Developer Spotlight: Three is a Magic Number
April 16, 2021
Founders of FiftyTwo Alexey Kalinin, Mikhail Shagin, Dmitry Victorov
The developers behind Fiftytwo are having a whale of a time.
Their latest game, Apple Arcade’s Populus Run, has you guide a surprisingly cooperative mob through wacky obstacle courses. It’s a sharp turn from their previous titles, both puzzlers: the visually lush Kensho and their jiggly debut, Jellies! Three games, three distinct styles, all incredibly fun to play.
Run with a group—and avoid sweet treats—in the speedy Populus Run.
The company’s name may be Fiftytwo, but there are only three of them: Alexey Kalinin, 33; Mikhail Shagin, 29; and Dmitry Victorov, 34. The trio is based in Nizhny Novgorod, a Russian city of about a million people located some 250 miles east of Moscow. The App Store spoke to the developers about Swedish folk instruments, the nautical origins of their name, and the importance of deadlines.
How did you arrive at the name Fiftytwo for a three-person studio?
Shagin: Initially the name was 52 Hertz, based on the story of the 52-hertz whale, who swims through the ocean singing at that unusual frequency.
Victorov: It’s so low not even other whales can hear him...
Kalinin: So he’s really lonely. It’s a very sad story!
Shagin: He’s also very famous, but it got hard to explain, so we decided to just simplify it.
The colorful puzzler Kensho is designed to chill you out while testing your brain.
Kensho is beautiful, both visually and sonically. How did the soundtrack come together?
Shagin: We worked with a Swedish musician and composer named Oscar Rydelius, who was the sound designer on Jellies! He brought in all these instruments: violin, guitar, folk instruments, his grandmother’s pump organ…
Kalinin: And a bunch of strange Swedish instruments we didn’t know.
Shagin: It ended up sounding very meditative, like the game itself.
The trio’s debut game was the fun, bouncy puzzler Jellies!
What’s one lesson you learned while making the game?
Shagin: We made, then remade, Populus many times. But sometimes you just need to stop. Perfection is an endless process. You can polish for years. We had to decide to just stop polishing!
Kalinin: The good thing about working with Arcade was we had deadlines.
What do you like most about creating as a small team?
Kalinin: Everything is quick and easy. You don’t need meetings every day. That said, we’ve been working really hard for almost two years, almost without a break. It’s like Groundhog Day: You wake up, work, go home, sleep, and do it again.
Shagin: But you do it because you love it.
Originally published on the App Store
Learn more about Populus Run on the App Store
Learn more about Kenshō on the App Store