We talk to Ryan Sumo at Squeaky Wheel about elections, sleazy crocodiles, and the Philippines

In the mix of the burly space marines, the World War One soldiers, the supernatural assassins, and even the chameleon/bat combos at EGX 2016 this year there stood a little game about animals running to be elected President of their group of islands. This game is Political Animals and it’s looking pretty lovely so far. You can check out our preview here but first we talked with Ryan Sumo, Co-founder and Art Director at developer Squeaky Wheel about the one thing you should never talk about among friends: politics. And animals.

GameWatcher: Okay, can you introduce yourself please!

Ryan Sumo: My name is Ryan Sumo, I’m the Co-Founder of Squeaky Wheel. We’re a Philippines-based studio, we’re a four man team and our new game is called Political Animals.

GameWatcher: So what’s Political Animals all about then?

Ryan Sumo: Political Animals is an election simulation/strategy game. You pick an animal, you customize them, you give them traits then you choose a platform and run a campaign to try a get elected President of the islands. It’s loosely based on Philippine politics, which basically means you can get into all sorts of shady s**t! [we laugh] We are trying to challenge the player to see if they can stick to their moral high ground despite being thrown into this situation which opens up so many opportunities.

GameWatcher: Just how shady do things get?!

Ryan Sumo: We have events throughout the game. One example is of a tabloid journalist is reporting untrue things about you, and you can choose to let it slide or “disappear” that journalist! There’ll be different effects in the game based on that decision.

GameWatcher: What candidates are available?

Ryan Sumo: Right now we only have a few but we’re constantly making more. Our lead characters are a mouse, crocodile, and pig, and we’ll have a bunch more later like a wolf, donkey, and an elephant. The crocodile is interesting because in the Philippines we call our corrupt politicians “crocodiles”!

GameWatcher: Do they play differently?

Ryan Sumo: They don’t right now. At first they had specific attributes but we made the decision to let the player customize the candidates as they like. It’s more interesting that way.

GameWatcher: But they’ll have different bonuses to start off?

Ryan Sumo: Yeah, there’ll be Traits. You can pick a positive Trait, a negative Trait, and what special ability they’ll have. You can also change their name. We want to make it as customizable as possible so that you feel that the candidate is really you. Except as an animal!

GameWatcher: What made you go with an animal theme rather than a more realistic take, or just humans in a cartoon world?

Ryan Sumo: One reason is that by not making it based on people you can create a bit of distance. If it’s actual people then you might get too attached or transfer some of your own politics into it. With animals you can be a bit removed and see the practice of politics as a whole. In some ways it’s a little bit more subversive, like it’s cute animals being shady. A few people have commented on the art style and how it attracted them to the game, so we’re trying to push that too.

GameWatcher: Animals are more appealing, for sure.

Ryan Sumo: Yeah! Because politics is a very serious business obviously, it might turn off some people, so we’re hoping that animal characters will make it more appealing and draw them into the game.

GameWatcher: Generally speaking, how do you go about getting elected then? In the game, of course.

Ryan Sumo: First you pick a character and customize them. Then you pick a staff, and each staff member has their own special abilities and a lot of the game is trying to find the best combination of staff who work the best together. Then you go around campaigning in different districts gathering votes that way, or just outright bribe people in a district which is a bit more expensive. You can also engage with “political patrons”, basically influential people who can help you out with your campaign if you get close to them. That’s basically how the game works.

GameWatcher: Which is your favourite candidate?

Ryan Sumo: Mousey the mouse probably. In my head she’s a lady, as she’s loosely based on my wife! [we laugh] She’s never going to run for politics, but we’re both politically minded and this is the closest she’ll get to running for office!

GameWatcher: I like the pig, because of the earring.

Ryan Sumo: The pig is actually a faded rock star. That happens a lot in the Philippines, when a rock star’s show biz career is over they’ll use the popularity they gained to run for office.

GameWatcher: Which one’s Donald Trump?

Ryan Sumo: [they laugh] That’s a tough one! As you can customize the characters it depends on the player. Then again as we have an island loosely based on America we added a donkey and an elephant to represent the Democrat and Republican parties, so if you wanted to run as Trump you’d pick the elephant!

GameWatcher: That also leads neatly into my next question about the various islands, do they play differently?

Ryan Sumo: Not really, no. They have different populations and some small other differences but the general election structure in them is the same. We want to keep things simple. It would be hard to have to different election systems for each map.

GameWatcher: Are there specific events for each map?

Ryan Sumo: Right now there’s just a common pool of events, but as the game goes on we might be able to. It’s really just a matter of time. After it launches even we might add specific events. We’ll be continuously updating the game as time goes on.

GameWatcher: How do you move around the islands?

Ryan Sumo: It’s a turn-based game, so each character can move one space per turn and do an action.

GameWatcher: How about moving between them? Is it just one island at a time until you get elected there or do you have access to them all at once?

Ryan Sumo: You can pick whichever island you want. We have four starter islands and there’s four to unlock after that. You can’t move between them, there’s just one specific election per game.

GameWatcher: What are some good strategies to employ? Shady or otherwise.

Ryan Sumo: There are a lot of different things you can do. For example there’s a character called ‘The Agent’ who can fabricate scandals about your opponents which might give them a hit to their reputation and their relationship with their patrons. To counter that we have ‘The Lawyer’ whose special ability is to settle scandals. Before scandals get out of hand you can send the Lawyer over there and pay some money to sweep it under the rug. There’s another character called ‘the Activist’ and what’s special about them is instead of using money to run your campaign and gain interest they’ll do a protest rally and gather support for you. There’re a lot of different strategies you can use!

GameWatcher: How long should a campaign last?

Ryan Sumo: In general? We’re all strategy gamers but we feel like it’s getting harder and harder to play a proper strategy game and take hours, days, weeks, months to finish! We instead very specifically made a game where a campaign would last 1-2 hours but hopefully still scratch that strategy game itch. With a lot of replay value of course.

GameWatcher: In what other ways do you sabotage your opponents?

Ryan Sumo: We have a character that blockades a district and stops your opponent from campaigning there. There’s also a character that threatens opposing staff and stops them moving for a certain amount of time because they’re too scared. Stuff like that!

GameWatcher: Can your staff do things behind your back that you find out later?

Ryan Sumo: We wanted to do something like that but it made the game a little too complicated! If we figure it out in the future we might add that.

GameWatcher: How involved have Positech been as the publisher?

Ryan Sumo: They’ve been very hands-off, they let us do whatever we want basically. We’ll get advice every now and then if they feel it’s warranted but for the most part we can make the game as we see fit.

GameWatcher: They’ve been a supportive publisher then?

Ryan Sumo: Yeah, very supportive. They’ve mostly been around trying to get press our way, which is primarily what we wanted a publisher for. Positech already have a following and we’re hoping to tap into that same niche of players.

GameWatcher: What’s the game development scene in the Philippines like?

Ryan Sumo: There are quite a few studios, although obviously not as big as here or the US. Until very recently a lot of it was outsourcing companies, for example one company called Secret 6 did a lot of outsourcing work for Naughty Dog. There are a lot of AAA companies with outsourcing studios in the Philippines. Most of them have a focus on free-to-play mobile games, and that’s in general in the South-East region. The companies that make free-to-play games are much more popular, I guess the barriers for entry are much lower so it’s a lot easier to do that. We don’t really have any connections with console manufacturers so it’s hard to do that, so it’s either PC or mobile. Ubisoft recently opened up a studio there so they’re probably the biggest around. Aside from that it’s smaller developers, like we’re a four man team which is the usual size that they come in, or smaller.

GameWatcher: Is it all quite friendly?

Ryan Sumo: Yeah. It’s still small but it’s grown big enough now that I don’t know everyone anymore! I was there ten years ago when everyone knew everyone else, it was very tight knit and very friendly. It’s good though that it’s large enough now that I’m consistently meeting people that I don’t know.

GameWatcher: When’s the game out?

Ryan Sumo: We’re looking at early November. We were hoping to launch it before the actual US election, ride that wave a little bit!

GameWatcher: Right, thanks for talking with us!

Thanks again to Ryan and Squeaky Wheel for talking with me at EGX, and if you’d like to know more about Political Animals, why, there’s a lovely preview right here for you. How convenient! There’s a gameplay video and everything. Catch you all later, and I’ll send for you when I get elected.