I had the privilege of interviewing The Bearded Ladies, the developer behind the recent PSN title Landit Bandit. The topics covered in this question and answer session range from about their game and also developing on the PlayStation 3. So let’s kick this interview off…
Oliver East – Just Push Start – Asks – Firstly how did you come up with the Landit Bandit’s concept? Throwing ideas around a room or did someone come in saying we should make this?
Haraldur – The Bearded Ladies – Answers – Well the idea came up before we started the bearded ladies, but my partner in crimes David Skarin had been asked to design some software that would work as a part of rehabilitation tool for Stroke patients. We started messing with it using gamepads and the splitscreen mode and really enjoyed the splitscreen duels. So when we started the bearded ladies Landit Bandit was a natural choice.
JPS – The game is advertised as semi-casual was this the aim from the beginning or did it evolve into this as development went on?
Haraldur – I remember that brainstorming meeting, as it was so funny, but it was near the end of the production and we wanted to be able to describe the game in one sentence and that was when we came up with “Semi-casual-retro-chopper adventure game”. We thought that would be the right description as we wanted to make a game that would be easy to pick up and hard to put down. But the game should also be hard to master, and it is and we think that is important as it was with the old retro games.
JPS – Was split screen something you wanted from day one or something you saw the game needed after development had started?
Haraldur – Yes we wanted the game to have splitscreen from day one, and we thought that would be the part of the game that would get most attention. Maybe it will but until now most of the focus has been about singleplayer campaign
JPS – Will you in the future be releasing more levels via DLC for Landit Bandit?
Haraldur – I don’t see that happening now, but if you or your readers get some great ideas then we could stay in the office for a long weekend and make that.
JPS – For any budding developers did you find developing easy for the Playstation 3/PSN?
Haraldur – Yes. We didn’t find that to be much of a “troblem” but we used Sonys Phyre Engine and that was really good choice. There is a great team that will go out of their way to help and we would like to use this opportunity to say Kudos to the Phyre support team.
JPS – With Landit Bandit’s release on the PSN will you future projects also be exclusive or will you look to expand onto other consoles?
Haraldur – Well we will see, and it really depends up on the game, Landit Bandit didn’t work as well on PC as it is designed for console. And as we are a micro team we have to pick our battles carefully, that means we can’t make the game in a year on all platforms, but we see that as an ideal production time.
JPS – Can you give any clues on the different ideas you have for your next title?
Haraldur – We are testing different stuff, and we have some cool stuff that we would like to do, now we are looking at three different projects, evaluating cost, time and different factors, then we will line them with pros and cons and pick one. When we have decided and we have something to show we will share that with you and your readers.
JPS – Many thanks for your time and answering the questions.
Check out the Just Push Start review of Landit Bandit, the Bearded Ladies first title.