Answers from The Exalted team
We are a small team from the south of France, 8 core team + few freelancers.
Big Helmet Heroes was really intense to do, but at the same time super fun! We did it in less than 2 years and put a lot of love in it!
We really appreciate to see the player understand the amount of effort we put in the game, thank you a lot for this!
R.Y: We did 2 mobile games with the same heroes and we wanted to keep them, for this game the story takes time to elaborate, but in the end we wanted something simple and quick to understand!
F.G: As for the design aspect, having oversized helmets was to get a better shape and readability on the mobile device because the screen is quite small. The proportion worked well and we kept this for the full Art Bible of the game.
R.Y: We would like to implement more than 2-player, even a online mode but it takes a lot of time and investment to put into games, we're also focused on addressing some requests and bugs reported from players since launch. We know it's a requested feature, but it's not planned right now.
M.V: Yes, the art style was there before we started working on this game, since we already made 2 mobile games with the same heroes. We wanted to create something fun and cartoonish but at the same time not just imitate styles that already existed.
F.G: The goal is to be cartoonish, stylish to push the humor in the visuals. Also, kicking some goblins with this art style makes it fun and not really violent for younger audiences.
F.G: Long time ago, the lead animator (T.B) and the creative director (F.G) were playing a role playing game called “Exalted”. This name was kept for their school project, and more than 10 years later, when the creative director decided to create the studio, he still had this name in mind
M.V: Definitely open to it, we will see what the future brings!
M.V: One of them is the dodge of the Brute heroes, they charge forward instead of just evading, causing damage even with this move in addition to being invulnerable for a short time.
We wanted to make mounts possible for the heroes as well and had a prototype to test, but we decided to exclude them in the end. Our levels were not really designed to use them, as player mounts turned out to be a more complicated feature than we expected.
R.Y: Superpower was a heavy task during development, and we did a lot of re-take on this to be sure that we find a good vibe with all heroes.
F.G: Another “problem” was the amount of cool ideas we had during the development, but we were running out of time and we had decided to keep the best ideas and make them work perfectly. Never easy to kill fun ideas…
R.Y: Yeah some levels contain some Easter eggs for sure!
F.G: Several items (not interactible, no destructibles) come from tons of movies, music, animes, games reference
T.L. : There’s this one Easter egg that no one found yet
F.G: We have established some rules : Start the level with one mood and finish with another mood. Also Each level must be different, it’s an adventure, the player must see a new environment all the time and must be amazed by the visuals
R.Y: We don’t think there is something stronger than another but for sure the funny weapons with elements are strong!
T.L.: The ‘Tesla’ cannon is probably the best one, with electricity doing a lot of damage and the projectiles having AoE, at least against basic enemies. There’s also a sword that turns enemies to stone!
R.Y: Yeah we take care of players feedback a lot, we stopped working on some stuff to focus on others based on what players reported to us
T.L.: it helps seeing if something bothers more players than what we’d think, so we can put more importance to it if it’s in our capability to work on it.
R.Y: We had a bug that scaled up the weapon way too big and we decided to use that as superpower in the end!
T.L.: There’s a magic wand that can randomly turn enemies into a sand castle, which was mostly just placeholder to show an example of a hit effect that transforms a target into an object, and I put the sandcastle to make it absurd a bit like the Wabbajack (a staff casting random spells, from The Elder Scrolls series), and it stayed that way…
M.V: We would love to make more content for the game but we have to see how much interest there will be from the players. In the meantime, we’re cooking!
T.L. : https://itisamystery.com/
M.V: The goal was to enable anyone to learn to play very quickly without too many instructions. But the harder difficulties need to bring a bigger challenge to more experienced players.
F.G: So at the end it was tons of tests and getting feedback from the testers and knowing their level of gaming experience to balance everything.
F.G: This will really depend on the game's success and what the player wants. We have several Helmets designs in our database that we couldn’t put in the game. So let’s see!
R.Y: Paris games week (A video game themed consumer event held in France) for sure! Having an amazing stand and a lot of people showing up was really joyful
T.L.: it’s pretty cool when a player reacts to something almost exactly like we wanted/expected them to react. Like that one cage they see while sliding down the dune in the desert level, so they’d rather restart the level immediately
F.G: This also depends on the game's success. We would love to release new levels, we love making them and adding fun ideas, new gameplay.
For sure Castle Crashers!
M.V: The Minions and other comedies for the humour as well as other beat’em up games like Streets of Rage, TMNT, …
F.G: The first Big Helmet Heroes games were for mobile, the influence was tons of mobile games, one good reference (yet another French reference…) La Brute, a flash game.
M.V: Thank you!
F.G: Merci!
R.Y: We did add a few puzzles, but we lacked the time to add more complex ones sadly
T.L.: there are some simple puzzles that don’t block the player progress through the level as it is not intended as an important focus in the main gameplay, but I would have loved making more complex systems!
We are a small team from the south of France, 8 core team + few freelancers.
Big Helmet Heroes was really intense to do, but at the same time super fun! We did it in less than 2 years and put a lot of love in it!
We really appreciate to see the player understand the amount of effort we put in the game, thank you a lot for this!
- F.G. : Florian de Gesincourt, CEO and Creative director (creator of the Big Helmets)
- L.K : Laurent Kobel, Production Director
- M.V. : Miha Vozelj, Technical Art Director
- T.B : Thomas Bozovic, Animation Director
- R.Y : Renan Yilmaz, Lead Dev Unreal Engine
T.L. : Tiffany Lallement, Dev Unreal Engine - T.S. : Thomas Severi, 3D artist
- N.A.: Nolwenn Armand, tester
R.Y: We did 2 mobile games with the same heroes and we wanted to keep them, for this game the story takes time to elaborate, but in the end we wanted something simple and quick to understand!
F.G: As for the design aspect, having oversized helmets was to get a better shape and readability on the mobile device because the screen is quite small. The proportion worked well and we kept this for the full Art Bible of the game.
R.Y: We would like to implement more than 2-player, even a online mode but it takes a lot of time and investment to put into games, we're also focused on addressing some requests and bugs reported from players since launch. We know it's a requested feature, but it's not planned right now.
M.V: Yes, the art style was there before we started working on this game, since we already made 2 mobile games with the same heroes. We wanted to create something fun and cartoonish but at the same time not just imitate styles that already existed.
F.G: The goal is to be cartoonish, stylish to push the humor in the visuals. Also, kicking some goblins with this art style makes it fun and not really violent for younger audiences.
F.G: Long time ago, the lead animator (T.B) and the creative director (F.G) were playing a role playing game called “Exalted”. This name was kept for their school project, and more than 10 years later, when the creative director decided to create the studio, he still had this name in mind
M.V: Definitely open to it, we will see what the future brings!
M.V: One of them is the dodge of the Brute heroes, they charge forward instead of just evading, causing damage even with this move in addition to being invulnerable for a short time.
We wanted to make mounts possible for the heroes as well and had a prototype to test, but we decided to exclude them in the end. Our levels were not really designed to use them, as player mounts turned out to be a more complicated feature than we expected.
R.Y: Superpower was a heavy task during development, and we did a lot of re-take on this to be sure that we find a good vibe with all heroes.
F.G: Another “problem” was the amount of cool ideas we had during the development, but we were running out of time and we had decided to keep the best ideas and make them work perfectly. Never easy to kill fun ideas…
R.Y: Yeah some levels contain some Easter eggs for sure!
F.G: Several items (not interactible, no destructibles) come from tons of movies, music, animes, games reference
T.L. : There’s this one Easter egg that no one found yet
F.G: We have established some rules : Start the level with one mood and finish with another mood. Also Each level must be different, it’s an adventure, the player must see a new environment all the time and must be amazed by the visuals
R.Y: We don’t think there is something stronger than another but for sure the funny weapons with elements are strong!
T.L.: The ‘Tesla’ cannon is probably the best one, with electricity doing a lot of damage and the projectiles having AoE, at least against basic enemies. There’s also a sword that turns enemies to stone!
R.Y: Yeah we take care of players feedback a lot, we stopped working on some stuff to focus on others based on what players reported to us
T.L.: it helps seeing if something bothers more players than what we’d think, so we can put more importance to it if it’s in our capability to work on it.
R.Y: We had a bug that scaled up the weapon way too big and we decided to use that as superpower in the end!
T.L.: There’s a magic wand that can randomly turn enemies into a sand castle, which was mostly just placeholder to show an example of a hit effect that transforms a target into an object, and I put the sandcastle to make it absurd a bit like the Wabbajack (a staff casting random spells, from The Elder Scrolls series), and it stayed that way…
M.V: We would love to make more content for the game but we have to see how much interest there will be from the players. In the meantime, we’re cooking!
T.L. : https://itisamystery.com/
M.V: The goal was to enable anyone to learn to play very quickly without too many instructions. But the harder difficulties need to bring a bigger challenge to more experienced players.
F.G: So at the end it was tons of tests and getting feedback from the testers and knowing their level of gaming experience to balance everything.
F.G: This will really depend on the game's success and what the player wants. We have several Helmets designs in our database that we couldn’t put in the game. So let’s see!
R.Y: Paris games week (A video game themed consumer event held in France) for sure! Having an amazing stand and a lot of people showing up was really joyful
T.L.: it’s pretty cool when a player reacts to something almost exactly like we wanted/expected them to react. Like that one cage they see while sliding down the dune in the desert level, so they’d rather restart the level immediately
F.G: This also depends on the game's success. We would love to release new levels, we love making them and adding fun ideas, new gameplay.
For sure Castle Crashers!
M.V: The Minions and other comedies for the humour as well as other beat’em up games like Streets of Rage, TMNT, …
F.G: The first Big Helmet Heroes games were for mobile, the influence was tons of mobile games, one good reference (yet another French reference…) La Brute, a flash game.
M.V: Thank you!
F.G: Merci!
R.Y: We did add a few puzzles, but we lacked the time to add more complex ones sadly
T.L.: there are some simple puzzles that don’t block the player progress through the level as it is not intended as an important focus in the main gameplay, but I would have loved making more complex systems!