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Fretless
Live to Shred! (Gamescom) - Fretless: The Wrath of Riffson Interview with Playdigious
We caught up with marketing director Axel Dauvergne to chat about the upcoming pixel musical adventure from the talented folk at developer Ritual Studios.
Audio transcription
"Hello everyone and welcome back to Gamereactor.
I'm still at the Playdigious booth actually.
I just had a chance to play Fretless, The Wrath of Riffson."
"And this is quite an interesting one for me because we were here last year playing the game and now we're back and it's an exciting thing because I enjoyed myself playing it last year and I've enjoyed myself this year as well.
So tell me, what's changed over the last year?
How has development progressed in Fretless ever since?
Yes, so what progressed? We refined the gameplay basically."
"So now there is an active QTE during combat.
Think about what Mario RPG does for example.
So that helps keep beat and flow to the combat.
The studio also reworked all the instruments."
"For example the bass is now revolving around another concept.
The studio felt that the combat was a bit clunky at the time.
So they are really working right now to make it polished, to make it as enjoyable as possible.
There's also new tracks."
"There's a ton of things that I can't tell you right now because that's a secret.
But I will tell you in a moment some things about what's going to be in the music for example because we will have guests that I cannot talk about right now.
The whole World 1 is now finished."
"That's why we can show it to you now.
We have new bosses, new enemies, new instruments, like a ton of new shit.
Tons of new stuff to look at and to play.
Tell me a little bit about the music and how the developers managed to incorporate and use music and build an entire experience that's around it."
"QTE, you mentioned the QTE and that's something that's really interesting to me because it works with the music, right?
Yes, so basically at the core the studio are music fans and musicians.
So what they want is for you to not only just have music in the game but also make sure that you are able to play with the music and you are able to feel like you are in the battle of the bands basically."
"You're not just here to use attacks or something like that.
You're really here to be in the battle of the bands and make sure that your music is more powerful than the enemy.
So what you do is like a lot of small details."
"Every attack in the game is actually a riff which you're using to battle.
With the active QTE, for example, you have to stomp on the beat when you're doing an attack to make it more powerful and when the enemy is attacking you also have to stomp on the beat for them not to hit you."
"And there's of course the crescendo mechanics.
So basically you're building up to the crescendo and it's your ultimate attack and when you launch it you have like over-the-top animation, over-the-top music and you have to do a kind of a guitar hero QTE to make sure that you're dealing the most damage to your enemy."
"So everything revolves around music, around combat, but not only combat.
You also have a lot of musical stuff in the world itself.
I know that one of the things that everybody loves is the bellflowers, for example.
It's a tiny thing, it's just like flowers that are bells and when you run through it, it does bell sounds."
"And it's part of the design of the world to have everything be musical and makes you feel like the world itself is musical.
I like the tone as well, the sort of style of the game.
It feels to me a little bit like a Scott Pilgrim type game with the sort of theme and the humor and the charm."
"Was that something that you wanted to make sure that was really captured, like a really distinct charm and authenticity to it?
Yes. So I've talked about a lot with the studio.
So they talked a lot to me about that."
"And what they wanted to capture is the feeling you had when you were a child and you started a new Zelda game and it was just like a new magical world to explore with a bit of humor, a bit of tragedy, a bit of emotion."
"So they really wanted to capture this into a game that was also musical for the player.
And I think that they really managed to do it with cool NPCs that are just here to make very bad musical pants, basically."
"And having a sort of whimsical world where you can just forget about your troubles for a while.
And, you know, Fretless is getting closer to launch.
We'll talk about the launch itself in a bit."
"But for the time being, when it does eventually arrive, what's something that you are really excited for people to experience when they play Fretless themselves?
What I'm personally really, really glad that they will experience is boss fights."
"Because every boss revolves around a cool design.
So you have SML Larry with an enormous buster, guitar, swords.
You have the Orcs Arachnid, which is like a big arachnid with a lot of speakers on the back and a lot of things that I can't tell you about now."
"But they also all have their special tracks, their special powers, a lot of build-up in the music.
And I think that those are really the moments that are very vibrant for the game.
So let's get to business and let's talk about the release date."
"Axel, what have you got to tell us about the release date in platforms?
It will release on Steam.
And maybe after that we'll see.
But it's definitely releasing on Steam."
"And we are exploring basically consoles and everything.
But it should go after launch.
Well, there you have it.
I say no doubt stay tuned for the next Gamescom interview where we talk about Fretless."
"But maybe you'll be out by then. Who knows?
There shouldn't be any more Gamescom interviews with Fretless before launch.
We'll leave it at that.
Thank you for watching this Game Retro interview."
"And we'll be back for the next one soon.
Until then, thank you for watching."
Gamescom
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