Review Fox chats with Rusty Sprout Rescue Adventure developers Francesco Marra and Nrupesh Gajjar to find out what makes the game a special one and more.
Review Fix: How was this game born?
Francesco Marra: At the beginning, we thought to make a restyle/remake of an old game but afterwards, we thought we should create a new IP.
Review Fix: What is your role in the game?
Marra: 7 Raven Studios is a small indie dev and at times, I have to cover different roles like programmer, producer, tester.
Review Fix: What has development been like?
Marra: The game was started before covid19 and was almost (the musician left) completed by March 2020. While waiting for audio assets, we chose to add other things.
Review Fix: What makes this game special?
Nrupesh Gajjar: There seems to be many other games inspired by Bust-A-Move (aka Puzzle bobble) but our game offers more things. We thought a simple puzzle bobble clone with x amount of levels could work but that wasn’t what we wanted so we choose to add an endless mode and battle mode. In Endless mode, players can play and try try to reach higher score. In Battle mode, you can play one vs one with another local player. We always thought we should make a game where players can enjoy the game with friends. We will always try to add a 2 players options in our games where possible. One special option is colorblind mode. Unless you are colorblind, you may never notice that a percent of people are colorblind. As one of our team has colorblindness, we noticed how the option helps gameplay.
Review Fix: What games influenced this one the most?
Marra: As before, the game is influenced by Bust-A-Move that is a leader in this kind of games.
Review Fix: Any fun stories or wild moments during development?
Marra: Hmmm as we remember, maybe. Covid19 and the musician leaving. The addition of colorblind mode and difference of opinion. If you are not colorblind, you may think this looks strange. The colorblind person was very happy and able to reach higher levels in the game.
Review Fix: What were the major lessons learned?
Marra: This is the first game that will be released almost at the same time for all consoles. Nintendo Switch, XBox One and PS4. It sasn’t easy as we thought but a good lesson and good experience
Review Fix: Do you think preserving older gameplay mechanics in new games is important?
Marra: Yes, playability is very important.
Review Fix: What’s your favorite memory as a gamer?
Marra: We have a lot. Born in 70s, we had the luck to know and program machines like Vic20, Commodore 64, Amiga, Super Nintendo and much more. We have played a lot of games and to see the graphics evolve from 8bit to 16bit to 32bits was just amazing.
Review Fix: How have your previous experiences in the industry helped this game?
Marra: We made commercial games for Gameboy Advance, Nintendo DS and other before this and everything taught us something. Most important is cooperation and listening to everyone on the team. Example: The first game for DS where we used an external QA company back to us with about 90 issues and we were easily depressed, now when we make a new game we know some basics we must test.
Review Fix: How do you want this game to ultimately be remembered?
Marra: Is a new IP and i really hope this could be the first of a long series of games with this IP, we are thinking already for at least other 2 games with the same IP because we think the characters are unique and can be remembered by players. We hope people take notice of colorblind feature.
Review Fix: What’s next?
Marra: We have 2 more games under development and with each game, we want to create something nice.
Review Fix: Anything else you’d like to add?
Marra: Special thanks to everyone who have supported us. Thanks in advance to all people who will buy the game and hope they enjoy it.
Leave a Reply