I’ve been following the two-man team behind Boss Baddie’s games for a long time. They’ve been working on an epic platformer called Tormishire for a long time, but they released Lunnye Devitsy last summer, and Wake just over a month ago. After Wake’s release, I asked the team if they’d be willing to sit down and talk with me, and they obliged.
Since a sea separates me and them, we had to converse through other means. MSN was the intermediary, and it gave up on the connection at least three times. But after some heavy stitching, I’ve managed to put together the words we exchanged in some semblance of order.
If this is your introduction to Boss Baddie, you can find demos for their released games here. A review of Wake will be somewhere on this website tomorrow.
DIYgamer: First things first, can you introduce yourselves and tell me a little bit about what each of you do for Boss Baddie?
James Whitehead: I’m James, I do all the graphics, coding and website stuff. Sometimes music too.
Alex Sumesar-Rai: I’m Alex Sumesar-rai, aka MrPineapple, and I make music a lot. I tend to throw idea sin and test as well, but I started as a musician. I didn’t test before we started Tormishire.
DIYgamer: What brought the two of you together?
Alex: Well, thats a long story. Long and dull. I’ve known James for nearly 10 years now, but we’ve never met in real life! How very progressive of us.
James: Gamemakers! An age old MSN Group. Alex was pimping his MrPineapple game and I was causing trouble with the admin.
Alex: Haha.
James: Then when Tormishire was being made I dropped in one of his tracks and we decided to team up and just make beautiful games and music together.
DIYgamer: You guys released a new game earlier this month called Wake. What’s it about?
James: Last summer I saw that horrible Poseidon remake. All throughout it I imagined playing it as a game, I’d just finished work on Lunnye and thought “why not!”
DIYgamer: OK, and why should people buy it?
James: People should buy it because it’s awesome. One of the players described it as an escapevania, so it’s in fashion too.
DIYgamer: Do they escape from a sinking ship in the Poseidon remake?
James: I think a few survivors do. They don’t get a high score though.
Alex: They don’t get that title screen either. The title screen alone inspired me to make the soundtrack.
DIYgamer: The title screen is hauntingly beautiful.
Alex: And it should be, James spent literally days on making it look that way. You should see all the half-finished versions of it I have on my desktop!
DIYgamer: You’re selling Wake and your first game, Lunnye Devitsy, together and calling it the Lunar Pack. Is there something that ties the games together?
James: Their themes just seemed similar. In Lunnye you play a moon damsel who has to find abstract methods to get home in an open world. In Wake you have to travel through a large open ship to get to safety. They both just seem to be about a person making their way home any way they can, with the moon being a continuing theme. Tormishire follows this too, except you’re running around inside a moon.
DIYgame: Hence the term escapevania?
Alex: I do like that term.
DIYgamer: So do you consider Tormishire the third in a series of thematically related games?
James: Definitely, and once it’s released there will be a bundle containing all 3 games. Tormishire is what binds them.
Alex: Although it’s more than capable of standing on it’s own.
DIYgamer: When did you start working on Tormishire?
James: December 2006. What seems like a lifetime ago!
Alex: I think i joined it about a year in, which isn’t that far in really considering the scale.
DIYgamer: Has it been in constant development, or do you take breaks to work on other games like Lunnye, Wake and the one you just announced?
Alex: Well, there’s only really been one break so far, it’s just been a large one in which yes, we’ve worked on Lunnye and Wake.
James: We have made some minor updates along the way. The next big one is to enable DirectX graphics and shaders and all that.
Alex: That and add the other two chapters.
DIYgamer: So far you’ve made 2D games with pixel art, but you’re dropping the pixels for the next project. What brought on the change?
James: The next game is going to use a different art style again just because I can’t settle on a single style. I like to experiment whenever I can and this next game required a HD resolution. Seemed the perfect opportunity to try something new.
Alex: Hopefully the music side will reflect that too.
DIYgamer: How do you approach the music when working on a new game?
Alex: It depends. Usually I’ll wait until James has a test level, or even a title screen, then work off that. But sometimes it works the other way round. There are a few areas in Tormishire that he made from listening to tracks i made.
DIYgamer: You released a sampler of music from Tormishire a few months back. Is the soundtrack basically finished?
Alex: More or less. I expect we’ll find a few places to stick some more songs in along the way, but we do have a lot of music for it already from both of us, and a few which we both worked on together.
James: One of my favourite tracks that too.
Alex: Ditto.
DIYgamer: Which track is that?
Alex: The one used on the Hi, Boss Baddie! video. I believe that was a collaboration.
James: Also used in Boss 5.
DIYgamer: You developed an online scoreboard and achievements to work with Wake. The game hasn’t been out for long, but have they been busy?
Alex: Melcadrien’s score impressed me.
James: The scores haven’t, though we did have to remove all our test scores. We want that board filled up so we’ve dropped the price of the game.
DIYGamer: Have any users beaten your own high scores?
James: It seems a bit unfair to put my own time on, not that I’m bragging or anything!
Alex: Well, being able to ace your own game isn’t that much of a thing to be proud of. More a fact of life.
DIYgamer: It would give players something to brag about.
James: One of the achievements is a time I set on hard mode, but that’s to do with getting to an exit under a certain time rather than getting a high score.
DIYgamer: So which game can we expect first, Tormishire or the new project?
James: The new project, oh yes! We’re hoping for a short development time with this one. Tormishire will hopefully be back with a vengeance after that.
Alex: Even though we still haven’t thought of a name for it yet.
DIYgamer: When you announced the new project, you also called off the Satan Sam 2010 port. How much work had you done on that?
James: The visuals had been updated and we were still redesigning the powers and upgrades. But Sam’s time had been and gone. If we could click our fingers and have it magically ported, that would be great. For now we’re busy with bigger projects
DIYgamer: You guys certainly seem busy enough.
Alex: Thats just James being a workaholic, I think. Always with a million projects up his sleeve.
DIYGamer: Well, I think that’s all I meant to ask about, unless there’s something either of you want people to know about.
James: Just that Wake’s entrance fee has been dropped and there’s a patch out. Our next game should be out within a couple of months so stick around or something!
DIYgamer: Thanks for talking to me, guys.
Alex: Thanks for letting us type at you.
James: No problem, its been fun! Barring the connection and messenger problems. Always with the problems.
Alex: I blame Microsoft and BT respectively.
Digital Distributor GamersGate has rolled out a week long sale that includes several titles that we at DIYG both know and love. Discounts range from 50%-75% off and the offers are all lovely, so take a look and see if you can turn your misfortune of not owning/playing these games yet into the reward of solid savings.
This week we had to scour every corner of the web to dig up enough sales, but as it turns out, those discounts we did find are heavy. Starting from 50% off and up to a name your price option, were in the high rollers room tonight.
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