Indie Game Spotlight: Creature in the Well
This week’s Indie Game Spotlight gives us some major pinball vibes…with a twist! Creature in the Well is a unique take on the hack and slash dungeon crawler genre, in that it mixes swords with ball games such as Breakout and Pinball. As the last BOT-C engineer, players must reactivate an ancient weather machine, now home to a dangerous creature, in order to stop a deadly sandstorm. Sign us up!
Adam Volker is the Creative Director at Flight School Studio, aka the art guy on the project. We spoke with him about the game’s art style inspiration, dungeon designs, and the journey from doodles in a sketchbook to finished game. Read on if you dare.
Aside from pinball, what were some other major influences for the game?
We LIKE Pinball, but we aren’t its biggest fans. We actually started out with a two-player game a bit like air hockey. Once we had that, we did look at a lot of different types of “ball” games like the aforementioned Pinball and Breakout, but also more recent titles like Ballz and Rocket League.
In terms of the dungeon crawling aspect, there’s some Metroid in how the levels are laid out, some Dark Souls in how we dole out the narrative, and some Hyper Light Drifter in the game’s controls and “combat”.
How long has development been going on?
Development for the game has been happening for just over a year. If you count the first drawings of cowboy robots holding pipes in my sketchbook, then maybe a few months before that.
How did you come up with the art style?
The art style was inspired by one of my favorite comic book creators, Mike Mignola, who created the Hellboy universe. He is so bold with darkness—the literal dark spots in the Hellboy world—and I was really inspired by how much atmosphere he evokes with it. I did my best to inject a little bit of what he does so well into Creature.
What kinds of gameplay mechanics can we expect?
Basically, each of the eight dungeons is built around a central mechanic that we get to develop throughout: different types of bumpers, explosive pillars, seeker drones, switches, timed puzzles, death rays, there are… a lot.
On top of those obstacles, which are set up by the Creature, you also get a bunch of weapons that change the way you play the game. For example, the dual blades will help you aim your balls from a longer distance, and the axe will split them up into multiple balls. They’re really fun to discover!
What is a BOT-C Unit and what role does it play in the story?
The BOT-C is the character you play as. It’s the last remaining unit of a robot collective that used to maintain the weather machine near Mirage, a desert town now caught in a dangerous sandstorm. When you get back to the machine, you encounter a Creature that haunts it and who is definitely not pleased with you returning there. Not at all.
And what can we expect from the game’s eight hand-crafted dungeons?
The dungeons are set up in a maze of interconnected rooms, of which players can explore every nook and cranny. You’ll face many of the Creature’s challenges, and find secrets like new weapons and ways to upgrade your robot core. And of course, every dungeon ends in an intense battle with the Creature itself.
Ready for your own encounter with the Creature in the Well? The game is coming out this summer on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and PC as part of the Xbox Game Pass. Or learn more by heading to their website here!
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