New details on Bradley the Badger, "a love letter to games, genres, and developers"

Even though it was revealed during The Game Awards' Opening Act a month ago, Bradley the Badger became an immediate fan-favourite of the show, its trademark humour giving a nod to both gamers and developers. We at Gamereactor wanted to learn more about the game right after the show, but with Christmas so close, it wasn't until this week that we finally got the chance and the pleasure to talk with its co-directors from studio Day 4 Night.

"It's a love story to the industry itself", Christian Cantamessa explains about the game's setting in our video interview below. "To the creative process, to what it means to create something and put it out there, what it does to you... It's also a little bit, if you will, autobiographical of the things that have happened to me and Davide [Soliani] in our 20+ year career".

"I would say that whatever your hurdles are, sometimes they become very good memories", Soliani then adds on the more personal autobiographical aspect.

"We are basically creating this game as the love letter from us, both to the games that we love playing and the genres that we think are big, and important, and meaningful in the industry, but also the people that make the games"

In the reveal trailer we saw Bradley at home (check out how that will apparently be the title screen/main menu in the new screenshots below) and how his Dreamwoods land, which also gives name to the in-game fictional developer, then turns into Badgerborne (a nod to Bloodborne), Cyberborne (Cyberpunk 2077), and The Last Badger (The Last of Us). So we wondered if this is some early build of a world that is not fully completed and that players have to fix it.

"Well, clearly we don't want to tell you too much about the lore at this point in time", explains Cantamessa, "and we really want the players to discover the story themselves, but you're not far off from what's happening here. Yes, there is certainly a collision of a few different unfinished game worlds here, and I promise that everything will make sense once people are playing the game".

Abilities in Bradley the Badger are inspired by dev tools, systemic, and not tied to specific levels

So then we also wanted to learn more about the fresh, game-changing mechanics shown in the trailer once the badger gets a magic controller (lod, copy, transfer, scale, liquify, volumify, gravity, magnet, control), and whether they're tied to the different game worlds referenced during the full adventure.

"All the mechanics that we invented, we want them balanced", Soliani points out. "And we want to make sure that the players are enjoying them in whatever scenario they are. But it's very hard to tell you right now in which way we are going to progressively give those mechanics in the end to the player. What is important to say is that the game we have in mind is completely systemic, so once the players have the power, they will be able to use it with full agency, and it's not like, oh, now you have to do that little bit of level design and then you don't use it anymore".

"All the powers are inspired by things that game developers can do", Cantamessa then adds as a tease. "They're really fun. Obviously, we didn't pick the most boring, you know, 'sign an NDA'; we picked things that we thought would also really be fun in a sort of sandboxy, freeform game".

Finally, both co-directors wanted to stress that, despite the initial reveal, they're more inspired by genres than specific video games or series.

"So we are inspired by medieval places. We are inspired by zombie apocalypse", Soliani lists. "And there will be even more that players will have to discover, for sure. But it's mostly the genre that we want to depict, because in the end, the world is full of beautiful video games".

If you want to learn how the project was born out of a happy birthday joke, or how the devs enjoyed the live-reaction of the reveal in December, along with some other titbits, play the full interview above, which is completely subtitled to your local language.

Bradley the Badger has so far been announced for PC, with a TBA release window. Regarding Day 4 Night studio, "we're 25 people today, with plans to grow a little more while staying small, agile, and focused", according to Cantamessa.

Bradley the Badger official screenshots