Bionic Chainsaw Pogo Gorilla's Creator On The Game, Lessons From Abobo, And More

Humor site I-Mockery has been producing online satire for more than a decade now. In addition to poking fun at bad movies and marking Halloween with an annual two-month celebration, the site's creators have produced a large number of games. Among those was the NES tribute Abobo's Big Adventure, which garnered a large amount of attention (and appreciation) from fans. I-Mockery has been hard at work on its next game, Bionic Chainsaw Pogo Gorilla. I spoke with site founder, writer, game producer, and all-around good guy Roger Barr to learn more about the project.

Can you describe the basics of the game, for people who haven’t been able to see it in action? 

Bionic Chainsaw Pogo Gorilla is the game that dares to answer the question that has riddled our minds for centuries: What would happen if you removed the arms of a gorilla, replacing them with chainsaws, and removed its legs, replacing them with a pogo stick? So there's this evil corporation that makes all kinds of random products that they test on animals – not like make-up and chemicals, but actual hardware. Well, one day they decided to test out their new lines of chainsaws and pogo sticks, and they had this gorilla to test 'em on. That's how Bionic Chainsaw Pogo Gorilla was born. Unfortunately for them, they didn't realize how powerful or how pissed off he would become. This is one seriously angry gorilla, and its arms flail around like a whirling dervish, stopping at nothing until everything in its path is a splattered bloody mess.

BCPG is a platformer with a fairly unique game mechanic in that your character is constantly hopping and/or jumping. You can use your pogo stick to land on some enemies and stun them while you attack with your chainsaws, while other enemies will die if you jump on them. Of course, some won't be affected by your pogo stick at all, but that's where the chainsaws come in handy. You have a standard melee attack with your chainsaws, but due to the wild nature of the gorilla and the way it swings them, you can simultaneously damage somebody in front of you and somebody behind you. Now, say you have an enemy that's a bit more out of your range. Well, in that case, you can use your bionic abilities to actually dislodge your chainsaw arms from their sockets and throw them at your enemies! Don't worry, they'll always return back to your body, for they're connected to some super-stretchy tendons that bleed a little every time you throw your arms. Yes indeed, the life of a Bionic Chainsaw Pogo Gorilla is a tortured one. You can even use one arm to perform a melee attack while the other is doing a ranged one. Keen, huh?

One of the most exciting elements of the game is our costume system. When you kill enemies, some will drop typical power-ups, but every now and then, one will drop a costume element, so you really want to kill everything in sight. In Bionic Chainsaw Pogo Gorilla, you can literally replace every single part of your body: your head, chest, legs, and individual arms. Once you've acquired enough costume elements, you can enter the "Costume Select-O-Tron" at any time and change what your character is. You see, the Bionic Chainsaw Pogo Gorilla is the default character, but with the costumes, you can become any number of ridiculous mutations. For example: you can have a merry-go-round for a head, a taco for a body, a beach ball for legs, a weed-whacker for one arm, and a teddy bear for the other. You have now become a Bionic Weed-Whacker Teddy Bear Beach Ball Taco Merry-Go-Round. You show me a person who says they don't wanna try playing as that character for at least a little while, and I'll show you a liar.

The levels are long, there are loads of different enemies on each one, and we have some huge boss battles for players to take on. You see, the Bionic Chainsaw Pogo Gorilla is just one of the many mutants this company has created, so he'll have to battle countless other mutant crimes against nature along the way if he wants to get revenge on the evil boss responsible for his current state. 

How did the idea for BCPG evolve? 

This is a game I came up with about five years ago, so it was one I had been thinking about for quite some time already, but we had to finish Abobo's Big Adventure before we could even consider developing it. I can't really explain how the idea came to me... I just get these weird ideas for characters and games, often when I'm laying in bed at night before I sleep. So, I write them down in a little notebook to ensure I never forget them, and I now have a variety of games I want to make (*hint* *hint* to any publishers out there looking to hire us). Fortunately, once Abobo was done, Adult Swim Games came to me and asked if I had any game ideas I'd like to pitch them. I immediately recalled the Bionic Chainsaw Pogo Gorilla character, and then began typing up a proposal for it. They later told me that they were sold on the idea based on the name of the game alone, and that's when I knew we were working with the right people for this project. 

Was BCPG always based on new characters, or was it originally an homage akin to Abobo’s Big Adventure?

There are homages to the classic games of yesteryear in most of my projects, and this game still has that old pixelated art style, but it's entirely based on new characters. Bionic Chainsaw Pogo Gorilla isn't a parody like Abobo is... everything in the game is an original creation. Still, it's a platformer with big boss fights at the end of each level, and I'm sure people who grew up on games like that will feel right at home once they get used to the gorilla's unique gameplay mechanics. Judging by people's reactions to the demo at Comic-Con, that's certainly the case - and we didn't even have the tutorial added in yet, so I think that's a real good sign.

What lessons, if any, did you learn while developing Abobo’s Big Adventure that you were able to apply to Bionic Chainsaw Pogo Gorilla?

Abobo was a huge labor, which is why it took us 10 years of on-and-off development to get the job done, but it was a labor of love. I guess the biggest lesson I learned was that if you have a new idea for a game that you're really excited about – as opposed to the 20th sequel to a game that you've been "assigned" to do by the head honchos at [insert mega-corporation name here] – it's going to be far less painful to work on it. Games are not easy to make, so if you and your chums are going to go down that path, it should be something you can really all get behind, because odds are you'll be working on it longer than you'd ever expect. So yeah, I guess that is the biggest lesson I took away from Abobo – asking yourself that simple question: "Is this the game I really want to make?"

The other lesson was exhibiting the game and getting feedback on it before its release. We exhibited demos of Abobo at the San Diego Comic-Con for years, and each time it gave us an incredible amount of valuable feedback on the game. I cannot express how valuable it is for a developer to be able to watch complete strangers pick up and play your game for the first time. It really helps you see what works and what doesn't work in the game, so you can make the necessary changes before you unleash it upon the world. Plus, as a developer, seeing people laughing and smiling while they play a demo of your game can seriously help re-energize you about a project you've been working on for a long time. That's one of the tough things about game development – you work on these projects for so long without any feedback from the general public, so you just hope that they'll like it as much as you do. So yeah, we did exhibited a demo of Bionic Chainsaw Pogo Gorilla at SDCC, and once again, the experience proved to be invaluable.

How many people from the Abobo team are working on BCPG? Is it still an I-Mockery production?

Two people from the Abobo team are involved on this one – myself and Louis (the artist). Nick (the programmer) was busy working on the Chibi Knight game with his daughter, so I got in touch with my friend Jacob who had programmed a variety of games for us in the past, including MonsterTime, Santa Fu, and Goon: The Game, to see if he was up to the task. He's been doing a fantastic job on Bionic Chainsaw Pogo Gorilla so far, and Louis is doing some of his best work to date as well. As for I-Mockery, if I'm involved in the game, it's always an I-Mockery production to some extent, because it'll have my brand of humor in it. Bionic Chainsaw Pogo Gorilla is being produced exclusively for Adult Swim Games.

BCPG is being published in a traditional sense, which is different from Abobo’s donation-based model. How has it been working with Adult Swim Games?

Horrible. They treat me like I know what I'm doing, like my ideas are wonderful, like I can do no wrong, and they're paying me. What the hell is wrong with them? Don't they know that they're supposed to be looking over my shoulder every second of the day, constantly telling me what to do, telling me horrible things like, "Hey bro! Wouldn't it be funny if that gorilla broke the fourth wall and started singing 'I Want It That Way' by the Backstreet Boys to you every time you beat a boss? Let's put that in the game!" and generally berating my entire existence? These Adult Swim Games people really need to get their act together.

In all seriousness, I honestly don't think I could've found a better group of people to work with. I've done projects for other developers and it always felt like too many people were getting involved in the creative process, but with Adult Swim, they're very hands-off. It's nice (and rare) to have that kind of trust from a company who's paying you to make a game for them, so that's something we're not taking for granted. We're trying to make something really special and enjoyable. They've also given us loads of fantastic feedback on the game. You can tell they truly love video games, and when you're working with people like that, they're gonna send some great ideas your way during the development process.

(Psst! Yo, Adult Swim Games! I've sung your praises to the public, now send me that $10,000,000 check like we agreed upon!)

Do you ever plan to revisit the donation model in a future project? Did you consider it a success?

We definitely consider it a success, but not because we made a lot of money in donations... it's because we saw so many people laughing and having a great time with the game. Seeing them playing it at Comic-Con, seeing the countless "Let's Play" videos of Abobo on Youtube... that's the stuff that will always stick with us.

That said, we've already talked a lot about doing a new game with a donation model in the future. We would really like to do a Kickstarter at some point, because if we could raise enough money in advance, our team could dedicate 100 percent of our time to making an awesome game. With Abobo, we had to work on it in our spare time, while we spent our days at jobs or working other game projects. You can still get a great game done that way, but development will go a lot faster if you don't have to worry about things like, "Okay, this is gonna be a great game when it's finished, but how the hell am I gonna eat and pay rent during production? Guess I'll have to take on a full-time job too." So yeah, it's definitely something we'll be looking into again at some point. I think a Kickstarter could be a lot of fun, because we could come up with some really awesome reward tiers, and that could be almost as fun as designing the game itself.

Do you find that making  a game funny is a similar process to writing on a satirical website?

Not really. Writing articles on I-Mockery.com is a completely different process. I'll find some obscure product from yesteryear, an insanely cheesy b-movie, or the latest oddball Halloween candy, take some photos and/or videos of it, and then start writing about why I think it's funny. Articles take me anywhere from several days to several weeks to complete, so the turnaround time is fast and you get feedback from viewers quickly.

With game design, it's up to me to create the entire world and story, rather than report on it, so it's a much longer process and requires a lot of planning. I grew up in the golden age of gaming, when companies like Sierra and LucasArts ruled our computer gaming lives. My all-time favorite game is "The Secret of Monkey Island," and Ron Gilbert's brilliant humor in that game is what made it so timeless. Games like that are what inspired me to make some of my own, and to this day, "Trick-or-Treat Adventure" is one of the games I'm most proud of, because it was an homage to those classic adventure games.

You can have a game that's really fun to play, and that's great 'n all, but if you have a game that's fun but also peppered with laughs and general ridiculousness throughout the way, you can have something truly memorable. So that's what I try to inject into every game project I work on; the kind of comedy that makes people immediately think, "Okay, I can tell these guys had a lot of fun making this game."

Have we seen the last of Abobo and his adventuring?

Who? Oh, Abobo! Riiiiight. Well, it's hard to say, but word on the street is that the three members of "Team Bobo" have been talking about him every now 'n then. Maybe they're talking about making another Abobo game sometime, or maybe they're just talking about the hospital bills they've incurred from Abobo's daily beatings. It's hard to say. Granted, I'm one of the three guys who makes up Team Bobo, so I should be able to answer you, but it's hard to think clearly when blood is seeping from your ears due to Abobo using your skull as a makeshift stepladder.

When is BCPG coming out, and on what platforms?

It will be coming out this year and will be available exclusively on Adult Swim Games. We're also hoping to add extra features / levels / etc. to the game and port it to some other platforms further on down the road. I'd love to have the game on Steam and/or on some consoles, but all that is up in the air at the moment while we focus on finishing the game. I'm really excited for everybody to see the finished game, because a lot of love has gone into it, and I'm sure it will show when people finally get their hands on it. I gotta say, I'm extremely happy with how BCPG is turning out, and I never imagined this ridiculous little character idea could have ever blown up into a game this big. You can follow Bionic Chainsaw Pogo Gorilla on Facebook and I'll also be posting updates about it to my Twitter account @imockery.