"Everybody is involved, and is 100% dedicated to what they’re making – and they are not confined to their field of expertise." As a team, she says, they work together to find solutions across the board, from designers to artists to coders. "Having small teams allows us better ownership over the products we make," says St-Onge. Hitman Go was the first mobile project for everyone on the team other than its creative director, Daniel Lutz, and opened many an eye to the upsides of working on a smaller scale project. “It was a great challenge because practically none of us had worked in the mobile industry before.” “Coming from different studios across the world, we combined our efforts to create what would be the first mobile game from the Square-Enix Montreal studio,” says St-Onge. There were just four developers on the project from the concept phase through to production, and the team then peaked at 11 developers to complete all the levels, wrapping things up and pushing the game to the store. Because people play short sessions on mobile devices, we wanted to make a game that could tell a story without a heavy narrative structure.” For the vast majority of the project, the Hitman Go team was very small. “Usually, Hitman games are played on PC or consoles, where story and dialogue are the common way of telling a story. “We wanted to make a game that is a natural fit for mobile devices,” says brand manager Geneviève St-Onge. Indeed, story is not the point here it’s not even one told indirectly through the environments. It’s minimal, atmospheric and highly effective – an abstracted rendition of a popular franchise, pared down to its bare essentials. All you hear is ambient noise and an understated musical score, and the result is one of the more memorable audio-visual environments we’ve seen in a mobile title. The isometric, fantastically clean visual style stands out from the crowd, and aurally, each box is essentially a series of levels that move you through a narrative without voices or character noises. As has been a staple of the series, presentation is key as well. Each scenario is a puzzle, some of which are forgiving and some of which have very specific solutions. Oh, and equipment must be used on the turn it's activated, meaning that unlike the Hitman games, you can’t simply carry it around until the time is right. Some boards include rocks or weapons for 47 to use (for distraction or murder, respectively). Players can move their 47 piece one space up, down, right or left per turn moving into an enemy in any direction other than the one they're facing will kill them.
The other huge departure for the game, of course, is that it’s turn-based.
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