Moving from client based work to creating games for yourself can be a daunting leap. However, as anyone who follows flash games knows, Nitrome is doing just that and with great success. Their portfolio of Flash games is full of unique and creative gems and each one sports Nitrome’s top-notch art and animation style. Mat Annal, one of the founders, was kind enough to give us an insiders look at what makes Nitrome tick.

Tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and Nitrome. What brought you to develop flash games?

Mat: Both me and the other director are from a Graphic Design background and on leaving Uni both got into Web Design. This quickly became more flash based and leaned more towards flash games for sites as time went on. We worked at an Agency for a couple of years together and, getting sick of the constraints client driven games can bring, decided to start our own company to make games for the mobile games market that was immerging at the time. We didn’t really have the funds to take a mobile game to market so we ended up doing it as a sideline to more client web projects.

After about a year we decided the mobile market had moved in a different direction to the one we wanted to head in and decided to concentrate more on what we knew which was web games. It’s then – not knowing if we would make any money from it – that we made our first in-house web game (Hot Air). We didn’t make a great deal of money from it but we enjoyed making it and thought it might be an area that could grow into something more sustainable as time went on.

From wizards fighting robots, to blasting bombs in a nuclear plant — what’s the magic Nitrome juice for such unique game ideas?

Mat: It always frustrated me that more games companies didn’t try more to offer something new and the games we had always done for clients in the past also had to fit around the established genres so I think when we started we were really motivated to head in that direction.

The ideas stem from all around us and from all members of the team. Some ideas are very driven from something one of the coders has been experimenting with such as Magic Touch’s gesture recognition and Sandman’s sand. Others are more inspired from things we see around us, be it in another game (the fan blowing idea originally came from a small part of Lemmings 2) or just things we see in real life like a cable car ride (inspiration for Skywire).

Walk us through your general design process when creating a game. Do you ever scrap ideas you thought would be a good game but didn’t work out when you started to develop it? How do you pick your winning ideas?

Mat: We usually find a way to make a game work, but game ideas are sometimes scrapped because they are too ambitious for the timescale we have to make them. At the start of each game we all sit down and discuss the various ideas we all have and agree on one and agree who is best suited to work on it. We work up a mock up shot for the game and a rough demo then we sit down again and discuss the different level aspects and plan out what is exactly going to be in the game that is realistic. It’s then just about sitting down and getting on with it until we have a final build that we all test before it is released.

Nitrome is known for rapidly producing games, even as often as one a month. What factors allow you to producing games so rapidly yet with such high production value?

Mat: We actually recently took on more staff and started developing two games a month (and that is soon to increase again) but there are other factors that make the release of them more sporadic.

I think the key is in keeping the teams small and each team only working on one game at once. This helps to keep people focused on the job at hand as everybody knows what jobs are theirs and they can get on with it.

I think it’s also important that everybody enjoying the games they are making. I think if you like what you do then you work hard at it and if you feel you want to push yourself to make the game the best you can. We like to think we encourage this by getting everybody equally involved with the games concepts and by giving them full credits in the games.

What were some hard lessons Nitrome has learned since it started? Is there anything you would have done different? What would you tell someone just starting out with flash games so they could avoid the rough patches?

Mat: I would recommend that people try to avoid reading too many message boards about their games. People are more likely to give negative feedback on your game than ever give it any credit and it can be very disheartening when you’re first starting out. We have found that people tend to email you if they want to give you more positive feedback.

It is also easy to fall into the trap of trying to guess what people want from the comments they make but in reality I don’t think people know what they really want until it is presented to them so your better of just trying to make games that entertain you and letting an audience build around that.

There seems to be some renewed attention to indie developed games, and flash games are no exception. Games like Flow, Zoo Keeper, and others flash games are even getting the attention of console companies. Where do you see web games in the coming years? Any hints at the future of Nitrome?

Mat: Flash games can be made by anyone with a limited budget and a passion for making games so they are a breeding ground for new and inventive concepts. There’s so much risk in console development that it makes sense for them to look towards the web for successful concepts. I definitely think you will see more of that particularly with the touch screen and pointing device of the DS and Wii lending them selves so well to mouse based concepts and with the introduction of download content across all three consoles.

It’s certainly an area that we are interested in getting into and have discussed ….you will have to wait and see :)

And finally, what games does Nitrome play during their time off? What games out there, console or flash based, earn your nod of approval for excellent game design?

Mat: We play anything and everything really. We obviously enjoy the more quirky Japanese games like Pac Pix, Kirby’s Cursed Canvas and Wario Ware but we also enjoy the more obvious blockbusters like Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil 4 and Gears of War.

Flash wise we have been really impressed recently with Bloxors and anything that comes from Netkun.com or nekogames.com is usually pretty cool.