The history of the video game medium is frequently written as a linear march toward technological perfection. In this common narrative, the industry’s progress is measured by the transition from low-resolution 2D sprites to the hyper-realistic, high-fidelity 3D environments that dominate the modern AAA landscape. However, to view 2D art merely as a stepping stone or a vessel for nostalgia is to fundamentally misunderstand its potential for growth. For developers like Adam Vian, 2D art is a living, breathing discipline—one that evolves alongside an artist’s personal tastes, technical skills, and shifting influences.
Adam Vian, along with his brother Tom, has spent over two decades navigating the shifting tides of game development. Starting as teenagers during the "Wild West" era of internet animation, the duo initially gained fame as the Super Flash Bros. Their journey has taken them from the browser-based playgrounds of the early 2000s to prestigious collaborations with industry titans like Nintendo and Apple. While they have experimented with various genres—most notably the collaborative puzzle hit Snipperclips—their most enduring creative legacy is the Detective Grimoire series.
With the release of The Mermaid Mask, the fourth installment in the Grimoire saga, Adam Vian reflects on a career defined by rapid iteration, the importance of artistic collaboration, and the delicate balance of bringing 3D depth to a traditionally 2D world.
The Newgrounds Era: A Crucible for Creativity
The story of SFB Games begins on Newgrounds, a cornerstone of early 2000s internet culture. For the Vian brothers, the Adobe Flash platform offered an accessible entry point into a world that previously felt reserved for large corporations.
"With my brother Tom, we got started with Flash back in the early 2000s," Adam Vian recalls. "It seemed kind of accessible, like something a teenager could make. Video game parodies were a big thing, and the internet didn’t have copyright detection, so you could just post stuff with copyrighted characters or music."
This environment allowed for a unique kind of creative freedom. Their first project, Kirby’s Star Scramble, was born from the practical reality that Kirby is a character composed of simple shapes—an ideal subject for a burgeoning artist. The brothers adopted a grueling but effective development cycle, often producing entire games in a single week. This pace established a clear division of labor that persists to this day: Tom handles the programming, while Adam serves as the artist and animator.
This period was more than just a hobby; it was an "accelerant" for their professional development. By releasing games quickly and receiving instantaneous feedback from the Newgrounds community, the Vians were able to refine their craft in real-time.
"I always think that was this amazing kind of accelerant for us, where we got through all of our bad ideas really quickly," Adam explains. "They say everyone has a thousand bad drawings in them and you have to get them out of the way before you can do a good drawing. For us, it’s like everyone has a hundred bad games in them, and we did them really quickly."
The Birth of a Detective
The Detective Grimoire series emerged from this prolific era, heavily influenced by the brothers’ love for the adventure genre. They grew up on classics like Monkey Island and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, but it was the release of Capcom’s Ace Attorney: Phoenix Wright that provided the spark for their own mystery series.
"We played Phoenix Wright and thought it was amazing that this is a game where all you really did is click on things and talk to people, and the characters are wacky and it’s funny," Vian says. "We wanted to make something like this."
