'Duncan wrote a book that very systematically breaks down the rules of fold types and how you actually construct pop-ups. 'But we were lucky enough find a book by a guy called Duncan Birmingham. 'When we were initially researching it, it was a struggle to find anything that explained very clearly how you actually made pop-ups,' explains Tossell. If the digital pop-ups were going to work, they had to be constructed in a way that would work with paper. The result of these experiments was a pop-up book concept - the idea that Nyamyam could make a game built around transforming environments. And just experiment with a bunch of things.' 'We really wanted to take this newfound freedom to just go a bit wild with it and be bolder with design decisions. Games that nobody else has made before, that are at the edge of what the 'core' game audience is expecting. 'So let's use this smallness and agility to try and see what different kinds of games we can make. 'We were like - okay so we're just three people now,' says Schneidereit. 'It was pretty much - what are we gonna do and what is the company gonna stand for? And what kind of games are we going to make?'īetween them, they laid out a plan. Just sitting in the Nyamyam office on that first day was very liberating, but incredibly scary. 'Leaving all that behind was a real shock for me. 'Rare was basically my life for 14 years,' he says. Tossell had been at Rare for most of his working life, starting out on Diddy Kong Racing for Nintendo 64 in 1996. The trio had discussed setting up their own studio for some time, but jumping ship in late 2010 brought with it mixed feelings, especially for Tossell. Schneidereit, Tossell and Agarie met while working for Rare on the Xbox 360 title, Kinect Sports. In our latest making of, Schneidereit and Tossell describe their struggle to fulfil that vision and bring Tengami to life. The first fruit from this mission is Nyamyam's debut title Tengami - an inventive adventure game played out in a gorgeous, Japanese pop-up book world. In 2010, alongside Phil Tossell and Ryo Agarie, Schneidereit set out to confound the expectations of 'core' gamers and bring fresh ideas to the industry.

These are the words of Jennifer Schneidereit, co-founder of British studio Nyamyam. So it's no wonder that people are kind of trained: this is a video game, this is how you work out whether it's a good video game. 'It's not the audience's fault, developers have set these expectations over the past 30 to 40 years. 'The game industry teaches you what a game should be, because mainstream experiences are extremely similar.

Tengami reflections youtube