Q&As// Jordane Thiboust: Lead Designer Hot Pixel

SPOnG: The promise of new downloadable content sounds like a great idea. Will new mini-games be available in the future? Will there be a charge for them and for how long will you guys continue to make new content for Hot Pixel after its release?

Jordane Thiboust: Yes, definitely! 70 new mini-games will be available online for Hot Pixel launch, and then we have a lot of plans to extend that online content into something great and unique.

I can’t say much about it yet, but one thing is sure, is that it will take full advantages of what the PSP has to offer and do it in a way that was never done before.

SPOnG: Nintendo’s Wario Ware series must have been an inspiration for you guys. Do you have any favourite micro-games from those titles?

Jordane Thiboust: Of course, Wario Ware was a great inspiration for us, we wanted to make a game fun and crazy, the whole concept of “Game Sampling” seems to fit to that perfectly, especially when talking about retro games. Let’s be honest, even though it is really fun to play games like Breakout for a few minutes, today you most certainly wouldn’t play it for two hours straight.

That’s why we thought it was something great to do, but then we asked ourselves: “What can we do to improve the concept? How can we push the genre further technically? How could the multimedia and online capacities of the PSP help us do that?

For one, we chose to push the concept of “play-lists” to re-mix the experience anyway you like, just like you do with the music in your iPod. You even have smart play-lists which can be based on the intrinsic characteristics of each mini-game (genre, universe, difficulty…), on user-defined parameters (e.g. your own rating) and also on your past performance on each mini-game: for instance, “play the games that you always miss”.

Added to that is the fact that our games are longer in duration, and Hot Pixel features ten ‘Xtra Games’ which are “unlimited” and that the player may play over and over when he feels like focusing an a specific gameplay (Shoot-Them-Up, Breakout…) and beat a High Score.

As for my favourite micro-games in Wario Ware, I would say that the game where you have to do rope jumps was the one I like the most.


SPOnG: What games other than your own projects are you looking forward to this year?

Jordane Thiboust: I am looking forward a lot of games this year, Hellgate London is one of them… but basically any game that I feel is taking risks and aiming for originality in its concept and/or design will get my attention.

SPOnG: Thank you for your time Jordane – Hot Pixel will be released for PSP on 22nd June for mental minigame madness.