With their latest game,The Gunk, they’ve finally entered the realm of 3D adventure games.
“We’d only ever done 2D games in our own in-house tech,” director Ulf Hartelius says.
We figured out it was doing way too much, but we liked one aspect of it.
“It really triggered that itch for exploration, and everyone just really liked it,” says Hartelius.
Realising they’d struck on a good idea here, Hartelius then started asking a lot of questions.
“This mist, what could that be?”
“And is it covering the entire level or just sections?
Does anything happen when you remove it?
Or is it just to see what’s underneath?
Does it affect the environment?
“I’m really fond of the radio banter that we have in the game,” he continues.
And that took a long time, and a lot of experimentation.
We tried going too deep down various avenues.
As I said earlier, the Gunk was just this mist that existed as balls.
We just placed 1000 black balls in the environment that you sucked up.
That’s how we eventually landed on our final technique.”
“It was very much a matter of give and take,” he continues.
There was going to be lava variant, a snow variant, a fog variant and so on.
It was a long process.
Eventually, though, we decided to focus on the default Gunk.
you’ve got the option to’t really do that when you don’t know."
Indeed, Hartelius says they “hit a lot of walls” trying to blend everything together.
A tension was beginning to emerge.
But when they started bringing in play testers, not all of them were on the same page.
“But it doesn’t seem like it.
It seems like there are a lot of people who really like this punch in of game and experience.
But The Gunk takes it a step further.
It’s very much in that same context.
- they don’t really have all that much real world meaning.
I figured if I can do that, then this game is so much more meaningful.”
you’re free to also read ourreview of The Gunkright here.
