The full interview with Pixelbite was originally published on the LocalizeDirect's site.

The creators of the “amazingly animated” Space Marshals, Reckless Racing, and Xenowerk, Swedish studio Pixelbite is launching its tactical mobile strategy game Xenowerk Tactics today. LocalizeDirect briefly talked to Pixelbite co-founders Mattias Olsson and Anders Blom about their new game, game localization secrets, and their ad-hoc game testing on the couch.

LocalizeDirect: Tell us a bit about your new game - Xenowerk Tactics.

Anders: It’s sort of a mix between our previous games Space Marshals and Xenowerk. It’s built on the story of the Xenowerk but Xenowerk was more of a shooting and action game, this one is a bit more strategic and tactical. There is a strategy element where you manage a basecamp, upgrade and recruit new operatives, and then you send then into the field, and in the field it becomes a tactical game for you.

What inspired you?

Mattias: It’s a mix of many games. We were inspired by games like Darkest Dungeon and XCOM, especially for the base management and recruitment parts. If we could get the player to care for the recruits the same way we did when playing those games it would be great. To hopefully achieve this we added unique traits and mutations to make each recruit feel more unique and valuable. For the combat side of things, we took inspiration from various RTS games and old-school RPG games like Baldur’s Gate.

What markets performed best for your game Space Marshals?

Mattias: We don’t know why but Chinese market liked us. We had some publishers looking at us before we were listed (1st and 2nd round), and they told our game and the theme wouldn’t work in China. And then we were nominated for the game of the year on the App Store. Now China is one of our best regions in the world. We also hope it’s gonna be success for Xenowerk Tactics.

Space Marshals was a P2P game. Besides China, what are other regions that performed best in terms of revenue and downloads?

Mattias: The US, Russia, South Korea, Germany, China are definitely top 5 for us.

To continue, check out the entire conversation. 

Images: Xenowerk Tactics, Pixelbite