PAX East 2012: Humble Hearts Studio Interview; Dust: An Elysian Tail

Walking down and about the show floor of PAX East 2012, The Microsoft booth is one of the first showcases to happen upon. While there were several different new Xbox Live Arcade and Kinect games being displayed, none of them were quite as eye catching as independent developer Humble Heart’s Dust: An Elysian Tail. Getting the opportunity to play the game, I immediately sought out the man behind the experience I just finished having and demanded to question what I played and what we should come to expect to the upcoming summer XBLA release.

GeorgieBoysAXE: I’m here at the Microsoft booth display for PAX East 2012 and I’m here speaking with Dean Koondril from Humble Hearts. We’re going to talk about Dust: An Elysian Tail, so where should we start, Dean?

Dean: Dust: An Elysian Tail is an action platforming RPG that I’m independently developing and programing -- everything but the music composition. It’s an open-world 2D action game similar to the sub-genre most would call Metroidvania-esque. The central focus is the crazy combat which takes inspiration from several different genres and games that have helped shape this melting pot of what I wanted out of my personal dream game.

GeorgieBoysAXE: It’s really hard to fathom the fact you were responsible for the nearly the entire development of Dust when the finished product outplays anything done by the fully staffed studio known as Vanillaware. What kind of resources or tools did you use? Am I to believe that is all just done with XNA?

Dean: Yup, it’s all just done through XNA and C-Sharp, just your everyday free tools. It was a lot of carefully planned out work and traditional frame animation work that can fully take advantage of all the memory and technical specifications that the current generation can bolster for old development techniques. Honestly, as humble as it may sound, this work isn’t really all that impressive when you think about it simply because the technology is there and it’s a real shame that you don’t see too many games that take this approach with detailed hand-drawn animation.

I’m not trying to make a statement or prove anything with Dust, as I feel that any game can pull off beautiful fluidity to its animation given the right art style, but I saw a void for a game like this and I wanted to fill it exactly with what I wanted out of 2D game. I just simply have the fortune of coming from an artistic background and the patience to meticulously program as I learn more by the day.

GeorgieBoysAXE: So you mentioned there was a list of games and genres that heavily influence your work with Dust: An Elysian Tail. Besides the obvious Vanillaware and Japanese game designs influences abound Dust, I’d love to know, what exact games had an impact on you during development?

Dean: Much of the visual design is actually influenced by my background, being as I’m half-Korean, but Dust is definitely a love letter to Japanese game design and all of us who grow up on those classics from back in the day. It’s not just identifying with the conventions of Japanese game design, but I also wanted to recapture that same magic and charisma that those games had and gave when you first picked up the controller.

I don’t even feel like that feeling is coming out of Japan, especially with more of the recent releases and though you mention Vanillaware, I feel as if there’s so much more that can be done to really capture that feeling that I’m trying to convey with Dust. It’s not purely Japanese though -- there are still a lot of western ideas I’ve implemented and I tried to give the visuals the same appeal of a Disney animated film in tandem with the appeal of an anime.

GeorgieBoysAXE: The action is really frenetic. You’ve managed to implement from what I was able to keep a loose count of about twelve or more enemies give or take on screen simultaneously. The sheer action of evasion and combo chaining relates to that of a 3D Hack’n slash action game, only translated to work on a 2D plane of movement. Were there any particular 3D Hack’n slash games that became a direct influence for you when working on Dust?

Dean: It’s funny you say that because I did include elements I enjoyed from Devil May Cry and the modern Ninja Gaiden games, but mostly the modern Ninja Gaiden games in particular. I positioned the button interface similarly to that of Ninja Gaiden and the chain of combos between different enemies encountered in large groups. The fluidity of constant movement always felt really good to me, and is something that I wanted to accomplish in Dust.

GeorgieBoysAXE: Wow, I never thought of that until now. But yeah, I do see the Ninja Gaiden influence like when I was able to launch that enemy into the air and then juggle him into finishing throw that felt really similar to the Izuna drop from Ninja Gaiden!

Dean: Exactly, I saw you do that right off the bat and how you mixed and matched it with other combos between your quick strikes, strong strikes and projectile moves…like Ninja Gaiden. The combos manage to have this real sense of satisfaction when you pull them off and still manage to pull of this subtle sense of familiarity for gamers who’ve played games from the last twenty years.

GeorgieBoysAXE: So earlier in the interview, you mentioned that you were going for a Metroidvania styled stage layout. The standard conventions of a Metroidvania game involve an expansive world that opens up from exploration and backtracking with newly acquired abilities that open up routes not previously accessible from before. So where does Dust fit into that formula? How exactly are you planning to pull that off?

Dean: Definitely so the routes are opened up based mostly off of contextual plot events in which you backtrack and travel through this giant world that’s never segmented into a stage breakdown. There are towns and characters that you come across that will ask you to retrieve items or keys that open up secret routes previously inaccessible before in your traveled routes that you can go to and discover new secrets, or bonuses that will determine your completion of the game.

You’ll also earn abilities granting access to new regions, and while in combat you also have a stats for your combat abilities in which you level up your strengths so that you’ll be able to meet the challenge of skill the enemies of that particular region demands. Without that, the proper level or stats you’ll get massacred and though the area will be open to travel, it’ll imply that you can’t travel it yet without having the proper experience from level grinding.

GeorgieBoysAXE: I’m excited for the game honestly. When should we all expect Dust: An Elysian Tail to hit XBLA?

Dean: I can safely say that the game is near completion and will be completed before the end of the year, but I can’t make the same guarantee for release.

GeorgieBoysAXE: Hey, so that's better news than expected! Thank you again Dean, and I want to wish you an amazing PAX East, sir!

Comments

[ViperAcidZX]

So buying this on Day 1.