Interview: Doctor Kvorak’s Obliteration Game’s Richard & Lin Bang
The ability to try new concepts and play around with novel ideas makes indie gaming a garden in which innovation happens, and Doctor Kvorak’s Obliteration Game certainly meets all such criteria, involving aliens, cosmic intrigue, high stakes, and chickens in spacesuits. Developers Lin and Richard Bang have been hard at work on their project (which releases later this month), and we discussed everything from madmen to map editors.
Erik Meyer: DKOG invites players to become aliens navigating puzzles and obstacles in Dr. Kvorak’s cosmic game show; we begin without a great deal of setup and dive into the mix, largely learning about the game world’s high stakes from the immortal egomaniac who has taken us hostage. Give some background on this style of exposition and the interactions you see as essential for orienting the player experience. What goals do you have for the game’s first 20 minutes, as developers?
Richard & Lin: Firstly, thank you so much for inviting us to talk about Doctor Kvorak’s Obliteration Game. For new players, the Obliteration Game is a single player puzzle adventure for Windows PC and VR that tells the story of an immortal trickster and his deadly galactic game show.
During the first twenty minutes of the Obliteration Game, the story opens with you playing Greeboo, a contestant in the most famous program in the galaxy. Exposition is deliberately kept to a minimum; You have no idea what’s going on, and all you know is that you have been plucked from your planet and dropped into a game show. During the course of playing the first level, the story then introduces the game’s two central characters, the Doctor and a seemingly random rhyming space chicken called Eggloot. Much of the game’s exposition is performed by the interaction of these two central characters, and the story of the Doctor unfolds with the increasingly witty and barbed exchanges between the two.
The Obliteration Game is split into fifteen game zones (levels), each with a different planet to liberate (save) or obliterate (if you lose the level). The first twenty minutes of gameplay will take place in the first game zone arena and are mainly concerned with setting the scene and teaching the player to move around, how to use the character’s special power, and how to solve puzzles in order to pick up the savior stones which must all be collected in order to save the planet. Players can also win the prize of exciting alien technology which they can take home with them after the show, which will advance their worlds by thousands of years. There are also collectibles and ancient artifacts which can be exchanged for different accessories (skins) for your character.
By the end of the first game zone, we tried to ensure that the player knew the goals of the game, as well as understanding the principle game mechanics, and also setting the scene for the rest of the Obliteration Game story.
EM: The art style of DKOG falls somewhere between Mars Attacks and a dream Bob Barker might have while watching Alf reruns, serving as a callback to the campy sci-fi of yesteryear in a way that is at the same time refreshing and unusual. Some colors in the game world are muted, while others pop, creating a chaotic feel. I’m curious to hear your philosophy behind game asset design, and how do you see the parts operating as a whole?
R&L: The Obliteration Game art style is certainly rather eclectic! We tried to capture the feeling and ambiance of an 80’s game show, and we designed the assets and art style to reflect this. Players have likened the Obliteration Game to a cross between Portal and the Running Man movie, and we feel that this is a pretty accurate description. The Doctor is very much styled in the vein of a slightly desperate and washed-up 80’s game show host who is seeking to massage his giant ego. Over the course of the game, we learn that the Doctor is a rather unstable character, existing in a state of chaos, and we tried to create the art style to reflect this conflict in his inner psyche, through the use of color and the specific assets chosen.
EM: The game includes support for the Oculus Rift and the Vive, along with a level editor. Content created by game communities often surprises developers, and as the universe you’re creating already includes a number of fantastic elements viewed from a largely top-down POV, what kinds of space adventures do you see spawning from enthusiasts, and how do you see VR playing into the overall big picture?
R&L: We are very proud of our VR level editor – we spent eighteen months developing it to work both on desktop and on the HTC Vive, and we tried to make it as intuitive as possible. As to the future, Virtual Reality is in it’s infancy at the moment, and in-game VR editors in particular are very new, so quite honestly we have no idea what players will come up with! However, we are tremendously excited by the possibilities of what Doctor Kvorak’s VR community will create. It’s going to be very interesting 🙂
EM: Megalomaniacs make for tricky central characters, and playing as Greeboo (or Mic-mak or Tik-tok) means gamers abstract themselves as humanoid (but very much non-human) beings. Obviously, you want players to connect with DKOG’s various inhabitants, so what becomes critical in creating and maintaining connections?
R&L: Over the course of a single episode of the Obliteration Game show, the story explores the struggles of a bitter and confused god who is trying to come to terms with who he is and how he feels, and how he discovers the true purpose of what his life means and how he relates to others. It’s a story about questioning the darker side in all of us, and we tried to convey this emotional message through the evolution of the characters themselves and how the player relates to them.
We therefore spent a great deal of time ensuring that the design of Obliteration Game characters were as appealing as possible so that players could really identify with them. For example, when you go close up to Greeboo with the camera in either desktop or in VR, he turns to look at you and his pupils dilate, which usually induced an emotional response from the players when we tested it at gaming expo’s. “Aaah, he’s so cute!” was exactly the response we were looking for!
Each of the characters moves differently; Greeboo is a short, pudgy alien, and he moves slowly, awkwardly, and he falls over quite a lot. Mic-mak is a super-fit cat-like creature and moves faster and has different abilities, and Tik-tok is an insect who has very unusual powers, which we won’t reveal just now as it would ruin the surprise!
It was of critical importance that the two main characters (the Doctor and Eggloot) were also designed to connect with the player. For example, at various times, The Doctor will talk directly to the game characters, and at other times, he will break the fourth wall and talk directly to the player, as in a real-life game show, so you are then abstracted as being a member of the audience.
The evolution of the story, particularly the exchanges between the Doctor and Eggloot, are designed to draw the player in, and through the use of humor and rhyme, to make the player want to solve the mystery of Doctor Kvorak and why he wanted to create his deadly galactic game show.
EM: Using a gameshow as the framework for DKOG means the audience brings a certain level of knowledge and expectation to the game. What is it about gameshows that draws us in, and why do we accept outlandish hosts without a second thought?
R&L: We are big fans of gameshows, especially those from the 1980’s era. They had a certain format, a delightful almost overdone retro style and we really tried to re-create that feeling. So much depended on getting the character of the Doctor just right. He had to be a larger-than-life character with a massive ego, which in turn meant that he was hiding his insecurities and seeking validation and adoration from everyone else. His character was written very much to draw on the darker side of the character of Killian, the game show host in the Running Man movie, Caesar in the Hunger Games, and with a touch of Q from Star Trek the Next Generation.
The game show format requires a strong character as the host because he is the only one who is consistent across episodes. A weak game show host will not draw viewers back to watch the next episode, so the funnier and more flamboyant the host, the more the audience is drawn in. Game show hosts appeal to the extrovert part of us that we would never dare to be.
EM: Describe the offbeat inclusion of things like collecting cheese and planet pieces; as you’ve constructed the reality players enter, what guides your aesthetic choices?
R&L: Each of the fifteen game zones (levels) has a particular planet as the prize to liberate or obliterate, and each of these worlds has a different history, which the Doctor talks about on each level. Each zone’s collectibles reflect the history and nature of the prize world, so the Cheese planet (which the Doctor selected because of his passion for cheese toasties) requires the player to collect cheeses as collectibles, or for example on the Very Berry planet, the planet is famous for a culture obsessed with food and baking, so the story and collectibles (cupcakes) are centered around that theme, and the technology prize is also tailored appropriately for each zone.
More importantly, each of the game zones presents a different aspect of philosophy which is examined as part of the Doctor’s evolving emotional journey. Remember that the Doctor is a trickster god, and tricksters use humor and deceit in order to teach their subjects a lesson about their lives, how they could better themselves, and how they can grow both spiritually and emotionally. Eggloot the space hen is the critical character here, as she forces the Doctor to look in upon himself, examining a different personal aspect in each game zone, for example, his ego, his mission in life, the nature of friendship and kindness, and so forth. In effect, the trickster becomes the tricked in the Obliteration Game.
EM: Indie games are often a journey, and yours includes the creation of a short film, Doctor Kvorak Destroyer of Worlds?, a number of years ago. What have your press, social media, and other public interactions been like since that time? What do you value in community interactions, and what ideas have come to you from unlikely sources?
R&L: Because we have been working on the game for so long, we have involved the gaming community every step of the way. We have attended game expos every year and are fortunate to have a loyal community who have helped shape the Obliteration Game (such as the addition of character skins and a VR map editor, which our players asked for.) Without them, our game wouldn’t have the rich feature set and gameplay depth that it has today.
As for ideas from unlikely sources, they are too numerous to mention, but one example would be the character of Eggloot, the space hen. Once upon a time, Eggloot was a real chicken, a wild hen who appeared from nowhere and lived in our garden for a while. We became very attached to her, and we were devastated when she was eaten by a fox. Our daughter asked for her to be in the game, so here she is, immortalized as one of the game characters, and in fact, one of the lynch-pins in the story of the Doctor.
EM: The game releases soon, so looking ahead, do you see yourselves creating more levels to challenge contestants? Will I be able to play as Elvis? Or Margaret Thatcher? Or Liberace? Describe what your post-release schedule looks like. Do you have other game ideas on the table at Freekstorm?
R&L: Gosh, that sounds like a very intriguing idea! Our post release schedule currently involves porting to other platforms and particularly consoles as soon as possible. We have had a lot of requests from players, so this must be our top priority at the moment.
As for other game ideas, yes we have a cunning plan, but it’s top secret for now. If we told you, then we’d have to obliterate you!
In case you missed it, here’s the trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY__sVSetjc
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