Footprints Games – Detective Gallo
[b]Jack Allin[/b]: So, why poultry and vegetables? I’m getting hungry just thinking about the game.
[b]Francesco De Angelis[/b]: So are we! Jokes apart, we like roosters and plants in any form, especially in noir version. Just imagine: a never-ending night… a world full of overconfident and tough characters… and then all of a sudden you discover that roosters are punks or detectives, and plants are victims or assistants. In short, it’s a pure comical contrast, with a touch of the bizarre.
[b]Jack[/b]: For those who haven’t yet checked out the demo, please give us an overview of Detective Gallo.
[b]Maurizio De Angelis[/b]: Detective Gallo is a point&click comic-noir adventure, wholly hand-illustrated and hand-animated. Thanks to his cactus assistant, Detective Gallo has to investigate the serial murder of five exotic plants… and then the case will get more intricate than ever…
[b]Jack[/b]: This is clearly not your average, everyday world as we know it. Tell us more about this unusual city and its even more unusual inhabitants.
[b]Maurizio[/b]: It’s a dark and deadly city populated by roosters, hens and chicks. Like Candy Bop, who is the parody of the “femme fatale” of noir movies – but in our case, she has totally fallen in love with Detective Gallo who, instead, cannot stand her. The general atmosphere of the game is serious (murders take place… punks endanger the streets… crime is everywhere…) but it clearly looks funny. And the funniest thing is that all the characters take themselves seriously! Like our baby punk, for example: the worse Gallo treats him, the more the baby punk manages to match up to him.
[b]Jack[/b]: Detective Gallo himself is a strange bird (literally). What can you say about his odd collection of quirks and foibles?
[b]Francesco[/b]: Gallo hates everybody. He’d kill everybody, but he can’t… He knows he must behave like a civil rooster. Yes. By tolerating everybody. And by behaving like a professional private investigator, strictly following a list of rules that allow him to control himself.
[b]Jack[/b]: He does seem to have an enormous (and often curiously specific) list of rules. Assuming rules #1 and 2 don’t prevent asking about the Rules of Gallo, just how many rules are there on the list?
[b]Maurizio[/b]: Gallo is happy that numbers are infinite, so his rules can be infinite too! He’s created rules for every occasion of his life: for his job… (Rule #1 of Gallo: Be competent, critical and careful), for action… (Rule #101 of Gallo: Don’t shoot your mouth. Shoot bullets), for when he doesn’t want to admit he’s unable to do something… (Rule #111 of Gallo: If you don’t have a green thumb, be trigger-happy).
[b]Jack[/b]: Gallo is clearly not the most sociable of fowl, but still… a cactus for a sidekick?
[b]Francesco[/b]: Actually, Gallo wants to always be right, so he hates people because people can criticize him. That’s why he prefers plants: because they don’t speak at all. And that’s why he chose a cactus as his assistant: loyal, portable, silent. The perfect assistant!
[b]Jack[/b]: I have to ask… does Gallo actually know Thorn is “only” a cactus? Or does he believe Thorn is really a living, breathing, speaking character with his own personality?
[b]Maurizio[/b]: Gallo would just reply “Details…” to these questions! 🙂 And he wouldn’t like to be contradicted!
[b]Jack[/b]: Although more Duckman than The Maltese Falcon, clearly this game has a distinctive noir vibe. What are some of your influences along those lines?
[b]Maurizio[/b]: We’ve mixed together thriller-noir moods from Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler and Rex Stout with the most famous “comic detectives” of videogame history, such as Sam & Max, Tex Murphy and Sly Boots!
[b]Jack[/b]: And then the flip side, what kind of comedic inspirations helped make Detective Gallo the humorous game it is?
[b]Francesco[/b]: After getting inspiration from the TV series DuckTales and cult-comic Dick Tracy, we took as comedy references some of LucasArts classic game protagonists (like Guybrush, Ben and Manny).
[b]Jack[/b]: It’s pretty obvious you’re longtime genre fans, as Detective Gallo seems to be very much cut from the classic adventure mold.
[b]Maurizio[/b]: We are true fans of graphic adventures (our favourite videogame genre): we’ve played a lot of adventures (and we’re still doing it) for a very long time. We could not even breathe without graphic adventures… no, ok, we could do that. But they are really our (second) life!
[b]Jack[/b]: So tell us more about your team. Who is Footprints Games?
[b]De Angelis brothers[/b]: We are two brothers, Francesco De Angelis and Maurizio De Angelis. Francesco, electronic engineer, is the tech soul of the game who created the GUI and programmed the whole script. Maurizio, writer and illustrator, is the artistic soul in terms of character design and animation. We created Detective Gallo’s story together and founded Footprints Games as an indie development company in 2012. Last year, two important collaborators joined us: we are talking of Mauro Sorghienti (color supervisor) and Gennaro Nocerino (soundtrack composer).
[b]Jack[/b]: Is there a thriving adventure game market in Italy? If nothing else, it seems your publisher, Adventure Productions, is determined to carve out a healthy niche for adventure games there.
[b]Francesco[/b]: The world of Italian indie developers is really thriving! Many projects, many ways to make videogames… so exciting! We are being constantly monitored and encouraged by Adventure Productions to improve the game more and more… and we are doing our best to create a game with a personal style not only for Italy, but also for the international market. Let’s cross our fingers!
[b]Jack[/b]: You’re asking for funds to help make Detective Gallo a reality, but you’re not using either of the more internationally well-known crowdfunding platforms, Kickstarter or Indiegogo. What is Eppela, and why did you choose that platform instead?
[b]Maurizio[/b]: The decision to run the campaign on Eppela and not use the most famous crowdfunding platform in the world was obviously tough, and we knew we might lose some potential backers by doing it… on the other hand, Eppela has been incredibly supportive from day one and even offered us to co-finance the campaign for a third with one of their sponsorship programs, Postepay Crowd. They really love adventure games and have already done a couple of (Italian-only) successful adventure game campaigns, so at the end of the day we decided to trust them even for an international campaign. It would be nice to see the backers acknowledge their effort and give them (and us!) a chance!
[b]Jack[/b]: Are there any major differences between Eppela and Kickstarter?
[b]Francesco[/b]: Actually, I don’t think there are big differences. You have all the standard options: they only require normal profile information and you have the option to be completely refunded if the campaign fails. It’s important for the non-Italian audience to understand Eppela is quite a big player in Italy: it has supported successful campaigns very well-known in the international audience (like Rockin’1000) and run important crowdfunding campaigns in our country, like the ones for the city of Milan and Crowd4africa). All that’s to say they run a serious business. 🙂
[b]Jack[/b]: One major difference I’ve noticed is that it’s possible to pledge support for the game through PayPal, though the process isn’t quite as straightforward. Can you explain how that works?
[b]Francesco[/b]: Sure, thanks for asking! We often saw that backers don’t want to register for platform after platform after platform… and rightfully so! So we figured out how to offer everyone an alternative payment method using PayPal: after choosing your reward, you can go to our official website (www.detectivegallo.com) and choose to pay through PayPal. At that point, we will directly receive your pledge amount and then add the money on Eppela using our personal account. Of course, all the guarantees for backers remain: full refund in 24 hours if the campaign doesn’t meet the goal, and full freedom to change/delete the pledge at any given moment.
[b]Jack[/b]: How much of the game is done already, and what kinds of things need crowdfunding to finance?
[b]Maurizio[/b]: The game is currently almost 80% done in terms of development. All the dialogues, puzzles and locations are ready… but with the support of our crowdfunding campaign, we’ll be able to add new in-game animations, new cutscenes, better beta-test puzzles to balance difficulty and fix bugs… and last but not least, implement EFIGS multi-language localization and Italian/English speech!
[b]Jack[/b]: Well, it looks like a very fun game, and I’ve had a closer look than most, so I wish you all the best in your campaign. Can’t wait to see the finished product!
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