Ultrabit, a San Diego-based developer sitting at a dozen team members, was acquired last year by Kongregate. With four published titles and millions of downloads and plays across both PC and mobile, Ultrabit is extending their genre reach with their latest title Crossword Safari: Word Hunt. In this interview, Ultrabit discusses their roots, trying new things, what makes a good word game, and how to keep a small team happy. KONGREGATE: Today we are chatting with Ultrabit, creators of Crossword Safari: Word Hunt, Pocket Politics, and Office Space: Idle Profits. Ultrabit was founded in 2014 by veterans from Zynga, Kongregate, Sony Online Entertainment, and Red 5 Studios. How did Ultrabit first come to be? How did the team meet and start working together? ULTRABIT: The majority of the early Ultrabit folks had worked together previously at companies in San Diego, most notably Kongregate and Zynga. Our co-founders were passionate about taking their game expertise into the indie space and so began gathering a team of industry veterans. Over the course of 12-16 months, the team grew to about 10 people

KONG: Hyper Hippo is a Canadian-based independent game developer best known for the hit idle game AdVenture Capitalist. How did you all meet and start making games together? CODY: Hyper Hippo sprang out of the imagination of Lance Priebe, the creator of Club Penguin. He assembled what he felt was a "dream team" for game development, then opened the floodgates and said, "GO!" TRISTAN: We all met while working on the virtual world "Disney’s Club Penguin." We wanted to try our hand at some new game experiments, create new IPs (Mech Mice, AdVenture Capitalist, etc.), develop for leading platforms (mobile, PS4, Xbox), and move away from the processes and politics of larger companies. KONG: For those of us not familiar, what type of game dev culture does Canada have? What sets Canada apart from other development hubs? CODY: Canada is similar to a lot of other "game" or tech hubs, but maybe just more apologetic? We’ve got our big guys like EA, BioWare and WB Montreal. But there’s also

We sat down with the co-founder of Synapse Games, Alex Reeve, to explore their newest launch Castaway Cove, an idle game set on a far-off deserted island. Synapse is responsible for hit titles like Animation Throwdown: The Quest for Cards, Spellstone, and Tyrant Unleashed. When not developing games, he’s busy playing Dominions 4 and XCOM. KONG: Even though many people reading here on Kongregate may be aware of Synapse and the games you have developed over the years, do you mind reintroducing yourself? What is the short history of Synapse? ALEX: Sure! We started making Facebook games way back in 2008. The first of our games to gain a significant amount of traction was called War Metal, which was a multiplayer web RPG game set in a dark, futuristic world. It was a lot of fun to work on, so we ended up making a spin-off/sequel called War Metal: Tyrant. This was a CCG built in the same world. We ended up launching this on Kongregate, and we fell in love with Kongregate and the community right away.