E3 2012: Arkedo Studios talks with us about Hell Yeah!

While waiting in the ridiculously long line for Metal Gear Rising, I let Nuckles87 hold my place in line while I went to speak with Aurelien Regard and Dimitri Pean of Arkedo Studio to talk all things involving Hell Yeah! This is the developer’s first time working with a big publisher and Hell Yeah! looks to be the studio’s most successful game to date. Read on to see what they had to say.

SEGAbits: How did come up with the idea for the game?

Dimitri: Sometimes as a small studio, we are sometimes work for hire. We were working previously on family games, but that can sometimes be very boring for us and we want blood, we want action, we want monsters, we want fun. So this game was our IP we put everything we wanted and that is blood and guns.

SEGAbits: Did Sega approach you to publish this game or did you approach them?

Dimitri: It’s about 50/50. There are other events similar to E3 and we were showing off this demo in an early build and Sega saw it and approached us from there.

SEGAbits:  There are some funny monsters in this game with some hilarious mini-game finishers. How many monsters are in this game and does each one get its own death animation/mini game?

Dimitri: In the game, there are 100 monsters and every one is unique. You never get the same big enemy twice and there something like 30 finishing moves each with mini games similar to Warioware where it’s simple but you may not know what to do right away.

SEGAbits: How many weapons will Ash have in the game?

Aurelien: 12 different weapons, but there will be shops to upgrade the weapons and many different vehicles to ride as well.

SEGAbits: What kind of input did Sonic Team give you guys? (I think this was mistranslated as if ST worked on the game, but I’m not sure.)

Aurelien: Absolutely none. They can say “Well, we would do this or this”, but they can’t change it. It’s our IP but we asked Sega for feedback because Sega is a great company. We met Sonic Team in London and they gave us their opinion on the game and how we were doing. They gave their opinion and that’s all.

SEGAbits: Would you consider this a large budget title for a downloadable game or still modest?

Dimitri: Good question. It’s our first console big publisher game so we don’t really know what’s considered big budget in this case. Compared to the big 3-D games you see around E3, it’s still a very small budget game in comparison.

SEGAbits: What’s your favorite weapon in the game?

Aurelien: Hmmm… Holy Water I think.

SEGAbits: What made you guys decide to go with the more “Metroidvania” style of platform gameplay vs. the standard “left to right” style?

Dimitri: We discussed a lot with Aurelien before hand and we wanted no backtracking. It’s a bit like Shadow complex. We made sure there was no back tracking and that you player could explore while still going forward.

SEGAbits: Do you have a release date and price set?

Dimitri: Sega has not given all the details yet, but it should be around early September I think. Expect the price to around the regular price for these games but we don’t know for sure.

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