R.I.F.T. Developer Talks About Portals, Platforms and Puzzles

We’re gearing up for the launch of this week’s new release, R.I.F.T.! The puzzle-platformer will debut on Candystand.com Thursday morning, along with brand-new trophies. We had a chance to interview lead designer Jan Rigerl about the game.

“I knew I wanted to create a platform game and I wanted portals in it, also I wanted some weird maybe slightly disturbing humor in it… We wanted a robot with tracks and big arms to grab boxes, only after the graphics were done and we put it into the game did we realize that it looked a lot like Wall-E.”

Read the full interview after the jump >

Tell us about the development of R.I.F.T.
I started sometime at the end of July, I’ve never done a platform game before, so I knew I wanted to create a platform game and I wanted portals in it, also I wanted some weird maybe slightly disturbing humor in it, but not much else was set.

In the middle of August I started putting more time into PortalPlatformPuzzle, PPP, which was R.I.F.T.’s project name. I got my friend Jonas Johansson to start working on the graphics while I did the programming and most of the level design. Then we worked almost full time on it for 1-1.5 months, after which Daniel Beckman who did the sound effects and music for the game.

Any difficulties you ran into?
Initially I made my own collision system but after a while I decided to switch to box2d which has worked really well, there’s been some issues with objects gaining to much velocity and subsequently flying through walls though

One difficulty was creating all the levels, it was hard to try and think of new things for each level and not making them feel repetitive or too hard/easy.

As soon as we saw the game, we thought to ourselves: Wall-E meets Portal. Did you take inspiration from these icons or are the similarities just coincidences?
Portal, definitely. Wall-E wasn’t really planned.. we wanted a robot with tracks and big arms to grab boxes, only after the graphics was done and we put it into the game did we realize that it looked a lot like Wall-E

The R.I.F.T. bot that you are in control of seems to have a great deal of personality. Why did you decide to make him so talkative?
I don’t know really, we just threw in some speech bubbles to test, and it felt good, first it was more supposed to be a easter egg, if you don’t touch the keyboard in more than x seconds the robot would start to complain about it.

We wanted to create a bit of a story on why you’re actually feeding your master, but in the end a lot of that never made it to the game.

There are a couple of lines that are configured to each level, when you reach a certain area for example. Then there are also a bunch of random lines triggered by certain actions, such as lifting a box, completing the level or inactivity.

You included two level packs (as well as a few cheat items) that players can purchase using Mochicoins. Have you used microtransactions in your games before?
Nope, this is the first time I’m using mictrotransactions, it’s still very new to these sort of flash games, I have no idea what to expect, but hopefully it will bring a bit of extra income that would enable developers to put a bit more time into making their games better.

Don’t miss out on the pastry level skin it’s pretty crazy it’s free as long as you have a mochi-account (which is also free)

Do you think the inclusion of microtransactions will play heavily in the future of flash gaming?
It might make it more financially viable to develop games with higher quality than the usual flash games, especially multiplayer games which takes longer time to create. There will probably still be plenty of room for smaller games that can rely on ads.

What are the best games you’ve played recently?
If I limit it to flash games; most games by Nitrome, really love their art style and their games are really polished. I also love Time Fcuk and Meat Boy by Edmund, Fathom by Adam Atomic, but I don’t play that much flash games to be honest.

Jonas adds these as some of his flash favorites:
Desktop Tower Defense 1.5 by preecep, Bloody Fun Day by urbansquall, Icebreaker by Nitrome

What’s after R.I.F.T.?
We got two flash games that are under development, one is a platform game where you play a frog that can swing himself from walls using his tongue, sort of like Spider-Man (but tongue instead of spiderweb).

The other is a multiplayer artillery game, similar to Worms and Scorched Earth.

Any plans for a sequel?
We’ve discussed making a prequel to RIFT, one that would explain the background a bit, maybe start by playing the master, and then move on to playing the unfinished robot that needs to find pieces to complete himself with, doing some sort of RPG-platform crossover game would be awesome..