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Developer Interview: Blade Kitten | PSNStores

Developer Interview: Blade Kitten

Posted by on September 7th, 2010 | 1 Comment | Tags: ,

Recently we had the chance to interview Steve Stamatiadis, Creative Director at Krome Studios, about their upcoming download game, Blade Kitten. This game caught our eye when it was announced, and we all know Eric loves him some furry cleavage (No Eric I will never let you live that down).

PSNStores: Blade Kitten looks very much like the action games of yester-year. What games did the team call towards as inspiration for the title?

Steve Stamatiadis: A couple of the classics in my book like Strider, Legend of Ninja Kage, Super Castelvania 4 and a dash of Ninja Warriors. But we never sat and studied them in detail. Instead, we took the path of taking the cool elements as we remembered. I find that when you reference an old game, nostalgia colors your memories and gameplay elements are always cooler in your head than they actually were in the game. When you actually go back and look at the original games they’re usually clunky and nowhere near as good. So we try to make Blade Kitten’s features as cool as we remember them. The technique works a treat and stops you from just aping old games.

PSNS: How did you come up with the setting for the game? It looks very unique.

SS: I just took the path of working with cool elements without worrying about how things actually worked. That’s the biggest reason for a sci-fi setting, so I can have whatever cool idea I want. People tend to get bogged down with the real world and constrain their imaginations.

A great example is the planetoid of Hollow Wish itself. As you can see it’s a bizarre shell made of hexagonal plates. I’m pretty sure it would require some pretty advanced technology to exist in the real world. But it looks cool and sets the tone for the level of… wierdness, I guess. It says, “You’re not on Earth any more, new rules apply”.

PSNS: How long has Blade Kitten as an idea been around? I recall the character started in comics of some sort.

SS: I started putting the world together mid 2001. It draws on comics and ideas of mine that go back to 1994. So it’s been a while but for most of that time it was just one of the pet projects I’d work on in my spare time. The current game version only goes back to late 2008 where I created a whole wad of new stuff specifically for the game and used the other material to fill out the world.

PSNS: There has been a lot of talk about the game’s narrative. Do you find it important to have a strong story in games these days?

SS: It really depends on the game. I’m just as happy to play a good game with no narrative. The important thing to remember in a good game is that the narrative gives meaning to the players actions. It’s not just the run from A to B, with a strong story there’s a motivation to run from A to B and when done properly that can change and deepen the whole experience for the player.

PSNS: Being a PlayStation gaming site, most the time we usually don’t get demo’s for download with digital titles… So will there be a demo for Blade Kitten at launch?

SS: Yes we put a bit of effort into having a demo that you can play and unlock the full game right there. It’s a feature that PSN has that frankly not enough developers/publishers are using for whatever reason. The Blade Kitten programming team pulled out the awesome to make that happen. Make sure you thank them, too.

PSNS: When can we expect to see it on the store?

SS: Should be towards the end of September. There should be an announcement pretty soon.

I would like to thank Steve for taking the time to answer our questions. You can find out more about Blade Kitten, on our site (duh), or you can check out the official game site.