By Brian Ashcraft

"For the first few months of working here, my old boss at Lionheads Studios thought I was working with Mizuguchi," says Q-Games planner Rhodri Broadbent, lounging on a sofa in the developer's third floor Kyoto office space. There's a hi-def TV playing their latest, PixelJunk Racers. Whenever Q-Games is first mentioned, Rez creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi's Q? Entertainment is usually as well — though Q-Games had the "Q" before Mizguchi left SEGA to set up his boutique studio. Sure, Q-Games may not have Miz, but it does have Dylan Cuthbert, who helped create Star Fox while working for Nintendo, and Kenkichi Shimooka, who developed Ape Escape for the PlayStation. Dylan has the chicken pox and couldn't make it. Kenkichi? No clue where he is.

I'm in a white meeting room, waiting for the interview to start. I peer down the street still slick with rain. There are traditional Kyoto-style houses across the street from the modern office building. In the meeting room, there's a clock, a white board (fitting) and ping pong nets. When not used as a meeting room, it's converted into a ping pong room. Well, that's what the recruitment brochure tells me — and the drawer of ping pong equipment doesn't lead me to believe otherwise. A trio of developers enter, trade business cards and speak in British and North American accents. Almost half the office is foreign. These devs sitting across from me were instrumental in bringing Q-Games first game label PixelJunk title Racers to the PlayStation Network.

"How many people were involved in creating the title?" I ask.
"You're looking looking at them," Braodbent says, laughing. "We're not just trying to get that old school feeling in the game itself, but also in the way we make them."

Typically, there was a team of 4~5 people working full-time on PixelJunk Racers. The title itself is fairly straight forward — deceptively simple, even. It's a top down, slot-car style racing game that features over thirty modes like "Fireball Frenzy" in which hitting other cars causes you to speed up or "Balloon Burst" in which your car is propelled by deflating it. The slot car element gives the game a puzzle feel in which it's more about "maneuvering" and less about "driving" where the goal isn't finishing the race, but completing the objective. Players use the analogue trigger for the gas and the directional pad for, well, directional movement.

As I play through with the guys who created the title, it truly seems like they are enjoying themselves. They turned around the game into a finished product within months, bypassing that brick wall that most developers smack into. Even after spending months (as opposed to years) working on Racers, they tell me that it still seems fresh. And more importantly, fun.

"Even though Racers isn't going to be on Xbox Live," Broadbent explains. "We tried to adhere to Xbox Live size limitations." Meaning? Racers clocks in at a little over 40 MBs and loads quick. Twenty-five percent of that is music.

With an international working environment, Q-Games was able to see what particular modes and games appealed to Japanese players and Western players. For example, Japanese staff enjoyed the brutally difficult "frustration games." Western team members, on the other hand, enjoyed the loose, high speed titles.

Through obvious strong connections at Sony (both of the Q-Games founders worked there), the developer was able to release PixelJunk Racers as the first PSN licensee for Sony Japan. For a network still in its infancy, Q has gotten in on the ground floor. While everything hasn't been smooth sailing (the morning Racers launch, there were issues with the online leader boards), Sony is expressing a strong desire to get online, says Q. And get it right.

"The support we've been getting has been incredible," adds Broadbent.

The game was conceived earlier this year when Q-Games founder Cuthbert was kicking around a new brand idea called "PixelJunk." A slot car game was proposed, and then pitched to Sony at this year's GDC. But, not just one PixelJunk title was pitched. Close to twenty were that ran the gamut of an airport game to a mountain climbing game to a taxi company game. All of them were top down just like Racers. All Q-Games employees are encouraged to pitch titles and can created demos on an in-house engine. That lets them see if the titles are even possible. The taxi game was deemed too busy and had too much going on the screen at once for the brain to process. Broadbent shows me concept art that was used in the GDC pitch to Sony.

GDC? That was back in March? Quick turnaround — especially, in an age where most projects lumber on for years. Q-Games has the nascent stages of an PixelJunk production line going. Last minute touches are being placed on Racers, which is already out in North America. The game is gearing up for its Japan release on September 20th and its October 1st European release.

Meanwhile, a second PixelJunk title is being developed — this one quite different from the dizzying Racers. It's a tower-type game in which the goal is buy and set up towers to shoot enemies. Different from the arcady vibe in the first PixelJunk game, but does a nice job of showing how broad the brand is. Like with Racers, the second PixelJunk game shows a fixed screen and has a black line at the bottom with the brand's logo. The music, as with Racers, is from Kyoto-based musicians and is mellow. Same's true for the game.

There's a third game in the preparation stage as well. Actually, the idea didn't come from Q, but one of the Kyoto musicians who created the soundtracks for a PixelJunk title. What's more, there's a fourth title in the preparatory stage. What's linking all the current PixelJunk titles is one fixed screen. That alone links the PixelJunk titles. For now. The current plan is a series of five or six games, and then introduce a new element that ties together the next PixelJunk series. So, if you don't like one particular game or style, there is more coming. Much more.

"We're trying to get them out as quickly as possible," assures Broadbent. "With a pipeline of three on the go at once."

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