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The Denki Difference: how one small studio is bringing back the spirit of DMA Design...

The last in my trio of Dundee development features is this talented outfit, currently working on... well... lot's of stuff...
Quarrel: Denki's forthcoming Xbox Live Arcade title - Scrabble meets Risk!

Very few game developers have a philosophy about design, a philosophy that's clearly and completely applied in everything they do. You get companies like Ubisoft, which have rigid and rigorous approvals processes, ensuring a certain amount of innovation, but you really have to look to Japanese veterans like Nintendo or Treasure, to see a truly over-arching creative theory at work.

Or you can look to Denki, the small Dundee-based studio that's spent the last couple of years firing out brilliant casual games for Sky's interactive TV service. By the end of 2008, the team - all 20 of them - had released 180 titles, most in the last two years. Sure, these aren't PS3 first-person shooters, they're usually cute puzzlers with cool ideas and solid interfaces. But 180. 20 people. The mind boggles.

Until you visit the office, which takes up two floors of a cavernous Victorian building, owned by the University of Abertay. Here, through the sketches, photos and artwork cluttering every wall, you get the sense of a singular purpose. Ever since the company's first title, the inventive mobile puzzle title, Denki Blocks, there has been a definite approach to development here. Nintendo is a good touch point, with maybe a dash of old skool Hudson Soft or current heroes like ThatGameCompany. The games are cheerful and immediate, clever, yet intuitive. There are pastel colours and cute characterisations. Whatever it is, you just want to play.

It turns out the company's development manager, Gary Penn - ex-ZZap 64 writer and DMA creative director - has built something of a Hollywood-style studio system here. "It is something that was born of having a magazine background," he explains. "You don't have slippage, you're doing the same thing 12, 13, 14 times a year, so you get more practiced. It's like the notion of repertoire in the theatre, you have these tools, these methods of doing things, whereas in the game development business we always seem to be re-inventing the wheel."

During the Sky production line, Penn started writing lists of what made a good game; he went round the office getting ideas from the artists and coders. This was all compiled, filtered and condensed. He came up with ten rules of design - they are called The Denki Difference and they are applied to everything the studio works on. There will be more on the theory next week. For now, the practice...

The studio currently has a smattering of projects on the go: a Wii game, a couple of early experiments - one perhaps for iPhone. The only 100% definite development I'm allowed to talk about is Quarrel, a compelling word game for Xbox Live Arcade that smartly mixes Scrabble with Risk.

Quarrel art Some of the concept art for Quarrel. This takes up several walls.

It works like this. The action takes place on a landscape, split into a series of territories. You're up against three AI or online players, and the aim is to occupy all the blocks on the map by defeating your neighbouring opponents in a series of word-building face-offs. When it's your go, you simply move some of your soldiers onto a block occupied by a foe - this activates the quiz/battle part; you each have to create a word with the random selection of letters, all of which are assigned a Scrabble-style points value. The more soldiers you have, the more letters you get to play with - the winner of the fight is the one with the highest scoring word.

When you occupy a new territory, you only leave one solder behind to defend your previous square, so there's a huge tactical element - for every advance there's a weakened area in your wake that's open to attack, so every offense must be carefully weighed up. It sounds complicated, but it's very simple to get into, and - like all good word games - incredibly addictive. There's no definite release date yet, but David Thomson, who's official job title is 'Number One Fan' says, "there are still several months of work left on the project". Quarrel may also make it across to other platforms after the XBLA launch.

From here, Thomson shows me into a small brainstorming room - called the Tink Tank - where three staff are busy conceptualising new projects. They've got several on the go: an animal-based racing game that looks like Mario Kart crossed with Chorlton and the Wheelies; I also like the look of a card-based RPG fighting game, Battle Atekko, which, department head Richard Ralfe tells me is, "Warlords meets Play Your Cards Right".

On the wall are Penn's ten game design rules, and it's these that form the structure of the brainstorming process. There's no sense that the team is just picking genres and trying to come up with new spins on old ideas. Instead, there's a sort of organic, industrial design approach - they start by considering actions and interfaces - what's fun to use, what isn't? Today, they're playing with iPhone, just fiddling about with different uses of the touchscreen, finding out what feels satisfying. "We always start with the idea of toys," says Ralfe. "They're the quickest way into finding fun. Rules aren't fun, so we never begin with them." There's also a fluidity to the design process - Battle Atekko starting out as a racing game, but the fighting element looked like becoming the really fun bit, so they switched to a combat game. Fun is key.

But ideas are the creative currency, and Denki seems to be a hothouse for them. Indeed, the company runs a regular Dragon's Denki competition, where staff members come along and pitch ideas to the board of directors. Instead of asking for investment cash, they're pleading for development time in order to work on prototypes; each dragon has a set amount of time they can award to the concept, but if the staff member gets two or more dragons on board, they get longer to work on their idea. So far, five games have gone into prototyping through this process and two are in full production.

Denki concepts Concept photos and sketches for an unannounced Denki project...

In many ways, Denki seems to be the spiritual successor to DMA Design, another Dundee-based developer, formed by Lemmings creator Dave Jones in the late-eighties. There, a similar approach to game development thrived - the idea of games as toys, with interface and interaction at the summit of the design process, rather than visuals or narrative concepts. But while DMA was chaotic, with many more interesting misses (Space Station Silicon Valley, Body Harvest, Tanktics..) than big hits, Denki is focused and professional; it's unlikely they'll produce a GTA, but then, that sort of thing is not on the agenda. It's all about fun, remember - even the company's recruitment site is a toy of sorts.

And really, it's UK developers like this that'll survive in the increasingly uncertain games business. Denki are concentrating on smaller platforms - iPhone, XBLA, even Facebook apps. Like nearby companies Tag and Proper, the aim is to build a fanbase, to gain a reputation, to work on solid ideas. It is like the late-eighties again - like having Sensible Software, DMA and the Bitmap Brothers back in business. It is, in short, a good time to put some faith in homegrown development.

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