XBLA Week: Castle Crashers

Kicking off XBLA Week, we've been talking to John, Dan, Emil and Kelly from The Behemoth, the developers of award winning XBLA game, Castle Crashers.

First, and predictably, how did you get into making games?

We all came into gaming from different directions- Tom Fulp created Newgrounds.com over a decade ago to host his flash games and movies. It quickly evolved into the internet's first Flash portal where artists, programmers and musicians could share their work with the world. Read more about it here. http://www.newgrounds.com/lit/history.html

John has a background in architecture and decided to switch careers after playing Doom II in 1994. He moved to San Diego and was hired on at various game development studios as a artist/level designer. He met Dan in 2002, where they worked together at a game development studio shortly before founding the Behemoth. The Behemoth was founded in 2003 to make fun games!

Dan made an online portfolio and online art friends until his art friends knew of some jobs in video games. He has been drawing stuff for games ever since…

Why choose XBLA as a platform to distribute Castle Crashers?

We had tried our hand at traditional retail console gaming in 2003/2004 with the release of Alien Hominid on the PS2 and GameCube in the US. The retail game development environment is not kind to developers as they are the last ones in the food chain. In 2005 we realized that since the Behemoth was founded on the idea of small teams making high quality games, we should be able to do as well or better with downloadable console games than retail titles. We made this commitment before the 360 was launched and realized we bet right once XBLA sales took off.

What was the biggest challenge developing a game for XBLA?

Online Multiplayer Networking because there are many factors that a game developer has no control over whatsoever. Marketing is also a huge challenge because while all the console systems are designed to be connected to the internet, it requires a change of thinking on the gamers part to know that they can plug in and download games instead of going to a store to buy them.

Did you have any problems with keeping Castle Crasher's file size down?

Not really because it was designed initially for the 50 mb limit. As the scope of the game broadened and we needed more room, Microsoft was already allowing larger file sizes for other titles. I'm not even sure there is a limit anymore, with that giant 1.1 gig game released a month or so ago.

What is in store for the future?

Just a string of really fun games and the toys and clothes that go along with them!

And smiling babies. And an empire built out of babies that used to smile, used to..

Which games would you say you've been inspired by when creating Castle Crashers?

The initial inspiration for Castle Crashers was the flash game Dad‘n Me that Tom Fulp and Dan Paladin had just finished working on. We thought Microsoft might not like the idea of a serial killer's son on a rampage beating up children.. so we started thinking about other 4 player adventure ideas and eventually settled on our four knights. I think most of the teams creative process comes from games we played while growing up. We’re really into old-school side scrollers like River City Ransom and Gunstar Heroes. What we were really trying to do was capture the memory of how that whole genre felt to us. When you go back and look at most of the genre it doesn't always have the magic you remember. Our goal was to bring an updated memory to the one you have now of how it used to feel.

Why did you choose to not release Castle Crashers on PSN?

Huh, did you say something? I saw your lips move but I didn't hear anything....

Thanks guys for taking the time to answer the questions.