Interview with imissmyfriends.studio, SXSW Sydney WINGS Award 2024 Winners for their work on Fishbowl
For the first time, WINGS was so excited to bring the WINGS Award to SXSW Sydney 2024 to shine a spotlight on exceptional games developed by women and other gender-marginalized creators. The winning game this year was Fishbowl by imissmyfriends.studio, a two person indie game studio based in India.
We had the opportunity to ask Rhea and Prateek, the developers of Fishbowl, a couple of questions about their game, their experience in the games industry, as well as to share some advice for new game developers.
How did you come to make games and work in the games industry; did you pursue other careers prior or in addition to game development?
Rhea: Since I was a child, I have enjoyed storytelling. I learned to express myself across different mediums, starting with writing poems, short stories, learning softwares to make digital art, getting into photography, graphic design, videography and so on. I had a decade-long career in fashion and fine art photography as well as creative direction and consultancy in the sustainable fashion space prior to working on Fishbowl. Fishbowl is our studio’s debut title. We are a two person studio, and we both inspired each other to pursue making our own indie game someday.
Prateek: I dreamed of making games since I was a kid, pursuing both pixel art and building games as hobbies. But financial needs and limitation of opportunities in India led me to choosing a stable career in programming and UX design all these years, for a non-profit. Our love for indie games and telling impactful stories led to imissmyfriends.studio being born, where we decided to finally pursue our dreams. We worked part-time on Fishbowl for two years to continue supporting ourselves financially, balancing game dev with our careers. In 2023, we took the step to go full time.
Were there any childhood experiences, education programs or events that inspired you to make games in general?
Rhea: I loved being part of stories as a child, whether it was reading books, watching anime, playing games, it felt very special to immerse myself in new worlds. I always learnt a lot from the characters, their lives and circumstances and I realised these are some of the best ways to build empathy in a young person. As I grew older, I got more interested in the art of storycrafting and that made me observant in how a story was put together, the emotional beats, the story line, character development and world building. Playing games and learning how they give agency to players to choose their own journey made me feel interested in creating an experience of that sort. The rest was about collaborating with my partner and learning as we made our game. We watched as many talks as we could and started off with a now-abandoned part-time project and a small prototype which we saw to completion, to build our skills. We are still learning everyday as we make Fishbowl!
Prateek: I didn’t have a computer growing up so my experience with games was watching my best friend play games like Dark Reign, Road Rash and Roller Coaster Tycoon. I remember there was a little Dark Reign booklet that he had and it had all this lore about the game. He’d bring it to school and we’d be really fascinated by all the details in it and we’d discuss it a lot. And then Roller Coaster Tycoon was something we’d continue to ‘build’ in our math square grid notebooks where we’d continue to sketch out the perfect roller coasters, what they’d be like and how we’d build them the next time we played. Later, when I was around thirteen and we had a computer, I started to learn programming and also started making pixel art. When I was in school, I met and became friends with the founders of a game development studio called Hashstash in Delhi (now MyyHashstash). Kinshuk Sunil and Yadu Rajiv were always welcoming and I would often visit their studio when I was in Delhi. They had built a small community of gamedevs and it inspired me to think that this could be a viable dream for me too, one day.
How would you describe your game, Fishbowl?
Rhea & Prateek: Fishbowl is a visual novel-ly, pixel art, slice of life story about Alo who has just moved to a new city for her first job. Players get to spend a month with her which is a vignette of her experience through grief and isolation.
You unpack puzzles to rediscover childhood memories, video call loved ones, work from home while taking care of yourself and chores, to figure out life one day at a time. The choices you make each day will lead to a unique journey of self discovery.
It’s a story of hope through a difficult time.
What inspired you to make this game?
Rhea & Prateek: We had a dream to someday make our own indie game while we pursued our careers which had nothing to do with this industry. We were keen to save up as we knew how difficult the indie game scene can be. We kept noting down our video game ideas and stacking them to the side. When the pandemic started, our lives shifted in ways we could not have imagined. All work travel had stopped and it was an extremely difficult time of loss and grief. We somehow found ourselves working on the story of Fishbowl through this time and as we kept working on it, it grew from a thought to something we believed in and wanted to give our all to.
What have been some of the greatest challenges in making this particular game, and how have you overcome them?
Rhea & Prateek: Our biggest challenge was to learn to build the game while we were making it. We watched a lot of tutorials, read a lot of newsletters, sought out mentors for advice and practiced kindness towards ourselves when things were slow and difficult. Being a two person team helped in being there to encourage and motivate each other.
With long term projects I guess that’s the most difficult part, to keep the consistency, showing up, doing our best. We were also part-time for most of Fishbowl’s development journey and only went full time last year. I think knowing that we want to tell this story, our way, was one of the things which made us excited to wake up everyday and make progress on the game, even if it wasn’t always linear
What was your reaction to winning the WINGS Award, and did it impact you as a developer?
Rhea & Prateek: !!!!!!
We were speechless. It is such a huge honour to be recognised for our debut title in this way. We have looked up to WINGS as an organisation since we started our gamedev journey and love the work you do across the events you host, the talks, the way you boost women and gender marginalised folks and give them the opportunity to pursue their dreams. So to receive an award from an organisation we have so much respect for means the world. To know that Fishbowl’s demo resonated with the judges deeply is heartening and we are so keen to see the game to the finish line and have it resonate with more people when it’s out.
Do you feel the games industry is more receptive to women and gender diverse people now as compared to when you began in the industry?
Rhea & Prateek: We are newcomers in this space as gamedevs, but we have definitely seen a shift in the industry where we see more and more representation both in the making of games and in the characters we get to play as. It is because of the efforts of so many people of colour, queer folks and disabled folks, people from marginalised communities and underserved regions championing their stories that this slow but necessary shift has happened. We still have a very long way to go but we do see changes in this space.
What are you working on now?
Rhea & Prateek: Currently we are working hard on Fishbowl to finalise the climax scene and the multiple endings. It is a tough period in the development journey as these are tough tasks but we are also in a good place timeline-wise and we’re able to enjoy the process. We are also working on completing all the level designs and locking in the narrative. We still have a long way to go before release and we’re working intentionally to meet all our milestones well in our production schedule.
Finally, where can fans find more of your work?
Rhea & Prateek: You can play the Fishbowl demo on PS5 and Steam! The best way to find all our socials is through our studio website
We are on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Discord and we also have a newsletter there that you can sign up to!
