We chatted with David Illan Lopez and Carlos G-Casilda of Amiguito Studios about their exciting new puzzle platformer.
"Hi friends, I'm Emil Bilbao for the BIG 2024 and I'm taking a look at the indie games being showcased here and I'm here joined by a couple of amiguitos who are telling me more about Blast Course which is a game I've been hearing buzz around and it was nominated for some of the university awards and it looks very good, it's sort of self-based, cartoonish, radioactive colors, style but it has a twist, so what's the sort of the elevator pitch for Blast Course?
So basically Blast Course is taking how portals, puzzles are designed and things like that and we take it with rocket jumping and like physics, we also like to, we believe in creativity in the players so we want in order to approach the game to feel like kind of freedom to the players for example, instead of having some linear puzzle in the sense that it's one and then another there's like some rooms where you can choose between some puzzles, then this concept evolves for example there's one city, one level that can be considered like an open world and also when you approach the puzzles, as you unlock new rockets, the solutions to the puzzles can change between players because as it's a game based on physics, you are able to like figure out how to solve a puzzle with the physics the game gives you As it's a system-based sort of experience and you guys are in the university with UTAD how did you guys approach like the concept, the prototyping of this game?
Like how did you come up with the idea and what did you try out before you came up with this whole concept?
Well, at the beginning of the project we had to make like several pieces for different ideas, each for each individual and at the end we decided like we make prototypes for them and then we decided which one was the one with the most potential and in this case was the Blast Course, the idea came from one of our co-workers that is not here that really enjoyed maps like of rocket jumping from TF2 and from Quake so that's like our main inspiration for the movement and the physics inside the game Does it have a story or is it just a bunch of levels for now?
Yeah, it has a story, we are also influenced by it, by Portal, sorry So our narrative is also highly influenced by Portal in the sense that there's like this enemy that is like talking over all through the levels kind of similar to GLaDOS, in this case it's the boss of this company called Interesting Company that has hired you in order to try their new way of transportation system that is called Hyperboom in the first level you will have to figure out how it works in some sense but later in the first level you will have to pick a package that you will deliver them in the city that is the second level and then there's like a twist in the final level but that's something that..."
"Spoiler alert! Yeah, yeah, same as in Portal So I've heard the game released already, so how can players get their hands on this game?
And what are you guys going to do next?
Are you still, you know, working with the university?
Are you planning on creating your own studio? What's next?
Well, yeah, the game can be found on Steam, it's completely free like basically most games that came out from Utah and we are kind of maybe planning on continuing this project but expanding it a lot bigger but it's still like muddy waters, it's not very clear yet where are we going to go from now Right, anything you would like to add to that?
No, thanks Perfect, thank you so much for your time I'm gonna try it out after this interview Thank you so much, enjoy your show Thanks"