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.
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.
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.
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.
- 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?
•Is Molly Greenthumb kind of hippie?
•When and where can we expect to see the game later this year?
•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.
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/
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.
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 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/
•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!
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