Mauro Fanelli CEO of MixedBagGames
takes a break from working on their
upcoming game Forma.8 to answer a
few questions
for us.
interview
First congrats on your Gamescom DualShockers award. Was this a surprise to you?
Thanks! Yes, it was totally unexpected, and we are so happy about it. When they gave us the badges on Friday we were 'OMG, those are the first official awards we are winning with forma.8!' So amazing. Hope there'll be more coming in the future!
I can remember meeting you for the first time a couple of years ago at the Leftfield Stand at EGX in the UK. How crazy has life been since then?
Totally, incredibly crazy. As a super small team we worked pretty much non-stop for the last two years, first to release Futuridium, then on Project Morpheus with different prototypes and Futuridium VR, all while at the same time always working on forma.8.
How impressed were you with the reaction of Futuridium EP Deluxe? We all loved it.
Very impressed and very happy! The game is so difficult, and we knew it could be criticised pretty hard. In the end things turned out for the best: Futuridium reviews were polarised, and we were expecting that, but in the end they were mostly very good with some outstanding scores (like yours!). We also were very happy about the feedback we got from gamers, especially after having the game up on PS Plus. The game got a ton of downloads and is now in the hands of a lot of players. We're so happy about that.
How long have you been working on forma.8?
It's been a long, long time. We started working on it during the summer of 2011, first as a little personal project and then as a full game since founding MixedBag in the first half of 2012. forma.8 was meant to be the first MixedBag game to come out, but we then decided to do Futuridium first, so the project is taking a lot more time than we anticipated.
What's the standout impressive feature that makes forma.8 shine?
It's a question for the players when the game launches, not for us! :D Anyway we're really proud of the control system. It's very peculiar and gives a nice sense of flow.
Also we love the general mood of the game; everything is so mysterious and full of surprises, and there's a lot
more depth than meets the eye watching the trailer we've released online so far.
How will the Vita version of forma.8 differ from the PlayStation 4 version?
They're basically the same. The PS Vita version of the game is a top priority for us and we've optimised the game a lot to make it run at its best. Currently the game runs at 60fps on Vita almost all the time at full resolution, with 4x MSAA and all the bells and whistles from the PS4 version: tons of particles, light effects, cool full screen post processing and ripples, dynamic water and lava and so on. We're still working to minimise the loading time a bit; they can be a bit long on PS Vita compared to the PS4 version, but I think we can reduce them a lot before shipping. We still have some tricks up in our sleeves to play...
With all the success of Futuridium has the team at MixBag grown in numbers?
Yes, a little bit! Since the beginning of 2015 we've been expanding the team We really wanted to up the ante on forma.8. We're now 5 working full time on forma.8, with some external help from time to time.
We know you're massive shoot'em up fans, but which other PlayStation games do you play and relax to?
I love to play and try out pretty much everything but sports games. I used to play them but not anymore, I'm just not that interested. As of late I've replayed Journey and enjoyed it immensely again. I've loved the Street Fighter V beta and I'm hooked by Everybody's Gone to the Rapture: it's not usually my kind of game but The Chinese Room really nailed it. I can't wait to play MGSV and I'm very intrigued by Until Dawn – will pick it up as soon as possible!
Which are the standout Vita games you've played this year?
That's a difficult one. There was a lot of cool stuff released on Vita this year! I've played Helldivers a lot; it's an amazing game and works perfectly in portable format, really gives you the sense of playing a big console game on the small screen. I also really enjoyed Geometry Wars 3. It's a great version and the only
shooter that distracted me from playing TxK nonstop!
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