Interview conducted on February 24th, 2021
Dustjacket is excited to have the PR and Community Manager of Right Nice Games’ Dennis Löfgren. Let us start off with the obvious, of asking what inspired Right Nice Games’ decision to create a 3D platformer?
Thank you for having me! The founders were big fans of the 3D platformers of old, especially the PS2 era of games like Jak and Daxter and Ratchet & Clank.
They were doing a four week student project at Futuregames, a vocational education in Stockholm. This game was called Adventure on Clover Island. That then grew into a six month project outside of the curriculum, leading up to the Swedish Game Awards in 2015.
There they won Game of the Year and Best Execution in Art. Another part of what inspired the 3D platformer direction was the fact that the course was using Unreal Engine 4, which is a very 3D focused game engine. They were also asked by their teacher to push themselves and try something new.
All of this coalesced into the 3D platformer you know today.
What was the early development for Skylar & Plux like? Obviously, Right Nice Games is a smaller team, and a videogame of any kind is an enormous task in and of itself. What were some of the challenges you faced, and how important was it to create a 3D platforming videogame compared to the 2D platforming other indie developers might have went for instead?
It was a fantastic mixture of passion-fueled inspiration, and nightmare-inducing intimidation. As I mentioned before, Skylar & Plux started as a student project. Which is a lot different from a commercial project made with the intention of selling to a market.
The development was fueled purely by the urge to learn and the passion for making games. As the project received a lot of positive critique from industry professionals, they were flattered and set out to turn the student project into a real game. Going with a 3D platformer was a choice that turned out to be a really interesting endeavour. That space is a lot less competitive for indies in comparison to the market of 2D platformers.
I can imagine why. Although every videogame, ideally, has a lot of hard work and effort put to it, sometimes an ambitious new developer can struggle if they’re in too over their depth. In fact, even mainstream companies struggle at times.
Not to say a 2-D videogame is easier, per se, for the reasons mentioned, but it does feel like the added dimension adds a lot of new variables to factor in, including how to approach camera-angles and new opportunities for glitches and bugs to manifest. Did development ever encounter an issue / issues that felt unbeatable? What recommendation would you make to young game developers with similar ambitious intent?
3D platformers, as much as we love them, come with a lot of challenges you don’t have to deal with in a 2D platformer. Platforming in 3D requires more precision on top of that, games are usually played on 2D screens. This issue may be unbeatable, but we can minimize it by developing a lot of tricks to add depth back into the game. One common trick are fake downward shadows that make it easier to see where mid-air objects are situated in 3D space. In addition to this, camera adjustments are very important in order to frame the obstacles in ways that help you understand the depth better.
The recommendation I have to young developers is to do your research. It’s okay to look at other games to learn from them, but not copy. Think about how to adapt for your game, iterate a lot, be creative and be ready to kill your darlings.
Since 2017, the 3-D platforming genre has seen a resurgence, so to speak. Later this year, players will have a new Ratchet & Clank videogame to look forward to, but we have also seen life breathed into series’ like Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon as well. On the indie market, we have seen remasters of series’ like Ty the Tasmanian Tiger, and new series’ like Yooka-Laylee. Are you guys excited for the resurgence in the genre and, particularly, are there any ones you’re particularly looking forward to?
We at RNG are super excited about it! The reason we are making 3D platformers is because we love them. 3D platformers offer so much room for exploration, creativity and play. The best way to move the genre forward is for a lot of different teams to try very different approaches. We will all learn from each other and we hope that the first game and our future projects are able to delight and inspire others as well.
Personally, I’m very excited for Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. It’s going to be really interesting to see how they will be utilizing the PS5 hardware features like the SSD and ray tracing. I need to go back and play Into the Nexus though to get caught up on the story.
Something I've noticed about other series of the genre, particularly Ty the Tasmanian Tiger, is their decision to branch out in other mediums like comic-books, as a way to flesh out other aspect of their series' world and characters. Is that something you've considered, or are you guys strictly committed to the videogame medium?
We’re definitely interested in that. Kevin, our CEO, had a long background in music before getting into game development. We’re a team of varied backgrounds and interests that makes it easy for us to play with ideas outside of the box. As a small indie studio, there are limits to the production values we can achieve in the game itself. So, if we did a Skylar comic, book or narrative podcast, we could expand the world more than we could afford to do in the game itself. We are doing this a little bit right now on Twitter. We gave the Skylar & Plux Twitter account to Skylar herself to try to expand on her and Plux a bit more. Through Twitter we can also interact with our fanbase and develop their characters on the fly. One fan asked Skylar about her thoughts on baked beans and now Plux has a new character trait, albeit a weird one.
Has the newfound success in the genre changed your perspective about Skylar & Plux, how you saw it, and how you see it moving forward?
The game started development back when the resurgence of the genre had recently started to hit near mainstream-like status and there were a lot of renowned studios starting to compete in that space. That was an intimidating experience for the founders, being new to the scene. They compared themselves to the bigger titles and tried to deliver their very best considering the circumstances. They hoped to deliver an experience decent enough to be counted as one of the “mid-tier platformers” coming out at the time. Moving forward, today's team are happy that we decided to continue competing in that space as 3D platformers have created their own place in today's gaming landscape.
Sometimes when I write a story, I find myself inadvertently thinking ahead to something else I want to write as well. Obviously, you guys seem pretty focused on the next adventure with the anthropomorphic gang, but I am curious if you have other series' you'd like to one day create / genres you'd like to explore? Maybe you've even done preliminaries on some other ideas?
We always have more ideas. Games take so long to make that you’re likely to have found and scrapped hundreds of ideas before one game is finished. We haven’t had any specific game concepts form as of yet though, we are fully focused on Skylar. I can however say that the mission of Right Nice Games is to make family friendly titles. So, you can expect that whatever comes next, will at least be that.
I could not help but notice on your Twitter page, we have seen bits and pieces of information in-regards to the future of the Skylar & Plux series. Notably, I have heard it referred to a “reboot” of the series, rather than a direct followup. Is that correct?
We believe that the first game didn’t quite get its chance to shine, for a variety of reasons. So, we want to build on what is there and rework what held it back. You could see it as a form of remix. That being said, we are adding tons of new content to that mix.
If so, what changes do you foresee will be seen for the future of the series. I noticed the working title of the new video game is named Skylar’s Adventure, is that to suggest his bird sidekick won’t be accompanying on the adventure?
Plux is still alive and well, though you might not recognize him when you see him next time. Actually, based on what we’re prototyping right now, Plux might have a larger role in this game than the last! Another thing we are addressing is the length of the game. The new game will be longer than the first, but we are also very careful not to pad the game out with meaningless time wasters just to have a longer playtime on paper. Quality over quantity as they say!
Something I appreciated about playing Skylar & Plux is how smooth and fluid the controls were. What would you consider as the “highlight” of the original game, and, conversely, what is something you guys wish you could have done differently?
Yes, like you said the controls felt really smooth. We also really liked the time mechanic in the desert world. We feel it was executed and developed very well throughout the level. As for things we could’ve done differently, that’s exactly what we’re working on right now! As mentioned, the length of the game is one aspect and another is Skylar as a character. We want her to not just be an empty husk for the player to inhabit but a fleshed out character in her own right.
Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to speak to us about your series. I bought a copy of Skylar & Plux when it first debuted (as a fellow devout fan of the genre) and I wish all of you the best of luck on it!
That's great to hear and thank you for the interview!
