Habbo Islands

A fairly large project, developed for the (original) Nokia N-Gage platform. Besides having multiple levels/missions, a really developed gameplay (screenshots & trailer should gave you an idea), it was also designed to tie in with Habbo Hotel itself by means of an integrated console.

Sulake hired Swedish Åsa Roos [1|2] (at Sulake from August 2004 up to August 2006) to do concept, gameplay & design of the game. A bit later Jetro Lauha joined in for software development.

On the ‘design’ role above, one can wonder if that’s designing the gameplay or doing actual graphics. Maybe both, but we get the impression (from Käsikirja interviews) also retiisi aka Jyrki Myllylä was deeply involved.

While the promotion process (trailer/press releases)¹ had already fully started, the game ended up on the attic. Jetro Lauha: “When we finished it, it had just become apparent that the original N-Gage device wasn’t commercially successful enough as a gaming platform. Apparently this meant for Nokia that they decided not release the game yet and wait for a better time and other platform.”

¹Sulake press release | Nokia press release.