A Chat With Mixed Bag Games

Yesterday we left you with a little taste of our complete interview with Mauro Fanelli from Mixed Bag Games, a two-person indie studio based in Italy which is currently working on Futuridium EP Deluxe and forma.8. Please enjoy the rest!

• Hello there! Can you introduce yourself and your game to our readers?

Hi! MixedBag is a super small indie Italian team, founded by Mauro Fanelli (that’s me!) and Andrea Gellato. I’ve been a videogame journalist for years at the end of last millennium (sounds scary!) and founded Alternative-Reality.com, a very big italian videogame website back in the day. Andrea is a veteran graphic designer, with over 20 years of experience.
We’re working on two games right now: the shoot’em up Futuridium EP Deluxe, that’ll be available soon on PS4 and PSVita, and the action adventure forma.8, slated to land on PS4, PSVita, Wii U, iOS, PC, Mac and Linux later this year.

 

• How big is Mixed Bag right now? Also, there aren’t many italian studios around - from an Italian to another, can you tell us a bit about your struggle to emerge in Italy?

MixedBag right now is very small! It’s basically a two people team, with the additional help of two external contributors that work on all the audio stuff and are the authors of the amazing Futuridium EP Deluxe soundtrack: Omar Ferrero and Luca Gasperoni.
The main problems in Italy are always the same, and not strictly connected to game development: bureaucracy and huge expenses to set up and run a company, also a small one. Just to get starter and set up MixedBag we had to spend some thousand euros and two months of time to get all the papers right. The same thing in the UK costs around 50 pounds and can be done online…
It’s a huge turn off for anyone who wants to open a start up on Italy.

 

• I understand that Futuridium EP Deluxe is inspired by the classic Uridium. What elements did you keep from Uridium in the game, and which unique features did you add in Futuridium?

We started with three main Uridium elements: the speed, the ability to turn 180 degrees and the idea of giant space dreadnoughts to destroy piece by piece.
First thing we did was strip down the game to the essentials elements: instead of destroying parts of the dreadnoughts the player has to destroy blue energy cubes and then blow up the core white cube. This element of abstraction adds a strong puzzle element to the game: you have to learn and memorise the correct pattern of cubes, to chain them together and to get the highest scores possible and all the Medals in Deluxe mode.
Then: the game is 3D, but with an eye to the past. We’re using a very simple colour palette, with very few colours on screen, just like in old games. We loved how the enemies and ships were made up of improbable colours back in the 80s’, because the colour palettes of 8bit machines were so limited.
We also added a lot of new stuff: Futuridium doesn’t feature traditional ‘lives’ but a different approach with a depleting energy bar, and in the Deluxe version there’s a turbo, new enemies and special in game portals…

 

• From what I’ve read about the game, there will be competition via leaderboards. Did you experiment with any form of true multiplayer, however, and if so why did you cut it?

We had, and still have, the idea of adding a multiplayer mode. We’ve still not tested it, but it’s something we’re seriously considering for the future.

 

• In your PS blog post, you’ve written that leaderboards will be shared between the PS Vita and PS4 versions - don’t you fear that Vita users will be at a disadvantage? How was your experience with PlayStation 4 as a developer? Also, we’ve heard great things about the Sony indie team (Boyes, Kamal etc.) - did they help you with getting the game on PS platforms?

We tested the game a lot, and currently the best hi score is mine, and I did it on the PSVita! Both versions are essentially identical to play, once you get the grips on the controls there are only some cosmetic differences.
Developing on PS4 was a very good experience: the console is a beast and porting the game was very easy. We use Unity as our engine: is only thanks to engines like Unity that a small two person team like MixedBag is now able to manage a multiplatform game on console.
Also we kept adding more and more stuff and particles: the game is a lot batter than what we showed in the trailers, I think everyone’ll be pretty pleased…
Sony is an awesome partner to work with. They’re committed to indie and they helped us in all the possible ways to get both Futuridium and forma.8 on PlayStation.

 

• Speaking of graphics, you mentioned “even more dazzling visual effects thanks to PS4’s added power”. Can you be more specific? Which hardware aspects of PS4 impressed you more during development?

In the last couple of weeks we kept adding and adding stuff to the Ps4 version, it’s like: ok the game is almost ready, let’s throw everything we can on screen! So a ton more particles than we initially anticipated and all the fancy post processing stuff: motion blur, a complex glow, distortion effects, the fancy chromatic aberration stuff. All at 1080p and rock solid 60fps with v-sync engaged.
What impressed me more of the PS4 is that it’s a very powerful yet accessible and ‘solid’ piece of hardware. Not only is it easy to develop for, but also the player experience is top notch: the so is fast and responsive, the sharing features are amazing and everything was in from day one. It’s an impressive feat.

 

• I’m also curious about the “cool DualShock 4 features”. Is there anything you can share about on that? Maybe you’ll use the touchpad in a clever way?

For Futuridium we are using the lightbar and the speaker, both are very fun to use from a developer standpoint and they can add a lot to player’s immersion. The lightbar glows in different colours and flashes when you hit cubes and performs other actions, it’s pretty cool to see in a dark room. The speaker is used to give the player audio feedbacks when some actions are performed.
Ah, we’re obviously using the rumble feature too: we have a cool effect when you fly low on the dreadnoughts’ surface…

 

• I noticed that your other game in development, Forma.8, will also be available on PC, Mac, iOS and WiiU. Is there a chance that Futuridium will eventually head on these platforms as well, or is it going to stay a PS exclusive?

It’s a PlayStation exclusive. :)

 

• Finally, I can’t help but notice that the only platforms you’re not currently developing on are those owned by Microsoft. This is not entirely surprising, as many devs already spoke against their indie policies. Did you try to reach them and if so, can you tell us what kind of response you got? 

We currently are in the indie Microsoft program, ID@Xbox, it took some time to get in so we didn’t have time to work extensively on the platform for now. But we hope to make some announcement for Xbox One soon!

 

• Thanks for your time.