PixelJunk Monsters Encore dated + interview part 2

Matt Morton here picking back up where Deb Mars left off for part 2 of our interview with Dylan Cuthbert from Q-Games on PixelJunk Monsters Encore. If you missed Part 1, be sure to check it out here.

What we’ve learned from Part 1: We’re all fans of Lost, fan mail rocks, Dylan’s marriage is fine, Encore hint revealed, coinage of new word “WikiTiki.”

We’re happy to announce that the game will be releasing this Thursday, May 8th for $5.99. And we promised you some juicy new info about the expansion. Well here is what we can tell you: There is a secret landmass located between Tiki & Toki Islands. Suffice it to say you won’t get any of us to dish on this one. But if you clear all stages, well…you’ll find out.

And now back to the interview:

6. (Matt) What was your first “epiphany” gaming moment when you realized this was going to be your career?

(Dylan) When I made a Pac-Man clone on my friend’s ZX-81 (an old 8-bit computer made by an English boffin called Clive Sinclair). I found it fun programming the AI for the little ghosts in BASIC. It was awful AI and took up way too much CPU time, but it started me on my long and winding path to make games for a living. That was about 1982 and I was ten years old.

7. (Matt) What game did you wish you made & why?

(Dylan) Out of existing games by other people? The original Made in Wario/WarioWare. I had an idea that was almost exactly the same which I pitched to Sony Japan in 1998 but it got lost in the rush to make the rubber ducky bath demo on the PS2.

Out of non-existing games? I really want to make a character-based side-action shooting game with platformer elements, but right now our line up for PixelJunk Series 1 is pretty much decided so maybe that will have to wait for Series 2.

8. (Matt) What career would you be in if you weren’t in the games industry?

(Dylan) A novelist, probably sci-fi. I really like Iain Banks stuff. If I failed at doing that I think I would open up a proper fish and chip shop in Kyoto during the day, and a really cool laidback bar in the evening. Maybe those three things should be my retirement plan. I’d also really like to make some kind of tv drama – something really dramatic and dark – for Japanese TV as all their stuff is so light and frilly. They could never do something like Lost or Prison Break…everyone smiles too much.

9. (Matt) If you could play co-op mode on Monsters/Monsters Encore with anyone, who would it be & why?

(Dylan) The Queen of England. Why? Well, it would be a hell of a laugh and I think she’d enjoy it, too. The Kings and Queens of the world don’t get to wage war anymore so we should encourage them to release their stress by playing RTS games. (I am watching another TV series besides Lost called The Tudors and it is really good.)

10. (Matt) Can you honestly, in all truthfulness, really get rainbows on everything?

(Dylan) Me personally…oh yes, definitely. It takes a few tries for a few of them, but I am quite the master. I know how the towers fire and where best to place them for maximum damage. Sometimes you can even time the building of a cannon tower so it pops up just as a big crowd is passing by and fires right into the middle of them inflicting a lot more damage than when if it fired as soon as the crowd hit the radius line. My wife also got all rainbows, by herself, not in cooperative play.

(Matt) Seriously?

(Dylan) Seriously.

…
Still always spreading the PixelJunk love,
-Deb, Matt, Dylan and the whole team at Q-Games