Games
Creature in the Well blew our minds at the Nindie Direct last month. We spoke with devs Flight School to talk about what we can expect from the pinball-fueled adventure.
A robotic warrior sauntered through a comic book sandstorm, walking slowly towards a looming mountain shrouded in mystery. Once inside, a monstrous hand emerges from the shadows gripping the very mountain itself. The creature's eyes settle on the robot as if to warn him about the dangers to come.
That was the opening of a short demo of Creature in the Well, a pinball dungeon crawler coming to Nintendo Switch and PC this summer (Flight School is hoping for a PS4 and Xbox One release too, although they have to wait and see how these versions do). It's unlike anything we’ve seen before, like Hyper Light Drifter with an interconnected map, built like a giant pinball machine. There isn't an easy way to describe what it feels like, but designer Adam Volker made a simple comparison:
"We like to reference Rocket League a lot – it's about controlling a ball with a weird thing. Rocket League had the car, Creature has tools. We thought it would be fun to control a ball with another non-violent measure. You have swords, but they’re only used to control the ball."
Volker and his development partner, Bohdon Sayre, have been creating Creature in the Well on their own at Flight School, a game studio with offices in Montreal, Dallas, and Hollywood. While the project evolved over the course of development, the core idea of pinball dungeon-crawling remained constant.
Pinballs and prototyping
Creature in the Well didn't start off as a creepy adventure game, it was actually a multiplayer experience, where players hit the balls back and forth, similar to air hockey. "This started with Windjammers, air hockey multiplayer prototype," Volker said. "After creating it we thought about building a world like this and went the single player route. We took the pinball elements and built puzzle rooms around them."
Volker and Sayre's prototyping process, like the entire development of Creature in the Well, was made up of separate ideas sewn together over time. The two regularly test different elements and mechanics to see if they’re practical in a game sense. "We're always kicking prototype ideas around," Volker said. "We're always thinking about elements and whatnot, always coming up with different ideas that are interesting to us."
Most major aspects of the game came together segment-by-segment, from different parts of Volker and Sayre's lives and inspirations. The desert aesthetic came from when they were living in Texas, the comic-like visuals came from Volker's love of Hellboy creator Mike Mignola's art style and the narrative itself was built slowly, as they put together the game's various mechanical systems.
"We knew we were going to do a top-down look similar to Zelda," Volker said. "We approached the narrative the same way we approached prototyping, piece-by-piece. What would it be like to have the game take place in a mountain? We'd figure something out and then build the narrative around that."
As those pieces came together the game slowly changed. It was originally going to feature procedurally generated dungeons to help add replay-ability – they'd been playing Dead Cells during development and wanted to use procedural generation in a similar way. They decided against it in favour of making eight handcrafted dungeons. It's extra work, but designing everything by hand gave them the freedom to add more tools the character can use in unique ways.
"We abandoned the procedural generation portion of it, since we went down that road because it gave us length," Volker said. "Now we have dungeons that are built around each weapon, there is one designed around an axe that can cut the ball into more, smaller balls."
There are currently 15 different weapons that all have their own style of play. In addition to the axe that cuts the ball into smaller pieces there are dual blades that help you aim with a laser sight, weapons that can hold more pinballs, and others that shoot the ball at higher speeds. There's even a hammer that slows down time.
Oscar the Grouch
One of the most striking things about Creature in the Well, after playing through the demo three times, was the natural sense of creepiness that oozed out of the environment and the game's antagonist – the giant creature that lives in the mountain. Despite the colourful visuals, there was always a sense of fear coming from the dungeons that surrounded us.
That creepy factor wasn't always there though, especially since the original idea for the creature's design came from Sesame Street.
"When we were brainstorming NPCs I had this idea for an Oscar the Grouch character," Volker said. "We were building out the characters that were going to be in the games village, its hub world. Oscar the Grouch was going to be our excuse to have dialogue come out of a dark shadow – that's where the creature came from."
The giant, ogre-sized creature, who's the main foe you fight throughout the eight dungeons, came from a puppet in a trash can. Despite its silly origins, the design came out as intended – scary.
It's somehow related to a giant weather machine that’s connected to all dungeons in the mountain, which is the protagonist’s main focus. Each dungeon contains a piece vital to turning the machine on. The small village, which serves as an area where you can rest, upgrade weapons, and interact with town folk before heading back into the dungeon, has other peculiar characters like the Oscar-inspired creature. Volker showed us some early sketches featuring a lizard blacksmith, and said there would be other animal-humanoid creatures in the village as well.
We've only got a taste of Creature in the Well from the trailer, demo and tidbits that Volker and Sayre have shared, but it’s safe to say we can’t wait for it to arrive.
Creature in the Well is hitting Nintendo Switch and PC in summer 2019.
