At the first GameCityNights event we found Rob Burman, European PR manager from SouthPeak Games, to talk about 3D Dot Game Heroes. Burman shared some details on the game’s creation editor and we asked him whether SouthPeak could also publish the sleeper hit that’s not for the faint of heart, Demon’s Souls, in Europe.
Is 3D Dot Game Heroes an RPG?
Rob Burman: No, it’s more of an action adventure game. If you look back to those old 8-bit games, Secret of Mana, Zelda, and some elements of Final Fantasy in it. It’s kind of a throwback to all those games, the older NES games or the SNES games that people grew up playing when they were little. It’s kind of what would happen if they were suddenly transformed into 3D. It’s mainly an action adventure, [but] there are some nods to classic RPGs in there as well.
From what we’ve seen you can create your own character in the game. How does this work?
RB: Yeah. It’s a bit like building a generic brand building block – let’s not say the specific one. You get a grid that you can fill with pixels, so you can increase them in size. It’s relatively straightforward. It must be straightforward because even I can do and I’m not that creative. You can create anything: cars, animals, anything, [and then] you can then play them in the game. What you can also do is save them onto a USB stick, put them on your PC and then send them to people, upload them to forums and things like that. We’re hoping that there’ll be a big community of people – hopefully not infringing on copyrights – making their own characters.
Where are people going to be able to share their creations? Will it be via an online portal, such as the game’s official website?
RB: We’re looking at that at the minute. At [present] people can share [characters] by sending emails, because they’re very, very small files. They’re only a few hundred [kilobytes]. But I think eventually we’d love to encourage the community to [share creations through other means]. We’re thinking of running competitions, like ‘who can design the best one in a certain month’. It’s not quite the same scale as LittleBigPlanet or something like that, but you never know, it could really take-off.
Are many of game’s tasks and objectives in the same sort of vain as Zelda?
RB: Yeah. There’s an overworld that you explore. The aim of the game is an evil wizard has come back and he’s stolen these six magical orbs. You’ve got to go round to different dungeons – or ‘temples’ actually’ – collect the orbs and restore order to Dotnia. There’s lots of side quests and things as well. I reckon if you did everything, if you did absolutely everything, probably 20-30 hours.
3D Dot Game Heroes was released last year in Japan by From Software. You mentioned that you’d seen it earlier at TGS. What did you think when you first saw the game?
RB: I just thought that it looked like nothing else. I think there’s been a fantastic retro revival at the minute. There seems to be a lot of, particularly Japanese, developers looking back to those 8-bit games and thinking, “actually, these were pretty good. Why are we faffing about with a hundred different buttons to equip a gun?” It’s kind of back to basics games. I think we seen at lot with Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! and Half-Minute Hero. They look fantastic and they play fantastic as well, because it’s back to basics. No fancy mucking about or things like that.
Speaking of “retro revivals,” From Software’s Demon’s Souls (a spiritual successor to the King’s Field series) has done surprising well in the North American market. Could there be an opportunity for SouthPeak to publish Demon’s Souls in Europe?
RB: A lot of people ask that. As soon as we struck up the deal with Atlus, everyone thinks: ah, brilliant, they’re going to bring all the Atlus things over. The problem with Demon’s Souls in particular is that Atlus only have the North American rights. So, the same deal isn’t possible for Demon’s Souls, which is a shame. I’ve got Demon’s Souls and I think it’s absolutely brilliant. It’s a shame [but] who knows what will happen with Demon’s Souls, I guess.
3D Dot Game Heroes will be released for PS3 on 14 May 2010.
Aaron Lee
Tags: 3d dot game, demons souls, gamecity, southpeak
