We had a lot of fun playing The Sexy Brutale for our review, so we got in touch with Cavalier Game Studios to talk a bit about the game’s development for Sony’s home console.
PS4Blog: Welcome to PS4blog.net. Could you please help us to get this going by telling our readers a bit about yourself and your work?
We are Cavalier Game Studios, a small studio set up in Guildford, UK. We developed the concept, design, and narrative for The Sexy Brutale, and then teamed up with Spanish developer Tequila Works to provide the art-style for the game, and also to publish the game.
PS4Blog: The Sexy Brutale is now out on PlayStation 4. How would you describe the game?
The game is a time-looping murder mystery. It’s all about creeping through a sprawling, bizarre mansion during a masked ball, where the guests are being murdered by the staff.
The exact day happens over and over again. To save the guests and get access to the powers held in their masks you need to learn how they die, then reset the day and prevent the murder from taking place.
PS4Blog: What drew you to working on a 3D adventure game? Which games inspired the team to go down this road?
We came up with the concept as a small team who loved adventure games, and we wanted to explore some of the ideas we’d seen in other time-based games such as Majora’s Mask or Animal Crossing.
We also need to choose an idea that could be created in a finite space, and find a way to wring as much fun and intrigue from the setting. We chose a mysterious casino mansion so that we could fill it with strange and exciting environments while still keeping everything inside reasonable constraints.
All of us I think took inspiration from a huge range of games, but the ones that definitely were aspirations for this kind of experience would include Majora’s Mask, Monkey Island, the amazing (and under-appreciated) Gregory Horror Show, Ghost Trick and the 999 series.
Those are the ones we’re actively aware of, anyway!
PS4Blog: Taking into consideration the game’s nature, are you considering working on DLC for The Sexy Brutale to add new guests or even new scenarios to the story?
We worked incredibly hard to create a narrative and scenario for The Sexy Brutale that tells what we hope is a strong story. It’s not something that lends itself particularly well to expansions, but we hope that players will appreciate the experience. If there’s a clear enough demand, we’d love to expand and refine some of the ideas from the game in the future.
