Vi spelade inte tillräckligt länge för att kunna ge en fullständig hands-on-förtitt av Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure när vi testade det i Netflix monter under Summer Game Fest förra månaden. Våra utsändas tid med det gjorde dock verkligen intryck, vilket stärktes ytterligare av ett fascinerande samtal med art director David Hellman och speldesigner Nico Recabarren. Han sade bland annat:
"The main mechanic actually came up from trying to make a 2D Rubik's Cube. The main goal was to try to make like a puzzle game, first of all, right? That's the thing that I like to design, but also I wanted to make it like more broadly attractive, so that's why when I started working with Nick Suttner and David Hellman, we started to make it like an adventure game. So in a way it's like the adventure game hides inside several puzzles and everything in the world is explored with the same mechanic".
Hellman förklarade även det unika grafiska upplägget i denna blivande indie-höjdare:
"The first job of the art is to support the functionality. In this game, you know, it's all on the grid. So we have actually an unusual split between the gameplay relevant objects, which are all on the grid, and then the the scenery, which is behind the grid and departs quite far from like a conventional world representation. So the grid stuff is very clear, very iconic, and just adheres to like grid logic. But then when we get off the grid, we get really loose and actually depart from consistent like viewpoints even."
Angående humorn i spelet, så gav Recabarren spelets författare all förtjänst och berättade lite om ursprunget:
"First of all, the credit for that is definitely Nick Sander, which is the writer of the game. Just for context, the game was started during the pandemic, so I think there are a lot of topics related to that. Throughout the story of the game, there are several communities that are separated, but for different reasons and by different means. And [main character] Jemma has this personality, and her nature is to disorder things in different ways. And that leads her to get into trouble, but also to open, in a way, those communities and connect them in a kind of sweet way. So yeah, I think the story we tell is a story of self-discovery for Jemma, but I feel like it's a very personal thing [for us] as well".
Detta ser ut att bli något speciellt, och då snackar vi inte bara för årstiden, utan för hela 2024. Hela intervjun hittar du nedan komplett med svenska undertexter. Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure släpps den 25 juli till Netflix Games, PC, Switch och Playstation 5.
Det här kommer bli något alldeles extra enligt våra utsända.
