http://youtu.be/X-AK56iwU9Q
GB: That’s what I love about Pig Eat Ball — it’s just insane fun. Pig eats things and gets very big and can’t fit through the hole in the wall, so Pig throws up. And why are they tennis balls?
NF: Why are they tennis balls? Is it not obvious for you?
GB: Urggh.
NF: So they’re tennis balls because they’re not pellets. I don’t know, because tennis balls are fun to play with, I guess.
GB: OK. They bounce around.
NF: Yeah, look, they bounce, they look like a pellet from Pac-Man, but they’re not. And we actually worked them into the story in this completely surreal way.
In the story of the game, you’re in this contest, and you’re trying to win these pearls, and you’ll win your dad’s love and affection. It’s in the story. And so what we do is, there’s these other crazy characters, these royal clams, and they give you little snippets of talk before action levels. And so we kind of mete out some silly explanations for all of this craziness through the clams as they talk to you. It’s only like a sentence or two, but there’s a whole bunch of them, so we get to tell this crazy story.
You’re in King Cake’s domain. That’s the space station. You’re in an interconnected group, like a flotilla of space stations.
GB: OK.
NF: You’ll start out in the Cake Palace, his domain, and he stays there and helps run the whole space station. The first place you go to is the outer courts, so it does have a tennis theme combined with a space station theme. And then there’s the next level, Sushi Gardens, then there’s sports bar and it goes from there. It makes total sense.
GB: None of it makes any sense ever.
NF: Everything I said is what happens, and if it makes sense to someone, that’s weird. It’s really strange if it makes sense to anyone.
GB: The other thing I gotta bring up is the Rump Shaker.
NF: That’s in line with my general philosophy in development, which is “why hold back?” If you’re in a position to do something great, just go for it. As an indie, we’re not held back by anybody saying “Don’t do that.”
So I thought, “What could we do with Pig Eat Ball that would be cool?” and that was butt rumble for the multiplayer. It actually works works with anything. I was playing Bulletstorm the other night with them, and it was great. Like a racing game, when you hit the boost, your butt shakes, and the light comes on. It’s awesome.
GB: Once you’re sitting there and you realize that it’s happening when your pig gets hit in the butt, you’re like “Oh, of course. You can’t do this in your hands.”
That’s one thing I’ve noticed again and again with your games is that when anyone talks about them and describes what happens in the game, like Serious Sam, you take a gun and stack four guns on top of it and fire them simultaneously. There’s no way to say that without sounding like a maniac. “Yeah, so you get to put a flamethrower on top of two other flamethrowers, and then what the hell, fire some bees.” But it’s completely un-self-conscious.
NF: Right, well I look at that with other games too. I like it when I’ve seen the creator online or I met them or something, you kind of feel almost like you hung out with that person some. Their games you’re just like “yeah, hey man how’s it going?” And you hang out with them for a while and it’s awesome.
GB: It’s like, “Here’s my brain.”
NF: Exactly. I like that, you get to visit them and you can just feel a solid stamp of particular qualities in their game, and it just feels neat. Not every game needs that, but I do like that artistically you can get a lot across now. It’s a viable medium.