Laika: Aged Through Blood has proven to be a very popular game, with many fans loving everything from its quality soundtrack to its intricate artwork. While the game was released in October 2023, there are still lots of players out there who are playing the game today. Not only that, but Laika: Aged Through Blood has just been released on the Nintendo Switch.
Game Rant recently spoke with Ivan Papiol and Marcos Vendrell from the Brainwash Gang to find out more about Laika: Aged Through Blood‘s Switch release, future plans for the developers, and more. The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Creating Laika: Aged Through Blood And What’s Next For The Brainwash Gang
Q: Fans love the combination of music, artwork, and the gripping story of Laika: Aged Through Blood. How has it been seeing the community’s reaction to the game? And how have things changed for you since launch?
We had only released games that were weirder or smaller in the past, and with this one, it really feels like we have passed the “threshold of indifference” because the game’s conversation is still alive in the community as they keep discussing it and making their own art and interpretations on it a year later. We’re so grateful that people still care this much about something we made. It feels really special.
Q: Are there any features that were cut during development that you wish you’d put in the game?
We wanted to have skins for Laika and her bike to make the game’s progress feel cooler. We also wanted more secrets and slow cinematic acts like the flashbacks and the Undernest because they contrast very well with the game’s core gameplay. But these were all pretty resource-intensive for us, and there was already something extra we were adding, so cutting these early to make sure we’d be able to finish telling the story we wanted to tell was probably a good thing.
Q: The world of Laika: Aged Through Blood is a captivating one. From the hand-drawn artwork to the incredible soundtrack, everything comes together to create a fantastic immersive experience. What was the biggest challenge you faced during development?
A big one was learning to find a safe gray area with how detailed the art should be, because we wanted the game to feel rich and alive, but we also knew that you’d traverse the environments super fast and a lot of details would fly out of sight for most players. For the music, we know that’s a strength we have as a team and the challenge was to highlight it as much as possible so that people would pay attention to it, which we did by making it a part of the world.
Q: There are lots of unique mechanics in Laika: Aged Through Blood, such as performing a backflip to reload. What specific mechanics are you most proud of?
The backflip is our favorite mechanic for sure! This one and its synergy with the bullet time mechanic makes it feel very unique.
Some players miss something about this synergy that we added later in the game’s development. It is a part of the combo system. You can hit the corpses of the enemies you’ve already killed up to three times to keep your combo going. These shots give you more “viscera” the more you shoot them. This is something that sounds super simple, but it adds an extra layer of depth to the gameplay that completely changes the way people play. It changes gameplay from 4 simple kills into 12 shots that need to be timed and aimed well, turning every encounter into a puzzle that you need to solve with the tools the game gives you.
Q: What’s next for the Brainwash Gang?
We have had a year of transitioning from the intensity of developing both Laika and Friends VS Friends at the same time to just starting a fresh new game. Until now, we had to work for years not knowing if we could pay our bills when we finished doing what we were doing. But these releases have given us a little breathing space, which has led us to work alongside other studios on their games and also to explore doing more than just video games in the future.
Bringing Laika: Aged Through Blood To The Nintendo Switch
Q: What was the hardest thing about getting the game ready for Switch users? Were there any specific goals that you wanted to make sure you could hit on Nintendo’s hardware? And are there any noteworthy differences between the Switch version of the game and the versions on other platforms?
The game is different on Switch because we’ve had to modify enemies’ placements in certain areas, which proved to be harder on this system because of readability and performance, as well as optimizing the high-res art so that the Switch’s smaller memory size could load it.
We were worried that readability on this system’s smaller screen would be challenging because Laika is a game where it’s difficult to know what you are looking at in the beginning. But, as a result of these changes, we feel that the game has a friendlier onboarding of its mechanics to the player. We feel that we hit two birds with one stone with these changes!
Q: With the release of the Switch version of Laika: Aged Through Blood, there are going to be new players diving into the game for the first time. If given the chance, what would you like to tell new players about the game?
Since the gameplay is a mix of things that are pretty unique, the learning curve for this game is going to be steeper than what it is for games whose mechanics players are already going to be familiar with. We made sure to give players breathing, narrative moments to combat the overwhelming start, but it’s going to take some patience to get used to. But when it clicks, it’s super rewarding.
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- Released
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October 19, 2023
- ESRB
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M For Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language