By Jake Rushing and Marshall Garvey
Last week, Marshall Garvey and Jake Rushing had the privilege of being joined by Three Flip Studios’ Rob Howland, Anthony Prusakowski and Brandon Jones. The developers of the upcoming shooter Armed and Gelatinous, Jake met them at this year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. They sat down with us on Google Hangout for a fantastic interview that covered their game, life as game devs, fundraising, their favorite games, the joys of local multiplayer, views on current trends in gaming, and much more. Watch the interview and check out the transcript below! Links for their studio and game are included at the end of the interview transcript.
Marshall: Hello everyone, and welcome to the second official Last Token Gaming Interview! Our first was last year when Sean Willis did a Let’s Play of Hive with the game’s own company founder, Sean Colombo. I’m lead editor Marshall Garvey, joined by staff writer Jake Rushing. Jake, good to see you!
Jake: Heidi ho! Good to see you.
Marshall: And today we are joined by Three Flip Studios’ Rob Howland, Brandon Jones and Anthony Prusa…Prusakowski? [Trying to get pronunciation right]
Anthony: There you go, you got it!
Marshall: Alright!
Anthony: First try!
Marshall: Excellent. They’re the minds behind the forthcoming game Armed and Gelatinous, a multiplayer shooter where interstellar blobs blast away at each other with various weapons. But the more weapons they grab, the bigger and slower they become, lending the gameplay a bit more to strategy rather than just simply shooting away at your opponents. Jake had the privilege of visiting their table at this year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, and got to sample this simple yet highly creative game. Thanks again for joining us guys!
Rob: Absolutely, thanks for having us on!
Anthony: Great to be here.
Brandon: Good to be here.
Marshall: So, first question is: This game was made as an entry in the 2013 48 Hour Game Making Challenge, and ended up being the winner. For those who haven’t read, this contest was in Brisbane, Australia. What was it like having to make a game in only two days? That sounds downright impossible to me!
Rob: Yeah, absolutely challenging, to say the least. It was definitely my first experience with trying to do something like that with such a short time scale. So it was very frantic, there was very little sleep, lots of coffee, a lot of motivation, and getting each other to get the task done as soon as possible…[it] was really an interesting experience, but it was fun at the same time to be able to make something in such a short period of time. But overall, I really enjoyed it, and I was happy to have made something so fun in such a short period of time.
Marshall: Oh, that’s awesome. It’s rewarding. I can relate as a writer. It’s like when you’ve got a deadline, and it just seems impossible, but then you kind of look back on it, and it’s like, “I made that in a day or two?” Definitely a proud feeling.
Jake: I’ve definitely been there. I’ve participated…in the two previous Global Game Jams, and I remember the times where I’d just like…(laughs), yeah, I was deprived of sleep. The last time I did…it was probably the weekend before I started my current job, and I went in my first day at work almost like zombie mode. (Laughs)
Jake: So I know that you had to make a game based off the words “growth,” “arms” and “sticky.” Aside from that, what was your inspiration behind the idea of having multiple blobs that can carry and shoot guns?
Rob: Well, the idea actually originated from another team member who was a part of a Hitbox team we were working with. And his idea was to kind of take the Asteroids gameplay and combine it using that “sticky” element of picking up weapons rather than, I guess, upgrades in general. Or, I guess, your classic Touhou-style shooters where you get weapon upgrade icons, I should say power-ups. In this case, each of your weapons that you pick up becomes a power-up, so you’re just getting bigger and bigger as you go.
I can’t take all the credit for the game, I was just one of six people who worked on it, so it was a really awesome experience getting to see everyone’s ideas come together into one final product. And now what we’re doing is bringing it from that Game Jam state into a place where it can be sort of a polished product with multiple game modes and new ideas going to be added to it. So, what you played at GDC is a very early alpha of what to expect in the final console and Steam version.
Marshall: We’ll definitely ask more about some of the other features, but I’d also like to know: For all three of you guys, what are some of your favorite games of all-time, and/or the ones that have impacted you the most as developers?
Rob: Metal Gear Solid is absolutely the first one that comes to mind. It inspired me to be in the games industry and make games. Playing Metal Gear Solid one, I was actually talking about this earlier with a friend of mine, that part where it tells you to find the CD case and find the call number for Meryl [Silverburgh] was really inspiring for me because you have to actually look at the physical CD case and flip it over to find the code that you need to call Meryl. And just kind of breaking that wall into the real world where you need to think outside the box, I should say…
Anthony: Think about ON the box. (Laughs)
Rob: Yeah, it was just brilliant. That, and the whole Psycho Mantis fight where you have to plug the controller into controller port two so he can’t predict all your moves.
Anthony: And also he would call out other Konami titles on your memory card as well. “Oh, you’re playing Castlevania, are you?”
(Laughs)
Rob: So all those unique ideas that went into that game were really inspirational for me, and inspired me to become a game designer. And I also really liked Okami, the Capcom, kind of Zelda-style game where you’re a wolf painting things…I’m also a huge fan of Super Mario 3. That was my first game ever, and it stuck with me in my heart. And I can still find all the secret whistles and coin ships and all that good stuff. How about you?
Anthony: So I’m a big fan of the Super Nintendo era, so my favorite game would have to be Super Metroid. The entire series, but Super Metroid especially. I even played the original one and the one on Game Boy, but Super Metroid’s the one I really have a lot of nostalgia for. I can remember clearly as a child going through it, figuring it out, having a lot of “wow!” moments. And just the idea of how it’s so expansive…the whole game is really a puzzle, that you need to kind of figure out where to go. But after you master that puzzle, it kind of opens up more to like the speedrunning type of community, and you can figure out how to…break the game, and that always fascinated me.
Brandon: I grew up in the Nintendo era, so I got in in like 1986 on Mario and all those games. But I think some of my favorite games were like the early PC games, like some of the LucasArts titles. Especially the ones that Tim Schaefer worked on, for their story and their inclusion of humor. And I always liked how you could have just a simple background and simple animated characters, but it just becomes even a richer world than some of the 3D titles at the time.
Marshall: Oh absolutely. I just got an original copy of Grim Fandango. I’m going to be inducting that into our Hall of Fame, it’s where we review the best games of all-time. Super Metroid’s already there, Metal Gear Solid will be there.
Brandon: Is that the remastered copy [of Grim Fandango]?
Marshall: Oh, I got the original!
Jake: I had a chance to test the remastered Grim Fandango. There’s an event in San Francisco called the Day of the Dead, I don’t know if you guys have heard of it. My favorite part about that game itself is that you can actually switch back and forth between the remastered graphics and the classic graphics.
Brandon: Really?
Anthony: Oh yeah! They did that in Monkey Island as well, that was interesting.
Jake: Yeah, so if you ever want that original nostalgic feel to that game, you can switch it…and play it as that if you want. That’s one of the best features of that game.
Brandon: Yeah, I love the fact that in Day of the Tentacle, you can play the entire Maniac Mansion, you can play the original game in its entirety from start to finish within the other game. That was amazing.
Jake: You know, I’ve never played Maniac Mansion nor Day of the Tentacle, but I watched Game Grumps play through Maniac Mansion and that looks like a solid game. I kind of want to play it!
Brandon: It’s hilarious, and it’s totally bizarre, and I spent my junior high walking around with like a tentacle hat on this purple baseball hat from LucasArts. Everyone’s parents would be like, “What sports team is that?” or “What’s wrong with that kid?” (Laughter) Trust me, it’s awesome.
(Everyone laughs)
Marshall: So, question: Contrary to what many think, making games isn’t some “goofing off” hobby, but a really difficult process of hard work, creativity and commitment. What would you guys consider the most challenging part of conceiving, writing and developing a game, such as from your experience making Armed and Gelatinous?
Rob: So, I guess when conceiving a game idea, the hardest part for me is scope. In my first game, Influent, I kind of bit off more than I could chew. And with Armed and Gelatinous, it’s the other way around. It was originally designed for 48 hours, which in terms of scope is probably as short as you can get in terms of game development. But since then, since we’re going to be taking it a lot further than that, our scope now is a little bit bigger obviously. So, the scope aspect of game design is something that a lot of people overlook. They have this great idea for something, and, you know, it’s going to be the best game ever and have all these features. But it’s really hard to take the time and plan out how long each of those features is going to take to implement.
So when I’m conceiving and coming up with an idea, after…with Influent, the amount of time that game took and will continue to take in the future, for one or two people that game definitely was way too big. And so this time we’re trying to do something a lot smaller that can be done in just a few months, and is gonna allow us to move on to our next project, which will hopefully be a lot bigger and take us about a year or two to complete. So having something that will be short term will allow us to make something that’s a long-term project. So scope is probably the most important thing that I would consider.
Anthony: For me, I’d say it’s the collaboration concept. We’ve all had numerous projects, we have a lot of diverse backgrounds working in different industries. And we’ve all one time or another worked with bad team members that can really bring the development to a halt, if you have arguments about features, or scope creeping, or just an unhappy client or anything like that. And that can just put a damper on the entire development process. You don’t want the development process to be a negative thing. You want it to be fun because it is such a daunting task. Fortunately with Three Flip we have a history, we all went to college together, so we all know each other, we all know our own stresses and how we deal with those stresses. So I feel we’re working very well as a team together, and we’re very fortunate right now.
Marshall: A little sidenote here, we’ll get to some of the game’s salient features in a bit, but I just wanted to say I really love the music, especially the song you’ve got in the preview clip. It’s honestly one of the best tracks I’ve heard in a game soundtrack in awhile, it creates a really cool mood. How have you approached scoring the game?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSEv2L8AXVY
Rob: That’s our friend in Australia, we actually met him through our filmmaker who’s filming a lot of the Three Flip dev cast and helped us with the Kickstarter video. The artist’s name is Intzu, and he has a Soundcloud and Bandcamp page if you want to check out more of his stuff. But we met him in Australia, and he gave us access to all of his music, so we just picked our favorite song off of one of his albums, and have just taken it from there. So that’s probably going to be our main theme, and we’re going to use a few more of his tracks in the finished game as well.
Marshall: Alright, our next question: Armed and Gelatinous has a strong emphasis on balanced multiplayer action. What are the keys to making the game’s multiplayer mode function for you guys? What are you striving for to make its multiplayer mode stand out, or make it unique or fair or whatnot?
Rob: Well I could probably hand that to Brandon, because as the artist, he’s going to be adding a lot of really cool, I guess, pieces of flair?
Brandon: Yeah, as Rob mentioned, the actual game’s going to look a little bit different, while still keeping the roots of the game style. But as far as making sure it’s fair for multiplayer, one thing I started working on I noticed was that one of the characters was starting to blend into the background. And I thought that gave him somewhat of an unfair advantage, just because of his color and all that. But another thing we’re trying to do is adding downloadable content that you’ll be able to customize your blob a little bit. You know, it’s not going to be seen all over network play, it’s all going to be local multiplayer, so it’s just going to be something you can put on in front of your buddies, basically. We’re thinking more like simple stuff like eye patches, beards and hats and things like that.
Jake: Oh that sounds awesome!
Marshall: That’s kind of like Team Fortress 2, where you can buy silly hats and goofy outfits.
Anthony: Yeah, we’re big old school PC guys, so that definitely spoke to us. And going off of that, we kind of want to mention we’re not a fan of the current trend of microtransactions or overpopulating your game with DLC. So a lot of that content we want to put out basically for free.
Jake: Oh, that’s a wonderful approach to it too.
Brandon: It’s just kind of like a thank you to the users, and just, here’s some extra stuff to enjoy as it goes on, like another reason to stay engaged with the game. And when you’re playing with a lot of different people, that way we can actually get feedback from the user base and put things in they might want to see. Those things don’t take a whole lot of extra time, so it feels a little cheap to try and nickel and dime someone if they’ve already invested in the game and they’re playing it and having fun. It’s just sort of like, “Thanks for being one of our fans.”
Anthony: Well and also we feel as a developer, if you respect and treat your consumer base appropriately, they will respect you as well…I feel there’s a lot of abuse going on right now, you know. We don’t want to lump ourselves in that camp at all.
Marshall: Oh, music to my ears. I couldn’t agree more. I think we’ve written commentary pieces like that on Last Token Gaming. It’s like, you know, DLC shouldn’t be just like, “You bought our game! Now fork over some more.” If you enjoyed the game, you supported it, vouched for it, you know…here, have it for free! I couldn’t agree more with that.
Jake: Yeah, I’ve actually noticed more studios are starting to add more free DLC. I believe I wrote an article on Last Token Gaming on how Witcher 3’s actually put free DLC on there…I’ve also noticed, uh, what was the name of the company? It’s kind of escaping me right now.
Anthony: Projekt Red?
Marshall: CD Projekt Red.
Jake: But there’s also another studio, another one that’s behind Fire Emblem. It’s escaping me right now.
Marshall: The new Fire Emblem is going to have free DLC?
Jake: They just released their game Code Name: S.T.E.A.M…..oh, Intelligent Systems! So one of the biggest downfalls behind that game was that the enemy turrets take too long, and they’re going to release a free patch that fixes that, so you can actually speed up the enemy turrets. It’s also for free, they’re not gonna charge you extra for that.
Marshall: Yeah, patches should be free, but I think we’re agreeing here that DLC should also be free too.
Rob: Yeah, I heard some upsetting news recently about the Mortal Kombat DLC system that they have. I think Anthony’s privy to that. What did they do?
Anthony: Easy fatalities tokens. I don’t agree with that system.
Rob: Apparently you can buy these tokens that allow you to do one button press fatalities, and they’re a one-use item. And you have to pay every time.
Jake: Seriously?
Marshall: That would be stupid if you had to pay just one time. I mean, imagine if you go back to, what, 1995, and you had to stick a quarter in to do a fatality? (Everyone laughs)
Brandon: Yeah, pay to win, that’s not a creative way of doing it.
Anthony: I feel that if you have a free-to-play game on a mobile space, that kind of makes sense with that model, but not a full $60 title. I disagree with that.
Brandon: Yeah, I mean if it’s done well, you know, I really like DLC that’s like a legitimate expansion that’s worth paying for like Monument Valley….it was basically double the content, brand new again, and you can imagine those puzzles like a long time to figure out. And people complained and jumped all over them in the app store and were saying, “What is this?” It’s less than $5, I don’t remember exactly what it was. But it comes out to hours of fun.
Jake: Back to that comment on the fatality tokens, it just kind of takes away the fun of fighting games in the first place. You’re doing multiple button mashes to do certain combo schemes and fatalities in the old school Mortal Kombat games…but if you give it that feature where you do one-button fatalities, it just takes away the core of fighting games. It’s like, what’s the point?
Anthony: Well if you remember in, like, Mortal Kombat 3, they actually had that as a cheat code you could enter and turn on one-button fatalities.
Jake: Is that right?
Anthony: So basically paying for something that they used to give you for free….I don’t like the idea of paying for cheat codes. That really doesn’t sit well with me.
Marshall: Oh, that’s even worse. You’ve gotta get cheat codes the right way! You’ve gotta go online and, you know…
Jake: GameFAQS.
Anthony: Get your Game Genie codes and print them out on a giant piece of paper!
(Laughter and banter all around)
Jake: Alright, so how did you guys manage to make a game that is simplistic in concept yet well balanced in terms of gameplay?
Rob: So it was kind of like a rapid prototype that, you know, we had to make at the game jam. We didn’t really have much time to really play test it, so I think a lot of it was really just serendipity. We were in the right place, working with the right people at the right time, and it all just came together in this kind of beautiful form of Armed and Gelatinous. And I will admit there’s been some rebalancing in the game now, so the original prototype wasn’t as balanced as it now, especially the dash attack, which is still very unbalanced to be completely honest. So we’re going to be adding a charge attack, or a charge-up state to the dash attack, so you actually see it coming. And you’ll also have to spend some time being vulnerable before you actually do that one-hit kill move.
Because right now, it’s kind of a like a free-for-all, everyone’s just dashing into each other. But the balance of it, before you get really good at the dash attack, just kind of happened naturally. And it was kind of a combination of already being kind of good at “bullet hell.” So if you’ve had experience playing bullet hell games, just that whole dodging mechanic, most people are pretty good at already, which makes it easy for you to get around all that fire. And then getting in position to take out your enemy or whatever. But the idea of having a weapon stuck in a particular spot was based entirely off of the words they gave us. That just kind of worked in our favor. So I would attribute a lot of balance and fairness to just serendipity.
Anthony: Well, I’d also like to add that after our studio really took over this project, we showed it off at a number of conferences. So we had a large number of different people playing this game, and kind of doing things we didn’t expect them to. Particularly those Germans, really crafty. When we were at Gamescom, they found a lot of exploits that we really didn’t think of at the time. For example, they’d collect all the weapons and become this massive super weapon, and just kind of sit around in the bottom corner and just dominate the crap out of everyone else! So because of that, we added in a sniper rifle and some other longer range weapons, and actually added in the uzi after that point…reduce its firing cone to make it lower. Just adding in those tweaks because we had these people kind of play test it for us in [an] open arena type of situation.
Jake: That’s funny that you should mention that part where you can just stick the weapons…and camp in a corner, because I actually had that same sort of thought in my mind when I actually played your game at GDC, I’m like, “I wonder if I can just hang around the corner and just obliterate everybody!”
Rob: (Laughs) Yeah, good strategy, it really is. It works! So that’s why we added the sniper rifle.
Anthony: And the heat-seeker.
Rob: And the heat-seeker rocket, which is still being kind of balanced. But the sniper rifle is cool because if you get far enough away from the person in the corner, let’s say you go to the opposite corner, a lot of the bullets they’re shooting will fade out and dissipate before they hit you. So you’re actually kind of out of their range. But the sniper rifle actually has the longest range in the game, it’s the fastest bullet. So if it’s in the right place on your gelatinous body, you can sit up there in the corner and give him return fire over and over again. And you’ll be hitting him, whereas he won’t be hitting you. So there’s different strategies based on which weapons you’re carrying, where they’re located, and where your enemies are. So it’s a rapidly changing environment.
Brandon: One thing I saw people going through the learning curve over and over, watching them at the conference (especially at GDC), and…you see some people figure something out right away just because of some previous gaming experience they’ve had. And they’ll just dominate maybe right away. Other people, it’s like a ramp up time. And at first, everyone just gets as big as they can, you just want that feeling of having all the weapons and that’s just a hilarious moment when you get massive and have bullets going in every direction.
Then I started to notice other people that want to keep their speed, so they intentionally avoid as many weapons as they can, they only pick the ones that they want. So that’s something I’ll try to do, if I can get three sniper rifles in roughly the same part of my body, then I’ll just try to go up and down on one side of the map, and you can pretty much one shot kill someone from across there if you can get close enough. Which is really hard to do. Usually I end up with two, and something to defend the other corner of my body. So…it’s fun to watch other people develop strategies like that.
Anthony: Yeah, we really like trolling each other. That’s kind of one of the pillars of our gameplay. We want you to be able to troll your friends, and we feel that, especially since we’re focusing more on local multiplayer, you know, if you’re playing online and a 12-year-old’s trolling you, you’re not gonna have a good time. But if you’re all playing together with a bunch of friends, then when you troll your friend that’s sitting next to you, you’re gonna have a blast.
Marshall: That’s one of the things I like about the game, is just getting back to local multiplayer. Honestly, I personally don’t do any online multiplayer*. The only one I still do is when friends come over, and we all decide to do Smash Bros. and GoldenEye.
Jake: Oh, I’m the same way. You’ve gotta have friends over, and you’ve gotta play with your friends next to you, man!
Marshall: And you have to jeopardize that friendship!
(Laughter all around)
Brandon: Make ‘em take it.
Marshall: Totally, the test of friendship.
Jake: That’s a nice thing about that game too. Just that sort of local multiplayer, because I don’t hear too many instances of it. I’m actually in a video game club in the south bay, and we do nothing but local multiplayer. But outside of that, it sounds like it’s almost dead. So it’s nice to actually see more of that…in the current gaming industry, aside from the independent game industry as well.
Rob: On that note, we met another indie developer at GDC, I don’t know if you had a chance to play his game. It was by a company called Tipping Goat…
Jake: Oh, Super Slam Dunk Touchdown! Love that game!
Rob: Yeah, we had a chance to get to know him a little better. We both showed our game at an event called Showdown SF in San Francisco, or SF Game Night….
Anthony: It was an event called the Foundry.
Rob: That’s right.
Jake: Oh! I had an acquaintance who had mentioned that to me that [he] goes to the Foundry. I hear it’s super awesome!
Rob: If you’re in the area and have time, I think it’s on Thursdays?
Anthony: Tuesdays and Thursdays. Everyone involved with that, they’re doing it out of passion, and they’re just an awesome, amazing crew that goes above and beyond any chance they get.
Rob: Absolutely, and we were able to get a chance to sit down and play that game at length at the showdown event. And it’s so much fun. I just love the whole idea, and the fact that he’s also doing sort of the same thing: Bringing back the couch competitive local multiplayer aspect of gaming that we’ve been missing for some time.
Anthony: A wild Zamboni has appeared!
(Everyone laughs)
Marshall: Alright, so we’re getting close to the end here. I just want to say, this has been such a fantastic interview. You guys are an absolute blast to chat with, both about your game and gaming in general.
Brandon: Thank you guys!
Jake: Ok, so you definitely had your Kickstarter set up…what was the purpose of campaigning? What were you hoping to accomplish with the funds? Assuming your campaign turned out to be successful?
Rob: So, we asked for $25,000, which in game development really isn’t a lot of money. I had a successful Kickstarter in the past where I asked for $12,000 and ended up getting $30,000. And, in my experience with that, the twelve wasn’t going to be enough, and I was very happy to get the thirty. So I asked for a little more, expecting to get more, like we did in the past. And there’s three of us on this project, that was gonna be enough to carry us three months of development, where we could pay our rent and eat and, you know, keep the lights on. And hopefully pick up a new computer for our artist.
But unfortunately, it wasn’t successful, so what we’re doing now is coming up with other funding options. And the reason we need funding is to essentially do what we do. We’ve kind of gone full force on this…we don’t really have day jobs, this is our passion and this is what we’re doing. And we want our cycle to be sustainable, so if we run out of money, then we can’t do it anymore. So the idea of the Kickstarter was to give us that cushion, so that we weren’t worried financially, and we could put our time 100% into this project without taking contract jobs or day jobs or something like that. More than anything else. But we have a unity license from the last Kickstarter project that I did for Influent, we already are pretty set up with computers, our artist just didn’t have a laptop. But other than, it was just to survive on.
Anthony: Also the payment for the dev kits as well.
Rob: That’s right.
Anthony: But a lot of good has come out of that too. We’ve gotten a lot of exposure, we started building our community, and also because of that, we put Armed and Gelatinous on Stream Greenlight. And we actually got greenlit in like five days.
Jake: Oh, that is tremendous!
Anthony: Yeah, we did that for…Influent, and it was on Greenlight for over a month, to give you a little perspective. We still don’t know why or how this happened, but it’s pretty awesome! We do account some of this success to a random Russian YouTuber, and also we got some support from Who’s Gaming Now?!, who put up some advertisements for us.
Marshall: Oh, awesome.
Jake: That is awesome.
Marshall: Glad it got greenlit so fast!
Anthony: I mean, there’s definitely a demand for this game. People are into it once they see it, or even experience it. We have a free demo out, we’re releasing a lot of our builds.
Rob: Yeah, we think the free demo probably helped a lot with our Greenlight. Because Steam drives traffic to Greenlight, and we had a link to our demo right there. We put the link up on our Kickstarter page, but Kickstarter wasn’t really driving traffic to our Kickstarter page, probably mostly due to their saturation, especially in the gaming space. I mean, we were named a “staff pick” on Kickstarter, which I thought really meant something, but when we looked into it, there was a very high percentage of Kickstarter projects that were staff picks. So I don’t know if it really means much anymore.
Marshall: I was gonna ask about that. I noticed that at the top left corner. I was like, “Oh, awesome!” But still…what a thrill to be greenlit on Steam and get that exposure, especially from other sources. And hoping we can do our part in helping you too!
Jake: Oh, absolutely! I mean, I’m not entirely sure I’ve voted for you guys on Steam Greenlight. But I’m just glad it’s coming out, it’s like, “I’m gonna get that game now!”
Rob: Well, we’ve got at least one sale!
(Everyone laughs)
Brandon: No matter what happens, it’s coming out for sure.
Rob: On that note, we also have a good relationship with Sony and Microsoft. We’ve met with both of them at GDC, they’re excited about the game. So we’re going to be coming out on Playstation 4 and Xbox One. So you can play it on your console, you can play it on Steam….[and] I think we might even push out on some of those small Android devices….so we’ll probably try to get Armed and Gelatinous on as many platforms as possible.
Anthony: Yeah, we were hoping during GDC there would be more of a “hoorah!” about the Steam Box, because they’re kinda announcing it. But it just kind of piddered out a little bit in favor of….the Half-Life 3 rumors of course.
Marshall: Well, I’ve gotta say, we only had a few questions left, and you guys have basically answered them all. So, again, I really appreciate hearing about the game, hearing about your lives as developers, some of your favorite games…this has just been one fantastic interview, I really appreciate it.
Jake: One more question….you did mention that you’ve had some talks with Sony and Microsoft, you said it’s coming out for PS4 and Xbox One. Do you have an ETA when it’s going to come out for those two consoles?
Rob: I guess our ETA now is in the summertime, maybe late summer. But there’s always, especially in indie development, setbacks. And maybe if we want to add other features, we’re going to be adjusting that date. But now our goal is to have it out in July, so we’re going to be pushing forward to that, but you know, things happen. So we’re going to do our best to meet that deadline. But I also wanted to say that we’re going to be releasing videos, and kind of talking about our current development process on this Three Frip Devcast, something we started around GDC and have three episodes out and a couple of other videos along with that. So we’re going to be, I guess, keeping our community updating, so we can let you know if anything changes in person.
Jake: Perfect! That sounds great. And you’ve mentioned how you’re looking at other campaign options. Have you considered Teespring? I know Tipping Goat had that sort of plan in case their Kickstarter campaign failed. So I guess you could set your goal, probably t-shirts…you could just crank out those t-shirts for those who contributed…it should help raise a little more funds.
Rob: Yeah, that’s a good idea. I heard a little about Teespring from Rick [Felice] at Tipping Goat, and I actually still haven’t checked it out yet. I’ll give it a look and see how it appeals to us!
Jake: Alright.
Marshall: Thank you guys very much, I really appreciate you guys giving your time for the site. And hopefully we can do our part in providing some mort publicity for this game, which we will definitely buy and cover when it comes out hopefully in July.
Rob: Thanks guys, it means a lot to us really.
Jake: Well thank you guys for agreeing to our interview!
Marshall: Thanks again. We were joined by Rob Howland, Brandon Jones and Anthony Prusakowski from Three Flip Studios. Again, they’re the developers of Armed and Gelatinous. Be sure to check their game out…again, I’m Marshall Garvey joined by Jake Rushing and Three Flip Studios, and this has been one fantastic interview! Thank you guys, and everyone have a great night!
Links:
Three Flip Studios Official YouTube Page
Three Flip Studios Official Twitter Page
Armed and Gelatinous official site
*Correction: Except for Team Fortress 2, obviously.