Twisted Pixel Games is a relatively small, independent video game company, formed in early 2006 by industry veterans with the focus on "memorable characters, creative game-play, and impressive presentation." From what we've seen, they're achieving just that. After playing the unique, fun and hilarious
'Splosion Man, Questional decided to interview Twisted Pixel's lead programmer,
Mike Henry.
Read on, and discover how Twisted Pixel Games operate, how the idea for Comic Jumper came about, and why mass-produced 'Splosion Man costumes probably won't appear on the market any time soon!
For starters, how did Twisted Pixel Games come into creation? Who had the dream and how did your company turn it into reality?
TPG was founded by Mike Wilford, Josh Bear, and Frank Wilson... I guess it was 3 or 4 years ago now. Time flies. Really, their main goal was to make awesome games that hopefully people would want to play. They had all started their careers at a retail developer working on movie and TV-licensed titles, which usually have too many cooks in the kitchen to produce anything very memorable.
Out of The Maw, 'Splosion Man and Comic Jumper, which game did you enjoy working on the most?
I’d say ‘Splosion Man, just because I enjoyed playing it so much. It’s the only game I’ve ever worked on where I wasn’t totally burned out on playing it by the end of the development process. I was genuinely still excited to play it with people for the Game With Developers event.
'Splosion Man was and still is an extremely popular game. What was the inspiration behind the game, and the zany characters in it?
‘Splosion Man actually started out as a joke. Every so often, we have lunch meetings at the office where we talk about new game ideas, or refine old ones that we haven’t used yet. Our Lead Designer, Sean Riley, is obsessed with explosions and shattering glass and other action movie stuff, and for several lunch meetings in a row, he would break out his patented Excited Guy voice and joke that we should do a game called ‘Splosion Man in Glass World. “You’re a man made out of ‘splosions, and every time you try to do anything, you make a huge ‘splosion, but since the whole world is made out of glass, you just destroy the world! It would be the greatest game of all time!” We all laughed the first couple times, but once we actually started to think about the real game-play possibilities, we got more and more excited about the idea. We ended up making Wilford pitch it to publishers, even though he felt pretty stupid doing it.
With the huge success of 'Splosion Man, can we ever expect a sequel? Or is that something you'd rather not do?
In general, we tend to shy away from sequels, because we don’t want to end up just doing the same thing over and over again. But I think I can safely say that there’s not a single person in the office that doesn’t want to do some more ‘Splosion Man at some point when the time is right.
Have you ever considered mass producing 'Splosion Man costumes? That would be pretty awesome. Especially for Halloween, and most casual gatherings.
Yes. Yes it would. Unfortunately, Sean Riley is our lone costume maker, and it took him a couple weeks to make the one you see in the ‘Splosion Man credits. I think he’d probably go insane making the costumes and working on our next game at the same time. If you know any people with mad felt-circle cutting and glue gunning skills, send them our way!
Any plans of releasing 'Splosion Man or Comic Jumper on PSN or WiiWare? What about Steam, considering The Maw was released on that platform?
Nothing to announce at the moment. We’re always interested in getting our games out to as many people as possible, but we also like going full speed ahead on our next projects better than spending a lot of time porting old ones. Microsoft has been really great to us so far, so we’ve focused on Xbox 360 for our initial releases, but that’s not to say we wouldn’t do multi-platform development in the future.
I haven't had a chance to play Comic Jumper yet, but after watching videos it seems like a must-buy! What was the inspiration behind the protagonist, "Captain Smiley"?
Josh Bear actually came up with Captain Smiley and his comic book in middle school to impress a girl. I think you can probably guess how that went. Once Twisted Pixel was formed, the idea of a generic comic book hero that jumps into other comic books to make money was just too perfect not to make a game out of it.
Were more people hired for Comic Jumper? As a team, did you learn anything new from working on Comic Jumper and what exactly did you get out of it?
Yeah, the studio got up to around 14 people over the course of the project. It was our first game with an actual script and voice work, so it was interesting learning how to properly wrangle all of that data. Also, we had to come up with some pretty complex systems to handle the comic book panels, speech bubbles, and live action/gameplay mixtures you see throughout the game. I think those might come in handy down the road, even for non-comic book projects. Oh, and we also learned you should never make a game with four completely different art styles, because that’s just insane.
It's quite clear that Twisted Pixel Games is on the way up in the gaming industry, with each game being more rad, and more successful than the last. Will you push your team to evolve and become better with each new game, or would you have no problem with resting at your current level?
Oh absolutely, we’re focused on doing something new and better with each game we release.
If you were to move on from XBLA/Steam, which platform would you be interested in working on next? Any chance of us seeing Twisted Pixel's games go hand-held? 'Splosion Man Portable, perhaps?
Just speaking personally, I think ‘Splosion Man would be a great fit for portable and/or mobile systems. Heck, I kinda want to play that right now. I can’t say for sure if that’s a direction we’d be likely to go as a company, though.
For those that don't have access to the Internet for gaming, has the notion of a "Twisted Pixel Games Collection," with all three games on one retail disk ever been thrown around?
That’s a great idea. I feel like it might deserve a couple more titles on there than just the three, but if we were ever offered such a thing, I can’t imagine turning it down.
I recently interviewed Frictional Games, who mentioned that they rarely meet each other and work entirely remotely. Is this the case with Twisted Pixel Games, or do you have an office building that you work from.
Oh man, we had one guy working remotely during The Maw, and looking back on it, I don’t know how we ever worked like that. The way we approach development requires a LOT of back-and-forth communication between our designers, programmers, and artists, so having them all in one place (especially with access to a whiteboard) makes the process go so much quicker.
Do employees at Twisted Pixel Games enjoy playing the products you all create? Do you play video games together in the staff room?
Like I kind of touched on before, it’s a rare case when you don’t need a break from your game once it’s released. That having been said, it’s definitely a blast seeing new stuff go into a game as it’s in development. There was always laughter in the office during Comic Jumper when each new round of VO was hooked up. As far as other games go, we’ve been known to play some StarCraft 2 and Street Fighter 2/3 from time to time, and I’m pretty excited about Rock Band 3 Night coming up this weekend.
What's next for Twisted Pixel Games? Have you begun work on a new original IP, or are you focusing your efforts elsewhere?
We are currently hard at work on not one but TWO new projects. We aren’t ready to talk about them specifically just yet, but keep your ear to the ground... we might be ready soon.
Thanks for your time; to finish things up I'll ask one last question. If you could persuade one video game developer to join Twisted Pixel, who would you choose?
Has Keiji Inafune found a home yet? I think the Mega Man series was one of the things that most inspired me to start making games as a young man. Inafune-san... if you’re reading this, give me a call!
Thanks to
Mike Henry for taking time out to do the interview! If you're interested in checking out more info on
Twisted Pixel (I hope you are, they're fantastic), have a look at their homepage:
twistedpixelgames.com. Alternatively, support them by buying their amazing games off the Xbox Live Arcade!
