I recently had the opportunity to talk to the development team behind the upcoming horror title, The Padre. Unlike some of your conventional development teams who work together in a single office, the people behind The Padre are a collective of developers from all over the world, so this sure was an interesting Q&A to do.
Before we talk about your game, we’d just like to get to know a little about the people behind it. Normally a game is developed by a team that works in the same office(s), but this title was actually made by a collective of developers from around the world. How did you all come together?
The founders of Shotgun with Glitters have all known each other for a very long time, but we started working together remotely not too long ago. I knew it was just time and cost-efficient way to build our projects. Communication technology is now so capable that we feel it can totally meet game development needs, especially when you are still a small team. As recruiting the rest of the team, some members were hired based on previous work we did together while others we met online just by pure luck and struck up a friendship from there.
And did working with people from all over the world cause any issues? I expect that holding meetings when everyone is in different time zones can get a bit difficult.
Sure, but nothing major. Sometimes we have to wait a few hours for someone to get up given we are in slightly different time zones. Sometimes there are slight language barriers, especially when you need to explain something technical that you’d struggle to do even in your native tongue. But to combat meetings being a major disruption, we do not have all-team meetings. We usually have meetings only with the members needed to solve the problem at hand. Most of the team is also in Europe too so that time difference isn’t something ridiculous like 8+ hours between us.
Would you say there were any specific benefits working as a collective compared to a more traditional game development team approach?
Absolutely! It’s much more time and cost efficient way to develop small projects. No office rental, no traveling costs. You can just sit down when you have the time and work.
Now we’ve gotten to know a little about how you work, let’s talk about your game, The Padre. Tell our readers what type of game it is and what it’s about?
We’ve worked so much on our official description so I’m going to have a little here and use a bit of it. The Padre is a retro stylised 3D horror adventure game tapping deep into the roots of classic horror games. The dark and striking atmosphere is often cut by the wicked humour of our very unique and witty priest, The Padre. So if you want classic inspired horror but you don’t mind some jokes mixed in, then maybe The Padre is meant for you.
And what was it that inspired you to make this game? Are you all fans of horror?
Is it wrong to point out it was more an accident than a divine plan? We started to make the game with the aim of creating a thrilling little adventure game but as we were moving forward and building our first rooms we realized that this atmosphere created was strongly bending towards horror. Then we just added some scary stuff… then a bit more … and more… and BANG we made a horror game.
Many horror games rely heavily on things like cheap jump scares. Is the case with The Padre, or do you have other methods to help get the player’s heart beating faster?
To be honest, I feel jumpscares are also very cheap, so we did our best to rely very little on this element. We wanted the fear of the unknown to be more centre stage. We wanted to create a feeling of loneliness by separating every area with a lot of darkness. Like everything is just hanging in the air if that makes sense?
And what else have you done to make it stand out from the competition and freshen up the genre?
Mostly we were tapping into the memories and feelings we had while playing our childhood favorite horror games. But then on top of that we added our voxel style graphics and witty dialogue to kind of ease the player. So it’s this back and forth between fear and fun that we hope makes the game stand out among the crowd.
Release for you game is less than two weeks away now. Why should people check it out on April 18th?
I hope we can give our players a unique horror experience built around interesting, nostalgic design and a lot of humour stuff mixed in between. We also created A LOT of easter eggs that pay homage to the horror classics, both gaming and film.
Just a couple more general questions to tie things up; firstly for people looking but are maybe too scared to venture into game development what advice can you offer? Are there any particular pieces of software you would recommend for beginners?
Start small and start creating just for yourself. Something as simple us playing around in GameMaker Studio will already give you plenty of knowledge at how game logic and basic programming work. The amount of knowledge available for free out there today is amazing. You just need take it one step at a time. The same goes with the modding community. That world is a fountain of info and experience that really opens your eyes to what is happening under the hood of a game.
In terms of software, for us, Unity also a nice place to start playing around in. We also made all our voxel style graphics in Magica Voxel which was such a total joy.
And a little topical question. The other week at PAX East Borderlands 3 was finally revealed. It’s safe to say there were a lot of people hyped up for it. How important are events like this, not just for the big AAA titles, but for smaller developers too?
As an indie developer, it is really hard to get noticed. Events are a nice way to connect with people and get new fans for your games, also the first-hand experience from players is really valuable. I’m really grateful towards our publisher FEARDEMIC that they were able to bring our game to events. We would not have the financial means to show our game this way and the feedback we got was immensely helpful but also reassuring at the same time.
And finally for a bit of fun; a zombie apocalypse has happened and you’ve the last video game character you played as by your side to help you survive. Who is it and how long do you think you’ll last?
I was recently playing Battlefield Gothic Armada II so it looks like I’ll be going into the zombie apocalypse with an entire space fleet of galactic warships. Hopefully I’ll be able to deal with a few undead corpses without a hitch. 😀
We’d like to thank the people at Shotgun with Glitters for taking time from their busy schedule to chat with us about their upcoming title, The Padre. As usual, you can find a developer bio and some useful links to help you follow the game and development studio’s work below, and you can click HERE to check out some of our other Q&A’s.
Developer Bio:
We’re a group of game-crazed enthusiasts working in a virtual team that is not limited by country borders. Although originating in Europe, we have team members all over the world who share our passion. We are on a quest to create games missing from the market. Games that don’t exist anymore or never existed before.
Our members are drawn to unique ideas, with the ultimate goal being to make the gamer, happy by encapsulating moods and experiences and giving you a front-row seat to them. Games can change the world. We are set on proving it.
Website:
www.thepadregame.com