Exclusive Interview: A Crowd Of Monsters Talks Blues And Bullets

WGTC: The second episode of Blues and Bullets will be available in mid-January. Ideally, how often would you want new episodes to come out?

Castellanos: Well, as most of the episodic titles, the second episode took longer to develop than the next ones. We’ll try to release the game ASAP, but we want to give the episodes enough care and polish to release them properly. Even by doing it that way, bugs and optimization issues appear (specially in PC users) and we are committed to give full support and make it work for as many users as we can.

We are a small team and that’s the way we think we need to work with the community. It’s a time when major publishers release ‘broken’ games. We want to deliver quality content and work to even improve the episodes after they are out.

Candil: We are at hard work right now to make this episode 2 a notable jump from the episode 1. In terms of optimization, visual quality on consoles and PC. We heard the community, and we took notes of the biggest complains they had. I hope the wait will be worthwhile.

WGTC: As an indie studio was going episodic a way for you to make a larger game without having to go a long time without releasing a product?

Castellanos: That’s exactly the thing. The full production of B&B is a titanic task for a team like us to be developing all together. The episodic model is a way to achieve this ambitious adventure for A Crowd of Monsters.

Candil: It’s a way to communicate with our community and make decisions with them along the path, too.

WGTC: A Crowd of Monsters is based in Barcelona. Has there been an extensive research process in making sure the game gives a Chicago-vibe to it while also feeling pretty fantastical? You largely nailed the feel of it in the first episode.

Castellanos: We appreciate those words! We worked very hard in getting the American style that we needed for B&B. Me, Josue and Dani were always looking for resources, movies and TV shows to make it all fit together. It has to, especially for the world and characters.

Candil: Oh, Chicago. Four years ago, I personally travelled to Chicago to take pictures and videos trying to capture the city vibe to use it in the game (and to enjoy some holiday time, too). Back then Blues and Bullets was only a dream, but this travel gave me fuel to fight even more for it. I fell in love with the windy city. I was there in Christmas time, so you can imagine the city. All the snow, the music, the people, the ice skating on the park, the river. It was incredible and of course influenced my view on what Blues and Bullets should be.

Actually, in episode 1 and episode 2 all the flashbacks happen to be during Christmas. So it’s safe to think I was traumatized in that travel!

WGTC: Funk of Titans was your first console game. What did you learn from that experience, and how have you implemented that knowledge into Blues and Bullets?

Castellanos: Well, the main thing we can say we learnt was how to certificate a game for a console. Each platform has some validation processes which are quite tricky to pass. There are a lot of things to polish, like Achievements, technical documentation, art assets for promotion purposes, game-system bugs or malfunctions, etc. Of course, after passing through that phase with Funk of Titans, B&B was a way more soft process!

WGTC: Are you happy with the performance of Blues and Bullets’ first episode? It seemed to garner quite a bit of buzz in my gaming circle.

Castellanos: Hmm… I don’t want to be too ambitious, but I think (and hope!) that B&B will have a bigger amount of users, but it will take some time.

Right now, we are a small indie studio without a publisher and with just one episode. We don’t have resources for a massive marketing campaign, so we need to rely on the users to talk about our game, share experiences on social networks and recommend it to their friends to gain more noise and units sold.

Candil: It’s a difficult question. We are a little independent studio with a very complex product to make. We love Blues and Bullets and we gave everything we had to make it real, we put all of our passion on it. We rely on our gamers, on the users. We need their force, their support, their mouth to mouth experiences with the game to keep growing the fanbase.

WGTC: Give us your pitch why gamers should pick up the first episode of Blues and Bullets ahead of its second episode releasing.

Castellanos: If you like episodic games with some extra gameplay value, mature plot, great voice acting, an incredible OST and a highly immersive world, take a look at Blues and Bullets. You won’t regret it!

Candil: Someone told us that the gamer audience was not prepared for this kind of game. They told us that a Black and White game was destined to fail. That the detective noir genre was a death genre… and we truly believe they are wrong. Take a look at Blues and Bullets, we think it’s a great game, and see for yourself if you are with them or with us.

That concludes our interview, but we’d like to give a big thank you to both Dani Candil and Daniel Castellanos for taking the time to speak with us. Dani can be found on Twitter at @dacangi, and A Crowd of Monsters can be found at @CrowdofMonsters. Dani will also be giving a talk at GDC 2016 about the art of Blues and Bullets entitled Dominating 256 Shades of Grey. More information on Blues and Bullets can be found on its official website.