The developers of Skull Island: Rise of Kong have said the publisher GameMill Entertainment gave them just a year to make the game.
A report from The Verge has revealed that Skull Island: Rise of Kong was made in just a year. The game was widely mocked on the internet following its release last week for its poor graphics and repetitive gameplay, and it seems that the title’s condensed development period is likely to be the reason why.
Speaking anonymously for fear of reprisal, one of the developers at Chilean studio IguanaBee said that the publisher of Skull Island: Rise of Kong – Minnesota-based GameMill Entertainment – gave them just 12 months to create the game. “The development process of this game was started in June of last year and it was aimed to end on June 2nd this year,” they said.
The article goes on to allege that GameMill has “a reputation for contracting smaller developers to make licensed games under short turnaround times with varying degrees of success and quality”. Its previous output includes the likes of Frozen: Olaf’s Quest, Nerf Legends and Nickelodeon Kart Racers.
Sources told The Verge that between two and 20 people worked on Skull Island: Rise of Kong during its brief development cycle, and one of the developers said that the team began a crunch period in February.
A year is a very short turnaround period for a modern game – it’s reasonable perhaps for a modest indie game with limited scope, but extremely tight for a major licensed property launching across PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Switch. Especially when you consider that simply porting a game to mobile can take six months or more.
Read more: Far from phoning it in: the trials of bringing indie games to mobile
