Penny Arcade Adventures' future iffy
Comic duo torn on game-making.
Penny Arcade creators Mike "Gabe" Krahulik and Jerry "Tycho" Holkins are divided about the experience of making Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness.
"I discovered that I had no desire to make games," Krahulik revealed to Kotaku at his own Penny Arcade Expo over the weekend. "I think it's a lot more work than making comics. I don't think the end result is as entertaining.
"For me, what I like is drawing a comic, putting it up in a few hours and I get immediate feedback. And if you don't like that comic, there's another one Friday.
"With a game," he added, "I worked on that for two years, but my work was all concept, right? None of that work shows up in the game. Nobody sees it. I get no feedback."
Holkins, on the other hand, found the collaboration with Ron Gilbert's Hothead Games very fun, and liked the process "a lot".
"The process is so different from our regular writing process [of the comic strip,] where it's mostly about a process of refinement, of distillation. You can write in a much more broad way in games. I could add as much text as I wanted to," he said.
"And so, for me, a lot of ideas that, under the ordinary strictures of the writing process, would be gone, I was able to keep and then polish up.
"I found that process of characters having conversations in my head that I would transcribe very enjoyable. And I think it's excellent training for other kinds of writing that I might be asked to do in the future," added Holkins.
The pair are apparently "on the cusp" of an announcement about their game development future. So far two episodes of Rain-Slick have been released, although neither fulfilled early potential.
Our Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode One and Episode Two reviews will tell you more.
Ron Gilbert's Hothead Games, meanwhile, is up to its eyeballs making DeathSpank, which was revealed proper at PAX this weekend. We'll have our thoughts on that up soon.
Until then, there's a trailer to watch and a gallery to peruse.