As one of the most commonly used game engines, it’s not unusual to see Unity appear on the splash screen when loading up a game.
There’s something different about seeing that logo appear in Survival Kids, however, one of the few new exclusive games that releases on Nintendo Switch 2 this week. This isn’t just a game made in Unity, it’s made by Unity.
Andrew Dennison, the head of Unity Studio Productions, the team behind the game’s development, spoke to GamesIndustry.biz about how this project emerged from a company that is known better for developing an engine used by countless developers than developing its own games.
But just like other notable licensed game engines, including Unreal, Source, CryEngine, or RenderWare in the PS2 era, even Unity’s origin was as a games company. Originally founded as Over The Edge Entertainment in 2004, which shipped its first and only game GooBall in 2005, it developed that game with a nascent version of the Unity engine.
“What [the founders] learned from building that game led to the widespread growth and adoption of Unity,” Dennison explains. “We just didn’t make games again for 20 years and focused on supporting the engine and making other developers as successful as possible.”
“What we have tried to do with this production is emulate what our customers go through”
Andrew Dennison, Unity Studio Productions
The question, then, is why do this now? And as a company headquartered in San Francisco but with international offices, why build a production studio in the UK, more specifically in Stratford-upon-Avon?
Dennison explains that Unity Studio Productions has always existed, albeit under the radar in a development support role, whether that’s visiting studios to help with topline problems and opportunities, porting a game to another platform, or even migrating a game from another proprietary engine over to Unity.
While this has allowed the company to product-verify how the engine is working on real products, that also comes with limitations.
“It often gives us quite a narrow window over a short period of time,” Dennison says. “The game isn’t ours, so we can’t necessarily keep the code base, and we’re perhaps only looking at one or two areas, like optimisation or graphical fidelity.
“The ambition that we had was, what if we built an entire game from start to finish? That way, we would be able to production-verify the entire journey of developing everything, from concept, green light, prototyping, and then all through our pipelines, audio, engineering, and then through QA, then we can actually put Unity to the task internally so that we can verify the production environment.”
Dennison continues: “We think there’s a really good reason to do this because the stronger we can make Unity the engine, the better it is for the millions of people that are using Unity.”
Enter Konami
The plan began back in 2022 at Gamescom, where Dennison sought potential partners. He had a meeting with Konami, which in recent years has been partnering with indie-sized developers to revive its dormant IP.
Evidently, Survival Kids, a series that started on Game Boy Color (known in Europe as Stranded Kids) became an ideal choice in a post-Animal Crossing: New Horizons world where cosy survival co-op games were gaining traction. “Once we got talking, it quickly became clear our goals lined up, and Survival Kids was the perfect fit for both sides,” he says.
The contract was officially signed in March 2023 just over two years ago with a production team built up, peaking at around 20 people. While Dennison acknowledges assistance from other Unity teams around the world, it was important to have a core team in one place.
“I think a lot of the secret of a game team is locality and experience of working together,” he explains. “Our office is based in Stratford-upon-Avon, we’re really near Leamington Spa, which is a hotbed of developers. It’s a great place with a lot of history of building games.”
It also helped that the team was partnering with Konami Europe, based in Windsor, which also made communications smooth since they were just a train ride away. Pure speculation on our part: this could also be how the title came to the attention of Nintendo, whose UK office is also based in Windsor.
Dennison says it just happened to be perfect timing that Survival Kids is releasing on Nintendo Switch 2 at launch. “We began development with a platform-agnostic approach, but as news of the new console emerged, it quickly became clear that its features lined up perfectly with what we were building,” he explains.
“From there, it made perfect sense to target the Switch 2 and its launch window. It wasn’t the initial plan, but it turned into the ideal fit.”
Development had also started prior to the unveiling of Unity’s newest version of the engine, Unity 6, which rolled out last October. As a full game rather than a tech demo, Survival Kids wasn’t designed as an excuse to showcase every feature of the new engine, although it still leverages new tools.
These include Adaptive Pro Volumes for lighting in the engine’s Universal Render Pipeline, while as a game that can be played in local and online co-op, it also makes use of Lobby and Relay tools, which Unity is continuing to iterate on.
“What we have tried to do with this production is emulate what our customers go through, so we’ve had to think about budget, timescales, milestones, prototyping, everything that a normal developer would have to go through,” Dennison explains.
“Another one of those is technical risks and how to reduce the risk as we go through QA to get the strongest game we can. So, when we moved the project over to Unity 6, we didn’t cherry pick every single feature, because that would have added a technical risk to the project. The later you are, the less change you want to make to the game.
“Just like all of our customers, we too have to manage the risk of the project as we move towards release.”
As a third-party developer with access to a Nintendo Switch 2 development kit, it’s also allowed Unity to put its latest engine to the test. One feature Dennison highlights that Survival Kids utilises is GameShare, allowing online or wireless multiplayer to be streamed across multiple devices with only one person having to own the game.
“We took that feature on, and we’ve ensured that we’ve been able to ship with it,” he says. “We’ve optimised for it, so it runs a silky smooth 60 frames per second. And that’s now available to any other developer that wants to build a Unity 6 game for Nintendo Switch 2 and support GameShare because of this production.
“The ambition that we had was, what if we built an entire game from start to finish? That way, we would be able to production-verify the entire journey of developing everything.”
Andrew Dennison, Unity Studio Productions
“We’re using what I describe as a vanilla version of Unity, and it’s the exact version you will get if you are a Nintendo Switch 2 developer. The point of doing this is [that it’s] only beneficial if what we have to do to build our game is available to everyone else.”
While it would be in Konami’s interest for Survival Kids to be a success, making a commercial hit isn’t a priority for Unity Studio Productions like it would be for another developer. Dennison isn’t able to say anything on what the studio’s future is after this, and whether that would involve developing another game end-to-end.
Yet it’s evidently still aligning with the company’s goals, as it recently launched the Production Verification program where Unity partners with studios to test its technology within live, large-scale projects, which can even have its engineers joining a production as co-developers.
“We’re not in the business of building games, we are first and foremost an engine developer,” Dennison says. “So what we will ask ourselves moving forward is, what is the best way? What are the best products to take on to production-verify as wide a section of the engine as possible? Whether that’s another game, or whether that’s other engagements, we’re not sure yet.
“Obviously, as a passionate engine and game developer, I would love to do this again.”
