Love RPGs? Then check out our interview with Bill Stiernberg from Zeboyd Games as we talk about their gaming passion, projects, and upcoming LGR release of Cosmic Star Heroine for the Nintendo Switch.
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
My name is Bill Stiernberg, I am one half of our two-man team at Zeboyd Games. We both do many different things, but as far as actual dev goes, I design and build the game art and assets. Making tiny little digital worlds is a blast and I love it!
What was the first console/game you ever owned?
Like a lot of people my age (mid-thirties), my first console was the NES. We got the NES Zapper bundle with the Super Mario and Duck Hunt cartridge. I still remember learning how to control Super Mario Bros. for the first time, looking up and then back down at the gamepad to make sure I was pressing the right thing.
Do you have any fond childhood memories based around gaming?
Tons, honestly. I don’t even know where to start. From learning to play Super Mario Bros. for the first time, to playing flight sims with my Dad, Tetris with my Mom, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with my brothers, or up through middle school playing Goldeneye with friends, there’s a million fond memories.
Can you share with us how you two came to form Zeboyd Games and where that passion to develop games originated from?
I’ve always been really interested in developing games. In middle school, my brothers and I would learn how to program in QBasic by messing with the Gorilla.BAS and others. We made all kinds of random things. Later, I learned how to create Doom maps and eventually full Duke Nukem 3D mods. I was really into this stuff and eventually tried making games with team online (those typically fell apart for many reasons, although the lessons were useful).
After college, I got really interested in making games again and teamed up with some people on the Penny Arcade forums to create an Adventure 2600 remake in 16-bit. I eventually took over the programming and art/map duties and we got it done. At the same time, Robert was making choose your own adventure novels for Xbox Live Indie games. We kind of knew each other from the PA Forums, so we teamed up to make a full-fledged, if small in scope, 8-bit RPG for the Xbox Indie games channel. Thus, we created Breath of Death VII.
Your studio has five titles to its name that include: Breath of Death VII, Cthulhu Saves the World, Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3 & 4, and Cosmic Star Heroine. A few common themes throughout your titles is they are JRPGs, retro-inspired, beautifully done, and filled with humor. Was this always the focus of the studio to specialize in this genre?
Pretty much! Robert’s always been interested in making RPGs, and I kind of fell into making this style of top-down, 16-bit graphical style and map/sprite construction. When we started on Breath7, we had both kind of used a minigame called Guadia Quest contained in the DS game Retro Game Challenge as a touchstone. It’s a simple, 8-bit JRPG contained within the larger Retro Game Challenge collection and we had both played it, and thought, surely we could do something similar.
We started Breath7 with that in mind and wanted to keep the scope small. So we kept the game short, the mechanics fun but simple, and kept the story and characterization stuff fairly brief… and it worked! We created a nice little bite-sized RPG that was a lot of fun and well received. We continued from there, expanding our games’ scope and improving our skills and trying to do interesting new things mechanically within our games, while also presenting them around the framework of an 8- or 16-bit RPG style. That has a lot to do with our limitations as a 2-person team, of course, but it’s a style that resonates with many people.
Given these games, what JRPGs do you consider to be your favorite and a source of inspiration?
Personally, my favorite JRPG is Chrono Trigger, like it is for so many people. I also really love Final Fantasy VI, Illusion of Gaia (this may be a nostalgia thing tbh), the Lunar games (which I played for PS1), Persona 4, and Secret of Mana. As for newer games, the Etrian Odyssey series, TWEWY, and probably a number of them I’m forgetting. There’s plenty of action RPGs (like Ys or Nier:Automata) and SRPGs (like Fire Emblem or FFT) that are among my favorite. Hard to list.
Cosmic Star Heroine first began as a Kickstarter campaign that not only met its goal but exceeded it! In addition to getting funded, you partnered with Limited Run Games to bring your title physically to the PS Vita and PS4. Let’s start with the campaign. What were your thoughts seeing so many backers support your project?
Well, it was super exciting, especially the first couple of days when we reached 40 or 50% of our funding goal. Everyone was super enthusiastic, so we knew we had something that resonates with people. It gave me a lot of hope and confidence. We’re super grateful to our backers, especially since we were so late in finishing the project. They were all very understanding. We still have a few things to fulfill for them and we’re working on it still!
How did you and Limited Run Games connect to produce the physical version for the PS Vita and PS4?
We kind of knew about each other from making indie RPGs and I’ve always wanted to be able to release a game on an official, physical format for a home console. So when Limited Run first started and began partnering with studios to release games physically, we all got in touch to get Cosmic Star Heroine out for PS4 and Vita. They’re big RPG fans and collectors and we are all really into the whole Working Designs era of physical releases. Therefore, we kind of modeled the CSH physical release after those.
Cosmic Star Heroine is also getting the Limited Run Games treatment on the Nintendo Switch, both digitally and physically. How exciting is it to bring your title to the Switch?
Super exciting! We were denied releasing it on Switch for a very long time, but since LRG is an official Nintendo publisher, they were able to get us signed on for release there. Better yet, they were able to take our Unity project and completely port the game to Switch (Thanks Adrian, you’re a hero!) It runs *awesome* on the Switch so I’m super excited to get it on there, especially when there are relatively few RPGs on the system at the moment, but that is quickly changing. I am doubtful that CSH would have ever come to Nintendo Switch if not for Limited Run Games and the awesome people who work with us there to do all of this.
Any chance of some of your earlier titles re-releasing on current consoles? Personally, Breath of Death VII would be amazing on the Switch.
Maybe. Our early games are our first projects and they were developed with Xbox Live Indie Games as the target market. It’s hard to put out a brand new product that is a re-release of our early stuff, because all I can see when I look at those is how far we’ve come. But we’ll see, we talk on and off about what to do about those on newer systems, since they’re still fun games.
Besides your own, what upcoming games are you most looking forward to playing?
I’m excited about playing Octopath Traveler really soon. I love the style and look of that game and I’ve been hearing great things. I avoided the demos so that I could take the whole game in unspoiled when it got released! I also really want to get Ys VIII for Switch, but I’m trying to figure out the situation with the patches and localization there first.
Finally, is there anything else you’d like to share?
Yeah, look forward to the physical release of Cosmic Star Heroine on Nintendo Switch later this year or early next year, from Limited Run Games! It will be an *open preorder* for a solid 2 week time period, so you won’t have to worry about getting an order before it sells out!
Follow Zeboyd Games
https://twitter.com/ZeboydGames
https://twitter.com/werezompire
https://twitter.com/bill_at_zeboyd
https://twitter.com/CS_Heroine
Be sure to read our review of Cosmic Star Heroine before it launches on 8/14!
