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I know creative folks like yourself hate being labeled or categorized, but I think it’s safe to say you are the Tim Burton of video game design. Your approach to each project you work on is entirely unique and different from your last; where do you get your visions?
These “visions” as you call them, come spontaneously and from some deep, dark place within. I think a lot of the foundation for my work and what inspires it was probably laid when I was a child. My relatives would give me coffee cans full of string, batteries, motors, and light bulbs for my birthdays – because I was more interested in making new things than I was in receiving a toy that was already built. Also, new toys never survived more than a few days before I ripped them open to see how they worked and how to build them into something more interesting. I was a problem solver as far back as I can remember. My work these days is much the same – I pull apart ideas, stories, and technologies to understand how they work, what’s interesting about them. Then I reassemble into something I hope is more interesting than the individual parts.
In some ways I think this is summed up in two of my favorite sayings “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” And “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”
Were you a fan of Grimm tales before this project?
When I was a kid I was a fan of colorful and fantastic fiction in general. I used to read the The Grimms alongside a host of other “ancient tales” from Greek mythology through to “modern” classics from Jules Verne to Daniel Defoe. I was especially attracted to the darker tales in these works – and the Grimm tales, when I could find the right ones, were especially compelling.
I grew up surrounded by some pretty heavy religion – being in a Southern Baptist dominated part of Texas. And the Grimm tales always felt to me like the dark cousins to the parables being taught in Sunday school. Bible lessons for devil worshipers or something.
What was the most challenging part about turning a Grimm tale into a video game?
It first had to do with mechanical details like timing, format, delivery schedules, and budgets. We had a very strict mandate: Create 24 episodes, each at least :30 minutes in length, and able to be delivered on a weekly basis. Once we got through the process of elimination in finding tales that would fit within our constraints – then it became a more artistic issue – how to represent the characters, locations, scenes, and critical narrative elements in a fashion that was entertaining and meaningful. In some ways, with the constraints, the other parts fall into place.
I think creativity without boundaries, without schedules, and without natural constraints, can often lead to meandering, endless musing, and concepts like “writers block”. Constraints are good.
So when you come up with a game idea like this, where do you start?
We always start with art, story, and character. It’s really important to get a sense of WHO we’re dealing with in the game, WHERE they live and breathe, and WHAT they’re on about. Then we start thinking about how game mechanic might relate in a meaningful way to the character, his actions, and his place in the world. The same was true with Grimm.
The story of Grimm actually began as a character sketch, a story, and then evolved into a film screenplay. In those days the character “Grimm” was actually a rather human looking kid with a mysterious “reverse Midas touch”. His story was set inside a world where things had been made too light, too clean, by a overly good (good to the point of bad) Queen. This Grimm went on a quest to understand his past, uncover the mysteries of his dark power, and eventually battle against the “forces of good”.
The Grimm you see today is a far distant cousin to that original character – but the origins and connections are there.
The “make it stinky” feature in the game is very addictive, what were the challenges of creating such an amazing visual effect?
We had to think about the ‘dark transformation’ idea from the very start of the project – this came out of the original story of “Grimm”. In doing so we simply looked at what the engine technology (Unreal 3) was already capable of, and thought of ways to adapt existing solutions to the new problem. Our solution was ultimately rather “clunky” from a technology perspective, but the end result is what we wanted graphically, so we’re general happy with it.
From a production perspective, the challenge in “light to dark” is one of creating 2 assets for every object in the game. No single asset exists without two components: a light and a dark version. That means that for every object in the game our artists must create two pieces of concept artwork, and that concept artwork must then be translated into two 3D models. Then those models have to be animated uniquely based on the light and dark versions. In effect, this is like creating the artwork for two games – then packing it all inside one game world.
Was there anything you thought was going to be a good idea, and finally decided to remove it?
Lots of things actually. One major feature we planned from the start was the idea of “words as weapons”. In using this concept the Player would run up to an object inside the game, hit a key to convert that object into a word, then carry the word around for use in another location. So you could walk up to a sheep, convert it into the word “sheep”, then carry that to a pit filled with wolves and toss “sheep” into the void. Upon hitting the ground it would convert back into the original object, and you’d have a diversionary sheep. We also envisioned combining words, so you might have a “flaming sheep” by collecting “fire” and “sheep” and combining them together.
This concept fit well with the overall theme of “changing fairy tales” by literally picking up the words within the tale and using them, changing them, etc. But the ultimate implementation of the concept didn’t function as well as we’d hoped. On paper it sounded great. In the game it was cumbersome and annoying. So we scratched it.
This sort of culling is natural. I think the issue for a lot of teams is that they don’t know how much to cull. My opinion, and it’s stated well by a quote my friend Jung keeps hung on his wall, “the more features we removed, the better the game got”. Simplicity is often the goal.
The The Grimm games are so incredibly funny, do you find that comedy comes naturally, or do you have to work at it?
Comedy is probably the most difficult of narrative themes to get right. For us, because we’re not experts in comedic storytelling, the road to “getting it right” was a very bumpy one. We really had to work hard to find Grimm’s place in this fairy tale world, and how to illustrate his disgust with the overly light tales we’re visiting, without him simply coming off like a repulsive jerk. Not an easy line to walk.
These days the character of Grimm has evolved itself into something that often guides where the narrative and the dialog should go. So the process of creating “Grimm commentary” on the tales is more natural. Were we to do a “Grimm 2” I think this sort of evolution would greatly benefit the final product. As it stands, you can see this narrative evolution in action as you play thought the existing Grimm episodes from first to last.
Your team have been creating episodes on a weekly basis, how many are you shooting for total?
In total we’ll create 23 episodes. The original mandate was for 23 episodes, but we ended up wrapping episodes 23+24 into one uber-episode for the finale. This episode will visit what is arguably the most famous fairy tale of all time, will go some ways to explaining the “origin of Grimm”, and will wrap up the first-year season for Grimm.
The artwork in the game really sets it aside from all casual games out there, what were your influences if any?
Our art director Ken Wong is going to answer this. I’ll send the answer as soon as I have it.
What can you tell us about SpicyHorse?
Over the past two years the studio has grown to 41 internal team members with 15 external artists creating 3D assets for Grimm. The studio utilizes a “core team” production philosophy – outsourcing all 3D asset production to local (Shanghai) production shops. This allows us to keep our internal team size manageable, quality and communication high, and lets us focus on what we feel are our core competencies: design, story, art, animation, and tech.
These days we’re growing the studio to tackle production on multi-platform projects of a larger scale than Grimm, but at the same time pursuing smaller, China-specific, online game production. Ultimately, we want to establish the studio as a premier producer of global game content in China.
What’s in your future?
For me? I’ll stay in China for at least the next 5~10 years. My home is here, my studio is here, and my heart is really here. It’s an amazing time to be in China, witnessing all the changes taking place in the culture, the economy, and in the gaming industry here. If I eventually move it’ll be further West, perhaps to Thailand or Vietnam. I’d like to continue riding the tech and game wave across Asia. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll end up in Africa?
At the same time I’m continuing to think about and play with the development of games – I’m also seriously interested in alternative energy and vehicle concepts that link into such. I’ve got a side-business here in Shanghai selling cool electric scooters to foreigners (www.spicy-motors.com, and every day I’m researching and pushing to make these vehicles cooler, faster, more fun, and more eco-friendly. Lately I’ve been working on concepts for a solar charging station – so someone could drive this vehicle to work daily and not spend a dime on fuel.
I hope that someday my passion for games might combine with the necessities of creating “new worlds” for people to inhabit, so that our reliance on real world transportation, possessions, and enjoyments might be transferred to virtual worlds where our impact on Earth is lessened.
QUICK REVIEW
The Grimm games are by far the most entertaining and original titles on STIMULUS to date. The object of the game is to retell a famous Grimm tale in a new "stanky" way by interacting with each scene to make it hilariously dark. The artwork will make you feel like Tim Burton and Walt Disney worked tirelessly to create each episode. Each game is incredibly cute and addictive. As soon as you finish seeing your first "stanky" tale, you'll want to go back and play it again. At $3.99 a game, the value is the best in the market of casual gaming.
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