At first glance, zombies, mobsters, and a wonderful cheese-filled dessert don’t seem like they’d have much in common. But while Clemenza instructed a young mafioso to leave his gun and take the cannoli in The Godfather, players will need both if they’re going to find any success against the rampaging zombie hordes of Guns, Gore & Cannoli. Belgium-based Crazy Monkey Studios is currently seeking funding for the game through Kickstarter, and we recently talked to Benjamin Claeys, one of the game’s artists, about the Prohibition era side-scrolling shooter and its unique art style.
Naturally, the conversation drifted away from the cartoonish violence of the game towards an appreciation for really good cannoli…
John Scalzo, Editor-In-Chief: For those who are unfamiliar with it, can you tell us a little bit about Guns, Gore & Cannoli?
Benjamin Claeys: Guns, Gore & Cannoli is a co-production between Crazy Monkey Studios and Claeysbrothers. Claeysbrothers does the creative part like the scenario, artwork, animation, and sound design, and Crazy Monkey Studios does all the technical things such as programming, implementing, and level balancing.
Guns, Gore & Cannoli is an over-the-top, comical, fast-paced action game with hand drawn 2D HD graphics and set in the Roaring Twenties during the height of Prohibition. It seems the mob has been peddling some bad hooch and it has turned everyone into zombies. The game tells the story of Vinnie Cannoli who is being summoned by the Mafia to come to the fictional city of Thugtown to find a small-time gangster named Frankie who’s gone missing since the zombie outbreak. Frankie seems to be of great importance to the local mob-gangs because when Vinnie arrives in Thugtown, the rival gangs are about to whack Frankie. It’s up to Vinnie and the players to find out what’s going on and discover the mystery behind the zombie-booze. So I guess you should find out by playing the game!
WZ – John: Why mobsters? Are Mafia movies popular in Belgium?
Claeys: Mafia movies are not particularly more popular in Belgium as they are in the rest of the world as far as we know. But I guess my brother Matthias and I have seen almost every Mafia film you can think of. It’s just an interest in the history of the Italian-American Mafia we have which is easily fed by watching all kinds of mob movies/series: everything from the original Scarface to Boardwalk Empire or The Sopranos, we’ve seen them all. So I guess it was an easy step as animators to make our own animated short Mafia film called Hell Bent For Whiskey. This was the first inducement into making Guns, Gore & Cannoli.
WZ – John: The hand-drawn art style really adds personality to the characters and the world of Thugtown. Can you tell me more about the cartoony style?
Claeys: My brother and I are cartoon animators, so it’s our common style of drawing and painting. We once won a film festival in Belgium with Hell Bent For Whiskey, which Guns, Gore & Cannoli is loosely based on. We got so many great comments from people who loved the film that we wanted to do something more with it.
Thanks to the success of the indie movement, it started to seem very achievable to make Hell Bent For Whiskey into a video game. We wanted to keep the look and feel of the typical Belgian comic book style because that’s what we as kids used to love to see when we played video games. It was always sad to see that lots of games just didn’t get to have great graphics due to the boundaries of the devices. Nowadays, a developer can go nuts with the special effects. So I guess that’s what we’re aiming for with Guns, Gore & Cannoli. An old school game but with smooth HD graphics and animations and real animated effects. No pixel art here…
WZ – John: With your love of Mafia movies and the game’s expressive style, might we eventually see caricatures of real-life mobsters like Al Capone or fictional ones like Tony Soprano in the full game?
Claeys: Almost all the zombies in the game are just inventions of our own hand. Some of the goons and gangsters in the game are based on real-life persons and some of the bosses are based on actors we know or even our own family members. But in general, we tried to give the baddies in the game more generic faces. You must realize that you probably will have killed the same guys a hundred times at the end of the game. So making them look like a real-life person would give them too much personality to make it credible that they are just an army of foot soldiers.
WZ – John: After playing the demo, I felt that Guns, Gore & Cannoli was partly inspired by the Metal Slug series. What other games have you looked to for inspiration?
Claeys: Other great games besides the Metal Slug series that inspired us were the Max Payne series, Mafia, Left 4 Dead, and others.
We loved the wiseguys in Max Payne which were very funny even when they’re not fighting… rambling on amongst themselves about all kinds of nothings. The creators of Max Payne were also really able to capture the dark scenes of New York’s underbelly. This atmospheric scenery is something we also hope to create in our game with the notorious 1920s setting. Which brings us to games like Mafia, which was perfect in its way of portraying the era, with the typical tommy guns and the old jazz music and cars. The setting is really not all that different from Guns, Gore & Cannoli… except for the zombies, of course. For the zombie part we really love games like Left 4 Dead, Zombieville USA, Deadlight, and others. Despite the fact that Guns, Gore & Cannoli is an indie game, we hope it will be a great experience for players. We went to a lot of effort the come up with a nice story with cool dialogue and cutscenes to add to the action and fun of the gameplay.
WZ – John: Another thing I noticed about the demo is that most of the weapons come from the 1920s except for the Lightning Gun. Can we expect more sci-fi-inspired weapons or concepts in the full game?
Claeys: Since the game is set in 1926, we kind of pinned ourselves down with the setting of the Roaring Twenties. I must say we have tried to keep a realistic angle in creating the guns, but in those days, there weren’t too many different kinds of guns to choose from. Especially guns a person would be able to carry. We added some crazy weaponry indeed, but we tried not to go too far with guns or props looking too futuristic for the period.
The look of the Lightning Gun, or Teslagun, as it is called in the game, is actually based on the work of the scientist Nicola Telsa. So we used pictures from his laboratory and Telsa coils to create a weapon that looked like a clumsy prototype with wires and bare mechanics hanging out. This is in contrast to its enormous power. There would have been other sci-fi-inspired weapons, but those didn’t make it to the game because we felt there would have been too much contrast with the era.
But I can happily say that all the settings and surroundings were drawn according to numerous authentic pictures and research we did on the Roaring Twenties . Except for the cartoony style, and some artistic freedom here and there, we tried to stay as true as possible to the Prohibition era.
WZ – John: Crazy Monkey’s previous two projects were mobile games. What’s different about working on a PC/console game?
Claeys: Working on a PC/Console game is actually much more liberating than making a mobile game. By “liberating” I obviously mean you are way less limited by the abilities of the device you want to run the game on. Lots of effects in Guns, Gore & Cannoli are sprite-sheet-based, like, for instance, the flamethrower effect. This would immediately be a fail for mobile devices. Although we still have to maintain boundaries in the effects and animations for the consoles and computers, the difference in what you can do is immense. Thus there is a lot more cool stuff you can create to make the game look awesome.
The other main difference is the marketing for the game, of course. The mobile market is presently severely oversaturated, making it very hard to stick out. Without a huge marketing budget, it is really up to dumb luck to get a nice game to succeed. On Steam and the consoles, there are certain steps a developer has to pass before they are even allowed to release the game. Which, we hope, will make it easier for an indie developer to reach the surface. So cross as many fingers as you can for us!
WZ – John: On your Kickstarter page, you say a successful campaign is required to accomplish your “full vision.” What’s included in that vision?
Claeys: Our full vision of the game would contain everything we thought of that’s making it fun. Special effects, different kind of weapons, a lot of different enemies, lots of one-liners, spectacular cutscenes, and a backstory on the characters. Every level should be polished and better than the previous one.
WZ – John: And what happens if you don’t reach your Kickstarter funding goal?
Claeys: If the Kickstarter is not successful, we’ll look for funding on other areas. There are always people who want to invest in projects like ours. We’ll have to cut back on certain things, of course… perhaps shorten some of the dialogue in the cutscenes. Kickstarter has been a good way for us to investigate the market, and how well people would respond to the game without a real marketing offensive. It has given us a lot of exposure together with the release of the demo. But a good marketing campaign on the release will be necessary.
WZ – John: Is there anything else you’d like to say about Guns, Gore & Cannoli?
As a four-man team, we have come a long way. This is our first game for PC, Mac, and next-gen consoles. It has been a great experience and an enormous learning process for the team. For the moment, we are still working like crazy on the last levels. There’s still a lot of work to do, but in the end we hope it will be a game worth playing. We have been experimenting with four-player co-op which is turning out to be a great ride. I hope friends will enjoy the game together without having to wait for their turn to play. Just be sure to have enough controllers for everyone!
WZ – John: Finally, do you fill your cannoli with cheese or custard?
Claeys: We fill it with ricotta cheese, as it was meant to be eaten! It has become a monthly tradition in the studio to bring some cannoli. Sadly, it’s a bunch of work to make it, and it’s not easy to find in our region. I guess we should move to Italy or New York if we wanted to get it more often. Buon appetito!
WZ – John: Thanks so much Benjamin. I’ll be sure to think of your team and Guns, Gore & Cannoli the next time I pick up a few at the bakery.
