The Indie Gamer #13

INTERVIEW with GRZEGORZ KUREK
Q.) What were your inspirations
behind Shing!?
A.) Grzegorz Kurek [Game
director, Mass Creation] We
are fans of old school arcade
beat’em ups so obviously
inspiration comes from games
like Final Fight, Alien vs
Predator or Streets of Rage to
name just a few. These games
are a bit too simple and
repetitive for nowadays
standards, so we drew a lot of
inspiration from the hero action
games like Devil May Cry and
Bayonetta. Shing! is a mix of
these two genres. We took the
best things out of both worlds
so the main idea is still to go
right and slay tons of goons but
now you have a huge arsenal of
combos and different skills to
do it and a very diverse set of
opponents to overcome. Also in
Shing! attacks are executed with
the right analog stick. The
characters mimic your stick
moves with their weapons so
mixing and matching combos
feels very natural and gives a lot
of satisfaction.
Q.) What's been the biggest
hurdle in development and how
did you overcome it?
A.) As we know the transition
from 2D sprites to 3D models
did not go too well for
side-scrolling beat’em up
games. The biggest challenge
was to keep the feel of a 2D
gameplay in a 3D environment.
Stuff like walking in-depth
without changing character
scale or being able to hit an
opponent when you feel that
you should even when you are
quite far from him. All these
small things that were obvious
on a flat plane are very tricky to
obtain on a fully 3D arena.
So we got rid of the camera
perspective, made the arena
huge in dept and did all kinds of
deformations in the
environment to achieve that 3D
feel to the surroundings. Next,
we made sure that the
characters feel like they are
actually there by applying few
animation tricks and made huge
hitboxes and snapping to the
enemy system to ensure that
you do not miss the target you
feel you should actually hit.
After a lot of iterations, tricks
and camera magic we hit the
spot with that “it looks 3D but
plays like 2D” feeling.
Q.) What does it mean to you to
be an independent developer?
A.) Lots of freedom and tons of
uncertainty. We as a team have
the freedom to create whatever
we feel like at the moment. On
the other hand, there is no huge
marketing machine and an
army of market researchers
behind you so every game
release is like a leap of faith. It
can be stressful at times. But for
me personally indie is a word
that describes more a type of a
game than a developer. We
work with publishers and
distributors nowadays so the
independence lays in the
freedom of creation, not in the
size of the team or the budget.
We often go upstream against
the metrics and monetization
trends with our games. That
what it means to be indie to me.
Q.) What can you tell us about
the storyline and the special
boss fights?
A.) Not much without spoilers!
The story focuses more on the
characters and their
relationships so we have a lot of
banters and jokes. It is a
fighting action game so players
do not care too much about a
complicated plot. For those who
do we have special rooms
scattered throughout the levels
that you can walk into if you
want to know more about the
world and the characters. We
22