David Kampa, Founder of JOOKITOOZ / A-RED • Interview Series

It all begins with a small step. Or, in the case of indie developer JOOKITOOZ’s A-RED Walking Robot, a small mechanical step with the aid of a simple yet effective wind-up mechanism. As it turns out, the soon-to-be platforming adventure will have all of the bells, whistles, and workshop-centric gizmos to entice us—the curators of adolescent toys—to explore a rich and unique world of thematic storytelling. And you know what? We’re super excited about it!

To unravel a deeper understanding of how the upcoming game works, I spoke with JOOKITOOZ founder, David Kampa.

A-RED Walking Robot has surfaced from out of the box, and we’re super excited to see more of it unfold over the coming months! Having said that, it seems that there’s still a great deal we don’t actually know about the bot-centric platformer. So, enlighten us. What is A-RED, and what inspired you to create it?

David: A-RED is my first game as a solo dev, I've been a 3D artist since 1996 working mostly on ads and cinema, and during the pandemic I found a remote job as a Game Artist so had to get deep into Unity and got in love with development, so decided to give it a try.

Edu, a good friend of mine told me he had a simple game idea for starters, a game where you pilot a realistic wind-up toy walking robot, I thought it was cool and doable as a first project.

I had a prototype ready in no time, but I learned the hard way that making a game is like making a modern car… Chassis, wheels and motor: piece of cake. The rest of the components is what gets you, so I failed “Failing fast” for first games and it's been about 2 years in development. But I'm enjoying the trip a lot as I'm learning everything from scratch.

Could you tell us a bit more about the setting in which A-RED takes place? This workshop that we’ve heard about — what will it include, and what sorts of “enemies” will be enclosed in its quarters?

David: The workshop is the place where A-RED was created; its inventor set a series of trials to test A-RED's capabilities, and the guy has some big warehouse.

The trials are made with everyday objects and stuff that inventors and DIY fans could have laying around repurposed as a trial. The point is to make the player feel that the tests could be real and A-RED is really there, like a RC toy robot simulator that you control with your gamepad.

The original idea was that: a toy robot simulator, but when I started developing I found that only walking was boring, so I got lasers to shoot stuff—who doesn't like shooting stuff? Then kept walking and shooting and got bored again so I made a jetpack—a tricky but rewarding improvement when you master it. Then I thought, every game needs an enemy, and made the dinos, they are dumb but hard to kill so you can choose to kill them or play cat and mouse with them. I prepared also a dark area, some mazes, long jumps, pendulums, balance tests, etc.. Then I thought about using electricity to do something; I made a custom electricity plugin and A-RED can get electrified for a while and use that energy to activate switches. For a while I got the idea of making mechanical spiders, but didn't know how to control the movement. I searched and found some assets and adapted one of them for the game, being physics-based forced me to modify some of the code as mostly assets are prepared for non-physics-based gameplay. Finally got the spiders working and made them electrified when killed so you can use them as a source to activate switches.

Also got into sound effects from freesound.org, modified and mixed some of them and made an adaptive music system that evolves as you progress. The music is made by Atsushi Moriya (DJ Guinzy), a very cool Japanese music teacher, great zouk dancer and DJ from Barcelona.

Also would like to say that for speedrunners, this game can be quite a challenge and somehow rewarding, as there's not always a single path you can take, or if you dare enough you can try to skip zones or take shortcuts.

This sounded like a resume of the devlog I wanted to do but never got the time to… (I got a daughter who is 1.5 years old, and only can work at night).

And I didn't explain all the time preparing marketing stuff that takes me away from development, preparing pitches, searching for a publisher, etc…

Finally went with Dojo Systems, a cool publisher from Spain, recently created but with a very experienced crew.

This “wind-up” mechanism will clearly play a crucial role in the gameplay, too. Mind if we ask how it works, as well as what needs to be done to maintain its functionality?

David: Well, wind-up toy robots need to be winded up to work, so anything you do unwinds the clockwork, walking, shooting, flying, etc…

Around the workshop there are Golden Windup Keys that you pick to regain energy and also save the progress—the everyday checkpoints.

As with any physics-based control system, learning the ropes can be somewhat challenging. Do you have any words of advice for those who are interested in picking up a copy of A-RED Walking Robot?

David: Yep, take A-RED as a new experience, it wasn't built with any other game in mind, so I don't know if it's a platformer, or a simulator, or an action, an adventure or everything mixed… It's the experience of controlling a toy robot with your gamepad.

A physics-based game can be a bit tricky at first, but once you get the hang of it, the game becomes a lot more enjoyable. Take your time getting used to A-RED’s balance in the early zones, and don’t get discouraged if things don’t go perfectly at first.

It's challenging, but will have at least 2 difficulty modes: “Let's have a ride” and “Are you persistent enough?” (Some people that tried the game told me that the hard mode is like Dark Souls with a tin robot.)

So, what’s next for the project, if you don’t mind me asking? Are we edging closer towards that all-important gold status, and are there still a few screws left to tighten, if you’ll pardon the pun?

David: Pun pardoned!

All the parts needed for the game are ready, menus, saving system, mechanics, leaderboard, etc… I only need to finish some levels. Right now I do dev runs that last about 25 minutes, I'd like to have at least 40 min with a low death count, but for new players I guess that this will be at least a four hour journey depending on the ability of the player.

We are also playtesting to catch bugs and get feedback, and very soon I'll open more spots for playtesters on Steam.

🤖A-RED has been officially announced on the PlayStation Store!🤖
💖Wishlist now!💖
🎮​ PlayStation ES: https://t.co/FRCpCK2OQn
​ 🎮PlayStation USA: https://t.co/PttIHAsqtk
🎮 Steam: https://t.co/vAbpAfR9P2 pic.twitter.com/cqgKfG46hC

— JOOKITOOZ / A-Red Walking Robot (@jookitooz) September 18, 2024

Apologies if we’re getting a little too far ahead of ourselves here, but would you mind telling us about some of the other projects, if applicable, that you’re interested in working on?

David: I have no other projects, only A-RED. I want to finish it, fix bugs when they come, and then think about a new game (I have a couple of ideas in mind) or a VR version of A-RED.

In fact, when I started developing I wanted to do VR games, got a crush on VR since I got the Quest 2, but for my first game and learning from scratch I thought that VR was too slow and uncomfortable.

Where can we stay up to date with A-RED Walking Robot? Are we able to share any social feeds, streams, or newsletters with our readers?

David: I'm very bad with social networks, but I post important news from the game on Twitter/X.

You can also check the JOOKITOOZ website.

Is there anything you would like to add before we go ahead and wrap things up?

David: I'm very glad that you counted me in for this interview and I hope that everyone that plays A-RED enjoys the experience as much as I'm enjoying making it.

And be aware that achieving things is never a bed of roses, you'll have ups and downs but if you persist you can make it. That works as well for life as for A-RED!

Thanks for your time, David! We look forward to catching more of A-RED Walking Robot over the coming quarter!

You can check in with JOOKITOOZ’s A-RED Walking Robot on X/Twitter for more information here. You can also wishlist the game on Steam here.