It may not have garnered the attention or accolades of VVVVVV, but Antipole proved there is more than one way to design a gravity-flipping 2D platformer. I had a chance to sit down with lead programmer and designer Edward Di Geronimo of Saturnine Games and talk about the changes it went through during its development and their next project, Turtle Tale.
Where did you guys get the idea to do something with flipping gravity?
It started off awhile ago I was working with a platformer engine just to see where I can go with it. I enjoy those kind of games always, just to see where it goes, and I was talking with a co-worker and he just said to me ‘how hard would it be to reverse gravity?’ and I said ‘oh that’s really easy to do,’ so I just tried it and messed around with different things. The first thing that came to my mind was the time limit on it and to see what you could do within that. I think this was going on probably about the same time VVVVVV was being created and they took a very different direction. And we both ended up with spikes all over the place, and we realized that once you throw in the gravity, bottomless pits don’t work.
So the art design, the character, I thought was pretty interesting, you know, it’s a zoot suit wearing, top hat, Tommy gun wielding dude…
We just wanted to get a very strong contrast, and in the end we decided not to go with putting much story in the game. We tried doing it, but everybody kinda felt it didn’t add a lot, and we felt that if we’re going to add something that doesn’t strongly add to the game, it’s better not to have it. But the original idea was to have that strong contrast with the clearly different worlds clashing.
The original, I don’t even remember how that exact character came about. I remember the idea that led to it. I think Mike [Michael Hayes - Lead Artist] must have thrown out that idea at some point and I went ‘ok that works.’ We had originally thrown out the idea of going further with the whole 20s style and going swing theme with the music. We tried that; Of course it turns swing is the one kind of style music I can’t do very well. We tried it and we didn’t like it, so we went in another direction, more techno and electronic kinda sound, and it kinda works and a lot of people tell us there’s a Super Metroid kinda vibe to the music, and it’s one of my favorite games, so I love that.
So now you guys have that project finished. Your future plans include creating a game about a turtle, correct?
Yeah, that’s the game we stated based off the Antipole code, and it’s a lighthearted cartoony game, very Saturday morning cartoon kind of feel to it. You’ve got a turtle with a watergun on a tropical island and pirates come and take it over. All the enemies are animals from around the island. The pirates are led by a rabbit; you have monkeys that are henchmen that follow them around. You wander around different areas of the island, huge forest, a lava-filled cave.
What kind of perspective are you guys using? A side-scroller?
Yes, another 2D platformer. It’s very different vibe. I think it’s going to be a different type of game than Antipole.
What made you want to go with a whole different theme for a younger audience?
It came down to a couple things. One is we’ve done two games thus far, one on DSI and one on Xbox, and both were space-themed, and part of me wanted to try a different direction anyway. And the other thing was I brought on an intern to work on this project, and working with his style, he was just great at cartoon art. We tried having him do metallic-style things like Antipole and it just didn’t work.
What do you think requires the most time? Art? Programming? AI?
It’s been the art, pretty consistently. Especially at this point because we’re doing another 2D platformer. Ninety-nine percent of the code is identical between these two games. The more traditional platformers, I can walk up to a whiteboard and spend half an hour and design a level. In Antipole, because of the whole gravity mechanic, to get like one room in that game could usually take me several hours, and that was when I was on a roll and going quick. There is one room in that game that I kept trying every now and then for over 6 months to get it to work out well. There’s a room where you have to push a block onto the spikes, jump onto the block and jump over more spikes. That room went through dozens of revisions that just didn’t work, but it’s a 1-screen room. It’s so simple.
I understand. It’s like the last 10 percent of the work can take 90 percent of the time.
That was a hard thing to do because I didnt have much reference I could go off of. Like even VVVVVV the mechanics are so different than ours. You can’t share any kind design. I can’t rip off a level from them even if I wanted to because they’re so different. But on the other hand, with the Turtle, I’m trying to figure out how to design things and I’m pulling out my Super Mario Brothers, especially how they handle things.
They had very good level design back then. Like Castlevania and all. It’s good that you guys look back at old mechanics and old design and try to bring it to a new generation of kids.
Definitely, like in Antipole, there’s one level where you’re dropping through spikes. It’s very Mega Man.
That’s exactly what I thought when I was playing that, but Mega Man is brutally difficult.
On our team we get into big fights. I’m a fan of Mega Man 2 and Sean, the AI programmer, is a fan of 3 and we debate constantly which one is the better one.
I enjoy the fact that they’re coming back to that, so new players can enjoy it. Granted I wish they’d change some of the mechanics, like having to replay the same area over once you die. Die on a cheap death and it’s frustrating to have to start back five minutes.
It’s kind of interesting that you mentioned that. I tried to put a decent amount of checkpoints in Antipole. You see a wide range of what people think the difficulty in this game is. The people who are hardcore Mega Man people say if you want Mega Man style gameplay but want an easy game, play Antipole. If you have people who don’t really play Mega Man, their reviews are all saying if you want a really hard game, play Antipole. So we get such a wide range
We originally started out as a very different path and structure of the game. We gave you 5 lives and the levels branched and there were a couple branching points; there were four different paths for the game. We tried to a short thing that you played through a lot. We ended up combining it into one straight playthrough. I think more people liked it that way. When we first did that, having the limited lives, people were complaining ‘oh this is brutal,this is so hard,’ so we went with the infinite lives approach.
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