Mycopunk Interview With Pigeons at Play – From Fungal Beginnings
With Mycopunk’s early access now available, and being quite the success with players, we recently sat down with Pigeons at Play to find out how they went from being a college group with a dream to being backed by one of the biggest indie publishers, Devolver Digital.
We talk about their beginnings, potential console release, weapon design, and the unexpected inspirations behind the game’s unique enemies and world.
Spreading the Spores of a Dream
Interview conducted with: Noah Matheu – Tech Art, Narrative Design & Writing on Mycopunk
MP1st: First off, tell us a bit about yourselves, as well as the studio, Pigeons at Play, and how it all came to be.
Noah Matheu: Pigeons at Play started when we were all in college. Mycopunk itself started as our senior class project, so Pigeons was mainly formed around our work on it. Though the team is very different now, a lot of the Pigeons originally met through work on a similar project the year before called Fishgun, which in many ways informed a lot of the decisions made for Mycopunk.
MP1st: What was the original spark or concept that led to Mycopunk?
Noah Matheu: The spark came from a couple different areas that mainly trace back to the two core ideas of: mycelium is cool as hell, and procedural enemies could be really cool too. It’s a fun combination of technical and artistic intrigue that really drove everyone’s interest in the project. Even if one aspect wasn’t especially interesting to someone, the others would help get us and other people invested. For us, working on the game design of such modular enemies ended up being just as interesting as the story and visual design of them.
MP1st: Devolver Digital has built a reputation for embracing “weird” and risky projects that push boundaries and bring fresh energy to the industry. I don’t think it’s much of a surprise that they picked up Mycopunk from an outside perspective, but I’m sure it came as one for the studio when it did happen. What do you think made Mycopunk the right fit for their portfolio, and how has their support influenced your creative process?
Noah Matheu: Devolver was easily our top choice for a publisher (we tried very hard to hide that when talking to them, but I doubt it worked). It was a surprise when things kept going up with Devolver, mainly because their interest in the game was immediately very strong. I guess we expected them to play hard ball a little more, but Devolver’s a really great group of really fun people, which took a lot of the weight off. While we originally thought we were a little out of Devolver’s wheelhouse, at the end of the day, they do Serious Sam, Boomerang X, etc., that we probably should’ve realized were almost perfectly in line with Mycopunk.
MP1st: Care to elaborate on how that partnership came to be in the first place?
Noah Matheu: This is always a fun story, but essentially, we just went to GDC and got lucky. Liam and Ryan were the ones who were able to go, and they went in with no interviews scheduled, no itinerary, no nothing, but still managed to swing it anyway. We had been talking to someone from Devolver prior to this via a connection with one of our previous advisors at NYU. Randomly on Wednesday night, a slot opened up for the next morning, and Liam and Ryan jumped on it. After that there were more interviews, files passed around, and a lot of hoping and praying.
MP1st: After playing, we were surprised by how much content there already is and how polished the experience feels, especially for an early access release. Typically, early access implies something a bit rougher or unfinished. Can you discuss your decision to launch in early access with such a strong foundation, and how you arrived at the $15 price point?
Noah Matheu: Early Access is something we were always set on doing for the game since we weren’t sure how people would interact with it. We knew that we were going to be updating the game to add new content and shake things up as we got feedback, so we figured it would be better to start off with the big Early Access label to make it more transparent that we’re still figuring out the best long-term structure for Mycopunk. Despite that, though, we didn’t want to launch with anything less than what we would expect from a full $15 dollar game, and then what we feel is a lot more. As far as the $15 goes, I would really love to say that it’s to maintain our promise of being around a quarter of one Borderlands 4, but there’s some more to it. We want this game to be something a group of friends can jump into and have a blast, so we wanted to drop the price a bit to make it more accessible to everybody. We know there’s always that one friend who tries to get everyone to buy a game (I have been that friend a lot), so hopefully we’ve made that job easier.
A Fungus Among Us
MP1st: We can see that a ton of passion was put into Mycopunk by the team. As we mentioned, it has a lot going for it. From the frenetic action and stylish visuals to the unexpectedly rich tone and atmosphere. What was most important to you as a team when shaping the player experience, and what do you hope players walk away with after their time in the game?
Noah Matheu: I feel like this is a question that everyone would have a different answer to. Ryan, for instance, is a big looter shooter player, so having a lot of colorful things to pick up is what gets him excited. The one thing that everyone has always considered before everything else is that we want the game to be fun and engaging. We always want there to be something to do, whether that’s playing a mission, scavenging around for secrets, or racing karts around in the HUB. We didn’t want any dead air, which I think resonates with all of us. This has bred us into perfectionists a little because it’s really important to us that whatever we add into the game has as much care and thought put into it as the rest of the game.
We really hope that people walk away feeling like they’ve just played in the most explosive playground ever, and that every corner of it had a fun surprise in store.
MP1st: While playing Mycopunk, we couldn’t help but pick up on echoes of Risk of Rain, Helldivers, Lethal Company, and even DOOM. What were some of the biggest inspirations behind Mycopunk, and how did they influence the game’s design, tone, or direction?
Noah Matheu: Borderlands, Deep Rock, and Destiny were probably our biggest inspirations. When I wanted to join the team, the biggest question I got asked was, “What do you think of Deep Rock Galactic?” We didn’t set out to just make another Deep Rock, though, which is where our other inspirations came in to really shape the game into what we wanted to play the most. Borderlands, Moebius, and old comics in general really informed the art style, although that’s not exactly a secret. Our gunplay is heavily inspired by Destiny 2, while our movement is pulled from Titanfall more than anything, since we think they’re really the best to ever do it. The tone of the game comes a lot from Valve’s games like Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead (another big overall inspiration), we really liked how their characters had a lot of personality and humor without being too overbearing with it.
MP1st: Were there any unexpected or non-gaming sources that influenced the world or aesthetic of Mycopunk, like movies, music, and/or real science?
Noah Matheu: Real science was a massive influence on Mycopunk. A solid chunk of my time has been spent doing mycelial research, and our artists often cite National Geographic documentaries as their largest sources of inspiration. Dead Space and Alien were both heavier influences at the start when we wanted to lean more into horror. A lot of those bones are still in Mycopunk, especially now that the Amalgamation is roaming around, and we always want to keep a good layer of disgust and unease whenever the fungus is around. My inspiration for the story specifically comes from reading a lot of defense contractor propaganda, which is always a fun day at the office.
The weapons in Mycopunk are pretty unique, but there’s also a clear sense of familiarity that players can quickly understand what kind of gun they’re using, even when the designs are out there. It reminds us a bit of how the Ratchet & Clank series leans into creative, over-the-top weaponry while still feeling readable with its weapons. What was your approach to weapon design, and how did you find that balance between originality and intuitive function?
For a lot of our weapons we simply wanted to take archetypes we enjoyed, then subvert expectations just a little to make them more interesting. A shotgun? Its pellets ignite when it ricochets. A DMR? Its got a laser. Easy stuff like that. Some of the weirder ones just came from fits of inspiration, chasing an abstract feeling that no one’s tried to jam into a gun before (this is where the Swarm Launcher came from). Other things, though, we just wanted to try adapting already fun experiences into this type of game. The Plate Launcher, for instance, was very inspired by a mix of the Gravity Gun and Thor’s hammer, to see if we could capture the fun, weighty feeling of slinging around a big hunk of metal. A lot of these ideas didn’t work, and there are several scrapped weapons that are never going to see the light of day.
MP1st: Speaking of designs, the monsters and bosses don’t tend to look like your traditional enemies, though I suppose that plays into the whole Fungus theme of the game. We’d still be interested in knowing the inspirations behind them, especially since they exhibit zombie-like traits, where no matter how many limbs you blow up, they just keep coming back.
Noah Matheu: Mycelial networks, we think, are still the core of the enemies. We really loved the dramatic idea that mycelium is alive and is intelligent in some way, so we just blew that idea up to make them actually threatening. People view mushrooms as something a little alien already, going so far as to create those mysticisms, so it wasn’t a huge leap to make it an unknowable alien threat that is driven by rules that we can’t understand. The zombiness happened a bit by mistake, a lot of parallel thinking with The Last of Us, but instead of hijacking people, the fungus is hijacking machines. Once we were prototyping the enemies, there were a ton of fun moments where an enemy would be knocked off balance but still chase after you relentlessly. While it wasn’t a present thought at the time, it’s hard to deny that it evoked the same feeling of blasting a zombie’s legs off and still having them chase after you.
It’s Just a “Fun-Guy”
MP1st: In the game, we noticed a global goal that players can all work towards, which reminded us of Major Orders from Helldivers 2. Will this in any way, shape, or form influence the story (beyond the planned story missions coming) of the game, almost in a way that Helldivers 2 does, where players shape the ongoing narrative?
Noah Matheu: Helldivers one and two continue to be big inspirations for us, we are continually impressed by how they run the Galactic War, and the stories that have sprung up from that. We have more of a mapped path we want to take for Mycopunk’s story, but that doesn’t mean it’s all set and paved just yet. Already, we’ve had people blow through our first public event, which has altered the history of the game in a way we didn’t expect. We look forward to seeing where our community’s enthusiasm will take us, and we’re even more excited to engage with that enthusiasm narratively through Saxon, Roachard, and the other public faces we can sit behind.
I see what might be hints of windows on the drop pod. Any plans for that? It would be cool to see outside the pod as we descend to the planet.
While it would be a lot of fun to see a full drop from the atmosphere, we really want to keep the moment of the pod popping open and being immediately faced with a vibrant alien area that spreads all around you. We wanted to have some of that space-flight excitement for the extraction portion, and we really enjoy seeing people knock each other out of the open pod door as it burns up in the atmosphere.
MP1st: Assuming everything goes accordingly up to the 1.0 launch (whenever that may be), is the studio considering bringing the game to consoles?
Noah Matheu: Yes! We would love to. A lot of us are old Halo fans and console gamers, so it would be great to bring Mycopunk over to those platforms. Porting takes a good chunk of logistics and time, though, so we don’t think we’ll be able to really give that a shot until we have some breathing room after our 1.0 launch.
MP1st: Anything you’d like to say or add, whether it’s a message to the fans, the players who’ve joined you in early access, or even just something you want to express as a team after getting to this point in the journey?
Noah Matheu: The games industry isn’t exactly in the best spot right now, so we really hope that, at the very least, we aren’t making the situation any worse. We wanted to make a fun game that gives people a break from a lot of the sludge that AAA games have normalized, so we hope that that drive will resonate with both players and creatives. If nothing else, our weird student project is now a released video game, and hopefully that means a little in the grand scheme of things.
That concludes our interview! We want to thank Noah for taking the time out of his busy schedule for this interview. We look forward to seeing how Mycopunk continues to evolve as it makes its way through early access to the road to 1.0.
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