We’re within the release week of our hand-drawn tag crew brawler, Jay and Silent Bob: Power Blunt Punch, a zeal mission that we’re happy with that has been in construction for a “couple” of years now. The crew has been resilient, sticking it out thru ups and downs, marriages, births, sicknesses, business shakeups, and the BBL epidemic.
Since I’ve the gap to percentage our revel in I believed we might pass deep like a Military seal and discuss how it began…
11 years in the past on a sunny afternoon in Berkeley CA, I used to be sitting at a boutique pizza joint with a scorching slice and a chilly beer. Sitting throughout from me was once a dapper gentleman with a antique baseball cap, lengthy hair and aviator glasses, additionally maintaining a brew. It was once Trevor Fehrman, the actor who performed Elias in “Clerks II,” who I met thru a mutual good friend at IGN.
We clanked dranks, took a sip, and began stepping into deep about online game historical past, gaming tradition and our peak 5 video games of all time. He mentions that he’s happy we attached as a result of he desires to make an indie sport and proceeds to drop the bomb on me…
“Good day so, my good friend Kevin Smith talented me the rights to make a Jay and Silent Bob online game, and I want some lend a hand to make this occur.”
I spit my drink out, my jaw dropped and hit the desk, choking and coughing I took a second and appeared up. “Kevin, what?! This is wonderful!”
I used to be dumbfounded as a result of my crew and I’ve been lovers of Smith’s paintings for a very long time and suppose Jay is hilarious. Whilst spending numerous hours running on our final sport and pushing thru my grasp’s thesis, I might watch “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Again,” “Mallrats” and the Night time with Kevin Smith Q&A periods for inventive motivation and psychological convenience snacks to care for my sanity.
So, Trevor and I talked for hours, met a couple of instances, turned into pals, and had been made up our minds to determine how shall we deliver this sport into lifestyles. I instructed Trevor we might be down, however for my crew to place effort into this mission I would wish Kevin to provide us his blessings and rights to make a sport along with his loved characters.
That subsequent night, I used to be sitting at my laptop running thru emails. I took a swig of Yerba Mate and after opening some other message, my reflex kicked in once more. I just about spit it out once I noticed an e mail from Trevor, with Kevin integrated pronouncing we had been all just right to make the sport!
That e mail was once all I wanted and we had been off to the races. Trevor and I got to work at the narrative design, tale and opening conversation, and our Interabang crew instantly clocked in to start out the manufacturing procedure, design paintings, and concepting essentially the most ridiculous persona design concepts and gameplay for Power Blunt Punch.
The idea that was once to make a conventional arcade brawler with grownup topics that fit Kevin’s inventive sensibility and our personal humor and persona design. The idea was once that it’s Dante’s Inferno however as a substitute of happening in hell, Jay and Silent Bob get trapped in a mysterious, mystical mall that escalates into insanity the additional the participant will get thru each and every degree.
At this level we had been self-funding the mission independently, whilst doing paintings for rent on some AAA tasks. To get this factor off the bottom, we in reality had to give you the option to fund the overall manufacturing of the sport.
Whilst within the Double High quality Indie Workspace, then-COO Justin Bailey, who was once rolling out a brand new crowdfunding and funding platform referred to as Fig to lend a hand fund Psychonauts 2 and different large indie titles, pitched me on working a marketing campaign thru their platform. Fig would maintain the promoting for the marketing campaign and in addition spend money on the sport.
We had the crew and our first investor. The next move was once to satisfy with Kevin to percentage our plan and ideas. The assembly was once at Kevin’s area. I stepped on his porch, pressed the doorbell, and anxiously awaited a maid or male servant to reply to. To our marvel, Kevin spoke back during the ring digicam and unlocked the door. As we entered, we adopted Kevin up the steps and into his television room the place we had been surrounded via quite a lot of fan artwork and memorabilia from motion pictures and products.
I got here in able to offer a complete pitch deck, however he lower me off and stated, “you guys can fund this during the crowdfunding marketing campaign, I don’t desire a pitch; you’ve were given this.” Kevin even installed his personal cash. Relieved, we chilled, smoked, after which mapped out the marketing campaign in combination.
In a while once we strategized the nuts and bolts of the marketing campaign, we introduced and won fantastic give a boost to. The marketing campaign integrated traveling with Jason Mewes, look on Kevin Smith’s podcast, and we even shot the crowdfunding video with Feargus Urquhart out of the Obsidian place of work.
The marketing campaign was once a luck, and we started working. Beginning construction out of the Double High quality places of work after which faraway, we created animation and battle techniques that labored in a similar fashion to combating sport engines. We dialed in the appear and feel of the sport and created manufacturing pipelines to make bigger and contract construction as wanted remotely.
Two years into manufacturing, there have been some exterior funding adjustments out of our keep an eye on, which slowed issues down. We reacted via pivoting when given the chance to spouse with LRG founders Josh and Doug who helped us fund a unfashionable 8-bit brawler referred to as Jay and Silent Bob: Mall Brawl. Tomas Guinan and I teamed up and constructed the sport in 9 months, launched it in 365 days and gave our backers a dope sport as an advantage whilst concurrently elevating completing budget for Power Blunt Punch thru gross sales as a substitute of funding. It labored!
We grew our crew with other people like Offended Steel, Toni Leys, Spoonybard and different creatives to spice up manufacturing worth and sign up for us within the marathon to complete the sport.
Whilst we had been in our stride to of entirety we attached with Virtual Eclipse to lend a hand with QA, Porting and publishing. A 12 months later, they joined with Atari, who’ve helped us get to the end line thru localization and porting with Alchemy.
It’s been a loopy experience, filled with heaps of fascinating zigs and zags, relationships, studio and private evolution. However all in all, it’s been an excellent experience, and we adore what we’ve created out of affection for each and every different and the tradition of sport construction.
Blammo! We are hoping you dig our little sport.
Jay and Silent Bob: Power Blunt Punch
Atari, Virtual Eclipse, The MIX GAMES
$19.99
Brawl your means during the streets and mall within the View Askewniverse as Jay and Silent Bob the place you unharness a dizzying array of irreverent mixtures, particular strikes, accumulate and summon assists, on this over-the-top beat ‘em up. You’ll wish to harness each ounce of smoke-fueled creativity to get previous the throngs of hockey-stick wielding teenage thugs, dookie demons, hipsters with young children, previous grumpy danglers and large, movie-inspired boss battles.
Jay and Silent Bob: Power Blunt Punch combines fantastic stylized, hand drawn animation, persona design, and excessive battle and badass catchphrases in a side-scrolling, tag-team, beat-’em-up. Our heroes embark on an epic journey from their humble, suburban New Jersey Fast Prevent to an unearthed mystical mall that has unleashed an evil cling at the town.
Regardless of if you happen to play solo and tag change between characters or along with your hetero lifemate in sofa co-op, you’ll be acting particular strikes and outrageous mixtures.
Evolved with the overall blessing, enthusiasm and voice-acting quips from Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith themselves, Power Blunt Punch offers gamers without equal, profound, and profane Jay and Silent Bob revel in.
Options
– Hand-Drawn Artwork and Animation: Extremely detailed, expressive and extremely encouraged hand-drawn animations.
– Insane mixtures: Bust out a cornucopia of irreverent particular strikes and mixtures that hyperlink in combination to create explosive finishers.
– Tremendous Strikes: Building up your tremendous meter to release online game encouraged tremendous assaults or save up your tremendous meter and grow to be Jay and Silent Bob into Bluntman and Power to freeze time and ship a devastating assault.
– Native Co-Op: Play solo or along with your hetero lifemate with two-player sofa co-op. Tag you’re it, snackpack.
– Cameo-palooza: All through your adventure, engage with cameo characters from the Viewaskewniverse and contact them in that can assist you right through intense moments.
