The Relic Hunters Zero: Remix AMA Recap

As a final capstone to May’s launch of Relic Hunters Zero: Remix on the Nintendo Switch, we held an AMA on the Nintendo Switch subreddit where Mark, Lucy, and Buddy got to sit down and answer questions from redditors across the globe! In case you missed it and don’t want to trawl through the comments, we’ve collected most of the questions and answers in one spot for you here! As a note, some of these have been lightly edited for the format.

Legend:

MV: Mark Venturelli, the designer and creator of Relic Hunters Zero
LG: Lucy Guerrero, the Relic Hunters Community Manager
BS: Buddy Sola, the Akupara Games Community Manager

Question: How long do you intend for an average run to be? How hard do you think it is to complete a run?

MV: A run of which game mode? Storm should take you 10-15 minutes, while Endless/Daily may go above 40 minutes. Difficulty also depends on the level (Beginner, Hard or Epic).

Question: What’s your favorite new thing in RHZ: Remix that wasn’t in the original?

BS: Ok, I constantly talk about this but I LOVE THE NEW SOUNDTRACK! It’s the perfect mix of chiptune and earworminess that gets in my head. I honestly feel so bad for my wife because I’m constantly humming or singing Spaceheart throughout the day. It’s super obnoxious.

LG: The soundtrack is my favorite part, for sure. It combines so well with the environment. Cat did a great job. 🙂

MV: The Raff skin <3

Question: What’s something that was really desired from a player standpoint but you weren’t able to implement on the development side? Was it a time, resources, or “not possible” factor?

MV: Online multiplayer for sure. This was the #1 request from our community from day one. Unfortunately it is just too much work to do properly – probably more work than coding the whole game again from scratch! So we just moved on to the sequel – Relic Hunters Legend is fully playable on online co-op for up to 4 players!

Question: What’s for dinner today?

LG: Today I’ll have bread with butter and cheese and a cup of hot tea. It’s winter here in Brazil so cozy food is what I seek for now. (but probably is way hotter than other countries, but I really can’t handle cold weather.)

BS: I’m having Indian food! We have this combination Indian/Pizza place down the street and we’ve been ordering a ton of delivery recently haha. I still have some leftovers to finish off. Chicken Tikka Masala and naan!

MV: I’m having pastel tonight for dinner! It is a traditional Brazilian food that resembles fried dumplings.

Question: Any community Manager tips for someone just starting in the industry?

BS: Welcome to the industry! God, I have so many CM tips haha. I actually cut my teeth in the industry working on a big title with a lot of moving parts before moving to Akupara Games. Even if it’s as QA or Customer Service or something like that, being able to see the inside of a game company and how it moves and operates is super valuable, I think.

I also think that having a side hustle, even one that’s not insanely successful, does a lot to show folks your work ethic when you’re applying for jobs. Some of my CM friends have a small youtube channel on the side, for instance. I have a podcast that we’ve done like 200 episodes for. That stuff goes a long way.

Good luck! Seriously, working in gaming is awesome and daunting all rolled into one!

LG: Well, there are tons of tips. Hahaha, the first is to be a good listener and empathize with the person on the other computer. Even if he is just a troll, he probably also has problems to deal with, but don’t take things personally or you’ll gonna be crazy. Help people as much as you can, try to connect your dev team with your community, and ALWAYS be transparent and honest with them.

Question: Are there any plans to have a viewable leaderboard for the daily runs? Just getting a message that you’re top 30 percent feels really ambiguous

MV: When I designed this mode originally I wanted to discourage cheaters, so we replaced actual leaderboards with the more general ranking placements.

Fun fact? There were almost zero cheaters, even when we had over 4 thousand people playing a daily! I known from previous experience that if we had leaderboards we’d have to invest a LOT of additional time and resources or see the top 10 constantly plagued by “420L33TGAMER” and his score of “69696969696969696969” points.

“Don’t give jerks a stage” is usually a good way to minimize cheaters in your game, so that’s why we went with this route.

Question: What was the process like creating the other characters after Jimmy and Pinkyy? Did you start with a design or concept and then go from there to create their unique abilities? Or did you start from the abilities and go backward?

MV: It was very free-form, actually. This was a game-jam game, so Betu and I (Mark) were just having fun.

Normally Betu would draw something he thought was cool, and I would come up with the abilities and code it in like a day, tops.

Question: Who is your favourite character from a design/gameplay perspective?

MV: Pinkyy is my favorite 🙂

I actually think she is S-Tier if you want to push really high Endless levels because of the invulnerability. Unfortunately her gloves do not scale that well in terms of damage, otherwise she would be the best character overall by a large margin.

Question: What would the rankings be for each character in the game?

MV: That is subjective and depends on the game mode, I guess. I play mostly Daily/Endless, so my tier list would be:

S: Pinkyy, Ace

A: Jimmy, Panzer

B: Raff, Red

C: Biu

And that is considering you want to go Loop 2+. Some characters (like Red) will excel at early game but won’t scale so well in the late game.

Question: For hardcore players, what is the end game for Relic Hunters? Can we expect hundreds of hours of challenging content?

MV: Relic Hunters Zero:Remix wasn’t designed for hundreds of hours, but there are people who do play for that long. If you are into achievements and want to do a 100% achievement completion, then that should take you 100-200 hours depending on how good/fast you are.

There is a lot of horizontal choice in terms of activities. 100% completing Adventure mode by collecting all of the items and unlocking all of the characters, beating Endless Loop 2 with each of the Hunters, placing on top tier on the Daily runs, and completing Storm on Epic difficulty (a feat that I myself am yet to accomplish).

Question: I’m wondering if you have any plans to continue updating and expanding the game?

MV: We have been updating this game since 2015, so we are not planning on stopping now that we have a shiny new “Remix” version 😉

In the past we’ve added new weapons, new characters, new game modes and seasonal events such as Spookylands for Halloween.

Question: What inspired you to work in the games industry?

MV: Being from Brazil, I honestly didn’t think that making games was even possible as a career path.

I was always into game design, having created my own tabletop games and role-playing systems and universes since I was a kid. But making video games always seemed like that impossible, Hollywood-like dream that was reserved only for a lucky few.

But it wasn’t until I saw Xbox Live Arcade and games such as Braid and Castle Crashers that I realized “hey, perhaps I can make games, too!”.

BS: Ok so the god’s honest truth is that I was insanely broke after moving to LA and trying to crack the film industry. I took some odd jobs in gaming right after that. Then, I bounced around between a few different spots for no more than a couple weeks before landing at Square Enix. After working there for five years, I joined Akupara!

LG: I have always been a great fan of MMORPGs and like to participate in this community – went to events, participate in groups and guilds, made a lot of lifetime friends from these times.

These experiences made me realize that I wanted to work and improve the connection between players and company – and that was one of the reasons that I graduated in Public Relations in college.

Another thing is that here in Brazil a lot of people don’t know about the great games that are being created in our country and I wanted to help spread the word about it. I already worked on other industries, but none of them motivate me as much as the indie game industry.

Question: Does Biu consider hamburgers to be sandwiches? What about tortas? If someone makes a sandwich and no one is around to eat it, is it still delicious?

MV: Every hamburger is a sandwich, but not all sandwiches are burgers.

If you are talking about Mexican Tortas, they are definitely sandwiches. Brazilian Tortas, on the other hand, are pies.

As for your final question, “delicious” is a subjective concept derived from human consciousness, perception, culture and worldview. Therefore, in a world without humanity, a sandwich could never be delicious.

Question: How did you go about building out the franchise into a full connected world across multiple games? Was that something you had planned from the beginning with like a world bible and plan to expand or did that come out of the first game being well-received and going from there?

MV: The extended universe only came to be after the first game was a huge hit in 2015. That’s when we started looking at it from a world-building point of view.

We have a Lore Bible, but it is very hard (and frankly unproductive) to try and fill it up completely before you start creating. We outline the foundations and the most important events on the timeline, but we also feel free to create new things as we’re writing stories for the latest comics, game, or animation on the Relic Hunters universe.

I think the secret is to keep updating the bible whenever you create something new. For example, do you need a new race of merchant frogs for a story? Add it to the bible and flesh it out with some backstory and connect it to other events and elements of the universe.

Question: Was anything left out of the final game that you wish had made it in?

Question: If you could have any superpower, what would it be and why?

BS: I feel like the best answer for superpower is telekinesis. Not because I want to fight crime or anything, I just honestly, hand to God, which I could be that lazy. Could you imagine being able to just like open the fridge, float a soda over? God, it’d be amazing. Listen, with great power comes a great ability to be lazy lol

MV: For superpower, I’d like to shapeshift! Imagine just being able to be somebody or something else – an old lady, a super strong dude, a cat!

LG: If I could have a superpower I would probably choose teleport because it would be amazing traveling all around the world in a blink of an eye, and it would be very useful when you live in a very crowded city with a lot of traffic.

Question: Is Scott Pilgrim an influence for you guys?

MV: Not directly, but maybe in style/attitude!

Question: If I want to test how good I am at the game – are there any particular modes, or rules (even if self-enforced), or achievements that would be good for me to try to see if I’m as good as I think?

MV: Daily run is definitely the way – the random seed is the same, so you will both face the exact same challenges. It also gives a final numbered score and rank that you can compare.

BS: If it were me, I’d track chests in Storm Mode or stages in Endless Mode. And then probably make it best 2 out of 3 to reduce variance.

Challenge One: Storm Mode

Each player plays three Storm Mode runs on Epic with any character and tracks the number of chests they open.

You then compare the number of chests opened between both players for all three runs.

The player that opens the better number two out of three times wins the series

Challenge Two: Endless Mode

Both players play three Endless Mode runs with any character and tracks the number of levels they defeat.

You then compare the number of levels beaten between both players for all three runs.

The player that beats more levels two out of three times wins the series.

Probably some problems with that kind of a layout, but just off the top of my head it’s what I got.

Question: Are the levels randomly generated?

MV: They are not. We randomly generate the enemy types and positions, hazards, item drops, etc. but the levels are fixed.

Special thanks go out to our friends at the r/NintendoSwitch mod team who helped us set up the AMA! If you’d like to keep up with all things Relic Hunters, make sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Discord!