Kickin' It: The Making of Anger Foot
I kick a door. I watch a miniature, knife-wielding Mickey Mouse, who probably spent too much time in the wrong parts of Poland, descend from a flight of stairs Snake-like, then make his little rat face touch the sole of my boot. In the next ten seconds, I kick a small army of these cheese-munchers while evading grenades being lobbied by a guy at the end of the corridor, kick a door that smooshes the guy behind it, grab his pistol, pop pop two other goons, descend three stories down in a quick succession of 180° strafes, while making shotgun-wielders eat molten lead, before succumbing their attacks. 63 kicks and three deaths later, I finally reach the end of the level. Not a minute later I (accidentally) eat a lizard, start tripping balls, and go on a toilet-kicking rampage for reasons that are difficult to explain for anyone who hasn't heard about Anger Foot before now.
If what you just read sounds like it was devised and created by a group of punks who get their kicks drawing penises in the back of history books and doing whippets behind 7-Eleven (while listening to Sex Pistols or whatever anarchistic-hyper pop/electro mashup kids are into these days) - well, that's sort of the whole point. The plot of Anger Foot is pretty much you, a total sneaker-head, going after four different gangs who stole your special-edition kicks for no discernible reason. At one point, you end up in a hyper-fun, three-phased boss fight that involves kicking a giant latex Daddy-looking pig into a pool of molten cheese and then doing the whole Resident Evil 4 lake monster-motorboat-chase-and-shoot thing, except now it has mecha-legs, no clothes and keeps crawling on the ceiling. There are a lot of toilet jokes...probably not enough.
And oh - the music. There's a song called "100 Coffees" and it makes you feel like your heart is about to bust if you cease kicking doors off their hinges at 160 BPM. It triggers something in your lizard brain that makes you want to jump into an Adidas tracksuit and start chain-smoking cheap Eastern European cigs (which, when you think about it, is the whole vibe of Sludge Life).
At the best of times, Anger Foot makes you feel like you're ten years old again, high on Dr. Pepper and The Ren & Stimpy Show, blasting demon after demon to cosmic dust in DOOM, with no knowledge whatsoever of ludonarrative dissonance or taxes. Then again, if you played any of Free Lives' previous games - the one, for example, where you control a big floppy penis dying to thrust the tip of your Johnson into the testicular anuses of other players (Genital Jousting); or Metal Slug-like shooter with all the iconic '80s action film heroes crammed into a single game where high-fives trigger slow-mo and everything is filled with explosives (Broforce) - this is what one should be expecting from Free Lives' take on Hotline Miami. It's a near-perfect compliment to edibles with a soundtrack that slaps; a palette cleanser from all capital-"S" serious games with infinite polygon count and a high-brow storyline full of characters with their own lore-rich Wiki entries.
What I'm trying to say is that Anger Foot, while not perfect, is so resistant to academic analysis that attempting to do so would be as fun as planning a wake, watching your little sister play Metal Gear Solid 4, or, say, spending five years developing a fully-fledged game based on some gags. And if one successfully did that (again: Broforce was conceived as a game jam project, as was Genital Jousting, which was originally titled 'Magnetic Assholes') without losing a sense of humor or the will to make games professionally, then who am I to say what games students should and shouldn't academically excavate for their Critical Theory and Analysis class?
After promises of free pizza, banter, and a light-hearted reminder that SUPERJUMP didn't receive the review key for Anger Foot (no hard feelings, Devolver - we still love you), I got to sit down with Luc Wolthers and Robbie Fraser, art director and lead designer of Anger Foot, two long-time members of Free Lives responsible for this rollicking shooter fueled by toilet jokes and blood-pumping EDM beats. Let's kick it.
SUPERJUMP
So Anger Foot has been out for a month now. How are you both feeling about it?
Luc Wolthers (Art Director)
It's tough to say. Obviously, [it] feels like a lot of excitement. Then, as the launch excitement settles in, it just feels like there's quite a lot still to do, so...
Robbie Fraser (Lead Designer)
I'm very proud of the game. I think the whole development process went smoothly. And it was nice to work on a game that wasn't incredibly broken at launch - which is how it often goes [laughs]. But yeah, launching a game always feels weird: you have this singular focus for so long and then you launch the thing, you're absolutely exhausted and you just don't know what to do with yourself... You feel directionless.
SUPERJUMP
How long does the post-launch euphoria usually last for?
Luc
Like a week?
Robbie
Yeah, if that...launching is obviously very exciting. But it's also kind of anticlimactic. You have this big buildup and then nothing really happens at the end - you just sort of stop working on the game. It’s a nice and very rewarding [feeling], even when it's not euphoric.
SUPERJUMP
Isn’t it similar to sending your first child to a school, like its first day of school? I heard that comparison from some developers [author's note: it was Edmund McMillen in Indie Game The Movie].
Luc
Yeah, I think there's something akin to that. Neither I nor Rob are parents, so we can't speak precisely to what that feels like. But I had a lot of nervousness. ‘What if they hate my boy?’, you know.
Robbie
It's definitely a lack of control, right? Like, before the game's out, you can still change things. You still believe you can fix it or whatever. But once it's out - obviously you can still improve things after that - then it’s kind of set in stone and that'll be your launch forever. And you don't want to mess it up.
SUPERJUMP
Does the feeling change after multiple projects? Or is it still a scary, thrilling experience?
Luc
They are such massive projects that I don't imagine this feeling will ever go away. There's nothing that you spend two or three years on and don't form a massive emotional attachment to...
Robbie
...Maybe if you work for a publisher and you just launch a game every two months – then it feels different. But with our dev cycles, we're spending multiple years on a thing. So it's long enough to care about the launch a lot.
SUPERJUMP
Can you tell me about the origins of Anger Foot? When and how did the idea for a game about kicking baddies and doors off their hinges originate?
Robbie
The origin story starts in December 2020. There was a Game Jam on itch.io called The Seven Day FPS Jam. We actually went away – we’ve been working remotely the whole year because of COVID. Then we went away together as a small group to do this game jam and we stayed in a little farmhouse. Luc and I just got talking about what we wanted to make – we hadn't planned to work together. But we were reminiscing about our childhood days playing SWAT 4. We wanted to make a game that had that same kind of feeling of breaching a room where you kind of know what's on the other side. You blow the door down and you shoot three enemies in one second, and you feel like John Wick. That was the original thing we were going for.
It was me, Luc, and Jay, who is our sound designer. And it kind of exploded from that point on. Everything fell into place in that first week: the core loop of the game and a lot of the spur-of-the-moment decisions for the music was just Luc having one YouTube track with one bass drop. That’s basically where the musical inspiration came from [laughs].
SUPERJUMP
So you built the original seed for what turned out to be Anger Foot in this game jam?
Robbie
Well, no. The original version we worked on for one week as part of the game jam - we released that on Itch.io for free. Then the studio closed for Christmas time, and when we came back - we just wanted to work more on it.
Luc
It was also doing very well on Itch.io at that time. We'd put it out at the beginning of the holidays and I think it got 20,000 downloads in the first couple weeks of being out. So when we got back, Robbie and I felt like, 'it's cool'. But would it still capture this much attention the second time? Then we spent another two months making another update. When we put that out, I think we got like 40 or 60,000 downloads at that point. We thought, ‘Okay, people are clearly into this and we love making it, so...’
SUPERJUMP
Can we talk about the inspirations behind Anger Foot? Obviously, there's a DNA of Hotline Miami and SWAT 4. What other games, films, or cartoons went into the project’s boiling pot?
Luc
You hit the nail on the head with Hotline Miami. It came in as an inspiration because we wanted to bring that kind of speed and also the die-repeat-die fashion of gameplay. In terms of other big inspirations, I was just obsessed with Eastern European music of all varieties and hip hop coming out of that space. And I was also obsessed with Tommy Cash, who's sort of a ridiculous eccentric character from Estonia. I wanted to put as much of that into my games as possible - but also broadly gesturing to Johannesburg, which is my hometown.
Robbie
I think Luc definitely had a lot of kind of strong ideas early on in terms of the music and the art style. I remember in the early days he was constantly posting stuff like music videos and being all like, ‘You need to watch this movie. You need to watch this music video!’ [laughs]
There's one game that I think acted as an inspiration, Sludge Life 1 & 2 by DOSEONE and Terri Vellman, especially the narrative sections that got added to the game later. There are a lot of inspirations for the world-building - not the world itself, but just making a very ridiculous, absurd world that has an internal consistency. Anger Foot, you know, has crime as the thing that ties everything together in terms of the world building. And that I think came from playing Sludge Life.
SUPERJUMP
Right! I wanted to say that it’s interesting how it feels like Anger Foot and Sludge Life share the same universe. You haven't mentioned any cartoons, however. Maybe there are any particular 90s cartoons that inspired Anger Foot?
Luc
It's hard to say. I definitely enjoy adult cartoons from the nineties, Ren & Stimpy-era cartoons. That feeling of the nineties cartoons actually comes from gig posters for EDM and the local events in my area that I was inspired by. So anything with melting text or toxic sludge effect. I was like: ‘This is what this game should feel like.’
SUPERJUMP
Is there any particular reason why Anger Foot has a three-second rule off after dying? I read some discussions online by Hotline Miami fans saying that even though having been taunted by cheeky dances is fun, some of the people were like, ‘Three seconds is too much to spend after each death!’
Robbie
I think it might just be that that's sort of how long it takes to reload the scene. There might be something where there's like a second it takes your camera to hit the ground... I don't think we would've intentionally forced the player to stay dead for any longer than we needed to.
Luc
Definitely didn't make that compromise to force people to watch the guys dancing... [laughs] Why did we do that, Robbie?
Robbie
Well, that, that is one of those kind of lightning-in-a-bottle things that just happened in the first jam where we just added it and, you know, I guess we thought it was funny that they taunt you after you lose. It's like a joke at the player's expense, but it's also funny. That kind of thing was such a hit that we realized that the tone of this game needed to be silly. There's a lot to compare with Hotline Miami in terms of gameplay loop. But in terms of tone – Anger Foot couldn't be further. We were also just tired of action games getting very dark and moody, they try to have these deep plots. We wanted none of that. We just wanted to make jokes and have the game feel joyful.
SUPERJUMP
When did the whole sneakers thing become part of the story? And how did you come up with the idea for sneakers with different effects?
Luc
The Sneakerhead thing just felt like a natural extension of a game that had an emphasis on kicking. Also there's sort of a joke in Huck and Gabber communities that everyone has to wear Black Air Force 1, which is a specific type of Nike [sneakers]. I felt like merging those two things. We're also living in the moments of Hype Beast culture where everyone's obsessed with sneakers. It felt like a natural extension of Anger Foot to make [sneakers] power up your character.
Robbie
I think it just made a lot of sense. Early on you wanted that Eastern European, drug den, gopnik aesthetic, and you had the Adidas tracksuit. It just made sense to have the sneakers as well, right?
The other thing about sneakers: it made sense because it's Anger Foot and it's all about kicking. It was the next obvious step to make it so that you could get different sneakers that have different powers... But then it also solved some metagame problems – [with] the core loop of Anger Foot it's very easy for that to become repetitive.
Plus, it feels amazing to simply kick a door. It flies off its hinges, splats a guy against the wall and you shoot him. But then you realize when you change that formula too much - it's not good either. We can't just do that same thing with a thousand rooms for 10 hours, you know? So different sneakers was a way of keeping the core loop that works, but changing [things] up and finding ways to keep the game interesting for a month or so.
SUPERJUMP
Do you have your personal favorite pair of sneakers? Not like bring your actual sneakers up and show them to me - which you can also do, I don’t mind... My favorites must be the Soul Suckers. Those bad boys are interesting to play with.
Robbie
I have a soft spot for quite a few pairs. So the thing with the Soul Suckers, or The Vampire Shoes as we call them, I like how much those change the gameplay. It's like things that were trivial now become really hard and things that were really hard now become trivial - it forces you to think differently. I often play with random sneakers on. But the one that always catches me out and makes me laugh is the big heads sneakers [Brain Expanders]. Those might be my favorite.
Luc
I think the Uppercutters or Flash Kickers have something that's just cool and fun about them.
"It was me, Luc, and Jay, who is our sound designer. And it kind of exploded from that point on. Everything fell into place in that first week: the core loop of the game and a lot of the spur-of-the-moment decisions for the music was just Luc having one YouTube track with one bass drop."
Robbie Fraser
Lead Designer
SUPERJUMP
I love Flash Kickers - they play like they came straight from some '90s Bruce Lee flick. Good fun! Anyway, I really enjoyed the variety of enemies: from Serious Sam-looking bomb heads to pigeons with S.W.A.T. shields that look like Goombas from that Super Mario Bros. film. Can you share where some of the inspirations or design ideas came from?
Luc
I wish there was a cool story for why every enemy looks the way it does. The truth is, the first character design [I did] was the purple-headed, blue-lipped pistol guy. I wanted him to look like a Muppet and I wanted him to be simple and silly. After that, I thought: ‘I can't make every character in the game look like this guy.’ Then I thought, ‘Okay, I'll just put animal heads on guys,’ which everyone thought was pretty funny.
From there on out I said to the guys, ‘Well, now I don't want the game to be about anthropomorphic characters: killing dogs and cats and crocodiles and what have you.’ I wanted to go for more silly heads. I have this big master sheet where I just came up with all the stupid heads I could think about. There were traffic lights, pizza, there was ice cream, the bomb-headed guy. Then there were a couple of animal heads distributed between them. The whole time I'd just go back to that sheet and be like, ‘What head haven't I used yet?’
Robbie
I think there was also a moment when you did the shotgun guy who has a hand as a face and he pulls the middle finger at you when he sees you. That just felt silly and like tonally right for Anger Foot. It's the kind of thing where you know they're bad guys and they hate you, but they're also incredibly dumb.
SUPERJUMP
Speaking about the enemy design, a lot of your games have boss fights - which kinda brings memories of playing like old school run-and-gun shooters like Contra. Do you have your favorite boss from Anger Foot? And which one of them was the most complicated to design?
Luc
My personal favorite boss was definitely the office boss. We call it Cat Boss. Robbie may disagree, but I'm pretty sure the hardest one to make was the sewer boss, which went through like four or five different versions.
Robbie
All of the bosses were a huge amount of work. Just pure pain and regret while we were making them [laughs]. But, you know, it was worth it in the end.
I love the third phase of the office boss - especially from a character design perspective. I love Pizza Pig as well. It's just this ridiculous, gluttonous pig with a giant pizza cutter. I love the animations and like the vibe he gives off. I mean, I love all of the bosses, but there's something about the stupidity of the chopper boss. It was just a van from a stupid music video that we liked. We're like, ‘Let's take that van and make a boss out of it!’ [laughs]
SUPERJUMP
Was it difficult to come up with designs for these bosses considering that the game revolves around, well, kicking?
Robbie
Yes. It was an absolute nightmare. The bosses were super hard to design. Mainly just because most games with boss fights have a less binary health system. With Anger Foot, because everything one-shots you, it makes it much harder to design boss attacks.
We experimented with a lot of things: like how Pizza Pig or the Trash Boss will try and knock you into the water rather than just straight up kill you. It was very tricky because there are only so many times you can make a boss charge at you while upping the spectacle each time, which is why we eventually ended up with a section where you drive a boat and there's a spider on the roof [laughs]. It got kind of ridiculous because we were just trying to keep it interesting and make it more spectacular. But it was really hard to design the boss fights and make them feel challenging and fun, but also make it so that the bosses are threatening. It's really easy to make something frustrating when they can just one-shot the player the whole time.
SUPERJUMP
You guys are known as the 'bantery' studio with a particular sense of humor that most games in today's climate couldn't pull off. Were there any jokes that you were asked to cut out by the publishers? Or did you do that yourself after playing Anger Foot hundreds and hundreds of times?
Luc
There's definitely a lot of stuff on the cutting room floor. There probably could have been a couple of toilet jokes on the cutting room floor, but...
Robbie
...all those made it in. [laughs]
Luc
Yeah, they all made it in. Our philosophy for making jokes is that we don't want everyone to be in on the joke, right? We don't want to attack any particular group or make any particular person feel bad. And like, two things happen that I love: One, it says that you're going to be committing crimes and that's fine. You should have fun doing that. But the other side of it is that everyone's bad and you're justified in killing them. It sets up so many wonderful jokes - how do you resolve the absurdity of a place where crime is the law, you know?
Robbie
I've worked at Free Lives long enough that when I've tried making games that aren't full of jokes, I just have less fun. I think it shows how much fun you're having making a game in the final product as well. When someone's like, ‘There should be a giant skeleton on a hamster wheel!’, instead of shutting that down - we just throw it in the game straight away. It’s much more fun to have a process where you instantly accept stupid ideas if they make you laugh regardless of how well they fit into the game. Genital Jousting was definitely like this. I think Bro Force has a lot of this as well, where it's like, let’s see if we can get away with making a giant collection of jokes and calling it a game. A lot of what motivates me in my day-to-day job is making my coworkers laugh and trying to enjoy the process. Three or four years is a really long time to spend working on something if you're not enjoying it.
"Our philosophy for making jokes is that we don't want everyone to be in on the joke, right? We don't want to attack any particular group or make any particular person feel bad. And like, two things happen that I love: One, it says that you're going to be committing crimes and that's fine. You should have fun doing that. But the other side of it is that everyone's bad and you're justified in killing them. It sets up so many wonderful jokes - how do you resolve the absurdity of a place where crime is the law, you know?"
Luc Wolthers
Art Director
SUPERJUMP
How many jokes do you come up with for a game on an average day? And how many of those actually end up being in the final game?
Luc
Whatever it is, it's too few. Need to crank up those numbers. [laughs]
Robbie
Obviously, we have a lot of jokes in the office. Sometimes people just get bored of what they're doing and they're like, ‘I'm gonna add a grenade vending machine to the game!’ The game gives you a license to just add stuff like that. Kane, our animator, was like, ‘I'm going to add dog vomiting animations because it's funny and it sounds fun to animate.’ So I'd say fairly frequently we just get bored of doing the important stuff and spend the rest of the afternoon adding one silly thing that you can do quickly that will be fun to do. Once you do enough of those, it becomes the vibe of the game as well.
SUPERJUMP
Do you remember your favorite joke from the game or, maybe the origin of that particular joke, that still cracks you up?
Robbie
There's one joke that I really like that nobody else except me thinks it’s hilarious. In the Office Wellness Center, there's a guy on the diving board, standing over a ball pit that’s obviously not safe, with a ridiculous name. You speak to him and he says, ‘I know it seems dangerous. But my mamma gave me my name for a reason - and one of my middle names is Danger.’ And then he says: [my full name is] Trevor Brokenback Danger Divingaccident McGee. [laughs]
SUPERJUMP
Sorry, Luc, but I’m with Rob on this one – that is pretty funny. That said, when you’re coming up with ideas for your next project, do you prioritize it being fun, humorous, and fast-paced? Or there are other key elements that you’re looking at in the project that you’re going to spend the next two years working on?
Robbie
I'd say it depends a lot on the game - not every prototype we make is funny. Some of them are quite serious. Sometimes we make games for the sake of making joke games because it's fun.
Luc
I think sometimes it's hard turning a one-note joke into a full game. So how we pick those jokes and games is really important.
Robbie
We probably don't start with the jokes for most new prototypes, unless that’s a big part of the game. With Anger Foot, the first version wasn't particularly funny. It had the dancing and character designs and funny ragdoll physics - a Free Lives staple. But aside from that, there wasn't a lot of humor in that. But it was a fun project and when I work on things, I just can't resist adding jokes if I can get away with it. The humor becomes more important as you work on it.
SUPERJUMP
Was there anything different about the development of Anger Foot compared to your previous projects?
Robbie
A lot of things. First of all, the teams were different. Free Lives is one studio. We all work in this house but there are sub-teams within it. So the people working on Terra Nil won’t be the same as the people working on Anger Foot, who aren’t the same as the people working on Stick It to the Stickman. Before Anger Foot, I was working on a strategy game, and then I was working on Genital Jousting and Luc was working on Gorn. You know, we hadn't actually worked together before Anger Foot. I hadn't worked on a big game with Luc before Anger Foot, but it wasn't like we were strangers. I still see him at lunch, it's still the same office.
SUPERJUMP
One of the things that Anger Foot players are having a lot of fun with is the challenges. I know that it's either one of you who’s particularly fond of The Pacifist challenges. Were there any challenges you came up with that you had to throw away for any particular reason?
Luc
It's a shame that Jem isn't here because he designed the majority of our challenges... But the one that really hurt me is this one challenge where you’re supposed to stomp on 60 or 100 bugs in 30 seconds. It’s a really fun level but we just couldn't figure out how to fit it in.
Robbie
There's a few of those things on the cutting room floor that never made it in.
SUPERJUMP
Do you have any favorites that made it into the final game?
Robbie
I do love the Pacifist challenges. I think there's something really fun about hiding from enemies. There's one level in the game I can’t remember the name of - our internal name [for it] is ‘Elevator Hell’ - I love the Pacifist challenge on that level. Otherwise, just the speed running: I find Anger Foot very fun when you play it fast.
SUPERJUMP
This game is kind of like a match made in heaven for speed runners. But moving on: is Shit City based on any real location that any of you had lived in?
Luc
It's sort of is and sort of isn't. A mix of a whole bunch of places. But a lot of it was inspired by my hometown, Johannesburg – [both] by the architecture style and just the general seediness. There's lots and lots of overlapping stuff: lots of Berlin in there. Lots of Eastern European cities in there, too.
Robbie
It's like a really bad part of Johannesburg... Except that they have subways. [laughs]
It was a joke that we thought was originally funny. In my mind, it's almost like a reference to all these film noir and old things where they talk about these bad cities, seedy undergrounds. And I thought it was just funny to just call it Shit City. As in that's the official name and not just like the nickname.
SUPERJUMP
What was the most challenging part about making Anger Foot?
Luc
The bosses.
Robbie
Yeah. I would say bosses were technically challenging and the least fun if that counts. So much work for such slow progress is how it feels to work on them.
SUPERJUMP
Was there any other aspect of Anger Foot’s development that was a pain in the ass for you?
Robbie
I want to say the story. It took us a long time to figure out what we wanted to do with the story and how to deliver it. Once we had it solved, it wasn't too hard to make it work. But for a long time that was an unsolved question that kept us up at night.
Luc
That's pretty spot on.
SUPERJUMP
And finally: what are you most proud of about Anger Foot (besides it being out in the world and played by people with bare feet)?
Luc
Fan art is huge to me. It makes me very happy to see people enjoying our characters and worlds so much that they would take the time to do some fan art.
Robbie
For me, I'm very proud of the whole game. I think it turned out really polished. I'm happy that we were able to ship the game and I still enjoyed working on it. I think often [during] the end of development, you can spend a year or two being like, ‘OMG, I just want to start the next game!’ It can get really tiring. And I feel the Anger Foot team is still having a very good time at the end of the project.
I'm also proud of how we kept the vibes and team morale high the whole way through. More than anything, that’s something I'd like to replicate on future projects.
The following chat with Jason "Jaybooty" Sutherland, the mastermind behind Anger Foot's killer soundtrack, occurred via email a couple of days after my initial interview with Robbie and Luc. Here's what Jason had to say about his contribution to the project:
SUPERJUMP
Is this your first commercial single-handedly composed video game soundtrack?
Jason Sutherland (Audio Designer/Composer)
I guess you could say it's my third. But Anger Foot is the only one that has a real focus on the music.
SUPERJUMP
Are there any points of inspiration for the soundtrack beyond trashy European EDM?
Jason
Not really. Before Anger Foot, I didn’t even really know gabber existed. Learning about it kind of inspired me. We watched a lot of Dominator Festival videos trying to find the hardest, loudest, and most extreme moments. I think that also carried through to the music a bit.
"I do love the Pacifist challenges. I think there's something really fun about hiding from enemies."
Robbie Fraser
Lead Designer
SUPERJUMP
What was your approach for tailoring beats for each chapter?
Jason
When the game started as a prototype, there was no concept of gangs and different regions. I wanted to keep the dirty distorted gabber style throughout because it felt fun to play to. The first batch of maybe 4 or 5 songs I made kind of dictated how the whole soundtrack would go.
As we introduced the different gangs and their regions, I tried to add something unique sonically that would describe the space or behaviour of enemies and the world they live in. It’s mostly based off mood. Things like similar production techniques on some tracks and specific sound palettes for different regions, also lots of specific reverbs. Even though there was a fair amount of consideration for making some tracks be inspired by a specific gang or region, any of the tracks can be played at any stage of the game. The idea was to group 5 tracks per region, but having them all play at random felt better.
SUPERJUMP
I really liked the way the music tones down and ramps up according to the intensity of the action. Do you remember who came up with this idea & did it affect the beats you were making in any way?
Jason
It was an idea I had quite early on to have an 'idle' loop for each song that plays before or after you’re faced with any action or threat beyond a door. It felt weird to walk around a room with no threat while the music was blasting with so much energy. Kicking the door also allows the transition from idle to action to be masked with sound effects of doors breaking, making the music feel like it’s restarting each time. This meant each idle loop had to have no melody and very little tone musically so that it could transition at any moment into the action music and allow that ‘drop’ (or door kick moment) to have an impact.
SUPERJUMP
Were there instances where you had to tone down any song because it was going too hard or distracted from the on-screen action?
Jason
I think almost every song has full sections which collide with important sound effects. It was really challenging to make music with that amount of energy without it taking up almost all of the audio spectrum. From the start of the jam, I approached the SFX with [the intention to] make it as over-the-top as possible, like each sound effect takes your whole attention. As the game developed and became so detailed it became really difficult to make sounds noticeable when everything was competing for your attention constantly. There are probably still lots of moments where the music gets lost depending on what song might be playing with what type of enemies on screen, but the audio sensory overload of Anger Foot is part of its identity.
SUPERJUMP
Since the soundtrack is the beating heart of Anger Foot, wasn't it a bit sad that most players won't hear more than 40% of most tracks because of the length and pace of the game's levels? (particular shoutout to "100 coffees", which is brilliant)
Jason
Thank you! I think for this reason it’s kind of cool to imagine each player having a different experience with the music in Anger Foot. There's some design consideration with the songs being longer than technically needed to complete a level. Most people play through levels super fast so they end up skipping through each section of the song quite quickly before there is any resolution, but might remember the short bits. When they play through slowly, the music still progresses relatively quickly and doesn’t feel as though it’s looping as much — that’s the idea at least. It’s hard to know how people will perceive it based on their pace.
I had so much fun making this soundtrack — feeling like an imposter in a genre I have very little knowledge or experience of. I’m really stoked people are happy listening to it.
We want to give huge thanks to Luc, Robbie, and Jason for taking so much time to chat and allowing us to peek behind the curtains of one of 2024's most unique releases. Stay tuned to the pages of SUPERJUMP for more amazing interviews!