Splasher (video game)

Lore & Background

Splasher was developed by Splashteam, a studio founded by former Ubisoft Montpellier employees who worked on Rayman and Rabbids. Creative director Romain Claude, who earned an Advanced Degree in Game Design and Production Management between 2006 and 2008, left Ubisoft in 2012 to work on the game with friend Richard Vatinel, a 2D artist and animator he met in school in 2006. Development began in 2013, inspired by a prototype Claude made to test blood properties and by the student project 'Power of Paint', which influenced Portal 2's paint mechanics. Claude initially planned to use an engine built with XNA Framework but switched to Unity on colleagues' advice. The game underwent extensive prototyping, with multiple prototypes on Claude's Itch.io page. In May 2016, Splashteam announced new features and a console release, targeting a launch window between late 2016 and early 2017. Pre-orders for a collector's edition, including a demo and soundtrack, launched in December 2016 alongside a trailer and the February 7, 2017 release date. The game was not a commercial success but received favorable reviews, leading to the team's next title, Tinykin.

Reader's Guide

Splasher is notable for its speed-focused design, developed in collaboration with speedrunners. The main campaign features 22 levels set in the Inkorp factory, where players use a paint gun to navigate and collect splashers. Beyond the story, the game includes speedrun and time attack modes. Speedrun mode offers three types: 'Selfish Speedrun' (no collectibles), 'Standard Speedrun' (with collectibles), and 'Gotta Catch 'em All' (100% completion). Time attack mode tasks players with completing individual levels quickly, described by developers as training for speedruns. Both modes support online leaderboards. Critics compared the game favorably to Super Meat Boy and Rayman Legends, with Destructoid noting it introduces enough new mechanics to stand out. Nintendo Life called it a 'brilliant callback' to twitch platforming with Splatoon-like elements. Hardcore Gamer praised its original ideas and brightly colored presentation, despite some levels falling flat. The game's reception on Metacritic was 'generally favorable'.

Did You Know?

• Splasher was developed by former Ubisoft Montpellier staff who worked on Rayman and Rabbids.
• The game's paint mechanics were inspired by the student project 'Power of Paint', which also influenced Portal 2.
• Splasher includes three speedrun types: Selfish, Standard, and Gotta Catch 'em All.
• The game was released for Nintendo Switch in October 2017, after the PS4 and Xbox One versions.

The Interactive Medium

Video games are electronic experiences defined by a core loop: a player interacts through an input device—whether a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion-sensing hardware—and receives visual feedback rendered on a display. That display might be a television, a computer monitor, a flat-panel screen, a touchscreen on a handheld, or a virtual reality headset. Most contemporary titles are audiovisual, pairing on-screen imagery with sound delivered through speakers or headphones, and some add haptic feedback for tactile sensation. A growing number also accept microphone and webcam input to support in-game voice chat and live streaming. Titles are traditionally sorted by their hardware platform—arcade cabinets, dedicated consoles, or personal computers—and further classified by gameplay genre and intended audience. In recent years the field has broadened considerably, extending into mobile devices, virtual and augmented reality systems, and cloud-based remote gaming. Splasher, as a video game, sits squarely within this interactive, multi-sensory tradition.

From Mainframes to Living Rooms

The roots of the medium stretch back to the 1940s and 1950s. In 1947, Thomas Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann filed a patent for a cathode-ray tube device that let a user steer a dot along a parabolic arc toward paper targets affixed to the screen. The 1950s brought a string of experimental titles: the Nimrod computer at the 1951 Festival of Britain, Christopher Strachey's Checkers, Alexander Douglas's OXO tic-tac-toe program on the EDSAC, and William Higinbotham's Tennis for Two on an oscilloscope. In 1962, MIT students Martin Graetz, Steve Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen created Spacewar! on a DEC PDP-1. Ralph Baer's Brown Box prototype at Sanders Associates in 1966 eventually became the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home console, in 1972. Meanwhile, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, inspired by Spacewar!, built Computer Space, the first arcade cabinet, in 1971. Pong followed in 1972, and the golden age of arcades swept through the late 1970s and early 1980s before the 1983 North American crash reshaped the industry.

A 159 Billion Dollar Ecosystem

By 2020, the global video game market generated an estimated 159 billion US dollars in annual revenue across hardware, software, and services—roughly three times the size of the global music industry and four times that of the film industry in 2019. The competitive landscape shifted dramatically after the 1983 crash: Japanese manufacturers such as Nintendo, Sega, and later Sony came to dominate consoles, while Microsoft's Windows and earlier MS-DOS platforms grew into the primary home for PC gaming, including the early multiplayer online titles that seeded the eSports scene. Arcades gradually lost their technological edge by the late 1990s, and by the 2000s Sega had exited the console business entirely, leaving Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft as the big three. The core industry's tilt toward high-budget AAA productions, combined with the rise of high-speed internet and digital distribution, opened space for independent developers to gain real prominence during the 2010s. Emerging Asian markets and the spread of smartphone titles have since shifted player demographics toward casual and cozy experiences, while games-as-a-service models have deepened monetization.

The Collaborative Craft Behind a Title

Bringing any video game to market is a deeply collaborative undertaking. It demands a wide range of skills, a shared creative vision, and tight coordination among developers, publishers, distributors, retailers, hardware manufacturers, and marketing teams. The medium also exerts a powerful pull on the broader electronics industry: consumer demand for better game performance has been a driving force behind advances in personal computer components, console hardware, and peripheral design. Video games are categorized not only by platform—arcade, console, computer, mobile, VR/AR, or cloud—but also by genre and target audience, meaning a single title must be shaped to fit both a technical ecosystem and a cultural moment. The fact that the industry's commercial weight now dwarfs both the music and film sectors underscores how much creative, technical, and business talent converges on every release, from the earliest interactive prototypes of the 1950s to today's sprawling, service-driven experiences.