How many games never get made because of where the developer is based? How many silicon dreams are dashed on the shoals of local interest?
One such story is the tale of Twilyt Productions, a South African company that sought to bring the violence of the colonial African period to your desktop. It announced two titles in its short life, Zulu War andAnglo-Boer War. Screenshots for both are still available at Gamespot.
Founded in 1999, Twilyt was well aware of the challenges presented by its location. In the interview with Gamespot, Managing Director Travis Bulford stated:
“Being in South Africa is a blessing and a curse for a young development studio. Costs are low here so financing our developments is not as expensive. On the other hand, we are isolated from the heart of the industry and need to make quite a few trips each year overseas to keep the ball rolling with international contacts both in publication and in technology.”
The screens of the two games show similar artwork. Very polygonal soldiers shoot at each other, looking a little ridiculous. Even the 2D art of Shogun: Total War, released in 2000, is more attractive. But these are early development shots and should not be assumed to be representative of what the final games would have looked like.
The Imperial period of European expansion is certainly underexplored. There have been a couple of small wargames released that dealt with moments in the Scramble for Africa. The battles of Isandlwhana and Rorke’s Drift have been fertile soil for wargamers. Independent wargame maker Incredible Simulations has had a Zulu War game since 1996. But the content matter is pretty foreign to both American and European gamers at large. The two Twilyt games were clearly not going to be huge hits and would only find success by targetting the strong and loud niche of wargamers.
Plus, for a developer with only 13 employees they had a lot of irons in the fire. They developed an Xbox game called Toxic Bunny 2 that never saw the light of day as well as the two ambitious strategy/wargames based on their local history.
Then, all of a sudden, Twilyt Productions closed down. It was reported that there was a lack of funds. This probably means that it couldn’t find a publisher for its strategy games and wasn’t making enough headway on Toxic Bunny to keep its doors open. Despite public confidence that it could find capital investment for its projects, there have no reports of new development.
Zulu War was to be a quite limited game, judging by the description. Despite the promise of multiplayer ladders, having a game with only two battles – and those battles divided into 25 distinct chapters – does not sound especially appealing on its face. And, planning for an expansion before even finishing the first game is a bit of hubris. So it could not have been an easy sell to investors.
Undoubtedly, the fears expressed in the original Gamespot interview came home to roost in some respects. South Africa was still recovering from a popular peaceful revolution and years of sanctions, so any long term investment would have had to come from overseas. Face time is still precious and partially explains why, even here in America, there is a distinct regionalism to most computer game development and production. For all its beauty, South Africa is an ocean away.
The theme of the games probably played a role, as well. European Imperialism in Africa is both interesting and important. The battles – the focus of Twilyt’s games – are only part of the story. But the story of a heavily armed European aggressor wiping out autonomous African kingdoms is not a pretty one, and considering that the target market of these games, would be a bit of a downer. Sure, the Zulus win at Isandlwhana. But a savvy player who knows why the British lost could turn Natal into a killing field. There is a reason why The Battle of Bull Run is not a popular subject in computer games.
When Shogun came out in 2000, marrying a fair strategy game to amazing battles, pure wargames with no strategy element must have seemed a little antiquated. Add in the fact that you have redcoats with rifles shooting at waves of spearmen and the game is a hard sell. Anglo-Boer War might have been a better place to start, but that conflict is likely even more obscure to potential investors than the Zulu War.
We don’t know enough about Zulu War or Anglo-Boer War to assess whether they would have been truly interesting or not. They were a small development house, and there are hundreds just like them around the world. Were their eyes bigger than their stomachs? Did they overestimate the appeal of their local history to potential overseas investors? Their end did mean that we gamers were deprived of another look at an underexplored area of history.
