There are many Metroidvanias, but none of them are set in World War II and pit you against evil Nazi experiments. This is the elevator pitch for Wolfhounda surprising new retro project from Bit Kid, the developer of the 2018 beautiful dungeon scroller with pixel art gap.
Revealed during the IGN Live showcase Last week, Wolfhound was easy to miss among the hundreds of new game announcements, updates, and trailers, but thanks to its unusual setting and stunning art style, it immediately caught my eye. You play as Captain Chuck “Wolfhound” Rossetti, a one-man army tasked with infiltrating a secret Nazi base in the Bermuda Triangle. In classic Metroidvania fashion, there are plans for a sprawling 2D map, special abilities that unlock new areas, and tons of different weapons, from flamethrowers to more experimental weapons.
Here is the trailer:
James Petruzzi, the boss of Bit Kid, told me in an interview that he was inspired Wolfhound after playing 2017 The Mummy Demastereda retro run-and-gun where every time you die and come back you have to kill your old self to continue. He wanted to do something similar set in World War II, partly as a tribute to his grandfather, a World War II veteran who had recently died.
“My grandfather died during the filming of gapand when we went to the funeral afterwards, my father had brought out all these old photos that he had taken in Europe and made a big collage out of them,” said Petruzzi. “And when gap was over, I was really interested in getting all these photos, scanning them, restoring them and all that.”
On the back of the photos were short captions by his grandfather, which became the inspiration for Wolfhounds title character. “This is the guy who just ran up Omaha Beach, almost died, and then a few days later there are all these German soldiers walking down the street, and on the back he writes something like, ‘More of Hitler’s Supermen,'” he said. “I try to kind of take his perspective and put it into the game.”
Petruzzi is working on Wolfhound with some contract developers for a few years now, but there may still be a long way to go. He is trying to take his time this time, especially after working on the development of gap, and procedural medieval Metroidvania whose shortcomings and mixed reception still seem to weigh on him.
“When we did that gap we had a kind of romantic crunch culture, you know, it was like, ‘Oh, we’re going to work so hard day and night and make our dream game,'” Petruzzi said. “Five years go by and all your friends say, ‘You’re a shadow of yourself,’ because you’re completely burned out. And I thought, OK, and my wife was like, ‘You can’t do that again.'”
He and the gap The team, which eventually split up, has released several updates to incorporate player feedback and improve the game after launch. He says the long tail was strong enough to give him the freedom to take his time with his next game. “We’re trying to stay a lot more stable by not working on weekends and nights and so on,” he said.
“It’s a little crazy sometimes when you’re stressed and you just want to get it all done, but you also have to have a little bit of self-control and just say, ‘It’ll be done on Monday.’ It’s just not worth it because this slide just keeps going and then when you start talking years, you think, I can’t go through this again. So, yeah, it’s not easy, but I just try to do my best and do the best for the team.”
I hope it works. Wolfhound looks like a lot of fun and I can’t wait to see the finished game. With WolfhoundPetruzzi is foregoing the procedural levels in favor of a hand-crafted map. “It’s just appealing to design something by hand this time,” he said. “I worked on it for a couple of years in my spare time when I wanted to take a break from working on the map. gap I was busy developing and catching up on other games and just trying to figure out what I wanted and what I would enjoy spending several years of my life working on.”
