TMNT: Tactical Takedown Developer On Why It Was Surprisingly Easy To Kill Off Splinter and Shredder
Reach for the stars.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles need no introduction — unless you’ve been living under a turtle shell, you know who they are. The heroes in a half shell are cultural icons, and they’ve been making waves in video games for decades — from beloved arcade classics like Turtles In Time to the modern masterpiece of Shredder’s Revenge. The turtles can reach across generations, but they’re about to go somewhere they’ve never gone before — a strategy game. But perhaps even more surprisingly, they’ll also be completely without their mentor and biggest villain.
“If this game was a $5 million investment over three years, I don’t think we’d be killing off Splinter and Shadow,” Strange Scaffold founder and game director Xalavier Nelson Jr. tells Inverse, “Making a turn-based game, which is not a market space TMNT has been ‘validated’ in before. We buy back the ability to be as interesting as possible by working at this more efficient scale.”
Tactical Takedown is a grid-based strategy game, where each of the four Turtles gets their own campaign. But part of what’s really interesting is that, unlike other strategy games, the levels themselves grow and change as you play through them. This adds a dynamic twist to strategy that forces you to adapt and change on the fly.
Strange Scaffold has drawn a lot of attention in recent years for its drastically different approach to sustainable game development — focusing on making scaled-down projects with a tight timeline and lower budget. The studio has put out 15 games in the past six years, many of which have ended up being viral hits, including the Max-Payne inspired El Paso, Elsewhere.
Although Nelson himself has written on licensed games like South Park: Snow Day, Tactical Takedown is the first licensed game from Strange Scaffold — but the project came together surprisingly seamlessly.
Things started when Paramount, which is owned by ViacomCBS, reached out to the studio, asking to collaborate on some kind of game. Turtles came into the conversation later on.
“We realized that our alignment went further than big mega corporation wants to work with interesting attention-grabbing creative,” Nelson says, “There was really a mutual respect of how Paramount looks at the worlds it provides, and wants to bring those into being and pursue interesting routes with them.”
Nelson said the initial talks really focused on Strange Scaffold’s focus of making games better, faster, and cheaper — and whatever came together would be made under those constraints that are vital to the indie studio’s identity.
Tactical Takedown splits the Turtles up, creating some interesting story possibilities that were initially molded by gameplay limitations.
There were multiple ideas that got passed around. At one point, Paramount was considering a show based on Bass Reeves Can’t Die, a game Strange Scaffold has in production, but was ultimately canceled — and the studio released a post-mortem documentary on last December.
“At one point, I literally just pulled out a portfolio of everything we were working on to transparently show them. Which is scary when you’re talking to ViacomCBS,” Nelson says, “But the head of gaming there, Doug Rosen, saw Teenage Demon Slayer Society, and I talked about how we could convert our turn-based character action game into a turn-based beat 'em up in the Turtles universe. His entire face lit up.”
Teenage Demon Slayer Society is another upcoming game from the studio, and using that as a base, the project for Tactical Takedown was born. Of course, on top of doing something no other Turtles game had in terms of gameplay, Strange Scaffold also wanted to use gameplay limitations to also innovate on story.
“We had to tell a story about the Turtles being separated because our game engine, to provide the kind of experience we want to provide, can only accommodate one playable character at a time,” Nelson says.
Eliminating Shredder and Splinter might seem like a big ask, as both characters are foundational to both the world and the Turtles themselves. But to tell a compelling story in such a small package, Nelson saw it as necessary.
“We sent off a document, and illustrated our own little take on the world of TMNT. We wait one week, two, three, and we’re still making progress on the game. So we’re wondering what happens next,” Nelson says, “Then they asked us a couple of questions about other plot points, and upon hearing those blanket approved everything. No caveats whatsoever. That was one of the most satisfying moments of my professional life, because it feels like a heist — you get to tell the story of what happens when Splinter and Shredder are dead.”
As its name implies, strategy is vital in Tactical Takedown, especially since you’re trying to keep a single character alive.
Nelson says it’s been incredibly satisfying getting to work in an established universe like TMNT, but finding a way to irreversibly alter the world and deliver something familiar in an entirely new format.
While Tactical Takedown is a major step for Strange Scaffold itself, Nelson also thinks it’s indicative of where the industry is at, with a renewed interest in licensed games that feels like a return to the PS2 era. But what he thinks is more important is diversifying the sorts of licensed games we get, and who makes them.
“I love what we’ve created, and what it’s meant to collaborate with Paramount. It’s allowed me to recognize how within a studio that’s idiosyncratic, like Strange Scaffold, a license game can be a positive addition to our ecosystem,” Nelson says, “With the right support and enablers in the room, beautiful things can happen.”
But Tactical Takedown is also a justification for Strange Scaffold’s entire model — proof that smaller games can continue to be a success, and even provide new innovative opportunities. And the fact that a Turtles game can be made under the same constraints as all of the studio’s other indie projects, is proof that there’s room for this kind of thing. In general, we’re starting to see more indie studios signed onto new experiences in massive series — from Dotemu’s Ninja Gaiden Ragebound to the Zelda-focused rhythm game Cadence of Hyrule from Brace Yourself Games.
As the indie side of the industry booms, more indie studios are being brought onto established series.
But Nelson is also wary of the path more licensed games might lead the industry down, especially for indie studios that can’t easily afford to take big risks.
“If people learn to see a licensed game as a seal of quality, that they can’t trust for an original IP, then we’ll end up in the same place in games that film is currently at. Where it’s very hard to convince anyone to spend money and time on something that’s not attached to a familiar face,” Nelson says, “Games are an ecosystem where people will try a game from a developer they’ve never heard of because it looks cool. As long as we retain that ecosystem, licensed games are a wonderful addition to it. If licensed games become an invasive species, where publishers only care about the licenses, we’ll see a turning point at that moment that we cannot recover from.”
Balance is the most essential part as games continue to get more invested in adapting big series and properties. The Turtles game being made under the same constraints as all of the Strange Scaffold’s other indie projects is proof that there’s room for creative passion projects, especially considering Paramount allowed Nelson to make this game the exact way he wanted to. Something that a lot of studios and developers struggle with when shareholders and big corporations are involved.
“In a career of 15 years now, I have almost never encountered that respect of process. Your process defines your project. It says what your project can and can’t do from before the paperwork is even signed by Paramount,” Nelson says, “I guess it’s an indictment of the current state of the industry that ViacomCBS executives saw and understood support of that, more than a lot of the indie-dedicate video games publisher that are trying to taste-make in a tumultuous time.”
But more than anything, Tactical Takedown is also a justification for Strange Scaffold’s entire model — proof that smaller games can continue to be a success, and even provide new innovative opportunities. A defiant reason for the studio to stay the course.
“It made me double down on the studio strategy going forward. We aren’t looking to make a 10-year magnum opus,” Nelson says, “The only thing that has kept us here, by the grace of god, is working with people who understand and support our process. And if people don't, I think our track record shows they’re the ones who are missing out on something, not us.”
