Review Fix Exclusive: Inside ’Tom vs. The Armies of Hell’

Review Fix chats with the multi-talented Sean Burgoon (Founder, Darkmire Entertainment), who discusses the recently released, “Tom vs. The Armies of Hell” game on Steam. With a wild story and some classic gameplay, as well as the possibility of a console release, it’s definitely a game for quirky fans of films the likes of “Office Space” and games the likes of “Racket and Clank” and “The Binding of Isaac.”

Review Fix: When was the idea for this game born?

Sean Burgoon: That’s actually tougher to answer than it should be. I’d been working on a similar game prototype with a totally different focus/story, probably back in 2010. It was still an isometric shooter, but it was more focused on spoofing ‘90s action movies. As I was scoping things out, though, I realized that I needed to find a way to simplify the game’s environment scope.

The initial idea was an office being slowly pulled into Hell; the deeper you went, the more Hell-like it became — but it was always going to be an office. Obviously, that changed rapidly — since in the final version, you’re in a lot of different environments (only one of which is the office) — but simplifying was a comforting idea while it lasted.

Review Fix: What games inspired this one?

Burgoon: Probably Bastion and The Binding of Isaac, with a dose of Luigi’s Mansion and Ratchet & Clank for good measure. I just really enjoy isometric shooter style games, and I love the art style and action of Ratchet & Clank. I definitely had a lot of artistic inspiration from Torchlight as well.

Review Fix: Who did the cutscene art?

Burgoon: I did. The voices, too. There’s one voice midway through the game that was done by my fiancee — but other than that, I never really had the budget to do anything more extravagant. I’m really happy with how it all came out, though.

The one thing I didn’t do was the music. The story/cinematic trailer music was done by Danny Baranowsky, who is amazing — and the rest of the music (both in-game and cutscenes) was done by Mathew Kong and Teresa Kerwin-Kong of Keko, who are also amazing in more ways than I can describe.

Review Fix: Lots of Pop Culture odes here. What films played a role in crafting the story?

Burgoon: Office Space and Army of Darkness are the two most obvious film inspirations. Army of Darkness is also a large part of the inspiration for Tom’s character. I wanted kind of a tech-industry Ash. While the actual characters are pretty different, Tom’s demon arm is definitely a reference to Ash’s chainsaw hand.

Other than that, I would say the humor is probably more inspired by modern adult-targeted cartoons such as American Dad, Archer, and Rick & Morty — the latter of which didn’t even exist when I was first starting this game, which kind of blows my mind a bit.

Review Fix: How does it break that mold though?

Burgoon: The story is really tied to (and driven) by the game’s structure. What I mean is, I tried not to overthink things. Ultimately, the story’s purpose is to keep you shooting demons and fighting bosses. That said, I didn’t want a shallow story by any means. There’s a lot of background put into some of the different characters you meet that if you aren’t a fan of text and tend to skip dialog, you may end up missing out. The game world has quite a bit left in it; I’d love to explore more of that world going forward.

Review Fix: Any plans at DLC?

Burgoon: What a conveniently-timed question! Plans? Oh boy, do I have plans — or at least I’ve had a variety of plans throughout the game’s development. For now, I’m pretty happy with where things have ended up. The story is definitely complete, though there’s plenty of room for expansion (in a number of ways) if players ask for it.

Aside from content expansion, I also have a list of features I’d love to add if the interest is high enough. I don’t want to go into specifics, though, because that always feels like some kind of weird extortion/hostage situation. “LOVE MY GAME OR THE {insert popular feature request here} GETS IT!” That sort of thing.

Review Fix: Any plans on a console release?

Burgoon: Yeah. I talked with some people at both Sony and Microsoft several GDCs ago, but I still need to loop back up with them and figure all that out. Porting over to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 should be reasonably straightforward. It will just come down to: a) whether they’re interested in the game being on their platform; and b) how much work it ends up being compared to interest levels. All that bet-hedging aside, I really want to see it on both platforms.