Had the pleasure to talk to Bertil Hörberg from Hörberg Productions. Let’s learn more about the studio and their recent release of Mechstermination Force on the Nintendo Switch. Available now.
Thank you Bertil Hörberg for taking the time to speak with me today for this interview. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Thank you, I’m Bertil Hörberg an indie dev from Sweden born in the mid 80s, so I’ve grown up with the 8-/16-bit era games and have a particular fondness for 2D platformers and Nintendo games. I’ve worked in the games industry for 13 years, working at a few different studios before starting my own indie studio.
Can you tell us a little bit about the history of Hörberg Productions? How was it formed?
I started Hörberg Productions in 2011, at first just to release some very small android games as a side project while working at a different game studio, but then I got bored with my job and left to do it full time. The plan was still just to to do small silly games and try to make a modest living out of it. But I moved on to a bit bigger projects, and after Gunman Clive became a moderate success I decided to move on to 3DS where it became a pretty big hit. After a sequel and a few unfinished projects I decided it was tie for a new chapter and stop working alone. I teamed up with my old friend Daniel Ribera Olsen and started working on Mechstermination Force together.
Can you explain to our audience what the game Mechstermination Force is to those that are not familiar with it?
Essentially the game is a mix of Contra and Shadow of the Colossus. It’s a 2D action boss rush game where you fight giant robots, by climbing up on them destroying different parts to hit their weakspots.
How many people were involved in making Mechstermination Force? What are there various roles?
At the start it was me and Daniel. I handled the design code and animation, with Daniel doing the art, then about halfway through the project we hired another 3D artist to help us finish the project. Sound and music were outsourced to a local sound studio, as well as my brother Arne Hörberg who did the Gunman Clive soundtracks returning for about half the tracks.
How did you come up with the concept and graphic style of Mechstermination Force? What’s your secret sauce?
The art style was really a result of a bunch of experiments, trying to make it looks a close as possible to the hand drawn concept sketches that Daniel did. I’m not sure how well we really succeeded in that but I think it turned into something quite nice in it’s own right. The secret sauce to the graphics is really in how we do the lighting and coloring. Pretty much all the textures are in black and white, then after we process the lighting we use a small palette texture to set the color, this way we can create nice gradients with vivid colors across the whole shading spectrum, without setting up complex lighting systems.
Were there any lessons learned from making Gunman Clive that you were able to apply to Mechstermination Force?
Those who played Gunman Clive 2 all the way to the final boss may remember than I played around with this concept even back then, but I felt I could do more with it in a game fully focused around climbing giant bosses. Another thing I learned while doing the Gunman Clive games is that I find creating bosses a lot more fun than doing level design, so that’s one reason I decided to go with a full boss-rush game.
Were there any challenges or difficulties while making either Gunman Clive and Mechstermination Force?
Game development is nothing but an endless stream of challenges.
One of the biggest challenges early on was to create a physics system that could handle the players walking and climbing on fully animated, and also allow the bosses to move and animate somewhat freely in 3D while still working as colliders in a 2D plane. In the end I’m doing a lot of cheating with the perspective and the bosses collision shapes actually transform each frame based on their position on screen in relation to the camera.
Then of course creating a 14 different bosses in a limited period of time wasn’t easy. Because it’s all boss battles there is no filler content, there is very little that could be reused, and the bosses are all very unique with their own mechanics. Some bosses required for completely new animation systems to be implemented.
Currently your games are digital only. Any chance that Mechstermination Force and Gunman Clive could get a physical compilation release for the Nintendo Switch, maybe with the help of Limited Run Games?
I have nothing to announce now. It wasn’t ever really something I considered from the start and not something I’d really push for, but I’ve had a few different companies reaching out to me actually so it’s not as unlikely as I would have initially thought.
What’s your next step now that Mechstermination Force has been released for the Switch?
We’ve already started working on a new project. It will be something smaller and simpler. I’m also looking into getting my games on more platforms, but because we’re focused on the new project now I’m not sure when that will be possible. Since it’s using a custom engine outsourcing the porting would be a lot less efficient than doing it myself.
Do you have any advice for game developers who are also hoping to create a high quality game?
Make the type of game you want to play, but most of all make the type of game you actually enjoy to make. By the time you’re done you’re probably going to hate everything about your game, but try to do something that you can stand to spend countless hours play-testing and that inspires you creatively. That may not necessarily be the same type of game you spend the most time playing on your own.
Before we end this interview is there anything else you’d like to share?
The game has been out for a while now so most of the information is already out there, but one thing I’ve seen very little mention of is that the game features a (very basic) romance aspect, so make sure to talk to your fellow Mechsterminators in the camp. Also please buy my game…
