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My last interview of the day at Casual Connect was with Daniel Bernstein, Founder and CEO of Sandlot Games, and it couldn’t have been a better way to wrap up my day there. Of course, we talked about all of the new things ahead for Sandlot and some great games, but I think I was mostly impressed by how genuinely excited he is about what’s been happening and what’s going to happen.

GA: So How’s it going?
Dan: It’s going really well.

GA: What have you got that’s exciting coming up?
Dan:There’s a lot of cool stuff coming up. Well, Kuros just launched. And it’s been getting some good accolades and some great downloads and customers really like it. It’s really, it’s our first foray into that genre, so we wanted to make sure it was a good one. And so far, it’s a really good bet and I’m glad we did it.

GA: Awesome, and when’s the sequel coming?
Dan: (laughs) That’s always the question.

GA: (laughs) Well, it’s kind of set up for that.
Dan:You know, it;s already planned, but you know but this is a game that takes a long time to do it. It’s just because everything that’s there is hand crafted. You see a lot of games out there, they’re kind of clipart here and there. Everything was built from scratch, hand crafted. When you build a game like that, people notice, first of all, and that’s great. And just it takes longer for us to build this type of game. So, we ask our customers to really be patient with us because we want to get then something that’s going to top Kuros I, and not just be Kuros 1.5. It really will be Kuros II, when they get it. So we’re excited for that. But, it will come next year.

GA: Okay, so in the mean time…
Dan: Mean time, Cake Mania Main Street is coming. It’s going to be a very cool game, because it is really the first time that we’ve done some… basically the point is when you see it you’ll see many other dynamics other than the traditional cake baking stuff, which is cool. And the thing is, I’ve seen a lot of games out there – time management games – you know one comes out there with this dynamic, another comes out with a different dynamic, and I said, ‘You know what? Fundamentally, it really is the same game, right? But these different dynamics kind of change it up and make it really kind of interesting for the player, but it really is one game. So in one game you have four different shops you can manage, each one with its own different dynamic, right? So you can manage a bakery. You can manage a flower shop. And it’s all the characters from the original Cake Mania. You can manage a sushi shop, and you can manage a burger joint. But they’re all different dynamics, so it’s not just ok we replaced cakes with burgers, it’s different. The games themselves are different. It’s also a continuation of Jill’s story, which is what Cake Mania is really famous for. We don’t take a static portrait in time, you know Jill Evans is an evolving character. She’s someone that’s going to grow, and going to do things in her life just like you and me. So Jill Evans is older, she’s married… and you know perhaps there’s a surprise at the end of this… game, but I’m not going to give it away… Something happens when you’re married… But the point I’m trying to make is there’s a lot of affinity that people feel with the character, Jill and they’ll feel it even more with this game. It kind of grows and builds on that story. I’m really excited about it. It’s our best Cake Mania yet. You really feel like you’re playing a different type of game.

GA: So do you feel in this sort of market that push to make it a little more involved, or a little more in depth, or a little more complicated each game? Or is it just from within?
Dan: It’s from within. Nothing comes really from without other than, you know business models and that type of stuff. We make decisions of marketing launches obviously based on when the market is up. We do encourage our customers to buy from us first when it comes out. They get the best support and the best experience when they purchase from us. So, we do encourage that. At the same time, the innovation and the thinking – I try to insulate our producers from what’s kind of happening with the rest of the world as much as I can. I try to give them as much leeway as they can have to build a great game. I’m also involved in the production process. I’m also involved in the design process. My producers, they have a word for it. They get Danbushed – it’s kind of like ambushed. Danbushed – it’s when Dan comes in and says you know what, we need more of this, because this is really cool. Or, we need to focus on this. Unfortunately I do this more toward the end of the project which throws the schedule off. But the point that I’m trying to make is that we do these things because we want to make the games better. That’s not driven necessarily by commercial considerations. It’s driven by our internal struggle to make the best game that we can.

GA: So where do your original ideas come from? Like, take Kuros, for example
Dan: It comes from us. It actually comes from the producer. Kuros happens in the world of Glyph, so that’s a pretty mature world. It’s had several – (interrupted to show me the video for the new Cake Manis Main Street and other new games, mostly on the iPhone that have recently launched – or will very soon, like Slyder, Snail Mail, Glyph II, and Cake Mania 3).

GA: Are you delving more and more – it looks like you are – into the iPhone?
Dan: Yeah. Well, some of our games lend themselves really well to that platform. When it makes sense, we do it. Cake Mania, yeah. It makes sense. When it’s appropriate, we’ll definitely do it. So yeah, what’s next?

GA: Your Facebook page is relatively new, right?
Dan: You want to talk about that?
Julian: Sure. Yeah, our Facebook page is about a month and a half old.

GA: Will you be putting any games on that also?
Dan: Yeah, so we’re lookin at Faccebook very seriously as a great delivery mechanism for kind of the next generation of games. So a lot of the R&D that we’re doing mow, relates to social games. And we hired on Julian to be kind of our social media expert and to spread the word about Sandlot Games in all the social network. So things like Facebook and Twitter are very important to what we do. You know, we don’t even need to talk about Tradewinds because (people) just talk about it themselves.
Julian: It’s groundwork initially to get the spark going, but eventually – especially when the game launches – that spark turns into a fire.

GA: So I am supposed to also ask about innovation in companion devices, like 3D technology, or foot controllers. Are you looking into those sorts of things also?
Dan: The thing about the PC is that you have to reach the biggest amount of players. A lot of our players are working on older computers, and so we’d love to be kind of bleeding edge and sign up with the greatest new technology, but we also have to be true to our users. We ca’t just tell Sue that a game on her computer is not going to work because we are optimizing it for Jane’s computer. That’s not how it’s going to work. It has to work on Sue;s computer and it has to work on Jane’s computer. So, that kind of limits what we can do kind of on the leading edge looking at some of this other stuff that’s out there. But as all that stuff starts moving to mass market, absolutely. We’ll take advantage of all of those technologies, but we’ll do it in a game-centric way.

Now available on a PC near you is the highly anticipated, newest installment in Cake Mania, Cake Mania: Main Street. Download Cake Mania: Main Street exclusively from Sandlot Games!