What kind of freedom does digital distribution afford you, when compared to traditional disc releases?
As developers, digital distribution allows us to control the scope of the game. Being a small company, we wanted to make a game we could do well, creating a game with no filler. A traditional disc release would force us to make a bigger game with a bunch of extra features that don’t make the game any better. Plus that would have taken way more money than we had in the bank.
A lot of the digital download games that have been recent hits–Bionic Commando Rearmed, Shadow Complex, Limbo–have been fairly evocative of gaming’s past, either in terms of style of play or by subject. Why do you think that might be?
I think the recent downloadable hits struck a chord in the gaming market, saying 2D games are still a vibrant and relevant style. 2D games are just easier to navigate; this allows the developers to experiment and expand gameplay rather than focusing on the basic controls. Most gamers started with 2D games, be it on Atari, NES or DS so playing games in 2D seems to bring back a sense of nostalgia.
You know, Shank‘s over-the-top and morbidly funny at parts, but the main catalyst of the game is getting revenge. How’d you guys balance the serious stuff with the dark humor?
I think the 2D style puts it at a level where the player separates it from reality enough to find even the most gruesome actions quite amusing. As a director, I always play Shank off as a serious character but, sometimes, he’s so serious he can get a laugh. If Shank was a live action show, it would be very disturbing but by being animated it almost makes everything ok.
Were there any design rules, in terms of looks or levels, that you tried to keep sacred? Like, “no hints…EVER!”
We wanted to include design ideas from the classic arcade games, simple things that gave Shank a retro feel. In our game, everyone has a name and lifebar, including every miscellaneous thug and dog. At one point, the crates had names but we removed that. As a call-out to retro games, we added a Hard mode. This is a classic arcade hard mode where we removed all the checkpoints in the level. If you die, you start from the beginning of the level.
If you had to compare one old-school game hero to Shank, in terms of sheer violence, who would measure up?
That’s a good question. If any old-school game hero can roll with Shank, it would be Marco (or Tarma) from METAL SLUG. Those guys were hardcore: good with knives, guns, grenades and even tanks. Shank would work well with them.
Shank‘s out today on Playstation Network and will release tomorrow for Xbox Live.