When Snacko first started to become a real game concept in 2018, its developers had no idea what it would turn into today. Advertised as a “cat-venture,” Snacko is an indie game being developed by the husband and wife team of Erisa Liu and Jordan Gonzalez. Snacko is part farming simulator, part building simulator, part adventure game, and completely shaping up to be an exciting game. Players will take on the role of Momo and Mikan, two adorable cats based on Erisa and Jordan’s real-life cats, as they move to a cursed island and try to revitalize it.
In an interview with Game ZXC, Jordan and Erisa discussed the origins of Snacko and the various games that have factored into its creation. Given what’s been shown of the game, it’s unsurprising that the game has roots in things like The Sims, The Legend of Zelda, and even Pokemon. However, it’s also interesting to know that other design choices were based on older MMOs. Snacko has a lot of layers to its development that will make it all the more exciting to play when it does release at its estimated date of 2022.
What Inspired the Creation of Snacko
To put it simply, Snacko became a game because Erisa loves cats. Apparently, her husband, Jordan, wasn’t much of a cat person until they moved in together, and now he loves them almost as much as she does. All three of their cats — Momo, Mikan, and Nobu Jr. — make appearances in Snacko. Erisa also stated that the idea for creating a game like Snacko happened in her junior year of college during the summer when she was supposed to get an internship. She realized quickly that her gaming repertoire, Nintendo games since she was a kid, wasn’t exactly on par with what companies were expecting from applicants.
“So we were thinking, “Okay, I could either do my own art thing or we could work on something together because he is also a programmer,” so we were like, "Let's make a game!" And then out of all the ideas … we were thinking, "What if we made a top-down Zelda-like featuring our cats?" And at the time it was the two of them, it was a black cat and a white cat, and we had all these ideas where it would be a top down 2D Minish Cap sort of Zelda game where you would go around and whack enemies with sewing scissors." — Erisa
Much of Snacko has been designed and redesigned since then, with Jordan citing a different source of inspiration. Jordan mentioned that both he and Erisa thought about developing a game where cats do everything that humans do. So instead of human characters doing things like using an ATM, it would be cats in their place. That shift in focus is where Snacko started to become the game seen today, but even then a lot of those town elements were scrapped in favor of farming mechanics.
Other Games That Inspired Snacko
Snacko is unique because it seems to be an intersection of a few different genres. First and foremost, it’s a farming cat-venture, but there’s more to it than that. Players will get to discover the secrets of the island, adventuring through different biomes and fighting monsters in different parts of the island. There’s also a robust building system that seems to be heavily inspired by The Sims franchise, especially The Sims 4. Erisa has played The Sims since she was a kid and really wanted the build system to be as robust as the one in The Sims 4. Snacko players are able to free-place items and draw fences in-game because Erisa insisted the build system should be similar to The Sims 4.
Jordan’s inspiration for Snacko comes in the form of old MMOs, specifically Ragnarok Online and Phantasy Star Online. Ragnarok Online heavily inspired the soundtrack for Snacko, while Phantasy Star Online helped shape some of the combat mechanics in-game. As for Erisa, she grew up playing a lot of Harvest Moon and found that the art in Pokemon Diamond really resonated with what she wanted the art style of Snacko to look like because it combined 3D elements alongside 2D.
“They were advertising, well they didn't advertise it, but this was before it was still called Project Octopath Traveler; they had this behind-the-scenes dev thing and they were using the engine we were already using, so we were like, ‘Oh! That's cool!’" — Erisa
One of the biggest inspirations for Snacko, though, came from Octopath Traveler. Erisa explained that Octopath Traveler was already being developed on the same engine they were using for Snacko, with a blend of 2D and 3D graphics. It helped shape the vision for Snacko, as Erisa and Jordan realized they didn’t have to stick to creating “an older sort of PS1-era 2.5D game” and could incorporate more modern elements. While some of the items they tried to implement ended up being scrapped, Octopath Traveler heavily influenced the lighting found in Snacko.
Snacko isn’t estimated for release for quite a while, but there are plenty of ways to keep up-to-date with the upcoming farming cat-venture. There’s a Patreon set up, a Ko-Fi, a merch shop, and there was even a Kickstarter at one point. The easiest way to get updates about Snacko is probably from joining the Discord server, though. Snacko may not come out any time soon, but from what’s been shown, it looks like it’ll be an exciting, cat-tastic game.
Snacko is currently in development for PC and Switch.
