In addition to the normal work required to produce the game, that sense of balancing the crazy ideas is what carried the project from announcement through to completion.
"One of the challenges we have of these various different concepts [is] how do you pull them together and make them simple for people to understand," says Reddy.
"And not feel like you are doing these sort of quicktime events," adds Crowle. "That's the last thing we want to end up with that we're just replacing stamping X with tilting wildly for 10 seconds."
For scratching the record player, that meant including it in the game in small doses so players wouldn't tire of it. For screaming into the microphone, that meant pulling back from Iota's horn and instead using it for select moments that wouldn't scare as many strangers overhearing things in public. For the fingers in the floor, that meant only letting players poke them through in certain areas where the ground appears thinner.
Looking back, Crowle says most of the fourth-wall features from that trailer made it into the final game. The team had found a way to be creative within a focused concept.
