Review Fix Exclusive: Inside ‘Atomic Butcher: Homo Metabolicus’

Review Fix chats with ‘Atomic Butcher: Homo Metabolicus’ developer David Schwingenschlögl, who lets us know why the game is worth a try. Detailing the developmental process and the games’ goals, Schwingenschlögl’s game is a unique one with some cool gameplay innovations at work.

Review Fix: How was this game born?

David Schwingenschlögl: ”Atomic Butcher: Homo Metabolicus” is actually the sequel to a freeware platformer game that we did in the old days, that is: 2004. Back then, Roland and I still went to school (the same one, that’s how we met), and we both always had a thing for games (and video games in particular). Somehow we decided to team up and “make some kind of platformer”. We locked ourselves in the basement of my parents and started hacking away. In the early stages of our prototype, we intended to add a blaster weapon with energy trail; by accident, the projectiles (and the trail) had gravity enabled, were yellow-ish and located a bit too low, which made it look like it came from the main character’s groin. We could’ve stopped there and fixed it, but the premature adolescents we were, we laughed and, well, the rest of the game kind of formed around the idea that the main character would pee.

Review Fix: What games inspired this one?

Schwingenschlögl: A lot of games, actually, since we were avid gamers ourselves. It would be impossible to list everything that influenced us; we picked many aspects that we liked from other games and tried to weave them into our design. For instance, the ability to aim freely and use both the mouse and the keyboard for controls were taken from Abuse and practically every first person shooter after the Doom era.

Review Fix: Lets talk about the art. What inspired that?

Schwingenschlögl: We wanted to create a game that would look bright (mostly), but feel kind of dark, with a grain of levity. It’s difficult for me to put this into words; the world in “Atomic Butcher: Homo Metabolicus” is broken. It’s a classic post-apocalyptic scenario where infrastructure and society as we know it ceased to be long ago. But that does not necessarily mean that everything’s monotonous; we did not want to make another “brown game” with a lot of desert and desolated, faded places, so that’s the dichotomy we were going for. It does not look broken, but it is, and it is also a dangerous place. That’s what I meant by the dark feel to it. The irony is that the main character, the Atomic Butcher, has no notion of any of this. He just is, and he so happens to eat everything alive — be it some kind of monster or an innocent woman. Whether society reforms and humanity manages to rebuild has no meaning to the anti-hero. As long as there’s enough to eat. This is quite ridiculous; that’s the levity I talked about.

Review Fix: What has development been like?

Schwingenschlögl: We’re doing this because we love it, so it has been fun most of the time. It’s very liberating to make a gross, totally over-the-top, politically incorrect game. Many things that we’d worry about in “serious” productions just did not apply here. What about putting a giant blender in here, in the middle of nowhere, with rotating blades and everything that goes in is chopped into a bloody mist? Can we throw children in there? Usually there’d be a voice in your head saying “noooo, you can’t do that! That makes no sense, and also: children? REALLY?!” Well, not for that game. We took great pleasure in throwing in weird ideas.

Review Fix: With all the competition on the mobile market and in the indies now, how difficult was it for you guys to try and make something that stood out?

Schwingenschlögl: I think the game itself has very little to do with this. There are just so many titles out there, many of which barely anyone ever heard of, which are really, really good games (and they would deserve more attention). So as you said, the competition is really tough. Luckily for us, we do not depend financially, so we have the luxury of moving freely and “doing our thing”. This takes off a lot of pressure. Sure, it’d be nice if a few more copies were sold, so we can at least cover the costs we had — I’m not even talking about the time we put into this, but rather everything we had to pay for to form a company and to be able to market the game commercially.

Review Fix: Bottom line, why must someone play this game?

Schwingenschlögl: Because it’s fun (or at least we hope it is). It is absolutely over the top, it is fast, it is relentless. It is liberating to be able to brutally destroy everything, and not having to feel the slightest guilt about it. It is very gross. I mean, you can pee, poop and puke on your enemies. It’s quite ridiculous, but it’s not stupid; we put a lot of thought into the mechanics and the basic building blocks of the game; it is not just random things thrown together. There’s an intricate design. Once you master the controls, there’s a certain elegance to it, a symphony of destruction, an artistic dance of death.

Review Fix: How do you want this game to be remembered?

Schwingenschlögl: As “that game where you can pee, poop and puke.”

Review Fix: What are your goals for this game?

Schwingenschlögl: Right now, we’re busy working on additions, there’s still many things we want to cram in (but wouldn’t because we’d otherwise never release). We want to do things right, not half-baked, so we removed a lot of stuff pre-release so the things that are there work. It’s time to put them back in. My hope for this game is that many people play it — not for the money, but because we see games as art, and art is worth nothing if there’s no one to look at it.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Schwingenschlögl: Oh, I kind of answered this in the previous paragraph. Expanding the game. As far as the next project is concerned, chances are high that we’re going to team up again. But we’re not ready yet to let “Atomic Butcher: Homo Metabolicus” go.