Interview with Basement Crawl creators, Bloober Team

In our latest interview, we talk to Marc Colhoun, Marketing Manager at Bloober Team for the lowdown on their recently released PS4 game Basement Crawl. Marc honestly and directly addresses the early bug issues in Basement Crawl, as well as confirming the game will have a single player mode added down the line…

You released your new game Basement Crawl this week. Roughly how long has the process taken, from the original idea of the game to it being released?

The entire cycle of the game was from June/July. We are still working on updates for the game and we will continue to release patches and extra features for the game over the next while.

Basement Crawl is a multiplayer game. Did you consider a single player mode at any point or was it something you wanted to wait and see if there was a high enough demand for? Furthermore, would you consider adding a single player mode in the future?

We had originally considered a single player mode but we opted to go with Online/Local multiplayer only shortly after production started. Given the amount of people that have asked for a single player, we absolutely will add it. We have been listening to what people have said and it will influence the future of the game greatly.

Can we expect any DLC or updates down the line?

Yes, there will definitely be updates. The first of which you can expect to be out very soon. This will address the bugs that are in the game then after that we will have another update which will include new game modes, maps and AI for a single player experience. Then later we will have futher updates and more features added to the game.

It’s been well documented there were a few bugs upon release. This must have been a stressful time for all at Bloober Team. You’ve been very open and honest about it though, and every time I go on Basement Crawl there is always loads of gamers online playing it. It must be awesome knowing that despite some issues, there a lot of people playing.

I will try and go through this one point by point; The last week or so has been really stressful for us. The issues that emerged at launch suprised us as much as they suprised everyone else. The game is not where we, or the gamers, want it to be. All that we can do now is own up to this and work day and night to make large improvements and try to gain back the trust of gamers. The fact that there are quite a few streamers that are still streaming and loving the game makes us excited for it’s potential. It is a fun and strategic game. Hopefully when we address the issues within the game this will become more obvious to people.

From a developer’s point of view, is it frustrating when you’ve put all this time into a game for reviews to go up so quickly? I feel on the surface Basement Crawl could be judged quite quickly, but the more I’ve played it the more skill and depth I’ve found.

I understand that many journalists don’t have time to put 50 hours into every game they are going to review, but Basement Crawl is infuriating if you don’t practice. This was deliberate; the game, when played by players who have practiced a lot, is a game of being constantly three moves ahead, predicting what is going to happen before it does. So, on the outside it looks like chaos but when you have played it for a while you are just executing a plan, or at least trying to.

The intro to Basement Crawl is pretty creepy – what was the inspiration behind it?

We took inspirations from the game from a few different places, but among these were horror films like IT and Chucky, we wanted to show these inspirations from the very get go of the game.

The difficulty curve is a lot easier than say, a game like A-Men 2. Was this a conscious decision, to make the experience a little easier to jump right into?

With Basement Crawl, as much as this is a cliche by now, it’s a game that you can button mash your way through and do okay… but if you practice and have a plan, you can completely dominate. So, I think that it is not that Basement Crawl is any easier than A-Men, just that it is a different kind of difficult.

There are more multiplayer games heading PS4 ways, games like Secret Ponchos etc. What challenges do you face when creating a game that is solely based on multiplayer?

Evidently, challenges that we hadn’t anticipated…With that said, we are working on it and they will be fixed with in the next few days.

Do Bloober Team have any more PS4 or Vita games on the way you cantell us about yet?

At the minute our focus is 100% on fixing the issues with Basement Crawl and turning the perception of the game around. Nothing else for us is as important, and will be put on hold, until we deliver on our promises.

A special thanks to Marc Colhoun from Bloober Team for taking the time to speak to us.