our focus away from fortress-building gameplay centered on defending against enemies. Instead, we focused on expanding the range of actions available to players to make them more dynamic, so they can actively take down enemies themselves. As we organized ideas for expanding players’ actions, the concept of ‘gadgets’ emerged. Players can equip gadgets to charge forward with power or leap high into the air, or place gadgets that let them hover briefly, and so on. We designed it with the idea that players’ actions would differ depending on the gadget they use,” explained director Yoshihiko Ito.
Seita Inoue, the producer and art director of all three main Splatoon games, added: “At first, the fun came from the sense of unity between the player and the character through the gyro controls on the Wii U GamePad combined with the ink-shooting mechanics. We’ve now developed three titles in the series, plus their DLCs. We’ve had both competitive and non-competitive gameplay, but no matter what, as long as there’s that strong sense of action and unity with the character and the ink, it always feels like you’re playing Splatoon. With traps, however, we couldn’t recreate that feeling. So, we built the gameplay around using multiple gadgets and weapons to take on large numbers of varied Salmonids. It turned out to be the most hectic gameplay I’ve ever seen.”
This happens often; there are plenty of examples of ideas that initially seemed good but were ultimately scrapped.
