THE WILD AT HEART

The Wild at Heart is a story-rich puzzle-solving strategy RPG published by Humble Games and developed by Moonlight Kids. Play as two precocious kids fleeing from a difficult situation in a mystifying and concealed domain. Trek through deep woods full of bizarre creatures and evil guardians. The Wild at Heart is available now on Steam, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One. Disclaimer: This feature contains affiliate links.

PAX WEST 2021 INTERVIEW 

Ankit Trivedi, Programmer of The Wild at Heart, with Brotuzak

Brotuzak: So what is the game you’re working on and what do you do within the game? 

Trivedi: Yeah, the game I’m working on is The Wild at Heart, and I am one of the programmers on the game. 

Brotuzak: If you could just give us a quick summary of the game? 

Trivedi: Sure! So the game is a story-focused adventure game. You start out as twelve-year-old Wake, who makes a plan with his best friend neighbor Kirby to run away from home. And they set off on their plan, but being that they’re just kids, they get lost pretty quickly. But soon after, they are met with some magical creature[s] of the wood called Spritelings. And the Spritelings pull them further into the woods, where they find an order of people who’ve been there for who knows how long, and they find there’s another story unraveling there, that a dark mysterious force is kind of leaking out of the woods, and the kids take it upon themselves to help solve that problem.

Brotuzak: I love that, that sounds awesome. Is there anything that inspired you heavily when creating the game? 

Trivedi: Yeah, so this is, I mean, all sorts of inspirations from all different types. And if you look at the art you know you can see a little like, Where the Wild Things Are, I mean… I don’t want to speak for artist Justin, but I know he said things like Cartoon Saloon... just a lot of childhood stuff that he grew up with. Mechanics-wise, it’s pretty heavily inspired by Pikmin. You have your Spritelings and you throw them around the world, they’re your conduits to the world. You can break down stuff, build up stuff, and the story is kind of based on the writer and the artist’s childhood, just kind of being a child, having to deal with, you know, real problems that we don’t expect kids to actually deal with. So that’s kind of our main inspirations.

Brotuzak: That sounds like some great games to live up to, I love it. And I guess if you could go back, change anything, revamp the game, would you do it? And if so, what would you change? 

Trivedi: Yeah, definitely. I mean, we’re really happy with kind of like how it turned out in the whole, I think. Personally, as one of the programmers, there are some internal systems I would like to have changed, just kind of done a different way knowing everything we know now. Like if I could go back in time, from what I know now, like this is exactly what the game’s gonna be, just focus on this and do it this way. And I think that would help out a lot.

Brotuzak: Just like more time that you could have spent on just what you wanted, instead of having to figure it out all the way?

Trivedi: Yeah, definitely, there was a lot of cut content. We had to kind of...our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, so to speak, and we had to cut a lot. And so if we knew ahead of time, like oh, this is going to get cut, we could spend more time on, you know, the stuff that made it in and kind of really polish it up and tighten it up a lot more. 

Brotuzak: And what’s been your favorite developmental process in the game? 

Trivedi: Favorite developmental process... I mean, really, the feedback of like, getting the Spritelings to play well like, how they feel with all the animations, sounds, and all the effects, and just that loop of putting in front of people and seeing how they respond to that has been really rewarding. 

Brotuzak: Awesome. That sounds— It sounds like the game’s gonna be a huge success. 

Trivedi: Thank you so much. 

Brotuzak: I think, you know, if there’s any shout outs you want to give out or anything else you want to tell us about the game, I’d love to hear it.

Trivedi: Totally. Yeah, just want to shout out the team. You got Chris Sumsky, another programmer, project manager. You got artist Justin Baldwin, an animator. And then our writer Alex. So just shout out The Wild at Heart, we’re out now on PC and Xbox, you can find us through Game Pass. And later this year we’ll be on Switch and PlayStation.

Brotuzak: Awesome, thank you so much. 

Trivedi: Thank you. 

 INTERVIEW BY

BROTUZAK

 

TRANSCRIBED BY

EMILY REYNOLDS