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Toronto-based Cococucumber is a fairly prolific indie game developer.

In eight years, it has created four remarkably different titles: the 2013 whack-a-mole experience Rabbit Bonker, the platform game of 2015 Planet of the eyes2017’s co-op supported dungeon crawler Riverbond and the retro-inspired turn-based RPG from 2019 Echo generation. And for his next trick, Cococumber is ready to release Ravenloka fantasy action RPG, set in 2023. It’s an impressively diverse portfolio, especially for a small team, and a major reason for that success comes down to Vanessa Chia, co-founder, director and producer of the studio.

Speak with MobileSyrup via email, Chia says that Cococucumber has been a great way to combine her design background with the inspiration she found in all the indie games that came out in early 2010.

“I fell in love with the immersion that comes with getting lost in a game and all the new creative avenues explored,” she explains. “Something in the long form of games appeals to me — it gives more space for things to breathe and explore ideas more deeply.”

Four games and eight years later, Cococucumber is approaching its tenth birthday in 2024, which Chia says is “stunning.” Thinking about this, she admits that the studio didn’t initially expect to get such a consistent result.

“From a creative background, I understand that creating imaginative worlds takes time. It requires a lot of patience and a lot of confidence in the process. In order to do all the creative things effectively, there has to be an organizational and administrative side, which has been a huge learning curve for me,” she says.

“With every game, we like to experiment with a few things and set ourselves some new creative challenges. While not everything has gone as expected, being able to change and adapt is important to keep things interesting and increase our chances of success in a hit-based industry.”

She also gives a “huge shoutout” to Martin Gauvreau, her co-founder of Cococucumber and fellow director. “He’s responsible for so much out there, but ‘you know, it could work…’ ideas that are challenging, but in a good way!”

Obviously it has worked. Each of the studio’s games received a positive reception, with Echo Generationin particular, received multiple awards at the Canadian Game Awards and Canadian Indie Game Awards earlier this year and even received multiple shoutouts from both Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer and Xbox Corporate Vice President Sarah Bond.

When asked about the team’s response to all these acclaim for Echo Generationin particular, Chia responds with deep gratitude, noting that it’s “very valid for the team and it means a lot as we spend years working on something to connect with players” upon release.

“If you think about the overall pitch for Echo Generation – it’s an adventure game with turn-based combat and a retro adventure game vibe – it can come across as niche, so we’re surprised by the success and really appreciate all the love.”

Of course, it’s not every day that Xbox superstars pick your game by name, and Chia says it gave the team “an incredible boost” in morale. “In an odd way, it made us look at the work we were doing on Echo Generation in a different light. While it is exciting and validating, at the same time we feel the pressure of expectations, which we hope to live up to Ravenlok.”

“Alice in Wonderland meets Spirited Away“

Cococucumber unveiled for the first time Ravenlok earlier this summer at the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase, and, in keeping with the team’s versatility, it looks very different from previous works. In the game, players take on the role of the teenage girl of the same name as she falls through a magic mirror into a fantastic but damaged land, which she must free from the evil Caterpillar Queen.

In addition to the genre shift to action RPG, RavenlokThe premise is very different from previous Cococucumber titles. While Echo Generation had supernatural elements, it was rooted in a small town; think Weird stuff with a fictional Canadian setting. Ravenlok, however, takes the opposite approach and brings a normal girl into a surreal world. According to Chia, the concept for the new game went through “many, many iterations”, with the current version actually being “closest to the original pitch” – to create “a cinematic” game.Alice in Wonderland meets Spirited Away‘ game with real-time battles.”

Chia says the team wanted to “make an action RPG because it builds on some of the things we’ve been working on with the turn-based combat in Echo Generation.” She adds that Riverbond’s Dungeon crawling and arcade elements also appear in Ravenlokalbeit with “added complexity” due to the new third-person perspective.

In the original Xbox Wire announcement post for RavenlokChia also said the game is a “true” story “of empowerment, overcoming challenges, and learning the confidence to walk your own destiny.” When asked to elaborate, Chia points out that the game’s coming-of-age story comes close to home for the team.

“One of the narrative goals in Ravenlok is to tell a story like Alice in Wonderland but where the female lead is not a passive character,” she explains. “She goes through an emotional arc to get stronger in a coming-of-age story, as our main character is young, about 15 years old. Most of our current team identify as women, so her story and the message of the game are important to us, but it’s extremely difficult to get it right.”

Ravenlok sunset

Our young heroine is in a strange and strange land.

RavenlokThe story continues to resonate with Chia and the team because of the titular character’s background.

“Although not explicitly, our protagonist comes from an Asian family, which reflects the backgrounds of many on our team. You could say we put a lot of ourselves into these characters, and it’s something we encourage the team to do,” she says. “Personally, the theme of home – what is home or the idea of ​​coming home – is something that resonates with me and a theme that I hope to explore in Ravenlok.”

Of course, the team also looked at “many” other works of fiction. “We refer to classic fairy tales such as Labyrinth, The Lord of the Rings, The Neverending Story and About the garden wall,” she says. “For the story, we looked at The Chronicles of Narnia and The Wizard of Oz. Especially the works of Studio Ghibli are a great source of inspiration Spirited Away and My neighbor Totoro.”

Create the look and feel of Ravenlok

What Ravenlok clearly the most in common with previous Cococucumber works, however, is the art style. Notably, it’s the final entry in what the studio calls its “Voxel trilogy,” which includes: Riverbond and Echo Generation. Chia has a penchant for this art style, which “has its charm — it’s retro and nostalgic,” she says. “Voxel art has its roots in pixel art that has been brought into a 3D dimension. It has its quirks, like how certain characters can come across as very noisy due to the blockiness of the item. But I think there’s a lot of potential in this art style and I am inspired by it.”

Having three consecutive games with a similar aesthetic also helps illustrate how much Cococucumber has grown over time.

Riverbond, the first game in Cococucumber’s “Voxel Trilogy.”

“If you take the voxelness of Riverbond, Echo Generation and Ravenlok, there is a gradual progression to a more stylized realism with 3D pixel textures,” says Chia. “The models are becoming increasingly complex with a higher resolution. Some people may find this voxel art style a bit odd or that it takes some getting used to – but we’re not voxel purists, this art style is meant to be an expression of how we evolve through our games. It also keeps things fresh for us and works wonderfully well in the chaotic world of Ravenlok.”

Another element that Ravenlok has in common with Echo Generation is the unique and varied boss design. In Echo Generation, one minute you’d be fighting a group of raccoons or secret agents near you and the next you’d go out and encounter a giant mech or a horrifying ghost. That array of enemies seems to have been transferred to Ravenlokwhich, as seen in the reveal trailer, features humans as a sickly large fungus creature, a winged automaton, and the aforementioned terrifying regal caterpillar.

Chia says the goal of the team with bosses is to make them “dramatic and rewarding,” which takes “more time and repetition” than some other design elements.

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Ravenlok’s “Weeping Fungi” boss.

“Processively, we start with a general discussion about who they are and what they want. We look for references, and when we find a direction, we go through modelling, texturing, rigging, animation, implementation, playtesting and tweaking,” she says. “There are quite a few bosses in Echo Generation and Ravenlok which have had an upgrade where we added more details to the model and textures. This usually happens when we’re nearing the end of production when we find some time and want to make the bosses look scarier or more imposing.”

Overall, Ravenlok will be another charming and immersive RPG from Cococucumber. But before we wrap up, there was one more question to ask Chia: Will? Ravenlok got one of the canadian easter eggs and touchstones that helped make Echo Generation such a pleasure?

“The real home of Ravenlok is set in an unspecified place in rural Canada, does that count?” Chia reacts shyly. “As for an Easter egg, I’ll say Bob the Frog [who was in Riverbond and Echo Generation] will probably show up again. As for more, you’ll have to play the game to find out!”

This interview has been edited for language and clarity.

Ravenlok will be released on Xbox consoles and PC in early 2023. From day one, it will also be available on Xbox Game Pass.

Image credit: Cococucumber