If you’ve had enough of hope, joy and toxic positivity, Dear Reader, then do we have news of a delightfully despondent playing experience for you. Did that cheer you up a bit? Well, stop that. It’s not out until 2027. You’ll just have to wait.
Luckily, Mårten Stockhaus, co-founder and creative director of Coffee Stain Publishing’s murderously creative wild child She Was Such A Good Horse, virtually dropped by our virtual office to talk about bizarre bosses, rubber hoses, and heavily-medicated main characters…
RL: To prep for this, I’ve just had my first deep dive Into The Unwell, pun intended, and I’m already sold on the aesthetic. For the uninitiated, please tell us what kind of game you’re making.
MS: We’re making a third-person roguelite for 1-3 players where we wanted to give power to the powerless. You play as one of several unfortunate characters that, in one way or another, have it rough in life – until your luck changes as you meet a super friendly goat with absolutely no nefarious or sinister motives that will guide you!
RL: In a game like this you wear your influences on your sleeve, but I still would love to know how you chose this style and what your references are.
MS: Our art director Felix gained an obsession with the style after playing games like Cuphead. After going into a rubber hose rabbit-hole for months, he came out with the foundation that Into the Unwell uses to this day. I would describe it as a modern take on rubber hose with a punky, gritty feel, mixing all the things we love in an unholy mix of childhood cartoons, horror movies, and everything in between!
RL: How do you capture that zany spirit in gameplay form? What have you tried to focus on when it comes to player agency and synergies?
MS: Starting out, the game was not as fast-paced as it is now. We wanted a more strategic, deliberate playstyle, and for a short time, it was like that. Then we hated it – the game didn’t feel like what we saw in our minds. A cartoony brawler should be fast, chaotic, fun, and fluid. So we went back to the drawing board and sped everything up, removed a lot of barriers, iterated on attack animations, the movement speed, the enemies – and pretty much every aspect of the game – for probably a year.
After that, we felt we had found the fun and could expand on the game, knowing the foundation was solid. We discussed selling Daniel’s (our animator’s) soul to the devil, but I think he had sold it already, so we just had to do the hard work and iterate a lot!
It’s still early days, but what has the feedback been like so far?
MS: Mostly good! We’ve had a few negative comments, of course. I recall one user who nicknames himself “Morten Stackhouse” who always comments that we don’t have enough black metal in the game, and, truth be told, I think that’s a really, really good idea. Who am I to deny our fans their wishes?
RL: Release is planned for next year, in 2027. Where are you in terms of progress?
MS: We did aim to create an early access build, so we locked down a lot of the game for that purpose. Now that we have decided to create the whole game instead, we can change things that we couldn’t before, like introducing different systems early instead of late. It’s really great to be able to make a lot of changes that would be tricky if the game was live.
But to answer your question, I’d say we have a lot of stuff that we want to add before we can start to polish, balance, and wrap this up. Good thing we have July, August, September, October, November, December, Secondecember, and then, hopefully, the then-newly-added Good Horse Month, where Coffee Stain has to entertain us with playful puppet shows to keep our spirits high! I’ve not yet pitched this idea, but I’m pretty sure it’s a no-brainer!
RL: Finally, you just put out a new gameplay trailer, which people can see below. Is there anything in there that you’re particularly excited about and want to drive people’s attention to?
MS: I think people should find Pedro, a tall, pink, mouse-looking character from our game, who sneaks into our trailers and videos all the time! I think whoever finds the greatest number of Pedros in the trailer and can show us on our Discord channel should win a prize! Perhaps a jet plane, a lifetime amount of cat food, or a handwritten thank-you note from me! Depending on the budget Coffee Stain allows for this competition, I vote for all three.
Head to Steam and wishlist Into The Unwell there for future updates!
