Ode to the Old School- Secret Saturdays Revealed

Tech-Gaming: How long have you been developing games? What attracted you to the industry?

Josh VanVeld: I’ve been working in games since 2002, which means that I’ve been at High Voltage Software for seven years. How time flies!  I’ve been a gamer since I was a little kid and my friends and I started a “Nintendo Club” which involved sketching ideas for new Mario games in our notebooks at school and sharing NES cartridges.  I think that was third grade.  It wasn’t until after college that I found out about an associate producer position here and realized that this was something that I could do for a living.  The rest is history, as they say.
 
T-G: Have the creator(s) of the series seen the game? What was their impression(s)?

JV: I haven’t had the chance to meet Jay Stephens, the creator of The Secret Saturdays yet, but I’m told that he has seen the game and likes it a great deal. Many people from Cartoon Network’s Burbank studios who work on the show have given us lots of great guidance and feedback that we’ve incorporated into the game.  They are really excited about how we allow players to play as Zak, the entire Saturdays family, and a whole host of Cryptids in their quest to foil the evil V.V. Argost and his latest scheme.

T-G: What has been the most difficult aspect of production?

JV: The toughest part is that we really took on a lot of work with the Cryptids, maybe more than we realized when we started.  We wanted to have 50+ Cryptids in the game but we didn’t want them to just be sitting around looking pretty, so we made over 20 of the characters in the game playable.  Most of the others serve as hazards or enemies.  The crazy thing is that most of them have completely unique play mechanics.  Fiskerton can climb walls and boost Zak up to high places.  Zon can fly, Doyle can jetpack, Komodo can wall-run.  Making each and every mechanic look and feel good and incorporating it all into a single game was a big task for us and one that required a lot of late nights from the team.  We’re really proud of what we’ve accomplished and wouldn’t have it any other way.

T-G: Is your game based strictly on the animated series or do you introduce new characters, abilities, enemies, etc?

JV: At the time we began developing the game, there were very few finished episodes of the show, and each episode usually features one or two Cryptids.  This meant we had to look through the Cryptipedia and create lots of creatures that haven’t yet appeared in the show.  That process was a lot of fun and provided a great opportunity for collaboration between the team and the show’s creators.  As far as abilities go, the game’s core mechanics focus on Zak’s Claw.  The Claw helps Zak to channel his powers to influence Cryptids and it also gives him the ability to grapple and fight.  The grappling provides our platforming gameplay, which is really at the heart of the entire game.

T-G: While your game is targeted toward younger players, why should adult gamers be interested?

JV: The difficulty level is meant to be accessible to younger players, but older gamers should enjoy the game as well.  I’m especially proud of what the team accomplished in terms of our grappling and platforming gameplay.  It feels really good and even though I’ve played all of the levels dozens (maybe hundreds) of times, I still enjoy it each time I pick it up to play.

T-G: The game appears to be influenced by a certain retro title, was that intentional?

JV: We were absolutely inspired by Bionic Commando. We were playing the Rearmed version of the game when we pitched The Secret Saturdays. The trick is that we wanted it to be fun for kids, even younger fans of the show.  We don’t think hair-pulling frustration is a necessary part of having fun with a game, so we designed our platforming and grappling mechanics from scratch to be fluid and forgiving.  Other games influenced many of the other gameplay mechanics for the various characters in the game.  The variety is quite staggering.  I’m proud to be inspired by other successful games and building on or modifying those ideas to provide a whole new experience for players.

T-G: What are a few of your favorite computer or video games?
JV: In recent years, some of my personal favorites have been Forza Motorsport 2, Resident Evil 5, and New Super Mario Brothers.  I tend to judge a game based on its ability to sink in its hooks right away and make me lose track of time.  The balance between challenge and reward is a tricky one to find and it’s part of what makes game development such an interesting profession.