Transistor Retrospective Interview

Last week, as part of Supergiant Games’ 10th anniversary celebrations, we got a chance to look back at the making of Bastion, the studio’s debut project. And now, Game Informer brings us another Supergiant retrospective, this one dedicated to Transistor and its surprisingly turbulent development cycle.

Here’s a couple of sample paragraphs:

Getting the project past the conception phase took much longer than expected, causing tensions to rise. “The sort of the honeymoon phase of having pre-production time ended after a couple of months,” Kasavin recalls. “And suddenly we were just wandering in the woods in a way that was new to our team.”

Things reached a breaking point right as the team was about to unveil the game at PAX East 2013. “We were so nervous about how it was going to be received that we almost pulled the plug,” Kasavin says. The team was set to announce Transistor on a Tuesday, but was still having conversations on Sunday if they should change course. “That’s how tense we were about how the Transistor announcement was going to go over,” Kasavin says. “Because even at that point when we felt we had something to show that was like a real expression of what we were working on, we were still getting kind of mixed playtest feedback.”

Ultimately, the group decided to move forward, figuring even if they had extra time, it wouldn’t fundamentally change anything. “If people didn’t like it, it would be better for us to know that sooner,” Kasavin says. “But the announcement went over way better than any of us expected. It was just incredibly encouraging.”