Thankfully, I was able to sit with Konami brand manager, Christian Spears, after playing the game, and he was kind enough to answer some questions to help us sort it all out.

Kirk: What would you like to say to introduce this game to people who have no idea what they’re coming into?

Christian: So, Super Crazy Rhythm Castle is an escape room-esque rhythm game where you solve different puzzles and, at the same time, play an amazing original soundtrack. You have a colorful cast of characters that you play against this mean king called King Ferdinand. He’s trying to protect his crown. He took it from prior kings. So, now you’re going through this crazy castle where he has traps and different things for you while you play music at the same time.

Kirk: I didn’t get too far into it, but there were elements where the rhythm game is happening while you’re solving puzzles.

Christian: Yes.

Kirk: What’s the best way for players to handle that? Are they calling out, “You do this, I’ll do this?” And how would that be handled in online multiplayer?

Christian: So, there is online multiplayer, couch co-op, and single player. For single player, the goal is to have really good multitasking abilities where you’re bouncing back and forth trying to solve each of these different issues. One of them is blocking the meter from moving while you’re trying to do the rhythm portion. So, you have to be really, really quick deciding how you’re going to get certain things done. Timing’s going to matter.

For multiplayer, we’ll talk couch co-op first.You’ve got to be really in sync and calling things out. Talking to your friends and saying, “Hey, I’m going to go get this. I’m going to go get this.” And sometimes, you might have that friend who’s like, “No, I’m going to get this,” and it creates all this back and forth fun.

Online co-op definitely will add a little bit more chaos and craziness to it. But, definitely, some people—even as we saw here—were really in sync and it just worked out for them. Even with that chaos, it’s part of the fun. Even if you don’t have that sync online, you’re still trying to figure out how to get everything done, and people can try to call things out from there.

Kirk: Do you think the game will work well for those playing in solo mode?

Christian: Definitely. I definitely believe it’s a great game to play by yourself. It’s the characters you end up seeing along the way. Solving different puzzles. Playing the music and just vibing out to it. There’s also a game lab where people can sit and just listen to music and do those types of things. So, there’s a lot for them to just do by themselves.

Kirk: Most of the rhythm games you play, if you miss something you’re getting penalized for it. Here, you have to stop what you’re doing and solve some of the puzzles. Are you getting penalized for that in the meantime? You have to do it fast?

Christian: You definitely gotta move fast. You can’t just let the rhythm keep going on and on and let the thing stop you because then you’re not going to be able to progress. You do need to keep making sure you’re multitasking and your speed is gonna be up there. So, for some players, definitely start off slow and then replay it and try to play it even faster than that.

Kirk: When I was playing it, I was unfortunate enough to get awarded “Pro.” Moving from three buttons to four completely changes the dynamic of the game, but you can bounce back at any time?

Christian: Yeah, you can switch that. You can switch from Pro to Regular just in case it’s maybe like, “Hey, you know what? I didn’t know what I was bargaining for.” [Laughs.]

Kirk: Is four buttons the most you’re going to deal with at a time, or does it get even more complicated than that?

Christian: At the moment, it’s four. Hopefully with feedback, if people want to go even higher and higher we can definitely consider that.

Kirk: Talk a little bit about the design of this world. It’s very…surrealistic, for the most part. Instruments evolve and push you around. What was going through my head—and it’s a bad comparison, but I’ll make it anyway—was that it’s an odd mixture of Yellow Submarine and an episode of Tiny Toons smashed together. Teen Titans Go, not Tiny Toons!

Christian: I actually liked the Tiny Tunes thing! I love animation. I love Tiny Tunes. I think that’s a really cool observation. Depending where your perspective is, you’ll definitely see it as something else you can compare to. It’s so…surreal, yeah, I guess would be best. You’re within this castle that has piano keys running down it. You have a hand grabbing out. All these weird, little different characters about it. It’s one of those games where you do have to experience it. Explaining it doesn’t do it justice.

Kirk: At the beginning of the game, there was a character we kept meeting. She was telling us things, but I didn’t get to see how she gets involved. Is that something that gets worked into the story? Are we going to get a big tale or is it like just bouncing between levels?

Christian: You’ll definitely get to see more of that character!

Kirk: OK, any other characters along the way? How deep does the roster get?

Christian: There are a lot of characters; a huge, colorful cast you get to interact with. You have people like Egger who’s the safety manager. And you’ll have characters who battle against you as you go along. You’ll see a whole cast of characters, so I’m really hoping people get to enjoy that.

Kirk: How long is the story mode?

Christian: So, the exact timing…maybe not off the top of my head, but there’s about 30-ish levels. That gives you a good amount of time to play through the game.

Kirk: After you complete a level, do you get to go back to try to beat your score, or is it just progressing straight on through the story?

Christian: You can definitely go back and play through prior levels to try to get a higher rank. If you want to compete against yourself, you can try to do that, or go back and try to level up your stars.

Kirk: How about multiplayer mode? Is it quick games, quick battles, or is it all story progression?

Christian: Story progression, and then there’s online…kind of a battle mode where you can…play against each at the same time.

Kirk: How about the music, too? All the music is original.

Christian: Yeah, original music. And the great part about that is there are some songs that fans are gonna notice from our collection. I don’t want to spoil too much on that, but I’m really excited they’ll get to see stuff like that. [Konami] works with a lot of great people that compose different things. It’s really exciting to see music that I didn’t hear before in the game. Everything just syncs up, and I’m really excited to see that whole soundtrack go live.

Kirk: The songs are pretty lengthy, too. Three minutes? Four minutes?

Christian: Just about, yeah…roughly anywhere from closer to two minutes to three minutes from time to time depending upon what the song is. That’s a key part of it. I love music, and it’s really great to just kind of vibe out as you play through this weird little castle.

Kirk: We talked while playing the game, and you obviously have a favorite [playable] character. How about a favorite level? Is there anything further on where you’re like, “This just totally clicks?”

Christian: I wish I could say the level out loud! [Laughs]

Kirk: But there is one!

Christian: There’s a really fun one, yeah, yeah, yeah! There’s a part in the trailer where you have these characters and, like, a chili pepper kind of going, “What! What!” I can’t really talk too much about it, but it is one of my favorite levels.

Kirk: Is it the music that does it? Is it the gameplay?

Christian: It’s music, gameplay. it’s just a funny –

Kirk: So, the whole thing just comes together.

Christian: It just works perfectly. And that’s why, weirdly enough, my favorite character is my favorite character.

Kirk: Alright. Let’s talk about the difficulty of getting a game like this on Nintendo. People think of certain franchises, certain IPs, and that’s what gets all of the attention. How hard is it to get a game like this in front of people when they may not have any experience with it?

Christian: You know, with titles like Super Crazy Rhythm Castle, this is a title where people get to see just how different it really is, and hopefully they enjoy it.

Kirk: To help them along, what’s the more appropriate superlative for the game: super or crazy?

Christian: You know, I definitely gotta say crazy. I think crazy is definitely a part of it. The “super” complements it so perfectly. It is crazy, it’s super crazy. You can’t just say “crazy.”

Kirk: Crazy is not enough.

Christian: Yeah, yeah, yeah; crazy is not enough! People are going to have to experience it and just enjoy it from there.

We at Pure Nintendo would like to thank Konami for inviting us to try out Super Crazy Rhythm Castle. Thanks to Christian, as well, for sharing his enthusiasm for this highly unique entry in the Switch’s catalog. Keep your eye on the Nintendo eShop this Tuesday, and be sure to watch for our full review this week.

Spoiler alert: We like it!

The post Konami’s Christian Spears explains Super Crazy Rhythm Castle appeared first on Pure Nintendo.

This two-person team from NSW is truly passionate about game development. I spoke to Rick, Director of Hojo Studio, at their booth at PAX Aus in Melbourne over the weekend. I also tried the interesting-sounding Godfeather. In fact, this was a title that drew a lot of attention on the showroom floor. 

During my hands-on time with the Godfeather, I became a pigeon on a mission. The game is played from a top-down perspective as you fly above the town to swoop on unsuspecting victims. It looks lovely, with big, bright colors and an overall style reminiscent of early Grand Theft Auto titles, albeit in a very fun and cutesy way.

The premise involves taking shots at humans who have disturbed the peace of the pigeons. A kid running amok. A couple displaying public affection. Clean laundry! They all must be punished! Those “shots” are made from bird poop, a hilarious concept that works very well. A simple tap of the relevant button, and your poop is free to soar down, down, down and hit its target. 

You control your pigeon, flying around town to take out your victims. A handy poop meter shows how much ammo remains, while diving into a dumpster will replenish your dwindling supplies. Along the way are other obstacles and enemies, including drones and bigger birds. Once spotted, you’ll need to get to safety before you’re caught. 

Hojo Studio has been developing games for around ten years, with four titles already under their belt. Previous titles include Puffington and the fun-sounding Nappy Cat, a game involving taking catnip away from kittens. How does this small team come up with such interesting concepts? Rick says it’s simple; they take the silliest ideas possible and make the best game they can from it. Their passion shows, with a polished title on display that looks and sounds great.

The Steam version of The Godfeather: A Mafia Pigeon Saga is out now, with a Switch release heading our way in early 2024. We’ll be keeping an eye on this one as it comes closer to the Switch launch, so stay tuned for more information.

You can find out more about Hojo Studio at their website, or follow them on Twitter or Instagram.

You can also check out our wrap up of Hungry Sky’s Nekograms, another indie dev that was at PAX Aus.

The post Hojo Studio presents The Godfeather: A Mafia Pigeon Saga at PAX Aus appeared first on Pure Nintendo.

Special thanks to Steve, George and the team (Scott and Ashley) for their time and help with organising this interview!

PN: Thanks so much for your time today! I’d love to know more about Krome and its history; what’s your background and how did you come together to begin developing games?

Steve: Well, the legends tell of these guys who were working on this bodyboarding game from two different companies and they thought, hey this has worked out really good. We should join together, and this was like 1999, and that was us forming Krome. It was like, well let’s work together, because we’ve got a business guy and we’ve got these art guys who make games, let’s get together and that was how Krome was born. It was just that simple, like good to go?

PN: Awesome. Does the name mean something, Krome?

Ah no, I had an idea for a character called Krome like a robotic platforming game character. I’d just like the spelling was K-R-O-M-E, so we wanted it because this is like the 2000s, Internet names and trying to find something that’s a word. It’s like, shiny chrome but it’s not “chrome”. No one had any better ideas. So we stuck with the worst.

PN: And so you two have been doing work together since the late ‘90s? 

Steve: Um, we’ve been brothers since 1973!

PN: Oh, you guys are brothers? Awesome! Okay, yeah.

Steve: Now George did some work on one of the first games we did, and he was off doing other stuff and then we formed Krome. We were looking for an audio guy and basically, I said I’ve got a brother who does it! it wasn’t like nepotism stuff, it’s just like, yeah, he does audio, let’s give him a go.

PN: Cool. That’s awesome, and 20+ years later obviously it’s working. Feel free to add something to that, George, if you like.

George: No, that’s pretty much it. It’s far less waffly than I would have come up with!

PN: Do you let the music do the talking for you usually?

George: No, and, you know, games have all these different elements. There’s the art. There’s the design. There’s the programming and there’s the audio. So, I tend to confine myself just to the audio part of it because that’s my thing. For all the other stuff, leave it to people like Steve.

Steve: I get to do all the work!

PN: The character of Ty the Tasmanian Tiger has been kicking around since 2000, with the first game released in 2002. Can you tell me a little about how the concept came about?

Steve: Yes, but we did need time to make it. But what happened was, at the end of 2000, Robert came back from overseas and had a friend who was at Sony, like a producer who’s doing all these platform games. We had wanted to do one for ages, like a character platformer, because we were big fans of Banjo Kazooie and Mario at the time. The stuff they think of as Playstation 2 titles, none of that existed.

There was Ridge Racer and a couple of games like on the PlayStation 2, and it’s like: that’s the cool new stuff. So we were sitting around what we call the blue room, it was basically a couple of blue couches in the office area, and as a group we were going, well, yeah; we should do that. And then it was like, it should be an Australian critter because Crash Bandicoot is so un-Australian. If you didn’t know what a bandicoot was, you wouldn’t know that it was an Australian animal. We should do a Tasmanian Tiger!

It was unanimous. There was no question about it. One of the other artists came up with the idea of using boomerangs as the weapon, we were like, that’s genius! It was just one of these things, everyone was throwing ideas in and it was this big melting part of cool Australian-isms.

They all fit together because we have a lot of the same history, roughly we’re the same ages and so we had all that cultural history. And another thing with Ty was that the games we did before that were much more international. We don’t have to be Australian, there’s that cultural cringe thing, you know, and with Ty it was like, we’re going to be Australian! We’re going to really lean into the stuff that makes us Australian, and the funny thing is the American guys at EA were like: “No, more Australian!” So our mission in life is to convert American kids to speaking Australian and knowing Australian stuff.

I don’t think we realize what we’ve got as far as all that stuff is. I was walking this morning and there’s a sulphur-crested cockatoo flying around, and a ton of ibis, and four or five gallas sitting in the park next door feeding. We just need to sit and watch a bit more I think.

PN: Has Ty the Tasmanian tiger changed over the years?

Steve: Yeah, he has. There’s been some really major changes in Ty. He changes his shorts every game. So that’s the big change! We try to keep his personality the same, he’s a really happy guy. He’s kind of a surfer guy but not a surfer dude if you know I mean. He runs around barefoot on the beach but he does help his mates out, we always try to keep that. So whatever the story, it’s that guy reacting to whatever the situation is, which I think makes him interesting.

He’s getting a little smarter over the years. He was never dumb, but now he’s sort of, I don’t trust you as much, like with Lenny the lyrebird and those characters. He just knows they’re doing bad stuff. So he’s picking up on that.

He did learn to drive in one of the games, which is big because Shaz always drove him around previously. But yeah, the joke is that I just changed his shorts mostly to give them something new to look at. There are design things we do, things with the models and in-game, adding mechanics and the way we render the characters, so that would always progress every game. Cloth technology as well, so we gave him a scarf running around in one of the games and he’s always got different abilities, like the different boomerangs. Game stuff always changes and we try to advance that as well, but the character is this nice guy helping his friends out and trying to do the right thing.

PN: Living in Australia, we know how diverse our country is. It makes a great setting for a video game. Can you tell us a bit about the inspiration for the settings and characters?

Steve: Well when I was a kid about 12, I did a week’s stay up at Mount Isa on a farm. We’re up there and the first day we got in the back of the Toyota Land Cruiser and we were driving around checking all the fences for the cattle. We were dodging termite mountains, like just driving there in the back of the ute. That was inspiration for some of the Ty level stuff. It literally was like we’re in the outback driving around and dodging termite mounds. And everyone added to that, like the rest of the team came up with ideas, like particularly the rainbow eucalyptus trees. So we just started saying “oh I love this thing, the beaches, and what kind of animals we have.” The stuff that we have fond memories of, and I think that’s just come from the whole team.

PN: Players from overseas may not know that the Tasmanian Tiger is actually extinct. How did you choose the Tasmanian tiger as your protagonist? Is that something that’s personal to you/your team?

Steve: I just always thought they were a cool, interesting animal, even just the name “Tasmanian Tiger”. I think in the late ‘90s Cascade Brewery started doing their stuff so they were getting noticed more as well. It was sort of around a bit more in your head and also, like I said, the Crash Bandicoot stuff. So what’s an Australian thing that’s interesting that hasn’t been done to death? We can’t do a kangaroo or a koala, you want to avoid that sort of stuff. Well, what’s left? You have this extinct Tasmanian Tiger that’s kind of cool and then you’d look up more info and it’s like, oh wow, they were really interesting. They can jump. They’ve got a pouch. The jaw that unhinges and opens up, that’s all perfect stuff for a game, and of course historically they were known for wearing shorts.

PN: Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 4 is a side-scroller as opposed to a 3D platformer. This was a change for the mainline series, what brought about this new direction? How different is development comparing 3D and 2D titles?

Steve: Well technically it is the third 2D game. Here’s how it works in my head: There’s a Venn diagram of the games. There are three 3D games and there are three 2D games, with a crossover with two of the 2D games. They’re the same story. So the numbering for me is the story. Not the actual style of game.

Gameplay-wise what happened was we were talking to Microsoft who were looking to release games for Windows 8 on the tablet and then we’re talking about doing a side-scrolling game. They really wanted to have something side-scrolling. They didn’t have any particular IP they wanted. They just wanted a side-scrolling game that would run nicely on a tablet. This was 2013 and we hadn’t done a Ty game since 2005. We’ve tried to do lots of Ty games. That’s the way the business was going and timing. So I’ve never kind of got it off its feet.

I had also been working on my own before that to work out how to do a 2D platform again with the sprites and stuff we use for Ty. So I’d started playing around with that idea that we could probably do this. Luckily, the guy at Microsoft we were talking to actually had worked on Ty and was a Ty fan so it just made it all easy.

The idea was that we would reintroduce a lot of stuff the players who’d played the series knew about and also introduce new players. So it’s kind of like, hey welcome back to Ty, all the gameplay stuff is in there from the games like gliding, jumping, biting, swimming, riding animals, diving games, chases all that stuff’s in there. It’s literally if you took a normal Ty game and squashed it, that’s what you get as a 2D game, which was what we had on the Game Boy games. But it’s a bit more advanced because you have full HD graphics and the cool level stuff we were doing, which we would see in Ray Man, hey they have stuff that’s not block shaped! We should try this! so we were looking at what else was being done. We were just trying to advance a 2D game.

PN: The animation is really smooth in the Switch version – I’m lucky to have had a go at the game already! Can you tell me about the improvements between this version and the original Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 4?

Steve: There’s mostly just keeping it at a good frame rate because pc it’s a bit ifffy like what you miss hardware was going to be. There was a whole bunch of different hardware that even the Windows 8 version had to support the Steam version. Obviously we could have that running faster. But it’s a bit harder to know still what speeds are going to run at.

With the switch you have the locked-off frame rate. You know the hardware. It’s going to be 720p on docked. It’s going to be 1080p handheld. It’s much easier to make it work nicer and focus on it.

One of the biggest comments previously was oh there’s no voiceover stuff. It was just silent text box stuff that was cheap. The cut scenes were just static frames originally. So, what we decided to do was get all the voice actors together. We had to cast some new voices, we got a whole bunch of the old ones and we recorded all the audio and it’s just jumps from “it’s a good game” to “oh wow”! And that’s us saying, yeah oh this is great.

And then the cut scenes we basically reanimated them. They were just going to be simple sliding motion graphics. It’s like, oh we got the voices, now I should probably just lip sync in it a little bit. It’s not really a full-on type of animation but it is nice. It’s simple. You get action going on. It’s not just static screens and it just feels a lot more visual and exciting to watch when stuff’s moving across the screen as the voice goes and the music’s playing. So yeah, that was a big.

PN: Do you do any voices in the game?

Steve: I do one voice. You have to guess who it is; he may or may not be called Steve…

PN: You’ve worked across many Nintendo platforms over the years including the GameCube, Game Boy Advance, and Nintendo Switch. How has that process changed over time – is it easier in 2023? Which is your favorite system to work with?

Steve: The Switch is the one that I like playing stuff on. I love the Switch as a unit. It doesn’t have all the power of the others but I like that it’s portable … even though I don’t go anywhere. It feels like this is the stuff I imagined we were designing for back in the ‘90s, so I want cool technology.

Game dev-wise, the GameCube dev kits were a bit of a pain, but so was everything else at that time.

George: [The Switch] is a lot easier to work with compared to even older Nintendo ones, which used to take up about sixty USBs on your computer and whenever they crashed they’d play one cycle of sound, which is not even a frame. So it would sound like your fuse box was about to explode until you muted your speakers or whatever.

It’s a little daunting at first, though, but once you’ve got it [the Switch] works really, really well and it’s fast. There’s no comparison. Waiting for something to render now as opposed to on the GameCube, that would take forever to get anything where you could actually test something. So the test hardware now is phenomenal compared to what it used to be.

Steve: And nothing compares .. I’m gonna say this, when we did the Ty console versions, the coolest thing for me is the Switch red logo with the click at the start of a trailer. You don’t know how much that means, like I’ve been making games for 30 years, we would go to Nintendo at E3 and say, can we have a meeting? So we were always trying to get on Nintendo and it was nice having games on there.

PN: Amazing! For budding developers or people entering the scene, do you have any advice?

Steve: There is a lot more technology out there and tools to make games. It’s a lot easier to use. Just go make games. It doesn’t have to be photo-real rendered, that’s nice but you can make any little game you want. It could be a 2D pixel thing. There’s asset stores now you can get if you can’t get graphics. Get your music and graphics from an asset store or tools you can make a game with.

One of the things when we were hiring people but we started Krome was if people had made a game. It doesn’t matter how crappy it was. It goes a long way to getting you a job if you’re going to be a developer. The other thing is that now you don’t have to wait for someone to give you the money for it, you can make it and release it and get games out that way. So make stuff. That’s the first thing, just make stuff.

PN: Cool, just do it, take that step, that’s awesome. Thank you so much for your time today to talk about Ty the Tasmanian Tiger! It’s been an interesting journey through the series’ history and we reallyt appreciate your time.

Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 4 hits the Nintendo on September 26. Also check out our latest podcast episode for another part of this special interview. Watch for our upcoming review of Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 4.

The post Pure Nintendo interviews Krome Studios, developer of Ty the Tasmanian Tiger! appeared first on Pure Nintendo.

Pure Nintendo caught up with Allen at GameGrooves and Chris at Ska Punk International to find out more about the album and the collaboration.

Pure Nintendo: Tell us about your Final Fantasy VII inspired ska album.

GameGrooves (Allen): After Skario Kart (our Mario Kart 64 Ska album) was well-received, I jokingly posted about another ska album on Twitter, and Chris (Ska Punk International) sent me a DM offering to collaborate on our next ska project. From there, we just clicked, and while it’s been a long road to release the album, it’s been a very fun one.

Ska Punk International (Chris): Basically, it’s 14 ska covers from the Final Fantasy 7 soundtrack. It features composers and arrangers from the gaming community as well as bands from the ska community. There are also many different types of ska covers on this album from more traditional ska to skapunk and even skacore. I’m extremely proud of both communities coming together so seamlessly.

Pure Nintendo: How did the idea for the album come about?

GameGrooves (Allen): After Ska Punk International (SPI) reached out to me, I knew that we would do a follow-up of sorts to Skario Kart. I think that we each came up with a few ideas for what game soundtrack to cover, but we both decided that Final Fantasy VII felt like a good fit. I mean, who doesn’t think of ska when they hear “One-Winged Angel”?

Ska Punk International (Chris): I got into ska in 1997, the same year that Final Fantasy 7 originally came out. In my head, they’ve always been linked. I was literally listening to my Less Than Jake, Skankin Pickle and Kemuri CDs while I was grinding for the Knights of the Round materia. So when Allen and I started talking about collaborating, this was one of the first ideas I had. We definitely talked about other games that would have been fun, but I’m very happy we settled on this one. 15 year old Chris is super stoked about this.

Pure Nintendo: How did you decide which elements of the original soundtrack you wanted to use for the album?

GameGrooves (Allen): I leave all the arranging to the individual artists. Of course, artists are expected to keep the main melody intact, but when it comes to genre/style, anything goes for most albums. For this particular album, I asked for ska arrangements, and that was all the guidance that I needed to give.

Ska Punk International (Chris): Right exactly, we put the call out and let the artists run wild with their interpretations of ska and the tracks they chose. It’s also been awesome working with Allen and GameGrooves overall. 

Pure Nintendo: What is the process like for switching the genre of a piece of music while still retaining the recognisable core?

GameGrooves (Allen): In some cases, the combination of soundtrack and genre makes sense or it’s been done a lot before (e.g. Zelda metal arrangements or orchestral Final Fantasy arrangements), but sometimes, I think it’s fun to throw a curveball. GameGrooves has done this a few times before with Skario Kart, our previous ska album, and Link-182, our pop-punk tribute to Ocarina of Time.

Ska Punk International (Chris): I can only speak from the ska and punk perspective, but ska is such a danceable and groovy genre that it becomes about finding the groove and going from there. That’s why you’ll hear so many of these songs feature sick solos while letting the groove ride out. There’s also so many types of ska that it’s an extremely flexible and fluid genre, and I think you can hear that in the different types of covers we have in this album. Deciding what direction you want your ska rhythms to take is one of the essential and most fun parts of a ska cover.

Pure Nintendo: What are your personal favorite tracks from the album?

GameGrooves (Allen): Like any good parent, I can’t choose favorites, but I will say that I never expected to hear “One-Winged Angel” as a ska arrangement, so let’s go with that lol.

Ska Punk International (Chris): Yeah asking me to choose a favorite isn’t fair hahah I’m definitely a huge fan of Flying Raccoon Suit’s “Those Who Fight” it’s the heaviest and most skacore song on the album so of course I love that. Have to mention Simple Minded Symphony’s “Under The Rotting Pizza” the solos on that track are incredible. Oh! The solos on Flip and the Combined Effort’s “Mako Reactor” are sick too. See I can’t pick, I could list them all!!!

Pure Nintendo: This has been a very different kind of project to your usual releases. Was there anything about the process that came as a particular surprise for you compared to what you’re used to?

GameGrooves (Allen): For my part, it was a real blessing to work with SPI because GameGrooves had never done a physical release before this album. Chris helped me every step of the way, and he brought new artists onboard, so I could not have done it without him. 

Ska Punk International (Chris): Yeah, it has definitely been a bit different. I’ve done compilations before, but nothing like this. It’s been most surprising how much the gaming community has embraced the idea and the ska community. The artists/composers that come from the gaming side of things really went all out on their tracks, and I love it so much. Also, I saw how much the gaming community overall enjoyed Skario Kart but the support has been even crazier than I imagined it would be. It’s been an amazing experience so far.

Pure Nintendo: Are you planning on doing any more releases like this in future?

GameGrooves (Allen): We definitely plan on releasing more video game cover albums, and we will probably do another ska album in the future (Super Mario 64?). Of course, I would love to work with SPI again, and as for collaborating with other labels, I would love to find more communities like the ska community that are inclusive, diverse, and passionate.

Ska Punk International (Chris): Yeah I’d love to do something else like this in the future. It’s been a dream come true. I have a lot of “regular” ska releases in the works for the next few years, but I’m sure I could find some time for another like this if (ahem) SOMEONE (nudge) asked me.

Pure Nintendo: Are there any other games that have soundtracks you’d like to play with?

GameGrooves (Allen): Too many to count. Majora’s Mask, Undertale, Ōkami, Super Mario Galaxy, Chrono Trigger, Pizza Tower. The list goes on and on.

Ska Punk International (Chris): Yeah I also have a huge list. Earthbound, Persona 5, Link To The Past, Ninja Gaiden, Super Mario 64, Splatoon, basically any other Final Fantasy. So many!

Pure Nintendo: What do you hope people take away from the album?

GameGrooves (Allen): I hope that people realize how many awesome and creative artists there are in both the ska and video game music communities. 

Ska Punk International (Chris): Gaming soundtracks and ska are pretty similar in a lot of ways. Both aren’t taken as seriously as their communities would like and both have a lot of depth and variety when you really dig in.

I want people from the gaming side of things to hear this album and dig deeper into the bands they hear and even go a step further and check out more bands they play with and are labelmates with. There’s so many sick ska bands that are active right now so I hope that together we can turn some people onto more of these bands. 

I’m also hoping that people from the ska side of things will dig deeper into some of these composers and arrangers. The work they do is incredible and deserves more of a spotlight as well.

Pure Nintendo: Do you have any advice for anyone inspired to take on similar creative projects?

GameGrooves (Allen): Be flexible. This album was delayed for almost 6 months, and we had to make several adjustments along the way. Fortunately, Chris and I are on the same wavelength, but in order to collaborate, you have to communicate often and be as flexible as possible.

Ska Punk International (Chris): I say just go for it. Whatever your idea is, just get started. Definitely be willing to be flexible just Allen said, but it’ll never happen if you don’t get started.

Limit Breaker: A Ska Tribute to Final Fantasy VII is available to stream and purchase now. Links to all platforms can be found here. You can get it on Bandcamp here. You can pre-order CDs and casettes here.

You can find out more about Ska Punk International by checking out their website here.

You can find out more about GameGrooves by checking out their website here.

The post Interview: Pure Nintendo Talks to GameGrooves and Ska Punk International About Limit Breaker: A Ska Tribute to Final Fantasy VII appeared first on Pure Nintendo.

PN: Tell us a little about yourself and your responsibilities on the project.

Scott Drader, co-founder in the studio, back in 2009, with Christian Zuger. So it’s been a long time working on Super Mega for me. We joined EA with the acquisition in 2021. Now, Studio Director and Senior Producer on the Super Mega franchise. I do a lot of the same stuff I’ve done for a really long time on this series, and I’m looking forward to talking about the new one with EA.

PN: It’s been about 3 years since Super Mega Baseball 3 launched, talk us through the development of Super Mega Baseball 4, what were the main goals with this iteration?

EA came along during the pandemic and said: we like your baseball game, and we like your team and studio. What do you think about joining us, and doing a bigger version of Super Mega with us? Obviously, when you have worked for a team that’s been independent for 10 years, that’s a big decision. But everything we heard around how we would handle the creative approach on the new game made sense. We joined up and had lots to learn working in a bigger company but EA’s been super supportive and treated us really well and let us run with what’s worked for a very long time now. So I think the new Super Mega game is gonna feel like a logical progression of the first three games with, hopefully, a little bit of fanfare and some star power around it that we wouldn’t have been able to do on our own.

PN: How does Super Mega Baseball 4 set itself apart from other baseball franchises like MLB The Show? 

I think, on the field, the game stays pretty true to the sport in terms of statistical outcomes. What’s hard to accomplish on the field in baseball is hard to accomplish in the game. That’s always been the case. None of that’s changing. Where we’ve differed massively and where we differ from MLB The Show, like a lot of other games in EA Sports and other AAA sports sims, we regularly break from authenticity in the spirit of pure fun. The games exist in a space sort of between the sports simulators that have dominated in the market for a long time now and just pure video games. We’re making a lot of decisions that are just in the spirit of pure fun from a video game perspective. Still true to the sport on the field but I think when you look at the mechanics that surround the on-field gameplay, like the franchise mode mechanics and the content, the fictional world that the game is built around – all of that stuff is a little more fun, a little more in the video game direction of humor, parody. I’ve always thought of it as kind of a hybrid space that sort of lives between traditional simulation sports games and pure video games. 

PN: I saw the inclusion of some former pro players likenesses in Super Mega Baseball 4, is there a potential for fully licensed MLB teams/rosters down the road?

It’s a really interesting design challenge there when you have a series that’s sort of rooted in fictional content and a lot of your existing player-based community is totally in-tune with that fictional content. But also, we know we can bring a lot of excitement to the series and some legitimacy in terms of the folks that maybe have passed over this series over the years because it didn’t have any sort of connection to real world players. We knew that was an opportunity with this one. What’s the right first step for a game that’s been about fictional content? What’s the right first step into licensing? And yeah, one of the ideas we came back to you was just the game’s always sort of had this timeless nature. It’s always sort of been a timeless celebration of baseball that you can pick up at opening day or all-star break or right in the middle of hockey season. It doesn’t matter. It’s a celebration of baseball and it felt like a really good step for the first series to bring in some timeless heroes of the sport.

You’ll see in the new game, there’s a new built-in league that exclusively features the historical legends of the sport. It’s called the Legends League, so that’s the easiest way to play with all of them. You can get in there and it’s essentially organized roughly by era. So, the teams in the Legends League, you’re basically pitting players from slightly different eras of baseball against each other. It’s all balanced from a gameplay perspective. Not every Legend player is gonna be an A-plus or like an S tier player. It’s a really fun integration. It’s a different way of doing it. You’ll see in pennant race what’s going on there with the Legends is that it’s still rooted around the same core balanced league that we did with pennant race on Super Mega Baseball 3, but there’s four retired legends playing, essentially ringing for four semi-randomized players on each team in the Super Mega League. You’re gonna have to think about every pennant race such as which team is benefiting the most from the Legend players that are on our team this week.

We’ve also just done as much as we can to keep it super flexible around how you wanna play the game. We’re gonna have folks that wanna play with the Legends. We’re gonna have folks that wanna play with the traditional fictional content. We’re gonna have folks that wanna play with customized content. That paradigm kind of permeates throughout the game where we’ve tried to create as much flexibility in terms of which of those groups of players you wanna play with. 

PN: A lot of the immersion in these sports games can come in the details, can you tell us a little about the audio enhancements players can expect with Super Mega Baseball 4?

The audio was the thing that we typically had a partner team doing on previous Super Mega games. This was the first time that we did audio in-house and we had audio aspirations factored in right from the beginning of the creative process for the whole game. The amount of content we’ve been able to do on this one is massive compared to previous games and there are all sorts of things. We had player names being announced for the core Super Mega players on 3. We have that for the Legends too, but like all of the customized player names that you can pick – I think it’s actually into the thousands of names that you can pick – and all of those will be announced in game. So, from a customization perspective, that’s just super cool. We got a custom soundtrack built for the game. There are 15 totally original tracks that are made for this game and in the spirit of this game. We’re trying to put a little bit of the metal back into ‘metalhead’, but it actually touches on quite a few genres. I think we have somewhere around 88 songs in the game. All carefully picked from essentially libraries that EA has given us access to. There’s hundreds of new audio clips featuring the audience just making snippy comments about what’s taking place on the field. There is also a GTA-style Radio DJ running you through the front end. It’s all connected to the fictional world that builds on the various made up brands and so forth that you’ve seen in the stadiums for the last three games. We approached it saying: how do we keep building up this fictional world while bringing new players into it? Super Mega Baseball 4 is the first take on how to do that in a unique way – I don’t think there’s anything else on the market that’s doing it quite like this. 

PN: For those that might be new to ‘deck-building’ in games, can you walk us through that feature and how Super Mega Baseball 4 utilizes it?

One of the key features is a new thing called shuffle draft. This is like a kind of deck building, board game inspired way of assembling a team that lets you source players like Legends, super classic / super mega players. It lets you essentially draft a team, re-draft an entire week from a configurable pool of players and then take that league into one of the other game modes. You can play a season with that week or franchise. You can, if you’re a fan of the game from before, you could take the Sirloins and then bring in the Legends as the free agents for that franchise play through. You could start with the Legends league and play with The Empire which is a team of recent MLB Legends and then bring in the Super Mega Baseball players. There’s a ton of flexibility around playing all different parts of the game, different mixtures of Legends, classic / super mega players and customized players. So, sticking to a lot of the roots and trying to do it thoughtfully in a way that it still feels like a Super Mega game. 

PN: I recall in Super Mega Baseball 3 that there were day/night lighting setups for parks but I don’t believe it was dynamic or would change throughout the game, is that the case in Super Mega Baseball 4?

We thought about dynamic lighting, but it came down to performance trade-offs. You could probably tell from Super Mega Baseball 3 that we had picked the most majestic time of day. Where we pushed really hard from a stadium perspective on Super Mega Baseball 4 was trying to get the same number of stadiums as the number of teams in the core league. We never had enough in previous games where each team had its own unique home stadium which we got to do with this one. Every team has their own home ballpark for the first time which we’re super stoked about. We’ve stuck with picking sort of three times a day for each ballpark and those have been given like a pretty big upgrade and I think they look better than ever.

PN: What’s up next for the development team? Any sort of DLC or further updates planned for Super Mega Baseball 4?

We’re gonna keep an eye on how we’ve done it with the previous games. We’ll see how people are feeling about the game and we’re not gonna announce anything specific post launch. There will be a couple of stadiums coming as post launch DLC where the environment teams are still working on those. 

PN: Sounds great. Appreciate your time, Scott!

The post Super Mega Baseball 4 Announced! Launches on June 2 – Interview with Metalhead Software appeared first on Pure Nintendo.

First, though, I was lucky enough to do something even cooler that morning in San Francisco; I got to spend some time with Davide Soliani of Ubisoft Milan. Davide was the creative director of Mario+Rabbids Kingdom Battle and Donkey Kong Adventure, and now Mario+Rabbids Sparks of Hope.

Perhaps more importantly, Davide is a passionate gamer with an obvious joy for his projects. In the short time we had together, we were able to talk about his development approach, what about working with Nintendo makes him happy (and his range of emotions when first pitching to Shigeru Miyamoto), what we can look forward to in Sparks of Hope, and plenty more. Like the game itself, Davide had a couple surprises for me.

PN: How soon after the completion of Mario+Rabbids Kingdom Battle did you start coming up with the ideas and the changes that you were going to put into Sparks of Hope.

Davide: In between when we focused on the DLC of Kingdom Battle that was Donkey Kong Adventure…yes, it was DLC but it was feeling almost like a 1.5 game because we worked quite a lot of the combat system to create a specific skillset of moves for Donkey Kong’s long hops. So, the ability that Donkey Kong used in combat such as carrying, grabbing and throwing was, in a way, our first sparks of creativity to come up with things that we would put on Sparks of Hope. So, I will say that we released Kingdom Battle in 2017. We released Donkey Kong Adventure one year later. And a few months after the release of DK we decided to embark on our adventure for Sparks of Hope. So, it took us a bit of time.

PN: When you saw that Donkey Kong was starting to carry over, were you also looking at how other characters could work their way into this? What could Luigi’s skills be? What could Princess Peach’s skills be?

Davide: As players (because, first of all, we are players), we would love to include all of the possible Mario characters in the game. Of course, we have to make a decision. But definitely, what we wanted to do compared to the previous game was make sure that weapons and skillsets such as the techniques were really defining which kind of character the player could control. So, basically, we divided the nine heroes into three main archetype categories—the fighter, the mage (the best at doing that to a single enemy), the supporter (the best at helping teammates and controlling the enemies, making sure they are disabling their features or their ability to move)—to control the situation on the battleground. And then, in each of those character archetypes there are the roles of each single hero… At the end, the major challenge for us was creating each one single hero in a way that could create synergy with the other. And on top of that, the sparks that are the buddies of the heroes but are also a modular element that you can level up. And because of that they become stronger, and you can keep two of them to each singular hero, leveraging the synergy even more compared to the first game. Even me, I’m still discovering ways to combine those things together.

PN: In the demo, I’ve been able to play with the sparks a little bit. I like that if you’re using a character who may not have a certain specialty, you can supplement that with sparks as you can in other RPGs with certains weapons and armor. In your mind, were sparks serving as weapon and armor upgrades for the character?

Davide: What we wanted to do was create creatures that could be seen as buddies. So, like friends; like having your favorite cats or favorite dogs with you. But at the same time we wanted to have a meaning for those creatures in combat and in exploration. In exploration, they are lending you powers that help you find secret areas or solve a puzzle. In combat, they are helping you express your play style because you can love one specific character, but the sparks add that modular element that can help you either leverage the characteristics of each singular hero or, at the same time, help the weakness of the hero. So, all in all, for us, the sparks were a way to express player play style at the maximum level. On top of that they serve as a tool to create humor in certain situations.

PN: When you’re designing the levels, do you have certain characters and abilities in mind? Like, you’re thinking, “If the player is using this particular character or this set of sparks, he’ll be able to get through it pretty easily. But if not, then it becomes a little more difficult.”

Davide: That’s a very nice question. It’s a challenge for us…do we force the player to use specific characters or do we want the player to enjoy the character they prefer throughout the whole game? So, what we try to do is find the sweet spot for each battle…could offer something new or a different strategy, and some of the heroes are better at dealing with those enemies than other heroes. At the same time, some sparks are better to be used against those kind of enemies. For example a fire spark is not as good against an enemy that is firing fire. All of those elements were important for us, but we always try to say, “OK, even if you are a player that doesn’t want to change heroes or sparks because you love those sparks or you love those heroes, you should always be able to finish the battle.” But…it could be way easier if you use that change. So, it’s a mix of the two things. There are battles that are suggesting you use specific heroes and sparks, but at the same time, if you really want to keep your team as it is, you can.

PN: Are there any particular levels that you thought were really good as you were putting Sparks of Hope together?

Davide: In each planet, we are trying to offer a different kind of experience. Overall, I cannot choose one of them because I think each one is bringing something new.

PN: Your history of the development of Mario+Rabbids and the connections you made with Miyamoto-san to get some games in front of him are well known. How does it feel to be able to work with the Mario characters when developing this game? Is there a sense of joy behind it because you loved these characters in the past, or is it more a business approach while you’re developing?

Davide: Business is something that is very far from me. [Laughs.] Miyamoto-san is my idol. When he arrived in Milan for the very first time in 2000, 2001, for the presentation of Wind Waker, I had a fever of 39, and I was waiting for eight hours under the rain for him to arrive at the hotel so I could say hello and give him some gift. So, I’m that kind of guy. When I met him for the first time to present the pitch for Kingdom Battle, I was completely scared. I wanted to run everywhere to escape the situation. For me, tons of emotion. Scared. Joy. Happiness. Respect. But business is something that’s the last of my thoughts. Of course, it’s present because we…need to do a quality game, but business is not really a driver for me.

PN: Does Nintendo have any oversight on the development of it, or are they like, “You’ve got these characters, go ahead and develop the best game you can?”

Davide: We never stopped working together with Nintendo since 2013, basically, when we started. So far we have 8 solid years of—let’s say “partnership.” We never stopped working with them because we did Kingdom Battle, then just after, Donkey Kong Adventure. Then, of course, Sparks of Hope, which is about to be out on October 20. And we are working on the DLC. So, not much changed. We are the developer. We are sending them things to play. They act as counselor and they are sending us feedback, so there is a mutual relationship. What changed, really, over the course of those eight years—that has been a huge pleasure for me—is the level of trust that we’ve gained from Nintendo, which is very empowering. It’s making all of us very happy.

PN: I’m more of a tactical RPG fan than I am a Mario fan. I like that this game very much focuses on battles and tactics and party optimization, a little moreso than I expected. What games have you looked at to inspire the gameplay portion of Sparks of Hope?

Davide: I think I need to speak about the first game to give you a wider picture. We were looking at games such as Worms. The 2D Worms. I think it was fantastic in terms of tactical approach. We were looking at…Mario Kart because we wanted to create that kind of Mario mood. And there was also a drop of XCOM. To be honest, in Sparks of Hope we were mostly looking at Kingdom Battle to make it better. Our big competitor was Kingdom Battle because its combat system was loved. Changing and evolving it was a risky business that we didn’t take easily. So, Sparks of Hope feels built on the foundation of Kingdom Battle but is offering a completely different experience, like exploration, which is the glue that keeps everything together. If I have to think about another game that inspired us in Sparks of Hope, I will say in a way—in a very far away way—Breath of the Wild. Moving from Kingdom Battle to the freedom of movement that we have in the combat system of Sparks of Hope…you are acting directly in battles to do very specific stuff. So, it’s a little bit like driving. Everything you are doing in combat now, it’s not about selecting and browsing, it’s about moving and pressing the button of the action that you want.

PN: How about evolving the characters? What kind of thought went into which ones made the cut?

Davide: If there is something that is guiding our decision it’s the ability to create synergy between years. At the same time, we wanted to introduce new characters and use new ones from the Nintendo universe as well. For example, Bowser is in because we really wanted someone who could demolish the battleground at some point if you use his skill points nicely. At the same time, Rabbids Peach is a character who was completely loved in the first game, so we wanted to come up with new characters who could be on par with the level of charisma that Rabbids Peach had done. It was not easy, but then I think we found our perfect recipe with Rabbids Rosalina which is a completely different character but is a show stealer. And then Edge, which is a character even more different from all the others, and it’s a very different Rabbid compared to all the Rabbids that existed until now, inspired by old Japanese RPG games. So, I think we are evolving the Rabbids…offering a wider kind of emotion.

PN: What can we expect from DLC?

Davide: The reason is for a new character, and this character is Rayman. So, there will be a whole new adventure tailored around some of the Rabbids heroes that we presented already, such as Rabbids Peach and Rabbids Mario that will do fun and incredible stuff along with Rayman. The first time I arrived in Ubisoft in ’99, my first game was Rayman for the GameBoy Color. So, working again on Rayman in ’22, ’23 is like a dream come true.

PN: The Rabbids, of course, came from Rayman, so being able to pull him into what’s more of a Rabbids game brings things full circle for you.

Davide: Yes.

PN: Are you already anticipating where to push ahead now that Sparks of Hope is nearing release?

Davide: George Martin, the super-famous writer, says that there are two types of writers—the architect that knows everything at the very beginning, and the gardener who picks and chooses as they go. I’m a gardener. So, I have a passion; I have goals. I can see pretty far, but I love to change direction depending on how things go. For example, we are developing game prototypes, and we find out that the mechanics are so incredibly fun and nice to do, and these mechanics could change the course of our decision.

PN: What would you really like to see players get out of Sparks of Hope?

Davide: If there is something I would love the player to get out of this game, I would love them to feel the evolution—if they are a returning gamer—the evolution that we have been through from Kingdom Battle to Donkey Kong Adventure to Sparks of Hope. And if they are enjoying this evolution, I would love for them to ride with us in the future.

Mario+Rabbids Sparks of Hope will be available for Nintendo Switch on October 20th in Standard and Gold Editions. Our preview will be posted soon, but you can learn more about the game in the most recent issue of Pure Nintendo Magazine.

The post Pure Nintendo interviews Davide Soliani, creative director of Mario+Rabbids Sparks of Hope appeared first on Pure Nintendo.

Pure Nintendo: Tell us more about Dawn of the Monsters? What is it? And how long have you been working on the game?

Alex Rushdy (Creative Director and CEO of 13AM Games): Dawn of the Monsters is a 2.5D side-scrolling beat-’em-up with four unique characters, over 35 missions, equippable DNA Augments to upgrade your monster’s abilities, a Platinum Games-inspired ranking system, fully dynamic destruction, 2-player co-op, an in-depth story, massive Cataclysm Attacks, and brutal finisher moves to refill your health! It takes about 8-10 hours for an initial playthrough and then you’ve got plenty to unlock by getting an S+ Rank on every mission.

 We started development on a prototype in late, late 2018, with full development starting in mid-2019! So practically 3 years!

The game certainly looks like it took some influence from anime. Also, being a religious studies major, I found the use of Nephilim interesting. So, where does it get some of its inspiration and influence? Also, who is the target audience for this game?

We’re certainly big fans of anime, with the likes of Patlabor, Evangelion, SSSS.Gridman, and Mazinger Z being influences on this project. However, the biggest influences are kaiju media like Godzilla, Ultraman, Gamera, Power Rangers, and Pacific Rim! I’m personally a massive kaiju fan, and a lot of these shows are what influenced later anime like Evangelion and Patlabor as well.

 There are definitely some religious influences in the game, and it’s good that you picked up on that! I don’t want to dig too deep into the game’s lore, but I’ll say that there is a mystery to the origin and nature of the Nephilim, and reading through the Archives section of the game can help you piece it together.

The game is two-player co-op. Is it a couch co-op, or will there be an online aspect?

It’s couch co-op. If we get to work on a sequel I’d love to do online, but I always prefer having a friend sitting next to me for this kind of game.

What were some of the challenges you faced with bringing your creation to life? And how did you overcome those challenges?

Well, the biggest one was probably the pandemic! The vast majority of Dawn’s development time was spent during the COVID-19 pandemic and making that transition was difficult. That being said, the transition to work from home was relatively smooth for us.

 Other challenges included making the technology to create the unique visual style of the game, and the dynamic destruction! Thankfully we figured all that out and are really happy with the result!

Was there anything you wish you could have added to the game but had to leave out for various reasons?

There are a few things we, unfortunately, had to leave on the cutting-room floor (and more than enough ideas for DLC or a sequel!), but when it comes to the main campaign we were able to get the vast majority of stuff we wanted in the game.

I would love to include more content down the line, like new endgame modes and stuff like that!

What do you hope players will walk away with their experience of the game?

I hope they become attached to the world and characters of the game and are impressed by the depth and variety of combat and enemies. It’s also my hope that they like it enough to S+ every mission in the game and unlock everything!

Anything else you would like our audience to know about the game?

If you prefer a physical version of the game, you can pick one up from Limited Run Games! They have both standard and collector’s editions, and if you grab the CE you will get a download code so you can play the game right away without having to wait! Thanks for your interest!

My interview with Alex was done via email.  Pure Nintendo would like to thank Alex for taking time out of his schedule to answer our questions.  We really appreciate it!

The post Interview: Pure Nintendo speaks with Alex Rushdy, Creative Director and CEO of 13AM Games, about their upcoming game Dawn of the Monsters appeared first on Pure Nintendo.

Fiery Squirrel is a one-man team. Can you tell our readers about your history with gaming and what inspired you to form this company?

I have been playing video games since the NES, but I never thought working in the game industry was an option because there weren’t many game companies in Venezuela. So I studied computer engineering, specializing in computer graphics, artificial intelligence, and video game development. That’s when I realized that being a game developer was what I truly wanted to do. After making some prototypes and demos at game jams as well as in my free time, I decided to work on my first commercial project in 2012, Fluff Eaters.

Fiery Squirrel was created in 2014 as a medium to develop and share the games I create with the world. It started with me not knowing a lot about the industry and just wanting to make cool games for people to enjoy. I would not say that I know a lot now, but I’ve definitely learned a lot on the way and I keep doing it.

Through Fiery Squirrel, I try to create innovative games with a combination of simplicity and energy, forged in a traditional way with elements from the modern world. As I envision this company, I would like it to become an experienced crafter, dedicated to impact players’ worlds in a meaningful way through simple and enthusiastic games.

Your base moved from Venezuela to Japan, how did that come about? Do you find it inspirational being an independent game developer in such a tech-heavy country?

I came to Japan in 2009 as an exchange student for one year when I was in college. The experience was great, so I decided to pursue my PhD here as well. In 2014, I participated in a program from the Japanese Ministry of Education to get a scholarship and study my master’s degree in Japan, and I was lucky to get it. From that point forward, I’ve been studying and working in videogames as much as I can.

Yes, it is amazing to have the opportunity to be working on this in a country like Japan. As you probably would imagine, the Japanese culture is very different from mine, customs, way of thinking, point of view, etc. These elements contribute strongly with how I design and create videogames.

In addition, the way Japanese people live, in general, is really “comfortable” I would say. Not only coming from a third world country, for me it’s fascinating that everything just works, but the Japanese people have this concept called “Omotenashi” which really takes hospitality to a different level. Feeling this comfort really helps to focus on the creative process and try to make the best out of it.

Finally, I would say that Japan is an amazing country, with an interesting culture, including their history, elements such as samurai, anime, games, etc. make it very inspirational when working in a creative media like this.

How did the idea for Cosmic Defenders originate?

The mechanics and concept were designed using the theme of cooperation, which is a message I wanted to send to the world: highlighting how important it is to cooperate with others to live in peace. The main reason for this was that at that time, and still today, Venezuela was going through a lot of difficult things, and I wanted people to realize that we and everyone else in the world needed to support each other. That’s also why some mechanics in the game, not only encourage, but force players to cooperate to clear some levels by destroying enemies together.

And how long has the game been in development?

The development of Cosmic Defenders started back in September 2017. Before that, there was a game jam (Ludum Dare) in 2017, which was where the game idea was born. So, the whole development time was around 2 years and 5 months (plus the game jam days).

Why did you choose to develop your game on the Nintendo Switch, and how have you found working on that platform?

This is the first time that I’ve made a game for a console, so there are a lot of new things I’ve experienced and learned in the process when working on the Nintendo Switch.

First of all, I would like to say that before making the game I already knew that I wanted it on the Switch because I thought it was the perfect fit for it. Not only does the game have a bunch of elements from the old school NES era, but easily being able to play with friends or family anytime made it a very good option for Cosmic Defenders.

About working on the Switch, Nintendo has made it really nice to work with the platform. For developers, there is plenty of documentation on the Nintendo website and they made things simple for us to access and work with features such as the Joy-Cons.

I would also like to mention that I’m using Unity3D for the creation of this game and it has been very helpful when implementing things. For that, I think that both the Unity team and the Nintendo team have been working really closely to develop a nice tool for us, developers, to bring our creations to the platform with the minimum difficulties as possible.

How has it been working with Natsume? Can you tell us a little about this arrangement?

Natsume understands that one of the most difficult aspects for us, as independent developers, is to get the necessary exposure to reach the audience we want to reach. As a way to compliment that part of the process, Natsume thought it would be great to support Indies with their experience and audience, to help us get our games to a larger audience and, at the same time, to be able to present new experiences to their audience with the games we are making.

In my case, there are different parts of the whole creation process that Cosmic Defenders and Fiery Squirrel have benefited from. It has been really helpful to have Natsume’s feedback about ideas related to the game during the process of creation, specifically game design, art, and sound. In addition, as I mentioned before that one difficult aspect of this kind of game was QA and testing, Natsume has also helped enormously with this part, debugging the game and helping improve its quality. Finally, of course, I think that thanks to their marketing experience and amazing audience, hopefully more people will know about the game and have a chance to enjoy it.

When should fans expect to see Cosmic Defenders be released on the Nintendo Switch?

Cosmic Defenders will release in April.

What’s next for Fiery Squirrel?

For now, I am putting all my energy on Cosmic Defenders, and do my best to have the best possible release for the game. In addition, I would like to share that it’s in my plans to have more content for Cosmic Defenders after its release. Natsume and I haven’t discussed anything about this yet, but I would love to include some features that I feel would bring more joy to players and let them enjoy interesting elements of the game.

In the future, I would love to keep working on other ideas that I have on my list, but nothing is decided yet.

Do you have any advice for developers trying to break into the indie scene?

For me it’s difficult to give good advice because I’m also learning a lot from this industry. I don’t have a lot of experience, however, I would say that if you are passionate about it, there is no reason for not doing it. Even if you do not 100% dedicate yourself to making games independently, there is always satisfaction about working on your own ideas, and you can do so in many different ways. Try to learn as much as you can from other developers, go to events, watch YouTube videos, try to make as many projects as you can, and try to fail early so you can learn from mistakes, and, most importantly, have fun when making games! We are all here for that!

Thanks for your time, we really appreciate it!

The post PN interviews Fiery Squirrel, developer of Cosmic Defenders appeared first on Pure Nintendo.

The new game is inspired by Viking folklore, but is just as weird as its predecessor. You play as a pacifist Viking called Bjørn, whose limbs can detach and recombine in different shapes.

You go on an adventure in which you encounter a host of mythological mayhem including Norse Gods, dragons and goblins. You have to use your ability to reattach your limbs to solve puzzles along the way.

Pure Nintendo caught up with the team at Perfectly Paranormal to find out more about the new game ahead of its release.

Pure Nintendo: Tell us about your game Helheim Hassle.

Perfectly Paranomal: Helheim Hassle is a narrative adventure game with puzzle platforming bits that revolve around detaching, attaching and flinging around your limbs in a modern Norse Mythology setting. See how well formulated that was? I have practiced that line a thousand times, which is coincidentally the same amount of years that passes between when the main character dies in the viking age, to the time period the rest of the game actually takes place. It is set on the same Tuesday as Manual Samuel even though it has a Norse Mythology theme. So the whole thing has a “Norse Gods…where are they now?” feel.

PN: What made you want to create a game about Norse mythology?

PP: We want to build a world where every legend, mythology and religion is real. In Manual Samuel we explored some biblical stuff, but being Norwegians, Norse Mythology seemed like a natural next step. We also wanna explore the hilarity that will ensue when we cross over some of these mythologies. What would happen if some of these different gods met each other? Or had a disagreement? The Tuesday Trilogy is a way for us to have this crazy and irreverent mish mash of cultures and mythologies!

PN: What kind of mythical monsters can players expect to encounter in the game?

PP: Let’s see, we tried to include the most popular gods, and some less popular ones. We also tried to -not- include some -too- popular Norse gods that you keep seeing everywhere. We also made a point out of trying to include some creatures that are only briefly mentioned in old norse legends, and giving them bigger roles in our thing. 

But to cut it short, you can expect to see some popular gods, dwarves, dragons, draugs, giants, and some other creatures from scandinavian folklore. We also have a bunch of Goblins who are originally from British folklore, but we included them because…we did.

PN: How did you come up with the idea of losing and reattaching body parts as a puzzle mechanic?

PP: We wanted to make a game similar to Manual Samuel where you had to navigate your body parts, preferably one at a time, without actually making Manual Samuel again. We feel like body-stuff is starting to become a part of our brand, so who knows how we will ridicule the human body next time?

PN: What is your trick to balancing out the narrative and the puzzles?

PP: Our trick is to have the obligatory puzzles as simple as possible. All they ever do is to teach you something new you can do with either your body or with the puzzle elements around you. None of them are designed to make you sit there and scratch your head for an hour. Other than that we have puzzles we call “narrative puzzles”. These puzzles are less about pulling levers or standing on buttons and more about talking to somebody or stealing a smoothie, or insulting somebody so they can kick your head in anger so it lands somewhere it needs to be. 

We have a healthy balance between platforming puzzles, narrative puzzles and cutscenes. We tried to make the game in such a way that you spend equal amounts of time on each. The cutscenes are of course skippable if you’re not into that kind of thing, but the game will notice, just like in Manual Samuel.

We also have secret puzzles you can find around the world. Those can be designed to make you sit down and scratch your head for an hour so good luck with those. The secret puzzles can both be platform puzzles or narrative puzzles themselves.

PN: Between the premise and your previous work, it feels reasonable to expect this game to get bizarre. Just how weird does this game get?

PP: I see people make faces when they have to bite their own arm with their head to make a head-arm combo that can climb ladders. We could say that’s as weird as it gets but I think we’ve built up a tolerance to weirdness through the years. It probably gets weirder without us noticing, but hopefully gamers enjoy that unique and weird element in our titles. 

PN: How similar is this game to your last game Manual Samuel?

PP: The art style (arguably better this time), the humour, the fact that you die within the first level and get resurrected by one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse (this is not Death contrary to popular belief) and oh yeah, the fact that you have to sometimes go through the hassle of having to steer your body one limb at a time.

Let me tell you where it definitely ISN’T similar and that’s the length. This game is about 5 Manual Samuels in one, even more if you count it in regards of content, all the secrets and all. We really pushed to make this game a with a breadth of content for players.

PN: Manual Samuel was a smash hit which currently has a 9/10 rating on Steam. How do you plan to top that performance with Helheim Hassle?

PP: By making a far superior game! (We hope it works.)

PN: What is the one most important piece of advice you can give players trying out Helheim Hassle?

PP: You can backtrack anywhere anytime you want so don’t get stuck trying to pick up a seemingly unpickable collectible. Go and unlock a leg or something and come back. Also, if something happens that confuses you, go play Manual Samuel, you might get more context there. However, those parts are brief and insignificant for the main story. Helheim Hassle is very much a standalone game.

Find out more about Helheim Hassle by visiting the game’s website here.

The post Interview: Pure Nintendo speaks to the Perfectly Paranormal team about their new game, Helheim Hassle appeared first on Pure Nintendo.

James: I’m James Montagna, Designer/Director at WayForward, and creator of the new Switch-exclusive title, Vitamin Connection. Before this, I’ve been involved in the Shantae series, WayForward’s Mighty series, Cat Girl Without Salad: Amuse-Bouche, and many non-WayForward projects too!

PN: Vitamin Connection is WayForward’s latest, and it’s a unique concept. Can you give a brief overview of how it came about?

James: The first idea was to create something for the Nintendo Switch, since we have always regarded it as a platform with a bright future. I felt prototyping something for Switch would be even better if the game took advantage of the features that make the system special, so that line of thinking led to a lot of the more unique elements of Vitamin Connection.

Looking at the Switch, you can hold the Joy-Con horizontal or vertical… Cue the question: “why not both?” The concept of two players cooperating with each other while holding the controllers differently and performing completely unique roles was too intriguing not to prototype out. I had the idea of the players copiloting a capsule-shaped ship, and the concept of it being a vitamin arrived some time shortly after. From there, we gave it a satisfying HD Rumble sensation. That was the point where we realized we were onto something promising, and a fun game concept was unfolding.

PN: WayForward fans might be more accustomed to playing platformer type games like Shantae. Vitamin Connection seems to combine… several genres…

James: Ah, yeah… It’s really hard to define what genre Vitamin Connection is due to its unique nature. Someone suggested “cure-’em-up,” and I like that a lot! But really, one thing that makes Vitamin Connection special is its experimental, eclectic nature. This thinking goes beyond the gameplay and into the art, especially the Sub-Game title-screen art and even the music.

PN: Many developers don’t seem to take advantage of the motion controls Nintendo Switch offers. For those who are less familiar with them, how do you think these controls elevate Vitamin Connection?

James: I suspect the reasoning for that is not every platform incorporates motion control in the same way, so when creating something meant to appear on multiple devices, it’s easiest to eschew using that feature. But our insistence on taking advantage of Switch to the fullest meant motion controls were a must. The level of precision with turning the ship and the immersion of combining motion controls with HD Rumble is a major part of what sets Vitamin Connection apart from other game experiences. The motion control associated with the claw uses the Joy-Con similar to a laser pointer, but it’s optional, so you can also use the control sticks if you prefer. Practicing a bit to get the hang of the motion control will prove the speed and precision is on another level.

PN: Vitamin Connection offers quite a cool audio grab bag in terms of music mixture and voiced characters. Can you share some insight into this process?

James: The process starts and ends with Cristina Vee’s voice direction and the musical genius of Tommy Pedrini and Maddie Lim!

What I mean to say is, I’m lucky to work with talented close friends who naturally align with me on the vision of a project like Vitamin Connection, and it’s through their great abilities that we could pull this off. A few people have mentioned the game has a “Saturday-morning cartoon” feeling — that’s definitely in line with our goal. When I showed Cristina the game and its characters, she knew just the auditions to reach out for and roles to cast. From there, in the studio, she was able to guide each actor with incredible fluency, resulting in some amazing lines that add so much spirit to the game.

As for the music, Tommy and Maddie are masterful musicians in their own right, but they had the intuition to reach out to contributors around the world. Therefore, Vitamin Connection turned into an ambitious international collaboration project. I provided influences to derive inspiration from, and those were as vast and varied as the final music you see in Vitamin Connection because the music team really did embrace the vision fully. As friends, we also happen to share a deep appreciation for the same obscure music genres, like Shibuya-kei, future bass, and others, so that probably made the alignment of vision pretty easy too.

PN: I’ve played Vitamin Connection both solo, and in co-op. Solo is tough, trying to wrap my head around holding the Joy-Cons two ways. Yet co-op offers its own challenges in terms of communicating with my partner. Do you have some tips you’ve discovered for either (or both) modes?

James: It sounds like you might be trying to play by yourself in Together Play mode! I really like playing that way personally, but it’s tough using both Joy-Con yourself, as you’ve said!

In the cooperative Together Play mode, during the core gameplay, communication with your partner is the key to smooth sailing. My advice is to verbalize your intentions frequently and encourage your partner to do the same!

With the controls in general, I understand they’re unlike other games at first glance. But I felt it’s important to create something stimulating and new to reinforce Vitamin Connection as a unique experience. My advice is to start with smaller, precise motions. It might take a bit of practice!

PN: I want those character plushies! How is it working with Limited Run and bringing eShop games like Vitamin Connection (and other WayForward titles) to the physical market?

James: It’s been great! I’m very honored we were able to work with Limited Run Games on Vitamin Connection and other WayForward titles. When we were shopping the Vitamin Connection concept around, I felt Limited Run Games really understood our vision and was on board immediately. They have done the best they can to put together a physical copy of Vitamin Connection worth having and cherishing. I never thought we’d have character plushies of Vita-Boy & Mina-Girl, but Limited Run Games made it happen!

PN: Lastly, and this might be the most important question of this entire interview… do you care to elaborate on what exactly “DISASTER PANTS!” means?

James: I didn’t make that up, I swear! Actually, the term originates in the community for bio-hacking…which is sort of a movement predicated on experimenting with the use of science and technology to optimize the performance of one’s mind and body. So, if you look up “disaster pants,” the definition is probably something like any sort of gastronomical distress. If you experience disaster pants, I’m guessing the bio-hacking experiment didn’t go so well.

I completely ruined the lighthearted and silly end of the interview with a serious answer, didn’t I? Uh…anyway, please go check out Vitamin Connection!

PN: Thank you so much for chatting with us James, and I hope Vitamin Connection has a successful launch window.

The post Pure Nintendo Interviews WayForward about Vitamin Connection appeared first on Pure Nintendo.