We’re within the launch week of our hand-drawn tag crew brawler, Jay and Silent Bob: Continual Blunt Punch, a ardour venture that we’re happy with that has been in improvement for a “couple” of years now. The crew has been resilient, sticking it out by ups and downs, marriages, births, diseases, trade shakeups, and the BBL epidemic.
Since I’ve the house to share our expertise I believed we might go deep like a Navy seal and discuss 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 by a mutual good friend at IGN.
We clanked dranks, took a sip, and began entering into deep about online game historical past, gaming tradition and our prime 5 video games of all time. He mentions that he’s glad we related as a result of he needs to make an indie sport and proceeds to drop the bomb on me…
“Hey so, my good friend 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 seemed up. “Kevin, what?! That’s superb!”
I used to be dumbfounded as a result of my crew and I’ve been followers of Smith’s work for a very long time and assume Jay is hilarious. Whereas spending numerous hours engaged on our final sport and pushing by my grasp’s thesis, I’d watch “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Again,” “Mallrats” and the Night with Kevin Smith Q&A periods for inventive motivation and psychological consolation snacks to take care of my sanity.
So, Trevor and I talked for hours, met a number of instances, turned mates, and had been decided to determine how we may carry this sport into existence. I informed Trevor we might be down, however for my crew to place effort into this venture I would wish Kevin to present us his blessings and rights to make a sport together with his beloved characters.
That subsequent night, I used to be sitting at my pc working by emails. I took a swig of Yerba Mate and after opening one other message, my reflex kicked in once more. I practically spit it out once I noticed an electronic mail from Trevor, with Kevin included saying we had been all good to make the sport!
That electronic mail was all I wanted and we had been off to the races. Trevor and I began engaged on the narrative design, story and opening dialog, and our Interabang crew instantly clocked in to begin 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 conventional 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 an alternative of happening in hell, Jay and Silent Bob get trapped in a mysterious, mystical mall that escalates into insanity the additional the participant will get by every stage.
At this level we had been self-funding the venture independently, whereas doing work for rent on some AAA initiatives. To get this factor off the bottom, we really wanted to discover a technique to fund the total manufacturing of the sport.
Whereas within the Double Fantastic 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 massive indie titles, pitched me on working a marketing campaign by their platform. Fig would deal with the advertising and marketing for the marketing campaign and in addition spend money on the sport.
We had the crew and our first investor. The following step was to fulfill 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 by the ring digital camera and unlocked the door. As we entered, we adopted Kevin up the steps and into his television room the place we had 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 stated, “you guys can fund this by the crowdfunding marketing campaign, I don’t want a pitch; you’ve received 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 acquired 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 a hit, and we set to work. Beginning improvement out of the Double Fantastic workplaces after which distant, we created animation and fight methods that labored equally to combating 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 by gross sales as an alternative of funding. It labored!
We grew our crew with people like Offended Metallic, 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 had 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 by localization and porting with Alchemy.
It has been a loopy trip, stuffed with tons of fascinating zigs and zags, relationships, studio and private evolution. However all in all, it has been a fantastic trip, 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
Brawl your method by 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 must harness each ounce of smoke-fueled creativity to get previous the throngs of hockey-stick wielding teenage thugs, dookie demons, hipsters with infants, previous grumpy danglers and large, 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 the town.
Regardless of in case you play solo and tag swap between characters or together 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 provides 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 rework Jay and Silent Bob into Bluntman and Continual to freeze time and ship a devastating assault.
– Native Co-Op: Play solo or together 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.
