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Video via Shaun Cichacki on YouTUbe
Video via Shaun Cichacki on YouTube
Video via Shaun Cichacki on YouTube
Video via Shaun Cichacki on YouTube
Video via Shaun Cichacki on YouTube
Video via Shaun Cichacki on YouTube
Tony Grayson Chats About ‘antonblast’ And The Design Philosophy Behind The Beloved Indie Game (interview)
Antonblast came out swinging and quickly became one of my favorite games of 2024. Hell, there’s a good chance that it may be one of my favorite games of all time. Its unique blend of loud, boisterous, and incredible level design helped it resonate with me more than I could have ever imagined. I had the opportunity to chat with Tony Grayson, Game Director behind Antonblast, about what makes it stand out in an otherwise crowded genre.
So, What Is ‘Antonblast’?
Antonblast is likely the loudest game ever created. I’m not even remotely exaggerating that fact, either. It’s a fast-paced, pixel-perfect platformer that details the adventures of Anton and Annie. It features 19 levels, ranging from Boiler City, Florida, to Hell itself, and is one of the wildest platformers ever made.
According to the Summitsphere Website:
“Established in 2018, Summitsphere is an independent, international development studio with a simple mission: make modern classics unlike anything you’ve seen before. Started by a group of longtime friends, our team focuses on crafting new experiences with a sense of familiarity, wrapped up in a bow of endearing characters and incredible worlds. We grew up with the games of the 90s but keep a keen ear to the ground for the latest innovations in the field – what’s a modern classic without some trailblazing?
“Although we create original titles, one of our primary pillars is reviving and revitalizing classic games with the respect and care they deserve. We’re not only developers, but fans too – and we know what it takes to get it right.”
Antonblast is technically the second game set in the Anton-verse. While Antonball may have been slightly more subdued compared to Antonblast, the initial inspiration was apparent from the start. And without further ado, here is Game Director Tony Grayson speaking on behalf of the Anton, his inspirations, and everything in between.
tony grayson breaks it down for us
It’s super apparent that Antonblast was inspired by ’90s cartoons and video games. You can tell that by the sound design and everything like that, but I want to hear it from the horse’s mouth; which games and shows were the biggest inspiration for you and the team when it came to creating the game?
TG: It’s funny because the starting basis is always in the Wario Land thing, right? That was always sort of the frame, and that goes back to 2016/2017 when the first iteration of this game was being worked on. At the time, I was like, “Well, no one’s ever really done something like that before!” And then we all know how that turned out.
But that made a lot of sense because I really enjoyed Wario Land 3. I’m old enough to remember when that was “THE ONE” people loved, you know? Then, the conversation turned more and more toward Wario Land 4. People got more allergic to difficult games [and] Wario Land 3 was quickly thrown to the wayside. But then, of course, I think there’s also the Crash Bandicoot influence, which is palpable throughout the whole game. So much of that is just owed to the fact that, for me, Crash is my number 1. Crash is why I’m in the industry at all. I mean, hell, look at the shirt. This was an accident. Crash is why I’m here; Crash is why the studio exists.
The founding members of the studio, myself, and JB… We actually met on a Crash forum back in like 2007. As a result of that, that influence is still palpable because we just love those games so much. And I would say, in some ways, Anton draws more from Crash than Wario.
classic cartoon inspirations
That’s also just the crazy cartoons that I watched growing up. That really inspired a lot of the art direction. Cow and Chicken is one that people repeat a lot. Funnily enough, it wasn’t one of my favorites at the time. But I think as I’m older, I appreciate it more, and I think it did screw my art in a way for sure.
But, Ed, Edd, and Eddy was the “THE ONE” when I was growing up. The one my parents didn’t want me to watch. It definitely had a big influence — just the overall art direction and humor of the game. And Beavis and Butthead, also. That’s one that people [especially younger audiences] can’t always grasp. I’ve had some people say, “You can’t mix that, you know, it’s just so matter of fact.” I’m just like, “YES, WE CAN. Anton and Annie can absolutely be Beavis and Butthead, that’s fine. They can talk like that.”
As soon as I started it up and heard Gianni as The Devil, I had to run to Google because I was so sure that it was the same voice actor as The Red Guy from Cow and Chicken. I was actually in tears the first time I heard him.
He’s great, man. He’s so fantastic [and] nice. And, it was also nice to just direct him in a way that is very unconventional to his other roles? You don’t really hear him do… THAT. So, when we did our initial recordings, and our initial voice test for him, a lot of it for me was like, “Okay, well, I really think that the Robotnik in Sonic the Hedgehog is super funny,” and the visual design is very inspired by him. So, let’s do some of that, but let’s make him have a sinister side to him too. Look at characters like Cortex and Uka Uka. Where they have that Clancy Brown gruffness.
It was important [to also] give him a little bit of color in the sense that he can SQUEAL a bit. We don’t want him to be stereotypical, necessarily. I mean, no matter what, you’re going to run into stereotypes because so many tropes HAVE been done. But, I think what we landed on was really fun. After we’d gone public with the game, and people were like, “Oh, man, he reminds me a lot of the Red Guy from Cow and Chicken.” And we were like, “Huh… yeah, you’re right!”
There’s a line at the very end of the game where he’s like, “Don’t be glad that it happened… CRY BECAUSE IT’S OVER.” The way that he goes from mocking quiet to extremely aggressive “CRY BECAUSE IT’S OVER,” it’s just a CHARLIE ADLER THING. It’s just so good. Gianni rocks, and it was an accident. But, yes, Charlie Adler was absolutely an inspiration.
I’m terminally online, so I’m familiar with Gianni doing his ‘Duke Nukem’ impression and all of the different memes. So, seeing this type of range was beautiful, and one of my favorite parts of the game. Honestly, just ‘Antonblast’ in general was one of my favorite things, as well.
Aw, man, I really do appreciate it. Gianni is one of the best. I can’t speak his praises highly enough. He got a lot of attention because he did the Duke Nukem meme stuff, and he’s fantastic at that. You know, he sounds like Duke Nukem when he does that. That’s the platonic idea of a great voice actor, right? When they’re able to sort of land those impressions because ultimately, voice actors are impressionists.
But the fact that he has that range and we were to land on something that was evocative but also himself… I don’t know. I just really, really love him, and I love working with him. Out of all of the voice cast, most of the rest of us — besides Gianni and also Jenna Kathleen, who voices Annie — the rest of us are just… us on the team. We’re not professional voice actors. I always say Gianni is like the diamond in the sea of punks, a sea of grunge, a sea of garbage that’s the rest of us.
Actually, I say that jokingly, the rest of the team are also fantastic voice actors. It’s just me. It’s just me who’s bad at my job.
So, this whole interview idea started off with me seeing you tweet that you wanted to talk about the Design Approach for ‘Antonblast’ and all of the weird, different creative measures you took in that game. The floor is yours; spit your collective stream of consciousness at me.
Yeah, for sure. We’re just about 3 weeks away from launch, so I’ve been able to kind of post-mortem it in my brain. That’s both a great thing and an entirely lonely thing. But it has been really interesting to kind of sit on that. Because I talked about this briefly before where you have the juxtaposition from when the game is first announced and revealed with the Kickstarter, which did pretty well. Where it was distinctly like Wario Land 4 meets Virtual Boy Wario Land, and we had sort of the art style leaning more toward that. In many ways, it was decidedly evocative if not emulative, right?
There came a point where we realized, “Hmm, we’re hitting a ceiling with this,” you know? It came from a place where we thought people would like this, we like this. We like the Wario Land games, at least — I especially do. I’m like the Wario Land encyclopedia on the team. When we hit that ceiling, we had that sort of realization of “Hmm… I think a lot of people are looking at this and they’re saying, ‘Well, what does this have to offer that Wario Land doesn’t?'”
the realization
It could be well and good. It could be great as a Wario Land game, but I think that ultimately blunts your appeal. And there was a turning point where we just realized, “Well, let’s just do whatever we want? Instead of looking at like ‘What would Wario Land do’, let’s be accurate to that. Let’s just go stream of consciousness, man. We’ll just do our own thing. It’s going to be completely unfiltered.”
So when you look at something like Antonblast, the Kickstarter demo versus the final game, the original game/original demo, which was actually the exact same demo we provided to publishers when we were trying to get funding and failed to do that prior to the Kickstarter. It was quiet, you had the hammer, you had the explosions, you had a lot of the same music. But it was all a little subdued.
It was all very accurate to Game Boy Advance stuff. Then, you look at the final game and it’s like the loudest thing ever. Even just the way that the game starts is like this big (CLAP). Right? It’s extremely funny to me because I have been absolutely overwhelmed by the reception of the game.
the reality
Like, it has been probably the most humbling thing I’ve ever experienced in my life where you’re seeing 9s and 10s. I never expected to direct a game that would get that. Our expectation, fully, was “We’re going to get 6s and 7s, maybe a couple of 8s in there.” Even though we knew the game was good, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be widely palatable.
You know, we’re like ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’ on Steam, so 97%. But the interesting thing about that is when you do something that is “that way.” Where it’s your own way, and you’re completely full throttle behind it, your own expression. Which doesn’t mean, necessarily, that you’re wholly original. It means you’re drawing from a lot of different [sources] and we’re picking everything off to create something unique. When you do all of that, what ends up happening is that you find a lot of people who were looking for something like this and didn’t necessarily realize they were looking for it.
And then as what you have made becomes more and more popular, you find a small contingency of people, or possibly a larger swath of people, because it was made for an audience of one to start with. But it goes to a few people who don’t get it. And if they don’t get it, then it becomes difficult to address a lot of their concerns, right? I think maybe that’s the crux of everything that’s interesting to me about the design side of it, because the thing that I realized over the course of making this game, and particularly with the reception, is that you’re not designing for everyone. You’re designing for a niche.
taking a risk
If you design for everyone, you get paced. That’s why you get games that don’t necessarily deeply resonate, that don’t hold their value over time. So, I think one of the great examples of that actually is just sort of in that overall “LOUDNESS” argument, where in general, I think the appeal of the game is largely that it’s a rollercoaster. And if the game is a rollercoaster, then the people that you’re selling the game to are people who like to go on rollercoasters. Unfortunately, it becomes difficult to design for people who don’t like rollercoasters in that instance. It’s really hard to account for that. There was a conscious decision for me that I wanted to make the loudest game ever made.
To be clear, this isn’t complaining, this is just an interesting thought from the perspective of the designer. Although I’m not a brilliant designer — JB’s absolutely way more talented than I am in that respect. But the most interesting thing to me, really, is you have a lot of people who see the sign that says this thing is extremely loud. And then you have a few other people who say, “Wow, that was loud, I really wish that wasn’t loud.”
early expectations
I guess then, there comes the question of “Is that correct, objectively from a design standpoint, that… Can you account for everyone?” I don’t think I can. I love games that have a mass appeal, but I think at what point do you have mass appeal that you start to dilute the overall peak appeal? Something like Wario Land 4, I always considered to be a niche game. It’s been interesting to see the conversation around that skyrocket, where “Oh, I love Wario-likes,” and what does that mean to people?
What is the expectation? There’s a lot of design problems that come with that, and I mean… I can waffle any specific way about this, honestly. If you’re designing for a Wario-type game… I could go in that direction, if you want? Or if you have any questions?
Honestly? Just keep rolling. I love that you’re able to talk about this kind of stuff. I was trying my best not to make any mention of it… but ‘Pizza Tower‘ was the big “Wario-like” of last year. Even though Pizza Tower and Antonblast share some similar things, they both aim for a different niche. Where do you see people going next?
My more cynical answer to that is that I think that when the original term “Wario-like” was coined, what that was really meaning was kind of just games that had just… kind of embodied Wario’s ethos. One of the things that people forget in that original take was Treasure Tech, which was a first-person shooter in the DOOM engine that took inspiration from Wario Land 4 and had a lot of callbacks to different GBA games. But the cool thing about it was just the character, Armond, had a very Wario style about him.
He was like a treasure hunter, like… his name was “ARMOND CHESTERFIELD”, like “ARM IN CHEST… erfield.” That’s a game that is conventionally not like Wario really, it’s a shooter by design. I think that’s the one that got a little forgotten in that video, and I just want to shout it out because the developer is fantastic and the game is super cool. I’m really excited for it to come out. But, I think it wasn’t necessarily positioned as a genre to start with. So, it was kind of “We’re not talking Genre, but we’re sort of talking like a feel, a vibe.” Because if you look at the Wario Land games, they’re so hard to encapsulate and really find links between them. If I’m analysing the design, you look at the Wario Land games and they’re kind of designed in pairs.
it’s-a-me, ‘antonblast’!
You have Wario Land 1 and the Virtual Boy Wario Land — they’re quite traditional platformers but they’re a little weird. Then you have 2 and 3, in which 2 was defined by being invincible and it was going to be slower paced, but you had the transformations. And then 3, same concept but it’s a Metroidvania. Then you have Land 4 and Shake It where you have kind of the similar sort of loop of, “You have health, and it’s a little bit more fast-paced but not terribly, and when you get to the end, you have to run back to the start.”. Which is of course what we took from, and what Pizza Tower took from.
I think very cynically, people don’t know what they mean when they say “Wario-like” or Wario Land-inspired platformer. Wario Land is an inspiration and it’s kind of like the frame, but I wouldn’t say that it’s something that we’re really slavish to in the way that maybe a Metroidvania might be. You can pick out in Hollow Knight what is being drawn from Super Metroid or Symphony of the Night, and that’s totally fine to be clear. And it’s great, obviously Hollow Knight is one of the best-selling games in the world, so it’s not a criticism leveraged toward Hollow Knight.
But I think Hollow Knight has much more in common with its forebearers than maybe the two games we’re talking about here. I think largely that comes down to the fact that these are the only two games doing Wario Land stuff. My assessment back in 2016 was correct; no one was doing Wario Land games, at least overtly. But the problem then is just that Wario Land is so indefinite, I think.
‘antonblast’ vs its inspiration
When Antonblast is being marketed by the press as “This is like a Wario Land type game”, you have a lot of people who are like “I loved Wario Land 3!“. And if you like Wario Land 3 and you like a slower puzzler kind of game, which I do. I have a copy of Wario Land 3 somewhere that’s 100%’d, like the real deal. I love that game, like a ridiculous amount, way more than anyone else. But, if you love Wario Land 3 and you’re buying Antonblast on the premise that it’s like Wario Land 3 when it’s not… you’re going to be disappointed.
The truth of the matter is that it doesn’t mean a whole lot, just because I think the examples that we have things in common, but they’re like roots replanted. That’s maybe the way I would like to look at it, where ultimately because these things are not necessarily following the exact same premise. They go extremely hard for the people that want that and like that, and maybe didn’t even realize that they liked that, like I said.
But, I think there is going to be a contingency of folks who don’t necessarily get what they’re looking for out of it, which is fine. I’m fine with making something that’s not for everyone. All this is to say, cynically, when people say “Wario-like”, or “I’m going to make a game that is like a “Wario-like”, which you’re not really seeing and I’m don’t predict that’s going to be something that happens a lot. Speaking extremely self-aggrandizing here, I think that the standard has been set quite high between the two games that have come out.
a purposeful development cycle
Both took a really long time to make. Us, we’ve been on an off since 2016, Pizza Tower since 2018, and so, at a minimum you’re taking 3 years to make something like this, right? And that’s more time than people are willing to invest. But also, I think the big takeaway is that I don’t think that the Wario Land series has been propped up super heavy by Nintendo. Until recently, it wasn’t really accessible at all.
Now I think they have Wario Land 3 on there, on the Switch Online, nothing else. I think, because of that, of course, you can emulate, but the reality is when people say “I want to make a Wario-like game”, they want to make a game like Pizza Tower or Antonblast. And I don’t know that that’s exactly what I want to see, necessarily. If we’re talking “Do I want something like Wario”, at a minimum I would like to see a game that’s like Wario Land 4.
I would like to see the Wario Land 4 game that people wanted from someone. I would want to see something that’s unabashedly Wario Land 4 because I love that game, and I’ve always wanted something that’s more of that. Anton has a different flow, innately, it’s a much harder game than that. We expect you to die a lot more than Wario Land 4 does. So it goes hard for a certain type of gamer.
embracing insanity
Pizza Tower, same kind of deal. Not like Wario Land 4. You can see where it picked from. But doesn’t scratch the same itch… I wanna see someone see do something that does. But I also want to see someone do something that scratches the Wario Land 3 itch, you know? I love that game. The big thing is; anyone who does that is going to have a massive mountain to climb. Because, quite frankly, one of the reasons Antonblast is the way that it is, where it’s super loud, super overstimulating — Antonblast is the way it is explicitly because of market conditions.
Not explicitly, I should say, that isn’t the only reason. It is the way that I just like to play games. I wanted to make a game that was insane, but it also ties hand-in-hand with the fact that you need to be loud and that you need to stand out. Anyone who makes their Wario Land 3-like is going to have a hell of a time trying to stand out from the sea of other slow-paced platformers that are out there. Just harsh, harsh, harsh reality. It’s going to be so hard to justify that. Someone would need to find another hook and then when you find that hook. it’s not a Wario Land 3 anymore.
So cynically, I don’t know that there’s a lot of places to go. But then I’m also the guy who goes “I don’t know what Nintendo’s gonna do next. They always do something surprising and interesting”, so it’s quite possible that I just can’t think of it yet.
Now, with how well Antonblast has seemingly been doing on Steam and on Switch, is there a possibility that we’ll see an Xbox port or PlayStation port in the future?
You know, I’ll put it this way. Never say never. More details soon on that. I think that at this point, the game has been doing incredibly well. It’s justified itself, it’s made its money back. We’ve been incredibly happy and overwhelmed. I was so prepared for the game to drop and do nothing, right?
The fact that it’s done as well as it has… I’m not at liberty to really say ACTUAL figures on it, but I’ve done some ways of obfuscating that. If you’re good at math, you can figure things out. But it has done very, very, very well. And I think a lot of the focus is going to be “Alright, how can we make that better.” We’re focusing on also improving the Switch version [with an upcoming patch]. So, hopefully very, very soon it’s going to go out to people.
‘antonblast’ for (hopefully) everyone!
That will be one of the best ways to play the game. But then, I think, there will definitely be a focus on “How can we make this more accessible to people”, in a general way. Just from a business standpoint, maybe that looks like other consoles, maybe that looks like some temporary discount. We’ve made our money already, I’ll put it that way. So, at this point, it’s just kind of getting it out to more people, and we’re almost giving back to the fans in that way. Because definitely, my inbox is overridden with people asking for PlayStation ports.
It’s been… PlayStation is very special to me, so I definitely would like to do something with them if we can. But, we’ll see.
Going off of the success of Antonblast on the Switch; how did it feel seeing Antonblast as the main header image on the Indie World Homepage and on their X Page?
Uh, deeply surreal. There’s a lot that went into that that I don’t think I’m really allowed to go into. Nintendo’s deeply secretive about how they manage these things. But Nintendo has just been incredible partners from start to finish. They were some of the first people to see the game before anyone else, and from the word “GO,” they were supportive. They really loved the original build, and they always kept in touch.
Just between all of the meetings and going to the offices and stuff, it was incredibly surreal to go through all of that. To court and be courted by Nintendo. I’m always of the mindset to shoot for the stars. But, I always have this expectation that maybe it couldn’t happen to me. And then we got the word that we were going to be part of Indie World for our Launch Date Announcement. Which, of course, got pushed back, unfortunately. But it was for the better.
a truly surreal moment
But when I got that? I was like “Oh my God, that is insane.” I cannot explain properly the sheer mix of excitement and terror that came with that — and just having to sit on it also. Seeing people sending me angry messages about when the release date was coming was really funny. Because it was like, “I can’t say anything, I can’t even hint towards this.” And then it actually goes out there, and it’s on Nintendo’s channels. And it’s on the eShop. Seeing the chats, and seeing people go crazy about it.
It was just wild. Genuinely, it’s a Top 10 life moment for me. From like “Oh, right, we did that and we got the attention of Nintendo.” If you told me, the kid who was sitting in the back of his mom’s car playing Wario Land 4, that was something he was going to do? And his team was going to be able to do?
I’d probably throw up on you and say “WHAT?!?” I wasn’t a particularly lucid kid. But, yes, I’m still processing it somehow, all of these months later.
So, I’ve been following the development of Antonblast for what feels like forever. Even though it’s a particular type of niche, the people that it resonates with? It resonates with them hard. The final level, alongside the remainder of the game, feels like it was tailor-made for me. It’s seven minutes of the most excruciating [nonsense] you’ll ever experience in your life, and I loved every second of it.
Oh my God, and that’s the thing, right? To go back to the overall, you’re designing for a niche. I mused about this on Twitter, But, my process here to internalize it [is that] the direction has been to do it for ourselves. But I’m also pretty consumer-brained, actually. I think that’s like my talent on the team. I consider myself pretty good at being able to say, “Gamers are going to be irritated by this.” You do have to consider that.
It’s not like a “don’t listen to feedback thing” or “don’t internalize how people are going to take it.” But, you have to know who you’re making it for. So, I would often push for removing certain friction points and all of that. But, you can’t design for everyone. With the benefit of hindsight now, it obviously will always hurt when you see someone have almost like a violent reaction to it. Where they just really have a distaste for the game. Negativity always sticks with you. Like, the one bad comment is going to stick with you more than the 1,000 good ones.
navigating criticism
You see like a Sea of 1,000 Good Comments, and then there’s the one. “I don’t like this, the controls are bad, or it’s loud, or whatever.” But, there’s something about seeing the people who really jive with it. I can look at it now, with the benefit of hindsight, and be like, “Oh. Wow, we made something kinda weird, huh?”
And then you see some people who are like, “I am obsessed with this game. I needed this in my life. This is exactly what I was looking for.” And sometimes, it ends up being comparative. This game didn’t hit for me, and I played this one and it really landed. Sometimes, you see the inverse of that, also. But just the fact that you can do something where it lands for people in that way is so rewarding and kind of tells you “Ah! I did the right thing!”
everything isn’t for everyone
But again, it comes with the fact that it’s not necessarily for everyone. That’s something interesting to reconcile. 97% of people love it, and then you have that 3% you can’t convince. And you have to decide on an attitude between “Oh, man, I’m going to try to placate those people.” Or the alternative attitude, which is kind of in line with my background. Which is just “It’s not made for you anyway.”
I mean that in the nicest way possible, to be clear! But, I think you need to keep up that “Punk Attitude” a little bit. That’s really been the driving ethos for me with the studio. This is Punk. We are super loud and super aggressive, and we do what we want to do with it. It’s a tough balance to maintain because we’re selling a product and we have to make sure that people like it. I don’t know, I’m just overwhelmed by the support overall. I expected it to be… just fine.
Like, with me, when I find a game like this, I need to champion it everywhere I go. I can’t help but wish for the utmost success for a game like Antonblast. However, if there is one way I could describe it, it’s got absolute ‘Theater Kid’ energy in the best possible way.
(Laughs) My girlfriend is a Theater Kid, so I think there’s definitely that. There’s that feeling of “Oh, I’m not necessarily the ‘cool kid,’ but, I’m cool in my group.” And I’ve got my people, and I think that’s the thing that’s extremely rewarding to me. There’s a sense of community that comes out of it. When you see games like this or, like I mentioned, Treasure Tech earlier, which appeals to a lot of my influences.
There’s another game I saw, PsiloSybil. It’s like Crash 1 kind of… not a clone, but it definitely leans hard into that. It’s like if Crash was a psychedelic Kaizo platformer. I haven’t picked up the full release yet, but I bought it on Early Access. It’s so weird. It’s such a cool little game, and you can see how this is something someone made because they loved that idea and the inspirations behind it.
the journey of other developers
That’s a game that hasn’t quite hit like Antonblast‘s success, but I would like to see it do so. Even if it’s not all 100% for me, I can just feel violently that this would be 100% for someone else. It resonates a lot with me, also, just as a Crash 1 guy. I love Crash 1, I love Crash in general. And there’s something just cool about that. I like seeing the resonance more than anything. That is its own reward. Just making something that is hardcore weird and hardcore yours. And you have the other weirdos that find it and say, “Oh my God, I need this, I feel seen!”
There’s a certain positivity that comes with that, and I say that as someone [whose] background [was difficult]. There’s a lot of anger that went into this game, if you can believe it. I saw real hardship. So, I think the fact that something positive came, it’s just hard to explain. I’m not so good with the emotions. I’m no Hideo Kojima, you know? I can’t spin this into some weird metaphor. It is just strange and wonderful to me that we can do that.
I mean, if you would have called him “Red Blastman”, you would have been halfway to the Kojima status.
(Laughs) Right? The most absolutely blunt thing in the world, but also just extremely poignant. We’re nowhere there. We’re just blunt in a different [way]. There’s a certain subtlety to Antonblast, though, that you really have to be able to understand. That’s a joke for the people at home who want to take what I said at face value.
At this point, I think I’ve only got a few other questions to ask you. We’ve got Antonball, we’ve got Antonblast… When are we getting Antononandonandon?
Oh My God… You know, there’s an interesting conversation to have about that. Because I don’t have anything to announce today. But, it’s funny because as I was working on Antonblast, life was very hard. [Antonblast‘s] release was life and death for us. When you talk about the difficulties of a studio, we’ve been lucky. From the start, we’ve been incredibly open and communicative about our struggles and studio. We’re transparent about not just the bad things, but also the good things.
Because of that, I have been able to — more so than other directors or people running a studio — I’m able to communicate “Hey, this is how much this matters.” The development of Antonblast was incredibly difficult. We were running out of money — were we going to be able to pay our rent collectively? No one talks about this, but when you’re working on a game as highly anticipated as Antonblast was, there is a pressure to deliver. A game is [awful] until it’s not.
what’s next?
So, owing to all those circumstances and many that I haven’t gone into, I was expecting myself to be really burnt out [and tired] by the end of this. I don’t want to see Anton again. And then, a day after we ship, I’m like, “I kinda wanna do another one…”
I already know what I want to do, that’s the worst part about all of it. I’ve already decided what I’m going to do. There’s going to be more — we’ve justified that, it’s paying for itself. Joystick Ventures is very happy, they’ve been a great financial partner. So, they want to do more with us. Really, it comes down to when that manifests. When we’re able to show what else we’re working on. And it isn’t necessarily Anton, either. That’s the thing I will say here. We are a studio that is very creative and we have a lot of things we want to do from [many] different worlds. We’ll just have to wait and see what that all looks like.
But, you haven’t seen the last of Anton. The blast of Anton, if you will. Until next time, Dynamite Anton.
And I guess at this point, the floor is once again yours. Is there anything else you want to say about the development of Antonball versus Antonblast, or just anything at all at this point?
There are a couple of things about that point if you compare the two, right? Because Antonball is a game [where we] made $16,000. It was a team of people largely composed of many of the same people that made Antonblast. But, we just kind of did whatever we wanted. And didn’t really care? But [it was] also like a pastiche. It was a tribute, and it was like a weird little game. We were also having fun with it, you know?
Compare it to Antonblast, which is like a really professional product. That was a game where we did whatever we wanted. But, we had constraints in terms of what we had to hit. We had actual deadlines, we had actual milestones, we had an actual minimum viable product. But in spite of that, I’m very proud of what the team has accomplished. I can’t believe we made a game that we wouldn’t change a thing about.
If I look at Antonball, I’m like, “Oh my God, I would not do things that way. Oh, man, I wish development wasn’t like that. I wish we had more time, I wish we had more money.” I don’t feel this way toward this one at all, I’m really happy. I’m really damn happy with what we made!
the finale
But I really hope that we can continue to do that. As I mentioned at the onset, I am just absolutely floored by the reception we’ve seen. Ideally, we can continue to make games that hit that hard for people. If not more. I guess that’s really my final word on it, you know? I feel very grateful for the fact that I’ve been given the opportunity to work with a team like this where we can just make stuff we want and is creatively satisfying. And then, to that end, I’m incredibly grateful people have given us the support and money to do these things.
It’s so incredibly humbling. I’m overwhelmed with gratitude, and I’m just… I need a moment to sleep and to really internalize it? It’s just crazy — I’m just so, so, so, so, so, so grateful. That’s what I want to say.
And also, I really love Crash Bandicoot, and I hope he’ll sign my shirt.
I would like to thank Tony Grayson for taking the time out of his day to speak with me about Antonblast. If you’re looking for a pixel-perfect platformer that isn’t afraid to kick you in the teeth when you’re playing it, be sure to check it out on PC and Nintendo Switch.
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