Henry Sterchi and the rest of Team Dakota put together some FAQs to help you get the full scoop on Conker!
Why bring Conker into Project Spark?
It all started with a Twitch stream and a tweet. Phil Spencer had just been on our Twitch channel playing Project Spark games people made and got a tweet earlier on asking to put Conker into Spark. Everyone thought it was a great idea and that started to get the ball rolling.
The team was really excited because there was a lot of love and nostalgia around Conker (funny enough, one of our designers was even a tester on the original way back). Conker broke so much new ground back in the day. From breaking the 4th wall, to the quality and richness of the characters and world they created, to the humor, and what was one of - if not the first real “reluctant hero”. Conker was fresh and the tell it like it is, no holds barred, let’s hit the taboos head on attitude felt real and genuine, which spoke to a lot of the players and team members.
Ultimately, we looked at things like the art style and aesthetics of the world and felt that would be a great fit, but it was the freedom of expression and unleashing the unexpected that made Conker a perfect fit for Spark because that is really what Spark means to our creators. Conker is that personified!
What about the mature nature of Conker?
We currently don’t have our ESRB rating back so we’re not sure what this will be rated, but the focus was to be true to the Conker spirit. This meant self-deprecating humor, jokes referencing the original, game jokes and parodies, partying, some adult language, acting quite silly, a bit of violence, and a lot of poo of course. Conker has always had a wit to the humor and we focused a bit more on the layered joke approach this go around, but there’s definitely some shock value moments and a bunch of “I can’t believe he/they just said that” types of laughs.
Keep in mind, Project Spark has a robust curation and moderation system so users that want to have only curated and safe feeds can easy keep things locked down, while others can have access to it all.
So what is Conker’s Big Reunion about?
The Conker play experience, titled “Conker’s Big Reunion,” is the first episode in an ongoing series of playable experiences in Project Spark. “Conker’s Big Reunion” takes place 10 years after the events of Conker’s Bad Fur Day and finds Conker in need of reconnecting with his old friends. The original creator of Conker, Chris Seavor provides his inimitable voice to Conker and the experience features familiar characters and challenges.
Is the teaser trailer representative of the game and Content Pack?
So you should know this entire teaser trailer was made with the Project Spark creation tools. It's important to us that everything we build for Project Spark is something any one of our creators could accomplish as well. That means this trailer does pull from some of the Conker assets that will be made available through this pack. The teaser trailer is not representative of Conker's Big Reunion gameplay. This was a little teaser to show off Conker within our creation tools and to re-introduce him to the public. You'll be seeing a lot more on the Content Pack and Episodic Adventure over the coming weeks.
How has Rare been involved in the process?
Our Creative Director, Henry Sterchi, has worked with Rare for a long time, dating back to his time at Nintendo and the original Donkey Kong Country. So there’s a lot of history there to the point that he even helped provide some gameplay feedback on the original Conker. Some of our Team members visited Rare in the early days of Project Spark and demoed the game for them, which they really dug and loved the ability to create. When the opportunity for Conker came up, we reached out and shared our general plan to make sure we were on the right track.
As we got near E3, we knew we needed the original Conker, so we reached out to Chris Seavor, who was no longer at Rare. When we shared the plan and showed him what Project Spark was, he was excited to bring in Conker. Rare gave us all the original assets we’ve needed, including the original music. Pretty much everything from tone, to scenarios, to music, etc. Rare has given feedback and help all along the way, it’s been tremendous. They really care immensely about the characters and giving them to the fans to create with.
When can we expect future episodes?
First we want to focus on getting episode 1 right. After that, we’ll look at our calendar and evaluate it for our release frequency on episodes. We also have Champions Quest episode 2 in the mix, which will come out in the next few months.
How long is episode 1?
It's about an hour long experience. More if you want to explore all the nooks and crannies.
When does Conker launch?
April 23!
How much will it cost?
We haven't settled on a price yet. We can say Conker’s Big Reunion: Episode 1 and our Conker Creation & Champion Pack will be available separately or together as a bundle. Episode 1 will be priced in the range of other episodic games. Our creation pack will be one of the largest we’ve ever released in Project Spark. Between all the characters, props, effects, paints, sounds and music, we’re at 200-300 assets for users. So that will be priced accordingly.
What’s included in the Conker Creation & Champion Pack?
We’ll have a Conker champion character you can play in Crossroads and Champions Quest adventure. It’s a really funny fish out of the water experience with him. You’ll also have a very large creation pack that includes characters, props, effects, music and sounds. It’ll be more than enough for creators to make their own Conker games however they want to. There’s so much stuff in there, it’s going to take the next month to show it all off to our creators before release.
Does this mean there will only ever be Conker games in Project Spark?
We're hoping Conker's Big Reunion in Project Spark leads to other experiences down the road. What Conker does in Project Spark doesn't limit him from appearing elsewhere.
