Ultrabugs: "we're trying to go back to the start of Vlambeer"

We always like to catch up with Rami Ismail from Vlambeer, and our chat at this year's Gamelab didn't disappoint either. During our talk with the prominent indie developer, we discussed Nuclear Throne on Nintendo Switch, the studio's new Vlambeer Arcade label, and the studio's upcoming first title under that label, Ultrabugs, which Ismail had plenty to tell us about.

"Think of it as... it's closer to Super Crate Box than it is to Nuclear Throne. It's small, arcady," the business half of Vlambeer explained to Gamereactor in Barcelona.

"What I think we realised at the end of Nuclear Throne is that we really loved making Nuclear Throne, but it's bigger than what we set out to do. When we started Vlambeer we had a very specific idea, which is not to make bigger games but to make better games."

"I think with Ultrabugs for the first time we're trying to go back to that, we're trying to go back to that start of Vlambeer because I think a lot of games nowadays are these big live services. They go on forever, 60-hour campaigns, you can play them every day. I just kind of miss the five-minute, small just-play-a-thing-between-games.

"I want to make a game that people play between two rounds of League of Legends, right? Like when they're queueing or something. I don't know why those games don't exist any more, and I'm not sure if people want them but we like making them. So we're just going to try making a few of them and then see how that goes, and if it goes well we'll make more, and if not maybe we'll switch back to doing bigger stuff."