Pewter Game Studios – The Little Acre
[b]Ingmar[/b]: The demo you showed contains a slightly(??) psychotic cat that made me burst out laughing several times. I predict that a lot of people are going to remember that cat once they play The Little Acre, so please give this feline a first introduction to our readers.
[b]Chris[/b]: The cat’s name is Marie Purry. She lives at the hydroelectric dam with her owner Nina, a scientist who works at the facility. It becomes evident later on that she has it in for another worker at the dam, who you meet during the game. Marie turns out to be quite a useful companion to Aidan too, but you’ll have to play the game to see how!
[b]Ingmar:[/b] You just demoed the game on a controller; what can you tell me about the controls in general?
[b]Ben[/b]: The game is also coming out on Xbox One and PS4, so what we’re doing is that you move the character with the analogue stick, and we use kind of pop-ups when you walk around. It’s a little difficult to get point-and-click without pointing-and-clicking, you know. (laughs) I like it now, but it took a while.
[b]Chris[/b]: Initially when we started working on the controller use, we just did a straight conversion of how it works on PC: moving the analogue stick would move the cursor. You would press a button and the character would move towards that point. It wasn’t terrible, and it’s been seen in other adventure games on consoles, but we felt like we were missing an opportunity to do something better with the controller, especially where we’ve got this part of the game where it’s an isometric perspective, and moving around with a controller in that type of environment feels more natural. So now the analogue stick actually moves the character—no more cursor for movement, even in the regular point-and-click adventure parts of the game.
(Charles returns)
[b]Charles[/b]: Have you seen the cat yet? It’s a bastard, that cat!
[b]Ben[/b]: (laughs) See? I told you. Some people love it, some hate it.
[b]Ingmar:[/b] Due to the game’s visual qualities, I can imagine it might appeal even to people who usually don’t play adventure games. Are you trying to keep The Little Acre as accessible as possible when it comes to its difficulty level?[/i]
[b]Chris[/b]: What we’re saying is that we want this to be an adventure game for everybody. So, regardless of how much experience you have of adventure games from the past, we want you to experience the whole story as it’s a game that’s made to be finished. Not to say we’re making it particulary easy, you know; we’re just trying to avoid obscure puzzles and make it somewhat logical.
[b]Ben[/b]: There are no inventory combination puzzles; it’s more about the characters, and story, and keeping it moving. A bit like a film, I guess, but longer and interactive.
[b]Charles[/b]: (grins) As far as the difficulty level is concerned, they came up with this brilliant idea – no idea where they got this from – of adding a hint system. I mean, what a great idea!
[b]Ben[/b]: (laughs) Oh yeah, very innovative! It’s cool because it keeps people in the game. You know, I feel like once you cheat once, the next time you get stuck for two minutes, you’re gonna cheat again.
[b]Ingmar:[/b] The point of no return!
[b]Ben[/b]: Exactly! So keeping the players in the game is important as they won’t start opening their browsers or something like that. Of course, for the hardcore gamers we have achievements you’ll only get if you don’t use the hint system.
[b]Ingmar:[/b] How much does the hint system give away?
[b]Ben[/b]: (grins) Well, it’s a three-step program. (Everyone laughs) Charles, please don’t look at me like that.
[b]Ingmar:[/b] Sounds familiar indeed. Can you offer an idea of the size of the game?
[b]Ben[/b]: Time-wise, I’d say we’re around 3-4 hours. It depends on how you play. The way I play it, clicking on everything, getting the full experience, takes around 4 hours, I think.
[b]Ingmar: [/b] What can you share about the voice acting in The Little Acre?
[b]Ben[/b]: Well, Aidan’s voice actor is one of the most popular YouTube guys in Ireland. His name is Brian (better known as Terroriser on YouTube), and he did really well. The girl, Lily, is voiced by my sister, Kate Clavin, who was also the character designer and one of the animators on The Little Acre. There are just a couple of others, professionals from Ireland. Good voice acting makes such a difference. You know, when some of us are doing it ourselves at first, you really think you made something bad until an actor makes it come alive. You just feel so much better about your job.
[b]Ingmar:[/b] You often hear how great a feeling it is to hear your own words spoken by a good voice actor for the first time.
[b]Chris[/b]: Oh yeah, it is!
[b]Ben[/b]: Although sometimes you find a line where you’re like, “Oh, that sounded good on paper”, but you realize it just doesn’t work.
[b]Chris[/b]: But mostly the other way around.
[b]Ben[/b]: Yeah, exactly!
[b]Ingmar:[/b] Before we finish, please tell me when you’re planning to release The Little Acre, and what kind of work is left to do.
[b]Chris[/b]: The plan is to release this year. We haven’t settled on an exact date yet, but soon. Like we were saying before, with Charles coming on board, offering all of his insight, we’re just making a number of changes, and a few additions. That’s what we’re working on right now, but we still want to release within a few months’ time.
[b]Ben[/b]: Yeah, most of the art is done; we’re nearly there, but with an adventure game, I think, it’s the most important last few percent just to make sure that everything makes sense, and Charles is a big part of that.
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