Almost every PS3 gamer is familiar with the PixelJunk series of PSN games and knows how amazingly addictive they are. Although the first game in the series (PixelJunk Racers) didn’t score such high reviews, the two which followed (PixelJunk Monsters and PixelJunk Eden) are praised and loved by all, critics and fans alike.

Dylan Cuthbert, founder and president of Q-Games – the developer of PixelJunk games – was kind enough to answer our questions about Eden, Monsters, the past and the future.

You have recently released another game in the PixelJunk series (a much anticipated one) – “PixelJunk Eden”. How did you come up with the idea of this very special game?

Dylan: It took a lot of painstaking experimentation – I knew basically I wanted to make something with similar dynamics to Bugaboo the Flea on the ZX Spectrum (an old 1980’s game I used to enjoy when I was a kid) but we wanted to infuse it with something completely different and that took a lot of experimentation.  Controls are always interesting and we had this crazy complicated foliage rendering system that we wanted to fill the screen with but we realized that it would be very difficult for the player to navigate around this, so we introduced the spin/grip mechanic to let the player choose to move through the scenery.

You have a very special approach with sound and visuals on Eden. How did you create this special world? As I understand you have worked with Baiyon creating this game. Why him? And how did he contribute to Eden?

Dylan: Baiyon is already an established artist in Kyoto and has cult following because he has a really interesting design aesthetic.  On top of that he makes music – so the collaboration was perfect for Q-Games.  He came up with some sketches for weird plantlife and while we developed the technology to be able to render and simulate them we worked hard to expand the game.  The visual and audio experience is pretty much entirely Baiyon’s creation, because he was able to create his vision pretty freely once we had the engine up and running.  We did a lot of production work at Q though to tune the visuals to be of use in a game.

You’ve included an option to upload recorded games to YouTube. What was the reason for that? What kind of videos do you think will be produced by the community?

Dylan: Well, we wished we had this feature for Monsters, because it’s such a great thing.  Eden is a lot of fun to watch too, especially if the player is skilled; it begins to look like a dance and you find yourself clapping when you see someone pull off an amazing series of moves.  The natural time-limit with Youtube is interesting too, it encourages people to record speed runs as a no. of our gardens are complete-able in under 10 minutes.

PixelJunk Eden

Are there any plans on releasing a trophies patch for PixelJunk Monsters and how will that work? Should we have to play the entire game again to earn those trophies? On the introduction video for firmware 2.4, they used PixelJunk Monsters to show the custom soundtrack feature, when will the patch with that option shall be released?

Dylan: There aren’t any details about the Monsters patch just yet but we do hope we can include that feature.  The trophy will be supported neatly and you won’t have to replay everything from scratch.

Why did you choose to focus more casual PSN games and not into more hardcore games?

Dylan: Well, we make more regular games for Nintendo, such as Starfox Command a couple of years back, a very underrated game I must say.  It had lots of very cool original elements in it.

As a company that only made PSN downloadable games (on PS3) so far, any thoughts of releasing a full blu-ray game?

Dylan: Actually, PSN titles are recent for us – we made Digidrive for the GBA, Starfox Command for the DS and we are also making another DS title for Nintendo.  I think we’ll continue to work with Nintendo for as long as they’ll let us.  We have no plans to make a full blu-ray game yet because of the size of the team it requires.

Why do you put PixelJunk in the name of every game you release to the PSN? What is PixelJunk? Do you plan to publish more games under the PixelJunk name?

Dylan: The problem with smaller games is that they easily get swallowed up and disappear, so I wanted to create a distinct brand so everyone knows that Eden is made by the same people who made Monsters and Racers.  Also, for smaller games the registration process for locking down a name worldwide actually eats up a healthy percentage of the development budget!  By prefixing PixelJunk we only have to register “PixelJunk” and we can put any name we want after it.  We will continue to make PixelJunk for at least a few more years I think.

Any plans on making a PixelJunk blu-ray collection with all three games on one disc?

Dylan: Well, you never know, but nothing is happening on that front yet.

PixelJunk Monsters

What are you currently working on and what new games are in development?

Dylan: It’s all secret – we’d have to kill you if we told you.  ;-)

You made games for the DS and the Gameboy Advance in the past. Any plans on developing games on different platforms than the PS3 in the future? What about PC?

Dylan: The PC games market is pretty much dead, and the casual PC games market (browser games) are too light for our tastes – ie. PCs are too vast a range in processing power and displays, whereas with a PS3 we know everyone is getting the same experience so we can push things more, and refine them specifically to the PS3.  Right now we don’t have plans to spread to other platforms.

How do you see the new arrival of the iPhone as a gaming platform (with games like Star Wars: Force Unleashed) with an easy and fast development process and high profit opportunities via the apple store?

Dylan: The iPhone is interesting, I got one myself but I don’t feel the urge to play games on it – the battery life is pretty bad for game playing on the device.  So, unless they are quick and simple I can’t see games really taking off that much – it’s too much of a pain if your iPhone runs out of juice when you need it to make a call.

Everyone is talking about the high cost and complexity with developing PS3 games. As a company that is focusing on PSN downloadable games, with limited budget, what is your take on this issue?

Dylan: Well, we keep the costs down that’s for sure – it still takes quite a bit of cash to make a title but nowhere near the millions and 10s of millions needed for a blu-ray release.

PixelJunk Racers

By the way, do you have any plans of making more visualizers for the PS3? I must say that the earth visualizer the only one I use.

Dylan: Right now we don’t have any plans for visualizers but this is something we are always interested in doing.  We have developed a lot of tech for sony in the past, some of which doesn’t make it to the consumer – things like SDK sample code for the PSP, or compiler modifications, sometimes even internal tools.

How did Q-Games come to be? What are you advices for those people who want to get into the industry and make games?

Dylan: I just took the bull by the horns and started Q-Games here in Kyoto.  My advice to people is don’t rush into it – in order to survive as a company you need to have contacts all around the industry and building up those contacts takes a lot of time and hard work proving yourself by making games.

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Big thanks to Dylan for this interview.
If you haven’t played one of the PixelJunk games yet, be sure to check them out!
They are highly addictive and worth a lot more than they cost – PixelJunk Monsters is by far the best PSN I purchased…