Following up DePaul University’s 2010 entry in the IGF Student Showcase Devil’s Tuning Fork, a team of development students from the school have once again cracked into the lineup of the 2011 Festival. With Octodad, students created a 3D game with unique controls. The tale follows an octopus who is living the secret life of a suburban father, much to the behest of a local sushi chef. You’re tasked with controlling the dad’s eight arms, both with awkward walking and flailing arms in order to continue your ruse in front of your wife and kids. I got a chance to (virtually) discuss the game with the development team and got some great answers full of insight into this unique title.
DIYgamer: Can you introduce yourselves and your roles on Octodad?
Kevin Zuhn: I’m Kevin Zuhn, the project lead and head writer.
John Murphy: I’m John Murphy. I’m the producer.
Greg Mladucky: I’m Greg Mladucky, one of the designers.
Kyle Marks: I’m Kyle Marks, and I am a designer.
Jake Anderson: I’m Jake Anderson, lead designer.
Ben Canfield: My name’s Ben Canfield and I’m the visual design lead.
DIYgamer: Was teaming up part of a class at DePaul or were other factors involved in deciding to work together on Octodad?
John Murphy: A couple of DePaul professors interviewed about fifty students to pick out a team of twenty to create a game to win the IGF Student Showcase. It was an extracurricular project starting in June. When school started back up in September some of the team turned their work on Octodad into a sort of independent study while others continued with it as an extracurricular project. While we didn’t decide to work together, Patrick Curry and Scott Roberts, our advisers, did an incredible job of picking a team full of people with complementary personalities, so it pretty much felt like we we all had come together on our own.
DIYgamer: Can you talk about the early origins of the game and any other interesting premises you ended up not pursuing?
Kyle Marks: So one of the ideas we had during conception came from Seth, our Sound Lead, who pitched a game based on the quantum physics thought experiment of Schrodinger’s cat, in which a cat in a box may be alive or dead based on an earlier random event. From this we created a pitch about a game where the player takes the role of a cat that is represented by four cats, all of which are controlled simultaneously. We had envisioned the screen divided into four quadrants representing different possible realities. If an “eye” in the level spotted a cat, all of the realities would collapse into one. Ultimately we passed on this idea because we had trouble prototyping enough interesting gameplay without adding extra mechanics, and we found several games that were too similar to our design.
Greg Mladucky: Another of the last few ideas we looked into before we settled on Octodad was a side scrolling platformer that gives players the ability to create, move and destroy black holes. The black holes were used to bend, change and distort the level around the player in order to solve puzzles, move objects, and “fling” their character to places they couldn’t normally reach. The prototype turned out fairly well but was not quite unique enough. The Octodad prototype got our team excited and seemed like the unique game we were looking for. With its unprecedented and interesting gameplay, as well as its overall premise, we knew it would be hard for people to miss.
John Murphy: We spent a few weeks pitching ideas and got to a point where we almost decided to go with one of the two ideas that Greg and Kyle mentioned. We did one more round brainstorming in small groups to either flesh out earlier pitches or to come up with something totally new. Nick Esparza (lead artist), Seth Parker (sound designer and composer) and I were becoming frustrated with our ability to make the quantum superposition idea into actual gameplay, so I suggested the dumbest idea I could think of – the idea of a person driving a person with horribly complicated controls. Then Nick goes ‘What if it were an OCTOPUS driving a person? We pulled up a You Tube video of ‘Jurassic Park: Trespasser,’ which we thought was unintentionally hilarious but also compelling. So we brought this ridiculous idea of an octopus driving a person back to the team, and it eventually morphed into the player controlling an octopus with a human family.
DIYgamer: How did you decide on the control scheme? The coordination involved reminds me a little of the flash game Qwop.
Jake Anderson: The initial pitch for the emphasized the slapstick comedy of an Octopus pretending to be human. One of my favorite memories from our concept stage was John flailing his arms around to demonstrate how he visualized the game coming together. To achieve this in game, we recognized that we would probably need a combination of physics and direct manipulation of the tentacles. The mouse was the most organic input for the PC, so we focused on using that for input rather than the more robot-like keyboard.
Strangely, most of the team hadn’t played or seen QWOP until after we released the game and started seeing comparisons in comments. Our earliest demos had a falling system which would cause you to fall down if your legs were too far apart, or if you became “unbalanced,” which was even more similar. During development we looked at other similar games like Envirobear 2000 and Jurrasic Park: Trespasser for inspiration for our controls.
DIYgamer: What early ideas didn’t make it into the final iteration of the game?
Kevin Zuhn: I could write essays on the number of ideas we had to leave out of Octodad, but here are a few of them. We had some funny-sounding scenarios in mind, such as Octodad knocking over display products and slipping on banana peels at a grocery store, filling toner cartridges with his octopus ink at the office, or having a final showdown with the Chef in a construction yard. There were two characters who were cut from the game fairly late in the process, John and Jane, who were Octodad’s normal next-door neighbors. Some of the members of the team often pushed to add a rival character named Squidfather as well…
DIYgamer: What was the most difficult aspect to get a handle on in early builds of the game?
Jake Anderson: At first, I think our idea of what would qualify as a fun challenge was too narrow. On one of the early challenges we created the entire house with pretty much a hide and seek game with small environmental obstacles that the player would have to avoid. That playtest was pretty hard to watch, but we were able to quickly identify the problems in the level and look at future challenges from a different perspective. After that we emphasized the movement over the objective in the design of the game’s challenges, which worked pretty well.
DIYgamer: For each of you, what’s your favorite moment in the game?
John Murphy: Beating that little jerk Tommy at soccer.
Kevin Zuhn: I love the end, when you build the mannequin and then face the dreaded ladder! I feel like it has the most tense and rewarding moments in the game.
Greg Mladucky: That would have to be the cut scenes. The art team did a great job getting those together and it really made a difference to me working on a level to see a new cut scene pop up for the first time. They really brought all of our gameplay, ideas and spaces together, making all of our work seem that much more cohesive and polished.
Kyle Marks: My favorite moment in the game is when Octodad puts his game face on and gets to beat Tommy at his own games.
Jake Anderson: I’ve always enjoying using the arms to throw the dinner suit, banana, and doll onto the mannequin from across the room. Its not an implicit challenge, but its fun just to mess around in the levels to see where potential challenges may be found. That, and making Octodad dance around.
Ben Canfield: I really love in the kids’ room when you’re putzin’ around on the lower level not really sure what to do next – admiring the beautiful vista through the tall windows – when you turn around and there’s 300 spiders coming to destroy your child. It gets me every time!
DIYgamer: What’s the first thing you want to hear people say after playing Octodad for the first time?
Kevin Zuhn: Something along the lines of “Ha ha, what was THAT!?” I want people to be just as bewildered and delighted upon finishing as they were when they first watched the trailer.
Ben Canfield: Even though I’m the Visual Design Lead, and I really do enjoy when people comment on the visuals, I love hearing people laugh. If someone is genuinely having fun playing the game it makes it all worth it.
DIYgamer: With its over / not-over ending, are there more plans for Octodad?
Kevin Zuhn: Absolutely! While we did our best to make Octodad give the player some closure, we’re working on the real end to the story right now, and we hope to have it ready by GDC. Of course, that’s only an end to the story of Octodad’s tenth anniversary. After that, we have plans to delve into all manner of adventures from Octodad’s crazy life!
DIYgamer: What’s next for everyone?
Kevin Zuhn: Seeing as I’ve graduated, I’m working on moving back to Chicago so that I can work on future games with this team, Octodad-related and otherwise.
Greg Mladucky: More Octodad! I’m continuing to work on new llevels and ridiculous gameplay ideas. We still have quite a bit still planned for the loveable and clumsy father.
Kyle Marks: On the side I’m currently working on a MOD for Unreal Tournament 3 which will be in alpha in about two weeks. I’d also like to finish another pet project called “Keyboard Sweeper”. Greg, and I have also been throwing around a few ideas about a joint project. And then our team has some more Octogoodness planned for GDC.
Jake Anderson: Well, we’re still not done with Octodad, there’s a lot of content we have discussed and joked about which could find its way into a game. Personally, I’m looking forward to continuing my senior game development project, which has just started in development.
Ben Canfield: More content for Octodad! I want to design more posters, more cereal boxes, and more items for the player to find when they’re exploring the levels. I love playing games and finding goofy jokes from the devs hidden in the nooks and crannies.
John Murphy: Some of the team wants to move on to work on AAA games, now that they’ve got a project under their belts that shows how talented they are. I’m hoping to use our success to work on a larger commercial sequel to the game and eventually make other innovative, insane games that appeal to a large audience.
DIYgamer: Congratulations on your selection in the IGF Student Showcase and good luck!
Everyone in virtual unison: Thanks!
Octodad is competing for a $2,500 prize as part of the Independent Games Festival 2011 Student Showcase. You can download and fumble around with this cephalopod-centric adventure for free from its official site.
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