Canvas City is a striking game – colourful, sharp, and stylish. It follows a crew of skaters fighting back against an oppressive regime, using their skills to chart various battlegrounds, which also double as canvases for spreading their message.
It’s a game all about working alongside your friends for the greater good – and in many ways, that subject matter is a reflection of the game’s development team, as well.
Disc 2 Games is the New Zealand-based studio behind this upcoming title, but they’re not alone in their work. The wider Black Salt Games team is also on board, as part of a cross-studio collaboration with deep synergies.
The development story of Canvas City – quick links
Disc 2 Games and Black Salt Games have a deep relationship
Notably, Disc 2 Games was actually formed under the Black Salt Games banner following the major success of Dredge, an eldritch horror fishing game released in 2023 that was both critically and commercially successful.
As announced in 2025, Disc 2 Games was to be an entirely new studio offshoot, with its own ‘unique identity’ and inspiration of ‘brightness, colour, and 90s retro’. Despite the two studios being separate, there is a still a deep connection between them, with developers sharing talent, knowledge, and advice.
‘After Black Salt Games did really well with Dredge, rather than essentially expanding that team and making a bigger team, what we decided to do was make a bunch of smaller satellite studios under an umbrella called Saltwork Studios,’ Michael Bastiaens, 3D Artist on Canvas City and developer at Black Salt Games told ScreenHub.
‘We try to share a bunch of resources, so we’ve got our QA people who jump between things, the marketing people. They jump between all different studios, who will try to help together here and there.
‘There are a lot of things we share, especially with experiences and going through things that are like, “How early do we need to get localisation, what are the pain points that we had when we released Dredge, and how can we avoid those situations going forward, and try different methods to see if that gets us a different result,’ Bastiaens said.
This setup allows for Black Salt Games to aid a range of studios under its banner, as well as those working alongside it in the Epic Innovation building in Christchurch. It’s become a hub of sorts, where New Zealand-based game developers are able to build their community, as well as their skills.
‘It’s just really good having that shared pool of knowledge across a bunch of different things.’
Black Salt Games’ experiences interfacing with organisations like the New Zealand Centre of Digital Excellence, aka CODE NZ, and New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, also benefits studios who don’t have experience dealing with more complex matters, or wanting to learn more about funding, support, or essential rebates like the Game Development Sector Rebate.
Building a world of rebels and rollerblading for Canvas City
For the Disc 2 Games team, the setup has allowed for a knowledge-led approach in their development process, while enabling a more ambitious scope for Canvas City.
Developers Kris Nicholson, Technical Director and Lead Programmer, and Johannes Otte, Creative Director and Lead Artist, have been both making games for years now.
Nicholson began his career around 2011 at Stickmen Studios in New Zealand, before moving on to sister studio, CerebralFix. Otte started making games around the age of 13, experimenting with Adobe Flash Player and Newgrounds to see what could be possible in the world of games.
Otte tells ScreenHub: ‘I discovered very quickly at that age that my art was real bad, so [improving] that became the focus. Then all I did was art.’
Harnessing these skills, he eventually got his first job in Japan doing art on the marketing side, as well as for some games. Eventually, he returned to New Zealand, and also spent time at Cerebral Fix.
Now, both developers are working together on Canvas City, alongside Producer Nadia Thorne, and the wider team at Black Salt Games.
The idea for Canvas City was born of a lengthy pitching process, which included rapidfire ideas for around ’20 or so’ different games that could have potential to progress to the prototype stage.
The initial idea for this strategy RPG, with its pop art style and frenetic pace, started as a criticism of the strategy RPG genre – that it typically focussed on military skirmishes.
‘I really like turn-based tactics games, but they’re all very military-focussed, and that … is just not what everyone is into,’ Otte said.
‘I think turn-based strategy games are actually potentially quite an appealing genre to a wide range of people, with things like Baldur’s Gate 3 being massive. I think that type of combat is really accessible to people, so trying to make a turn-based strategy game around something that’s a bit more appealing to a wider audience – looking at games like Jet Set Radio and more energetic, and happier-style games, that could get other people into this genre.’
Elements of Jet Set Radio‘s street art-inspired style also made it into Canvas City, as Otte and the team were interested to explore movement and mechanics in a turn-based format, and how traditional ‘military style’ strategy games could be reimagined with a lighter, more artful touch.
Starting from scratch
With the outline for Canvas City and its intentionality nailed down, the Disc 2 Games team eventually set about working on a prototype which would begin an experimentation with combat and style.
‘The initial pitch didn’t really look at any specific game in the genre,’ Otte said. ‘The initial prototype we made was basic. I really just looked at translating movement into a turn-based system, and what role movement would play in terms of fuelling attacks.
‘From there, it feels like it was a more collaborative process of how we then iterated, where everyone has played different games in the team, and has different kinds of reference points. We would play the game, play test it, get feedback from people, then as a team, bring our collective influences to shape it.’
As Michael Bastiaens told ScreenHub, the closeness of other studios has been a major boon for work on Canvas City, as it’s ‘really easy’ to get other people in to playtest and give feedback. It was also essential for iteration, as the team worked out the best ways to innovate on strategy RPG gameplay – including figuring out how a rollerblading movement system could aid speed and style.
Recently, Disc 2 Games was also able to gather feedback at BitSummit in Japan.
Bastiaens said: ‘We saw a lot of people playing through the game there, and they’re wild and everything. And then [it was] realising “okay, yeah, people don’t quite get this, so let’s try to make that a bit more clear”. There’s going to be more iterations right until the end, until we’ve got something that really feels like it’s working.’
Of course, the team also plans to lean heavily into the expertise in their studio building. It’s expertise that’s incredibly valuable, with nearby developers sharing a range of specialties, and having experiences that can inform better choices.
‘Because there’s a lot of gamers around, you can find people that actually play that particular genre or game,’ Bastiaens said. ‘Those are the people that are likely to purchase the game, and you kind of want to test the game with people that are familiar with the genre.’
As said, Canvas City is a reflection of this team-based approach.
It’s a game all about the power of the people, working together to take down an oppressive force, using the medium of art. Disc 2 Games, working alongside Black Salt Games and their fellow game developer community, is also fighting a battle here, with art as their method of communication.
Intentional or not, the parallels are sweet. It reveals so much about how this facet of New Zealand’s tight-knit games community continues to work together to create such cool, new, and exciting video games.
With a string of hits in recent years, Canvas City is currently gearing up to make its own splash in the New Zealand games scene, and on the global stage, in the near future.
