Available: USA: TBA UK: TBA Developer: UDS Publisher: CDV

Interview by: Andreas Misund

Hi, please introduce yourself and your company to our readers.

Hi, my name is Oskar Burman and I’m currently producing UDS new game “The Kore Gang”. We’ve in the past created games like “Ignition”, “World’s Scariest Police Chases” and “Futurama”.

Could you tell us about the storyline in The Kore Gang? What did you get the inspiration from?

Earthquakes have been rocking the City, when suddenly a huge drilling monolith bursts out of the ground shooting half kilometre up in the sky. The three Krank brothers, the leaders of this earth ship, make clear that they have no intention to spare anyone in their plan of exploitation and conquest, using this giant weapon of mass-destruction. Earth’s last hope for a peaceful future is the fantastic Kore suit, piloted by three friends, Pixie, Madboy and Rex. They have to enter the ship and try to stop the devious Kranks. But time is ticking down, and they have no idea what dangers lurk inside the ship. As the player explores the earth-ship from the eyes of Pixie, Madboy and Rex a fantastic journey unfolds.



How would you characterize the gameplay in The Kore Gang? What will you be able to do with the suit we’ve been hearing about?

Invented by Dr. Samuelsen, enigmatic explorer, the Kore suit is a robotic suit, which is designed to be used by a team of three. Depending on who’s in control, it will read and enhance the abilities of its user. Players can see the world through the eyes of the character in use and enemies react differently to the Kore Suit pilot.

Those are the people you’ll be working with:

First: Pixie. She’s an athletic girl of action who craves insane excitement. When she’s in control of the Kore suit the arms change into the best climbing claws ever made. These claws can shoot 100 ft and attach to nearly any surface. She can also use them to grab objects from far away, like the Moscovian brain creature. The arms can also transform into Spring Sticks to safely bounce over deadly and dangerous areas, like Gorgolian stomach acid.

Next: Madboy. Not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he is definitely the toughest. When he’s in control of the suit, the arms morph into gigantic fighting fists, ideal to knock out evil enemies. His Crush Punch makes walls crumble and guard towers break. His Punch Back skills, can punch bullets that are shot at him, so it bounces back at the enemy.

Finally, we have Rex, Madboy’s best friend and dog. He’s a tiny nervous Chihuahua with a loud terrifying bark. When Rex takes control of the Kore suit, it becomes a four-legged machine. This makes the Kore Suit into a super fast running tool. Like all nervous dogs, Rex has great and almost paranoid sense of hearing. Suddenly you can hear the slightest footsteps behind walls, creatures breathing in the dark, even the sounds of silence. You can eavesdrop on guards half a mile away and maybe (hint, hint) get a secret password or two. Other than peeing, dogs have a great ability to smell things others don’t. With Rex, you can literally see the stench from a stinky butt and you can track anything that stinks.



Judging from the screenshots The Kore Gang seems to be really colorful and organic – can you tell us about the art direction, what kind of style you wanted, etc?

Artistic inspiration was mainly taken from Tim Burtons work on movies such as “Nightmare before Christmas” but also from games such as Monkey Island and Earthworm Jim. We love twisted alternative worlds and this has been achieved with strong art direction and concept art of almost every object in the game. It all fits together perfectly and the players will find subtle details over and over again in the graphics when playing the game. There’s a lot of references to contemporary culture both in the art and in the storyline which will make players have as fun playing the game as we had creating it!

We really want to differentiate from the bulk of games that’s out there, we want people to say; “wow, this is different”, when they see our game.

What kind of villains will the characters face, and what tools of destruction can we use to get rid of them?

Well, there are so many enemies I don’t even know where to start. We have the Gorgul, which is about 20 times as big as the Kore suit with vending-machine sized teeth. We have the Boffum, a beast with bad neck problems who utilises a gun loaded with animal bullets called Poxies. And we have the Kranks, the most evil of them all, who is in charge of the Krank Tank and planning to kill all humans on earth.

But I think one of our favorite enemies is the Moscow, a light-red creature somewhere in between a cow and a human. Despite their huge head size, they are very unintelligent. The truth is that they don’t have a brain at all, but a little creature called Brainy inside the head controlling them. The Brainies are trained and educated by the Kranks and can not do any harm on it’s own but inside a Moscows head it makes the Moscow do evil deeds. There’s two ways of defeating this monster, either Madboy uses his fists to take the Moscow out, a rather dangerous project, or Pixie uses her grabbing arm, waiting on safe distance until the Brainy opens the head to look out, then Pixie can quickly grab the Brainy with her long spike arms and pull him out of the Moscow head. Now the Moscow enters a Zombie state and can easily be defeated by Madboy.




I’m assuming humor plays an important part in this game, so what kind of audio should we expect? Full voice-overs? How would you characterize the music?

Music and songs are an integral part of The Kore Gang with many musical parts, just like a Disney movie. We’ve even integrated this with the gameplay and by following the beat and listen to what the enemies sing you can easier predict when they attack, and defeat them more efficiently. Finding voice actors for those songs were quite an obstacle for us since no game before have featured songs in this way. We had to look long and hard for not only great actors but also for great actors who could sing! Not a common thing in the world of game voice recording.

Did anything especially funny happen during the development?

Well, it was a big surprise when the office was flooded. Suddenly a pipe connected to our coffee machine burst and water started to fill the kitchen area. While most of us people tried to hide behind our desks and some even lifted their feet from the wet floor continuing working, one of our self-sacrificing programmers ran into the kitchen and grabbed the pipe. He tried to stop the water by pressing his thumb to it but only soaked himself and some other people who at that point had lifted their lazy asses from their seats. In the end some clever designer found a tap that stopped it all but at that point several more people were soaked. Unfortunately no pictures are available from the incident.



How much is left of the development, and what are you currently working on?

I can’t comment on release dates yet, but currently we’re pretty much winding up the story and gameplay. The boss-fights are currently coming together and we’re finalizing all cut-scenes.

What are your future plans as a company? If The Kore Gang sells a lot, is a sequel a possibility?

Definitely but right now we’re focusing 100% on getting the game in place. What our heroes does after that is still up in the blue.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

The Kore Gang is the most sensational, magical, fantastical, fabulous, groundbreaking adventure you will ever experience on this side of the galaxy. Or did I say too much now? Anyway, just play the damn game...

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