One Finger Death Punch features a large amount of content and variety for a game that can be purchased for only a dollar. Was it difficult knowing when to stop adding onto the core gameplay? What content was conceptualized from the beginning, and what was added on as the game developed?
Jonathan Flook: Our goal when we were creating One Finger Death Punch was to capture the feeling of all the martial art films we’ve loved growing up, like Drunken Master, Blood Sport and Enter the Dragon. We also wanted the game to play and look like a Xiao Xiao stick fighter video that’s brought to life. We had hundreds of ideas before we started making the game and we slowly added features as we progressed through development. The features we added usually were the easier ones that we could afford to do, because the more grand ideas can’t really been done on a practical scale when it’s just two people working on the game.
Unfortunately, in the end we couldn’t achieve anything near what we wanted. There’s room for many more cool things, but we simply couldn’t afford it. One Finger Death Punch was made for Xbox Live Indie Games, which if you don’t know is notorious for having a core market that rejects most 2D games. Typically a 2D game will generate less than $500 dollars. My brother and I know this all too well and while making One Finger Death Punch we’re constantly asking ourselves, should we stop? Can we afford to lose more money on this? When making an Xbox Live Indie Game of this nature it’s a financial sacrifice that a developer has to make for the sake of art, passion or simply doing something from the soul.
Was there anything that you wanted to add that your budget or development skills wouldn’t allow?
Jonathan Flook: There’s not one big feature we wanted, but rather many small ones. Such as additional deaths for the enemies, more interactions with weapons, more throwing weapons for variety. Or even more importantly, we wanted more polish. The game needs polish on the menus, pause interface, navigating the map and many more small things like that.
The constant player feedback and sometimes downright insane response times required from some of the higher levels made this one of the most intense games that I’ve ever played. This ended up making the game my go-to activity for a while whenever I found myself tired but wanting to wake up again. Have others mentioned this aspect of the game to you, or have you noticed it yourselves?
Jonathan Flook: We’ve gotten that response a few times. Some people have told us they play the game in the morning before they go to work instead of their morning coffee. However, I’ve played the game so many times that it actually makes me a little sleepy because of the repetitive and familiar nature of it all.
While I thought that the difficulty curve was quite well done, One Finger Death Punch can feel a bit too difficult at times. I struggled with some of the later timed levels in particular. My thumb just cannot move that quickly. Eventually, I started playing just the timed levels with my pointer finger on the X button and my middle finger on the B button, effectively turning things into Two Finger Death Punch. Was I playing the game as intended, or was I cheating?
Jonathan Flook: I always play with my thumb, but we tested the game with many people and about a third of them like to do the two finger thing. I personally feel that playing with two fingers can be confusing, like rubbing your stomach and patting your head at the same time. But everyone’s brain works differently. My brother uses the two finger method, I use the one. Interestingly, the PC version uses the two mouse buttons, which you can really only do using the two finger method. Almost everyone that’s played both the controller and the mouse versions prefer using the mouse. I also believe the game’s about 15% easier using the two finger method on a mouse.
In addition to being available right now as an Xbox 360 Indie Games title, and being available as a PC download, the PC version has recently been approved in Steam’s Greenlight process. How has it been working with Steam so far, and do you have any estimate as to when the game will be available through the service?
Jonathan Flook: We’re having huge problems understanding and working with the Steam SDK, which is needed to incorporate the Steam features into our game. One Finger Death Punch is written in XNA, which is C#, but the Steam SDK is written in C++ which we don’t know how to use. The fact is we’re extremely amateur and what is simply for most people is way over our heads. We hear people saying to us that we can’t possibly be amateurs because of games like One Finger Death Punch, but games like that are little miracles because we made the game despite our serious lake of artists, technical skills and programming knowledge. Unfortunately, our lack of knowledge is catching up with us and we’re scrambling to find a way to get the Steam features into our game. If any readers can help us with this we’d be extremely grateful. So as for a release date, I really can’t say until we figure this whole process out.
You originally started using Microsoft’s XNA development tools with the game Blazing Birds, which won a prize in the 2007 Dream-Build-Play and saw a full release as an XBLA title. Was Blazing Birds your first programming effort of any kind, or did something else come before it?
Jonathan Flook: Our first game was a strange little math shooting game. You had to shoot aliens and do math at the same time. It was extremely weird but it was actually very fun. It was never released because it was created before Xbox Live Indie Games existed. After that we moved on to making Blazing Birds, which was finished before Xbox Live Indie Games, so we’re very lucky it was accepted on Xbox Live Arcade at the time.
Blazing Birds was developed by Vector 2, which I assume later became Silver Dollar Games. Why the name change, and why did you go with Silver Dollar Games?
Jonathan Flook: Vector 2 Games and Silver Dollar Games is my brother and I. My brother used the name Vector 2 Games for Blazing Birds because it sounds cool. But shortly after making Blazing Birds and Blow we wanted to make smaller games that reflected our strange personalities. Vector 2 Games was too serious sounding for that so we came up with Silver Dollar Games.
You and your brother both are a part of Silver Dollar games, so who is responsible for what? Does your company have other staff, or is it pretty much just you and your brother?
Jonathan Flook: Dave does the programming and I gather the assets and do the level design. The ideas come from both of us. Except No Luca No, which was entirely Dave’s idea. Most of the fun we have is coming up with silly ideas. It’s great to make a small little idea into a game because you know it’s not going to take years to finish. You know you can move on to something totally different without investing/gambling your whole life on a single project. Coming from a creative perspective there’s something refreshing about that.