Back in 2011, legendary developer Gochi Suda (AKA Suda51) and their studio Grasshopper Mnaufacture releasedShadows of the Damned, a third-person action game, to a postive reception. That said, the game had a notable troubled production. The game sold poorly, being relegated solely to cult classic status. But now, with Grasshopper gaining the rights to the game again, it’s time to try introducing it to a new audience viaShadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered,set for a release later this year.
Running With the Shadows of the Damned
Shadows of the Damnedmight stand out as one of Suda’s more “normal” games, which in this case means you play as a demon hunter named Garcia Hotspur who teams up with their flaming skull sidekick Johnson to save their girlfriend from the underworld, where they have to shoot goat heads in order to light up areas and prevent darkness from sapping health, feed strawberries to baby heads attached to doors so that you can unlock them, engage in shoot-‘em-up gameplay at one point, and whip out a massive gun called the “Big Boner,” placed exactly where you think it would go. Again, for a lot of Suda51 fans, this is what basically constitutes “normal” from him.
The demo only showcased an early stage after the introduction to everything, though, but it still showcased well-crafted action with a lot of personality, already giving players some nice bits with Garcia and Johnson. It showcased that there was still life in the game, and while we can’t wait to see if it can make a comeback now, the exciting moment was getting to actually meet Suda51 at PAX East where the game was demoed, as fellow HG writer James Cunningham and myself were able to talk to him aboutShadows of the Damned,along with Grasshopper’s other projects past, present and future, which you can read about in the interview that is now commencing…
[Kyle LeClair] Let’s start with a little bit of history about the game. It started as a psychological horror title?
[Goichi Suda]So what the game is about is the main character, Garcia. He’s a Demon Hunter and he loses the love of his life, Paula, when the demon Fleming takes her away and basically whisks her away to hell. So he’s gotta go through hell, kill a bunch of demons, do a bunch of hardcore stuff and get his girlfriend back. To put it simply, it’s kind of like the love triangle between Mario, Peach and Bowser.
[Kyle] The original origins of the game, it started out as a psychological horror game with Shinji Mikami?
[Suda] So yeah, it started out as a project called Kurayami that I was doing together with Shinji Mikami. And yes, it started out somewhat different than you know what we got in the end product, it was basically a psychological horror thing with me writing the scenario and Shinji Mikami basically producing and kind of writing a lot of stuff. And yeah, as it sort of evolved for different reasons, things were added, changed, taken out and yeah, we got in the end what we have now withShadows of the Damned,but I feel that it still has a lot of the original psychological horror elements that we started with. But yes, it did end up being a very different game than the original plans.
[Kyle] And do you feel that the gameplay still holds up today?
[Suda] Yeah, I feel it holds up. It’s a straight up remaster of the original, so if you liked how the original played, then you’ll probably dig how this one plays as well.
[Kyle] And so there aren’t any real new additions or anything?
[Suda] There are actually two new additions to the game. The first one is New Game Plus and the second is that there’s a handful of new costumes for Garcia.
[Kyle] And what is your inspiration for characters like Garcia?
[Suda] For Garcia specifically, when I started coming up with the story and the plans for the game, one of the first things I thought of was I wanted to write a character that was just, like, really kind of like an overly manly man, you know what I mean? The kind of guy just dripping with testosterone, like when he walks in the room, he probably reeks of really strong aftershave. The kind of guy that in Japan, you’d see in ’70s or ’80s Yakuza movies, that kind of stuff. Yeah, that was pretty much where it came from. It’s just “Okay, how do I make this? How do I make a character that’s just, like, overly masculine and really manly and kind of gruff, and would do anything to save the woman that he loves?” and it just kind of popped out of that original idea.
[James Cunningham] You’ve got a very specific style of game that you tend to go for, like howLollipop Chainsawcan be recognized as coming from the same person who didNo More HeroesandShadows of the Damned.Is that something you work toward or just something that happens?
[Suda] So whenLollipop Chainsaw, No More HeroesandShadows of the Damnedcame out, they were relatively close timewise, and part of it, the way my style kind of developed like this, part of it is because right around that time in Grasshopper’s history, those are the kind of games that we were being asked to make. And so part of it is that, and part of it’s just that there is definitely something inside that whether it’s conscious or kind of subconscious, I do kind of gravitate towards a certain style, certain characters, and a certain vibe. And it’s not like when I’m making a game, it’s like “Is that okay, I’ve got to make sure to give it the Suda vibe or anything,” but no matter what kind of game I’m making, there are definitely parts of me that kind of come out and just naturally sort of spill over into the game, so that’s probably got a lot to do with it too.
[James] Yeah, I forgot to mentionKiller is Deadin there, which came out after those three.
[Suda] Yeah, it’s pretty much like the same flow, same thing.
[James]:So it’s been a couple of years andShadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered,of course, is a throwback to an older PS3-era title, and so for whatever may come next, you’d be sticking to that same type of style?
[Suda] Me personally, and as Grasshopper, we’d like to try and take things in different directions sometimes and try some new things, try some different types of games, but I’m pretty confident that when our next game comes out, there’s probably going to be a lot of people going, “Okay, this is the same people, definitely the same guy again,” right? So they’re just gonna happen.
[James] Every once in a while, Grasshopper does something like aContactor something like that, that basically just completely wanders off thataway.
[Suda]Games likeContactand other games that seem to kind of really veer away from the general Grasshopper vibe, the general Suda vibe, a lot of times the reason for that is that they either have a different director or other things happened before. And one thing that we’d like to start doing in the future is have some of the younger staff on our team, have them take over as director, give them a chance to kind of helm a game and see how they take it. Not to get more experience, but to give other people a chance to experience sort of a different flavor of Grasshopper. So that’s something that we plan on putting a bit more energy into in the future.
[James] So Grasshopper becomes less Suda 51 and more Grasshopper Studio.
[Suda] And we also want to start taking on what we call internal indies. So for example, we might have a game that I’m the director of, that I’m fully leading on, but also have another game that again, some of our younger staff has thought up and is directing and doing it, again, much more like an indie-style game, a smaller-scale game. It would also be a Grasshopper game, but like you said, as opposed to a Suda 51 game, just a full-on Grasshopper game. We want to start working on more of those as well.
[James] Well, that’s very fascinating!
[Suda]Thank you!
[Kyle] Getting back to your style for a moment, there are some people like Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw who have described some of your games and your style of design and gameplay, such as withKiller 7,as “post-punk.“How do you feel about that?
[Suda] I love that! I’m a big fan of post-punk as a genre, I love The Smiths, New Order, Joy Division, I grew up with that kind of music, that’s sort of representative of my early years. As far as art goes. that’s some of the stuff that I like the best. So yeah, describing my games as post-punk, I’m just super happy about that!
[Kyle] Yeah, he was describing how a gameplay genre can be broken down and built up again, reconstructed, like how post-punk came after punk.
[Suda] That’s exactly how I feel about it as well, ha!
Member Shadows of the Damned?
[Kyle] Are there any future plans to proceed with any other stuff for theShadows of the Damneduniverse? Any sequels, other possibilities?
[Suda] Yeah, revisiting theShadows of the Damnedcharacters and just the world in general is something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while. We were finally able to get the full rights forShadows of the Damnedto put out on multiple platforms and remastered on everything, and to be honest, if this sells, like, stupid well, then we pretty much have no choice but to do a sequel! We’d finally have the excuse to make a sequel, so yeah, that’s definitely something that I’d like to do in the near future.
[Kyle] And I guess I have to ask, any hints on any future projects, or an update onHotel Barcelona,the collaboration with SWERY?
[Suda] As forHotel Barcelona,that’s mainly a SWERY and White Owls thing right now. Every once in a while, we’ll look up to Swery and he’ll kind of report to me, “Hey, man, check it out. Here’s how the game’s coming along.” But as far as development goes, they’re fully handling that. So again, that’s mostly a SWERY thing. Apart from that, there are several things we’re currently working on right now at Grasshopper. They’re all in different stages of development, I guess, but we should be able to announce at least one thing within the year. But yeah, there’s definitely a few things, not just things that we’re kind of talking about. We can’t really talk a lot about it just yet, but please do keep your eye out and look forward to some of the stuff we’ve got coming out!
[Kyle] Sure! Anything else you want to add?
[Suda] Touching back again on the thing about, you know, possibly using the styles, the characters, and reusing the game’s world, There’s Fleming, the big bad of the game, the main villain, the big blue demon you see here.(showing us a promotional coaster with Fleming’s design on it, the character can be seen in this article in the bottom right corner of the header image.)Personally, I love the character of Fleming. And I actually considered having him pop out inNo More Heroes 3and having Travis fight him. I just really liked that character for years, for some reason, and I’ve always wanted to use him in something else. So yeah, there’s a really high chance that at the very least, you’re going to see Fleming again in something in some capacity in the future.
[James] One last thing, one of the fun design elements ofNo More Heroeswas the t-shirt designs, which didn’t really add anything to the gameplay but was just so much fun to see. Any plans to bring that back in future games?
[Suda] I just love T-shirts in real life, personally, and I also like what we did with them in the game, and there seems to be a lot of people out there that also just enjoyed playing with the t-shirts and stuff inNo More Heroes 3.So yeah, that’s definitely something that we’d like to revisit in any title in the future, but there’s also a high chance you’re gonna see something like that again, in our future stuff.
