Lynked: Banner of the Sparkis a new hybrid-genre title that blends brawling and town building for a uniquely cozy-yet-combat-filled adventure. It’s the debut title from developer FuzzyBot, a new independent studio founded by industry veterans Max Spielberg and Tatyana Dyshlova, who previously served as directors at EA and DICE respectively. The upcoming release was announced at Gamescom’s Opening Night Live, and Spielberg and Dyshlova made the journey to Germany to discuss the game further.
InLynked, players will join the Unibot resistance and go onroguelite-style missionsthat pit them against Combots - evil robots set on dominating the world and eliminating all organic life - in hack-and-slash combat, which they can take on solo or with friends through multiplayer co-op. Back in town, they can also build up their settlement, befriending town residents and improving their character between comnat runs. Though there’s no release date for the final version of the game, it will enter early access October 22 on Steam.
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Screen Rantinterviewed FuzzyBot Co-Founder and Creative Director Max Spielberg and Co-Founder and CEO Tatyana Dyshlova at Gamescom to discuss the gameplay loop, the title’s biggest inspirations, and how the title balances its coziness with its combat.
The Founding Of FuzzyBot & Lynked’s Origins
The Benefits Of A Small Team & The Cozy-Combat Blend
Screen Rant:This game is a really interesting hybrid of genres, and I feel like in recent years the term"cozy" for gamesgets tossed out more and more as this vague definition. Can you talk about what made you want to specifically pursue that as a core aspect of this game, and how those aspects fit into the overall world and storytelling?
Tatyana Dyshlova: We started this studio during the pandemic, and there wasn’t a lot of games where you could hang out but also have action combat. Animal Crossing was a cool place to hang out, and Hades was a cool place to have a lot of action. But we wanted something that felt like a party game where you had moments of doing things together that were meaningful, and then still having most of your gameplay with your friends that was around coordinating, succeeding, fighting bosses. But the core concept has come from Max.
Max Spielberg: A lot of the things around my favorite aspects of cozy games - I would say short bursts of activities. In games like Animal Crossing or even Stardew, there is a lot of downtime where you’re waiting for things to happen. For me,in those moments I was like, “Well, I wish there was something else I could go do, activity-wise, that could contribute to the cozy side of the experience.“Being also an action player, for me that was like, “Okay, it would be awesome to go run out, do some raids or whatever, and come back with materials that I could then use to fund the other side of the operation.”
That was our starting point. As we developed the game further, as our team was more action-oriented as developers, we realized we didn’t want to do a pure 50-50 split. We wanted this game to be an action game to introduce action players to elements of the world of cozy, where coming back from a run where maybe you’ve failed, and you’re a little bit frustrated, you could have extra activities to power yourself up in the next run as well as calm down and go fishing, harvest some of the plants you were growing to make some money, et cetera, and have both sides of that experience feed one another.
Obviously, you guys both have a really storied history of working in games at EA and at DICE. Can you talk a little bit about how you feel like that AAA experience has helped you parlay into the creation of the studio and spearheading this new project together?
Tatyana Dyshlova: Me and Max have a very clear split. I come very much from the production and operations, and people management side. For me, many developers of my experience have come to realize it’s so much about the team. In AAA, one of the things you get in your career is you feel like you stagnate at some point if you don’t want to become an executive, so a lot of the studio’s around creating a place where people can be forever creative.
Becausein a smaller studio with experienced people, you may give them so many different places to stretch, and flex, and bring out what really drives them, which is creativity in creating great experiences for players. I think most of my experience is around just bringing the best out of every single person that we bring to the studio, allowing them to maximize their creative contribution. That’s what I think contributes a lot of heart to the game - long story short, it’s all about people.
Max Spielberg: Yeah. In my career I’ve worked on many different sizes of teams, maxing out at over 600 people. Tatyana and I worked together on a project where I think we really found our flow at around that 30-person mark. It was just a really fun experience working with people who are at the top of their game in terms of talent, but also able to move very quickly and make decisions fast, anddue to a smaller size you’re going to have to stretch out a bit more and dabble in areas that are not your core discipline. After having experienced that in the world of AAA, I think that was our light bulb moment of, “We could do this outside of this system as well, and just have a really fun time doing it.”
In terms of inspirations, I would love to hear more about what inspired you to embark on this indie studio journey in the first place, as well as when it comes to other games and other pieces of media that are inspiring you on this project.
Tatyana Dyshlova: For us, the initial group of six people we got a chance to work together with at an Electronic Arts studio in Los Angeles - it used to be called DICE L.A., it’s now called Ripple Effect - we had a chance to work on a few projects and found a lot of really great synergy. Everybody worked well together in our respective fields, so I think at some point we saw an opportunity to break out on our own and work with people who we really trusted and really enjoyed working with. That was really the initial catalyst, is just getting that opportunity.
Max Spielberg: Early on, myself and Eric [Kozlowsky], our art director really conspired, thinking about the game design. In terms of combat design, we referenced a lot of hack-and-slash games from the ’90s, sothe old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Final Fight, that was what we were going for with that crunchy style of combat.
As we were talking about that, Eric and I were discussing other games at that time that were part of our childhood that are mainstays in the world of gaming. Mega Man, of course, is a big one - we’ve got robots on our game, that’s an easy go-to to think about, Sonic the Hedgehog. A lot of those games from that time influenced the visual style of the experience and going for a different feel than a lot of rogues you see today, or combat-based games you see today, which tend to be a little darker, a little more gruesome.
Which are great, and I’m a big fan of those games as well, but I think for us,we wanted to try to stand out in a way that was a little brighter, a little more uplifting. Even though, tonally, our game has that uplifting feel, we’re also couched in what is essentially a human apocalypse, so we’re riding a line there, but we also think that just adds to the interest and the charm of the world.
Lynked: Banned Of The Spark’s Core Mechanics
The Game’s Combat, Village Hub, & Future Growth
Can you tell me a little bit about how the village hub will fit into what players are doing? You mentioned having that place to come back to and have it be cozier that way, and I’m curious how that fits into the overall combat threat. Is this an area that’s untouched by that?
Max Spielberg: Yeah, narratively this is a secret haven, so it is untouched. It won’t be raided in the middle of the night or anything.We wanted to be very deliberate about having a safe zone that you could spend as much or as little time in as you want and not worry about things kicking off, and that’s what our combat areas are for. But what you’re doing in your town beyond just hanging out, there is a number of activities that can basically further advancement of weapons, your character’s powers, collection of resources, et cetera, that can be mixed with resources that you find out in your combat to then be able to craft new and better equipment.
Or, if you’re more of that cozy player, and you want to have a space that you may really decorate, you’re free to utilize those elements of the game to build. But it’s also something we knew for our action audience we didn’t want to force upon players, so it is one of those things that it’s there for fun; if you want to mess around with it, there is a lot of options. Butthe core of our experience really is utilizing the functionality of the town to power your character upor create upgrades for yourself or new kit options that you can bring out to the combat runs.
Can you talk a little bit more about this overall combat threat that’s facing the world and how players will be dealing with that?
Max Spielberg: Are we talking narratively or systemically?
Both.
Max Spielberg: Narratively, the game takes place in the year 3000. Basically, humans have regressed to a point at this time where there is very few of them left, and the new, main society on planet Earth is robots. In our story, there was a fracture at some point between two sides of these robotic characters, and they’re at war with one another.
One is trying to, essentially, remove all organic life from planet Earth and create a very robot-only planet, and the other one that you’re going to be working with wants to be part of Earth’s ecosystem using sustainable-energy concepts, and wanting to live among what was already there before, and trying to preserve some of that. As you’re fighting, you’re basically fighting as a human for your own survival. But you’re also fighting for what the Unibot faction - which is the characters you’re working with - are aiming to do as well, which is partly their own survival, but their own place within planet Earth.
In terms of mechanics, the way that the game flows,it’s a little bit different than your standard roguelite where you play the first boss to the last boss in a single run, and as you master it you can finally make it to the end. We’ve chunked it up into more of a mission structure, so each mission allows you to choose how much time you want to play the game.
We’ve got everything from a 10-minute mission to a 40-minute one. Where this is going to take place, what bosses are going to be there, what enemies are there, are there any mission mutators? We have things that can change up the aspects of the game mode, change difficulty levels up and down.We really wanted to give players a choice in how they experience the game, depending on if they’re playing solo or if they’ve got two friends ready, and also depending on skill level.
One of the big things early on was players of a higher skill level that want to play with friends that maybe aren’t as good, they can get together and almost teach each other as they go through, so elements of sharing weapons, so the more weapons that I create the more you have access to as we play with one another. You’re going to be going through a linear story, going through these missions, but then it also starts to spread into all the side content that you can experience. We have a generator which just creates infinite missions, sothere is a lot of replay valuein that alone, but the main story arc does take you through a number of story-based missions that have context.
The combat itself, how deep does that side of the systems go in terms of mastery and that sort of thing?
Max Spielberg: There is a mastery to the combat, it’s based off of timing and understanding enemy patterns, when to dodge, all that kind of stuff you would expect in a rogue. We do let you power your character up to a certain point, but we want players to not just completely overpower the enemies at some point. I always find that when the difficulty becomes too easy, it’s less engaging at some point.
I want to allow players to, if they feel things are getting too challenging, they can have a route to overcome it, based off of things that they can do in the town and powering themselves up at skill points and what not. But also really being able to learn and master the various weapon sets or the wire, which is our grappling hook.
It’s our key combat mechanic, which supplements your core attacks. You’ve got your wire, which is your way to manipulate characters in the environment. you may pick up objects from the environment to use as projectiles, you can drag characters around,you could even pick up enemy Combots to throw into traps, into each other, off cliffs. It’s great, kinetic and dynamic in that way, how you can utilize that.
Then you’ve got your main weapon in which we have three attack styles per weapon: you have your light combo, your heavy attacks, and each weapon has its own unique, special attack, which is a little bit more more flourish and usually offsets what the weapon isn’t quite as good at. We also have unlockable Spark Powers, which add to the team dynamics of the game. Of course, you can use all of them solo, but some of them promote co-op play - casting shields for your team, healing, that kind of thing.
Then, as you develop deeper connections by completing side quests for the various characters back at your home base, you’ll eventually be able to access those characters in what we call support links, which is basically like a summon or an ultimate attack which we perform once per run. This could be anything from massive damage down to something that will rez all the characters on your team who had fallen.
At the end of the day, the kit can get pretty big, and you have a lot of options to continue to switch in and out.Even during our play tests, we’re constantly seeing new combinations, and that’s before you even start getting into the mid-round upgrades and things like that that add even more into the kits.
That was actually another thing I was curious about, is how the relationship-building aspect fits in. Because obviously, as a cozy trope, you think of it as more like, “I’m going to marry this person.”
Max Spielberg: There is no human-robot marriage in the game, unfortunately. [Laughs] you’re able to befriend every character that you rescue. There are two types of characters that we have that will join your town. You have your main cast of Unibots which all provide some gameplay element: Smith, he is your weapon smith, he’ll build you new gear, Chip will upgrade your wire, things like that, and then, of course,The Banner of the Spark, which are key story members that each bring their own set of upgrades to the town.
Then, along the way, you’ll rescue other villagers. We have almost 200 of them; there are 168 Unibots, very fun-styled, visually. You can perform small tasks with them throughout the day, and they’ll provide you with extra currencies and skill points. Beyond just being fun to run little errands for, their purpose is really to give you that, “Hey, I just need five more skill points before I move on to my next upgrade. I can work with this character and do that really fast before going on the next run.“Again, all of our activities are built to do in the 15-minute time period between combat runs, so those characters supplement some of that as well.
When this game comes out - I know it’s coming into early access later this year - what are you most excited to see players reacting to once they do get their hands on that early access?
Tatyana Dyshlova: I would say from my side, my favorite part of it is how much cool moments there are, both in the kinetic combat and things that you didn’t expect to happen where things just perfectly line up, so I’m just excited to see how players will gravitate to those things.
But also, since we’re defining a new genre hybrid, I think we’re also very curious to see what the action player base will want in the town, where we have opportunities to expand there; then, how do we grow the combat from the core? Even in our early play tests, I think we have a really strong combat system.
Also, people really like fishing. [Laughs] There is an interesting overlap between people who like fighting and fishing. For us,a lot of the concept is it has so much room for growth on both sides, and we want to grow it with the players in mind. We have our thesis now, we’re ready to put it out. We’re finishing the last thousands of bugs. But then when it’s out there, we’re just very curious to see the feedback that we get, and then what we can provide for the players to keep them engaged in the world and in this genre hybrid.
Max Spielberg: I’m super curious - and we’ve seen this a bit, like Tatyana said, with our play tests - how action-first players are surprised with themselves on how much they enjoy spending time in the town. I think off the bat, some people are like, “Well I don’t want to play that type of game. It’s not for me.” It’s completely fair, butI think once they get their hands on it and try it out, there’s elements that we see people coming back to that they’re surprised that they’re interested in, beyond even fishing.
I want to also put out there that we wanted to verify that players are never forced to play the game in a way that we determined. That’s the other interesting thing: watching players spend their time in the different aspects of the game. The game is pretty big for a smaller studio.We’re constantly surprised at how many hours are playable in the game beyond the repeatable stuff, so very curious to see where players are spending the majority of their time, and the types of kits they’re building, and the types of crazy combinations of passives and actives that they’re going into combat with.
What’s the meta going to actually turn into? Where can we help facilitate and build off of from that point in time? Lots of points that we’re real interested in players checking out.
Are you guys definitely foreseeing a lot of evolution between this early access and the final version of the game?
Tatyana Dyshlova: We’re coming out with the initial two-thirds of the game, and thenwe have another whole ending to the game- similar to how Hades did their early access - that we’re actively working on. Part of the game is around working with the players to see where we’re going to build it out and catering to that, but part of that is also taking them in the story to the final ending.
Lynked: Banner of the Sparkwill enter early access October 22, and can be wishlisted now onSteam.
