In the final write up of our chat with Johnny, Gavin and Ken, the masterminds behind Breakout’s games, we learned the efforts in designing and building a game, and also what we shall expect to come in the near future:
The Effort Needed
Escman: How long does it take to design and build a game?
Johnny: How long do we take to design one room? Depends on whether we’ve got inspiration? Hahahaha
Ken: Longest one is which one?
Gavin: Longest one… magician.
Ken: Detective?
Johnny: Infinity room.
Ken&Gavin (in unison) : No, that’s the hardest one.
Johnny: Oh ya! Oh my god, that one is… my brain was dried out already.
(Hahahaha…The 3 guys was laughing… must have been about a good memory creating that room)
Johnny: It actually take months to design a room. What I can share is (about designing the rooms)… what we usually will do is, we have this one big idea, then we need to think of the features inside the room and everything must have feelings. So, we watch movies and look at some pictures to get some ideas. From there we design every other details.
Ken: Like the way you enter the game, how each piece of a puzzle are played and then what kind of ending we want…
Johnny: We have also to come up with all the possibilities on what the player is going to do if this or that thing were to happen in the game. And then what are we going to do about it. That is the hardest part.
The Next Stage – Level Up!
Escman: Can the players expect a level up in the new games from you? Can you share anything new (story? themes? Surprises?), pleaassssseee!
Johnny: I think you can expect some new surprises.
Ken: It’s hard to say… because we’re thinking of revealing stories during gameplay, so initial story we’ll tell you something, but when you play it, there will be plot twists.
Gavin: The challenging part is that we already have very good rooms, so when we think of going to the next stage, it’s very challenging. We had some ideas….
Ken: Yup, currently we have some new ideas for new rooms, new stories, new themes
Gavin: That would also create the wow factor..
Johnny: And we also learn from the mistakes in the current rooms as well, and as nothing is perfect, we learn from the mistakes we did before. We always want to have a situation where the players, after they have played, to have their mind blown.
Ken: It’s like enjoying movies like Shutter Island…to have a last minute plot twist in the game.
Johnny: I can tell you something, a small information. I don’t want to make it big first. We are going to go international, and we’re also finding a few more locations. So once we found the location, we will build up the room. We are going to incorporate more Easter egg into our new rooms actually. The sort of thing that has a bit of link back to the rooms that we have here. When we play video games we also like easter eggs.
Escman: We’ll be very excited to find out because we really can’t imagine what the level up will be.
Johnny: So now you could understand how hard is it for us.. Haha!
That’s the end of our conservation! We’re so glad to be able to pick the brains of Johnny, Gavin and Ken, and learnt so much about their game creation inspirations and thought process. Now we know what motivated these people, which will be lots of psychological thrillers, plot twists and magic! It’s also exciting to learn about what they aspire to, bring on the Universal Studios! They love the word, wow factor, and we love it, too. We really appreciate their time and willingness to share so much interesting stuff. We had a very fun chat indeed.
We’ve heard that there will be some great stuff happening in few months time. So, all real escape game fans, do keep an eye on Breakout for new exciting updates.
We really look forward to their new outlet in NuSentral!
Check out our reviews of the games we played in Breakout Avenue K~ They are awesome~
Conversations with the Breakout Game Creators Series