Old School Gamer Magazine chats with “Ground Zero Hero” developer Rowan Edmondson, who details the creative journey behind the upcoming game.
About Ground Zero Hero:
Featuring a vibrant hand-drawn art style inspired by The Simpsons and Rick and Morty, Ground Zero Hero challenges players to explore a post-apocalyptic wasteland as they face off against massive hordes of marauding mutants. Pummel piñatas, crunch candy, and absorb the irradiated guts of monsters to unlock new mutations and become the ultimate mutant.
Old School Gamer Magazine: How was this game born?
Rowan Edmondson: I randomly came across Vampire Survivors before it blew up, and it struck me as something I could put a cool spin on (something about 30,000 other developers also decided). The immediate things I didn’t like about VS like the lack of animation etc were informative to what I was imagining.
At the time, VS didn’t actually have vampires in it, so some of the core design ideas were born from “What if Vampire Survivors had vampires and survival”, hence why GZH has a day/night cycle where vampires emerge at sundown, and light survival mechanics (candy meter).
Old School Gamer Magazine:What is your role in the game?
Edmondson: I’m a 100% solo developer – I did literally everything in the game from code to animation to music. (A couple of explosion VFX I paid for but were still heavily modified)
Old School Gamer Magazine:Love the visual identity of the game. What inspired it?
Edmondson: Thanks! It’s probably obvious there’s a huge Matt Groening/Simpsons influence with a dose of Rick and Morty weird. I don’t really have a default art style – after 15 years as a full time indie, exploring different art styles is something that keeps the process fresh and interesting – but that combination felt
like a good fit for the themes of the game.
Old School Gamer Magazine:How can gamers get their “freak out” in this game?
Edmondson: It’s all about crafting your ultimate hideous mutant!
Old School Gamer Magazine:What has development been like?
Edmondson: GZH was started almost four years ago, and represents a three year project of effectively working 7 days a week (it takes time when you’re a pedantic perfectionist doing everything yourself). Just about any project spanning that amount of time is going to be a rollercoaster, and this certainly was.
The different incarnations of starting as RAD Surivor and releasing as an early demo that was totally ignored. The pivot to renaming it to Ground Zero Hero and completely redoing most of the visuals. Pausing development for a year after a second project found a publisher.
Returning to GZH development after that project was cancelled. Waking up to an email from Acclaim wanting to have a call after I’d totally forgotten even pitching to them
(pretty sure it was late at night and I was hammered when I sent a demo link) and then the subsequent process of teaming up with Acclaim and being a part of the rebirth of the legendary publisher from my childhood. So yeah, quite the rollercoaster.
Old School Gamer Magazine:What makes this game special?
Edmondson: I think genuinely special games occupy their own creative space. Games like Bioshock come to mind – the intersection of visuals and direction and game feel creating something incomparable. I’d like to think the aesthetic, music and attitude of Ground Zero Hero combine to create something pretty singular in gaming,
despite the saturation of the genre.
Old School Gamer Magazine:What games influenced this one the most?
Edmondson: Vampire Survivors and Fallout are obvious influences. But for the creative direction, Sunset Overdrive was a major influence in terms of the whole “happy apocalypse” vibe: rainbows and candy and bullshit everywhere.
Old School Gamer Magazine:Any fun stories or wild moments during development?
Edmondson: Signing with Acclaim was the most unexpected part of the whole process. When I started development there was no hint of them coming back, so landing GZH with the home publisher of some of my all time favourite games as a kid (NBA Jam, Mortal Kombat, Turok) is still kinda crazy to me.
Old School Gamer Magazine:What were the major lessons learned?
Edmondson: I would probably do a hundred things differently regarding project management in Unity. Also, the nature of the genre meant I learned A LOT about optimisation at the back end.
Old School Gamer Magazine:Do you think preserving older gameplay mechanics in new games is important?
Edmondson: Frankly, no. Of course there are time proven mechanics that will always have their place in the medium, but I don’t view the preservation of older mechanics as something important within itself.
Old School Gamer Magazine:The marketplace is crowded. How do you think you stand out?
Edmondson: Hopefully the combination of the aesthetic and attitude elevate GZH to be seen as something fresh and fun.
Old School Gamer Magazine:How have your previous experiences in industry helped this game?
Edmondson: This is my 15th year as a full time indie, so it’s hard to concentrate all of that experience into how it manifested through the development of GZH. I would say that in the early years of bootstrapping as indie developers, we could only afford to pay an artist to make a few key assets and I’d then make the rest based on their art style.
Over the years I became fairly profficient at riffing on an existing style, so it definitely equipped me to realise an aesthetic I imagined as a mix of The Simpsons and Rick & Morty.
Old School Gamer Magazine:How do you want this game to ultimately be remembered?
Edmondson: Ideally it’s remembered as fun, amusing nonsense with a banging soundtrack that sold 10,000,000,000 copies.
Old School Gamer Magazine:What’s next?
Edmondson: Buy one of them gold plated houses.
Old School Gamer Magazine:Anything else you’d like to add?
Edmondson: Socks then shoes.
