South Park: Snow Day! is nothing like the 2 South Park RPGs that preceded it, with its 3D animated aesthetic, its co-op battle gameplay, and even its surprisingly low cost $30 price ticket. The transfer away from epic-scale, in-depth RPGs was a deliberate alternative, says co-creator Matt Stone, and provides them the liberty to do some new issues with the South Park gaming franchise.
“We got here off of The Fractured However Entire, and we positively wished to do one other online game, however we wished to do one thing completely different,” Stone stated in an interview with IGN. “We began speaking about doing one thing a little bit completely different, extra about replayability. Extra about with the ability to replace characters. We all the time thought we wished to do this factor the place we do a factor in a present after which like, it is within the recreation two weeks later, or three weeks, or no matter it’s.”
The change in each gameplay and animation fashion will assist facilitate this extra reside service fashion of recreation, making it simpler for the builders so as to add new content material. “The 2D stuff–amazing because it was to make these games–it was actually, actually exhausting when you consider what you need to work with. It is simply very confined, how we even made these fights work,” Stone explains. “And it is the liberty right here to create, it is only a lot simpler within the 3D realm. For me, I simply settle for that these are the South Park youngsters.”
Exploration will even get a shake up, with Snow Day’s world designed to be extra of a sandbox in comparison with the earlier video games’ narrative-driven development. “The earlier video games really feel such as you’re in a South Park film,” stated South Park author Jameel Saleem, who additionally labored on Snow Day. “It is very immersive. That is extra of a visceral feeling of identical to with the ability to run round in South Park and run round within the snow.”
As an alternative of a film, Stone explains that the brand new recreation is narratively “type of like a protracted episode of South Park.” The recreation will begin with the low-stakes arrange of the children simply desirous to play on a snow day, with any bigger menace or narrative rising extra steadily.
Total, Stone admits the sport is taking some dangers by straying so removed from its much-loved predecessors, however the low pricing permits area for them to mess around a bit extra with a brand new format. “As a $29.99 recreation, that appeared like the appropriate measurement for us to strive 3D for the primary time [and] make it work, make all these programs work with out biting off an excessive amount of and failing at it, you realize.”