After successful interviews with both Nitoris Media and Rainbite regarding their upcoming Vita games, I managed to grab the attention of the talented team from Behind the Stone to speak to them about their adventure-platformer Sir Eatsalot.
As always, I wanted to know more about what made them decide on Vita as a platform; what their aims with the game were as well as their plans for the future.
First off, tell me a bit about yourseves! Who makes up Behind the Stone and what do you all do?
Hey there! My name is Slawa Deisling and I’m the Co-Founder, Game-Designer and Programmer. Monika Rider is the other Co-Founder and Art-Director. Together we’re the core of the small Hamburg (Germany) based studio. For our game Sir Eatsalot we gathered additional programmers and artists.
I’ve been following the development of Sir Eatsalot across Social Media for some time and you have an extremely high level of engagement with your fans. Do you feel it necessary to do this given Vita’s lack of coverage by the gaming media?
It is generally very hard to get any attention by the gaming media for your game, so I’d say the lack of coverage of the Vita doesn’t matter for us (anymore). Of course it’s a shame, since there are some really cool games out there. I wouldn’t use the term “necessary”. I think it’s just “naturally”. We never wrote a mail to sites like IGN, Gamespot, Eurogamer and so on, knowing they won’t cover a Vita-Game. Instead we tried to find the Vita-players directly. So we went on Twitter and focused on sites/communities like TheVitaLounge, PunkAndLizard, dozens of Vita-Centric channels – and it worked out. And the best thing is: we are able to interact directly with the Vita-Fanbase.
Aside from people like Gio Corsi, it seems like Sony have all but given up on Vita at this point. Did this public withdrawal of support deter your development?
We would lie if we’d tell you that didn’t affect us. I remember how every time there was a headline explaining how SONY stops doing this or that for the Vita and that this would be the death of the Vita we sat down and discussed what that means for us and the development. We had some hopes that Sony will prominently feature the game since we’re using the hardware features, but it was clear that their focus was on their new hardware, prominently the PS4 and PS VR.
But we stayed positive because of the Vita-community. Sony will support the Vita as long as possible, maybe not through first-party support or big marketing, but by providing developers and gamers a niche with exciting and diverse games.
How has the support from Sony been in bringing your game to the handheld?
It was way smoother than we thought! Back then I contacted Shahid Ahmad, “Indie Champion” of PlayStation and we pitched our game.
Some mails later they were like: “Cool stuff, you can have as much as PS Vita DevKits as you need”.
Doesn’t get any simpler than that.
How has the feedback from the Vita community to your project been so far?
It’s unbelievable. Every time we post a screenshot, a small gif/video we get a bunch of likes and comments how people are eager to play this game. This is a huge motivator for us. If not for this dedication by the Vita-Community we might stopped development or changed the game in order to bring it to other platforms.
Sir Eatsalot is a 2D platformer. What made you decide on this genre?
Actually it’s an Adventure-Platformer. It’s important to make this distinction. Don’t expect they likes of Super Mario, Rayman and so on. Sir Eatsalot is a more slow-paced game. The character is able to run, but there is a stamina-gauge which you have to refill by finding and eating sweets. I love platformers, but with Sir Eatsalot we wanted to create a connection to the character, the world and its inhabitants, that’s why we went with the slow-paced approach.
What inspired you to create an overweight knight as the main character? Are there any other cultural influences in the game?
The initial game idea came to mind years ago when we were still studying. Back then we wanted to make only a simple platformer game. When I met Monika, I told her that I had a comic idea once about a chubby knight. Wouldn’t that be a fun character to play as? Over the course of years and other smaller game projects we changed and adjusted the project. We never wanted to make a chubby character in order to be able to say “it’s funny because he’s fat”. It’s also not a political statement, we just wanted a kind character in a colorful world.
There aren’t specific cultural influences, maybe later in the game. You’ll encounter so called Chocolate-Golems, where you have to file applications, and madness of bureaucracy is typically German.
I understand you are making heavy use of the Vita’s unique inputs including front and rear touch. How easy has this been to implement? Do you feel it has come naturally as part of the development process?
It was a no-brainer for us. We think it’s almost an obligation to use hardware features if the platform offers them. And as a developer it’s your job to design/implement it in a fun and engaging way. Of course this approach binds you to this specific platform, but that’s what we wanted. The Vita is the perfect platform to combine all the features. You’re controlling the character with all the standard inputs: buttons and analog-sticks. But in order to interact with specific world-elements you have to use the touch-screens. A bush? Tap it with the touchscreen/rear pad, maybe something drops or jumps out.
Implementing the touch-mechanics wasn’t that hard, to be honest. First we used a plugin which gave as a variety of things we could accomplish, but the plugin delivered poor performance, so we wrote our own touch-system which we accomplished pretty fast, since the Unity-Engine provided the foundation we needed.
Are there any other features you’re adding to make the game unique from what is a somewhat crowded genre?
As mentioned above the game is more slow-paced. You’ll have enough time to explore and interact with the unique levels of the game.
Of course. We’re utilizing almost every feature the Vita offers except the Microphone. We discussed the touch-screen already, but you also will use other hardware features, like the Vita’s camera – you’re in a cave? You might to hold the camera against an actual light-source to enlighten the cave!
I understand the game is being built in Unity; an engine notorious among Vita fans for poor performance. How has it been working in this so far? Any Vita-specific difficulties?
As of now the game never drops under 30 FPS. And most of the time it’s around 45-60 FPS, but I promise that we’ll try to squeeze every last bit of performance in order to get it as high as possible, hopefully steady 60FPS, until release.
Vita-specific problems? Not really. The Vita is a great device, but it’s not almighty and we had to optimize early on. As mentioned before, we had to ditch some plugins due to poor performance and had to write or own stuff to get better results. The majority of problems we had to deal with was the engine itself. But we always were able to manage.
How far along in development are you at present?
Actually we’ll soon finish the development. If everything goes as planned, we will be able to release the game this year. I can’t give a specific date yet, but it will be probably something around November/December.
What is the estimated length of the game going to be? Anything to encourage multiple playthroughs?
I’d estimate you’ll need something around 5-10 hours, depends on your play style, though. If you rush through the game without paying attention to anything, you might beat it under five hours.
In Sir Eatsalot you’re able to collect stickers of creatures you encountered. If you weren’t able to collect all of them in your first playthrough you might give it another go, since the stickers give you some insight into the lore of the world of our chubby knight.
Will the game be PlayStation TV compatible?
I’m afraid it won’t, since we’re also using the Vita’s camera.
With the advent of physical indie releases through publishers like Limited Run Games, will you be looking towards a physical release of Sir Eatsalot?
I’m a sucker for physical versions and collector editions of games. That’s why I love how Limited Run Games, eastasiasoft, indiebox and other companies partner with smaller developers to release their games physically. For us, as developers, it’s almost something divine to be able to actually hold your game in your hands.
Long story short: we teamed up with eastasiasoft to bring you folks a nice physical limited edition of our Sir Eatsalot, so look forward to it!
Is there a chance we will see more Vita games from you beyond Sir Eatsalot?
The Vita is an awesome device with an incredible community, and we would love to bring future games to the platform, but we probably won’t do PS Vita exclusive games anymore, you might expect a Vita version of an upcoming game, though.
What are some of your favourite games that you’ve played on Vita?
I’ll just going to list them in an unspecific order
– Hotline Miami 1 & 2
– Killzone: Mercenary
– OlliOlli 1 & 2
– Gravity Rush
– Darkest Dungeon
Finally – which of Vita models is your favourite (LCD or OLED)?
LCD is fine, but personally I’m all for the OLED version. The colors are just so juicy.
I want to thank Slawa and Monika for agreeing to hold this interview with me. You can follow updates on the game via the developer’s Twitter account as we get closer to release.
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