[Game View] Indie's solidity...'KiwiWorks and Team Tetrapod' to compete with IP expansion

Recently, the global game industry is in overheated competition. It is seeking new measures such as strengthening competitiveness and introducing new technologies in domestic and foreign markets, and game development for global expansion is accelerating. Under these circumstances, domestic game exports in 2022 amounted to $8.98 billion, accounting for about 68% of the total content exports. This is higher than the $7.95 billion in household appliances, South Korea's main export item. Among the sales dominated by large game companies, there are indie game companies that have exceeded $5 million in global sales and have been well received by overseas investment buyers and steam users. They are "KiwiWorks" and "Team Tetrapod," which achieved global results through collaboration with the commercialization and follow-up support project of the "Gyeonggi Global Game Center" operated by "Gyeonggi Province" and "Gyeonggi Content Agency." We met with "Director Kim Yeon-ju" and "CEO Lee Hee-sang," the main characters of "Team Tetrapod," which developed the "Witch's Spring" and the superpower mystery adventure "Stepper Case," which debuted in 2015.

Please introduce the company and IP.

(KiwiWorks Director Kim Yeon-joo / Hereinafter referred to as 'Director Kim') It is a studio composed of two people that is producing packaged games using its own IP, the 'Witch's Spring' series. The "Spring of Witch" series is an RPG that fosters witches who have to survive a witch hunt. After accumulating 2 million paid downloads from the mobile platform to the series, it is currently developing and serving new titles by expanding the service platform to the PC and console market. IP's latest PC and console title "The Witch's Spring R" surpassed $5 million in global sales in a year, achieving the highest record in the series.
(Team Tetrapod CEO Lee Hee-sang / Hereinafter 'CEO Lee') In 2023, the Stepper Case: Superpowers Mystery Adventure' was released, gaining sensational popularity among mystery enthusiasts, and the 2024 spin-off game Stepper Ribbon was released. Currently, all games in the Stepper series are rated "overwhelmingly positive" on the PC game platform "Steam," with two sequels of the Stepper series scheduled to be released next year.

How did you apply for the commercialization program?

(Director Kim) With the mobile game "The Witch's Spring 2" released in 2017, he won the Gyeonggi Game Audition, and he first became involved with the Gyeonggi Content Agency. Since then, if there was a continuous support project, I was informed by the agency officials through e-mail, and I applied because the conditions for participation in this commercialization program were in line with the release of the console version of "The Witch's Spring R."The first game of
(Representative Lee), 'Stepper Case: Superpower Mystery Adventure', achieved unexpectedly good performance in Korea, but was having great difficulty entering overseas markets. Since it was a start-up company registered as a business operator in 2023, there was no capital to use for marketing. In this regard, the commercialization program of the Gyeonggi Global Game Center needed help. Thanks to the selection of the support project, the game was able to entrust advertising broadcasts to famous Japanese YouTubers in time for its overseas launch. I was able to enjoy the marketing effect without much difficulty because I was supported with all the parts such as writing the contract and interpreting.

From left, "Team Tetrapod CEO Lee Hee-sang" and "Kim Yeon-joo, director of Kiwi Works."

What's the secret of being selected for the program?

(Director Kim) I think the reason is that we have been releasing IP titles for about 10 years and have built a solid fan base and world view, and that we have created a solid IP by developing games only with our own sales without external investment or unreasonable expansion. It seems that the fact that the know-how in various fields was accumulated by serving games without publishers since the mobile days also matched well with this support project.
(Representative Lee) I think that the part that the support target wants is different depending on the type and purpose. Looking at the additional point ratio in the scoring criteria, you can see the desired direction of the support project. Other than that, I think it's important how clearly you can explain the concept of the game.

What did you get from the commercialization program?

(Director Kim) We discussed a lot about the marketing side when the game production was almost complete. In fact, Japan's offline marketing, which was conducted in the last week of August when the game was released through this project, worked well with other marketing conducted by itself to increase exposure. As a result, Japan ranked No. 1 in sales share of the console market of "The Witch's Spring R."Among the contents of the
(CEO Lee) commercialization support project, there were many contents that directly helped, such as community management and QA support after launch. Since our company was already in the final stages of preparation for the launch, we used all the funding for marketing.

Director Kim Yeon-joo of Kiwi Works, the developer of "Witch's Spring."

Why did 'KiwiWorks' decide to enter the console market and maintain its IP?

(Director Kim) The "Spring of Witch" series is a game that started as a "packaged RPG" from birth, and has been preparing to enter the PC and console market since the time the first title was produced. The reason why the first title of the console was chosen as a remake of the existing work was that IP introduction was needed as the first mobile title of "The Witch's Spring," which is the basis of the world view for console players who are new to the "Witch's Spring" series. Although the expression Remake was used, compared to the mobile version, the rest of the elements other than the main character were newly produced and released, which allowed users who played the mobile version to play with a fresh sense.

"The Witch's Spring" has gained a large fan base through the series, but what's the secret to its long popularity?

(Director Kim) Every time he prepared a new title, he aimed to "improve gameability." Whenever a new work was released, it left a good impression on the players that they continued to show a little better performance, such as graphics, sound, and systems, and I think the results of 10 years of hard work have continued to the present. In particular, it was the first opportunity to introduce its own production title to the console market, so "The Witch's Spring R" tried to show further progress in terms of gameability, receiving 83 points in Metacritic and the highest MIGHTY rating in OpenCritic, which was highly praised by foreign media.

"Team Tetrapod CEO Lee Hee-sang," the developer of "Stepper Case."

Stepper Case is a genre that adds superpowers to reasoning. When did you make it?

(Representative Lee) liked mystery games such as "Trial Against Reversal," but it was a pity that there were not many companies making such games in Korea. Therefore, I thought that I would make a mystery game that would satisfy users who have the same thoughts. Super phenomena such as superpowers are also taboo in the mystery genre. However, when looking at media based on superpowers, there were more attempts to deal with superpowers analytically than expected. I thought this tendency matched well with the mystery game, so I made a mystery game that deals with superpowers as the main subject.

Due to the nature of the mystery game, was there any difficulty in translating because of the long sentences and many technical terms?

(Representative Lee) Because he aimed for a mystery game that anyone could access, the script used easy terms as much as possible, and thanks to this, there was no difficulty in translating jargon. However, the translation cost was burdensome in that the script was long. Now, it has succeeded in supporting a total of four additional languages through stable translation, and it is receiving good responses from overseas as well.

What is your future direction of development and ambition?

(Director Kim) made a successful debut in the console market with "The Witch's Spring R", so the new title is also preparing new works based on the console and PC platform.
Our goal is to create games that impress more players with better gameability and story. I'm thinking a lot about the new work, but whatever game I make, I'll show more satisfying work than my previous work.
(Representative Lee) recently released a development roadmap by 2027 on SNS. There are four games scheduled that belong to the worldview of the "Stepper Series" and aim to release at least one game a year. There are also games that change genres while growing IP, but the games we make will include deduction elements unconditionally. I'll make the "Stepper Series" the best mystery game IP in Korea within 4 years. Please pay a lot of attention to the new "Dise Eater," which is scheduled to be released in early 2025, and the second-tier game "Stepper Retro," which will be released afterwards.

Photo: Shim Kwan-heum (shimgh@ytn.co.kr )