Snipperclips was originally made as a prototype on
Adobe Flash in 2015 by
SFB Games, namely brothers Adam and Tom Vian, and was originally titled
Friendshapes; it was created for a
game jam, a
video game development competition where they needed to create a game in eight hours. Much like the final version, it had a school art supply theme. When the game was released, the creators believed the game could be much bigger and reached out to Nintendo for funding. They agreed Nintendo would be the best choice for publishing as they knew Nintendo was known for family content and multiplayer. SFB Games describe the development process as cooperative, with both SFB Games and Nintendo working together to conceptualize game design, levels, and art. Although the game was planned to be released for the
Wii U, the
Nintendo Switch was starting to be rumored and nearing announcement. While they decided what console to release the game on, SFB Games created a version of the game on PC. The team was invited by Nintendo to a conference in 2016 where they revealed the Switch to the developers, showing off info about its features and the
Joy-Con controllers. They decided to release the game on the Nintendo Switch due to the Joy-Con controllers and possible abilities for multiplayer.
Snipperclips was announced alongside the reveal of the Nintendo Switch, and released as a launch title for the console alongside games such as
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. When
Snipperclips released in March 2017, SFB Games started planning how they could expand upon the base game. They came up with new ideas after watching people play the game on
social media platforms such as
YouTube. For example, they often saw people use the same shapes to complete puzzles, such as making a scoop to hold objects, so design was focused on using different shapes to solve puzzles. ==Reception==