For our first country Q&A from Asia, we talked to Jeremy Mum, from Phnom Penh-based studio SomPom. We asked Jeremy about some of SomPom’s recent titles, and found out why it’s tough for a small Cambodian games studio to get noticed.
Hello SomPom! Can you introduce your company and let us know how you got together and why you started making educational games?
Hi. Our team was created 2 years ago in Cambodia. The main idea was to make games on mobile. But in fact we wanted to make games for everyone, not just a specific people segmentation. This was the main idea. Soon we realized that our games were education oriented. It means that while working on draft, ideas and brainstorming, we always tried to find the element that could bring something more to the players than just fun. Fun is already hard enough to provide and requires lot of work, but yet we still tried to provide something else along with it. [Making educational games] is not a really a calculated trend. It’s just the area in which we are feeling more comfortable for now; the area in which the ideas pop-up more easily.
The Origin Brainsquare App
So our approach of the educational games is the following:
We are always trying to use the gameplay to push a positive element to the player. The gameplay should work so the educational element can follow and reach the player without them noticing. This is our goal. For example that would be the mental calculus with Numbees or the logic, the reflexion and the observation with Brainsquare and Origin.
The Numbees App for iPad
You are based in Phnom Penh in Cambodia. Is there a games design scene in Cambodia? Are there any other companies in SE Asia we should know about?
The game scene in Cambodia is still small. We are tying to build networking with other video-game developers around. The process is slow but really motivating. With the unexpected success-stories that come-up regularly in the media (like Flappy Bird in Vietnam) people get more and more interested in our work. In Cambodia another studio Osja got some attention with his last year title, Asva the monkey. In the coming years we hope that the scene will become more and more important.
Tell us about some of your apps, like Numbees and Brainsquare. How did you come up with the concepts and how are your games doing in the App Store?
For Numbees, at the beginning we wanted to make a game based on maths. There were no characters at the beginning. Then Rudy started designing small characters art for a promotional screen. And we started integrating it into the game menus. It completely changed the premises of the game. And we went a long way to what the result is. You can see in the screenshots below the difference between the first ideas and the final results.
One of the first ideas for Numbees
Numbees with characters added
The main idea was also to mix arcade game mechanics and educational content [so that it would be] fun to practice mental calculus.
Numbees as it is now is just the beginning of what we have in mind. Right now we are working on another game using the same world. And the premise will come from a more in-depth modification of Numbees and the world of Maths. Math is a big subject we really want to explore more.
For Brainsquare, we have published an article about how we came up with the idea. It covers the creation from the game-design and economic point of view.
Screenshots from Brainsquare
Those puzzle games really required from the players focus and logic. It seems hard at the beginning but it’s just a matter of logic, observation and anticipation. We got some positive feedback.
Regarding visibility – we lack visibility for our games. But despite that they are doing well. Numbees and the world of Maths was featured on Apple home page in Japan and China. And later the game reached #1 in the category learning maths in Japan.
For a small indie studio like us, getting noticed, attention or coverage is kind of hard.
How do you test your games and make sure they are educationally relevant to students?
[We test our games with] children. Family, relative or any other opportunity that would allow us to get feedback. The children’s feedback is usually straight and honest. If they feel bored then you know something is wrong. And they don’t care about how you should use the app; if it does not crash with a child then it’s good to go!
We have this kind of funny story with Numbees. There were 3 children in primary school and Rudy gave them the iPad with Numbees so they could start playing. The children were playing and having fun trying to show off a bit with the operations. And when the division character popped up, the youngest girl just ran away hiding out of the room, because she was scared. She did not learn division yet! But then she came back saying she would do it next year and start focusing on the multiplication tables. It was fun.
In Cambodia there are a lot of things to do that could involve educational games. Various actors are trying to think and set up projects to take advantage of the mobile in schools. There’s a long way to go, but this is something that we want to support.
What projects do you have coming up, and what games would you like to make in the future?
Right now we are working on another game in the Numbees World. We also are working on updates on our existing games Brainsquare and Origin to take into account users’ feedback and include elements that were missing in the first release. After the next game with Numbees it will help us as a basis to go back to Numbees and the world of Math to improve it and integrate all the ideas we could not before.
How do we find out more about your work?
There is our website and our YouTube channel. On Twitter we regularly post news or even promo-codes: @InSompom
One more question- what does ‘SomPom’ mean? 
It was a joke. In khmer, Som means “please”. It’s a word that kind of means to ask something. “Pom” means apple. It comes from the French Pomme. If you translate it can mean “Please give me an apple” And we were making game for iOS, so we thought it was fun. We like poor jokes.
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