AusGamers: Firstly, where on Earth (or beyond) did you come up with the game's premise? What sort of inspiration did you draw from for the comedy and characters?
Andrew Goulding: Aye, that be a tale. It's no secret that I'm a fan of the Monkey Island series, though I should say that when I say "Monkey Island series" I'm talking about Monkey Island 1 and 2. Though I might cop some flak for this, it's my opinion that the series got weaker with each sequel after LeChuck's Revenge, I feel similarly about Space Quest past episode 5, Quest for Glory past Episode 4 and King's Quest past episode 5. So, there's something about the games that were created in that period that were great, and they lost that towards the end of their lives. I think it had something to do with the people creating them and the size of the teams... but I digress.
My first idea for a pirate adventure was for the DS back in 2004, I thought the DS would be great for a point and click adventure. I initially called this idea Just Another Pirate Adventure, as a parody of pirates and point and click adventure, which followed my previous indie game Just Another Point and Click Adventure, which I saw as a parody of point-and-click adventure that started from my initial experiments with Adventure Game Studio. I worked as a programmer for four different games companies in the space of four years, and at each company I tried to push the design for this adventure with no luck. In 2008 I started freelance programming, for the simple reason that I wanted to work on Dave Gilbert's new point-and-click adventure Emerald City Confidential being published by PlayFirst. At the conclusion of the project PlayFirst decided to hire me for another casual point-and-click adventure Avenue Flo. It was around this time that I started thinking I could take Just Another Pirate Adventure to PC/Mac using the PlayGround engine that I'd become familiar with, but the design was very dated and somewhat immature in its design decisions, so I scrapped everything bar the pirate theme and adapted it for PC. But something was missing... I wanted to create iconic characters, and with humans they just felt too generic. I was remarking to a friend that Sam and Max had such fantastic silhouettes, you'd recognise them anywhere, and then it struck me, why not make the characters REAL scurvy dogs! Jolly Rover was born. This opened the floor to lots of puns and different takes on pirates as dogs 'Arrrf!'. My influences on this title were from games such as Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island, Sam and Max, Space Quest and Quest for Glory. All these titles had a great sense of humour, and I wanted pay homage to those games, while also adding the things I learned while working on casual games to remove a lot of the things that block people from enjoying adventure games.
AG: What was the decision behind the point-and-click direction? Did you ever consider 3D or the like?
Andrew: Ah I believe you're asking why I wanted to go for 2D over 3D? Well, part of it was because I was very familiar to working with 2D PlayGround engine and I could prototype things very quickly, but another part was that I simply didn't like 3D adventures, both the look and feel - I like 3D RPGs, RTSs, FPSs and Action Adventures - but how I longed for a 2D point-and-click adventure. I just haven't played a 3D point-and-click adventure yet that I believe looks or feels as good as those 2D classics of yore. Sure we can up the res a bit to 800x600, but staying 2D makes it instantly accessible to those who played adventure games back in the early 90s, it's instantly recognisable, instantly nostalgic, it also hits home with the older demographic that are more likely to download casual games. That's not to say this is exactly aimed at a casual audience, more the adventure game audience, and hopefully casual as well, but the key here is accessibility. When I play a 3D adventure that feels accessible and isn't plagued with control issues maybe I'll change my tune. If I were to summarise this I'd say 2D looks and feels better for a point and click adventure. I could also say that we've come far enough with graphical ability to be able to have 2D as a viable artistic choice.
