The answer to the first part of the question is deceptively simple - 'We thought right from the beginning that the main character had to be small so he could hide in particularly little hiding places'.Īs for the animal choice, 5 Ants thought 'the Ferret was the perfect companion, cute and evasive, for the main character' who's a bit in 'the Robin Hood spirit'. When asked if it could have created Tiny Thief without Scaleform, 5 Ants ruefully noted that 'it wouldn't have been the same game' since it would have required 'more time looking for workarounds to problems and less time taking care of the many details that make Tiny Thief such a good game'.Īs most players know, a large part of what makes Tiny Thief so enjoyable is the friendship dynamic between the pint-sized purloiner and his ferret sidekick.īut where did the idea for a tiny thief and ferret friend come from - and for that matter, why a ferret? 'Scaleform allowed us to overcome the limitations that Adobe AIR has on iOS and improved the performance of the game in most situations,' they say. With this in mind, 5 Ants turned to Scaleform to help bring their animations to life. 'Unfortunately, AIR for iOS has some important limitations and, although Adobe has made efforts to improve the performance of games using bitmaps, the performance when using vector graphics is not as good as we needed in many devices.' 'One of the keys to create Tiny Thief was to be able to add as many animations as we felt the game needed, without restricting their size or length,' the pair say.

With this background in mind, it might not be surprising to learn that Tiny Thief ran into a few problems during its development cycle for mobile platforms, notably in with its animations. Given it's pre-Rovio low profile, you might think the Spanish developer has just appeared on the scene, but the team's been in business since 2004 working on Flash and Macromedia Director games that allowed players to explore what they call 'multi-user virtual worlds'.

In other words, Tiny Thief itself is the most impressive and enjoyable part of Tiny Thief.Īnd from the care and detail that 5 Ants put into the game, it's easy to see why the two developers feel this way. 'The art style, the story, the tons of details, and the controls,' they say. When asked what the most impressive and enjoyable part of playing a game is, a developer will often answer with a favourite level, character, or control gimmick.ĥ Ants' Max Bevilacqua and Luis Oses - speaking to us in our latest Making Of feature - responded with something else entirely.

Makers of tiny thief