DeathSpank Interview

Eurogamer has cranked out a three-page interview with Hothead's Joel DeYoung that quizzes the co-founder about their recently announced Swarm title and the success and future of Ron Gilbert's DeathSpank series.
Eurogamer: Your last game, DeathSpank - were you satisfied with how that turned out?

Joel DeYoung: Yeah, I think we were. It was a really fun game to work on, and being part of Ron Gilbert's next game was a lot of fun to do. We didn't start the company to make funny games, it just seems that's just what we do - it's a natural thing we tend towards. It's really heartening when you release a game and you read online about people liking it and the fun they had with the game. And now everyone's asking us online about a third version of DeathSpank.

Sales-wise its been a big success and we're really happy about it.

There's always things as a creator that you look back on and think you could have spent more time on, could have made it a bit better. Some things you don't even expect: some people, when DeathSpank eats food to replenish health he makes this smacking noise - I guess for some people it's a bit of a finger-nails on the chalk-board effect. For some people it really sets them off. In hindsight we should have had a check-box in the options to be able to turn that off! I think I publicly committed that we would do that anyway in the future.

Little things like that; things with the UI, the combat system, the progression, the quests. We put on our blog about a month ago and said hypothetically speaking, if we were to make another DeathSpank what would you like to see? And we got a flood of responses.

Eurogamer: Will you make a third DeathSpank game?

Joel DeYoung: Well I won't say anything officially, but you can just read our blog and read between the lines I guess.

It's been a great franchise for us and it's a great character, and there's a lot of world that's still unexplored for DeathSpank.