“Run Away” is the latest in Jon-Paul Keatley’s design whims. To design a pure game experience and release it via XNA. Well, he did it. “Run Away!” is a cartoon-y sidescroller with a punishing difficulty. No shooting, no side-missions. Just run. Run away.Keatley shared his thoughts on game design, his proudest gaming moment and what makes 2D so damn enjoyable.

Check out Run Away!

Yes. I have always wanted to create a game entirely on my own so when I found myself with some free time on my hands I jumped at it. I did however have an excellent group of friends who played the game through out development and gave me very valuable feedback.

You call it an ‘on-rails platformer’, is that fancy talk for ‘Left to Right Jumper’?

Haha, ‘on-rails platformer’ was a bit of creative marketing. While developing Run Away I started to question what kind of category the game would fall into and I hit upon the idea that it could be classed as a quick time even game. This idea scared me greatly as I am in no way a fan of quick time events. So I coined ‘on-rails platformer’ as a vein attempt to mask this fact.

How long was production on the title?

Including the time in which it was in peer review the whole thing took 5 months to create.

What is your proudest moment in the game?

I would say it was the nice things people said while my game was in play testing. After four and a half months of development I started to question whether anyone would get Run Away or if it was even fun to play. So when I started receiving really nice feedback from people who I had never met it hit me with the power of a thousand Pixar movies. It effectively melted my rugged manly heart, I feel capable of love now.

The game has a rather difficult curve to it, (one hit!) what is your favorite, ‘one-hit = death’ game?

That would be Another World hands down. It is based in a truly beautiful world and has a great story, all told without a single word. In fact, thinking about it makes me wonder why we are not all playing it right now? It’s amazing.

Who handled the soundtrack?

That would be me again. The hardest thing to create for the game was the music and the sound. I simply have no musical talent at all. I did have aspirations of creating some great music for the game at first (there was even a song!) but after a few days locked in my bedroom with a guitar and xylophone I soon realized it was not to be. So I switched my focus to making music and sound that would annoy the player.

What is it about 2D that seems so pure for gaming?

This is a hard question; I don’t think I have a strong enough command of the English language to truly express the feelings a well-executed 2D game can invoke. I think you can be move expressive in 2D as it is more abstract. 3D games seem to marching towards greater and greater realism for reasons I do not understand. I don’t think greater realism is equal to greater fun at all. I feel there are still plenty of ideas unexplored in the 2D realm.

I like the style, but I have to ask, how long did the graphics portion take?

The simple answer is too long. The art took about 60% of the development time. This is mainly because I went about it in totally the wrong fashion. I didn’t plan things like the sizes and scales I just drew what I wanted. This led to a lot of issues when I started importing the art into the game.

Was XBL always part of the plan? Were you counting on it or did you know it would be accepted when you started.

The XBL was always the plan. I was confident that if I could create the game then I could get it onto the market. I already had an Xbox and knew C# so when I heard about XNA I couldn’t wait to start a project

How difficult is it to get a game into the XBL these days? And about how long did you have to wait for the go-ahead?

It is fairly difficult. I think it took 3 – 4 weeks in total to get through the review process. I have to take my hat off to the people who tested my game, the tests the came up with where amazing, things I would have never thought of. The good thing about the review process is that everyone is really helpful and kind. It can be very frustrating when you fail it though.

Any indie titles you are looking forward to?

I saw a video yesterday of Toki Arcade by Golgoth Studio I am very excited about that. I loved the original and this new version looks unbelievably beautiful. I am also looking forward to Fez and the next Behemoth game.

What is your favorite game that you have developed so far?

I would have to say Lineboy. It is a little game I put on Kongregate that I did with my old flat mate Andrew Smith. He returned home one-day claiming to have designed the best game ever. When he showed me the design it turned out to be a line with an arrow to it saying you and a dot with an arrow to it saying bad guy. I should mention that Andrew is a professional games designer of Flock fame. So I decided to make it as a joke. We tried to remove every element from it other than the game play. It was liberating to break our own rules, I felt very punk!

Anything else upcoming?

I have two projects that are going ahead at the moment. One is a scrolling beat-em up which I am working on as part of a team of five. The other is an on going mystery project which I am working on with two other people. With the speed that the beat-em up is progressing I would expect to see that on the market first. There may also be another personal project before the end of next year as releasing “Run Away” has been an amazing experience.

You may be interested in: