{"id":1177,"date":"2017-10-01T15:30:00","date_gmt":"2017-10-01T15:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/news\/2017\/10\/feature_learn_more_about_indie_pogo_a_quirky_brawler_featuring_iconic_nindies"},"modified":"2017-10-01T15:30:00","modified_gmt":"2017-10-01T15:30:00","slug":"feature-learn-more-about-indie-pogo-a-quirky-brawler-featuring-iconic-nindies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2017\/10\/01\/feature-learn-more-about-indie-pogo-a-quirky-brawler-featuring-iconic-nindies\/","title":{"rendered":"Feature: Learn More About Indie Pogo, a Quirky Brawler Featuring Iconic Nindies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Indie Pogo<\/strong>, from developer Lowe Bros. Studios, is not only a love letter to Nintendo fighting institution Super Smash Bros. and similar brawlers, but is also an ultimate indie game collaboration; it features characters from many popular indie (and &#8216;Nindie&#8217;) games. The <a class=\"external\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/1642689247\/indie-pogo?ref=thanks_tweet\">Kickstarter for the project<\/a> is well under way, though sadly its Switch stretch goal is still some way off; at present the GameMaker engine isn&#8217;t supported on Switch, which means it&#8217;d need to be ported to a new engine unless that scenario changes.<\/p>\n<p>As Indie Pogo features so many characters and IPs familiar to eShop gamers, however, we just had to know more. We took the chance to talk to the masterminds behind such a bonkers yet gloriously ambitious project.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"object object-youtube\">\n<div class=\"youtube\">[embedded content] <\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p><strong>First of all, congratulations on the reaction to your kickstarter project, Indie Pogo.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Oh, hey there! Yeah It&#8217;s been incredible. It definitely justifies the last 3 years of development!<strong><br \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>How has the development process been so far?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Honestly, it&#8217;s been somewhat of a struggle. Not the development on the game itself, but situations in my life that have happened as a result of me deciding to go indie. You sacrifice a ton of stuff in order to make these happen, independent of a publisher, such as a stable career and many of life&#8217;s finer things. That said, I wouldn&#8217;t do anything differently if I were given the chance. No regrets.<strong><br \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>What attracted you to develop a game with such a wide variety of characters?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve always been somewhat of a collector\/completionist. When we decided early on to make it a crossover, it&#8217;s in my personality to strive towards having ALL the best cameos. So far, I&#8217;m pretty happy with the one&#8217;s we&#8217;ve got! Funnily enough, it wasn&#8217;t always meant to be a cameo crossover. It was meant to be a marketing platform for our own games where we would retroactively add new characters in with each release. That&#8217;s why Stardrop is a playable fighter.<strong><br \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>We<\/strong> <strong>can see there may be a few aesthetic and technical Influences. Was there a particular aspect of the game that was the focus or did everything come together organically?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I was primarily influenced by 4 games: <em>Slambots<\/em> (iOS) was the first. It&#8217;s an autojumping arcade platformer that I played and thought &#8220;What if this were multiplayer?!&#8221; The humorous tone and retro art style is very much inspired by <em>Legend of the Mystical Ninja<\/em> (SNES). As we developed the basis for the engine, we kept saying &#8220;this feels like it needs more X to make it competitive&#8221; which where the obvious <em>Super Smash Bros<\/em>. inspiration comes into play. And the simple movesets that have communicative functionality stems from my unhealthy obsession with <em>League of Legends<\/em>!.<\/p>\n<p>I learned a design process in my time at Zynga called &#8220;The Onion.&#8221; Basically, it means you don&#8217;t develop ANYTHING until the base is solid. For us, that was autojumping. That meant we narrowed in on gravity\/momentum, landing squish, dust particles, collision, jumping\/landing sound effects, etc. And then you build out naturally from there. So we added a second instance of the prototype character and focused on hitstun, visual effects, head-jump, sounds, knockback, facedown state&#8230;.all before ever looking at attacks, character traits, weight classes and more. You essentially build in layers, and this gives a great result because you&#8217;re not building up incomplete systems with the intention to fix things later. In game design, that&#8217;s like building a house in quicksand.<strong><br \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Since the announcement of the kickstarter, it&#8217;s been incredible to see the reaction from fans and devs offering support and contributing IP. How has it been for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s honestly been so vindicating. I&#8217;ve had movesets planned for some of these newly recruited characters for years. Keep in mind, I&#8217;m a HUGE fan of these characters and worlds, otherwise I couldn&#8217;t justify including them.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s also nice to see that the social connections I&#8217;ve carefully built have been paying off. It almost feels like we&#8217;re in the center of a big indie network. I think it&#8217;s been a good time for many people involved!<\/p>\n<aside class=\"object object-youtube\">\n<div class=\"youtube\">[embedded content] <\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p><strong><br \/>Not only has the reaction been (rightly) fantastic, but seeing the roster increase &#8216;in real time&#8217; on social media is pretty uncharted territory. That must be exciting.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s funny you should mention that because I was thinking the exact same thing. I can&#8217;t think of another instance where a project has expanded so rapidly in such a public manner. We&#8217;re definitely doing things nobody else has done before and it&#8217;s easy to forget that in the heat of the moment. We get compared to <em>Super Smash Bros<\/em>. a lot (and I definitely stoke that fire) and I think there&#8217;s a natural tendency to advertise character reveals in a similar way. But we&#8217;re doing our own thing, regardless of what Smash or other indie crossovers are doing. I think that&#8217;s important in order to maintain our identity.<strong><br \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Also, the sense of community amongst indie developers is unprecedented. How has it been making these new relationships?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It has definitely gotten easier lately. We&#8217;re finally able to ride on the momentum we worked hard to build. There have been quite a few times when a studio or developer has given us the hookup with another studio. I try not to ask for that until I&#8217;ve proven we can implement their character\/world in a way that&#8217;s faithful to the original. I think that&#8217;s an important thing when building trust: to gain respect, one must respect their counterpart&#8217;s work.<\/p>\n<p><strong><br \/>With little to no characters initially, how did the look of the game start and develop?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I think that the best word to use here is simple. And that was part of the reason we were able to make a strong foundation. We had to make something unique and polished in order to appeal to some of the more famous studios. I think if we had started out with all the flashy characters and well-known IP&#8217;s the game would be very different at it&#8217;s foundation. I&#8217;ve always said, beyond anything else, I just want to make a good game. And then I want to make a good indie crossover. Because you can have the best graphics or all the famous indies in the world, and nobody will care if the game isn&#8217;t fun.<br \/><strong><br \/>There is of course one game above all others that the game resembles&#8230;!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re referring to Super Smash Bros. I obviously see some similarities, but by no means are we a clone. I don&#8217;t think it would have done anybody justice to simply clone Smash and call it a day. That would have been easy. We want to be memorable.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture strip\">\n<div class=\"img\"><a href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/news\/2017\/10\/feature_we_learn_more_about_indie_pogo_a_brawler_featuring_iconic_nindies\/attachment\/0\/original.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/news\/2017\/10\/feature_we_learn_more_about_indie_pogo_a_brawler_featuring_iconic_nindies\/attachment\/0\/original.jpg\" alt=\"Screenshot.png\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p><strong>Does the team have tournaments?!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve never done any public tournaments, although we usually have a crowd of players who like to stay at our convention booth for hours and compete! Internally, my brother and I testplay everything in detail. That&#8217;s how I&#8217;m confident we&#8217;ve made something fun. He&#8217;s my rock in many ways, even though he&#8217;s only a part-timer on this project.<br \/><strong><br \/>One of the stretch goals is to get the game onto Nintendo Switch. Indie Pogo seems perfect fit for the system.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I am heavily influenced by Nintendo games in my art style and game design values. \u00a0So I think it&#8217;s natural that the game I create as a result would fit there!\u00a0<strong><br \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Are you excited about potentially working with Nintendo?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I SINCERELY hope Yoyo Games and Nintendo can allow GameMaker to port to Switch. I&#8217;ve owned every Nintendo console since the NES. That would be an absolute dream come true for me.<strong><br \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>What games influenced you growing up?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (SNES) is still one of the best games I&#8217;ve ever played. It has a way of being so much more than the sum of its parts. That and <em>The Legend of Zelda: Majora&#8217;s Mask<\/em> are games I think about often. But I let myself be inspired by many mechanics from many games. It&#8217;s hard to pinpoint them all.<br \/><strong><br \/>Have you got a Switch? If so what are the games you are playing?<\/strong><br \/>Personally, I&#8217;ve not been able to afford one, but I&#8217;ve played more than enough <em>Breath of the Wild<\/em> on my brother&#8217;s Switch. Once this Kickstarter is done, I may splurge so I can study the market! My brother and I sincerely loved <em>Snipperclips<\/em> as well. I&#8217;d love to see that in Indie Pogo.<br \/><strong><br \/>What was your interest regarding the rumours and announcements around the NX (Switch)?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Well the only rumor that keeps my interest are the whispers regarding GameMaker porting&#8230;.And I&#8217;m certainly curious to see if Nintendo will port <em>Smash<\/em> to Switch. I&#8217;d be shocked if they didn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Have you had the chance to look at the Switch&#8217;s unique features\/ have they been experimented with?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I haven&#8217;t spent too much time with a Switch. I hear HD Rumble is pretty neat. Nothing jumps out at me as being so revolutionary that my next game would have to be centered around. But I love that it can be portable and a console. There&#8217;s definitely some interesting game design possibilities to come from that.<\/p>\n<p><strong>All the best for the Kickstarter campaign.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Thanks! Keep a weathered eye on that pledge! We&#8217;re over half way!<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>You can follow the project&#8217;s progress over on its <a class=\"external\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/1642689247\/indie-pogo?ref=thanks_tweet\">Kickstarter page<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Indie Pogo, from developer Lowe Bros. Studios, is not only a love letter to Nintendo fighting institution Super Smash Bros. and similar brawlers, but is also an ultimate indie game collaboration; it features characters from many popular indie (and &#8216;Nindie&#8217;) games. The Kickstarter for the project is well under way, though sadly its Switch stretch [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}