Barnyard Blast started as follows:
Long ago we had a meeting to discuss an in-house project. It was supposed to be a simple game that we could make on our own budget without a client.
3 programmers (including myself) and the CEO attended. 1 person suggested some idea I have forgotten (it was too complicated so we ruled it out immediately), another person suggested a top-down shooter, and I suggested a side-scrolling or top-down shooter about a pig escaping from a farm.
My idea won out and we started trying to implement it for PlayStation Portable. I had already stated that the name would be, “Barnyard Blast”.
It failed because I spent too much time fixated on the fascination with learning physics programming than I should have spent on just getting the job done. In a way I learned that I tend to prefer making engines over games, but I would not realize that until many years later.
It was my original concept but no one had specified what kinds of enemies we would face, and others had made the choice to fight fruit zombies.
So that got thrown into the game.
It was a long time between the original concept and actual implementation (2 years?) and by that time I was working on another project as a programmer.
Another designer who did not know the history behind the game had taken over and used his fanboyism for Castlevania to turn my idea into a parody.
That turned out fine. The programmer then borrowed his own parodied ideas into the game, and the artists also went with the flow feeling some creative freedom to barrow from other games.
Unfortunately no one ever thought of a backstory for all of this. I was on another project but when Barnyard Blast was nearing its finish I was called in to complete the story. They had actually forgotten that it was my game from the beginning and only called me in because I was the only native English speaker.
I was told that my own character’s name was “Robert Belmart” as a pun on Castlevania and that was it.
As I recall there was a Julius Belmont, so I named his wife Julia. The son? Cliffy B. was in the news a lot back then so I named him Cliffy.
That basically got the ball rolling for me to reference tons of other games.
Brandon Sheffield was a company friend and got hired to add some to the story. He added a lot of high-quality jokes and references. In fact, so did the CEO. He added the joke about, “The time for bread has passed, perhaps forever.” In my original script Robert simply looked stunned but did not say anything.
I remember when I originally submitted my first story he was cautious about the idea of having an ending that admitted this was the final level etc., but once Brandon was on-board and the jokes were flying everyone started to get involved.
In the end it was my concept from the start and mostly my jokes in the story, but honestly the story became even funnier with their input. Their input really improved the humor of the game and I definitely do not deserve full credit. Brandon made a ton of good jokes but I was really impressed with our CEO. I never knew he had it in him!
L. Spiro
