We’re within the launch week of our hand-drawn tag group brawler, Jay and Silent Bob: Continual Blunt Punch, a ardour undertaking that we’re pleased with that has been in improvement for a “couple” of years now. The group has been resilient, sticking it out via ups and downs, marriages, births, sicknesses, trade shakeups, and the BBL epidemic.
Since I’ve the house to share our expertise I assumed we’d go deep like a Navy seal and speak about how it began…
11 years in the past on a sunny afternoon in Berkeley CA, I used to be sitting at a boutique pizza joint with a sizzling slice and a chilly beer. Sitting throughout from me was a dapper gentleman with a classic baseball cap, lengthy hair and aviator glasses, additionally holding a brew. It was Trevor Fehrman, the actor who performed Elias in “Clerks II,” who I met via a mutual pal at IGN.
We clanked dranks, took a sip, and began moving into deep about online game historical past, gaming tradition and our high 5 video games of all time. He mentions that he’s glad we related as a result of he desires to make an indie sport and proceeds to drop the bomb on me…
“Hey so, my pal Kevin Smith gifted me the rights to make a Jay and Silent Bob online game, and I would like some assist to make this occur.”
I spit my drink out, my jaw dropped and hit the desk, choking and coughing I took a second and appeared up. “Kevin, what?! That’s wonderful!”
I used to be dumbfounded as a result of my group and I’ve been followers of Smith’s work for a very long time and suppose Jay is hilarious. Whereas spending numerous hours engaged on our final sport and pushing via my grasp’s thesis, I’d watch “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Again,” “Mallrats” and the Night with Kevin Smith Q&A classes for inventive motivation and psychological consolation snacks to keep up my sanity.
So, Trevor and I talked for hours, met a number of instances, turned mates, and have been decided to determine how we may deliver this sport into existence. I advised Trevor we’d be down, however for my group to place effort into this undertaking I would wish Kevin to present us his blessings and rights to make a sport along with his beloved characters.
That subsequent night, I used to be sitting at my laptop working via emails. I took a swig of Yerba Mate and after opening one other message, my reflex kicked in once more. I almost spit it out once I noticed an e mail from Trevor, with Kevin included saying we have been all good to make the sport!
That e mail was all I wanted and we have been off to the races. Trevor and I began engaged on the narrative design, story and opening dialog, and our Interabang group instantly clocked in to start out the manufacturing course of, design work, and concepting essentially the most ridiculous character design concepts and gameplay for Continual Blunt Punch.
The idea was to make a standard arcade brawler with grownup themes that match Kevin’s inventive sensibility and our personal humor and character design. The premise was that it’s Dante’s Inferno however as a substitute of going down in hell, Jay and Silent Bob get trapped in a mysterious, mystical mall that escalates into insanity the additional the participant will get via every stage.
At this level we have been self-funding the undertaking independently, whereas doing work for rent on some AAA initiatives. To get this factor off the bottom, we actually wanted to discover a option to fund the total manufacturing of the sport.
Whereas within the Double High-quality Indie Workspace, then-COO Justin Bailey, who was rolling out a brand new crowdfunding and funding platform known as Fig to assist fund Psychonauts 2 and different huge indie titles, pitched me on working a marketing campaign via their platform. Fig would deal with the advertising for the marketing campaign and in addition put money into the sport.
We had the group and our first investor. The following step was to satisfy with Kevin to share our plan and ideas. The assembly was at Kevin’s home. I stepped on his porch, pressed the doorbell, and anxiously awaited a maid or male servant to reply. To our shock, Kevin answered via the ring digicam and unlocked the door. As we entered, we adopted Kevin up the steps and into his television room the place we have been surrounded by a great deal of fan artwork and memorabilia from films and merchandise.
I got here in able to current a full pitch deck, however he lower me off and mentioned, “you guys can fund this via the crowdfunding marketing campaign, I don’t want a pitch; you’ve bought this.” Kevin even put in his personal cash. Relieved, we chilled, smoked, after which mapped out the marketing campaign collectively.
Shortly after we strategized the nuts and bolts of the marketing campaign, we launched and obtained unimaginable help. The marketing campaign included touring with Jason Mewes, look on Kevin Smith’s podcast, and we even shot the crowdfunding video with Feargus Urquhart out of the Obsidian workplace.
The marketing campaign was successful, and we set to work. Beginning improvement out of the Double High-quality places of work after which distant, we created animation and fight programs that labored equally to preventing sport engines. We dialed in the appear and feel of the sport and created manufacturing pipelines to broaden and contract improvement as wanted remotely.
Two years into manufacturing, there have been some exterior funding adjustments out of our management, which slowed issues down. We reacted by pivoting when given the chance to accomplice with LRG founders Josh and Doug who helped us fund a retro 8-bit brawler known as Jay and Silent Bob: Mall Brawl. Tomas Guinan and I teamed up and constructed the sport in 9 months, launched it in 12 months and gave our backers a dope sport as a bonus whereas concurrently elevating ending funds for Continual Blunt Punch via gross sales as a substitute of funding. It labored!
We grew our group with people like Indignant Steel, Toni Leys, Spoonybard and different creatives to spice up manufacturing worth and be a part of us within the marathon to complete the sport.
Whereas we have been in our stride to completion we related with Digital Eclipse to assist with QA, Porting and publishing. A 12 months later, they joined with Atari, who’ve helped us get to the end line via localization and porting with Alchemy.
It has been a loopy journey, filled with tons of fascinating zigs and zags, relationships, studio and private evolution. However all in all, it has been a fantastic journey, and we like what we now have created out of affection for one another and the tradition of sport improvement.
Blammo! We hope you dig our little sport.
Jay and Silent Bob: Continual Blunt Punch
Atari, Digital Eclipse, The MIX GAMES
☆☆☆☆☆
★★★★★
$19.99
$17.99
Brawl your means via the streets and mall within the View Askewniverse as Jay and Silent Bob the place you unleash a dizzying array of irreverent combos, particular strikes, gather and summon assists, on this over-the-top beat ‘em up. You’ll have to harness each ounce of smoke-fueled creativity to get previous the throngs of hockey-stick wielding teenage thugs, dookie demons, hipsters with infants, outdated grumpy danglers and big, movie-inspired boss battles.
Jay and Silent Bob: Continual Blunt Punch combines unimaginable stylized, hand drawn animation, character design, and excessive fight and badass catchphrases in a side-scrolling, tag-team, beat-’em-up. Our heroes embark on an epic journey from their humble, suburban New Jersey Fast Cease to an unearthed mystical mall that has unleashed an evil maintain on town.
Regardless of when you play solo and tag swap between characters or along with your hetero lifemate in sofa co-op, you’ll be performing particular strikes and outrageous combos.
Developed with the total blessing, enthusiasm and voice-acting quips from Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith themselves, Continual Blunt Punch offers gamers the final word, profound, and profane Jay and Silent Bob expertise.
Options
– Hand-Drawn Artwork and Animation: Extremely detailed, expressive and extremely impressed hand-drawn animations.
– Insane combos: Bust out a cornucopia of irreverent particular strikes and combos that hyperlink collectively to create explosive finishers.
– Tremendous Strikes: Construct up your tremendous meter to launch online game impressed tremendous assaults or save up your tremendous meter and remodel Jay and Silent Bob into Bluntman and Continual to freeze time and ship a devastating assault.
– Native Co-Op: Play solo or along with your hetero lifemate with two-player sofa co-op. Tag you’re it, snackpack.
– Cameo-palooza: Throughout your journey, work together with cameo characters from the Viewaskewniverse and name them in that will help you throughout intense moments.
