Luc Bernard over at Arcade Distillery is busy working on three games that will be making their way to PlayStation hardware, so I got in touch to talk a bit about them.
PS4Blog: Hi! Thank you for joining us at PS4Blog.net. Could you please help us get started by telling our readers a bit about yourself and your work?
I’m terrible at introducing myself! I’ve been doing this for a decade now, mostly independent and I’ve been lucky enough to do so. I’m a game director mostly. I think mostly Vita users will be familiar with my work – so far on PlayStation I have released Mecho Wars, Desert Ashes, Kitten Squad, Plague Road, Death Tales, Mecho Tales – some more popular than others.
PS4B: Now that Plague Road is ready to go on Nintendo Switch, you’ve announced a trio of games that will be releasing in 2018. Could you please let our readers know about War Theatre?
War Theatre is a pure strategy RPG, straight into the combat aspect, no exploring, that’s what some people tend to think since it’s set in the same universe as Plague Road, but it’s a different genre of game. Even if it’s still turn-based, I took the feedback that people weren’t that fond of the upgrading on the farm and instead wanted character progression, so I’m doing that for the hero characters, while your army will be more like a turn-based strategy where you must conquer factories in order to build more units and so on.
PS4B: And then we have Skull Pirates, which is still in early development. What is the game all about?
SkullPirates is still very very early in development. The plot of the game you can see on the PlayStation Blog. I wanted to make a game where you play as “bad guys,” and your main goal is to steal from others and pillage. I personally really love co-op games online or local, so I wanted to make that a big focus of the game, even if you can still play in single player fully. The goal is really to make a fun single-player and co-op action RPG, especially for Vita.
PS4B: It’s interesting that all games are set in the same universe which means they are also tied to Plague Road and Death Tales. On that note, where does Manufactured Beauty fall in the timeline? Why did you want to make this one a 3D platformer?
Manufactured Beauty would be timeline wise set in the future, well I wanted to see if we could push the limits of the PS Vita that’s how it started, and also I had made a few 3D games behind the scenes for publishers that sadly got cancelled, so I wanted to give it a try, I still love 2D games, but as you noticed I rarely do the same genre twice, so I really love trying new things.
PS4B: Considering that Plague Road released first on PlayStation hardware before being ported to the Nintendo Switch, is it safe to say that your other games will follow a similar path?
I can say as of right now that SkullPirates is also planned for Switch, yes.
PS4B: And now it is time for us to go. Would you like to add anything else before we end this?
Nope, I’m not that great at interviews!
