Welcome to our interview with Muse Games, currently running a great Kickstarter for the game called Hamsterdam.
As always, our first question is for our guests to introduce themselves, so please tell us all about Muse Games!
We are an independent game studio in NYC focused on boundary pushing co-op gameplay and AI, with the aim of bringing people closer together through games. Our projects include the award-winning and best-selling Guns of Icarus series on Steam and PS4 that features team-based multiplayer airship combat set in a post-apocalyptic, steam/dieselpunk-inspired world. We also created the App Store Game of the Week featured platformer CreaVures set in a decaying mystical bioluminescent forest. Aside from Hamsterdam, our upcoming projects explore a desolate but spiritual planet, question the impact of technology on human consciousness, and play with fire, irreverently.
Second question, you have a Kickstarter running for Hamsterdam which is already funded. How does Kickstarter work from a developer point of view, could you share some insight into that?
This is our fourth Kickstarter, and I think Kickstarter is a great vehicle for a few reasons. The funding is obviously beneficial especially in helping us support the artists, sound designers, and composers we work with. It’s also a great motivator for us, knowing that there are people willing to put their faith in the project while it is still in development. It pushes us that much harder to deliver something that our supporters would be proud of. Additionally, Kickstarter is a cornerstone to building a community. We would love to get the Kickstarter backers involved in the project early, so they can help us test. Having testing help would be immensely beneficial and critical. Moreover, Kickstarter is a great medium to get the word out, both in terms of media and potential players.
Third question, tell us all about your new project Hamsterdam and what inspired you to make a game like this?
We would periodically do game jams ourselves, and Hamsterdam was born from one of those jams. We wanted to answer a question of how we could distill the brawler mechanics that we love and push beyond the traditional platforms that made the genre popular. The quest for us is to re-examine the brawler elements – precise and reactive timing, the satisfaction of comboing and frantic attacks, and the David vs. Goliath feel of boss battles – and bring them out with controls and gestures that are native to the different platforms.
For the Nintendo Switch for instance, it’s a lot about the Joy-Con. Players can be in the thick of combat and snap the Joy-Cons to the correction direction to dodge incoming attacks or use the Joy-Con’s gyroscopic support to experience precise actions as if guiding the knockout punch to the enemy themselves. Or with a quick shake of the left and then the right Joy-Con, players can feel like they’re weaving in and out of enemy strikes. For mobile devices, all the gameplay elements are tuned to native gestures of touch inputs, so there’s definitely quite a bit of screen mashing, and potentially cleaning with all the swiping required to master hamster-fu.
Fourth question, I am certain a lot of fanboys already asked this, but are there any long-term plans to make your game a physical one? I know the Switch fans especially can be rather insistent about this.
Yeah I’ve been asked this question by quite a few people already, and it’s something I’ve started to look into. We would love to be able to offer at least a small run of physical copies. Right now, I’m waiting to hear back from my outreach, and I’ll definitely update everyone as soon as I know more!
Fifth question, if we are allowed to know, how far into the project are we?
We are pretty far into the project. We wanted to make sure we have a fairly advanced game build and gameplay experience across all the different platforms we aim for before we announce Hamsterdam and start a Kickstarter campaign. We wanted to be certain we could deliver on our promise. Also, in order to get testing help from the Kickstarter community, the game had to be ready enough and in a state where we could derive meaningful test data. So overall, we are pretty far along. We still have quite a bit of polish, progression, pacing, platform tuning, and balance work to do, but the core of the game is in a testable state.
Last but not least, which game is currently in your favorite console?
I’ve been playing the Nintendo Switch quite a bit, and I’ve sunk an untold number of hours into Zelda. I’m a completionist gamer, so of course I wanted to get all the Korok Seeds, or die trying. Zelda is a brilliant game, not only for its vast world and contents, but for how all the game systems intricately interact to enhance the gameplay experience. It’s inspiring for us.
GamingBoulevard would like to thank Muse Games for the opportunity for this interview and we look forward to play Hamsterdam when it becomes available!
