Transistor - Interview @ Gameranx

Gameranx interviews Supergiant Game’s Greg Kasavin about Transistor at Pax Prime.

One thing I love about the combat is that it varies so much depending on the player. If someone wants to make it a hack-and-slash they can, but there is also a heavy strategic element to it. Would it possible to go through the game without using the time-pause ability?

Greg: Yeah, that’s kind of the idea. Whether you’ll be able to avoid it entirely, I don’t know. The idea is that we want you to be compelled to use it on your own terms so we aren’t going to force it on you. We want the real-time combat to be fun and viable; having this really powerful ability opens up this opportunity for us in terms of designing combat and encounters with enemies, stuff like that. To make them really intense because you always have this option to say ‘No, no, no, wait. Time out. Now I’m going to turn the tables on these guys. I’m going to take these guys out, do that..’ and we find out that players use it in very different ways—that’s when we felt that we were really onto something. Not everyone was just using it every single time, because we didn’t want to make just a straight-up turn based game, because of the things we wanted to do with the narrative and our desire to make an immediate-feeling game. We wanted to capture some of the sensation of turn-based games and the drama of contemplating your next move and the anticipation of pressing the go-button and seeing whether the plan is going to happen or whether it is going to screw up. Those are fun moments for us.

In the end, what do you want players to take away from playing Transistor?

I mean, I would be very happy if it were received similar to the way Bastion was received. We have been just overwhelmed with the response to Bastion and it’s the reason we can be here again making a game on our own terms. With Bastion we wanted to make a game that would leave a lasting and positive impression on people, and be more than just fun to play, but leave people with something. We like games that do that, and we want to see if we can do it again. Hopefully we can surprise people along the way once more.

And then the burning question everyone has been asking you…. When and on what can we expect to see Transistor?

Transistor is coming to PS4 and PC early next year.