We Talk: With Spooky Squid Games

Hi guys! I know bring you another interview with awesome people, this time with Miguel Sternberg, he is from  Spooky Squid Games, the creators of They Bleed Pixels

•How was Spooky Squid Games founded?

It was founded due to a mix of factors. I had been planning on starting a small indie studio for some time. Around the end of 2008 several things happened that pushed the studio into existence: I'd just come off some long contract work and had some savings to rely on. I was accepted for a round of the Artsy Games Incubator (a sort of writers circle for artists interested in making games) and had a successful grant application to create a prototype for Guerrilla Gardening. Andrew Pilkiw who's the programming half of Spooky Squid came on board for that prototype and ended up becoming a partner in the company. Thus Spooky Squid came into existence.

•Why did you name the studio Spooky Squid Games? Did someone inspire the name?

I had several name ideas, Spooky Squid happened to be my favourite one that also had a .com domain name that wasn't taken.

•Your graphics have a really nice touch of pixel art with paper and ink textures, how did you create this awesome graphics style?

I've been a pixel artist for coming up on a decade now. The mix with paper textures was something I'd been wanting to experiment with for awhile.

•How did you came up with the idea for Night of the Cephalopods. Was there something specific that inspired you?

It was pretty heavily inspired by some of Jonathan Blow's lectures on the conflicts inherent in combining narrative with interactivity in games. The dynamic narrator approach seemed like it might be one way of side stepping some of those problems.

•In your upcoming game Guerrilla Gardening the player will fight a dictatorship with flowers.  Why not  take a more violent approach?

Doing that would make it a different game and one that would be less interesting to make since the violent approach has been thoroughly explored in plenty of other games. The game's original inspiration was the real life guerrilla gardening street art movement. We combined it with the idea of an anti-plant dictatorship as an interesting way to frame the gameplay and give it more tension and significance.

•In Guerrilla Gardening the player has a variety of flowers to plant, which ones? what do they do?

Most of the plants function as a way to manipulate the citizens and police in your surroundings in various ways. I don't want to give away the full arsenal of plants but here's a taste:
- Perennial Screamers: plants that scream when disturbed, they scare citizens and attract police.
- Smell-so-goods: flowers with tasty smelling pollen that attracts citizens.
- Sleeping Poppies: plant fields of these to put cops or citizens to sleep with their pollen.
- Helivines: vines with spinning fan blades that can blow and direct pollen or disturb other plants.
•The tactical Tree Drop is a very creative of planting a tree without major work, how did you came up with this amazing idea?

It was one of the first ideas I had for the game, I can't remember the inspiration for it but I remember sketching it out on paper early on while exploring the basic idea of a stealth gardening game.
•Is Molly Greenthumb kind of hippie?

Not really. We've generally tried to avoid the whole flower power 60's hippie thing. That imagery has been so over saturated in the media that it lacks any real power and just slips into self parody.
•When and where can we expect to see the game later this year?

Guerrilla Gardening won't be out for a while, we're currently shopping a prototype of it around to publishers.

•They Bleed Pixels is a platforming game that requires skill and precision, was it inspired by another indie platforming game?
No one game specifically, though it's movement and jumping is closest in style to the wonderful metroidvania Knytt Stories. The combat was inspired by another indie game, Nidhogg which is a fantastic 2 player sword duelling game. Though the resulting combat is very different.

•What can you tell us about the little girl in They Bleed Pixels, will the players get to know her name?

Nope! The story will be told using silent comics, I want to leave a lot of it open to the player to interpret and figure out on there own.

•Will there be any kind of Boss battles in They Bleed Pixels?

Perhaps ;)

•The soundtrack for They Bleed Pixels is a really good one, can fans expect to see it on amazon or a retailer?

We're talking with the musician, Shaun Hatton, to figure out the best option for the soundtrack.  There will be a digital release for sure but It'd be great to also have some sort of deluxe physical version. Still we don't have a solid plan we can reveal yet.

•The way the player gets a checkpoint is extremely unique, why to use it in the game?

We wanted the player to have a reason to really engage with the combat system above and beyond getting more points. The traditional rewards of giving the player some sort of super attack or xp to level up their attacks weren't appealing since they would break the balance of the combat. Our friend Mathew Kumar (http://www.expdot.com/about/ ) suggested the checkpoint earning system as a possible solution and it just fit.

•Do you have an official release date for the game?

Not yet. We'll be announcing it in the near future though.

•Will They Bleed Pixels and/or Guerrilla Gardening be another free game?

Nope. They're both large, time consuming games to create. They will be reasonably priced and by supporting them you'll be supporting the creation of more games from Spooky Squid including more small free ones.

•Can we expect to see They Bleed Pixels on PC or PS3?

We're planning on some form of PC release when we're done the Xbox Live Indie Games version but won't have the details until after that first version is released. A PS3 version would be great but it would depend on Sony approving it since the PS3 isn't an open marketplace.

•What else can your fans expect about your studio in the future?

Hard to say, we have a big document of games we'd like to make in the future. Whatever it is, it'll probably be something significantly different from our previous games since we like to challenge ourselves.

We want to thank Daniel for giving us this awesome interview, so please be sure to support them!

We Talk: Zeboyd Games

Since we love interviewing game developers we have brought you guys another awesome interview with another indie developer, Zeboyd games! They created really awesome games such as Chtulhu Saves the World, one of this year's best seller game on steam!

-When did you guys decided to start developing games?

I had messed around with small projects before then, but I didn't really get serious about game development until the beginning of 2010.

-Did you guys expected such a huge amount of sales during the release week?

We were hoping but we were still surprised when it actually happened.

-Do you guys have a big team?

No. We have a core team of two - Robert Boyd (myself) who does the design, writing, and programming and Bill Stiernberg who does the graphics, animation, and level designs. For Cthulhu Saves the World, we also had a composer, Gordon McNeil.

-Are you guys planing to release  Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World to Playstation Network?

We're not planning on releasing BoDVII or CSTW to any other platforms. Since we're such a small team, any time we spend on ports is time that is taken away from actually making new games.

-Any more plans for Cthulhu Saves the World and Breath of Death VII?

We might decide to revisit either game with a sequel, prequel or spin-off, but we have no such plans at the moment.

-Are you guys modern gentlemen and/or guidos? =P

Of course.

-Do you like us?

Sure, why not? :)

We want to thank Robert Boyd fot letting us interview him! :)

The Old Republic Star Wars Collectors Edition for PC.

The game in a metal box.
30 days with susrcipcion.
Map of the galaxy.
The Journal of Gnost Dural.
A figure of Darth Malgus.
And finally a few extras like a pet and more. 

We Talk: With Meadiatonic

Have you ever heard of a Steam game called Who’s That Flying?! Well we interviewed the guys that created the game and we talk about how the game was born and about their future plans so be sure to read the entire interview!

> When did you guys started to make games?

Mediatonic will be six years old in September. In that time we’ve made over 100 games for a whole range of platforms, so we’ve certainly been busy!

 > How did you guys came up with the idea for Who’s That Flying?

The original idea for the game came from one of our artists during a brainstorming session for new game concepts. This was taken on by the games Writer & Creative Producer, Jim, who wrote the games story and designed the characters and world.
The mechanics and story changed a great deal over the course of development. The idea that the player was actually invincible and needed to stop the ravagers getting past only came in at a fairly late stage.
> Do you guys have a big crew?

There was a core team of around 6 working on Who’s That Flying?! during the course of the development, with more people joining in at critical points. In Mediatonic as a whole we have a team of around 40 at present.

 > Do you guys have any more super awesome games under development?

We do indeed; we’re working on several exciting projects at the moment. Out of those only one has been announced a game with Telltale based on The Walking Dead comic series. In addition to this we’re also working on several original Facebook, iPhone and PSP titles.

 > We love Who’s That Flying sense of humour, where does it come from?

Humour is hugely important to us as a company and we always hope it shines through in the games that we make. With Who’s That Flying?! the man behind the games story and humour is the games writer and producer – Jim Griffiths. He’s the man that makes the magic funnies happen.

 > How good went the sales for Who’s that flying?

The game has done well on all the platforms we’ve released on – iPhone, Steam and PSP. It’s always exciting to launch a game into the world and see people paying to play it – it has been great to watch the games reception.

 > Do you have a pet in the office?

Alas at the moment we have no pet in the office. Quite a few people are in favour of different animals. Personally I would like to get a pug, or a parrot.

 > How much time did you guys spent developing Who’s That Flying?

In total we spend around 6 – 7 months on the initial version of the game.

We want to thank Paul Croft from Mediatonic for letting us interview him!

By Joes