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Deadly Creatures screenshot

VideoGamer.com: It's really quite impressive that you have both Dennis Hopper and Billy Bob Thornton lending their voices to this game. What was the thinking behind the casting?

JI: We looked at a lot of actors who had that earthy, weathered sounds to their voices, but they also had to have that indie film cache, so they would be appealing to people who liked those kind of Coen brothers movies or edgy horror films. Deadly Creatures has such an indie feel to it already, so it felt like a good fit.

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VideoGamer.com: So what did they make of it? I'd have loved to have been in the room when the job was pitched.

JI: Me too! I wasn't involved in the negotiations, though I was in the room for the recording sessions. Neither one of them had done a video game before, so they were already a bit "so, what's this all about?" And then when they heard that it wasn't really your average game and that it had a lot of unique elements to it, they were like, "Ok, this is something special".

VideoGamer.com: To go back to what we were talking about before about the Wii's controls. Some games barely use the whole motion-sensitive aspect, whereas others go completely overboard. How do you find that sweet spot in the middle?

JI: It's a learning process. It's obviously weeding out what doesn't work, and having the discipline to know that there's a reason why tried-and-true conventions are a big thing. Back when the snake was the main character, we felt like "Well we can't do a game where you're not gonna do this" (slither motion) and just move the remote back and forth to slither. That seemed too cool to give up - never mind the fact that that was going to get old after about 30 seconds. And then we thought, we didn't just want to have a regular control scheme for the tarantula, so what if you do cycling forward to walk? But right away we saw that was going to get old - plus it would limit us, because how are you going to make a fluid transition to combat? So we had to take a step back a bit, and just say "let's really work with the controllers, forget that the gestures are there for a while". Just come up with a good control system. But for a long time our combat system was gesture based. Your basic strike as the tarantula was flicking the remote forward, and that got really old. It became spamming, button mashing - you weren't hitting buttons, but it was the same thing. So again, it was a learning process. We needed variety and we needed to bring some strategy into it, so we looked at traditional light and heavy attacks plus block triangles. And it worked really well. The ends result is that you have a lot of moves, you pull them off in different ways, you have to fight differently as the tarantula and the scorpion - and where the gestures are there, it feels appropriate. For the quicktime events, it feels appropriate. For the the finishing moves, it feels appropriate. It's using the gestures as the exclamation points, rather than the nouns and verbs.

VideoGamer.com: That's a nice metaphor. What other third-party Wii games do you think achieved that balance well?

JI: I think De Blob did a great job, just in the way it's put together. It's a fun experience. And Okami of course, though that's a port. When we were building this we looked at a lot of Twilight Princess, but you wanted non-Nintendo stuff...

VideoGamer.com: One last question, then. I've had this idea that I've pitched to your colleague, and I want to know what you think of it. In the next Deadly Creatures, I think there should be an unlockable feature that lets you play the entire game as a snail. Do you think that could work?

JI: Yeah! Because that would take an eight to twelve hour game and make it a 12 to 24 hour game!

VideoGamer.com: Exactly! It would bump the play-through time considerably.

JI: You only have one move. You can retreat into your shell, and that's it. Actually, have you ever seen Microcosmos?

VideoGamer.com: No...

JI: It's an amazing documentary about insects. It's shot in super, super high-def with special lenses, really down at their level. It's incredible to see what insects and stuff do. But there's a sex scene with two snails which is either really revolting or really beautiful, depending on where you fall. They're undulating against each other and there's quite a lot of mucus involved, so I think we could do a whole mini-game based on that.

VideoGamer.com: That might bump up your T-rating...

JI: "Rated M for snail-related porn!"

VideoGamer.com: We'll look forward to playing that, then.

Deadly Creatures will lay eggs inside your face (be released on Wii) on February 13, 2009.

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