About ten days ago, a new AG French Direct conference was held. Over 40 games were shown or announced, including a number Zigglox. Delirious and colorful party-game, the title promises to be a great distraction between loved ones. We were able to ask some questions to the creators, Jeremy and Etienneto learn a little more about this atypical project.
The beginnings of the project
- First of all, thank you for this interview! Can you quickly introduce yourself, who are you and what is your role in the game?
Thanks to ActuGaming especially! It’s really cool to highlight French-speaking indie games, a great initiative.
So to put it simply, we are Jérémy and Etienne, two Bretons who embarked on the creation of a small multiplayer game called Zigglox. Me (Jérémy), I take care of everything concerning the 3D part, the music, the communication… Etienne takes care of the Unity part and the development.
- What led you to create this party-game with a particular system?
Not very original but I would say “a little by chance”… Etienne was working solo on an adventure game that was a little too ambitious for one man, he came one morning knocking on my door “it tells you, we’re making a little game video both?” — “uh yes but I don’t know anything about it myself”.
And that was the start of Zigglox. The goal has always been to make a fun multiplayer game for friends. The gameplay has evolved enormously since the beginning! We are very attached to the idea of having a game that is simple but with a bit of strategic depth.
A party game like no other
- Ultimately, are there other game modes planned?
Yes ! Several game modes are planned and even under development. Today the demo only has the “Battle” mode which is the classic mode of Zigglox. But soon new modes will be integrated like the Boom where everything is played with dynamites!
- Will the tutorial be a little more complete at launch, with for example explanations on how special combos behave (deleting floors or not for example)?
Of course, we are also working on improving the tutorial by integrating a new “sandbox” type room which allows you to discover all the “special” bricks (dynamite, narutomaki, freeze, cheese, etc.). There will be a good dozen of these combos available to fully understand how they work and their “recipe”.
- There are 30 skins planned, most are unavailable in the demo: will they all be available at launch, or are there conditions to unlock some? If so why ?
All the content of the game will be available at the launch of the official version, if there are updates planned afterwards, they will be free and will complement the game.
- Big Bigorno Beach showed a nice leveling mechanic with the tide rising and falling. Among the 8 levels announced at launch, will others benefit from this mechanic? If yes how much ? (We saw that Magma will also have an evolutionary system)
Yes ! The idea is to have interactivity on each level. We promise the next 4 levels won’t cut it, quite the contrary!
The future of gaming
- Have you planned game modifiers related to the game duration, the fact that it can end after X floors are reached, the frequency of bricks falling, the speed of the characters, etc?
There are no plans to customize the game modes to this extent, only the number of players, and the number of rounds (for now anyway).
- Are you planning community events? If so, do you already have some ideas?
It’s a good question ! It’s true that for the moment we’re more focused on development, but it’s true that we’ve already thought about doing tournaments on our Discord, to be continued!
- You deployed a demo during the AG French Direct. Have you had any feedback from the community? Have they been positive? What are the areas for improvement?
We had some feedback and even a Twitch stream with Billiechou! These are often times a little stressful, the fear of the bug haha!
There is still some confusion in terms of the gameplay which is quite rich for a party-game (especially if you skip the tutorial, which can happen). But the feedback seems positive, in any case what often emerges is that there is a little potential to be developed, and that is very motivating.
- Do you have any plans for a console release?
For now, we are focusing exclusively on Steam because we are using their tools for the multiplayer part. Today, the compatibility of Zigglox on console would require *huge* extra work. We will wonder if the game manages to settle well in the video game landscape! It is true that a Zigglox on Nintendo Switch would be terrible!
- Do you have an anecdote or an unusual story to tell? Something that stood out to you or a development story about the game?
The Zigglox (the characters in the game) are flat-headed, as the original plan was to have them stack on top of each other to climb higher and search for bricks on the heights. We finally gave up on this feature because it made us restart the game 5 times. So we don’t have the functionality, but they still have a flat head.
- A last word for our readers?
We’re too proud to tell you that we’re taking part in the Stunfest from May 20 to 22, so see you there!
We thank Jérémy and Etienne for their answers and we remind you that Zigglox is entitled to a demo on Steam. The full game will be released at an undetermined date. If you want to know more about the title, do not hesitate to consult our preview.