Exclusive: How Dark Souls, Candy Crush, and Reddit Inspired One of the Freshest Indie Games Out of India in Years
Chromadi reminds me of The Golden Era of Android and iOS gaming.
Before mobile games evolved into giant free-to-play machines vying for your attention, time, and eventually, your money, there was a brief moment when independent game development flourished on iOS and Android. We had Infinity Blade, Ridiculous Fishing, Mini Metro, Shibuya Grandmaster, and Battle of Polytopia to name a few. There was, at the time, a sense of novelty and surprise attached to actually checking out the Android Market (as it was known back then) or App Store because you never quite knew what hidden gem you might uncover. And that brings me to Chromadi.
Helmed by Kleanup Games, a three-person studio based in Madurai, Chromadi merges colour-matching with arcade style flair that results in an almost hypnotic gameplay experience that’s reminiscent of a game you’d find from what I firmly believe was The Golden Era of mobile games.
Chromadi is still in development and slated for a 2025 launch. The name itself is a portmanteau of “chrome” (colour) and “adi,” which means “to hit” in Tamil. The game has you fusing primary colours to unleash attacks and had me learning a thing or two about colour theory along the way.
Naturally, I reached out to Jaiwanth Shanmugam, Director of Kleanup Games to know more. What I didn’t expect was detailed insight behind making a game like this as well as details on its PC version (complete with Steam Deck support). Some responses have been edited slightly for clarity and length.
For the uninitiated, could you give us a brief background of your game development journey?
My journey into the industry started almost half a decade ago, when I was handed my first professional gig for a studio called All Star Games. Before that, similar to most people who are passionate about this medium, I grew up playing video games and I remember falling in love with them almost immediately. Since then, I have always known I wanted to make video games when I grew up. Years later, when I was in college doing engineering, I had to help out my parent’s business by putting out some marketing fliers and designing websites, which led me to pick up some basic graphic design knowledge. This turned out useful when I eventually was looking for an opportunity in any studio at any capacity to just let me work on something related to video games. A couple of design and UX courses later, All Star Games were kind enough to offer me my first gig as a UI designer for their game All Star Cricket 2. I worked on that for almost a year and learnt a lot. Shortly after that, I got a call from Mayhem Studios who had just announced that they were working on their own battle royale game, Underworld Gang Wars. It was exciting and a no-brainer for me to head to Mayhem and start working on UGW.
During my time working with various studios, I realised that the role I was in was not the one I wanted to continue to be in. I wanted to be more involved with the design and development side of it all. That’s where my true passion was, to craft experiences and design engaging mechanics and systems which I would enjoy playing. I started learning more about development and participated in numerous game jams to test my skills out, and my confidence in my skills kept growing. Eventually, I hit a place in my working career where I realised the games I was working on in the studios weren’t fulfilling, I decided to move out and started working and spending more time on my own games. Chromadi was born from all this, a title that I could develop on my own under my creative freedom and design something original and fun that I and my friends could enjoy playing.
Chromadi is described as Dark Souls of Candy Crush. Is there even an audience for something like that given that a large chunk of Candy Crush’s audience would not likely be at home with Dark Souls’ difficulty?
Describing Chromadi as the “Dark Souls of Candy Crush” was more in lines for familiarity rather than boxing the game for a certain audience. The phrase was thrown around during one of our playtest sessions when the playtester wanted to beat his old score and ended up two seconds short. Shortly after the game ended, he turned to me and said: “This is the Dark Souls of match-3 Games”. That phrase struck a chord with me because framing a description in that way I believe immediately informs the players what they are getting into.
Although we would be so thrilled if it does eventually pique the interest of the players who are into Candy Crush or other match-3 games, we believe that Chromadi resonates with a different core group where they seek fair challenges and a game where they could improve and develop their skill over time.
One of the other things that certainly was decided early on was the fact that this game wouldn’t be chasing trends, and would be designed with a similar philosophy to how older classics were designed. Since Chromadi was very much intended to be an ode to the older classics, we wanted to apply the same line of thinking that the designers of that era worked with.
If you would take a look at the list of classics that were birthed during the 1980s and 1990s, they had a lot of constraints in a technical aspect but almost none on the design side of it which therefore boosted a lot of creativity and established the genres and the genre tropes which we widely recognised these days. A question we kept asking ourselves was “What would be the game similar to Tetris, Pac-Man for this generation?”. I’m a huge fan of FromSoft titles, maybe that bias also kicked in hard when I heard a phrase like that.
Chromadi’s core gameplay forces you to swap colours on the fly to land a hit. It’s not a gameplay mechanic you often see in modern games. While it gels well with the overall vibe, what’s the thought process behind going with such a gameplay system?
Chromadi brings a new mechanic to the shmup genre where the colour-matching systems in place are an expectation and something the players have to utilise to proceed further and reach a new high score. Akin to Radiant Silvegun, Chromadi does offer higher scores when you tactically use the power-ups to get more secondary colour kills rather than plain white or primary colours. Although this is not explicitly conveyed to the players, we expect that the players would figure this out during their time with the game.
It’s not a gameplay mechanic that we often see in modern games, and that in a way is quite sad. One of the reasons I believe is that building systems and designing mechanics with layered complexity decreases the accessibility of the game because it involves a steady learning curve to grasp the different mechanics and to understand it.
The thinking behind designing systems like this was to simply take something so foundational, in this case, colour theory and build a system that utilises it and design a fresh mechanic so that it could be its own thing and the players who play Chromadi experiences and share the same joy that we once had when we played Tetris or pacman for the first time. We wanted to apply a very hard constraint on ourselves to make the best out of it, and I think that helped us design the systems and mechanics you now see in Chromadi. Funnily enough, that’s the same thinking that we even applied when we named our game Chromadi. When people ask what Chromadi is, all this is what we expect people to remember the game by, something original.
Chromadi sports a striking clean neon aesthetic. Was this an intentional choice or borne out of the game design choices?
Chromadi’s visuals had a lot of iterations during development. One of the core and primary things I was clear from the get-go was that the game should aim for a minimal and extremely vibrant tone, considering that the entire game revolves around colours and mixing and matching those. Since Chromadi was also designed and very much inspired by other old retro classics, our initial prototypes and builds even actually had the spaceship which involved you killing different coloured alien species. The aesthetic and the characters (Chroma crew) you see in the game right now were born during the middle of the development cycle, one of the core inspirations being Pixar’s Inside Out and how they visualised and gave personality to each of the emotions. Since Chromadi’s core aspect involves you playing around with colours, I wanted to try applying a similar thought to the colours by giving each colour its own unique identity and personality.
Having colours at the forefront, also led to another self-imposed constraint with the backgrounds, to keep it dark and void of any hues. That worked out well for us and we were able to achieve the clarity we wanted when the players picked and mixed colours. The neon glowy bullets are just our love for vibrancy I guess, it just looks super fun and cool to shoot enemies in Chromadi and that’s what we wanted.
One of the other things that certainly improved and added to the overall aesthetic was the UI for the game. As you would have noticed in the game, your goal is to protect the RAINBAR (The Rainbow Health bar), it was quite intentional to keep that diegetic rather than having a dedicated health bar to make sure that the game’s visuals stay minimal yet vibrant. Fun fact: the entire UI for the game is also quite responsive to any colours you land on in the menu. It’s dynamic and it acts as an always active tutorial for players who like to goof around with it.
The music and sound effects in-game are a surprisingly cohesive fit with the rest of the experience. What were its inspirations and how did you craft it?
I think all the credit for the music in the game certainly goes to DarkGray aka Niranjan Nair. He’s the music guy and the other half of Kleanup Games. Similarly to how the visuals had their share of iterations and changes, we initially kind of had a different way of thinking when it came to how the music and the sound effects would be, and you could see this in our early prototypes and builds which we had shared in different communities. It was very 8-bit and there were a lot of metal elements involved.
One of the things that made it easier for me when it came to producing music and setting the tone for the game was myself and DarkGray always had a similar thought process and he would immediately catch and understand the vision I had for the game. Once I discuss that with him, I just let him go and do his magic.
The inspiration behind the audio for me personally was Sayonara Wild Hearts. Although our game is nothing close to it we wanted to achieve a similar feeling with our track. Sayonara Wild Hearts OST is goated. I think when DarkGray produced the track for the game, it immediately made so much of the game’s direction even more clear. It helped set the tone for the sound effects too. We wanted the effects to seamlessly blend with the track that was playing.
One of the other things we knew about the game was us wanting it to be retro-modern. I think it’s a vague term but the principle we applied it in is that we wanted the players booting up Chromadi to be reminiscent of the old retro classics but also for them to feel that this is how a classic like that would have been developed if it was done now. I think our sound effects (the synths, the drops) and the name-calling for Chromadi when you start the game are all our way of keeping the retro feel intact.
What challenges have you faced developing a game of this kind?
There were numerous challenges during development. One of the first challenges we came across was regarding the overall accessibility of the game. Chromadi’s colour mixing mechanics require the players to remember which secondary colours they would get upon mixing two primary colours. This was a challenge when we started when we realised during our initial playtests that the players were getting kind of frustrated and blaming that they didn’t remember the combinations easily. To solve that, we tried out numerous ways and we wanted this information to be non-disruptive and non-interruptive to the player’s experience. We tried numerous ways and I think what we ended up with is something we are proud of.
Although in hindsight it does look simple and just appears as a border outside the colours, it wasn’t an easy thought when we tried out different versions for it. You could also notice this from the intentional UX decisions for the menu where we wanted the players to get familiar with moving across the tiles and choosing different colours, which the interface responds to. Pretty much the reason we reserved the tertiary colours for post-launch, that’s 6 new colours coming in. Exciting and adds so much more depth!
Another challenge in the similar area of accessibility was deciding on the difficulty curve for the whole loop. If you could see our initial prototypes, you would notice all the starting tiles to be in a fixed position. This made the game to be very deterministic, and we liked it for a while until we realised that there was further depth we could capture by making the starting tiles random during every run thereby making it very non-deterministic. This was also very challenging to solve for, considering the different strategies that each starting tile set offers and we had to ensure that there were clear affordances and feedback provided for the players during every step.
Apart from this, I think we have and still have a lot of upskilling and learning to do with marketing. We suck at it and we are trying to improve and learn to be better in that aspect. I think showcasing something that the players haven’t played yet and with mechanics they aren’t used to, makes the job, even more, harder for us. Kind of neatly ties in to the phrase you had asked about earlier “The Dark Souls Of Candy Crush” , something for quick familiarity.
While the game is for PC (Steam) and mobile (Android and iOS), have you noticed any differences in user behaviour between users on different platforms? Do audiences have different priorities and feedback for the team or are they in the same ballpark?
Absolutely! There is a vast difference that we noticed when we tested the game on PC and mobile, and it’s always mostly to do with how the controls are programmed. On mobile, moving your character is dealt with a swipe and on PC it’s by using your keyboard (WASD). On PC shooting is also done with either the mouse or spacebar. You could see how much more flexible and agile you could get while playing it on your PC, and the speed with which you could move the characters around is insane. It reminds me of how speedrunners/world record chasers play Guitar Hero or like. I think the PC release is going to be interesting and I can’t wait to see the scores that would be achieved by the players.
The feedback we receive or mostly similar other than that for controls but we do make sure that enough dedication and flexibility is also given to the players on mobile so that they also stand a chance to beat the record. With mobile, we could leverage the haptics which further enhances the experience so that’s cool.We are also working on other accessibility options for both platforms for players, such as an ability to auto-shoot or manual clearing of colours when you stand on white (input requirement).
Are there plans for cross-play, cross-save, and cross-progression?
It’s very soon to tell but with the PC launch, we certainly hope there will be cross-save and cross-progression. Chromadi is launching as an offline title to just make the experience more smooth and uninterrupted. There’s a lot of stuff that we are actively developing on the meta side to bring in the progression among other things and it will be great to have their progression carried forward when it drops on PC.
A topic that comes up often with game developers and publishers on Steam is how the current 'meta' to bring about sales success is that it's dictated by wish lists. As an indie developer how do you solve this?
I think this is a great question which we lack a good answer to. We are marketing noobs and that was proven with tons of feedback we had received from early testers and influencers because when we sent out an early build for them to test it, while the response was overwhelmingly positive, nobody was aware that something like this was being developed.
I think the time when you just lock yourself in a room, make a good game and hopefully release it with commercial acclaim is long gone because the games that are being released annually are growing year on year. Also, making video games has never been this accessible and this number is only going to go up from here.
The learning we took from here, is to start marketing your game from the get-go. Showcase your vertical slices, your pitfalls, your challenges and all the way to your release, be present on social media and keep putting your game out there. The wishlists help a lot, commercially and more importantly as an immense morale and motivation boost. When you see people wishlisting or even reacting to your game, that just gets you excited to get back in the grind and work on your game even more. And if the response is not as you expected, that’s a learning tool that something isn’t quite working out, could be your marketing materials, your visuals or the gameplay that is being showcased. Instead of looking at these as something negative, I would suggest taking all this to pivot and relook at your design choices and work on those feedbacks ( not all of them, but you would know which one to)
Funny story, when we first started showcasing the early prototypes for Chromadi on Reddit, people hated the audio and the way it looked (this was way early and we had used some random assets we found online ), and there is a comment that I still remember saying “ I wish I was deaf, at least then I wouldn’t have to suffer to whatever you have going on here”.
Indian audiences usually expect a lower price tag on Steam. I'm curious to know, as a developer and a gamer, what are your thoughts on regional pricing?
As a developer and a gamer, I think regional pricing is fair and an absolute requirement. No two ways about it.
While Chromadi is labelled as a free game, are there plans for micfro-transactions or in-app purchases? If not, what’s the thinking behind releasing it for free?
Chromadi is always going to be free, there’s no question about that. We want Chromadi to be played by everyone and to jump on the global leaderboard and chase the world record. We don’t have any plans for micro-transactions or in-app purchases for the game in the foreseeable future. However, we do have a donate option that the players could use and leave a tip for us if they liked playing the game.The thinking was quite simple and this was something which we decided very early on. One of the main reasons was very personal to me. I have always hated when my experience in a game is interrupted by ads or requesting me to purchase a skin or whatever it is.
I understand the business side to it and that’s fair but as a player that hinders my experience and my fondness for a game. This was also something that I realised when I saw my girlfriend complaining to me a lot about how she hates the games she once used to love playing on her phone, only because the ad placements and the micro-transactions were interrupting her time during the game. So, it was something that I agreed with and I just wanted to make something for her and my friends that they could enjoy without interrupting their gameplay sessions and most importantly for everyone to have a similar experience with Chromadi.
Are there plans to bring Chromadi to other platforms?
For now, we are working towards getting Chromadi out on mobile and PC. With the mobile launch set to come out very soon, I am looking forward to seeing how the reception of the game is going to be. Although getting Chromadi to other platforms is what I would like ( especially Nintendo Switch), I think that’s a decision that is still pending.
While you’ve mentioned specifically about a Steam Deck release, is there any particular reason for targeting Valve’s handheld?
I think Chromadi would fit so well with handhelds, mentioned Steam Deck in particular because that’s something we are working on right now along with the PC release. We also ideally would want this to be on Nintendo Switch, let’s see. A few reasons for explicitly calling that out was just the fact that Chromadi is a fast-paced shoot-’em-up that has touch and KBM/joystick controls built for it.
We believe that it would be great if the same choices were provided for the players when they play it on their deck or other handhelds, giving them options on how they want to play the game. Another one was something we had thought about was just imagining the various venues our players would likely play Chromadi at, and since each run could run just last a couple of minutes we believe that having it on your handheld would make it easier for the players to boot it up and start a new run and chase their high score easily. Also, I have been using my Steam Deck a lot recently and I just wanted my own game on there to play it. Cuts both ways I guess.
It’ll be interesting to see how Chromadi is received. While most publishers and VCs look to India’s burgeoning population as a sign it could be a welcome consumer market, games like Chromadi could also signal that its developers can make experiences that are played the world over.