AMANDA DYAR: Who are you and what do you do at Relevant Games?
RANDY GREENBACK: Hi, I’m Randy Greenback, Sr. Creative Director here at Relevant. Day to day I oversee the gameplay and designs in the games we produce, but the tasks I take on can vary from project to project. On Fat Chicken for instance, the three largest tasks on my plate were... doing the overarching game design, creating levels, and balancing the gameplay across the campaign.
AMANDA: Fat Chicken is an incredibly adorable game even though you are plumping up herds of animals to send them to the slaughter house. Tell us a little bit about Fat Chicken and how the concept for the game come about?
RANDY: It can definitely appear to be adorable on the surface, the cute farm animals and colorful environments are meant to draw players in. Once you start playing the game though, the subtle, biting humor begins to come into play. By the 3rd or 4th city in the game it starts to become more clear that the game is slathered in satire, and it can get quite dark (in a cartoony way). The concept came about after reviewing a giant list of topics we’d like to take on with one of our games (Factory Farm/Food Safety was on the list), and a discussion began with Mike Tata (Relevant’s Head of Publishing) & Josh Mills (Studio Director). We began talking about game genres that we’d like to work on and I mentioned that I’d enjoy getting to go back to my strategy roots, possibly to do an RTS or a Tower Defense game. The next time I came into the office, Josh had scrawled a crude drawing on the whiteboard, depicting a farm and what appeared to be a “corn gun”. That set off some more talks and we started injecting the issues surrounding Factory Farming into it, and it grew and grew (just like the animals in Fat Chicken after being pumped full of Growth Hormones).
AMANDA: The visuals are stunning for Fat Chicken and literally pop-off the screen. The game features bright, colorful graphics with the animals taking on a block-like shape. What inspired the visuals and block-like character creations?
RANDY: On a previous pitch for a game that ultimately was scrapped, I was pursuing a papercraft style, boxy characters that all appeared to be made of paper. Those papercraft visuals were stuck in my head when it was time to start collecting art reference for Fat Chicken, so I went hunting in that same direction in mind.
Working with David Brossoie (Art Lead) at Mighty Rabbit, we began talking about defining the look for the game. After showing him some of reference I had been collecting, he was able to run with it, quickly honing in on the look we have now for the animals. We went through a similar process with the environment art, the Towers, and the Hired Hands (human characters) in the game. Each component we could lock down helped inform the next. I was surprised how quickly the overall aesthetic came together just by bouncing ideas back & forth, presenting them to Josh when we felt like we had something unique, collecting feedback, and then turning that into a tight iterative process helped immensely.
With the look defined, Shadie El-Haddad (Mighty Rabbit Animator & VFX Artist) stepped in and started adding animations to the animals and characters. We knew we had something very special on our hands as the animations began to flow into the game, because the world quickly came to life and we started hearing comments from others like “it looks like a playable looney tunes cartoon”. Yes! VALIDATION!!!
AMANDA: Fat Chicken uses tower defense tactics with players stuffing animals full of food, antibiotics and growth hormones before sending them off to the slaughterhouse. What makes the gameplay in Fat Chicken unique from other tower defense titles on the market?
RANDY: All of us here at Relevant Games believe that beginning each project with a mission to shine a light on, and create awareness around a real-world issue, directly leads all of our games to a very unique place. Fat Chicken is no different, it is certainly one of the most unique and downright bizarre games I’ve worked on in my entire career. First off, most tower defense games take place on a battlefield, but Fat Chicken takes place on a farm. The biggest difference in the gameplay is that we flip the genre on it’s head! Instead of charging the player with protecting a base or castle from hordes of “creeps” that must be killed, we task them with ensuring the animals stay alive so that they can be fattened up as much as possible.
The goal of each level in the game is to meet the Fat Chicken Meat Company’s Meat Quota. To do that, the player must build a variety of towers to feed, hydrate the animals, inject them with growth hormones, pump them full of antibiotics, and even genetically modify them, so that each of them can achieve their maximum meat capacity.
AMANDA: There is a ton to do in Fat Chicken with over 13 locations and 26 levels. What can players look forward to most in this massive campaign and what do you hope players take away from the game in the end?
RANDY: We’re going to throw everything and the kitchen sink at the player by the time the game is complete and the campaign has run it’s course. I think I’m especially proud of the later levels in the game as they get very strategic and require a fair amount of investment in tower upgrades and more advanced tactics. In the end, I hope player’s takeaway an understanding that the game has a connection to the real world and that the issues baked into the gameplay itself are something that are worthy of more thought. If players discuss the game and the issues surrounding factory farming with their friends and family, then even better. If a player misses all the sub-text entirely, but had a fun time with the game, then that’s fine too. In the end, the most important thing is creating unique, fun and engaging gameplay.
AMANDA: Jason Graves composed the soundtrack for Fat Chicken which helped bring the overall theme of the game to life. How was working with Jason and what are some of the reasons that it was important that he be the one to do the game's soundtrack?
RANDY: First and foremost, Jason composes and produces amazing music and it’s an honor to have him involved with Fat Chicken. Being indie, it was a dream come true to have someone of that caliber to take on the creation of the soundtrack and knock it out of the park. He never looks for the easy way out and he’s always trying something fresh and new when he tackles a project. On Fat Chicken we came to him with a few very “expected” music tracks that were relatively tropey, then we talked about the game and its goals. Jason presented a high level plan to give most of the missions in the game a custom track.
There is a split in the campaign missions which also marks a musical move to a darker tone. The early half of the game that is more normal where the Fat Chicken Meat Co. isn’t entirely off the rails, and then we jump the shark for the darker latter half of the game where the Genet-O cannon is heavily used. The soundtrack begins as bluegrass/jazz fusion, definitely brighter and more upbeat, then evolves to introduce more industrial and electronic sounds. Dan Schneider remixed several tracks to help hone in on the soundscape for our wilder levels. At the end of the day, the prolific amount of music that was created, and the fusion of music genres he tackled, just wouldn’t have come from anyone other than Jason Graves.
And with the main question answered… I just want to quickly proclaim my love for the Dobro, a mighty string instrument that is sadly underused. Anywhere it’s featured on the Fat Chicken soundtrack is definitely a highlight for me. I’m glad that Steve Howell could swing on into the studio and play it so masterfully. If you don’t know what a dobro is, then look it up!
AMANDA: Thank you for your time. Is there anything else you would like to add and where can fans check out Fat Chicken today?
RANDY: I could go on and on about all the features we packed into Fat Chicken. I want to touch on our Farm Upgrade system real quick, it allows players to use the stars they earn in each level to purchase stat boosts and perks for the towers, animals and hired hands.
We also have what we call Farm Heroes, these are bizarre characters that provide an overall buff and a debuff for your factory farming operation. Players can unlock them in the game and choose which one they’d like to equip for the mission. My favorite Farm Hero has to be the Love Guru, not only is he a creepy blonde dude in a diaper, but he gets the animals all worked up so they begin having babies right on the path.
As for updates on the game, for now the best places to go to check out updates would be our Steam Greenlight page http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=297154771 or our company blog at http://relevantgames.com/blog/. We try to keep everyone up to date with our company blog posts and also enjoy interacting with fans on twitter via @relevantgames or @fatchickengame.