What do you get if you cross a trippy, acid-like cartoon, an old school adventure game and a “silly Genie Teapot guy”? The answer: Loot Rascals.
Developed by UK based Hollow Ponds, their self-labeled tale of friendship, loot, loss and redemption in outer space is set for release on PC and PS4 early this year. Here to tell us more is one of the integral cogs of Loot Rascals: Ricky Haggett.
Hello there. Who are you and what do you do?
Hello! I’m Ricky Haggett, a founder of Hollow Ponds, an independent development studio based mostly in London. I’m also the co-designer and one of the programmers of Loot Rascals, the first Hollow Ponds game – I always want to be working directly on the things we make.
Before Hollow Ponds, I founded a studio called Honeyslug – the games we were best known for were the ones we made for Playstation – Hohokum, Super Exploding Zoo and Frobisher Says.
Can you tell us a little about Loot Rascals?
It’s a procedurally generated roguelike where you’re trying to rescue Big Barry – your huge robot head pal – from a space theme park that’s been invaded by a tentacled pan-dimensional godbeast.
You explore an alien planet, fighting a menagerie of strange baddies to win the Loot Cards, which give you special abilities.
Choosing which cards to equip requires strategic thinking – they buff or debuff the cards around them, so the way you lay them out is crucial – and some must be sacrificed because cards are also the precious resources you need to heal and use powerful abilities.
Aside from exploration and combat, the game uses a card skill system that also links with other players’ games. Can you elaborate on how this will work?
In Loot Rascals, the baddies can loot you! The cards they steal drop into other players’ games, and when you defeat an Elite Baddie you’ll get another player’s card, and must choose whether to return it or keep it for yourself.
Whichever you choose, prepare for a visit from that player’s Holographic Helper – if you returned their card, their Holo will be friendly and join you to help for a while. If not… beware their vengeance!
What inspired the bold art-style for the game?
Collaboration with visual artists whose work I love is a big part of my process as a game developer – and we’ve often worked with people who are outside the ‘traditional’ games industry, which makes our games stand out.
Loot Rascals started out as a collaboration with a Scottish artist and animator called David Ferguson, who goes by Swatpaz. I’ve been a huge fan of his very silly cartoons for years (for example check out Terry Runders Kicks a Stone or Best Brilliant Breakfast). He also did an Adventure Time episode.
We’d worked with him a little on Frobisher Says and Super Exploding Zoo, but were such big fans of his amazing worlds that we asked him if he was interested in making an entire game, and he said yes!
Later on, we realized that it would be a good idea to have a second artist, and it felt like a great opportunity to work with Brent ‘Meowza’ Kobayshi – we’d been fans of each other’s work for a while, and having Brent illustrate the environments that Dave’s characters lived in felt like a great fit. It’s worked out wonderfully!
From the trailer, the game seems to have a very British, dry sense of humour. Is this part of the developers’ personalities seeping into the game and is there a worry of it alienating international players?
It’s absolutely our intention that the personalities and sense of humour of the people who made the game come across: it’s not so much ‘seeping’ as really deliberate – we think that’s a big part of the unique charm and appeal of our game.
Early on we wondered about whether Dave’s Scottish accent would be tricky for American ears to understand, but from all of our experiences showing the game it hasn’t been an issue at all – people really seem to love that silly Genie Teapot guy!
The hexagonal world that the player explores has an old-school look to it. If any, what old-school games inspired the team throughout production?
We actually started with tabletop games – playing board and card games with my friend Nat Marco from Honeyslug, who introduced me to things like Munchkin and Forbidden Desert – the original prototypes for Loot Rascals were all made on cardboard hexagons.
Later on we started working with Jonathan Whiting – co-designer and gameplay programmer, who’s into roguelikes of all kinds, including stuff as far back as Nethack and the original Rogue.
What’s next on the horizon for Hollow Ponds?
Right now we’re focusing entirely on releasing Loot Rascals. After that, I reckon we’ll make another game – we’ve been working on some cool new stuff, but don’t have anything to say about it yet.
If you could use 5 words to get our readers hyped about Loot Rascals, what would they be?
“Wow five words isn’t very”
…sorry. Umm, how about:
“Strange, silly but deep roguelike”?
Or
“A horse and seahorse intertwined”?
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