Starstruck: The Hands of Time sees you dig old Guitar hero guitars to play tunes and become a giant hand destroying a handmade city of popsicle sticks and cardboard.
The game's developer sat down with Max Ponoroff, the game's director, to talk about what attracted them to offering musical and destructive gameplay styles in the same game, how the developer's strange need to destroy what he created led to the ridiculous segments of giant hands, and how the inspirations from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood would help shape the world of the game.
Game Developer: Starstruck: The Hands of Time mixes music-based action and interaction with destruction like a giant hand. What inspired this unique blend of gameplay styles? Why combine music and destruction in your story?
Max Ponoroff: The idea with BewitchedThe gameplay of was to allow the player to experience a unique, unified and interesting view of the world from the different perspectives of each of the three protagonists. And since each protagonist has a different perspective, the gameplay is different between them.
In the past, there were multiple games designed along these lines, with a single world to explore from the perspective of multiple different protagonists, each with different gameplay. For example, many games in the SaGa series, Sonic adventureand even MOTHER 3. In more recent times, Nier: Automata has further developed this way of doing things.
They say there are three main components to a film: characters, world and story. The same could apply to story-based video games. Given the interactive and real-time nature of video games, it makes a lot of sense to me that a video game would focus more on their worlds than movies, since video games seem suited, by their nature, to reveal the nature of their worlds. worlds nonlinearly from multiple perspectives.
Image via Createdelic.
Was this blend always what you had in mind? How did this happen? Bewitched Did it change (or stay the same) during development?
Ponoroff: Originally, the game was simply going to be a story-driven rhythm game. However, after creating the city graphics, I felt the need to destroy everything and turn everything upside down. From there, the rest of the ideas began to take shape, and it became clear how they would connect to the different characters' perspectives.
Rhythm is present in much of the game. What thoughts were made regarding the game's music playback system? What inspired you to make it sound similar to games like Guitar hero AND Rock band?
Ponoroff: There are two significant differences between Bewitched and other guitar rhythm games: It's a horizontal rhythm game instead of vertical, and the notes stay fixed on the screen instead of moving.
The main idea behind these choices was to ensure that the player's eyes always moved around the screen while playing the songs. The reason I wanted this was so that players could glimpse the background images as the songs played, because these images are often there to help develop the characters and story. You only need to worry about this kind of thing in a story-driven rhythm game, which is why you don't see arcade-style rhythm games that work this way. But you see it in games like Bewitched, PaRappa the rapperAND KON! Ho-kago live!!who ultimately all try to bring everything back to the story and/or characters.
Image via Createdelic.
Bewitched Allows players to connect a variety of older guitar controllers to play. What struck you about that idea? What challenges did this create in making so many different controllers work with the game?
Ponoroff: This was something I implemented due to popular demand from players after releasing the demo. There's a huge community of people who still play various games with these controllers and they work pretty well for this type of gameplay, so it seemed like a natural fit. Honestly, the biggest challenges with this feature were with Unity, as I needed to change the game's input system from Rewired to Unity Input System to support control remapping.
You have designed a variety of different challenging levels for players with the paced gameplay. Can you tell us a little about the thoughts behind the design of each of the difficulty levels?
Ponoroff: One of the great things about creating a rhythm game is that there are people out there with a lot of knowledge and skill in charting. I actually originally created the leaderboards for the game demo myself, but they honestly weren't that good, so I sought help from a charter called Chezy from the rhythm game community. Chezy created the charts with the commonly accepted conventions of this type of rhythm game in mind, including the various difficulty levels.
What thoughts went into the music included in the game? What kind of audio style and musical genres seemed suitable for this experience of exploring life as a pair of guitar players in a handmade world?
Ponoroff: I thought it was important that the music felt handmade and not entirely digital to convey the concepts and world of the game. For this reason, whenever possible, we used live instruments and voices. And also for this reason I thought it was important to incorporate many different musical geniuses. All of this was only possible because I happened to work with Andrew Allanson as the game's lead composer, who was always willing to explore unusual and challenging ideas and then hit a home run with each one. In the end, I think all the factors came together to make a high-quality soundtrack.
Image via Createdelic.
Much of Bewitched has a handmade visual style, the game is full of clay characters, popsicle sticks and cardboard buildings. What drew you to this style? Can you tell us about the work that went into designing it?
Ponoroff: The art style was designed by Brian Allanson, the game's lead artist. We researched vintage model trains, miniature dioramas and things like that to come up with the basic concepts together, and then Brian took inspiration from there and created the models. To create textures for some of the models, Brian also took photos of real-life objects like cotton balls and popsicle sticks.
Can you tell us how you designed the game's vibrant city? From concepts to its final form in the game?
Ponoroff: Bewitched adapts its game series from the American television program Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Half of that show takes place in Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, a realistic American suburb, and the other half takes place in a mysterious surreal world called “The Make-Believe Neighborhood,” a fictional place that Mister Rogers invites the viewer to visit with him. Like Mister Rogers' neighborhood, Bewitched is based on traveling back and forth between two locations: the Captain's realistic-looking spaceship and the miniature diorama neighborhood, the “Neighborhood of 20XX”. For this reason, some observant players may notice that the 20XX neighborhood features some interesting visual homages to Mister Rogers' neighborhood.
After hand-crafting this style, can you tell us how you managed to make breaking things while playing with the giant hand so satisfying? How did you capture that feeling of childlike creativity and destroy your creations with giant hand moments?
Ponoroff: It was a long process of trial and error, the kind I'm sure every game developer has gone through. Ultimately, it was about trying out different ideas and seeing how players reacted to watching them play on Discord and talking to them afterwards about what looked good and what didn't.
Image via Createdelic.
What ideas went into the various tools and ways the hand would destroy things? What do you think they added to the game?
Ponoroff: Ultimately, I think the most critical aspect of the hand-playing sections was the humor. Bewitched uses a lot of visual comedy and one book that really helped me work with it was Too Funny For Words by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas.
What do you hope players take away from playing the game? Bewitched?
Ponoroff: It is an undeniable fact of this world that not everyone can be at the top of the pyramid. This is just one of those ugly truths that no one really wants to face or talk about. I think every modern person is probably troubled by the cognitive dissonance related to this question on some level. In the course of a single school day, a student might be taught both that everyone is equal and that life itself owes its very existence to, and is therefore defined by, the process of survival of the fittest (and, by implication, the cancellation of losers). ).
How can we make sense of it? As the world becomes more bifurcated with each passing year, this question becomes increasingly important, even in everyday life. I hope everyone who plays Bewitched may derive some benefit from examining this question.