Here at Marooners’ Rock, we’ve been following Just Shapes & Beats since at least 2015. Yesterday, we even published our review that was written by me of course. You can click on over to a new tab and read it here on why you should pick up the game on Steam or Nintendo Switch! Heck, why not both! With all of that said, I got to sit back and chat with Mike Ducarme who is the Good Guy & Word Wizard over at Berzerk Studio.
Before the interview, here is a bit of information on what Just Shapes and Beats is. “Just Shapes & Beats” is a trippy couch-coop musical bullet-hell based on two simple things, there’s going to be Shapes, and some kick-ass beats, and you are going to die a lot. Wait, that’s three things, just go back and edit the first part to “three simple things” in your head. Now, let us dig into this interview about a game that has kick-ass beats and shapes.
Andrew: I’d like to thank you for jumping on in with this interview about Just Shapes & Beats. It was great seeing you over the past few years to check out those kick-ass Shapes and beats.
Mike Ducarme: No thank YOU for being awesome!
Andrew: For those new to the game, how did Just Shapes & Beats come to be?
Mike Ducarme: Just Shapes & Beats came from a random encounter, Lachhh bought a CD at a GDC party 5+ years ago and immediately well in love with it to a point where he started to try to think about how to make a game about it, that CD was Parallel Processing by Danimal Cannon. A year later, he entered a game jam in Quebec, alone, and decided to make that game. Reminder that Lachhh can’t draw for shit, so he made a game with just shapes, and beats. At the end, he had a game that was way too hard for anyone but him, nobody liked it, and somehow, we thought “I think we got something here”. Four years later, here we are.
Andrew: How did you go about choosing what artists went into the game’s soundtrack?
Mike Ducarme: It wasn’t so much as much as artists, as much as tracks. Every stage is unique and inspired/orchestrated to the track itself, for the past 4 years we’ve just been immersing ourself in chiptune/edm until we found tracks that inspired us gameplay.
Andrew: What is your favorite song in-game? (Mine has to be Close to Me)
Mike Ducarme: Other than Mortal Kombat, because seriously that’s like asking you who’s your favorite child but one of them happen to be Mr. Rogers, everyone seem to have different opinions on this, I know Lachhh’s favorite is T’ill it’s over by Tristram, mine is Close to Me by Sabrepulse, and Olivier’s is New game by Nitro Fun
Andrew: Are there plans for streamer interactivity?
Mike Ducarme: Like twitch plays and stuff? Not at this moment, maybe someday if the game has hundreds of thousand viewers daily on stream, but for now we’d rather focus on the core of the game.
Andrew: Will we be seeing possible DLC added to the game? Extra tracks for us to play and have that can extend past the 35 tracks in-game.
Mike Ducarme: it’s planned to do as long as we can sustain it, music is expensive
Andrew: What were the greatest parts of working on the game for the past few years?
Mike Ducarme: If you told us that someday we’d make a game to be played on a Nintendo and that they’d promote it, we wouldn’t have believed you.
Andrew: What was the most exciting thing you’ve seen during shows when you’d be watching people play your game?
Mike Ducarme: After like 30+ shows, I think the craziest thing to us is always watching people with their kids playing, on their shoulders and stuff, nothing like seeing 3 generations of humans enjoy something that you do.
Andrew: Is there anything you’d like to tell our readers and fans of Just Shapes & Beats?
Mike Ducarme: Just Shapes & Beats was all made possible with the help of the awesome musicians that contributed, please support them, visit their Bandcamps, follow them on twitter, see them at shows, buy their stuff. The game is just shapes without the beats, and shapes aren’t that exciting. Also please buy our game I don’t want to live under a bridge, winter is horrible in Quebec.
Thank you, Mike, for dropping on by to answer a few questions for our readers. You can find Just Shapes and Beats on the Nintendo eShop for Nintendo Switch and you can obtain Just Shapes and Beats on Steam over this sweet link here. For the time being, I’m going to jump back onto the game myself and play online. So if you end up buying the game I’ll see you online!
