LA Comic Con: Interview with Chris Heintz with One More Game

I’ve been a gamer since gaming was an option. From playing my family’s Intellivision (you could STEAL SECOND in the baseball game!) to joining the ranks of people playing Animal Crossing on my Switch, I have spent many hours gaming for enjoyment.

One More Game, a start up that began in 2020, was founded by Patrick Wyatt and Jamie Winsor, who are both game developer veterans. Wyatt was the lead programmer of many of Blizzard’s games and was the founder of ArenaNet. Meanwhile, Winsor was the senior engineer at Riot and also worked for ArenaNet.

They were at this year’s LA Comic Con, offering demos on their second game, SWAPMEAT. A co-op third-person shooter game, the basic idea is wonderfully weird. Per the description on Steam, SWAPMEAT is a game where “you raid the weirdest worlds and angriest aliens in the universe… for their meat. Swap meat with the enemies you defeat to steal their abilities and augment your hero on the fly, and fight alongside your friends to bring home the bacon.”

I talked to Chris Heintz from marketing while I was at the convention and got more information about the company and the game.

My first question was where the idea of the game came from. Heintz said the original idea came from Winsor from other games he’d worked on where swapping body parts was part of the game mechanics. “It’s funny, but it also opens up a lot of interesting design space,” Heintz said.

“As the team was thinking about ‘what game do we want to do next?’, this was one of the prototypes that was resonating within the studio,” he continued. “The game is essentially a third-person shooter with roguelike elements, but with its own very unique personality. So they thought, ‘Hey, this meat-swapping idea as a game design space is really a good match for a roguelike shooter. Let’s go build that. And two months later, they couldn’t stop playing it internally during playtesting.”

The game has been under development for about a year, and they’re now doing play tests every couple of weeks. Currently a game you can wishlist on Steam, there are no plans for a console version at this time.

I asked what the most difficult part of developing the game was. While Heintz initially suggested that was more a question for Wyatt or Windsor, he did talk about the difficulties of trying to come up with something new – especially in gaming. “It’s hard to find the fun,” he said. “So the idea of swapping body parts and getting abilities based on that, like that runtime hero creation, it sounds cool.”

As with any game, the goal is to make it intuitive and fun and having the game make sense to new players. “That’s always hard anytime you’re trying to innovate,” Heintz said. “The current implementation of (SWAPMEAT) is pretty intuitive an fun, and it opens up a lot of strategic design space that seems to resonate with players. So, we think we’re on to something, but we’re early in the process.”

Finding the audience is always a tough part of any entertainment, and gaming is no different. While their marketing is geared toward players who are already into roguelike shooters, I couldn’t help but ask what would attract newbies to the game. “If you have any nostalgic inclination for ’90s cartoons or you are tired of entertainment that’s just grimdark and doesn’t take itself too seriously, we’re hoping that what we’re building will resonate with you,” Heintz said. “So the personality and tone of the game and the crazy weirdo aliens that you fight –hopefully, that’s something that appeals to people and they find charming and fun. And as the game gets further in development, a lot of that personality and story will start to emerge and be more obvious.”

Of course, gaming companies also have to draw in long-time players as well. Why should they give SWAPMEAT a try? “It has a ton of depth,” he offers. “We think that this genre is really underdeveloped. There are some great examples out there, but there’s so much room for more. There’s a lot of opportunities to innovate. If you want a challenge, if you want something that’s also fun to play with friends, hopefully, it’s up your alley.”

One More Game saw a spike in investors thanks to games becoming more popular during COVID (one of the few positives of the pandemic), but is suffering from the same dive the rest of the gaming industry is currently going through.

“Every year, 14,000 games come out on Steam alone,” Heintz says. “Just look at all of the other incredible indie game developers that are here at LACC. There’s so many people making earnest efforts to make games, and they’re all essentially competing for the same market.” Getting a game noticed is a two-prong approach. “If you’re making a new game, especially with a new IP, you’re competing for an increasingly small set of audience. That’s why we’re here [at Comic Con]: to see if the game is resonating.”

Not only were they demoing the game at the convention, but they also do playtests every couple of weeks. “If you want to play the game, you can come and play the game – even at this early stage of development,” Heintz said. “That’s how we’re trying to grow the audience: find people who dig the game authentically who want to tell their friends about it, and see what happens. Listen to their feedback really closely, build a community around them, and keep our fingers crossed basically.”

As for the game itself? I did manage to spend about five minutes playing it while they were there. I’m not usually a fan of co-op games and gaming has kind of fallen off my entertainment options recently (it’s been relegated to the ‘when I invent the 24 hour’ list), but I do enjoy a good rogue game as well as first-person shooter games.

While the game is geared toward using a controller, they had it set up for keyboard and mouse. The graphics reminded me of Breath of the Wild, and the play mechanics had elements of the LEGO platform games I adore. In an odd way, the game also reminded me of the MediEvil series, where you could ‘swap’ to the skull to play. What little I played was enjoyable, although as with many things, it’ll come down to the price as to whether I’d buy it.

You can currently sign up for a playtest and learn more about the game on the official website.

Author: Angie Fiedler Sutton

Angie Fiedler Sutton is a writer, podcaster, and all-round fangirl geek. She has been published in Den of Geek, Stage Directions, LA Weekly, The Mary Sue, and others.

She also produces her own podcast, Contents May Vary, where she interviews geeky people about geeky things. You can see all her work (and social media channels) at angiefsutton.com.

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