Sega Nerds

Interview: Paul Mottram, Zoë Mode senior producer

by Chris on June 11th, 2007

Now I understand why the Crush developers wanted their name changed from the boring Kujo Brighton to the humorously curious Zoë Mode. Only people who are insanely crazy yet remarkably brilliant would do such a thing.

After playing Crush for a few minutes, it’s crystal clear the guys and gals at Zoë Mode know how to make a great game. And as reviewers and gamers are still buzzing over the release of the amazing puzzler, Zoë Mode’s senior producer Paul Mottram took a break from his busy schedule to answer a few questions the Sega Nerds just had to ask.

Sega Nerds: Crush is such a unique and innovative puzzler. How did the idea to create such a game come about?
Paul Mottram: For years, we’ve wanted to make a game where you could switch between 2D and 3D and effectively lose a dimension, an idea which originated from some drunken nights out, the work of M. C. Escher and a desire to try and do something more original.

It was initially a concern as when you have an idea like this you start asking yourself “Why hasn’t it been done before? It’s so obvious. We must have missed something.” It took us a while to figure out how we could restrain such a powerful mechanic and come up with a set of rules which meant we didn’t have to create levels that were not just tens of simple platforms spread all over the place.

Sega Nerds: Why did you choose to develop the game for the PSP? It seems like it could have transitioned remarkably well to the DS or Wii, and is there a possibility we could see a port in the future?
Mottram: We wanted to create a handheld game, and when we started development, the PSP looked like being the perfect match for Crush. The cerebral nature of the game means that it can be played in short bursts or for prolonged periods where the player can dip in and out of levels.

There is no reason why it couldn’t be transferred to multiple different platforms especially the Wii, DS and PS2 and this is something we are thinking about. If we do move Crush onto new platforms, we’d want to ensure that each version fully utilises the strengths of the platform and alternate controls and mechanics it can offer.

Sega Nerds: Was there anything that you would have liked to have seen made it into the final version of the game but were unable to?
Mottram: A blue hedgehog :) , seriously though, it would be the in-game level editor. We have a terrific in-game level editor running on the PSP which our designers used to create all the levels in the game. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the time to get this running on a commercial PSP or implement all the necessary user friendly features we would have needed if it was to be shipped with the game. As you could imagine designing Crush levels can be tricky at times.

Hopefully in future, we will be able to fix this and give everyone the opportunity to create Crush levels.

Sega Nerds: Most puzzle games don’t feature much of a story, yet Crush’s is wonderful and Danny is a really interesting protagonist. Why did you guys think it was so important to flesh out the characters and story?
Mottram: Gameplay was our number one priority, but we thought it was important to have a strong story and common characters running throughout the levels. We wanted to have a character who was not a superhero but more of a troubled soul. Something different from the muscle men and well endowed women that are so prevalent in games currently and can give non-gamers the impression that developers have no imagination.

Jonathan Taylor the lead artist on the game is also a brilliant comic artist, and he produced all the fantastic cutscenes that we used in the game, which we thought deserved to be showcased.

Sega Nerds: In developing the title, what was the biggest hurdle or problem you had to overcome?
Mottram: Crushing is such a new mechanic to the player that we needed to ensure we could explain it to even the most inexperienced gamer. We didn’t, however, want the player who understands it straight away to be trawling through hours of tutorials. Getting the difficulty curve balanced over the course of the levels was a constant challenge.

Level design on Crush is one of the trickiest tasks the designers have ever had to do. You could spend hours perfecting a level only to see someone instantly circumvent the entire level with a crush we had never considered.

Sega Nerds: What are the chances we’ll see a Crush 2?
Mottram: It’s something we’d all love to do since there are so many features we didn’t get the opportunity to put into this version. The feedback from players has been phenomenal, and we really believe that we have so much more crushing features and puzzles to explore.

Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions, Paul. All I can say is if you don’t go out and buy Crush, you are not only supporting global terrorism, but you’re also giving publishers more of a reason to not support innovative titles such as this.

It’s one of the most refreshing games I’ve played in years. Zoë Mode has taken a crazy idea (mixing 2D/3D), and made it into an amazingly addictive game with all the bells and whistles one could ever ask for.

Buy this game!

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