Interview With Lead Designer of Red Goddess, Yannick Pluig

After proving to be successful on Steam’s Green Light program, Yanim Studio’s Red Goddess launched its Kickstarter this week. As it continues to receive an impressive amount of backing, Lead Designer Yannick Pluig has provided us with some key insight into the development and future plans for Red Goddess with an interview with PushStartPlay.

This interview was conducted via email and Yannick was kind enough to offer a swift reply. If you have considered backing Red Goddess then the following information could be exactly what you are looking for.

PushStartPlay: What were some of the inspirations behind Red Goddess? Both in terms of real-life experience and games.

Yannick Pluig: Studio Ghibli, Journey (the PS3 title), DoubleFine, the Frederator series, Trine, Giana’s sisters…

PushStartPlay: With Red Goddess being Greenlit on Steam, did you use this seal of approval to heighten your ambition for this project and develop it for so many platforms?

Yannick Pluig: Steam helps us so much because it’s a great platform for distribution, but Red Goddess was planned before we were Greenlit. It was a fantastic way to gauge interest in our idea and we’re so glad that people are as excited and eager to get the game made, as us!

PushStartPlay: With so many promising projects not reaching their goals on Kickstarter, do you think that the service is still a great platform for so many indie developers?

Yannick Pluig: It’s really quite difficult now to reach the goal, but Kickstarter is still a fantastic opportunity. The most important aspect of all, it helps to spread the word about your project and to share with the big Kickstarter community to then hopefully, fund. As good as your dream is, it really does help to have help with promotion and marketing; it’s only the lucky few projects that go viral and fund.

PushStartPlay: The campaign is still only a few days old, but it has already reached more than half your target budget. What were you realistic money-raising ambitions with this project?

Yannick Pluig: Well, obviously the more backing we receive, the more content we can create and add and the better the game will be! We also have a stretch goal at $100,000 to develop a Red Goddess comic book and we’re so excited about this. It’ll allow us to expand upon the story of the main protagonist, Divine. We’re passionate story tellers, having created award winning animations used in music videos and more.

PushStartPlay: Was there much feedback from the community which you took notice of and changed?

Yannick Pluig: Firstly, we went into more detail on the project description and include the intentions of console ports in main goal. We also changed the rewards because many people are collectors and they wanted exclusive rewards for their pledges.

PushStartPlay: Red Goddess seems to heavily rely on getting through the world undetected and without a hitch; will the game be able to appeal to someone who isn’t too familiar with games?

Yannick Pluig: The appeal of the game is to uncover all the mysteries involved, solving puzzles, find the best character to fight and go unnoticed by the world. We feel it’ll be a very varied and complete game and this is its appeal, basically it will be a very fluid, playable and intuitive game.

PushStartPlay: With so many platform-based games available on several platforms, especially PC, what do you think makes Red Goddess stand out from the crowd? Would you be able to use various parts of the Wii U gamepad or PS4 touchpad in any way? If you can’t reveal anything yet, would this be something you would consider?

Yannick Pluig: Firstly Red Goddess is not a classic platform game parse, Red Goddess is a ‘Metroidvania’ game, this means that it is a game of action and adventure – one where the player must solve puzzles and unlock certain powers to achieve progress in the game . All their chambers are interconnected and are different every time new powers are acquired

We’re considering placing a map and all of the UI elements on the screen of the Wii U Gamepad so that the TV only displays the game, and we’ll also offer the option of playing the game completely in Off-TV mode, which is a great feature that allows people to continue playing if the TV is not available. On top of that, we’re considering other things such as using the touch screen for quick-access to some of Divine’s skills, as well as for other abilities and options we can’t discuss right now.

With the fundraising still in an early stage it’s difficult to get excited about Red Goddess, but judging by the reaction so far and the positive outcome from the Green Light venture, it seems as though Yanim Studio has the talent on-board to try and take the game to the next level. Yannick does reveal a little about possible future plans and Red Goddess could greatly benefit from being on the Wii U.

Only time will tell if Red Goddess will be released, but judging by the reaction of the gaming community and the ambition from Yanim Studios, this should be a game that should at least meet its expectations.

The Red Goddess Kickstarter page can be found HERE.