'Alto's Odyssey': How the team behind 'Alto's Adventure' came up with one of the best smartphone games ever made

Snowman

• The sequel to the critically acclaimed "Alto's Adventure," called "Alto's Odyssey," released this month after almost three years of development.
• The game builds on its predecessor's mechanics, but expands on them significantly while still maintaining the soul of the original game that players fell in love with.
• The resulting game, "Alto's Odyssey," might just be the best iPhone game around, if not the best mobile interactive experience outright.

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When "Alto's Adventure" was first released in February 2015, expectations among its developers weren't high, and there was little beyond hope that their hard work would pay off.

But that hard work did pay off, with glowing reviews from the press and a deluge of positive comments from players of all kinds.

That's why Team Alto — the group formed by people from the Toronto-based developer Snowman and others like the British artist and programmer Harry Nesbit — faced a much bigger challenge when it came to doubling down on that success with a sequel.

Business Insider talked to Team Alto about "Alto's Odyssey," the saga's second chapter, which launches on iOS devices and the Apple TV on February 22, to get a sense of what the three-year journey was like, and the story behind it:

Moving on from "Alto's Adventure."

Snowman

The idea behind the original "Alto's Adventure," at least in terms of gameplay, was rather simple and straightforward. "Alto's Adventure" is a 2D, automatically side-scrolling platformer, set in an endlessly descending mountain full of rocks, chasms, ropes to grind on, and so on.

As the character progresses automatically, you only need to tap the screen to jump, or hold your finger on the screen to perform a backflip. That's it.

The game starts at what seems to be the top of a mountain, with Alto (the main character) and his llamas gathering around a fire. When the llamas escape, Alto grabs his snowboard, and the journey begins. As mentioned, there is no real end to the game, in the sense that the mountain never finishes — until it does.

From the mountains of "Alto's Adventure," to the desert of "Alto's Odyssey."

Snowman/Facebook

In a telling promotional image published on the developer's social accounts, we can clearly see that Alto and his friends — the other characters you unlock throughout the game — sit at what seems to be the mountain's valley, gazing at the canyons and hot-air balloons beyond the horizon.

That vast desert, for Alto and his friends, is an unfamiliar environment that represents both change and challenge. The members of Team Alto said they faced their own challenges over the past three years.

"There is a mirroring between the story of Alto the game and Alto as a project for Team Alto," Eli Cymet, one of the game's lead producers, told Business Insider. "Going out of the comfort zone, as when the original Alto launched, a lot of our lives changed."

"When starting to think about a sequel, we really wanted to think about what feelings we wanted to evoke: Upheaval and personal change, and trying to come to grips with the way the world around you was changing."

Edoardo Maggio/Business Insider

"That's how we ended up choosing a space that is wildly different from a snowy mountain," Cymet said. "Quite the opposite, in fact: A hot desert space."

Cymet said that "a sense of home" created a safe barrier for exploring these uncharted territories, both in and out of the game. Home, he said, was not meant as a single, physical place, but rather a state of mind that can be brought from place to place — so long as your friends and family are with you.

"Alto and friends start at the top of the mountain in a comfort zone of sort, but as they move to this new, wilder, crazier, ridden desert, they value the theme of exploration while keeping the idea of home," Cymet said.

And that is exactly what "Alto's Odyssey" feels like when you play it: A familiar experience submerged in a new and much larger world.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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