Revenge of the Savage Planet is an ambitious sequel to Journey to the Savage Planet, taking the colorful dystopian Metroidvania to multiple planets with an even wider variety of upgrades for players to unlock. In the wake of Google Stadia's unfortunate shutdown, the Raccoon Logic studio was formed by Journey to the Savage Planet veterans to deliver a sequel that seeks builds on the original in every way while staying authentic to its memorable and strangely bright dystopian sense of humor.

That said, Revenge of the Savage Planet does make one major departure from its predecessor by switching to a third-person perspective. Not only does this new perspective open up a few new doors for interesting traversal mechanics, but in the developers' minds, it also serves as a way to enhance the comedy by giving players a full-body look at their characters' reactions. The addition of split-screen co-op is also a rare boon these days, making Revenge of the Savage Planet an ideal game for couples, parents, and friends alike.

Game Rant recently sat down with Raccoon Logic co-founder and creative director Alex Hutchinson, along with game design director Steven Masters, to discuss Revenge of the Savage Planet's features and systems. Among other things, they spoke about noteworthy improvements like an informative map aimed at completionists, the move to third-person, and the studio's overall approach to comedy. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

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Revenge of the Savage Planet Preview

Revenge of the Savage Planet follows up action-adventure title Journey to the Savage Planet with more planets, more tools, and more creatures.

Revenge of the Savage Planet's Move to Third Person Perspective and Approach to Comedy

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Q: Can you talk about the challenges or potential risks involved in taking Journey to the Savage Planet to third person?

Hutchinson: I think the ideal version is that you do both at the same time, but obviously, we're an indie company so it's a bit tricky. I think it's always a risk to change radically, but there are lots of good examples—like Resident Evil going first-person or Helldivers going third-person. There are lots of successful examples.

We weren’t too worried about it overall, but I think you’re right—it’s a mix of positives and challenges. First-person is more intimate in the world, but you can’t see your feet with mere platforming, which is a challenge for us. We wanted to have nice suits that you could wear and collect in the world. You know, it’s better for physical comedy to see your character on fire and there’s only so much you can do with your hands. Our animation team was very keen to move out to third person.

Masters: Mike was able to bring a lot of personality to the character as well. That level of care and love in the execution really brings that charm to the forefront. It makes you want to get in there and enjoy playing with it.

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Q: How does collaboration work in terms of comedy between the design and writing teams?

Hutchinson: It's a small team, so I do all the writing. Him [Masters], he yells at me. We go back and forth.

Q: Do you have guidelines regarding the comedic tone and whether the humor is going too far?

Masters: We have some rules, and that's been tricky for me. The core rule is: the characters can tell jokes, but they can’t be jokes.

You never want to—especially in a cinematic—have something that makes the player feel dumb. You know, you can have a catastrophe or an accident happen to the character, and that’s fine. But if the player feels like they’re being mocked, that’s a real negative—especially in a cinematic.

For example, if I make a mistake during gameplay, that’s on me. If I go into a cinematic and the character makes a mistake, that’s not me—you’re taking control away from the player. Yeah, we try to keep cinematics very short, for a start, because we don’t like taking control away from the player. When we do use cinematics, disasters can happen to other things, but not directly to the player.

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Q: There are a lot of references in the comedy, like the Swordfish reference. Is it challenging to find a line where there are too many references or feeling too much like Deadpool?

Hutchinson: Or trying to be too self-referential, right? It's pretty subjective. It's really a "feel" thing, but like Steve said, there are only 30 people on the team so it's all there.

With that sort of comedy, I was thinking about how our art director often worries about references to "now," you know what I mean? But I don’t think it’s a big issue. When you watch a show set in the '70s, one thing that bugs me is when they make everything look like it’s from the '70s. Having lived through the ‘70s a little, you realize there's still a lot from the ‘60s and even the ‘50s around. The past doesn’t just disappear because you’ve hit a new period.

I think having old things in it is fine. Honestly, most people don’t even get the Swordfish reference. Someone much smarter than me once said, "Science fiction isn’t about the future; it’s about the present." We’re radically exaggerating our lives. Like, right now, we’re sitting next to the biggest derelict block in California, but it’s directly across from the Staples Center, which just bleeds money. You know what I mean? It all feels humorously dystopian, especially with this lovely astroturf.

Correction—it’s now the Crypto.com Arena, which is named after a company whose founder is now in prison, whose name is Bankman-Fried. You can't write this. I'd be like "Bankman-Fried? It's too on the nose."

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Q: Can you talk about how you approached structuring the game so that exploration is important and there are interesting things to do, but also having progression and balance with traversal?

Masters: When we structure our planets, we always think about the journey. Our goal is always to collect a core piece of equipment that the character needs for their survival on the jungle planet. We think about the journey toward collecting that as a series of obstacles the player is going to have to overcome. And really, we think of them as problems—not just “blue door, blue key.” We want players to overcome these obstacles, and along the way, they’ll discover needs that inspire them to build different upgrades.

We always think about it in terms of challenges—means of overcoming a challenge—and then we go wide from there. We fill the world with opportunities that speak to things the player has already acquired. For example, if I’ve acquired the whip on the previous planet, there are going to be areas gated off by whip breakables or something like that.

But we also design for future opportunities. We tease what you’re going to get later. For instance, maybe there’s a pool of water with a chest at the bottom. Gotcha—can’t swim yet, right? When you go into the jungle planet, one of the first things you’ll see is exactly that: a chest underwater that you can’t reach yet. And it’s going to take several planets’ worth of adventure to get there.

Revenge Of The Savage Planet Fighting Creature

Hutchinson: Another thing to consider is the pacing—like, when does something become frustrating and annoying versus satisfying? You don’t want to keep a mental “checklist” going for too long.

But I think, building on Steve’s point, you have this central goal. If you use the area scan, you can see where it is. Those level design goals are meant to distract you, so you should be trying to go there and thinking, "But wait, what’s that? I’m going to check over there." If we do that right, we’re luring you into the width of the game, as Steve was saying. But if you get bored or feel like, "I don’t know where I’m going," you can always just say, "All right, I should go there," and return to the main objective.

Masters: Structurally, the game will always say, "Here’s the gold marker—just follow it, and you’ll get to the end." But there’s so much else to explore and do. We want you to be distracted—just adventuring in your own way. A lot of the level design is really about creating those draws—those little hints and advertisements that say, "Hey, there’s something interesting over here."

Revenge Of The Savage Planet kicking mushroom

Q: How do you approach the design of the game so that you're giving players those distractions, but also making them feel like they can focus on the main objective?

Hutchinson: It’s really tricky, but in a weird way, it’s easier than the other approach. The hardest part is trying to control everything, especially pacing—because pacing is really hard.

You never know: Is this too long for someone? Is it too short? Is this attractive to one player but unattractive to another? I think we try to absolve ourselves of responsibility for that. We just put the opportunities there and always make sure the marker shows you where you need to go if you just want to progress. Beyond that, we say, “Yeah, do what you want.”

It’s even interesting with the scanning. I don’t know how much scanning you did, but see, one of the others was scanning every single rock they came across. I can’t tell which one is “right” because neither is “right," but both are right.

Masters: One of the things I find most fun about that design challenge is responding to and acknowledging the player’s path through the world. Take scanning as an example. One of the first things you’ll find is a health plant, right? You start off slightly damaged, and there’s a health plant nearby so you can refill yourself. Your robotic companion will say something like, “Hey, you should probably check out what that plant is and see if it’s useful to you.”

If you choose to scan it or not, you’ll get different outcomes from the bot. That’s just one simple example. If you eat the plant without scanning it first, the bot might acknowledge that you’re a bit adventurous and say something like, "You probably should have scanned that first!"

Then you take that idea and apply it to the rest of the game. You say, "Okay, you could have collected this before you got that." There are so many different permutations of how you can approach things. Tracking all of that and making sure it makes sense—ensuring that what we tell you and how we respond to you is coherent—that’s a wonderful process. It also gives the player real validation of the choices they’ve made.

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Hutchinson: I think that’s the key point. You asked how we do this, and it's about supporting whatever the player chooses to do. It’s about making them feel like they always did the right thing. Whatever path they chose is the right one; it’s just the flavor of their choice. If someone is very cautious and scans everything, we acknowledge that. If someone is rushing, we celebrate that too—Wow, no time to lose!

It’s all about acknowledging the player’s decisions. I think, especially when we’re trying to be a little systemic—though it’s obviously not a completely systemic game—we want to have enough systemic width so that you can solve a problem in different ways. We want to celebrate that for the player. If they realize, "Oh, I could have done it another way,” that encourages them to think about the environment differently. And that’s a lot more fun than just going from point A to point B and pressing X when you’re told to press X.

How Revenge of the Savage Planet Refined Its Metroidvania Gameplay

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Q: Are those lessons you were trying to apply in the first game?

Hutchinson: You always have this amount of time and this amount of work, and the question becomes, “How deep can you get into it?” I think we did a little bit of that, but we didn’t get as deep as we wanted to at that time. We’ve done a much better job of embracing that now, and hopefully, if we get to game three, we’ll be able to do an even better job.

Our vision for the studio has always been inspired by companies like BioWare and Blizzard—really, all the "B" companies. They start small and build their tech base, iterating on it. You end up with something like Fallout and Skyrim on the same engine but with radically different expressions or Dragon Age and Mass Effect being developed simultaneously.

I think that’s a smart way to develop. When those companies were at their best, they were small teams making big games. That’s what we’d like to do. We don’t want to grow so big that we’re at risk of going out of business every six weeks. Right now, there are only 30 of us so we’re pretty stable, but we hope to keep making bigger and bigger experiences.

Revenge Of The Savage Planet Throwing Creature

Q: Are there any elements you got feedback on from the first game that you're proud of incorporating this time around?

Hutchinson: The map, maybe. Steve really pushed for the map. I wasn’t exactly anti-map, but I was definitely anti "playing the map."

I find that in a lot of games, you end up just looking at the map and following the points on it. I wanted players to actually explore—to engage with the world itself. We went back and forth on that a lot.

Masters: We’ve dialed in a system where the map is really useful for completionists. In the first game, it was tough when you were searching for your last couple of items. It was frustrating not knowing where to go to find them. Now, every area you enter has a stat pool that shows you all the tasks you can complete in that area for the completionist goals. As you roam around, you can scan the world by clicking the right stick, and it will highlight all the chests you can collect.

If you get an upgrade, those get recorded on the map, and they’ll inform you whether or not you have the right upgrades to collect them. Tackling that Metroidvania style, yeah, absolutely. As you get toward the end, after you’ve played out the narrative, you can shift into "Okay, I want to get everything." The map becomes a really useful way to scrub the world and get it all done.

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Q: We saw a brief mention of split screen, which is becoming increasingly rare these days. Can you talk about your approach to split screen in Revenge of the Savage Planet?

Hutchinson: I grew up playing split-screen, you know what I mean? I think it’s some of the most fun I’ve had playing games. I want to play with my kid—he’s 12 now—and talk about that kind of stuff. I think playing with your dad, your best friend, your partner, or your kid on the couch is such a nice way to experience a game. There are very small indie games, like 2D games, that do it, but we thought in our space—sort of, I don’t know, in that "AA" space—there aren't many games that offer that experience. It’s a rare thing.

I also really believe in two-player co-op. We didn’t do four-player in the first game because we found two-player is a really nice group size for actual cooperation. When we see playtests, we notice that people talk the whole time when they’re playing in two-player. In four-player, people talk on and off, but past that, it becomes more like a shared world. I think two players is the sweet spot.

Q: If my friend joins my game, do they have the things that I have?

Masters: It's mirrored, so they'll have what the hosting player has.

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Q: What are you most excited for people to see in the game, whether they're fans or newcomers?

Hutchinson: We touched on it a bit, but it’s the fact that it’s bright and optimistic—an optimistic dystopia, which is a weird thing to say, a bright, happy dystopia. But it’s a fun playground that you can experience with your best friend, your partner, your kid, you know?

I think sharing that experience is the most fun I have. It’s like that fantasy from back in the days when you had to buy games in shops. I remember going to Maxwell’s, this old Australian computer store, picking up one game, and then coming home, staring at the box the whole way. You’d read the manual and then play it.I hope we can capture some echo of that experience with our game.

Masters: I’m really excited to bring joy to people, you know? Seeing the way our systems are coming together, it's amazing because crazy things will happen when you’re playing. Even now, after three years of development, I’m still laughing at the game.

I want to bring that joy to others. Every time we have a playtest and hear back about how much fun people are having, how many times they’re laughing—it’s so validating. I just can’t wait to bring that experience to as many people as possible.

[END]

Revenge Of The Savage Planet Tag Cover

Revenge of the Savage Planet is an upbeat, satirical action adventure Sci-Fi. Jump, shoot and collect your way across vibrant alien worlds, uncovering new gear and upgrades, while discovering various hidden secrets.

Adventure
Action