Splasher is a fast-paced 2D platformer filled with humour and surprises where the protagonist rises against the authority of a massive paint factory named Inkorp. Armed with a paint cannon, he faces the dangers to save his companion, the Splashers, from ‘an ugly fate’ from their evil boss Le Docteur.
Romain Claude, former Game Designer at Ubisoft Montpellier who worked on games such as Rayman Origins and Legends left the game industry four years ago. Now Claude has announced that his first independent game is coming to PlayStation 4 on September 26.
As players splash their way through 22 levels, the cannon will grant more game play abilities such as sticking to walls, bouncing high in the air or even throwing dumb opponents into their own traps.
Claude said the concept of Splasher popped up while he was prototyping random stuff back in 2013, and the initial idea was to reproduce some of his favourite gameplay mechanics for training purposes.
Claude created a surface painting system when he thought about paints with different physical properties depending on their colour, when he thought of another well-known game with 3D puzzles using paints, when the idea was born to develop another 2D action-platformer.
Thus, Splasher was born and Claude worked on the code and level design for the game over the next three years, while his artist friend Richard Vatinel crafted all of its graphics and animations.
In Splasher, players have to combine different abilities skilfully to jump and fire liquid projectiles. Water allows players to perform primary actions such as activate mechanisms with small treadmills, damage enemies and also collect ‘drop coins’ by cleaning golden dirt.
Claude said he designed each level to offer exciting situations by paying close attention to both learning curves and difficulty spikes. He said he intended to make players feel like they are able to flow from the beginning to the end of the game.
However, this does not mean that the game is easy, but rather that the game needs to be fair regardless of the difficulty. “This game is an iron hand in a velvet glove,” he said.
The game includes a ‘Time Attack’ mode to challenge player’s skill in a level of their choice, plus multiple ‘Speedrun’ modes are designed with the leaders of a big French speedrun community called “N.E.S.”: Nerd Entertainment System.
Claude said that they know a lot about speed-running and includes world record holders among their ranks. Therefore, both have worked closely to optimize the levels with their pro tips, and have developed three speedrun modes, each one offering a different approach to the game.
