Deathwish Enforcers is an amazing run-and-gun shooter/platformer in the style of Konami's classic arcade game, Sunset Riders. The unusual mix of grimy 1970s vibe, dark humor, gangsters, and zombies certainly make for a memorable shooter. To find out how it all came together, we interviewed Christopher Obritsch, head of Monster Bath Studios (as well as director, lead programmer, lead art, co-designer, and more).
Co-Optimus: Thanks for taking the time to visit our hidden compound for this stubbornly in-person interview. First, could you tell us a little about your experience in game development?
Christopher: Thanks for having me! I’ve been developing games for about 11 years now, but originally went to school for programming (not gaming) many moons ago… 25-plus, I believe. I fell into game development one day, just for fun, and one of my personal projects caught the eye of a media company looking for someone with my skill set. I ended up doing a Space Harrier engine [for them] as my first “real” game… I [made] Insanity’s Blade with another dev. [That game] released between 9 and 10 years ago. Then I went to work at a place called HB Studios on a golf title and a snowboarding title.
After that came Battle Princess Madelyn, on which I focused on the art and direction, and my co-dev did the programming. After he left, I took over all of the programming and moved on under a new company name. I reprogrammed Battle Princess Madelyn for Exa-Arcadia as “Super Battle Princess Madelyn,” and then [created] Deathwish Enforcers.
Battle Princess Madelyn
That’s a cool pedigree! And what are some of your favorite classic and modern games?
Christopher: Non-run-and-gun games I love would be mostly beat 'em ups. From Kung Fu-Master to Splatterhouse, Double Dragon to Streets of Rage 2, The King of Dragons to Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow Over Mystara – I love all of that stuff. Modern games find me playing things like Diablo 3, Shadows of the Damned, and Lollipop Chainsaw… [I’m also a] huge Left 4 Dead 2 fan. The most recent thing I finished would be Dead Island 2.
[As for run-and-gun games,] classic games like that impressed me would be Ghouls n Ghosts (if that counts), Contra, Super C, Sunset Riders, RoboCop, and Sly Spy, just to name a few. My favorite modern run-and-gun would be Blazing Chrome, of course. That team s**** gold every time!
Blazing Chrome
Co-Optimus: Your pixel art on Deathwish Enforcers, Battle Princess Madelyn, and Insanity’s Blade is truly impressive. Can you tell us about how you draw and what your goals are with your art?
Christopher: Thank you! Very kind of you to say! I’ve used Construct 2 to draw forever. I have gotten so used to the layout and its quirks that I can spit out pixel art at Mach speed. While I often use other paint programs to swap colors for my final palettes, I stick to Construct 2 for the most part. I can’t actually hold a pen/pencil for more than a few minutes now, thanks to overworking at desks for the past 17 years. My hand cramps right up. So, everything is done with a mouse, and I click away until I’m happy with what I have.
And there is literally no concept art – I do it all in my sprite editor until I get what I want, and then I go from there. Doing the art for any of our games puts me into a zone where 20 hours can fly by, and I don’t know it. Thanks, ADHD!!!
As far as goals go: just to make art I’m happy with at the end. I tend to change up style per game to match what I’m trying to emulate. If anything, my art is heavily influenced by Capcom and Sega, but for Deathwish Enforcers, I stepped out of my safe zone to try something new. It worked, I think?
Co-Optimus: Art is a big part of a 2D game like Deathwish Enforcers, but several people contributed to the final product. Can you briefly tell us what everyone on the team did for the game?
Christopher: For sure! Reese Holland does a lot of design concepts for how enemies should work, some of the initial player design bits, and boss fights. But his major contribution is Level Design and Enemy Placement. He knows exactly what he wants and where he wants it (not a sexy joke!). He really nails the balance of the levels, which was much harder for this game than a single player game. [With] up to 4 people playing at once, it requires a lot more thinking!
Gryzor87 always does our music and always knocks it out of the park! His music is the soul of the game. He also does the majority of the SFX for the game. He knows exactly what I want every time and is always a pleasure to collaborate with!
[My wife] Lina did the female character voices for the game, and helped out with play testing. She always does all of the wheeling and dealing with the company, the planning and budgeting. [She’s] my greatest supporter, along with my kids! Sometimes [she] assists with the print art work as well.
Mission 2 development screenshot
Ben Hebb does a lot of the voices with me. He started back on Battle Princess Madelyn Royal Edition, did some more for Super Battle Princess Madelyn, and did the voices of the first 2 bosses in Deathwish Enforcers as well as the announcer voice for the final game trailer!
Edward Di Geronimo Jr. handles the Sony side of the ports and helps me when I get stuck with the Nintendo side. He’s also wonderful for keeping me up to date with what’s going on with the various SDKs for the different systems.
Matt Murray does all of the Trophy art and splits the fun for doing the cover art with me! I’ve been working with Matt since my HB Studios days – amazing artist and a real stand-up guy… He knows exactly what to do when it comes to style that matches a game.
We all test the game, but we also have a few people step in to do multiplayer testing as well – a huge shout out to them for helping us get to where we are!
Co-Optimus: Nice job, Monster Bath! Let’s focus on the game itself now. How did the overall idea come about?
Christopher: I was on yet another Clint Eastwood kick and had bought the full Dirty Harry set on Laserdisc (I love laserdiscs). In the middle of watching The Enforcer, a scene happened that I had totally forgotten about over the years. Harry is chasing a perp across the rooftops of San Francisco when they hit this amazing snag in the chase. The perp falls through a skylight and into a porn shoot. Pretty sure I spit my coffee all over myself when I started laughing – but the next thought was “why hasn’t anyone put this into a video game yet?!?” Next thing I knew, I was at my pc, drawing the first "Filthy Larry" (our parody of Dirty Harry) sprite set… Then a level happened.
Co-Optimus: Deathwish Enforcers features four playable characters who are parodies of movie stars from the 1970s. Larry and Chuck are clearly styled after Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson, but who are Diana and Cleo parodying?
Christopher: Diana started off as Emma Peel (Diana Rigg’s Character in the Avengers tv show), but I couldn’t handle her wearing a plain black catsuit. So I went back and watched the Austin Powers movies to get some clothing ideas and the Diana in the game was born. Cleo is a mashup of everything Pam Grier.
[The characters all play a little differently.] Larry is the slow, heavy gun [with the] best stopping power but a slower fire rate. Chuck and Cleo [deal] similar damage, but one has a better spread while the other one has better speed. Diana has two guns, so while her bullets do the least amount of damage, she fires the fastest. Powered up, she’s basically a submachine gun.
Co-Optimus: In addition to running, shooting, and jumping, Deathwish Enforcers features a slide move. Can you tell us about how sliding is used in the game?
Christopher: Sliding is your ticket to a perfect game. Regular enemy bullets can’t hit you, it gets you out of tight spots, and it makes you move at double speed.
Co-Optimus: Sliding aside, the heroes’ walking speed is a tad on the slow side. Did you try different speeds during development?
Christopher: The walking speed is slow for many reasons, but the main ones are that it forces you to use the slide, and it stops you from running straight into oncoming fire. Faster scrolling speeds also made it more annoying with more players on screen; the one at the back constantly stops the scroll from moving if someone is already rushing to the front… Sliding still makes this painful until everyone starts sliding at the same time, LOL!
But yeah, different speeds were tested. Faster speeds could sometimes cause the player to randomly vibrate, which I hate. [That’s] the downside of having pixel perfect scrolling. My playfield is 1:1 with the art then upscaled via another camera so [that] it doesn’t warp and look strange.
Co-Optimus: Speaking of speed, the game also features two exciting motorcycle levels. Can you tell us about the design and effort that went into those levels?
Christopher: Reese designed the enemy layout for all of that. The shooter AI is just the regular AI [that] I did for stationary enemies in the regular levels. The biggest thing here was all-new code for the players to move. So, the bike levels have completely different code for movement and shooting – and [unique] art.
Originally, the motorcycle levels didn’t exist in the game design, but I thought it was going to be too boring and samey if [we] just did all run and gun levels… I love the horse levels in Sunset Riders, so I came up with a plan to do the bikes and just did it… The art took much longer than the code did, but that’s [true about] the entire game, too.
Co-Optimus: An interrogation minigame also takes place between certain levels. Do you have any tips for succeeding at the minigame?
Christopher: Just alternate buttons as fast as you can. I find it all comes down to what controller you are using. Gotta have that strong forearm. Whoever wins (you have to fill the meter) gets a promotion. The first promotion [awards a] permanent silver badge (bullet speed and rapid-fire), and the second promotion [gives] the gold badge (stopping power).
Co-Optimus: One interesting aspect of the game is that while it starts out with players fighting crime on the streets, zombies and demonic enemies appear after a few levels, and then the final stage is a military-themed jaunt through the jungle. How do these wildly different themes fit together?
Christopher: Originally, I had a full story plotted out, but [we] scrapped it. Now [the game is] basically just my favorite bits of my favorite movies jammed into sections. When we changed the ending, it kind of lost the plot. I wanted to leave it open to new stages or a sequel, so I didn’t show the boss actually dying. Had we done the original ending, ol’ Big Boss X would have gone splat.
Co-Optimus: The variety of stages and enemy types certainly allows for a bevy of unique bosses. Which of the big bosses are your favorites?
Christopher: Boss 1, boss 3, and the “joke” final boss are my favorites: Boss 1 (Ron "The Porn King" Bigly) because he was stuck in my head since the second I started drawing the game (though he had blonde hair to start), Boss 3 (Basil the Flaccid) because I love my horror stuff, and Boss 7b because everyone needs a little **** rocket in their lives!
Mission 2 Update Preview
Co-Optimus: On the topic of bosses, when the prison boss is defeated, a previously unseen NPC comes out and finishes him off. Can you explain what’s going on there?
Christopher: That’s a bit of a nod to Dirty Harry having a bad time with partners. If I had [included] cutscenes with the game, it would have explained it with a joke at the end “damn… not another one.” But in the end, I didn’t bother putting those in to let speedrunners have an easier go at it. I may revisit the cut scene idea down the road, but it wasn’t needed. I think she was actually supposed to be the one driving the boat, but then I let the boat just be automated. Not like I can’t add her into the boat in the next update, though! (See the preview screenshot above. - ed.)
Co-Optimus: We know the game has some fun references to classic action movies, but what other types of references did you work in?
Christopher: Insanity’s Blade is the movie playing at the theater at the start of Level 3, and once you go in the house at the end of that stage, the pictures on the wall are the pictures from the original Battle Princess Madelyn. I did not, however, get Finn from Insanity’s Blade into this one.
Co-Optimus: Run-and-guns can vary wildly in difficulty. Would you say this one caters more to mainstream or hardcore players? Can even a casual player make it to the end somehow?
Christopher: It’s pretty much on par with the Sunset Riders arcade game. The Super NES port [of Sunset Riders] is slower and easier, I find, which a lot of people are probably more familiar with. The trick here is to find out which character works best for you (Chuck is best for beginners) and slide, slide, slide! I can do a lot of the levels without getting hit now, even on hard.
Co-Optimus: Deathwish Enforcers features 4-player local co-op. What kind of development challenges resulted from supporting 4 players?
Christopher: It wasn’t important, but I wanted to try it. The usual bugs popped up the same as they would in co-op if I forgot to change a “player1” to a “player2” in the code, etcetera, but the only really tricky bit was level design - not getting other players stuck. In reality, if [the game only supported] two players, it would have been 90% of the same challenges.
Co-Optimus: Now that the game is out in the wild, do you have any plans to release an update with bug fixes or other changes? What about letting players choose button layouts?
Christopher: We’re thinking about a massive update later down the line (because it’ll take me ages to do the art). Yes, I’ll do an alternate button layout for the Nintendo purist (I’m a Sega guy so button layout doesn’t bother me). But we might do additional content down the road. [I’m] revisiting the cutting room floor as well as sequel ideas [that] we may just add to this game instead of doing a full-blown sequel.
Bug fixes will be in the first update which should be coming in the next few weeks. Minor adjustments were made to the game from the players’ initial reactions: flashing of enemies when they are shot, the bottom face button will also act like “Start” to skip some screens, the countdown timer can be sped up by pressing the lower face button, an issue with the Render Texture not clearing on PlayStation is fixed, two minor graphic glitches are fixed, a “Shoot here” sign is added to the first ice cream truck, and some new [voice] samples [have been] added to make a few scenes even funnier.
Co-Optimus: Finally, is there anything you’re proud of about Deathwish Enforcers that we haven’t already touched upon?
Christopher: The sense of humor. While it’s not for everyone, it is for me. I’ve always been a parody kind of guy. I love the old movies that make fun of everything, including themselves. That’s what I did here; I took nothing seriously on the screen. I made it goofy, rude, and exciting – almost like a trip to the toilet after a hefty serving of Taco Bell. I love Mel Brooks’ stuff, the Airplane movies, and old shows like In Living Color: stuff that made me laugh – hard.
The voice acting was probably the most fun part of making the game; we’ll release the takes from recording the voices on YouTube at some point. The best part is probably listening to Ben dying laughing as I switch from one character to the next on the fly… And poor Lina didn’t want me in the room when she was doing her voice acting, HAHA!
Lastly, my team (Monster Bath Games) was bloody perfect! Everyone worked so well together, always on the same page... I’m extremely grateful to all of them for getting to the end of this project!
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Deathwish Enforcers supports 4-player local co-op. Digital versions sell for $22.99 on PlayStation and Switch. We'll have a full co-op review soon!