Don’t Die Mr Robot is about to be released on PS4. Are you looking forward to gazing at your beloved robot on a big screen?
CHARLIE: Absolutely! But frankly I'm more excited to be hypnotised by the reflection of the DS4's light bar in my TV as it cycles through the zones... Oh and it'll be nice to see people's robot customisations on the leaderboard in their full heavenly glory.
MIKE: Yeah it’s gonna be rad. I mean let’s be honest, it’s about time the PS4 had its killer app system seller.
SJ had the intense pleasure of reviewing DDMR back when it was first released on Vita. She scored it 8/10 and has had nightmares of killer exploding fruit ever since. What have you got to say for yourselves?
CHARLIE: This wouldn't be the first time I've had an adverse effect on a woman's dreams :(
MIKE: I still feel guilty about making SJ walk into a bin while playing it.
From the first spark of an idea to Mr Robot’s arrival on the Vita, how long did the entire process take? Feel free to elaborate with exact quantities of Wotsits consumed.
CHARLIE: For such a seemingly simple game, it’s had a surprisingly long lead in... We first prototyped the concept under a very different guise many Wotsits ago, and the star of that version appears as an unlockable cameo. When we came to realise Don't Die Mr Robot as it is today, we were only working on iOS games, so he started life on that platform under the name Avoid Droid. But after a short spell, we started Vita development and got pre-emptively scared of Lucasfilm's lawyers and their trademark of the word "droid", so we moved everything over and re-branded it. The whole thing took about 427 packets of Wotsits and a can of Diet Coke.
MIKE: Charlie doesn’t let me near the Wotsits because I end up getting yellow cheese-dust all over the devkits
If a talking badger came to your front door one sunny Sunday afternoon and asked you to bake him a bread and butter pudding with extra custard, what would you tell him?
MIKE: Yeah I’d be down with any spontaneous badger hospitality. I’m a big badger sympathizer and very fond of said pudding myself. My neighbour is mental obsessed with this local badger we’ve got. He honestly thinks he’s eating his gooseberries. He goes around his garden in the night banging a saucepan to deter the badger. They don’t even eat gooseberries. The man’s a lunatic.
CHARLIE: The judge has forbidden me from hosting for any form of Mustelidae over the next 3 years after the ferret incident early last year. Who knew baking soda would have such an effect...?
How did you get into making video games?
CHARLIE: I've always loved playing them, then discovered by typing random stuff into a keyboard I could actually make them. I also discovered there were courses to teach me how to make my typings less random which helped. In my own time I made a few games, and used these to get my first job with a real game studio.
MIKE: To be honest, in 2005 I was Food Safety and Technical manager at London’s biggest fruit and veg wholesale distributer. In 2006 I was a producer working on an n-gage game. I have no idea whatsoever how it happened. I’m scared.
How old were you when you started gaming and what was – or is – your favourite console of all time?
CHARLIE: Around 13 or 14 on the good old ZX Spectrum was where I first discovered games. It's hard to pick a favourite console though, as it's usually my latest. However I have particularly fond memories attached to my SNES because of the period in my life associated with it.
MIKE: It started with my Atari 65XE around my 8th birthday. It proper blew my mind with its
amazing selection of arcade conversions. Centipede, Missile Command – and not forgetting the 8-bit Llamasoft titles. But yeah, like Charlie, my favourite
Don’t Die Mr Robot is a whacky little game about a whacky little robot who gets whacked in the face by exploding whacky fruit. It stands to reason that such a brilliantly whacky game would be developed by … people who are completely normal. Well, we don’t think so. We think they’re one nut short of a bag of cashews and to prove it we’ve slipped some sophisticated brain assessment questions into our interview with them. Afterwards, we will present an official psychological evaluation.
Don’t Die Mr Robot is about to be released on PS4. Are you looking forward to gazing at your beloved robot on a big screen?
CHARLIE: Absolutely! But frankly I'm more excited to be hypnotised by the reflection of the DS4's light bar in my TV as it cycles through the zones... Oh and it'll be nice to see people's robot customisations on the leaderboard in their full heavenly glory.
MIKE: Yeah it’s gonna be rad. I mean let’s be honest, it’s about time the PS4 had its killer app system seller.
SJ had the intense pleasure of reviewing DDMR back when it was first released on Vita. She scored it 8/10 and has had nightmares of killer exploding fruit ever since. What have you got to say for yourselves?
CHARLIE: This wouldn't be the first time I've had an adverse effect on a woman's dreams :(
MIKE: I still feel guilty about making SJ walk into a bin while playing it.
From the first spark of an idea to Mr Robot’s arrival on the Vita, how long did the entire process take? Feel free to elaborate with exact quantities of Wotsits consumed.
CHARLIE: For such a seemingly simple game, it’s had a surprisingly long lead in... We first prototyped the concept under a very different guise many Wotsits ago, and the star of that version appears as an unlockable cameo. When we came to realise Don't Die Mr Robot as it is today, we were only working on iOS games, so he started life on that platform under the name Avoid Droid. But after a short spell, we started Vita development and got pre-emptively scared of Lucasfilm's lawyers and their trademark of the word "droid", so we moved everything over and re-branded it. The whole thing took about 427 packets of Wotsits and a can of Diet Coke.
MIKE: Charlie doesn’t let me near the Wotsits because I end up getting yellow cheese-dust all over the devkits
If a talking badger came to your front door one sunny Sunday afternoon and asked you to bake him a bread and butter pudding with extra custard, what would you tell him?
MIKE: Yeah I’d be down with any spontaneous badger hospitality. I’m a big badger sympathizer and very fond of said pudding myself. My neighbour is mental obsessed with this local badger we’ve got. He honestly thinks he’s eating his gooseberries. He goes around his garden in the night banging a saucepan to deter the badger. They don’t even eat gooseberries. The man’s a lunatic.
CHARLIE: The judge has forbidden me from hosting for any form of Mustelidae over the next 3 years after the ferret incident early last year. Who knew baking soda would have such an effect...?
How did you get into making video games?
CHARLIE: I've always loved playing them, then discovered by typing random stuff into a keyboard I could actually make them. I also discovered there were courses to teach me how to make my typings less random which helped. In my own time I made a few games, and used these to get my first job with a real game studio.
MIKE: To be honest, in 2005 I was Food Safety and Technical manager at London’s biggest fruit and veg wholesale distributer. In 2006 I was a producer working on an n-gage game. I have no idea whatsoever how it happened. I’m scared.
How old were you when you started gaming and what was – or is – your favourite console of all time?
CHARLIE: Around 13 or 14 on the good old ZX Spectrum was where I first discovered games. It's hard to pick a favourite console though, as it's usually my latest. However I have particularly fond memories attached to my SNES because of the period in my life associated with it.
MIKE: It started with my Atari 65XE around my 8th birthday. It proper blew my mind with its amazing selection of arcade conversions. Centipede, Missile Command – and not forgetting the 8-bit Llamasoft titles. But yeah, like Charlie, my favourite console is the SNES. I never had one myself so I suppose there’s an extra layer of un-requited nostalgia. I spent my formative years lusting after my mate's imported super famicom. I strongly believe that if you put a teenage kid on Mario Kart, Street Fighter II and Super Mario World they’re gonna grow up right.
The media has recently declared black pudding to be the unsung hero of the fry-up and the new superfood of 2016. Are you pleased about this and how do you like your eggs?
CHARLIE: Haha you're not even joking! Regardless, black pudding may as well be sliced devil phallus. Any fry-up vendor that will swap out the black pudding for an extra egg or bacon slice will for sure be getting my repeat custom. As long as the egg yolks are sunny-side up and runny.
MIKE: Man, I’ll eat pretty much anything if it’s fried. ‘If you don’t fry, the taste will die!’ – that was my grandma’s mantra. Ironically, she died of a cardiac arrest. I like my eggs flipped over and done on both sides.
What were your favourite games of 2015?
CHARLIE: Bloodborne, Blood Bowl, Rainbow 6 Siege and Rogue Legacy.
MIKE: Bloodborne, Downwell, Hotline Miami II, Super Mario Maker.
Which games are you most looking forward to this year?
CHARLIE: There's so much great stuff coming this year... Dark Souls 3, Detroit, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Mirror's Edge Catalyst, No Man's Sky, Horizon: Zero Dawn to name but a few on PS4. Plus Civilization Revolution(sic) on Vita.
MIKE: Is it bad to say our own game, Wing Kings? Cos I’m pretty excited for that!
Any more plans for Mr Robot or are you working on anything else?
CHARLIE: There are no immediate plans for any more Mr Robot once he's out on PS4 and iOS. Right now, we're hard at work on our next game: Wing Kings (http://youtu.be/FnSktgPNbt8) which is a 2D arcade flight rogue-like. Development on it is a little slow at the moment though. Not because we have to work around our day jobs/families, but because we get distracted blowing stuff up every time we play test.
MIKE: I’ve got a name if we do a sequel! It’ll be called ‘Oh Dear, Mr. Robot!’ We’ve chucked some ideas about like co-op modes and that, but we’re already making one game and have at least 2 games in planning. P.S – one of those is called ‘SHITBEARD THE PIRATE’ but that’s top sekrit.
If you could only give one piece of advice to someone looking to get into the video game business, what would it be?
CHARLIE: Proven experience counts for so much more than academic qualifications... Make something and ideally release it if you are a developer. Otherwise make levels for an existing game if you're a designer, concept art/models if you're an artist. Get together with likeminded friends to make a complete game. Simply being able to see a project through to completion goes a long way when you have no experience.
MIKE: What Charlie said, really. Find something you're good at and get better at it. Team up. Make stuff that you know you will/can finish. Basically don't give up, don't sell out.
In September you took part in the Now Play This exhibition in London where you promised to give away real fruit as prizes for highscores. Could you tell us more about this and do you have any other plans to give away grapes?
CHARLIE: This was a great day, but we had an awful lot of fruit left at the end. We ended up giving it away to random homeless guys as we pottered around London afterwards. Grapes won't really be thematically appropriate for Wing Kings, but knowing Mike, he'll be working on an angle to get them into the game somehow!
MIKE: Hahah yeah, busted! That Arcade Survival mode in Wing Kings is totally screaming out for some parachuting cherries. But yeah, Now Play This was fun. We love these public events and talking to fellow gamers. We're showing Wing Kings at the Norwich Gaming Festival on 1st April 2016 so if you come along to that, come and say hi and have a go!
Verdict of psychological assessment: two donkeys and a raspberry donut.
Infinite State Games:
Fruity Basketcases?
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