Interview by Ninichi | Contact | Follow
Who are you and what is your game, A Robot Named Fight about?
'I'm Matt Bitner (@ARobotNamedFight), a 32 year old game dev from Bowling Green, Kentucky. I've worked on a few games for mobile like Draw A Stickman Epic and Battlepillars, but now I've set out on my own to make a PC game called A Robot Named Fight.
A Robot Named Fight is roguelike metroidvania about a robot (or several robots, depending on how often you die) whose planet is invaded by an enormous, moon-sized ball of meat, mouths, eyes, tentacles and reproductive organs known as The MegaBeast. Your robot must flee beneath the surface of the planet, fend off ever-mutating flesh creatures, and gather ancient technologies to become fight enough to return to the surface and defeat the MegaBeast.
The game will feature procedurally generated metroidvania style game play, where you must collect power ups to traverse through previously discovered areas. Being a rougelike, these areas and the power ups you have to collect will be different everytime you play. And of course, there's permadeath, but as long as you don't die you can quit your game and pick up where you left off when you return.'
How's the music coming along?
'Truth be told, A Robot Named Fight is actually something I'd tried to do a long time ago in ActionScript 3, when I first started learning to program. That original project was scrapped, but I still have the music for it, and its honestly some of my favorite music I've ever written. I'm rewriting a lot of those original tracks along with some new ones, so the music is probably further along than any other component in the game.'
What do you think of game music generally? Is it important?
'Game music is incredibly important, and my favorite game music is the kind that's absolutely integral to the identity of the game. I often think of the Mega Man 2 soundtrack and how I can't hear those songs without visualizing the levels or see those levels without hearing the songs. I think the emotional identity of a game can be almost completely defined by its music. I hope to do that with the music in A Robot Named Fight.'
What has influenced the music for A Robot Named Fight?
'While I've been developing the game, I've been listening to nothing but Synthwave and Krautrock, along with Italian composers like Ennio Morricone and Goblin. Also a lot of David Borden's early synthesizer music. So the game's soundtrack is some collision between those things and the kind of chippy rock and roll of Contra or Megaman X. I really want the game to sound like some kind of Futurist Horror Western.'
Why should we play A Robot Named Fight and when can we get it?
'If you're a fan of Metroidvania style games, you know that the joy of playing them for the first time is a constant sense of discovery and knowledge gained. Replaying them, you get this rewarding sense of competence and mastery. You know the location of secrets, you know how to exploit the various power ups and maybe even how to sequence break the intended route, but you eventually lose that sense of discovery. With A Robot Named Fight, I want to make a game where you can achieve that sense of knowledge and mastery, but never lose that sense of discovery. My goal is to create something vastly replayable, and I've got the framework for that working, but still have lots of content left to develop.The game is being developed in Unity and I'm doing all of the programming, art, animation, sound and music myself. In addition to the procedurally generated content, there's a kind of meta game of unlocking new items for later runs, similar to The Binding of Isaac. Tentatively, I'm hoping to have it done and launch on Steam by late 2017.'
About the author: Ninichi is a game music composer & music enthusiast. If you need custom music for your game, film or media project, Ninichi can help.
Check out some of her game music and contact her: ninichimusic@gmail.com to explore working with her now.
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