Retronauts - 650: Modern Retro: Antonblast & Grapple Dog

Episode Date: November 11, 2024

A talkative Stuart Gipp talks to Tony Grayson about Antonblast, and Joseph Gribbin about Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines. It’s a jam-indie-bo-jump-a-ree! Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts 

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Booster juice, Canadian-born, blending since 1999. This week in Retronauts, I do the longest intro before the music ever to let you know that the November 12th launch of Anton Blast, as mentioned in this episode, has in fact been delayed till December the 3rd, and I don't even do a joke. Hello and welcome to another episode of the venerable ongoing retro gaming podcast. Retronauts, I am Stuart Chip, and I am your presenter for this episode. But don't worry, you'll be hearing a voice besides mine very shortly. A couple of voices, in fact, because this is one of my occasional interview episodes. And in this one, I have gathered together a couple of indie developers who are working on, or have been working on

separate platforms. I've got Tony Grayson, who's working on Anton Blast, which by the time this comes out, will probably not quite be out. And Joseph Gribbon, who worked on Grappled Dog and the more recent sequel Grappled Dogs, I wanted to talk to them as well.

The reason I wanted to do this is because I'm a fan of both of the games, all three of the games, I should say, but both of those upcoming or just released games and I sort of wanted to get the word out about them but I thought it would also be an interesting thing to dig into their developments and receptions and all sorts of different details and I think it came out quite a lot of fun and quite informative so hopefully you'll agree and I won't keep him any longer with any of my silly jokes or anything I won't get distracted and talk about like

I don't know Kirby or anything although I do love Kirby I'm especially fond of these games that he's in and his face I want to kiss it but enough about me let's hear from Tony Graysen of Summetsphere working on the now upcoming Anton Blast. Hello, would you mind introducing yourself to the lovely naughties, please? Hi, I'm Tony Grayson. I am the fearless leader at Summetsphere, which is not so fancy title for Studio Head. I'm also the game director on Anton Blast and the composer and voice of Anton and other weird creatures in the game. You're sort of wearing several hats there. I like that. Anton then. Anton. Yes. The boy, Anton. This is a sort of slightly

philosophical question, I suppose, but who is Anton? Oh, my God. Wow, that is a deep one. Well, at his core, Anton is a little red destruction worker. He's on a death mission to hell to kill Satan after Satan stole his booze because Satan's more jealous of how red Anton is.

So, you know, that pisses Anton enough for him to grab his little hard hat and his mighty effing hammer and drop all the way down to hell to get it back. And in the process, he's blowing a bunch of stuff up because of course he is.

I would define him as a, not for the ESRB's purposes, but he is a habitual drunk, and he usually just wants to keep to himself. But other than that, I mean, he's a swell fellow. You could hang out with Anton and just crack on and have a great time. No, you definitely. He's a joker. Right on. So it is sort of off time when he's not descending to the nether world to kill Satan.

What sort of thing? Would you find him? Would he be at the bar? Would he be bowling? I'm just kind of curious about his personality, you know? I mean, he would be at the bar, but actually, like, the story is that he's been banned from the bar for not going to do that. So, you know, he's kind of a drifter by nature, a little bit of an hermit.

But he actually does reconcile with the bar owner, Brulow, for the game's story, because Satan's forces have been pissing Brul off too. Yeah. An enemy of your enemy, or sort of enemy, air quote. I guess he's your friend in that respect. Okay, so we're talking about, I should have made this clear from the off really, but we're talking about Anton Blast,

which is your upcoming, sort of platforming, smashing things, killing Satan to recover vast quantities of spirits, inverted commas around spirits there from Satan. And that's out 12th of November, I want to say, which is pretty soon. At the time of this recording, barring any,

you know, unannounced things. Yes, that is the plan. So it's probably quite an obvious question, but what state is the game in at the moment, this close to launch? What is happening? So the game's coming along great. We're really happy with it. Right now, we're in, we're kind of in two phases in parallel, as how I would describe it, where the game is very, very, very close to being playable from start to finish. At the same time, we're also kind of double-tracking the polished stage of the game, which is really just, I think that's kind of like our calling card where, you know, even from like the very start, our Kickstarter demo

was very, very polished. Yeah. And so, you know, we're really trying to punch above our weight and make sure that it's kind of a triple A in the experience is how we've thought about internally. And so for that reason, you know, we're just kind of looking at it from the perspective of the game has to be 100% polished. from top to bottom before we're even consider releasing it.

And that's kind of the phase that we're in right now, just making sure that all the arts there, finishing up some of the cutscene work. That's, yeah, that's it really. Yeah, and you say we obviously, your team, what sort of size team are you working with? What sort of team is it? How sort of close-knit is it?

So our core team is 12, counting my dog. Yeah, of course, yeah. And, you know, we're scrappy, I think, for the kind of game that we're making. So we've had some extra help as well with some of the stuff like the cutscenes and additional artwork, particularly for things that I think,

you know, I had a vision for that I just felt weren't necessarily in our team's wheelhouse. There are some things that are like mixed media, for example, that we weren't able to do internally or just wouldn't have made sense for us to learn how to do that stuff. So there have been a lot of hands that touched this game.

But the core SummitSphere team is 11. that's okay and how long has it been in development for this one so by the time the game comes out it'll have been a clean three years that we've been working on the game directly um it has been in gestation for many years um i want to say like seven or eight years uh i've wanted to make this specific game um but you know we had a lot of sidetracking uh we made anton ball before this one uh or i made anton ball before this one uh or i made anthony Anton Ball classic for the Game Jam back in 2019, and then we did Anton Ball deluxe after that, which wasn't very good. And then now, you know, we've, well, not now, but a few years ago, we were presented with the opportunity to strike out on her own and make this game. So three years of direct work, but many more years of planning. See, I've got to hold up, because there was something I've been meaning to get around.

I've got to get this off my chest. It's not a negative thing necessarily, so don't worry. Now, you say Anton Ball Deluxe, you say wasn't very good. Yes. And I've got to confess now, because seriously, it's been eating me up. I reviewed that game for Nintendo Life back in a few years ago. You do remember? Yes.

And I've been feeling bad about it, because I gave it at like a six, and I'm like, well, this isn't for me, and I think other people will click with this. But it eats it up your soul, doesn't it? you don't want to do that with indies it's it's like oh god but the characters the vibe i love the vibe you know and i think the thing is like a game is a game and ultimately anton ball i think is in a weird weird spot because i will joke about it and say it's not very good i think that it is good in what it tries to do but yeah my honest appraisal of game is that it is a game for a niche of one really like the core direction was just

something that I made for myself and it kind of got an audience that was substantially larger than that and I think what happened consequently was that it spread to a lot of people who were expecting based off what they heard to really get into it and I think that it was just something that was way more niche fundamentally because it's like it's a bizarre arcade game right Yeah, difficult. Yeah, extremely difficult, and I think if I designed it today, I would approach it from a much more, I think that concept could be much more,

I don't want to say mainstream, but I think it could be much more digestible for the general audience. But I still have a lot of respect for it, and I love that game. I think it's just one of those things where it's a little bit like if someone went and published your home movies, right? you know so I don't really does anyone for thinking too harshly toward it it's um it so sort of going back from that uh and I'm sure you get this question a lot but like

you started with uh the game maker was what sort of switched you on to making games that's not very good sentence but um so what were you making just like for yourself like back in the day what sort of games were you sort of turning out yeah man so like um I made no secret of this uh I think this is something that we've even yapped about like on Twitter before but like crash bandicoot was like the one for me right so yeah um like everything genuinely i mean this i want this to be like tattooed on my chest um scream from the rooftops i would not be where i am without crash bandicoot so when i got into game maker i think i might have straight up just like google searched like game maker not even like because of the program just i wanted to

make something so i had always like drawn up ideas for games when i was quite young and And the very first things I made were like Crash Bandicoot fan games. I don't remember if I finished many of those, but like we would, I would make them and dump them onto, you know, like the crash forums that I was on at the time. And I would get, you know, torn apart because I was just a brat, you know, making crappy games in Game Maker. But we all were, you know, like there was the community around that. and that was the stuff

I'd started with and then short after I started to just really come up with ideas for like original games and they were almost always 2D platformers which I guess is probably not a surprise and then I had actually come up with stuff

that was like before Anton was Anton like they were games about Anton you know what I mean before he had a name or anything and he didn't look nearly as cool or good as he does now but it was like the core concept Like, this is the Red Captain Haddock. And so, for better or worse, that character has been around for the better part of, like, 16 years.

And so the characters' origins just sort of stem out of this, or was there someone, like, did you draw comics, or did you, like, do anything along those lines, or was it just always games? I think it was always games, like, that was, like, always what it was meant to be, right? Because I think the world, especially, surrounding, it didn't really get fleshed out for a long time. And I didn't, sorry, go ahead. No, I was just going to say, so it's kind of, I need a protagonist that's make up a guy. Pretty much. Like, I think it's a big thing. And this mentality has kind of stuck around to, you know, my current years.

And it's something that's, it's kind of spread across the team in general, but we're a lot more disciplined about it now. But at the time, especially, I didn't take it even a little bit seriously. So I was just like, all right, here's red guy and here's, you know, here's like his faithful companion who's, you know, I don't know, he's called asshole or something, whatever. And so it was just whoever that was around. And so there was no real lore, there was nothing. And the point of the game, and I guess this still is the point, but the point of the game really was to make you laugh. So it was just whatever dumb thing

I'd remember from earlier that day and just slammed in there, which is exactly how I make games now. And these days, to, you know, thread that needle, these days now we do take into consideration's lore, how things connect with one another. So there is still stuff to latch on to, but so much

of it just comes down to, you know, this would be funny. Now, for me personally, I feel like it's interesting because not to go on about me obviously but just today I was looking through some old sort of documents and old files and I do you remember the

I don't want to dead name them the jumper and jumper too the platform games they were game maker I think or macromic possibly fusion but basically they were games that shipped with level editors to sort of early quite popular indies before the sort of indie's scene air quotes

again came about and I was looking through and finding just like this graveyard of half-finished levels and I'm sort of going through some of them thinking, you know, this isn't, I'm not, I'm not half bad at this. Like, it's, I just feel like for anyone sort of creating, there's always this graveyard of half-done things. And it never, and you're always like, oh, I'll come back to this.

And you never do. And I don't know, just, uh, with Anton to sort of make an abrupt change back to Anton, um, I feel like the character is the first thing that I saw. and he would pop up online and I didn't remember who he was because he caught on like the guy is popular um

yeah he is was that was that something that because I mean did Anton Ball deluxe like crossover with Anton Blas like were you working on the both at the same time or did the character kind of come out from Anton Ball

and that fed into the popularity of Anton Blas like pre-release or was it all from like blasts it's a difficult question but I think think you know what I mean like as the carriage came first you know the character or the game is in terms of the popularity right so I think um the easiest way to answer that would be I always was seating doing like a warrior land type thing right I was always seen then always prototyping stuff but I never really shared much um originally when we were working on Anton Ball we were meant to do a sort of DK94 style platformer to go with it um And that's why actually there's a lot of weird quirks about how Anton controls, because in that game, the main mode was not meant to be, you know, the ball part. It was meant to be a platformer.

So that's why the controls are just so strange in that game. Because we didn't really have ample time to, like, retool anything. And we were just, you know, like, oh, let's make the game weird. Sure. But Anton Ball was, like, the first, like, public front-facing thing. So I think the characters of the game, I want to say. like plural, because Annie was really the breakaway hit, right?

But I think the characters of the game really caught on and people would draw them. And it was also just funny for people to say Anton Ball. Like, that's a funny name. It is, yeah. So I want to say that the popularity in quotes of Anton Ball Deluxe was what allowed us

to really like make Anton Blass into what it was because after that game came out, people were like, well, I don't really like this gameplay too much. But you guys really have that feel down of like the GBA, like the WarioLand thing. It would be really cool if you guys did a platformer. And at that point, it just kind of felt like, oh, well, we can answer that call.

Sure. So, Anton Blast was funded on Kickstarter in, what, three days? Yeah, yeah. And I don't, forgive me if my numbers are wrong, but I think you had something like a 75K, an original, like, God, the word has completely left my brain. the amount of money what you wanted to do the game but then it was up to 140 $145,000 or so

no I'm very ignorant of this I mean is that enough to fund is this like a full-time thing or are you I'm just curious so the best way to answer your question would be because that's kind of like a two-part question right? Yeah yeah and is this a full-time thing for I'll answer the second question first

Is this a full-time thing? Yes, yes, it is. I am a working professional and all of our team are. We all do this full-time, and it's our primary gig. As for $75,000 is enough to make a video game of Antalm Blast scale. Hell no. Yeah. This is why I ask, because based on the limited amount, but I know it seemed like a, as goals, that's the word goals.

As Kickstarter goals go, it seemed reasonable. You know, it seemed quite a limit, quite low. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think it's one of those things where, for us, we looked at it from the perspective of what would be a sizable amount of money where we can make the game that we've promised in this Kickstarter, which for $75,000 was nine levels, right? So basically, like, the original demo was like one level of Boiler City. So eight more of those. Can we do that for 75K if we, you know, take on one of the jobs or whatever? yes we can

that was viable not as like a full-time thing working on that project full-time but that was viable when we got to the higher stretch goals which were having any as a playable character and also having

three more levels so it was 12 levels total and that's not included like the bosses and all that stuff when we got to that point we were like okay well that's about 125k And at that point, now we have to seriously consider bringing in external funding so we can actually do this full time. And we did secure that in the end.

And we've had a very pleasant and independent deal with joystick ventures who are our financial partners. But it is interesting to go back to that conversation because I think Kickstarter poisoned the well for a lot of people. because 75K I think sounds like that's like the perfect area in my mind for a Kickstarter because it sounds like a reasonable enough amount of money that you can make at least a reasonable portion of the game for that and it doesn't also it doesn't sound too expensive for people but then you see some kickstarters where people will go

we funded our game in a day and then you look and their goals like $5,000 right You're not making anything for that. You're making two months rent. So I think on the other side of that, you have Kickstarter where the goal is like $500,000. And that's closer to what a game of this scope takes to make. But no one's going to invest in that from a Kickstarter level because it's the well has been poisoned such.

The people are like, well, that's too much. You're greedy. You don't need that kind of money. I always think of that one game that one of the X Sonic Mania devs had made. I forgot what the game was called, but I played the demo, and it was fantastic, but because they were asking for a reasonable amount of money to make the game, the Kickstarter failed miserably. You know, it's unfortunate, but that's the nature of the business.

And so with Kickstarter, I mean, obviously, you know, it's a funding platform, but it's also like a marketing platform. And this seems to be a very, my understanding is it's self-popper. publishing this one. I mean, obviously you have the partner, but it's self-published. So you're doing your own, like, marketing here. So I'm just curious how you've gone about that, because I mean, obviously it seems to be, you know, working with the amount of engagement, at least fan art and excitement for this game that's coming over. But, you know, I'm in the dark. I don't want to say that and then be like, not, that's not how you perceive it. I'm just curious, really. I mean, I think from the inside, I always think it could be more, right? Yeah. I always think it can be more. And I think just, like, that level of hunger is probably why we've done relatively well for ourselves. For me, I always tend to think of it as no one really cares or, you know, everyone's got to forget when the game comes out. And it's funny because any time I relay those concerns to, you know, other people, other friends, other industry partners, they're like, what? Are you crazy?

So I think at least maintaining that sensibility toward it is good because you're always kind of fighting to get people to notice. With respect to the marketing approach, so joystick has been very hands-off in terms of, you know, like you guys were already doing well before us, so just keep doing what you're doing, and we'll give you the resources to do it better. And what we've been doing, this is not something that's particularly well-known about me,

but before I was doing Anton Ball and Summetsphere, although I guess it was on the start of Summit Sparta Studio because that was like 2018 but one of the things I did is just a sort of hobby was I was actually responsible for the Save Medieval

Reserect Fortescue campaign back in like 2016 I think it was it was 2016 or 2017 and that actually got like official acknowledgement from at the time head of Sony Sean Layton and because of that and because of just the approach

of like doing a grassroots campaign for something that decidedly is not like indie per se like it was like lower echelot of Sony stuff but yeah I had to sort of learn like imitation triple a marketing right yeah yeah just sort of like on the fly and eventually that turned into like semi official working with Sony where we had done some press stuff for them we did some review stuff for them we uh I then ended up doing some like under the table community management for them, not in any official capacity in the sense that, like, I'm not in the credits or anything, unfortunately.

This is for the remake for the PS4. Correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And because of that, I got a very good sense of timing for, you know, if you do, like, a big drop, right? That becomes immediately way more exciting if you, like, seed something and then make it out like it's a big deal

versus, oh, you know, screenshot Saturday, our indie dev hour or whatever, you know, like that. Because it's so easy to get lost in the noise. And so when we announced Anton Blass, we actually announced the game with the Kickstarter at the same time. And we had just seated it before, like, because we had a little bit of a following from Anton Ball, not a massive one, but enough that we could say, hey, we're doing game two. And here's a striking silhouette poster. You know, get excited for this date. And so that mentality just kind of stuck with us.

And we've experimented with other things. Like we tried being funny on Twitter. We've tried doing that stuff. I think everyone does it. Everyone wants to be, you know, the next agor crab, right? And they're darlings, by the way. They're great friends. But so I don't mean that disparagingly.

But more just like with us, we've found more success in just not trying to be as funny as our game is generally where we've been. So we treat it like it's a cool thing because in our mind it is. So I'll ask one more question about the sort of marketing aspect, and then I'm going to ask more about the mechanics of the game, because people want to hear about that. But within the parameters, obviously, of what you can tell me about it, I'm just curious how if you've noticed how things have changed at all since the Nintendo Indy World Showcase, where it was sort of a headliner for that.

And that must have been a big deal. like that's to get into a Nintendo direct essentially yeah absolutely it is an Nintendo direct I don't know why I qualified it like that yeah yeah yeah I mean Nintendo have been amazing partners to us you know we've been working with them for a while the game was slated to come out on Switch before it was even announced

and so we'd brought it to them and they were excited about it and I think when the opportunity came for us to be on indie world and you know we worked really hard on getting that trailer together and it finally dropped we were already moving in a pretty good clip I felt

but being in an indie world announcing the release date there which was probably the absolute best way we could have possibly done it. It really it made tons of people super excited about it people who were on the fence about the game before because there's always

people who are going to be detractors There's always people who are going to be comparing it to other games, whether that's like Wyrland or Pizza Tower or whatever. And it's weird because I love all that stuff, and I'm friends with the Pizza Tower developers. So, you know, there's no actual beef or anything there. No. I find that, like, if you don't mind me interjecting real quick.

Yeah, for sure. Pizza Tower is a fantastic game. It's very enjoyable. Yeah. Anton Blas from the demos that I've played and I think I've played one that's different from the public demo

and the formal public demo and I just don't see it they're not the same I mean if you want to say this as like Wario I mean it's like I mean it's like I mean Pizza Tower you know

you don't break through blocks really you do move quickly and there and there's the timer element but that's not exclusive to Wario I just don't get it's not the same It baffles me. It baffles me. They're both stylized. That's the best I can do, really. The way that I've always looked at it is there's a couple of different elements, right?

Because I think the cartoon comparison is apt, I feel. If you look at stuff like Renan Stimpy and then like Ed Ed Nettie, for example, you can see how both of those cartoons took influence from a lot of the same things, right? you know, a lot of like the Bob Clampett or Tex Avery stuff. But what they did with that stuff ended up being vastly different, right? And so there are similarities in the final result ultimately because of the fact that there were similar influences. But the result is very different. And I think what I found is that you have people who maybe didn't love Pete's Tower and then they attached to Anton Blask because that's a game that does things in different.

way that's maybe more catered to them or the inverse or the best case scenario is you see people who love both and you know for me anton blasts a game that's made more to my sensibilities pizza tower you respectfully and i've said this to developers but respectfully like it does a lot of things that for me just don't really jive me as a player and i think that's really just the best thing is that we're able to coexist and uh do things differently i i think the comparisons are valid because ultimately they are both drawing from a game that up to this point, before both of us were doing these things, people really weren't even looking at for reference or, you know, making, we'll call them clones or more generously inspired. Warrior Land, for specifically, we're talking about here. Yeah, with the timer and all that, right.

And I think because of that and because of the fact that we're also, again, in different ways, we're both doing very cartoony styles. which is something that hasn't been seen, like even in the indie space too much. Like it's, there's like a very specifically indie style, right? Yes. And I think because of the fact that Pete's Tower and Anton Blast in different ways are very like rough and tumble, you know, 90s, 2000s cartoon, I don't want to say gross out, but it's like in that range. Intense, I guess, I would say. Yeah, intense is is the word. I think because of that, people naturally will draw the comparisons.

and so I don't mind them because I know that what we're doing is great and I think there are worse things to do than be compared to a game that I assume has sold millions of copies. Yeah, a game that's a lot of people have taken to heart which is a good thing. So, getting on the game now, after 30 minutes of me asking you about marketing, sorry about that. So what kind of, Anton Blas, what can Anton and Annie, what can they do? What's their sort of, what are their moves in this game? So you have your typical platformer move set.

I mean, it's a 2D platformer at its core. So you can move from left to right. You can jump, you can crawl on the ground if you really want to. I don't really like to do that myself But then they also have Their Anton has this mighty F and hammer And Annie has her

Massive Mace There's a contraction for God damn in there But I don't actually know how we pronounce that They have those And really like the primary driver Of the game is just the structure right So you can press the attack button And then that will just drive you forward

In a sort of warrior-style bash We call it the clutch and if you do that into an enemy or a brick or whatever then Anton or Annie will just smash them away right but the cool thing about that is that we actually have a sort of I've always kind of described this as a sort of crash team racing layer yes I was going to mention that because that's what came to mind for me when I found this thing

yeah there's that weird crash team racing layer where when you hit the clutch button there's a bar that fills up in the bottom right And when that bar fills up and turns red, if you time the clutch button again, then you can do a clutch boost and start moving faster and it just stacks and stacks and it's something that kind of just came about as a result of the game for my money. Because, like, Wyrland had the like 4 and on, I think, or it might have just been 4. Shake it didn't have this actually. The Wireline 4 had the sort of R-Dash, right, where you hold it down and you can move really fast and then that breaks through block. and whatever. And Pete's Tower went and very well

iterated on that. They had you know, beta had different tiers and all that. And we had made a deliberate decision to not have that move in the game. I think ultimately just kind of came down to like core differentiator. And in Warland 4 particularly, I felt that that move was just too removed from the rest of the kit. So I really racked my brain, like, how can we add like another layer to this that'll make the game

more fun? And the natural thing was just with a crash bandicoot, of course. Yeah. And I realized, like, there wasn't really anyone who was doing, like, cart racer platformer too much. Like, that's something that was just untapped. And I thought, well,

this would be something that would be fun. Because I feel like the nature of just tapping a button is really easily understood by people. Yeah. And so we just added that in. And then it kind of became this thing of, well, can we add other interactions that come with that? What happens if you just go faster and faster and faster? And then other things came from that where like, oh, what if you tap the button again when you're about to touch an enemy or a brick? Well, then you can slingshot through the enemy or brick and get like a burst

of speed that way. And so what happened with that was we didn't, we made a constant decision to make sure that you never, ever had to do any of this. Yeah, I was going to ask that. Because the game, it seems like it's operating on a sort of consciously a friendly level in which it's not necessary to clutch throughout the game. But if you're playing sort of higher level for speed runs and such, that's when it comes into play. It's a mechanic that you can if you want to ignore. Precisely.

Which I think is, I love stuff like that. It just makes it so much more accessible when that's, that's, it just makes it so much more accessible when that stuff is sort of on the periphery, not to say it's not important, obviously. It's just, it's there, and you can use it if you want to, but it's not going to harm the game experience if you don't use it.

Exactly. There's a lot of meta game there, you know? Yeah. And you've also got a move where you, I mean, I sort of think of it as sort of an inverted sort of hammer world from Sonic Advance, where you hit the hammer into the ground and use it sort of as propulsion to get to a higher sort of higher ledgers and things. Yeah, the hammer vault.

Yeah. And that one is really, really fun where if you press the clutch button in the air, then Anton will just swing his hammer out. And when he hits the ground, he will just bounce up higher. And it's such a small thing, but just having that very violent vertical

ascension, it adds a lot to the game in the sense that the way all the moves chain together means that players can be very expressive in how they play. I think that's a, that's kind of a buzzword that a lot of my 3D platformer friends have been using lately where it's like, oh, let's do

an expressive platformer. And it wasn't necessarily deliberate that we did that, but it did end up becoming very interesting to watch people play the game in very different ways. And because of that, as players get better at the game and they become

more confident, like Anton's a very, he's got a very weird move kit, right? And I think when you watch people play it for the first time, sometimes they bounce off of it a little bit because they're like, oh, he moves really fast or he feels like he's going to launch off at any moment. But as they start off playing, and they're very sheepish,

and then they become better and better and become more confident, it's very funny to watch players become really aggressive in how they play, where you'll see them do, like my favorite chain is to do clutch boost baseball slide jump hammer ball bounce like just that sort of

liquid feel between the moment to moment is just it's really just great like I will I try not to be self-aggrandizing but that part of the game is just phenomenal I'm very happy about it a lot of work must go into and not just like obviously

the visuals and the actual sort of code but making it sound destructive because there's some great sound effect in this game. The Hammer Vault's just like, that sort of quite mega-drive-ish kind of wop-wop-wop-wop-wap sound when you're in the air. Oh, yeah. For sure. So what is like the progression of the game, like some sort of start to finish of a level? Like what is the aim? What are you doing?

Right. So it's all very simple, really. So of course, I stated earlier, like, the goal of the game overall is to get your spirits back. now Anton also is what we call a destruction worker and Bruehle of the bartender has put him up to going over to the lots that he owns and

blowing them up to rhythm of satanic presence so your goal is twofold you get in, you grab your spirit and then you hit the spirit timer and get out before happy hour ends right everything blows up

so throughout the levels, they are semi-linear, for the most part, barring a few left turns throughout the game, which are some of my favorite levels, by the way, the absolute weirdo ones, which we haven't really talked about at all

up to this point. But throughout most of the levels, they're a relatively linear progression, but they still maintain that sort of Warrior Land deal where they are a little bit Metroidvania maze-like. And so to get to the spirit and get to the timer, usually that's

pretty straightforward process, but we have a bunch of other collectibles throughout the levels as well. We have the cassette tapes, which if you have played Wireland for, they're very much an analog to the CDs from that game where you can listen to the sound room and they're just like awful soundscapes, right? Yeah, yeah. Do you get little sort of potted music videos with unusual visuals as well? I have to watch. Oh, yeah. Oh, good stuff. We have album art for each track. and then we have a weird little guy who is just called weird guy I animated him and he dances

to the music whenever you put it on and it's really really great it's very unsettling and very scary I look forward to my nephew playing through it but we also have Annie's trash because Annie's kind of a fail girl and so she's when all of Anton's spirits were stolen by Satan

they had also stolen her hoard of just nicks and knacks and garbage that was in her apartment. And she's determined to get that back. That's kind of her primary motivator, besides just wanting to blow things up. And so we have those throughout the level for you to find as well.

And then we also have spray cans. So we have different skins that the player can throw on for Anton and Annie, and they are individualized between the two despite them sharing a palette. And so those are available. to find throughout the level as well.

And they're extremely fun because when you grab the spray can, it sprays all over you. So you actually do play throughout the rest of the level with that skin enabled. So do you choose between Antalon and Annie or do they sort of alternate stages? Is it the changes different for each character?

You can swap between them, between levels. Right, right. Play functionally exactly the same. So it really just kind of came down to the fact that people liked Annie. Yeah. So it's a little crashing Coco and Crash 4 kind of deal. Very, very much so. It really just comes down

to who you like more. Like, there was debate internally over if they should play differently between one another, but they are designed in such a way that they are meant to be you know, call out of. So is Anton, if you're in a, sorry to harp on this, but if you're in a stage as Anton, you can collect one of

Annie's Chochies, or does it have to be her to collect the stuff? No, you could play the whole game 100% as Anton if you wanted to. Oh, perfect. Yeah, we the game has sizable 100% completion just because we do have that crash bandit of DNA

like we're all hopefully not as sizable as crash four but yeah no no no and no we're near close to that I would say it's most comparable to in the sense that well it is a little bit like warped in the sense that we have time trials

but we really in my mind have it quite reasonable you know we're not you can definitely dig a few hours to go in there and just 100% the game but it's not something where like, okay, you have to go and collect 12 gems per level and then do it

again, you know, we're not doing that. Okay, this is all very encouraging. So let me ask, I mean, if you can talk about them. Well, can you tell us about, like, the boss battles in the game? Oh, my God, they are phenomenal. We are so deeply excited about them. So the boss battles are split into two tiers, and we very deliberately, buried this

during the early marketing. We have what we call the bucket brigade. They're the boss busters. They are the big malls that Satan kind of has as his like fat for, right? And throughout the game, Satan's forces are not

exclusively demons. Sometimes they are just like these weird moles that we call it ballbusters. And that name just came from when they were in Anton Ball and it was funny. And now it's just kind of a non-sequitur, but it's still funny. So the boss busters are more or less

them, but they're like the supercharged. You know, they're the boss busters that everyone wants to be, right? Yeah. So we have Brawlbusters, kind of like a Hulk Hogan type. We have a mall buster who, she's

a thespian at heart, so she loves to sing, and she's kind of like the matriarch of the four. We have Tallbuster, who's this long nudely stoner and then we have small Buster who's extremely small and wears

teacup for her helmet but also she and Tall Buster are you know they're always doing something together you know they're yeah we ship them internally and so their fights are very close to being like a traditional

platformer boss fight although I would say platformer bosses usually kind of suck they're usually not very good I hate to say. Yeah, I mean, if I can interject again, I often feel like boss battles in platform games should be a reward for finishing a level

or for finishing a set of levels rather than something that roadblocks you. This is why I think Sonic did it so well, the Omega Drive Sonic games, because you can take those things apart in like five seconds. Yeah. Even if you're not that good, if you don't care about getting hit. So that to me is like the Platonic ideal. that's my interjection.

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely interesting because I think that also depends on the placement of the boss, right? Because in Sonic, the way that they function is that they are like the end of your act three, right? Like they're not really like a stage onto themselves. They're kind of like usually. But they're framed in such a way that they are like the cap off, right? They're almost like the cool down. And so the way we've structured them in our game is that they are levels onto themselves practically. Right.

it's a similar structure to how Crash doesn't put their bosses at the end of like level 5 in the warp room Yeah, between the war rooms, yeah And so in that respect, I always appreciated that degree of the roadblock for a platformer boss And so the boss busters are kind of similar

to that crash sort of structure where the bosses will have you know, some predetermined patterns and you have to wait for a weak spot and then hit them back, right? and they're fine and they're good and I think that they're fun in the sense that they're

very cinematic in how they're presented and they're challenging but I wouldn't call them unfair and that's really what I appreciate about them and they're engaging because I think platform or bosses of that ilk tend to be a little boring yeah with the crash

just with the crash of course they always take place in arenas that are unique as well. Yes. You're not just in the same environment you've already been in, which I've always thought it's very cool for boss plates. And you learn so much about the boss through that, right?

And so we've adapted Avera's similar mentality. So our bosses were, for example, small busters like in a junkyard, and she has these little mechs that she's been tinkering with. And so that all, you know, makes a lot of sense for her. Our tall buster, you know, he's in a big, It looks almost like an aquarium. It's very abstract, but he's just in a hot tub chilling out. And that kind of stuff, I feel, is always really fun because you can take a lot away from the character.

But then, and these are the ones I'm really excited about, but we have the big bosses. And those guys are just, wow, they do not fuck around. They are very cuphead inspired in the sense that they are extremely large screen. filling beasts. And these guys are just absolute weirdos by definition. We've shown off the jewel ghoul, and

he's kind of this massive hulking king diamond fellow. Yep. And he's in his underground mine strip club being the pimp that he is. He's in a zoot suit. And he pulls

out his big gun to shoot at you. He has He does, like, the Daffy pose when you start fighting him. What other stuff that does he do? Because I designed that fight from top to bottom. I shouldn't know that. Oh, right. He has a cigar that he pulls out and blows fire into the arena.

So it's all, like, really, really, like, heavily cinematic. But the interesting thing about these bosses is that they are structured closer to a cop head or a sonic fight where you can hit these guys at any time. so you don't have to wait for a weak point you can just wail on them and clobber them and so if you're good then you can be done with them in a matter of seconds really and that's the cool thing because they are pretty brutal bosses by design but once you learn their patterns and you learn sort of that they're idiosyncrasies you end up really being able to take them out quick and you get rewarded for being cocky I think

the way that J.B., who's our producer and the other designer on the game, he has described it a lot as being sort of like a Sekiro deal. Oh, yeah, yeah. Which is maybe like a weird thing that people will always bring up like a Dark Souls, whatever.

We're not using it as a selling point. You know, we're not saying, putting that in the marketing, whatever, but it is kind of that sort of Sol's deal where you will get fucked up a few times to start with, but you do a bit better each time. Secura has the focus on aggression as well obviously Aggression rewards you much more than sort of passive blocking and yeah

Precisely yeah like we I think overall that's just the big theme The game is we reward aggression Yeah And then we have the Freco Dragon Who is this big crazy dragon made out of Pachinkaballs And he's just you know he's just a freak as the name says He's not a pervert I've been very clear about that but

he is a freak and the cool thing with all the bosses is that they have these you know I call them party tricks where Jugal has this crazy palette mapping

to make him look like he's really reflected and then Freakot Dragon has a lot of mode 7 scaling going on particularly in the third phase of the fight which is we're not showing till launch

but that fight is I'll put it you this way, it's very difficult for Sprite games to be impressive in the current year. But without fail, every single person who has seen that fight has had their jaw drop. Just like, whoa!

What is going on? So really, that's been the big thing for me is that obviously there's substantive fights in terms of gameplay, and we're extremely proud of that fact, but also, they are eye candy. They will freak you out and make you rethink what a pixel platform can do.

I am very excited to see this. I am very excited to see this. So just a couple more things, really. You composed the soundtrack? Is that in its entirety? Yes, yes. top to bottom, that's me. So could you tell us about, like, sort of the process there and what kind of soundtrack

you've created for this game? Sure. So, before I was a game developer professionally, I had done music. And that was what I was trying to do. I was trying to do session work. I was playing in bands. That worked out okay. But, like, the big defining thing for me during that period of my life was just the fact that

I played guitar in a really aggressive way that didn't necessarily, it wasn't necessarily, like, the way that other people were doing it. So, which isn't to be self-aggrandizing, it was just, I was stupid. And so, because of that, when I had come into doing the soundtrack for this game and Anton Ball, and I had done some other indie games as well,

I always had a lot of respect for, like, classic game soundtracks, whether that was stuff on Game Boy or NES, or obviously the crass soundtracks were a big influence for me. Oh, yeah, they're incredible, yeah. They are just fantastic, and Josh Mansell's an absolute gem of a person, person. But when it came time to do this soundtrack, the original approach was to do it in a way that was very GBA authentic. And so that came down to, they didn't have like a sound chip on the GBA. It was all done digitally. Just to kind of really match a sort of like gritty compression and everything would be MIDI distinctly. And I have like this massive rack of period correct hardware for all samples, right?

but I had done that for a bit and it was fine but it just really wasn't landing I tend to think of it like a great game can be sold on its music and if the music is something you would want to listen to outside of the context of the game then you have a winner right and so at some point I just sort of forgot doing hardware accurate but I decided to retain the sounds all the weird

I have an emulator proteus here from 1989, right? So, you know, using that stuff, using stuff that's pure, correct, sample CDs from the late 90s, whatever, if you use all that stuff, but then you use modern mixing and mastering and then you bring on some live guitar

or live vocals or whatever, then you have something that's just, it doesn't really quite sound like anything else in terms of production or instrumentation. And so I think that really was a driving factor. And then when you mix that just kind of like with my own influences where it comes down to, you know, I grew up on

a lot of like 60s and 70s rock as like a core foundation, which I don't listen to too much anymore, but like even just having like, oh, I really like, you know, all along the watch tower, right? Just having that as like a core influence really influenced just sort of the grooves I chose or my core progressions. And then you start bringing in like nine inch nails was a big one for me. So half the soundtrack is just ripping off. nine-inch nails. And then you pick out some other weird stuff, like Happy Hour, which at the time of this recording,

it just recently hit 1 million views on YouTube. So the kids are super into this stuff. But that track was super deeply inspired by like the 70s and the 80s, like power metal stuff that I was, you know, playing with bands, right? And so if you listen to stuff like, I think it was Kill the King by Rainbow, the riff on Happy Hour is

it's a take on that right like it's really just trying to not emulate necessarily but take inspiration from all these weird things that maybe people playing a game don't know particularly if you were born in 2005 you don't know what Rainbow is right but you hear Happy Hour and you hear the way that the drums play

the guitar riffs and you're like whoa this is cool I've never heard anything like this before And also, like, there's the video game music inspirations as well where that was kind of like, Kill the King meets multi-man melee, right? And people who know that stuff, they pick up on it and they get excited about it. So it's just this weird hodgepodgepodge of influences. I don't want to say that it has a process because it's just extremely messy and sloppy as I tend to be. But I do think that it ended up being a unique result, even if failure.

it saddens me to a degree that the kids don't know rainbow though it's a shame I don't know I surrender they don't know all night long it's upsetting I'm British I know I'm no rainbow I know Paul Rogers I'm you know but the last thing I want to ask and I always ask this so it's totally and it's totally fine if the answer is no so now it is but is there anything secret about the game that you've never talked about anywhere else that you can tell me I'm trying to think I think I think I asked you you this for Debug, actually, and you gave me quite a

cryptic answer, so I'm going to angle through another cryptic answer. What I could do is I could actually talk about what that is. Yes, that'd be great. Yeah, so in the debug magazine, I don't remember the exact wording that I used, but I'd said something

about lime. And ultimately, what pairs better with a good spirit than a slice of lime, right? Yeah. And so one of the very cool things that we have in the game as part of the core campaign, I've mentioned the crash team racing influence, but we have these little arenas that you can play after you beat a,

we call our worlds in the hub area branches or wings. So you have like the West Wing, the East Wing, whatever, because it all takes place in the casino. And it's all like one seamless hub. So it's not quite like, oh, here's like a different floor or a different world, but like the levels are structured in a way it's like, oh, here's three levels, a boss. when you beat that wing's boss you get access to what we call lime trials and if you ever played the crystal challenges in crash team racing where you have to run around the arena and collect the crystals before time runs out that is exactly what the lime trial is and even the music is an homage to those themes we released the music for that last year I think and that that was being used at the time for the boss rush and those modes are just incredibly fun. Oh, my God.

Like, they're so simple, but with Anton's moveset and the clutch boost and all that stuff, and we actually have like speed boosters around there so you can just to really hammer in the CTR stuff. It's a ton of fun. And I think you're the first person I've ever

talked to about it outside of the team. I'm very privileged in this respect. It's extremely, extremely exciting. Well, thanks very much for coming on. I'm really looking forward to the game, as hopefully has become clear. I really enjoy playing the demo

and I'm looking forward to the full thing and I hope it all goes well with the launch. I'm really bad at ending things so I'm just going to say it's finished now. Goodbye.

Bye everyone. Okay, I'm back It's the middle of the episode Or maybe slightly over the middle It doesn't matter, consider this the middle No matter where it takes place Now, we've heard from Tony Grayson now About Anton Blas, which is upcoming

Now we're going to hear from Joseph Grimmon Of Medallion Games And that's about grappled dogs the sequel to Grappled Dog, which just came out a couple of weeks ago at the time of me recording this, but will it be out a month or so by the time this goes out, it's a game that I employ you to check out, and it's a game I wanted to find out more about. So let's do that together right now. Hello there and welcome to Rector Nauts. Would you please introduce yourself to our lovely listeners?

Hi, I'm Joseph Gribbin. I'm a game designer and artist. I made Grappledog and the recent released Grapp Dog's Cosmic Canines. Excellent games they are indeed. I'm going to just put out front. I did review Grappled Dog for the first one for Nintendo Life. And that was a natural nine. I love that game.

It's fantastic. I mean, this is why I wanted to get you on this, because I really like the first one. And with the second one out now, I thought it was a good opportunity. But I think the best place to start would be... So was Grappled Dogg? Was that your first game?

When were you working on game making prior to that, like, elsewhere? So, yeah, so I was like a hobbyist, kind of artist and game developer for a long long time. Then I worked at a company called Nitrome. Oh, Nitrome. Yeah. The game where you rotate the box and, yes, that actually explains a lot about some of the art. Yes, okay, all right. I'm putting the dots together here.

Well, so the Nitrome are mostly well-known for Flash games back in the day, sort of like the mini-clip era, like Newgrounds, that kind of time, although I don't think they were on the other of those services. But, yeah, they made loads of flash games. I didn't work there. then. Right, right. So whenever I say that, people go,

oh, did you work on this from my childhood? And I'm like, I'm not that old. I worked there doing mobile games because they transitioned off from Flash, because that kind of died off. They were doing mobile titles. And I did a couple of mobile titles there. People haven't heard of. I did Rust Bucket and HopSwap, which was a platformer as well.

And then I did some level design for a game called Turn on Dead. I did some marketing art for we published some titles on mobile then. So I did that for a bit. And I have just been doing art around the industry for a long time. And then, yeah, about five years ago, I was working on Grapple Dog. It was kind of like, get this off the ground. And, yeah, we kind of pitched over to Super Air and kind of got it going there. So, yeah, I released a bunch of stuff at Night Train before I, just to get back to the question,

before I did Grapple Dog. And I also did a game called Magna Box on my own, which once again, nobody's ever heard of, but it's a kind of puzzle game about the magnet. Right. I think it's really good. Yeah. I'm going to check that out now then, because I have to admit I hadn't heard of

Magna Box. The one I was thinking of was called Gunbrick, or Gunbrick reloaded or something like that. And yeah, that was the one that was jumping into my head. So with the character, Pablo, the main character of the original game, was he around, like, prior to the game, or was it sort of a case of you've got a game

and now you need a sort of protagonist? So, yeah, the development on that one was, like I said I did Magna Box and that didn't do very well and so I sort of went like okay how do I what do I need for the next game that's going to be what I do better than that like what lessons do I learn one of the big things was Magidbox is very it's very sterile game

very deliberately austere which I found very freeing particularly after my time at Nitrine because their art style is so you're adding flavour to everything all the time and sometimes it's exhausting but on the on the counter side of that

it means that the game when you're trying to drum up attention for it it doesn't have a lot of personality it's not really appealing so when I was kind of setting out to do grapple dog the first the two ideas were just like

I need something that's like got lots of personality because I can do that and you can sort of look at just a little bit of footage or whatever and it's got very clear gameplay concept so yeah the personality was a big aspect of it and then at the time I had a Labrador named Pablo

and so it just made sense to me but having a main character that had a lot of personality to it was kind of like very core to the concept of the game it's just yeah yeah there's plenty of there's lots of personalities of lace throughout the whole thing even in like the movement which I appreciated a lot when I played it

and so I'm going to talk more about the sequel of course but I do want to ask you a little bit about the first game as well just out of curiosity is how did you feel about its sort of reception when it um when it after it came out like how have you felt about that well um I don't know I'm a bit of a perfectionist so there were a lot of elements to it where I was really kind of like disappointed in a way because as this this I think it's a quote from Valve uh but I've always kind of like what about a lot which is like you only know how to make a game once you finish making it yeah um so there was a lot

lot of aspects to it where you know I was like I know I could do it better now if I just had another opportunity to kind of take another crack at it and there's a lot of kind of like people that came away from the game or even bounced off it and just said like this isn't I don't like this I couldn't help but agree because I was just kind of like yeah we we should have done that better at the same time like the reception was generally like really positive and the people that liked it really liked it and you know having played a bit over the past couple of years, it's like, yeah, this is good, you know, this is a good game.

I'm just trying to imagine not liking it. I can't. It's staggering to me. Like, I feel like these people should be, I don't know what to do, do something with them, though, something. I don't know. Actually, I jumped a bit ahead there, because there was something else I want to ask, because you mentioned

about super rare, they're publishing? Yeah. Yeah. So can I ask how that came about if you're legally allowed to tell me? I'm trying to think now. I actually think, do you know the game cassette beasts? I know of it.

I know of it. Yeah. Okay. So I'm friends with Jay, who is a guy behind that game or one of the heads on that team. And he knew that super rare at the time we're looking for

to get into publishing games. Yeah. Also, what had happened is with grapple dog. So I worked on it for like, so the total development time at the end was about three years because I was working on it whilst I was doing

I had a job at one point I was doing freelance work at another point and it was just so happened that Super Air were kind of looking to launch a publishing division while I only had about like three months left ago making the game so it just lined up in the right way where it was like the right project

for the kind of budget they wanted that's yeah that's for serendipitous that's good so Super Air previously they were And probably still, I don't, I'm not actually sure. They were putting out, like, physical editions of games that otherwise wouldn't get physical additions. Is that right? Yeah, that was their business, basically.

But then they moved into, well, not move, or they sort of went adjacent into publishing, yeah. So, was this a solo code, like, and build and everything? Did you make this one yourself, or did you work with anyone else? Because Medallion Games is the sort of developer, but I didn't know who else you'd worked with. so medallion games is yeah i call it micro studio it's basically just a company to handle my games uh i i'm the only employee that's cool though so the way that we kind of work is we just staff up um project to project uh with freelancers so on the first game we had uh jazz mickle doing the music uh she's a fantastic fantastic soundtrack yeah yeah she's amazing and then we had uh damien

and his company called igame. Audio and they were doing all the sound design but in terms of like every other aspect of the game that was that was me I did all the programming art the writing the overall design the level design um yeah so I

don't really like because some people go like I was this solo dev I don't really like to say that because like loads of other people went up working on it not just them but also like people on the publishing side um the marketing side so it feels a bit egotistical to just kind of go

like it's solo div but I end up doing a lot myself yeah so you did all the art for the game for the first game and presumably the second game as well so did you was it always like video game art or did you do anything in our outside of video games

like prior to that or like illustration or comics or anything along those lines or was it always just for games so I I went to university and I studied philosophy that explains nothing about grapple doc grappling with physical

concepts I suppose yeah okay no no but I what I mean to say is like my career trajectory was like I'd always drawn I'd always sort of been an artist and like I said I was I call myself like a hobbyist game dev for that period where it was just kind of like something that I did but I never thought that I could ever make a living with even my art like you know I love comics I love animation

but it was always like out of reach for me in terms of career stuff the Nitroen gig was the first time that somebody had paid me to draw something and so it was a strange learning experience there to do that but yeah as far as other art yeah no I just

video game art is the only thing I've ever kind of professionally been employed to do so what are your sort of influences in art because you mentioned loving comics and animation and I love those things too, and I'm trying to sort of just kind of trick you into telling me things that you like,

so I can tell you if I liked. I love, I love, like, I've been reading a lot of Mike Minnolo's Hellboy recently. I love like Will Eisner, Old Will Eisner Comics and his stuff. His books on, like, cartoon anatomy and stuff. I've just read to bits. What else? I didn't know I was going to be asked about which comics I like. I was just curious.

what sort of fed into grapple dog, if anything, if there's anything specific that you've sort of taken inspiration from or even other games for the art. I mean, I'm not going to say that there was an inspiration here because I have no idea. I remember when I reviewed it, for some reason,

I kept going on about Denkeke, because it really reminded me of this Denky game called Go Go Beckham visually. Mostly the way that the gems and stuff looked. I just, I was wondering, I even found myself wondering, is there someone from Denky on this? But the timeline don't add up. So yeah, I apologize

if that was an annoying thing to read in the review because I would not stop going on about it. It's all right. Sometimes weird things happen like that. Recently on the sequel, somebody that reviewed the game was like, oh yeah, because there's a level in it that's kind of noir-inspired called Katzablanca.

And somebody was like, oh yeah, he just took this idea from this Garfield game from the Genesis. I just had no idea that my terrible pun had just been done like 20 years yeah but they did that and it was Garfield caught in the act but to be honest with you

nobody got that far in the game so I don't buy it like I absolutely believe without hesitation that you didn't pinch it from that horrible game. Nice looking game but my god it sucks grapple dog's way better than Garfield caught in the act. Don't worry about that. Thank you. No it's just

it's the same thing with GoGo Beckham. I remember reading about it in Nintendo official magazine back in the day. Yeah. Because they rated it quite highly, because I think, from what I remember, it was some other Japanese game that they'd kind of rebranded to David Beckham for the UK release or something like that? I honestly don't think it was. I think it was a Denki original. Like, I mean, I could be wrong, but I'm almost certain that they just made it themselves because they just loved

Mario World and wanted to put David Beckham in it for whatever reason. I mean, yeah, it's confusing, confusing. Yeah, no, but I had not really, I'd not really played that. I was I wasn't really influenced by that. I think I was influenced by, I think I had seen part-time UFO, but I hadn't played it. Oh, you're the whole game, right, right. Yeah, because that's the double outline kind of style on the art. I don't know, the double outline style was just something like I toyed with for ages. I think I want to say like Marion Luigi Superstar Saga was like a huge inspiration for that

because it had these very distinctive, thick outlines. Yeah, I can sort of see that now. You mention it. Yeah, this sort of very cartoon you look as well. Yeah, that's grand. they use a very different kind of technique to achieve that they use kind of like alias um outlines uh yeah just because i think the the resolution of the game boy font screen was lower so you couldn't really double up without losing a lot of kind of um space but yeah but that was

huge like when i was a teenager or younger like when i was on kind of pixel art forums like doing stuff in the style of marion luigi was was a huge thing so i think that that probably had a big influence. So, um... I'm just trying to think. Other visual, like, Yoshi's Island's a huge one. Oh, yeah.

The Sonic Advanced Games, like a huge inspiration. Also, in terms of animation, just like Adventure Times, Stephen Universe, a lot of that recent kind of wave of stuff. It's had a big kind of influence on it. Um, so the original Grappled Dog, that's, I want to say Game Maker or GameMaker 2?

Yeah, well, at the time, it might have been called Game Maker Studio 2. Now it's just Game Maker Studio, but, yeah, Game Maker. was that the case for grappled dogs as well same tools so to speak yeah I talked to Tony Grayson about Anton Blast in this episode as well

and that's also GameMaker so it's a double game maker episode completely by coincidence that's great maybe they'll maybe they'll give me some money no I'm kidding so fast forward though

so between following Grappled Dog I mean were you immediately working on a second one or was that something that came about a bit later well I was thinking about it towards the end particularly like sometimes when you're

it's that thing about you only know right at the end what you've done wrong is sometimes you're sort of like in the last couple of months and you're like it's too late to make certain changes and there were definitely things then where I was like right I would do this I would do this and then yeah the last couple of months of development I was actively kind of exploring the ideas of like okay where could you take it

um I even had I think at the launch it wasn't really a party it was just kind of like I went over to Super Air's offices and we pushed the button. But at that, I was kind of talking to them about, like, here's what my idea would be. So I think it would go. And at that time, it was basically just like a gun. It was like, we need to add a gun because that's kind of where the gameplay evolves, in my opinion. That's where Luna comes in.

Yeah. And, yeah, I think after that it was like a couple of months of figuring out the contract. And then, yeah, once that was signed. we kind of got going. So it was a little while after the launch of the first game before we actually kind of entered full development. Yeah. So was it similar to the process with the second game

or were you working on it sort of full time at this point? Well, yeah. By the time I was on the second game, yeah, it was full time. Cool. So grappled dogs, like just broadly speaking, what is it that you do in this game and what is it that's new in this game from the first one? so it is a platformer about a dog with a grappling hook

as the core of grapple dog in this one there are two dogs so there's one Pablo who is sort of very physical focused and has these elemental abilities that are kind of these unique power-ups and set stages and then there's another dog Luna who has a gun and has kind of projectile of gameplay and you will be switching between them throughout the game yeah it's yeah it's a it's a kind of collectathon adventure 2D platformer that has lots of bits of all my favorite games

it's got excitement and adventure and cool environments and great music and just yeah everything i love the stuff into the video game and sort of the new mechanic you mentioned already was the gun which is controlled in a sort of not so i sound like calling it twin stick because that implies that you're top down but like you're aiming with the right stick and firing with uh with the right trigger while you're moving around and also grappling. So it's all very active and dynamic. That's Luna who uses the gun and Pablo, who, as you say, he has the element abilities

and also he just beats the crap out of things. He probably wouldn't put it that way. But I've got to ask, is Luna also based on a real dog? No. Sort of, actually. So my girlfriend had a dog called Whisper, but they were in Alaska Malamute.

right so that was sort of the that sort of took a bit of a name from that it was basically I love Shadow the Hedgehog I love Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Adventure 2 is just like a huge sort of inspiration for this game and I love the idea of like the dark rival of the main character

that was kind of the jumping off point for it and combining that with the idea of like project all gameplay is is the next step in kind of what to do with the core of this game It's fascinating because, first of all, if you love Shadow the Hedgehog, you must be having a hell of a year. All the Shadow fans are having a great year. Second of all, and this is weirdly personal and irrelevant, so I apologize in advance.

But the gameplay of Luna, for me, is, okay, look, I'm going to bore you a bit now, and I apologize. When I was a kid, I loved the Shadow the Hedgehog game on, like, GameCube. I mean, I wouldn't say it's a great game, but I loved it because, you know, Shadow, he's cool. And I always wonder what it would be like if it was on the DS. And I drew up on paper this DS game. And it was pretty much exactly the same as it's like 2D, but you tap the screen where you want to fire. And I'm like, this feels like what Shadow the Hedgehog would have felt like on GBA,

I mean, or DS. And it's fascinating that you mention that because that really is the first thing my head went to when I started busting caps in this game in Grappledogs. So you mentioned it. Sorry, go on. It's funny you talk about that. Like one of the inspirations for this is like when I was a kid, I loved Sonic Adventure too,

but it always disappointing me a little bit that Shadow and Sonic had exactly the same moves. I always thought like, oh, Shadow should have like his own, because in the story he's got like all these chaos control abilities. And I was like, oh, he should get his own move set. And Sonic could have his own moves that, you know, only he could do. And yeah, and so when I was doing this game, I was like, yeah, they're going to have different moves that like, like say different things about their personality and that's fine.

I think a lot of people in kind of reviews for this one, like a sticking point for some people has been having to change your brain a little bit to kind of move between the two characters because they do have such different movement stuff. So for me it's like, oh, okay, that's why Sonic Adventure 2 was like that. But on the other hand, I think like the benefits you get from that versus the cost, you get these two very different characters that have very different. it feels. I think it's

a bit in the end. I thought that Lunas gameplay a little bit, it reminded me of, did you play Bleed, the 2D indie shooty thingy? It reminded me a tiny bit of that with the air dashing and the firing and stuff.

And Bleed is awesome, so anything that even slightly reminds me of bleed is always good. So you mentioned this as a sort of a collect-a-thon, so could you tell us about the collectibles and the progression, how that works? Yeah, so it's separate out into worlds and each world has its own type of gem and there are three gems

in every level and you go into well i should say stage you go into a stage you get the three gems and then those will kind of unlock an area of the overworld for you to kind of like go on to further stages and there's also but there's also like fruit you can collect which is a kind of currency where you can buy outfits and health upgrades and things and then There's also collectible grappling hooks where you can kind of customize your character and outfits. There's these hidden duck bands that are kind of ferreted away in really hard to reach spots.

So, yeah, the collection screen is a bit much. It was at one point in development even more. You know, it was a bit Donkey Kong 64 at one point. But, yeah, there's loads to collect. I love a good collection screen with lots of different numbers on it. Yeah, it's all very satisfying. I mean, Donkey Kong 64 is, I think, get to like you want to get a balance between

Dong Kong 64 and say Banjo 2y and I think you've leaned more towards the banjo 2y and that's a good thing I would say um thanks yeah it's interesting to capture that sort of n64ish feel although the GBA had a lot of games with collectibles like that and this has GBA vibes

very much so so yeah and you've got like these like time trial bonus stages as well in there three-ch character um and is that just get so is that is that just getting more of the gems or So in this one, no, so there's a separate collectible that's like gold medals for just to be time trials. I never required for anything.

That's kind of like a design philosophy is like, I'm not going to make you do time trials because I think it, depending on the type of player you are, you either love it or you just like have no time for it whatsoever. So I deliberately left it in a way where it was like, yeah, if you don't want to do time trials, you don't have to. But for the players that really, really enjoy that kind of stuff, that's there. Ready? Let it go. Let it go. It's just smart because it's like, well, I suppose it's like in Crash Bandicoot when that stuff wasn't really required. And when it was, it was pretty low-level requirements, just like the silver. But how did, if you don't mind me asking, how was the launch for the new game?

How did that go? Um, it's been, it's been pretty disappointing, to be honest. Dang. Yeah, it's been, um, pretty dire on a sales front. and I think pretty poor in terms of the amount of coverage that we were able to get and the reach. But it's reviewed really, really well. The Steam reviews, like the ratio is very high. Reviews we managed to get are all 8 out 10, 9 out of 10.

We finally managed to cross the metacritic threshold the other day, which is great, because that means that's good for me because it helps me pitch games in the future and say, you know, hey, I know what I'm doing here. Yeah, so I'm feeling really positive about the reception in terms of like the quality of that thing we made. I'm really proud of it and I'm proud of all the work that everybody who worked on it put into it. But yeah, it's been pretty dire on the sales front and, yeah, in terms of the kind of reach and the coverage. If you don't mind me talking about that, do you think that, do you know, do you think that any sort of what might be any sort of factors in why that was or is it just one of those things, you know, it seems like there are so many

sort of games launching all the time that it must be a nightmare getting the right sort of window yeah I mean talk about it to a certain extent so like the a big big factor in it is just the

amount of stuff that's that's coming out right now there's just like lots of great games being released and it's wild wild couple of months for sure yeah and that's eating into the kind of like bandwidth of people's um time you know like astrobot launched a few weeks before us and i think people weren't done playing

that um but also just attention you know if there's other indie games that are coming at around the same time as your indie game people will talk about one and not talk about the other um and we launched i think there were two other quite big indie games that launched on the same day and then also two days beforehand we had i am your beast which is another really great indie game and then yeah i think I think there was also the Capcom Marvel versus Capcom collection came out the same day. So obviously, like, the sheer number of releases is like a huge factor. And I think it's also, there's an element of, you know, I just talked about the amount that I do on this project, which is, you know, I do all the art and I do all the programming and I do a lot of project management. And I do, particularly on this one, because we had, you know, more people working on it.

and we had a bigger budget, and we had all this stuff. And it's not necessarily my responsibility for marketing and distributing of the game. And I trust that other people are doing that. And sometimes I just feel a bit let down by that aspect of it. But I'm not totally in control of it in that way. It feels like, I mean, from the outside looking in, obviously, so stop me if I'm saying anything ignorant here,

but it seems like sometimes regardless of, any of that, then it just doesn't for some reason get seen. I mean, there was a Zelda, new Zelda out now. I think it's a shame. I'm going to do what I can to boost it myself because more people should play this game. Did you find that the original game sort of had some legs or sort of what happened with that one?

Yeah, I mean, that's the kind of, you know, if you want to have a sunny outlook on it, that's the thing with the first game is, you know, we had a pretty slow launch as well, But I think what happened with it, it just had a really good word of mouth. And when it goes on sale, the calculation in a lot of people's heads is, you know, it flips in a way. Yeah. And they go, like, suddenly it's worth it.

And we consistently did really well on sales. And we consistently did, I mean, like, we were on the Steamfront page a couple of months ago with the first game. And, you know, that was like the highest number of players we ever had, even higher than the launch of the game. You know, it was like really big. Oh, wow. Yeah, that was. I think that was when I bought it because I got that double pack

because I had it on Switch from reviewing it but I didn't have it on Steam so I think it was like £21 or something at both games which was probably the best deal I've ever purchased in my entire life Yeah, I mean Yeah The thing is with that stuff is because it's on discount

Just to kind of like inside baseball it for a second But when it's on discount You get less revenue ultimately So it doesn't counteract necessarily But yeah That kind of happened with the first game Where it just kind of like kept selling And so, yeah, and at many points where we kind of thought, like, oh, this is tailing off, you know.

And even when Grappad Dog 2 launched, people were telling me like, oh, well, the numbers for Grapple Dog 1 are really, really good. And I'm like, well, that's great. Yeah. So there's every chance that, you know, it could have a really long tail. It could keep trucking. If the word of mouth is really good, it could sell. So it's not, you know, it's not done for. But it's really hard.

to come back from a kind of weak launch and just all sorts of algorithmic things I don't understand. Yeah, I don't think even the ones who produce the algorithm that understand it. Do you find just, sorry, go on, sorry. I just want to reiterate, like, yeah, yeah, a bit disappointing on the sales end and a bit disappointing in terms

of the coverage end, but like, I'm really, really proud of it, and I think it's really good. Well, you know, not that I want to platitudes, but, like, you should be proud of it. like everyone who did anything for it should be proud of it because I think it came together really well I'm going to say I swear with now it's fucking good so I think everyone should play it

which is why I wanted to do this at all I hope you don't mind me asking about the deception and to be honest I'd seen you talking about it on Twitter a little bit I've been spying on your tweets by you know following you on there I know I didn't I didn't mean for them to be public well yeah but I did what I was curious about that because of

many factors because a lot of to be frank a lot of developers don't usually talk about that stuff on Twitter which is not to say that you shouldn't have obviously but I just I thought it was interesting so I thought I'd try and pick your brain on that a bit more

so I guess yeah I mean is it from my perspective again as someone who's a complete hobbyist as well and doesn't really do anything other than mess around with existing level letters I've worked on a couple projects that I've made stages for and they go out and they go out

and they go on, people stream them on YouTube, people play the games and I watch people play the levels I've made and they will find without fail everything I'd not noticed, they will stumble across and break and do you find, do you watch like streams or let's plays

or whatever of your games or do you find it sort of excruciating like I do? Yeah, yeah, I do a lot. I actually find, so we actually had internal play tests and we had like QA stuff so I got a lot of footage at certain points of like people paying through the levels yeah I think what you're talking about is it's really difficult and it's yeah it's like a huge part of level design and design in general

and it's a skill that you you know it's like learning an instrument you sort of like get better at it and better at it I think it's like one of the best things you can have as a designer is the ability to put yourself in the play of shoes and start to understand how they're going to see it from their perspective, how they're going to play through it, but also how different types of players are going to play through it, and also where they're going to mess up and where they can go wrong. And then you never catch everything, and then that's why playtesting footage is so good, because you can sort of get like, okay, well, you know, for instance,

the player might go left when you want them to go right and you go like, okay, why did they do that? And you work backwards to kind of like figure that out. I did, when the game, by the time the game launched, I will say, like, when I was watching people play it, we'd ironed out a lot of that stuff. So, you know, people weren't getting it really wrong. And I did take a bit of perverse joy in watching people play and seeing that they were going like exactly as I had intended them to go through the level every time. There was something quite pleasant about that in a way where I had designed this level. I'd be like, okay, the player's going to think this, this, this, this and this. And then to, to what, their reactions are to be like, okay, I got it, right? I got exactly where they were going to... Yeah, you've got to build a sort of invisible guiding hand. It's really fascinating stuff. I mean, it's interesting for me that when it comes to, again, me, amateur, don't make games.

Just did a few levels here and there. But, like, for example, talking about the other game on this episode, Anton Blast, a long, long time ago, I saw one of the early trailers for that game or maybe the demo, and I just tweeted, like, not like rudely I don't think but maybe kind of thoughtlessly like these platforms blend in way too much with the background it's it's so it doesn't work

and then Tony his reply and he's like you I think I agree with you actually we'll do something about that and I was like they're watching and you're mortified because it's like you're telling them how to suck eggs you know it's like

I did so do you sort of keep an eye out for people talking about the game on Twitter and stuff like obviously there's such thing as you know tags hashtags and things but do you keep an eye out for that stuff for like I don't know patches and things like that yeah absolutely well I'm I tell you what

so on the first game I spent launch day just worrying about things and I didn't enjoy it so this time I said to myself enjoy the launch day Joe like even if there are bugs even if there are issues just try and enjoy the launch and try

and like not stress about it until you have to. So, yeah, I spent the launch day just reading everything, everyone was posting and just kind of like searching for grapple dog and seeing like, is anybody playing it, you know, what are people saying and looking through all the Steam reviews and trying to see all the coverage and the YouTube stuff. And just enjoying the little bit of attention there. I think now at this point, I'm like, I don't need to read everything.

And I do try and keep, but I do try and keep my finger on the pulse, particularly if there's like a bug that kind of made it through. the QA stuff and everybody's talking about it or you know if there's a bit of feedback that just keeps coming up like usually if somebody will if somebody will be like I don't like this I'll be like oh well you know that's just your opinion man but if it's if it's like four or five people in a row that are like I really don't like this then I will kind of look at that and I'll be like oh is there something we could do about that um did you just to interrupt you sorry um this is what we do under british retronauts we apologize constantly and interrupted constantly it's just a

British way. Did you find anything from the first game that came up in particular that you specifically wanted to fix or change for grapple dogs? Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, okay, like the big one, and it's like the number one criticism of people to tell about the game. I mean, I was at a conference last year, and I met one of my, maybe heroes is too strong a word, but somebody I really look up to in this industry, Tom from SFB games, you know,

Crow Country County? I always forget whether it's country or county. I actually don't know. Or they did I'm a horrible journalist. They did snippet clips. They did... Oh, yes, yes. Slipperclips, yes.

And I met him, and he was very nice about Grapa Dog, and I was like, oh, my God, that's amazing. And then he went to me, what happened with the music? Like, yeah, the one criticism we got repeatedly is just like the music was really repetitive. And then that was a big thing that I wanted to fix for this game. But it's also like that wasn't just a problem with the music, if that makes sense.

It was like a problem that pointed to other problems. And I think it pointed to a broader problem, which was like there wasn't enough environmental variety. Because you were kind of playing like the mountain world like six levels in a row. And also that the environments in the first game were quite, maybe this is too negative a phrase, but like box standard platforming stuff, which I love that stuff. but like iconic iconic is the word to use iconic yeah but like you know

everything that sounds bad can be rephrased in the way that makes it sound good oh wow repetitive music catchy music oh yeah yeah yeah um I love that game's soundtrack I love that guy can swivel as far as I'm concerned I'm kidding it's really good but it does get a little

repetitive after a while but yeah but that's one of the reasons why like the cool concept of the sequel is like you go to all these different worlds and they're all jumbled up in different orders and you know you're here one second and there next because that way you're not listening to the same track so much and yeah we definitely worked on like the variety in the soundtrack

and also just like complaints about the physics I definitely had a look at all that everything that everybody was saying I really read through a lot of the Steam reviews and you know there's people that are like I don't like platformers I don't like this game and there's like not much you can do

because it's just it's not the game for you but I don't like platforms I don't like this game and I aim to write a review on which I should be seen as an authority in some way Yeah, but what got

kind of got to me was there were people that were like I really wanted to like this game I really love platformers but these couple of things just kind of like got to me and that kind of stuck out to me and I was like yeah

they're kind of right in a way you know and so yeah we should have to fix a lot of that stuff this time we have Thank you. So, sort of as we're sort of drawing to sort of the end of this chat, do you know what you're doing next? I mean, there's probably something you can't talk about,

but generally, do you know what you're going to do in doing sort of post-grappledogs or in sort of the launch window? So I am going off to go to a bunch of a bunch of. freelance work I need to pay my rent so I'm going to be doing some art for some other people's projects for a bit and then I've got a couple of hinds

in the fire in terms of things that might be going here and there and yeah I would love to do another Medallion Games production one day I think now's a pretty bad time on the indie game front just because funding is drying up

and UFO 50s come out and it's ruined all other indie games forever they just did 50 games at once it's not fair yeah it's cheating yeah but also just like yeah publishers are getting scared and shutting down

and yeah it's a pretty rough time so I'm not sure whether another medallion games game is going to happen any time soon but I'd love to do that eventually and I've got like a big manila folder full of ideas of things I'd like to make

any other sort of genre that you're interested in tackling or is it going to be platformers all the way down for you, do you think? I'd love to do Zelda. I've always wanted to do Zelda. That's kind of like my big love. I think I saw you prototyping.

It's like something on Twitter actually, like a top-down kind of engine. Yeah, it's also like a bucket list thing of like one day I'll do Zelda and I'm increasingly just like, well, I'm not getting younger. I should probably do that at some point. I'd love to make a stealth game one day.

I really love like Splinter Cell, metal gear solid. I'd also love to make a shooter at one point. I think that would be cool. Yeah, all sorts of genres I'd love to try. Just whether I can yeah, whether I get the opportunity to, I'd love to. Well,

thanks very much for coming on. I have enjoyed talking to you and I appreciate your sort of candora in general and I want to urge everyone to buy grappled dogs and grapple dog and you know what? I am going to shamelessly show it because it's, like I said,

earlier, it's fucking good. And if you don't, if you don't buy them, I'm going to come to your house, and I'm going to beat the shit out of you. Okay, that's, I don't condemn that. As the official representative of Medallion Games, I cannot. Also, I probably shouldn't say that, because

I probably can get in trouble, so I just want to retract that, actually. I'm not going to come to your house. I might come near your house and look at you. Like, as you go, come back from work, I'll just be standing there across where my arms folded, glaring at you, knowing who you haven't bought it. A weird stare Yeah, yeah

And they'll see it's me And they'll be like Why is world famous Retronauts Presents Standing 600 yards from my house And folding his arms And staring at me

Um No seriously They really I really love them That's why I wanted you on here Because I'm a fan And I wanted to get the word out And I want people to play these games Because if you like

I'm trying to think It's difficult to even say So if you like this like that Because I do think they're quite singular games But if you like platform games that are concerned with being fun rather than being like punishing, you know, that aren't

trying to make you feel like you're just dying constantly, though they do have their challenge. And you want to use a grappling hook that isn't fiddly and it's easy to use the grappling hook and it's incredibly accessible. And there are accessibility options as well if you want to just jump infinitely

because you, I don't know why you would want to do that, but you can if you want. You can jump infinitely. And you want to be a cool dog that you also pet you can pet the dog by the way you like the meme then yeah please get in on this it's very good and that's a stewardship guarantee which is worth an enormous amount of cultural cash obviously so thank you very much thank you for the nice words that's party party nice um yeah oh i can be nice i can be desperately nice well yeah i'm just i'm really really glad you enjoyed it

and um yeah i'm just really glad that it's out there because i've worked on it for so long and people are really vibing with it. And it's, yeah, everybody who plays it seems to really, really enjoy it and really kind of get what I was kind of going for with it. So, yeah, I'm really proud of it. I'm really feeling very positive about it. I'll look forward to Grappledog 3, semi-colon, now it's Zelda. Oh, God, I'm trapped making Grapple Dog forever, yeah.

There's no escape from the hook of Grapple Dog. Well, I have just one last point. I have joked around that I can never include a grappling hook in a game ever again. I've ruined it for myself. You've grappled with your own concept

too much. I'm going to stop doing grappling puns now. Going by the game, it's on Steam, it's on Switch. Is it on an Xbox PlayStation? I can't remember. It is on Xbox Series S and X, but not on PlayStation.

Great fit for the Switch. Great on Steam. Steam deck works perfectly. Both of them do, in my experience. Get them in. You'll love them. And again, thanks very much, and perhaps we'll talk again at some point in the future. Well, thank you for having me.

Yeah, and I love it. Well, all right. That was interesting, wasn't it? do the end of the episode. Thank you very, very much for listening. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. I love doing these interviews, and to be perfectly frank, I think I'm getting slightly better at them, so that's always nice. Nice to find a sort of a rapport there, and I think I did. So, yeah, and I will continue to big myself up. But if you want to big us up in the form of money, and by us, I mean, Retronauts, you can do so by heading over to patreon.com for slash Retronauts, where for just $5 a month you'll receive not just the weekly episodes a whole

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I really can't recommend them enough. And you'll also have the eternal gratitude of us here at Retronauts, and you'll have access to our excellent discord, which you'll, if you're a fan of me saying swear words, you're going to love that discord, because that's all I do in there constantly to the point that I'm always just told Stuart, please stop swearing. It's a family podcast. It isn't because of me. No, I kid. But thank you, seriously.

Thank you very much for listening. And there'll be another episode long in just a week's time. So get excited about it. Thank you.