Telltale Games is one of the leading developers of episodic games, with series such as the very popular Sam and Max, or the new Strong Bad franchise, which is already gaining a lot of fans these days. The company has always stressed the importance of episodic gaming in the casual market and has gained a lot of praises for the innovative use of this design strategy.

Recently, Mike Stemmle, a writer and designer for Telltale Games, revealed a few things about the design philosophy of the casual game developer. He went on to say that the team was hard at work on season three of the very popular Sam and Max series and that the future episodes in the Strong Bad series would bring even more innovations to this franchise.

"I think there will be other players that get into it. It helps that we have this really great mix of veterans who understand how to ship games, how to finish them up, and the usual curry of incredibly hungry young twenty-somethings whose adrenal glands we feed on to actually get a lot of work done. But there will be other people. It's just a question of getting your tools together."

He went on to say that the studio had its own proprietary tool, called the Telltale tool, which "is enough to get us 80% of the way through [the development]." He also said that the creative freedom that the tool gave developers would allow the teams to take the franchises to new heights.

"We can do so much with our basic technology, really. We can break out if we want to. We're slowly getting to that. You'll start seeing some really interesting trends. This season of Strong Bad, and the upcoming Sam & Max and Wallace & Gromit are going to do some amazing stuff."

It's really nice to hear that developers are aiming to bring innovations even in the field of casual gaming. The market for small, episodic games is rapidly growing and Telltale is definitely getting more and more popular with casual gamers.