How Interabang Brought Jay and Silent Bob Back for Chronic Blunt Punch

We’re within the launch week of our hand-drawn tag staff brawler, Jay and Silent Bob: Chronic Blunt Punch, a ardour venture that we’re happy with that has been in improvement for a “couple” of years now. The staff has been resilient, sticking it out by way of ups and downs, marriages, births, diseases, business shakeups, and the BBL epidemic.

Since I’ve the house to share our expertise I assumed we’d go deep like a Navy seal and discuss how it began…

11 years in the past on a sunny afternoon in Berkeley CA, I used to be sitting at a boutique pizza joint with a scorching slice and a chilly beer. Sitting throughout from me was a dapper gentleman with a classic baseball cap, lengthy hair and aviator glasses, additionally holding a brew. It was Trevor Fehrman, the actor who performed Elias in “Clerks II,” who I met by way of a mutual good friend at IGN.

We clanked dranks, took a sip, and began stepping into deep about online game historical past, gaming tradition and our prime 5 video games of all time. He mentions that he’s glad we related as a result of he needs to make an indie recreation and proceeds to drop the bomb on me…

“Hey so, my good friend Kevin Smith gifted me the rights to make a Jay and Silent Bob online game, and I want some assist to make this occur.”

I spit my drink out, my jaw dropped and hit the desk, choking and coughing I took a second and appeared up. “Kevin, what?! That’s wonderful!”  

I used to be dumbfounded as a result of my staff and I’ve been followers of Smith’s work for a very long time and assume Jay is hilarious. Whereas spending numerous hours engaged on our final recreation and pushing by way of my grasp’s thesis, I’d watch “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back,” “Mallrats” and the Night with Kevin Smith Q&A classes for artistic motivation and psychological consolation snacks to keep up my sanity.

So, Trevor and I talked for hours, met a number of instances, grew to become mates, and have been decided to determine how we might convey this recreation into existence. I instructed Trevor we’d be down, however for my staff to place effort into this venture I would wish Kevin to offer us his blessings and rights to make a recreation together with his beloved characters.

That subsequent night, I used to be sitting at my laptop working by way of emails. I took a swig of Yerba Mate and after opening one other message, my reflex kicked in once more. I practically spit it out after I noticed an e mail from Trevor, with Kevin included saying we have been all good to make the sport!

That e mail was all I wanted and we have been off to the races. Trevor and I began engaged on the narrative design, story and opening dialog, and our Interabang staff instantly clocked in to begin the manufacturing course of, design work, and concepting probably the most ridiculous character design concepts and gameplay for Chronic Blunt Punch.

The idea was to make a conventional arcade brawler with grownup themes that match Kevin’s artistic sensibility and our personal humor and character design. The premise was that it’s Dante’s Inferno however as a substitute of happening in hell, Jay and Silent Bob get trapped in a mysterious, mystical mall that escalates into insanity the additional the participant will get by way of every degree.

At this level we have been self-funding the venture independently, whereas doing work for rent on some AAA tasks. To get this factor off the bottom, we really wanted to discover a method to fund the complete manufacturing of the sport.

Whereas within the Double High-quality Indie Workspace, then-COO Justin Bailey, who was rolling out a brand new crowdfunding and funding platform known as Fig to assist fund Psychonauts 2 and different large indie titles, pitched me on operating a marketing campaign by way of their platform. Fig would deal with the advertising for the marketing campaign and additionally put money into the sport.

We had the staff and our first investor. The following step was to satisfy with Kevin to share our plan and ideas. The assembly was at Kevin’s home. I stepped on his porch, pressed the doorbell, and anxiously awaited a maid or male servant to reply. To our shock, Kevin answered by way of the ring digital camera and unlocked the door. As we entered, we adopted Kevin up the steps and into his television room the place we have been surrounded by a great deal of fan artwork and memorabilia from motion pictures and merchandise.

I got here in able to current a full pitch deck, however he lower me off and stated, “you guys can fund this by way of the crowdfunding marketing campaign, I don’t want a pitch; you’ve acquired this.”  Kevin even put in his personal cash. Relieved, we chilled, smoked, and then mapped out the marketing campaign collectively.

Shortly after we strategized the nuts and bolts of the marketing campaign, we launched and acquired unbelievable help. The marketing campaign included touring with Jason Mewes, look on Kevin Smith’s podcast, and we even shot the crowdfunding video with Feargus Urquhart out of the Obsidian workplace.

The marketing campaign was successful, and we started working. Beginning improvement out of the Double High-quality workplaces and then distant, we created animation and fight programs that labored equally to combating recreation engines. We dialed within the look and really feel of the sport and created manufacturing pipelines to increase and contract improvement as wanted remotely.

Two years into manufacturing, there have been some exterior funding modifications out of our management, which slowed issues down. We reacted by pivoting when given the chance to companion with LRG founders Josh and Doug who helped us fund a retro 8-bit brawler known as Jay and Silent Bob: Mall Brawl. Tomas Guinan and I teamed up and constructed the sport in 9 months, launched it in 12 months and gave our backers a dope recreation as a bonus whereas concurrently elevating ending funds for Chronic Blunt Punch by way of gross sales as a substitute of funding. It labored!

We grew our staff with of us like Offended Steel, Toni Leys, Spoonybard and different creatives to spice up manufacturing worth and be part of us within the marathon to complete the sport.

Whereas we have been in our stride to completion we related with Digital Eclipse to assist with QA, Porting and publishing. A yr later, they joined with Atari, who’ve helped us get to the end line by way of localization and porting with Alchemy.

It has been a loopy journey, stuffed with tons of fascinating zigs and zags, relationships, studio and private evolution. However all in all, it has been an important journey, and we like what now we have created out of affection for one another and the tradition of recreation improvement.

Blammo! We hope you dig our little recreation.