No one can accuse publisher
Devolver Digital of not being eclectic. Its stable of titles is a veritable prism of ever-branching and legacy genres, from shooters to top-down arcade classics, with everything in between. The studios it works with, then, also need a similar ethos -- enter
Flying Wild Hog whose own stable of titles range from shooters to ARPGs and beyond.
We had a chance to chat with the studio about its upcoming Devolver Digital-published joint, Trek to Yomi, with game director
Marcin Kryszpin.
"Not going to lie, it meant a lot of binge-watching of the so-called “chanbara eige”. You know, both the classics were directed by [
Akira]
Kurosawa but also
Harakiri by
Masaki Koboyashi and
Teinosuke Kinugasa’s
Gate of Hell," enthuses Kryszpin when we asked about the team's influences on Trek to Yomi. "On top of that, we also watched some anime classics like
Ninja Scroll,
Berserk, and
Samurai Champloo. For those of you who haven’t seen them, do yourself a favour and watch them!"
He's not wrong, of course. Go. Go now and watch it all! And if that's the quality and depth of influence on the Trek to Yomi experience, we're in for a very fantastic treat. The rest of our interview covers off topics around making a game from cinematic experiences, how audio and camera trickery plays into that as well as the team's other sources for historical information and its uses of Japanese folkflore.
Click here for our full Trek to Yomi developer interview.