Metamorphosis Collection developers interview

As we announced the publishing of the Metamorphosis Collection, we wanted to get to know the game a little better, from the perspective of the developer! So, we had a quick chat with Ben Jelter to talk to him about his vision for the game, some of the inspiration behind it, and his experience in developing this unique compilation. If you’re as curious as we were, you can read the full interview below!

Q: What’s the story behind your game?
A: This entire project was kicked off by the Scream FM game jam. I was planning to make a little game for the jam to take a break from The Machine which was a much bigger project. Unexpectedly, the game received a lot of attention and was played by a lot of top streamers and youtubers. Since it was so well known, I was approached by Incube8 Games to publish the game on a cartridge but since the game was so short, I didn’t feel like it warranted a cartridge by itself. I then made Decline and Specimen 134 to round out the collection and have a horror pack instead of a single title on the cartridge. Each game was longer than the last and Specimen 134 is by far the biggest title in the collection. It’s also brand new exclusive content for people who have already played the other two!

Q: How has the development process been?
A: Opossum Country was originally made in GB Studio 2.0 but has been ported to 3.1. Being able to use new features like large sprites and parallax backgrounds for the other games has been a really exciting part of development. I got a little carried away with some of the special effects I could create. GB Studio is always growing and now in version 4.1 it looks to be better than ever. Opossum Country and Decline were made in a short period of time but Specimen 134 took me many months. I had tons of different ideas so early in development the biggest struggle was organizing everything and weaving it together nicely. I am happy with how it came out. Be aware that it has a few different endings depending on your choices throughout the game!

Q: What would you say are the influences behind your game?
A: Some of the places I have been here in the Northeastern USA have a lot of interesting people and scenery. That is a big inspiration for the setting. I really like the atmosphere of games like Silent Hill and the gameplay of Resident Evil so you will definitely see some similarities to those games here and there. Game Boy is a more limited platform than Playstation so it is fun to solve the different design challenges you find there.

Q: Are there any funny or unexpected things that occurred during the development of your game?
A: For the longest time I couldn’t decide on a name for Specimen 134 and was actually calling it ‘Skunk Country’ in my head. It’s kind of a ridiculous name for a spiritual successor to Opossum Country. Eventually I settled on Specimen 134 but for a long time in development I was mixing up 134 with 143! I had to go through the game and double check all mentions of that number. If any slipped by me, it might say 143 somewhere, haha.

Q: How have your previous experiences helped in the development process?
A: Yes and no. I have trouble keeping up with the speed that GB Studio is updated so sometimes I will spend a couple of years working on a game and develop a set of ‘best practices’ that become irrelevant as the program improves. The really great thing about recent updates to GB Studio is that it isn’t too hard to migrate a large project to the newest version. Previously I have been stuck on old versions.

Q: What kind of lessons did you learn in the development process?
A: It helps to have a really organized outline for the game before you start. For Specimen 134 I had a less organized outline and figured i would be able to figure it out as i went but ended up spinning my wheels for a long time not sure how to progress. At this point I had to stop and sit down and write a much more concrete outline of everything I wanted to accomplish in order to return to forward progress.