Finding your area of interest can typically be the key to success for smaller builders, however Swedish crew Image & Form refuse to be pigeonholed. Over the final ten years they’ve tackled each style, from tower defence to turn-based techniques, RPGs and motion platformers. With their newest recreation, The Gunk, they’ve lastly entered the realm of 3D journey video games. Released on Xbox Game Pass at the tail finish of final 12 months, The Gunk was a giant step up for the makers of SteamWorld Dig. Not solely was it their first recreation in 3D, and their first time utilizing a brand new engine, however it was additionally their first title that had nothing to do with the collection they’d constructed their identify on. As it makes its method to Steam at the moment, I sat down with director Ulf Hartelius to discuss extra about the creation of the recreation’s titular goop, and how the timing of its environmental themes about cleansing up its gunked up planet was way more than only a Death Stranding-style blissful accident.
“We’d solely ever accomplished 2D video games in our personal in-house tech,” director Ulf Hartelius says. “The predominant spark for The Gunk got here from engaged on totally different prototypes in Unreal and getting up to date with the engine and dealing in 3D. Some of our early prototypes have been SteamWorld, however The Gunk’s prototype wasn’t, which was additionally very intentional from our finish. Creatively we wished a break from the SteamWorld video games, and that world to recharge our batteries and do one thing else and be allowed to do different issues.
“For numerous causes, none of these prototypes actually took form, however at one level we stepped again and checked out the final one we might been doing. We found out it was doing method an excessive amount of, however we favored one facet of it. It was a recreation with lots of totally different skills, however it had a blowing and sucking wind mechanic – that was fairly cool. We might in all probability do one thing if we did simply targeted on that, so we ripped every part else away and simply had this little tiny factor that was a top-down jungle surroundings made from like one mesh, and we crammed it with mist as little balls. We made it so you would simply suck up these balls, and that method you’d reveal this jungle surroundings as you have been exploring and selecting up cash.”
The prototype quickly gathered velocity as Hartelius and his crew began to move it spherical the workplace, the bulk of which was nonetheless engaged on sprucing up their deck-building RPG SteamWorld Quest at the time. “It actually triggered that itch for exploration, and everybody simply actually favored it,” says Hartelius.
Realising they’d struck on a good suggestion right here, Hartelius then began asking lots of questions. “This mist, what might that be?” he muses. “And is it protecting the complete stage or simply sections? Does something occur whenever you take away it? Or is it simply to see what’s beneath? Does it have an effect on the surroundings? If it is protecting the surroundings and eradicating it adjustments the stage geometry, then it have to be some sort of corrupting affect, some sort of air pollution… Lots of issues like this got here very naturally to us.”
Around the similar time, the crew have been additionally beginning to peel again the layers of The Gunk’s underlying story. They knew they wished a feminine lead driving the story ahead, and that she’d have what Hartelius describes as “a scrappy sort of enterprise doing odd jobs for giant corps” along with her finest mate. “I’m actually fond of the radio banter that now we have in the recreation,” he continues. “I really like that ongoing, not cutscene-stopping narrative sort of storytelling, and it suited itself very nicely to that.”
“We had lots of bits and items, however how can we make a recreation out of it?”
Before Hartelius might go any additional, although, there was one ultimate query that wanted answering: “We had lots of bits and items, however then it is how can we make a recreation out of it? And that took a very long time, and lots of experimentation. We tried going too deep down numerous avenues. At one level, it was very open world-ish, however that had its challenges, not to point out how you interacted with the mist, which of course turned the Gunk.”
It’s maybe slightly ironic that the black, gooey substance that will go on to give the recreation its identify would find yourself being the most troublesome half to nail down, however it introduced the crew with lots of actual world technical challenges. “Not solely was Unreal and 3D fully new to us,” Hartelius remembers, “however it was additionally a query of, ‘We have this dynamically formed factor that is protecting big areas of the surroundings… what sort of tech can we even use for that?'”
As their ambitions grew, Image & Form tried numerous options, however Hartelius additionally admits that “each time we modified that tech, we additionally had a scrap lots of stuff, of course, as a result of lots of earlier work was incompatible. As I stated earlier, the Gunk was simply this mist that existed as balls. We simply positioned 1000 black balls in the surroundings that you just sucked up. And it seemed actually dangerous, and it was actually dangerous for efficiency, in order that was by no means an possibility, however we constructed our first ranges utilizing that.”
Gradually, these Gunks balls turned the extra amorphous sort of Gunk you see in the recreation at the moment, however numerous technical limitations nonetheless prevented them from making a Gunk that will enable them to “get it up on the partitions, up on the ceiling, [… and let] gamers have the opportunity to dig into it,” says Hartelius. “We wished to make these vertical ranges and never be constrained by being trapped on the ground with a peak map. That’s how we ultimately landed on our ultimate method.”
After two years of pre-production growth, the crew had lastly accomplished it, though even Hartelius admits that the 3D Gunk they settled on in the spring of 2021 was “nonetheless nowhere close to to the ultimate form it has now” in the completed recreation.
“It was very a lot a matter of give and take,” he continues. “With this method, we will get it in the ceilings and do all these cool shapes with it, we will make it boil and bubble, and mix with itself. It gave us lots, however we additionally had to make a quantity of concessions with that, from a technical standpoint. Before that, once we had this peak map-based tech, we experimented with tons of differing kinds of Gunk, however our ambition have been too massive. There was going to be lava variant, a snow variant, a fog variant and so forth. It was an extended course of. It’s sort of wonky, however it’s fairly enjoyable taking that every one the method to one thing you possibly can really ship. Eventually, although, we determined to deal with the default Gunk. That’s going to be good and juicy, and we’re going to construct on that so far as we will.”
With the tech facet now in place, the crew nonetheless had to end answering the ‘how to make a recreation of it?’ query. “Just from a stage design perspective, we had this factor that was concealing one thing beneath it, however how can we entice the participant to take away it to reveal one thing they cannot see?” Hartelius says. “Can I make it so there’s an energetic alternative about which half of the Gunk I’m going to assault first? Does that matter? In the finish, we made it so it did not actually matter, you have got to soak up all of it, partly for that cause, as a result of it was so troublesome to get gamers to make an knowledgeable alternative. You cannot actually try this when you do not know.”
“We’ve at all times been afraid that perhaps that section of individuals who like the atmospheric exploration was actually small. But it does not seem to be it.”
Indeed, Hartelius says they “hit lots of partitions” attempting to mix every part collectively. “Coming from the 2D video games, particularly SteamWorld Heist and Quest, that are turn-based video games, they sort of have it simple, in some sense, so we seemed extra to the SteamWorld Dig video games. Lots of the motion stuff is taken and tailored straight from them, as a result of despite the fact that this is not actually a platformer, we nonetheless wished the platforming to be, nicely, perhaps inferior to the Dig video games, however we nonetheless wished pretty tight platforming controls, as a result of there’s nothing that takes me out of an expertise greater than dangerous platforming!”
A rigidity was starting to emerge. For Hartelius, The Gunk “was at all times about exploring this surroundings, eradicating the Gunk and revealing what’s beneath and triggering that new second layer of gameplay.” But once they began bringing in play testers, not all of them have been on the similar web page. “It appeared like a fairly clear cut up between those that actually get it and actually get pleasure from being on this world, versus people who need some sort of deeper gaming problem.” In reality, Hartelius himself concedes that The Gunk in all probability “has higher controls than it ought to have, given how simple the platforming really is in the recreation,” and he tells me how some opinions ended up criticising the recreation for not having extra superior platforming sections. “Someone even thought it had adequate controls for it,” he says, “and I agree! But we additionally discovered doing this venture that it takes a very long time to make an space of this recreation, notably with all its lush geometry and environments.”
In the finish, the crew moved ahead with their unique imaginative and prescient, pushing apart any lingering issues they’d obtained throughout these pre-release playtests. “We’ve at all times been afraid that perhaps that section of individuals who like the atmospheric exploration was actually small,” says Hartelius. “But it does not seem to be it. It looks as if there are lots of individuals who actually like this kind of recreation and expertise. I’d find it irresistible if we had had the alternative to give the ones looking for extra depth in the gameplay one thing as nicely, and to get the Gunk to evolve extra in the recreation, however we sort of ran out of time ultimately.”
Despite its numerous setbacks, there was one half of the recreation that resonated with everybody, and that was the environmental themes operating all through Rani and Becks’ complete journey. Indeed, in some ways The Gunk builds on what Image & Form have been doing in the SteamWorld video games for years, many of which occur on a ravaged, Earth-like planet the place some sort of local weather disaster has already occurred. But The Gunk takes it a step additional. Not solely are there references to Rani’s house world having already been ruined, however your major function in the recreation is to assist her clear up this new planet to restore its steadiness – and in contrast to a sure different post-apocalyptic recreation that got here out lately that simply occurred to coincide with everybody going into lockdown, the inclusion of these themes “was very significant and deliberate from the get-go,” says Hartelius.
“At our launch get together, I had this little speech the place I recounted how we got here to be the place we’re, and once I seemed it up, I realised that we began with The Gunk like a month earlier than Greta Thunberg’s first protest. It’s very a lot in that very same context. But personally, I’d additionally been turning into extra conscious in the years main up to that and I’d additionally been rising sort of impatient about the SteamWorld video games, as a result of, pretty much as good as they’re – and I’m 100% tremendous proud of them! – they do not actually have all that a lot actual world that means. I actually wished to make a recreation that would, no less than marginally, have an effect on individuals and assist them see the world in some sort of new lens, or simply make them barely extra conscious of issues and query issues like the environmental affect we’re having on the Earth. I figured if I can try this, then this recreation is a lot extra significant.”
The Gunk is out now on Steam for £20/€25/$25, and you can too discover it on the Microsoft Store and Xbox Game Pass. You may learn our assessment of The Gunk proper right here.
