Straight from the Source: Aurélien Régard (AWAY: Journey to the Unexpected)

One of the games I was most excited about was AWAY: Journey to the Unexpected. The game promises a huge narrative with some interesting gameplay mechanics. I was stoked when I got the chance to talk with one of the developers behind the game, and get their thoughts at BitSummit.

The interview was conducted by PushDustin.

PushDustIn: I’m here with one of the developers behind AWAY: Journey to the Unexpected. Can you briefly introduce yourself?

Aurélien Régard: My name is Aurélien Régard which is a weird and unpronounceable French name. I’m making the graphics, code and the game. Yeah, I’m making a game called AWAY: Journey to the Unexpected it’s a ‘feel good FPS’ if that makes sense.

PushDustIn: How many people are working on this game?

Aurélien Régard: Mainly two. Right now we are finishing the ports, and some real coders are entering the game. So now we are five.

PushDustIn: When do you plan on releasing?

Aurélien Régard: This year, but we are aiming to every version finished so we can launch everything at the same time. We don’t have a very precise date, but it’ll be this year.

PushDustIn: So it’ll be released worldwide?

Aurélien Régard: Yeah, sure. Even in Japan. We are planning on translating the game in Japanese, Chinese, Russian…on every platform in every language.

PushDustIn: What’s unique about AWAY?

Aurélien Régard: Now is the time we are trying to sell the game…I’m not very good at that (laughs). Well, I guess you don’t have a feel-good FPS every day. This is a first-person shooter but you can talk with the other characters and try to recruit them. If you play your cards right you can play as different characters. You are talking to another guy and he’s a magician and stuff…and you want him to be on your team, you can see the world through his eyes. So if his glasses are broken, the screen will look broken. If you play as a tree, you will see as a tree. (PushDustIn laughs) If you can picture in your mind what the world looks like as a tree. It’s silly and cute, that’s something you won’t see in first person shooters every day.

PushDustIn: The art style looks like a bit like it’s influenced by anime…

Aurélien Régard: I grew up in France, and in France, we have the anime on TV…every day, every hour. Since we are super kid we are swimming in anime. As an adult, I’m trying to mix the thing I liked as a kid. So it’s kind of a mix of Japanese and French animation put together. You can see I’m French, but the people making the music are from Tokyo. We are mixing the two countries in the game.

PushDustIn: That’s fantastic. The opening really does look like a TV show.

Aurélien Régard: For the opening, a friend of mine worked with animation in Tokyo and he spent seven months, alone making the animation for the opening. I’m glad you like it as he spent a lot of time on it.