The action-oriented platformer and roguelikeHave a Nice Deathfrom French indie game developer Magic Design Studios is readying its final release. The company is also releasing a new video miniseries on the game, which will introduce Death as the protagonist, the setting, and some of thegameplay aspects ofHave a Nice Deathto the public. While the game has been available in Early Access for a year, only now did the developer reveal that there was a chance at one point that Pump Quinn could have dethroned Death as the protagonist
Have a Nice Death’s premise is fairly simple, albeit original and hilarious. Death is the corporate boss at Death Inc., which is a company with a lot of paperwork from collecting the souls of the dead. However, not everything is right with the company, and Death needs to show the Thanagers and Sorrows who’s the boss in the afterlife. While this has been the crux of the game’s story for a while, early on there was a possibility that Death was not the main protagonist of the game.
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Have a Nice Death: Designing the Characters and the Protagonist
At Magic Design Studios, thedesign of the game started with the characters.Have a Nice Death’s Creative Director Nicolas Leger came up with the early prototypes for Death and a few of the other characters. These included a pumpkin character that further down the production line was conceptualized into two distinct characters found onHave a Nice Death. The game’s adorable, Death-idolizing intern Pump Quinn is one of the characters that spawned from the original pumpkin character.
The second one is the lazy albeit well-meaning skull-faced employee and union representative, Jerry, who negotiated a breakthrough deal in 1988 by securing a coffee machine in the break room. Before Magic Design Studios split Pump Quinn and Jerry, however, the original concept was considered for the main protagonist role ofHave a Nice Death, as revealed by Meredith Alfroy.
“Nico had been working on animation tests for Death while also researching character design for other characters, including a pumpkin character (who players know as Pump Quinn). Although Pump Quinn could have been a charismatic and endearing main or secondary character, the team decided to keep Death as the main and only player due to the established story and core gameplay. However, we did incorporate Pump Quinn as an NPC role. As the team began to create a corporation world, Nico continued to research character design and created a trainee character with a skull face who was a big fan of Death. However, we ultimately decided to make the cute pumpkin character the trainee and the skull face character, Jerry, became the lazy/syndicated employee.”
This, however, didn’t come to pass, and the team instead decided to keep Death as the only playable character. The decision was made on the basis that the team had already established the story and core gameplay elements surrounding Death as the protagonist. At this point, animation tests for Death had already been started, and thus Death managed to hold on to the protagonist role in thisTim Burton-esqueroguelike.
Have a Nice Deathis available now on Steam Early Access and launches on March 22 for PC and Nintendo Switch.
