Hothead Games Interview

Recently we sat down for an interview interview with Hothead Games’ Joel DeYoung, producer of the Penny Arcade episodic game series. After the success of Episode One and the recent showing of Episode Two at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) convention, it is time to get more information to wet your whistle.

Mike and Jerry’s involvement with creating the story and art of Episode One is well known. When making this episode, how involved in the story did you get to be? What would you say are the benefits of being involved (or not) in the story process?

Joel: We actually collaborate quite a bit with them on the story now. The pace and length of the game, the complexity of the adventure puzzles and other aspects of gameplay are interwoven into the story. So, those guys know the direction they want the story to go and how they want it to end up, but we bounce ideas back and forth on all the details in between. Through the process of making Episode One, we learned how important it was to do this planning early.

Since Episode One ended, Hothead has mentioned the carry over of your character. Does this mean everything you had when you beat the final boss will still be in your inventory? Can you give us more details?

Maxing out your stats at the end of Episode One means that your party can be as high as Level 15 if you import your save game and character. Your character’s look and all of your items are available to you as well, and if you want to improve upon your looks, you can always browse through the new customization options at the start of the game. About the only thing that won’t carry forward is your weapons – we’ve automatically upgraded Tycho’s tommy gun to a shotgun, Gabe’s fists now have brass knuckles and your character has traded in your rake for a hoe. We're sticking with the garden tool theme!

With this being the second in the series, will there be new weapons and items? If so could you please tell us a few of them and how they will work, if possible?

As I already mentioned, there are new weapons for you. As for items, yes, we’ve definitely added a few tweaks there as well. Before, you could use a health item to revive downed characters in combat. Now, you have to use a specific revive item to bring party members back to the action. In addition to some new attack items, the special attack mini-games have all been updated as well. I think you will find them a bit more challenging to execute perfectly.

In this episode, compared to the last, will we see more than four areas that are playable? If so, could you tell us how many playable levels there will be and maybe about one of them not shown at PAX?

In Episode Two, you’ll be able to revisit a few old areas like Desperation Street and Anne-Claire’s Room, but there are also four new areas to explore. As you’ve probably seen from the first showing we did at PAX last month, there’s the Cloying Odor Sanitarium, an insane asylum run by the evil Dr. Wolfington. We also showed a very small piece of Riverbrook Park Estates, which is the wealthy district, the very antithesis of Hobo Alley. What we didn’t show was a Science Symposium, where some of New Arcadia’s greatest scientific minds have gathered (to Anne-Claire’s great interest), as well as a final level that we’re keeping secret.

What engine are you using in this game and what makes it the best fit for this game?

We started work on the Penny Arcade game series over 2 years ago now and selected an early version of GarageGames’ Torque engine. It was a good choice at the time, as it was a stable and inexpensive way to get the game running quickly and easy to port to Mac and Linux. However, a lot of modification was necessary to obtain the rendering effects we wanted, and to adapt it to various consoles. So while it's built on Torque, we’ve effectively created our own custom version of the engine for all of the episodes of On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness.

It took a lot of effort to get everything just right for Episode One, but we’ve been able to hit the ground running on the rest of the episodes because of the investment we made up front.

When this game comes out to XBL, PSN and PC, what kind of price point will we see? Also will there a special price break for Episode One during this time?

We're finalizing pricing details right now, which takes a little time because our partners at Microsoft and Sony are part of that discussion. We're happy with how the game was received at the $20 price for the first episode, and we got lots of feedback that people found it to be good value for the amount of gameplay.

At PAX there was a special collector’s edition that was brought out for Episode One. With Episode Two, could we expect something like this for all systems or only certain ones?

Although we’re a digital distribution company, we realized that some folks just have to have the physical copy. We’re definitely looking at special boxed versions for the Windows, Mac and Linux platforms for all episodes. Further down the line, we may produce retail versions for the console versions as well, packaging them as a “season” of four episodes for those interested in having one for their library. None of this is finalized of course, but when people tell us they want this kind of thing, we definitely listen!

With download content on the rise, will we be able to see on the Xbox version some themes, gamer pictures or any other content from Episode Two? What are your thoughts on download content?

This is a topic we've gotten a lot of questions about, and is something we'd like to start doing more of. Stay tuned for future announcements!

As a 360 owner we like to personalize our consoles. Have you thought about making Penny Arcade game-themed faceplates or skins for this system?

We have talked about this idea, but to be honest the whole team has been so focused on working on the game we haven't started the process of making something like this happen. After building a game studio focused on digital distribution, it's amazing how many logistical hurdles you find when faced with the task of creating physical goods.

Since production of Episode Two, what has been one of the team’s greatest accomplishments during this process and why?

One of the things I am particularly proud of is how fast and efficient our team re-architected the engine to work on multiple consoles at the same time as Windows, Mac and Linux. Of course, this isn't something players see directly, because the game just runs smoothly on all these platforms. But it was a pretty amazing piece of work, and reflects the wealth of experience we have here in the studio.

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We thank Joel DeYoung for his time and for his dedication to making creative new games for us to play.