Tormentor X Punisher Interview
After we had such a good preview of Tormentor X Punisher at gamescom, we jumped at the chance to speak to one of the people behind it - Joonas Turner.
Can you give us the elevator pitch of what Tormentor X Punisher is?
Sure thing, Tormentor X Punisher is a comic book inspired top down arcade game where you chase the highest of scores by giving demons a hard time! The game's main character: "TERMINATOR SOMETHING" has ended up in a deadly arena in "PLANET FUCK YOU!" and faces demons of various kinds: including their overlords who shape up and change the arena in various ways. She is armed with a gun that acts both as a machine gun which shoots quick and reaches far, and as a shotgun which shoots out three bullets, although reaching a shorter distance. It can learn tricks depending on how you use it! Oh, and shooting the shotgun also reloads the machine gun. My elevator rides have all the buttons pressed, heh!
It looks like it takes influences from a lot of places, was there anything in particular you were inspired by?
I started the game as a personal game jam just to make something for a controller. I was heavily inspired by various arcade games such as Geometry Wars and top down shooters like Tapan Kaikki.
After becoming more serious about the game and thinking about the general mood and direction, I started to channel a lot of my influences from comics, animations and various games like Prison Pit, old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics and cartoons, Korgoth of Barbaria, Necromunda and so on!
You’ve worked with sound a lot previously, does sound have a huge influence on Tormentor X Punisher?
Indeed, I am a sound designer and a voice actor by profession. Sure enough sound and music play a huge part in the feel, communication and world building of the game, but they don't act as the main influence alone. To me, it's all about everything working together to give a nice, punchy, tight gameplay experience. To us it's gameplay first and everything else shapes around that to make it alive!
Raw Fury are relatively new in the indie scene, what was it like working with them and how did you get involved?
This is my first time making my own commercial game with a publisher and they have been pretty welcoming, relatively straightforward and easy to work with in that regard. We have a lot of freedom to make the game we want to make, I guess ultimately when the game is done and released it's easier to give a more cohesive thought over the process in retrospect.
The name screams 80s action, is there any more to it then just an epic crossover of words?
Heh yeah the name is, hmmm, a bit of a dumb riff over 80s/90s metal band and action movies and cartoon names. I came up with the name quickly when making the original jam and just needed to name the session hahah... It was so ridiculous, how could I not use it?
You have one hit point each playthrough - what’s the longest you can last and what is the average game length?
Ah that's right, all the enemies and the bosses and the player character have only a single hit point and it's over! I personally don't enjoy videogame encounters where you have to chug away at an enemy for too long without really doing anything that impactful. So instead decided that everything is one hit death, which kinda forces us to make more interesting and immediate mini-puzzles with the enemy encounters and making everything seem dangerous to uh, everyone!
I expect the average game time to grow up scaling with your experience, a bit like playing Spelunky or Nuclear Throne where your first runs last a minute onwards but end up lasting way longer the better you get! Except in Tormentor X Punisher the lifespan starts from being mere seconds up until a few minutes when you get really good at the game. I guess my best time (without cheating!!) might be somewhere around three minutes now, I think, and in this game three minutes feels like an hour hahah... It can get pretty intense!
Can we expect to see leaderboards and challenges?
Yes, by its core the game is all about chasing the highest score and encourages you to be better than anyone else in the world and definitely encourages you to be better at punishing demons than your friends!
What’s the craziest thing you’ve seen in the game?
Oh wow, so many moments to choose from, but I think right now I'll share this little scenario:
I'm running through a room complex built by a nasty boss called CARRION who jumps up in the sky and smashes down, making floors rise up creating rooms. So I'm running through this complex and a few SHIELDERS (demons that carry shields) arrive from different doorways and charge at me. I manage to dodge them one by one and escape the room, shooting some enemies out of the way, until I notice this massive circular saw approaching us and decide to lure the SHIELDERS into the saw. As I pull off this dangerous plan I see this large pack of BOYZ (basic melee demon) running at me accompanied with a WIZARD shooting magical bolts at me. I decide to shoot my shotgun at the right moment to clash with a magical bolt next to the BOYZ to cause an electric explosion, thus stunning all of them and upon my celebrating cheer I failed to notice there was one still conscious and behind me, with a club, in my back, dead.
All this happened in a matter of a few seconds, as mentioned it can get pretty hectic!
You’ve mentioned bosses in the game, how do they work and when do they arrive?
Ah yes, upon killing demons you raise the awareness of the overlords who want a piece of the action too and decide to spawn into the arena to have a go!
I'll give a few examples of the bosses:
GOLEM: A hulking demon who throws huge stones at you and upon colliding with a wall they shake the very foundations of the arena, resulting in chunks of ceiling to fall down to create new walls into the arena!
BIGBONES: A big, disgusting slug-like demon with a great appetite who eats demons to spit out huge homing gore-balls at the player. Occasionally the demons inside the old belly are too much and BIGBONES pukes pools of deadly acid that remain on the ground for the duration of the current run.
All the bosses attempt to mix up the arena and gameplay in various ways, never being too complex in design but just enough to give a slight change in attention and focus of action.
Is there an end-game?
As the game is more of a highscore arcade game, instead of having an end-game as such, we decided to have the game loop after all the bosses are dead. So when you loop the game the amount of bosses that spawn gets increased, so first time you loop it's two bosses spawning at the same time, second time you loop the game it's three bosses at the same time and so on.
Any news on a console version?
If the game does well and we can afford to port the game, definitely would love to see the game on consoles too!
When can we expect to get our hands on Tormentor X Punisher?
Sorry for the vague answer, we are not 100% sure about the release date, but hopefully early this Spring it looks like!
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