We’re currently playing 60 Seconds! for our review so we got in touch with Robot Gentleman to talk about the game’s development for Nintendo Switch.
PS4Blog: Hello! Good to have you with us today. Could you please get us going by introducing yourself to our readers and telling them a bit about your work?
Juliusz Zenkner: Hi! We are Robot Gentleman, a small indie games studio from Poznan. My name is Juliusz Zenkner, I’m the studio’s co-owner and also an art director. We created 60 Seconds!, our debut title that had quite a success and sold in more than 600k copies. We started as 3 people team. The studio originally was created by Dominik Gotojuch in 2012, and Berenika and me joined him later on to work on 60 Seconds!.
Much has changed since the release, since now we’re 12 people, we have Piotr Żygadło – Producer, Anastazja Kulińska – PR/Marketing, Mateusz Pusty – Unity Developer, Agata Bednorz – 2D Artist, Radek Smektała – Writer/Designer Paulina Vera Szmidt – our very own QA specialist, Mateusz Lewicz – 2d Artist/Animator, and our two newest crew members: Marcin Michalski and Krzysztof Lewicki – both Programmers and Unity developers.
PS4B:60 Seconds! is now out for the Nintendo Switch. How would you describe the game to someone who’s never heard about it?
JZ: Basically it’s an “experience your own end of the world story” game. Game is divided into two parts. In the first part we have to gather our family and supplies in a crazy 60 second timed run, and put them into the shelter below our home. In the second part we have to live with whatever had chance to grab and survive as long as we can or until someone come to our rescue. Every game is different because of randomly generated elements (like house arrangement, daily events etc.) an one playthrough is between few minutes to more than an hour, so it’s perfect for traveling, waiting in lines and wherever Nintendo’s Switch helps us fight the boredom and passing of time.
PS4B: Where there any particular challenges or hurdles you had to overcome in order to port the game to Nintendo’s hybrid console?
JZ: The game was originally designed on PC, so there were few issues we had to address. Our main goal was to make the controls as comfortable as on keyboard + mouse, but also on every way of control that Nintendo’s Switch provides. There was also some issue with the tiles in the bathroom. Because of the smaller screen of the portable console, the highly detailed tiles looked really bad, so we had to change them.
PS4B: How goes the development of 60 Parsecs!? Is it safe to assume it will also be released on Switch?
JZ: 60 Parsecs! is evolving during the creation process just like 60 Seconds! did. There are some subjects and possibilities we want to explore and some things we want to do better than in the previous game. Also the crazy scavenge run will be made in 2D in contrast to 3D part of the previous title. That means a lot of 2D animation work for all of the new playable characters, and huge changes in the game’s code. What’s important is that 60 Parsecs! is not a reskin of 60 Seconds! There are a lot of changes in the game’s core so we had to do a lot of work from scratch.
We really think that our games are perfect for the kind of consoles like Switch, and as every creator, we want to tell our stories to wider audience of players. So if nothing will change along the way, we would like to release 60 Parsecs! On Switch as well.
PS4B: And now it is time for us to go. Would you like to add anything else?
JZ: We were really excited when we learned that 60 Seconds! will be released on Switch. We are fans of Nintendo’s new console ourselves, and we’re really happy to see our game in Switch’s library, next to other indie games, that are being released every month.
