Mobile gaming is often seen as being dominated by the same handful of experiences, but Turbo Studios (a New York-based company comprised of video game industry veterans from Riot, SuperCell, Nintendo, PlayStation, Square Enix, Ketchapp and more) is looking to change that up in a big way with its debut game, Super Senso. Yohei Ishii, founder and CEO at Turbo Studios, explained that the GungHo published turn-based strategy game is inspired by the Advance Wars franchise (from the Nintendo Game Boy Advance and DS handheld consoles) and is built for mobile devices. Essentially, players create armies using a variety of unit types and move them strategically to destroy the opposing player’s base. Taken together, that’s a recipe for an incredible new experience on the mobile market.

Speaking with AListDaily, Ishii describes Super Senso as “a strategy game where you compete with other people on a global scale. The more time that you put into the game, the more that it rewards you. It is not a twitchy, bash-em-up kind of game, nor is it the kind of game where you zone out and lose yourself for 30 minutes at a time. If you like strategy and competing with others, this game is right down your alley.” Ishii also emphasized the fun of creating armies from disparate characters and having them battle it out like in Super Smash Bros. on Nintendo consoles.

Turbo is working with over 15 livestreamers to spread the word, show what Super Senso is all about, and grow the community. “This is our beginning,” said Ishii. “Community building is our function.” He then explained how Super Senso isn’t like any of your other mobile games.

Yohei Ishii, Turbo Studios founder and CEO
Yohei Ishii, Turbo Studios founder and CEO

What led to the formation of Turbo Studios?

I’ve been very fortunate to have worked at Square Enix on some great franchises like the Dragon Quest series and Final Fantasy—not just on the console side, but also the MMOs. Before Turbo, I worked at CCP with EVE Online and its incredibly passionate group of players. The experience that I drew from that was that community is paramount. As long as you connect and resonate with players by communicating with them, and ultimately make them happy, they will continue to be great players and loyal fans. What I felt was lacking in the mobile space was that sense of focus and real value to building and nurturing a community.

On a more granular level, I’m a big fan of Advance Wars. When I had the opportunity to start my own company, the catalyst was: what if someone took what made Advance Wars fun, brought it to the modern era (from a platform standpoint) and made it more accessible? We are making more of an homage than a carbon copy. In some ways, it’s similar to what Riot did with the Dota community by elevating that gameplay to a more modern era.

We wanted to take that turn-based strategy gameplay and optimize it for mobile devices by taking advantage of how they’re always present and connected. The smartphone is the most intimate device that I own. I’m constantly checking it, and it’s where I go to interact with the rest of the world. So, how do we tap into that kind of power and create a great game experience around that with a focus on competitive gameplay? That’s what we’ve been doing at Turbo for about three-and-a-half years.

Turbo employs industry veterans from prominent video game companies. With that expertise, why put the focus on a mobile game instead of PC or consoles?

We have a great roster of veterans from the console and PC space, and I think what brought us all together was the love of creating great game experiences at the highest quality possible. But at the same time, developing these projects and franchises on PC and console has become larger. The team sizes have become enormous. A large team might have been 200 people years ago, but now you can count them in the thousands, depending on the project. The amount of time it takes to develop a AAA game has continued to expand.

With our goal of defining a new game experience—something that’s innovative and focused on competitive gameplay—we thought mobile was the ideal place to do that. Not only is it more accessible, but there’s the ability to have a different form of interaction with the player base while breaking the barrier to entry. You don’t have to buy a $400 console or a dedicated gaming PC. We want the game experience to speak for itself. That’s also why we decided to go down the free-to-play route.

What has that collective experience taught you about standing out in the mobile game market?

It’s been incredibly humbling, to be honest. Again, I’ve been quite fortunate to have worked with some of the best publishers and studios out there, and I was fairly prepared to dig into the mobile space. But the reality is—if you want to make a derivative game, that’s pretty straightforward, but it’s not a function of how good your game is. It becomes a function of how good your marketing is and how big your war chest is for advertising.

What we set out to do was to create a truly innovative game, which is easier said than done. We found that the types of gameplay that worked on handhelds and consoles didn’t work for mobile. So, we spent a lot of time making sure the play experience was tailor-made for mobile. After creating a great game experience, we went to work on the monetization framework and a core loop experience so that doesn’t feel tacked on. We had to make sure that players felt that there was a fair chance to win and advance in Super Senso or any Turbo game.

So, what we learned was to take our time, not rush a product out to market, and listen to the players. We worked very closely with content creators and professional teams, took all that community input, and folded it back into the game. I don’t think that the hundreds of mobile games that come out every year have gone through that process and have that North Star.

How are you working with GungHo to get the word out about Super Senso?

We started about a year ago by having a presence at PAX events. Those were great opportunities to see how the player community reacted to Super Senso on the show floor next to Puzzle and Dragons and Let It Die. It was very enlightening to see how players were engaging. Beyond that, we’ve been eliciting feedback with many of the influential voices in the content creator community and professional teams. We’ve established a great group of evangelists that will be walking people through the game, explaining what Super Senso is about, and highlighting the magical moments while offering tips and tricks.

It’s not about flashy marketing—that’s not who we are. The way to stand out is to work with people who are sincere to the market. The people that we’ve connected with, and garnered the support of, didn’t come because we have GungHo with us. I think it’s because they truly believe that what we’re trying to do with Super Senso is good for the overall space. A lot of these content creators are hungry for something new. We aren’t another card-battler, we aren’t another mobile MOBA, and we’re not another tower defense game—that’s not our thing.

Statistics show that most mobile gamers delete games within one week of downloading them. What do you think is the key to continued engagement?

That’s the other side of the coin for mobile. It’s incredibly accessible, but at the same time, games are a tap away from being deleted. There is no sense of investment because you haven’t paid anything to download most of these games. I would say that once we’ve gotten players to download Super Senso and have that first experience, it’ll come down to whether the game feels different and if it’s fun. There’s also the aspect of how the game is built from the ground up to focus on a social connection, being a competitive game.

We also pride ourselves on the production quality of the game and its aesthetic, which comes from a former Nintendo artist, and gives our game a unique style. There’s a lot to be said for the art and how it motivates players to get that beautiful or cool looking unit. There are over 40 units to collect, and players could really want that baby dragon or the cat knight. It differentiates the game and showcases enough of it so that players will hopefully put the time in. It isn’t like any mobile game they’ve played before, and I hope people recognize that as they get into it.