Some time ago, we informed you about one crazy game by a developer studio Necrosoft Games – Gunsport. What to say about this game at first sight? It looks as a mixture of Pong, volleyball and many other things. Since this game looks pretty challenging, we could not stay away from it and we decided to make a short interview with developers. We asked the founder of the team, Brandon Sheffield, several questions and you can read the whole interview below:

1)Hello, could you please introduce yourself and your team to us?

Hey hey! I'm Brandon Sheffield, director of Necrosoft Games. I used to run a magazine in the US called Game Developer, and was senior contributing editor to gamasutra.com - both of these are industry publications (though Game Developer magazine is now closed), which try to help developers do their jobs better. While I was working as a journalist, I started writing storied for other people's games, and eventually decided to make my own company and work on my own stuff. And that's how Necrosoft Games was born!

As for the team, they're based all around the world. One programmer lives in Poland, another is in Hungary, one is in Ireland, and our artists are in Sweden, Russia, and Uruguay. It's a pretty international team! For one of our games, Oh, Deer! we had Motohiro Kawashima (composer for Streets of Rage 3) writing music for us from Japan. So we're a pretty diverse and distributed team, as far as countries go.

Basically, we are coming together to try to make the kinds of games we want to play, but which aren't really being made.

2) What are your recent games we could have played?

We recently put out our first game Gunhouse, which is free on Windows Phone and really cheap on PlayStation Mobile (on the Vita store). It's a puzzle game mixed with tower defense, in a way we haven't really seen done before. That's all we have out now, but soon we'll be bringing you a lot more! We've got Oh, Deer! which is a driving game about hitting as many or as few deer with your station wagon as possible, and Gunsport, which is basically futuristic volleyball with guns. It's a 2v2 mini eSport which has gotten really good reception at places like the Penny Arcade Expo and the PlayStation Experience.

3) What is a target group for the titles developed by your team?

The target group is basically us! We make the kinds of games we like, because we think there are others like us in the world. People who liked what games of the past had to offer, but would like to see those techniques moved forward into the future. People call our art style retro, but we don't think of pixel art that way. With what we're doing, we're actually trying to move pixel art forward as a medium again. You can't quite see that in our existing art for Gunsport, because we've actually started over with all new art (which is crazy!), but you'll be able to see it soon!

At the same time, we've also found that our games, Gunsport in particular, appeal to a lot of different kinds of people that we didn't expect. We made it for hardcore players who like a tough challenge - after all, the game is about precisely shooting a ball into small goals, while others are trying to do the same. It's pretty precise! But more casual players who don't usually get into games have been pretty interested in this stuff. I'm not sure what the secret is, but we're going to keep pushing that, because we think the more people that are playing competitive games, the better.

4) What are your favourite games in general?

Hmm, I like a lot of games! But I'd say for me the best games are the ones that try something interesting, even if they don't always succeed. I really like a game called Valis III for the Turbo Grafx/PC Engine. It's a side-scrolling sword-action game starring a schoolgirl who can transform into an armored warrior. Pretty standard 90s stuff, but they had a lot of new and weird ideas that make the game really work for me. But of course I also like technically precise action games like Gunstar Heroes for the Mega Drive, Silhouette Mirage for the Saturn, Ghost in the Shell for PlayStation, driving games like Outrun 2 and the Highway Battle series, and tactics game like Janne D'arc, Onimisha Tactics, and Disgaea. Lots of games, really!

5) What about your plans for the future?

Really, I'm hoping we can build Necrosoft Games into a company that is known for making interesting games in a wide variety of genres. We're currently prototyping a small tactics game, and we've also been pushing a prototype of our vs puzzle game, Magicops (see here: https://twitter.com/necrosofty/status/494932616533921794). I'm hoping we can get into a position where we only work on two slightly bigger games at once - right now we're working on between three and four games at the same time! It's a bit too much.

6) Gunsport is your newest game - could you tell us more about this title?

Yeah! So Gunsport is about a future in which war has ended - instead, people compete with Gunsport, kind of like you find with football being played across Europe today. Or even like Eurovision! National conflicts and identities are wrapped up into Gunsport instead of war.

As for the game itself, it's a lot like volleyball, where it's all about keeping the ball in the air. The more times the ball passes the net the more points it’s worth, and the more dangerous it becomes to miss a shot. Shots are limited – the keeper, in the back, can’t move, but gets two shots in a full clip. The striker, in the front, can move and jump, but only gets one shot. Teams reload when the ball crosses the net toward them, but only then. So you have to economize your shots, and when you’ve got a 30 point volley going, and you’re playing to 60, well, the stakes are pretty high.

Then there are the goals – if you get the ball into a goal, you get a bonus on top of whatever the ball is currently worth. Strikers can snipe it in, or Keepers can double-tap it in, shooting twice to change the ball’s direction. Or, if you’re truly drift compatible, you and your teammate can shoot the ball at the same time for a team attack, causing the ball to go twice as fast.

So it’s an eSport, but we think about it a bit like a fighting game. Rather than being reactive, you have to be predictive. The aiming is deliberately analogue. It’s not immediate. You have to watch the angles and predict where the ball will be. You need to predict how long it will take your shot to reach the ball. You need to see where your partner is aiming, as well as whether your opponents have any shots left with which to vex you. You’ve got to take in the whole screen at the same time. Pay careful attention to your timing and positioning.

And the new art looks really great! We can't wait to share it with everyone... the new art should be available in March, when we show the game at GDC and PAX East!