Interviews

Honeyslug explains the creative process behind bonkers Vita freebie Frobisher Says

Frobisher Says 'Put the Vita down your trousers'

Honeyslug explains the creative process behind bonkers Vita freebie Frobisher Says
|
| Frobisher Says

When it comes to games on the PS Vita's horizon, few can claim to be as unique as Honeyslug's Frobisher Says.

Sure, there will be plenty of shooters, racers, brawlers, and platformers on Sony's new portable powerhouse. But, only Frobisher Says has the goofy-mini-games-collection-inspired-by-WarioWare-and-Bishi Bashi Special box ticked, doesn't it.

The game's co-creator Dick Hogg has coined a term for this particular genre: arcade tapas. We chatted to Honeyslug's Hogg and co-creator Ricky Haggett on the fun process that went into crafting the Vita's most unique and utterly bizarre title, and into preparing the aforementioned tapas.

Pocket Gamer: Frobisher Says is absolutely bonkers. Why?

Dick Hogg: Our market research department showed us some very convincing data on bonkersness. There is a high demand for bonkers things among our core demographic, and moving forwards, we are well placed to exploit this demand with the Frobisher Says IP.

Ricky Haggett: If you're going to start an independent video game developer and go to the trouble of making a video game, you may as well have a load of fun making it. Otherwise, it might start to feel like a job!

A lot of comparisons have been made between your game and Nintendo's Rhythm Heaven (Rhythm Tengoku) and WarioWare series. Were those sources of inspiration when coming up with Frobisher Says?

DH: We both love that genre of games and I guess we felt like it is an area that hasn't been explored that much, especially by developers outside of Japan. I think there is room for loads more games with this "arcade tapas" vibe.

RH: Rhythm Tengoku in particular was an influence - particularly how strange and yet charming it feels.

What process goes into crafting the mini-games that appear in Frobisher Says?

DH: We had some great sessions coming up with ideas. To be honest, it was quite addictive and we came up with too many.

We had a really good laugh sitting around a table going: "What if we have a game where Frobisher says 'Put the Vita down your trousers'?" That was the most important bit of the process. Then, it was a fairly straightforward case of building prototypes and briefing the artists. Testing, tweaking, polishing, and all that jazz.

RH: Dick drew rough versions of the games in Photoshop, and I made them in Flash. We then sent these prototypes to the artists so they could understand what we needed.

In some cases, the finished games turned out pretty much exactly like the first prototype - especially for the ones where we fell in love with Dick's sketch and made him do the final art! Others went through some quite radical changes based on playtesting. The "testing, tweaking, and polishing" process was sometimes straightforward, sometimes quite involved.

You had many artists working on Frobisher Says. How are they involved in the creative process? Do they pitch in with game ideas or do you give them a game and pitch it to the artist?

DH: We already knew what nearly all of the games were before we spoke to the artists, so there wasn't any room for them to come up with game ideas. It was really important that we kept control of the overall feel and balance of the experience. I think letting artists come up with game concepts would have broken that.

Having said that, we gave the artists quite a lot of creative freedom in how they interpreted the core game idea. Some of the best games are the ones where the artist did something really different from what we expected and surprised us. In some cases, we worked with artists who don't really play video games and only had half an idea of what we were doing with their art.

The comic book artist Johnny Ryan was classic: he was like, "I don't really get this, but, yeah, I'll draw an otter running through a landscape - can I give him a liberty Mohawk, and can the landscape be a derelict slum?" So, even though he couldn't give a damn about how it worked as a game, he still made a massive contribution to the humour and spirit of Frobisher Says.

RH: One of my favourite things about Frobisher Says is the range of artists around the world who worked on it, many of whom had never worked on a video game before - from collage artists and comic book guys, to 'serious' graphic designers, Plasticine animators, and indie legends like Greg Wohlwend and Pixeljam.

Are there any mini-games that stick out as your favourites?

DH: Frobisher says "Look away now", and Frobisher says "Levitate this rock with your mind". Just because they are so stupid and I am really proud that we have made something which gets people doing daft things like NOT looking at the screen.

RH: I particularly like "Smile at the Ladies, DON'T smile at the badgers!", and "Find the Flan!", but I'm not going to explain what either of them are.

Frobisher Says is one of those games that's hard to explain to someone but easy to understand when it's in the player's hands. Do you see that as a problem facing Frobisher Says?

DH: I hope people will be intrigued by, and curious about, Frobisher Says. It is very different from anything else on the Vita.

RH: Yeah, I'm happy to have made a strange thing! Too many video games are easily categorised these days.

What sort of reactions are you seeing from testers and players experiencing Frobisher Says for the first time?

RH: Because of the sensitivity of putting pre-release hardware in people's hands, a lot of the early playtesting we did was over at Sony.

Our producer put out a call over the intranet inviting people from different departments to come to play. So, we had folks from accounts or the web team turning up - people that don't necessarily play video games much but who were the ideal test candidates for Frobisher Says.

We had a lot of fun in those sessions - it was wonderful standing just out of sight, watching their reactions. We got a load of laughs, which was a relief. That was when we were like, "phew! It works!"

I remember one lady in particular who was over the moon about winning a five-player game. She said, "I don't play video games, but I would play that!"

DH: I have had some awesome games of two-player Frobisher Says with complete strangers. There was this German journalist who thrashed me at my own game, and by the end, we were both laughing. That was the moment when I realised that we had probably made a good game.

How has the Vita been to develop for?

RH: It's been pretty smooth. The Vita is really powerful, so we didn't need to spend much time optimising for memory or speed - and there is a crazy amount of art and animation in Frobisher Says.

There are still a few kinks being ironed out - which you'd expect with a pre-release console - but generally our experience of working with the APIs has been great. The architecture is nice and straightforward, too.

It helps that we hired an awesome engineer (Caspar Sawyer) to help us with the low-level stuff, and Sony's developer support was fantastically helpful, as ever.

Sony is offering early access to Frobisher Says as one of the Vita's pre-order incentives. Was this something Sony approached you with, and are you excited by the fact that this incentive will help Frobisher Says reach more players?

RH: It's really exciting that Sony believes in Frobisher Says enough to make it a pre-order incentive. And, yeah, it will definitely get Frobisher Says a load more publicity and attention at launch.

Of course, it does also mean that the people who don't pre-order will have to help Mr Nathan Drake swing over some chasms for a little while until Frobisher Says arrives in their lives, but, hopefully, they won't mind too much.

Frobisher Says will be released via the PlayStation Store for all to play this May: what sort of pricing models are you looking at for the game?

RH: It's going to be free - hurrah! And we'll also be making some additional content available on the Store for Frobisher Says's mega-fans, so I guess that makes it freemium. Exciting times!
Tom Worthington
Tom Worthington
Fresh out of the packaging, Tom joins Pocket Gamer with a chip on his shoulder and a degree in Journalism. Naively, Tom believes there's a star-studded career in video games and has penned words across the internet in between praying to the almighty Nintendo gods.