June 4, 2009 - Donald Mustard has spent most of his career flying just under the radar while working on projects like Advent Rising and Undertow. Those days appear to be over though after much of the gaming world was introduced to him when he took to the stage during Microsoft's E3 press conference alongside Cliff Bleszinski to announce Shadow Complex. Having sat down for an extended demo of Shadow Complex, I can truthfully say that this is the next big thing on the Live Arcade. This is what you should be preparing to play this summer. If you haven't yet already, read our first-look preview of Shadow Complex to learn why.
Mustard serves as the creative director at Chair Entertainment, a small studio whose first project was the colorful online multiplayer XBLA game Undertow. With one game finished, the group quickly set its sights on bigger fish. Shadow Complex wouldn't just be a fun diversion. I was to be a return to the 16-bit side-scrolling action era of game design with Super Metroid as the inspiration. This time, though, it would be a 2D side-scroller modeled in three dimensions with full cinematic cutscenes and the power of the Unreal Engine 3. There was just one problem: Making such a massive game means taking on a lot of risk. "Undertow gave us a decent amount of breathing room but we knew for the scope of what we wanted we had to bring in a partner," said Mustard.
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Work began on Shadow Complex immediately and after six months the team had something it believed was worth shopping around at the Game Developers Conference."We cut together this little trailer and it was just on our iPhone," said Mustard. "We just showed it to Epic and they loved it." The little demo, and other factors like Chair already being experienced with the Unreal Engine 3 through work on Undertow, made the two a natural fit and Epic soon acquired the independent studio.
"They gave us the resources and the time and the support and the expertise to pull it off," said Mustard. "Epic, man they're smart. They are smart. They know how to make good games. We know some stuff but man they come in and they're so good at really analyzing fun."
But before Epic could lend its expertise, Mustard and Chair had to lay the foundation on their own. This would prove to be no simple task.
"Before we could even start," explained Mustard, "we had to know the end from the beginning. It's this huge web of interdependencies. We did as much research as we could as how they made Metroid. It seemed like what they did was they got a bunch of pieces of paper and drew out the game, so we said, 'Alright, that's what we're going to do.'"
So they did.
"In Illustrator, we built the entire game
we'd print out these maps and send everyone home with stick figure guys and we'd play test the game." The team sat around with rulers and measured spaces between the scaled ledges, working to figure out where players could get with each new power as they moved through the non-linear game. "We had to. We had to know all of this stuff."
Of course, that doesn't mean exploits won't slip through the cracks. "The truth is, we're not going to catch everything," Mustard told IGN. "Early on we knew that there would be stuff that we don't account for so we'll just make sure that all of the stuff that matters works even if they do it a way we didn't expect them to." That means that if you happen to snag one power-up before Chair originally intended or sneak past a major boss, the story will adapt to your shenanigans. The leaderboards have even been designed to encourage players to look for these shortcuts.
There's a story told through cinematic cutscenes.
Once you beat the game, you won't find a simple leaderboard that only tracks completion percentage. Bonus multipliers to your score will be applied based on how you played the game. "We're factoring in the percentage of the items you found, how fast you beat the game, how many kills you got, how much experience you got and what difficulty you're on. When you beat the game, you're going to get points so you're not going to have a bunch of people bunched up on the leaderboards." Being a fast completionist isn't the only way to get to the top though, according to Mustard. Players will also be rewarded for finding ways through the game without fighting or exploring or finding power-ups. "Those bonuses go the other way too
If you beat the game with nothing, you're going to get a massive bonus."
Shadow Complex has its roots in classic, hardcore game design, but it clearly doesn't eschew modern design sensibilities. In making the game, the team started by playing very close to the Super Metroid playbook but then evaluating each aspect to see if it still works today. The most important factor was fun.
"Is it fun? Does it add to the experience? What could be done better?", Mustard questioned while talking about the old-school designs. "We know that we're going to want to put in modern stuff, so if we stick really close [to the old design] at the start it will quickly allow us to go off on our own. We created a core foundation of old-school and then we started making the game and just let all of the new start seep in."
Mustard sees the Xbox Live Arcade as the place for new takes on classic game designs. "Now is a good time to start to see a resurgence of any good idea, any good design. I personally think the Metroid design is a brilliant, brilliant design. It could almost be a genre in itself."
It's been a while since we've seen many games in this "genre" on the home console. As Mustard explains, "Super Metroid came out in 1994. Pretty soon the PlayStation comes out and it's 3D with 3D controls. So that was it. Everyone had to be 3D. It completely changed the way you design videogames
I think now as games are getting more mature as an art form or as a type of expression, there's just a lot more room for all types of games. The fad of 3D is [now] just a style."
And this expansion in gaming is going to usher in a new era for the Xbox Live Arcade -- one that hopefully legitimizes the download service in the eyes of mainstream gamers. "It's going to be the Castle Crashers of the world. It's going to be hopefully games like Shadow Complex that start to set a standard and start to set a mark
that's a must have title."
"For me personally," says Mustard, "I want to see way less ports
I want new stuff. I want to push, push push."
