Stikbold! Interview

It changed quite a lot; of course the graphics had changed, except the whale, which is the only part of the game which has remained in there. The theme of the game jam was “Grotesque”, so we modeled the game around it, which is why whales came up, and cannons… The game would spin up into space on a platform! It would be crazy… We tried to theme it a bit more: we put the whale in the oil rig level, and the bus in the roundabout level… So, it was a bit of a mash up, and we tried to put it into levels. Oh, and there were ten players, and we rounded it down to six.

Basically, we were inspired by the 1970s sports stars: our main character was named after Björn Borg, the tennis player! We wanted to do the whole game in the 70s universe, because we feel that Scandinavia had a lot of interesting things going on back then. So, we tried to model the whole universe with this Scandinavian vibe, like the roundabouts and fields are typical.

Yeah, it’s kinda like a buddy movie-thing, where you want to play the finals, but they’re tonight -- and some guy in a devil costume comes in and steals your love interest, who is also the captain of the other team. So, you have to go out and figure out what happened and get her back. Our world is a place where every conflict is resolved by playing dodgeball. So, when you meet the angry hippies or the weird captain on his oil rig, the only way to get some information out of them is by playing dodgeball.

We are currently looking into adding more content in a later update. Perhaps more modes or a throwback to the original game jam level, where everything basically escalated into madness.

It's either the giant skeletal hand that you use to grab the players in Hell, or the whale from the oil rig - the only piece of art we kept from the game jam version.

In it's essence, Stikbold! is a game you play with friends and for us, that means a cozy couch and a big screen, snacks and beverages. We had the opportunity to pursue a tablet version early on, but we realised that we would have to scrap the core of that we loved about it ... so a tablet version of Stikbold! - if we chose to make one, will be an entirely different game, where we imagine you would manage a whole team.

We were all kids in the 90s, so there's no denying that we grew up with those kinds of influences. Originally we chose a more simple version of the art style for the game jam, and it has since then evolved into something more expressive and colorful. We chose to maintain the low poly and flat shaded look, since it's great to work with and did a good job at expressing the 70s vibe we are going for.

As of now, that's not something we are working on. In retrospect it would have been awesome, but we would have had to plan for it to begin with - and the road from making a game jam game to realising the potential in making it a full-fledged title has been weird and wondrous.

It's actually been easy, due to how we've been funded. We've received a little bit here and there from different programs, which has allowed us to make very specific parts of the game - with that kind of restraint, you are painfully aware of what's possible and the darlings you'll have to kill.

You will learn some of the essential team play mechanics, that can be useful if you play Team Mode. We also feel we have a nice and quirky story that brings out the characters personalities. After playing through it with a friend, you'll probably have a new favorite character or two due to all the contagious laughs you'll have. There's a lot of silly little details, that an extra set of eyes can help you notice.

Replays. Having a well-designed replay mode, allowing you to save and edit replays is one of the things we really would have liked to do. If we ever do a sequel, that's on top of the wish list.

While we have streakers in the gym arena, the boob shape is entirely coincidental. All our arenas are round and the gym markings are pretty much standard... at least they didn't draw these parallels when it was rated. Wait a minute, doesn't this mean that pokéballs look like boobs too?

We're great fans of Rocket League and have dabbled in games like TowerFall, Don't Starve Together and Monaco. Anything with a local multiplayer or co-op mechanics is right up our alley.

Let's Make An Adventure is a small mobile experiment that we set out to do, to get a change of scenery. It's loosely based on a Cards Against Humanity type of gameplay, but with optional obscenities. It's not really our next project as such - just a little breather, while we get ready for our next game.