Interview: Teravision Games Talks About Captain ToonHead

Cubed3's Jenny Geist, Feature Writer: Was the virtual reality component always a part of this project, or did you come up with it later?

Luis Zambrano: We designed the whole game with VR in mind from its first conception. For us, it was a dream come true to have a platform like this to build on. I mean, it was the promise of the 80s' to play VR, right? We grew up in the 80s' and now we are there, and for us, it's a dream to work on.

Cubed3: Have you ever worked on a virtual reality game before this?

Enrique Fuentes: No, this was our first virtual reality game, but we fell in love with the platform right off the bat. The first time I tried VR was in a game jam, in Chile, some years ago. It was a very simple demo: you were a rat and could crawl beneath tables to see the legs from below. The sense of scale you could get in the game, just looking around… thinking 'oh crap, this is amazing, this is huge!' [laughs] At this point we said, 'okay, we gotta build something for this platform.' We love tower defense games, and we always had this fantasy of 'how would it feel to be right there,?' You'd be in the middle of the action, so VR is the perfect medium for an experience like that.

Cubed3: On that note, have you played a lot of tower defense games and/or first-person shooters? Are there any specific ones in those genres that have inspired this one?

Enrique Fuentes: Yeah, many! In the area of tower defense, Kingdom Rush was a big reference, especially because it has a hero that you can move around the map. There's also Plants vs. Zombies, that's a big tower defense reference, as well as PixelJunk Monsters.

Cubed3: How has COVID-19 impacted the development of this game? I imagine for a VR game, that would be a pretty different wheelhouse.

Enrique Fuentes: When we started creating the game, we thought we could develop it with just a few VR headsets. Then we found out everybody involved in the game needed a VR headset because everybody was now working from home. Collaboration and communication also get a little trickier, but we are also developers from Columbia, so we're very used to remote work. All of our clients and partners have been from other places. We were kind born remote, here.

Cubed3: Are you traveling all the way from Columbia for this convention?

Luis Zambrano: Yes, I traveled from Boleta where most of our team is based, while Enrique is here in the US.

Cubed3: What inspired the world of this game? It's very wacky, with dinosaurs, and a guy with a TV on his head, and all.

Luis Zambrano: The root to all of this madness was a condensation of the creative aspects of the whole team. Basically, it's an homage to Saturday morning cartoons that we love. There are a lot of little details, some of which are more obscure than others, referencing things that we all love in the studio. That's why it's so wacky, yet cohesive, because we just loved the source material so much.

Cubed3: Have you hidden any references in the game that nobody has caught yet?

Luis Zambrano: As a hint, there are little details in the pizza rocket, which is the base where you live, hidden in the textures if you pay attention.

Enrique Fuentes: There's also the more in-your-face kind of references; we're from Latin America, so it was kind of unavoidable that a lot of our country permeated in the game. One of the most powerful weapons in the game is the chancla, which is a flip-flop. That's a very Latin American thing. One of the towers is the piñata catapult, and other stuff like that.

Cubed3: What is the scope of the final product going to be?

Enrique Fuentes: It's more narrative-driven than your typical tower defense game, so you go through the narrative and experience different levels. We have four stages, each of which have three levels.

Cubed3: What time-frame do you want to get the game out by?

Enrique Fuentes: Very soon. We're not allowed to divulge a specific date because of the main platform we're in, but it's coming extremely soon.