Solo developer ofLunistice, Dennis Kroener who goes by A Grumpy Fox, has worked in game-related jobs for years now. However, being part of the game media and working for a game publisher wasn’t enough for him. For a long time, he had wanted to develop and release his own game.Lunisticewas a concept for a few years before it became the 3D platformer that it was released as, but eventually, with the help of his beloved community, he managed to realize his dream.
Lunisticeis a 3D platformer inspired by the likes ofSpyroandSonicfrom the 32-bit era but also by modern 3D platformers likeSuper Mario Galaxy. The developer and creator of the game is also a huge fan of speedrunning, and as a former speedrunner has made the game work especially well for that purpose. Game Rant spoke to Kroener about his open development philosophy, transitioning from 2D to 3D, the importance of community, the IndieLand experience, his past in speedrunning, level design, and much more. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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Q: Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your history in game development, and how that led to A Grumpy Fox?
A: My name is Dennis. Right now, I am an indie game dev. Also, I’m a streamer andtechnical producer at Deck13in Frankfurt. My way to the whole game industry was a really long and complicated one. I was interested in making games and game development for ages. Since I was very little. I never really got my foot in the industry for the longest time. I basically started on my own, with YouTube and streaming. That’s how I started making content, 12 years ago. That’s how I kind of got myself in the game.
I worked for an online game magazine for five years after that as a lead video editor. Since two years ago, I’ve been at Deck13 and Spotlight, which is basically our indie publishing, and last year I finally sat down and started making my first very own game. Something that’s not just a demo, prototype, or experiment.
Q: Can you briefly describeLunisticefor those that are not familiar with the game?
A:Lunisticeis a very linear 32-bit-inspired 3D platformer that was designed to be very easy to grasp, but it expects players to be pretty precise with their gameplay. It’s mostly made out of love and nostalgia for the 32-bit era.
Q: Often starting developers choose to begin with a two-dimensional game. What made you choose a 3D platformer over a 2D one?
A: SoLunisticeactually started out as a 2D platformer around five years ago. That’s when I started working on the concept ofLunistice. It actually started as a 2D Metroidvania, because of course as an indie dev you start as a Metroidvania. I think the two main problems were that it was way over-scoped and even though I like to create pixel art, I never found a proper direction to go with in 2D. After that I was experimenting a little bit with 3D stuff, I had an idea to makea 3D rail shooter. That was also calledLunisticebecause it was set in the same world.
It didn’t quite work at first, because I was quiteinexperienced with 3D because I just started out. With the current game, it was basically me telling myself last year: “alright, you’re going to sit down now for a month and you’re going to create some kind of game in 30 days.” I wanted to sit down and get some kind of 3D pipeline going and see if I could come comfortable with it. It turns out, I did! After that 30 days, I had a nice prototype. You have this basic platformer going, why not polish it up for another year and release it as a full game.
Q: Are there any specific challenges that came with 3D?
A: I think 3D platformer physics is probably one of the most complicated things you could basically do. I was always very interested in learning about platformer physics in both 2D and 3D. It’s just a topic that I am interested in a lot because it is very complex. Even with the whole theoretical experience I had, 3D was so much more work and tweaking and fiddling around than a platformer in 2D. Making a good 2D platformer is still very complicated, but in 3D there are just so many more little edge cases - like the camera is so much more important. You need to have a good camera in 3D. Stuff like that was much more complicated than in 2D.
Q: What type of games have inspired you in creatingLunistice?
A: It was mostly games from the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and Dreamcast era. I would say, mostly my influences were probablySpyro,Sonic, andKlonoa. Three of my favorite franchises pretty much. A lot of those went intoLunisticebut also a lot of more modern 3D platformers, likeSuper Mario GalaxyorSuper Mario Odyssey. Because although I have a lot of nostalgia and love for the old times, I really like the quality of life and good stuff the new games brought, so I tried to marry those.
Q: On the surface,Lunisticeis a very traditional 3D platformer. Are there any aspects that set it apart from the others?
A: I think, first of all, it’s mostly the visual design. Just because I tried to find a way to make a game that looks how people remember the 32-bit era looks. Not how it actually is, because a lot of games don’t look quite as nice as they did back then. We all remember them looking really, really nice. I tried to capture that feeling. Besides that, I think the fact that linear platformers are getting kind of rare these days. That kind of makes it special in today’s day and age.
These days you see a lot more open platformers and collectathons, which I love a lot, but I craved a really linear experience. I think the last game that gave this to me, was probablySuper Mario 3D World. I think that’s what sets it apart from today’s platformers.
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Q: While the game is linear, there are still spots that can be skipped or “broken.” Was that a conscious choice?
A: Yes, very much so. I have been apart of the speedrunning communityfor the longest time. For a really, really long time. I am not actively speedrunning anymore, these days, but it was such a big part of my life. So I was like, If you make a game, make it breakable in some shape or form. That’s why there’s a lot of little stuff, some obvious, some not so obvious, that throw people running the game a little bone. So yeah, it was very much a conscious choice.
Q: Can you talk more about the speedrunning aspect inLunistice?
A: I made little skips possible to make it more interesting to speedrunners, but also smaller stuff like there’s a separate jumping ability. It was a bug at first, but I liked it a lot, and I saw howit could break the game. So I wanted to keep it in there for runners to use. I’ve also closely worked with speedrunners that are currently running the game as they find new stuff and break the game in ways that I didn’t expect. I basically try to find a middle way between whether I should fix this bug or not, depending on how easy it is to exploit by regular players, but I always keep in mind the speedrunning because it is so important to me.
Q: What type of speedrunning games are you excited about and what communities do you consider yourself part of?
A: I got my start in theCastlevaniacommunity, where I ranCastlevania: Portrait of Ruin,Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance,Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, land a little bit of Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. I actually had thespeedrunning world recordforPortrait of Ruinfor a very long time, until it was snatched away a few years ago. I was like, I’m not coming back, I don’t have the time anymore, unfortunately.
But I am still very much interested in not onlyCastlevaniaspeedruns but Metroidvania speedruns in general. There’s always just really cool tech and movement, and so many different routes. I think that’s very interesting. Since a few years ago, I also got a bitmore interested in RPG speedruns, because they are just kind of cozy to watch. The run can be like five or six hours, and you can have it on your second screen. I got really into that, but I wouldn’t run RPGs myself, I wouldn’t have the patience for that. But I really like watching them.
Q: Are there leaderboards for the game or is anything like that in the plans?
A: There are noin-game leaderboards. I tried to implement them but unfortunately, I couldn’t make it in time. I had to scrap the idea. There was an actual speedrunning mode planned for the game. It was in one of the very early demos of the game. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out, but we do have leaderboards on speedrun.com, where people can post the best times.
Q:Lunisticeseems like it’s primarily an arcade game, but there is a story. Can you tell us about that?
A: There’s not a whole lot I want to tell people, because as you might have seen, I like to tell my store in the background. There’s a whole story starting with the intro sequence. There’s some kind of program going, Hana is in some kind of testing program or loop. There are a lot of hints and story beats that are being told in the game. Especially if you attempt to find everything in the levels, where you can unlock these data files that tell more about the background story. That’s really something I normally don’t talk about openly because I want people to find out what it’s about. There’s been a lot of ideas thrown around on Discord, but most of them are not 100% correct, which is really fun for me. But the story isn’t really in your face, I wanted to concentrate on the gameplay.
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Q: Completing levels inLunisticeis measured in several ways. Can you expand on those?
A: So there are basically two parts that are ranked after each level. Those are all based on competition, so you have a rank for collecting everything on the level. you’re able to collect paper cranes and those are pretty muchjust normal coin-type collectiblesthat you’d find in pretty much every platformer. There are also letters, and they unlock little secrets as I mentioned before. You are also ranked on the number of resets you have in a level.
There’s also an in-game timer, which will be saved, but I actually de-emphasized it a lot. There’s a funny story about that. In the first demo of the game, you were only ranked on time, and not on completion at all. Most people didn’t seem to really care. If you get a good time, you get a good rank, it’s all good. There was, however, one particular streamer that I was watching, who was really, really mad about timed ranks. I was interested to see what was going on there. He actually ended up having really good arguments. He wanted to explore everything, but he gets punished for it, and he was right.
So I basically switched the whole ranking system around. Most people actually prefer the new system. Even the same people that didn’t care either way at first changed their minds. So basically one streamer ended up changing my whole ranking system.
Q: How would you describe the difficulty level ofLunistice?
A: I do think it is not incredibly difficult, but I do think it requires players to have at least a little bit of precision when going through levels. Especially if you want to go for the S ranks, of course. Especially the no-reset rank. However, there’s no penalty for falling off the platforms, besides getting back to the checkpoint and getting a worse rank at the end. you may still collect everything, you can see all the endings, and you can get all the data files. You’ll only miss on the S ranks. I think the game is pretty lenient on that part, but if you want to do well, it will get a bit more tricky.
Especially if you go for the bonus characters, Toree in particular. That’s pretty much called the hard mode now because it dies in one hit and cannot attack. I hope I managed to cater to as many people as possible. Both to people that want to see everything and to people that want to get really good at it.
Q: The game has different characters, can you talk about what they bring to the game?
A: When you finish the game once, you do get two bonus characters. Those are guest characters from other games. Those are Toree fromToree 3DandToree 2, developed by Siactro who’s a good friend of mine, andToukie fromHolomento, which is a semi-open world RPG that Deck13 published. As I said previously, Toree is considered the hard mode of the game, he’s really fast, dies in one hit, and cannot attack, so it gets really difficult really fast.
Toukie I would almost call it a bit easier than the main character, Hana, just because she has a quadruple jump even though she can’t jump very high. She has also a very short attack range and a little bit less HP. However, you may do really interesting movements with her because she can jump very far. I think those bonus characters bring a good amount of variety. Both of them have also their own final special stage as well, both of which are inspired by their respective games that they are from.
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Q: Can you talk about the level design ofLunistice?
A: It was an interesting process. I guess I’ll start with what my philosophy was for this, and likely the next, project.Lunisticewas always a project that I designed very openly. I got a lot ofinput from the community, especially my Twitch chat, with a lot of early development. That’s why they are also credited. A lot of the very early design process, the very basic ideas for the visual design of the levels, was done on a big brainstorming live stream, where everyone could chime in. It was a lot of ideas, a lot of them are, you know, Twitch chat ideas, but there were a few good ones. We all decided together on the stage themes.
When it came todesigning the levels themselves, what helped me a lot with creating them, since there are quite a few levels in the final release, was to have a very strict structure. If you play the game, you will notice that in a very bare-bones view of the level, they all kind of flow in the same way. When it comes to level secrets and the letters you find. There are some outliers, like one stage for Hana is a bit more open or the bonus stage for Toukie that is really, really open. For most of the levels, I had this very clear skeleton of the level. That helped a lot with hammering through a lot of level ideas. That also includes me redoing levels and tweaking because it is an iterative process in the end.
Q: Independent game developers often help each other out. What does being part of the community mean to you?
A: I love it. It is really nice that nowadays it is easier than ever to connect with either even bigger developers or indie developers all over the world, and either actively or passively get all kinds of input and ideas from them. Also, many developers offer direct feedback, which can be very valuable. To have an additional set of eyes that can give sophisticated feedback on your game. That’s incredibly valuable, and it’s just really nice. Especially the nicheLunisticefits into,the retro 32-bit niche. I think the developers in that niche are pretty close-knit. All of them are just super nice and super friendly. Everyone is excited about everyone’s project, and that’s what I really love about the whole community.
Q: You were part of this year’s IndieLand. What was that experience like?
A: That was a really interesting experience. I was not expecting to geta spot at IndieLandat all with a small $5 game. It was a really, really cool experience. Especially, I watched The Completionist channel for years, and IndieLand as well. So sitting there with your game on stage was pretty exciting, and very frightening, but everyone had the greatest time playing the game. Jirard was completely blown away according to his reactions, which was really nice to see. So it was just really, really fun. It was an amazing experience all in all.
Q: What’s next for you,Lunistice, and A Grumpy Fox as a studio?
A: I actually quite recently announced that I will be working on a sequel toLunistice, which will be going from the 32-bit era to the Dreamcast era because I am also very nostalgic for that. I am really looking forward to trying my hand at doing basically the same as I did for 32-bit but capturing the whole late-N64 and early Dreamcast era. Make it look really nice and modernize it. I will again be very open with development and will share a lot of early development stuff, as well. Looking forward to that.
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Lunisticeis available now for Nintendo Switch and PC.
