Q: The loot/cloth/items features, are there special ones clothes? , like in Diablo II where some have sets that combined with specific clothes give you more stats?
Do they have the same drop rate or the Obsessive Compulsive players *Cough* like me *cough* will have to spend hours killing thousands of enemies just for -that- one item? …Is the Dishwasher’s Hat one of those 1/1000 chance items you can get if you beat the final boss?
A: This was the question that inspired the other week’s post on our loot system. Find that post here! For more specific rare clothes, you’ll have to play the game.

Q: What are each of the characters’ personalities? Do they have a notable background(s)?
A: We’ve been gradually releasing more information on each character here on this very blog. Check out who we’ve covered so far:
Tommy Homicide
Lester Deth
The Rexicutioner
Skelekitten
Circe Bathory

Q: What is the motivation/purpose behind the conflict between Gorequaffer and Charlie Murder, on a more in depth scale?
Q: Do the members of Charlie Murder have personal grudges/rivalries with their respective counterparts of Gore Quaffer? (Singer vs Singer/ Drummer vs Drummer etc.) And if so, do they (band member rivalries) play into the story at all?
A: These are very good questions we would like to reveal in time. For now, please make due with the teaser we previously posted and the character information linked above.

Q: Will characters have different combos? Also, how big is the story? I know you guys said it’ll be told through music/rhythm sections through out the game, but can we get a little more insight/details into it.
A: Everyone has the same attack combos but the way they look is unique to each character. For example, a body slam for Charlie is an homage to the Izuna Drop while Kelly grabs the foe with her legs and flips them to the ground. Again, we’ll have to get to deeper story at a later time.

Q: Who was that guy in the karate outfit in the demo?
A: The karate outfit guy is a mysterious stranger who seems to be helping Charlie and crew. He can be seen showing the band how to deal with blocking enemies and making the best use of environment hazards. While he’s not acting as a guide, you can find him performing in his band at local bars.

Q: Will the game have hilariously bad fake band shirts? Like a shirt that says Brown flag or Living Reagans. (dead kennedys)
A: I considered not answering any questions I have to say no to because “no” is just so boring and saying yes to this would be so much more awesome. There are some graphic tees but sadly no band shirts at the moment.

Q: Which games most heavily inspired the studio’s games?
A: River City Ransom, Ninja Gaiden and more recently Dark Souls and Diablo III.

Q: How about a topic on how easter egg-infested some of your games are?
A: They wouldn’t be Easter Eggs if we did that, now would they? As for a hint on quantity, there’s not one on every screen or anything but there should be enough to keep the detail oriented entertained.
————————————————————————————————————–

Loot Heavy
Earlier this week on our Facebook page, I asked: “what do you want to know about more in-depth in Charlie Murder?” The results are in, and stats and loot have won!  So, here’s a little bit of depth:

The base statistics are Strength, Speed, Defense and Anar-chi. These can be increased through leveling. Each level grants you 5 points to distribute between the four base stats.

There are four equipment types that can also provide these stats: hats, shirts, gloves and relics. Only one of each clothing item can be equipped at a time but multiple relics can be stacked, and the relic cap is upgradable (takes a lot of practice to pin all those little trinkets to your body, you know). The clothing item stats and special attributes are generated by level, with tougher enemies dropping higher level gear. Relics have fixed abilities, like +5% attack/-1% defense, or causing all grab attacks to automatically poison enemies.

Knockback: Send your targets farther through the air on knockdown.
Cooldown: Increase the rate at which your Anar-Chi slots cool down (recharge).
Stun: Increase chance of randomly stunning an enemy. Stunned enemies can’t move or attack.
Crit: Increases chance of critical hits. Successful crits tack on elemental damage (if applicable).

Fire Resist: Resist immolation. Successful counter immolates your attacker.
Block to Cooldown: Blocking attacks increases the rate at which your Anar-Chi slots cool down (recharge).
Shockwave Falldown: Getting knocked down releases an elemental shockwave.
Shockwave Counter: Successful counter to release an elemental shockwave.

Fire: Immolate on crit. Causes death by fire if target has less than 25% health.
Frost: Freeze on crit. Frozen targets are slowed and can be shattered.
Rapid Jabs: 2x jabs. Fire off twice as many jabs, but jabs deal only 45% of original damage.
Stasis: Lock enemies in mid air when performing an air combo kick.

As for your other Burning Questions, hold onto your butts, we will answer them in next week’s Good Morning Gato!
————————————————————————————————————–

Q: Are there any old Ska favorites I’d recognize lurking in the backgrounds of Charlie Murder?
A: Definitely, but you’ll have to wait and see.

Q: How’d you come up with Charlie Murder?
A: This is similar to last week’s question so I’ll just pasta it here:
James wanted to make something that was half homage to coin-op brawlers like TMNT and Aliens Vs Predator, half a long lost spiritual successor to Zombie Smashers X . We’ve grown rather fond of the raw style that Charlie Murder oozes. We also love the character building.

Q: What qualifications and skills have you learned to make games, where would be a good place to get into Game Design, and could it be on the internet or not?
A: James obtained a master’s degree in computer science and practiced making games for a long time before becoming successful. Michelle has a bachelor’s degree in fine arts and also worked for a long time before getting to make games. We can’t specifically suggest a school to learn game design since we obtained more traditional degrees but there are folks out there who have gotten their education through game specific schools such as Digipen. Though you can always teach yourself, I wouldn’t recommend paid online-only schools.

Q: Are unicorns really just a one-time unfortunate mistake of a horse and a narwhal mating?
A: I’ve heard it said unicorns are the offspring of a horse and a narwhal but not as a one-time mistake. The taboo couple held a wedding the likes of its magnificence had never been seen before or after in all of eternity. Their precious unicorn babe with beauty and majesty unlike any other creature on this green Earth spent a time on land like its horse mother but eventually retreated to the sea to join their father narwhal as it knew the land dwellers could never understand and accept its beauty.

Q: What is your opinion on the game “Sacred Citadel?” Do you think it can give Charlie Murder a run for its money in the “BrawlPG” department?
A: I hadn’t heard of it before, so I can’t really fairly compare, but I do believe Charlie Murder to be one of the deepest brawlers I’ve ever played. Our game is just full of so much stuff! While Sacred Citadel looks pretty excellent, I hope we too will charm people with our 2D art style, unique characters and difficulty curve.

I have noticed a lot of reviews saying Sacred Citadel gets too easy, and I can confidently tell you Charlie Murder gets very, very hard, especially past the first playthrough. Kite, you fools!

Q: Do you watch ASAPScience?
A: Nope, can’t say we have. After looking it up I assume you ask because they use the words “burning questions” as well.

Q: Is it just you and Michelle that do the voices or are there other people in on it?
A: For Charlie Murder all of the voices with the exception of a few cameos are us. These cameos are Easter Eggs but should are fairly obviously not us. You will hear our voices throughout the world in the player characters, monsters and other miscellaneous audio clips. Now that I am remembering, in our recent “We Are Charlie Murder” video I mentioned I play every female voice in the game and James is every male voice. This isn’t entirely true. We also do a bit of gender bending with our audio.

Q: Was there something you wanted to add in Dishwasher games that you couldn’t (because of time/lack of programming knowledge/didn’t fit) but you added in Charlie Murder? Was there something you wanted to add to Charlie Murder but couldn’t, and you will use that idea for another game?
A: Dishwasher did hyperviolent stylistic killing very well, but didn’t do much else, and we’ve kind of regretted that. Charlie Murder sort of became a playground for experimenting with stuff we never quite figured out in earlier games, like environmental hazards, a bunch of neatly integrated minigames (particularly proud of our exposition-through-rhythm-minigame approach), and randomly generated loot.  Now that we’ve tasted this much complexity, it’ll be hard to dial it back for our next game…

————————————————————————————————————–

Q: Are there any downsides to indie development or is just pretty much everything in your life awesome?
A: Our survival depends far more on the success of our games than if we had “real jobs.”  We obviously don’t just get salary or benefits, but we’ve done well enough in the past that we can set ourselves up with that sort of stuff. Of course, we don’t have to worry about getting laid off, but if our company ever goes bankrupt, we’re out on the streets! (not like that’s imminent or anything)

Q: What is the creative process for you guys when working on something new, do you storyboard or just run with an idea and build on it?
A: Michelle likes story boarding and roughing out ideas ahead of time. James just starts making stuff and putting it in the game.

Q: Why did you make Charlie Murder? What do you love about it?
A: James wanted to make something that was half homage to coin-op brawlers like TMNT and Aliens Vs Predator, half a long lost spiritual successor to Zombie Smashers X . We’ve grown rather fond of the raw style that Charlie Murder oozes. We also love the character building.

Q: What kind of guitar does James record with? Effects? Secondly, where did the inspiration for the squirt gun/zapper weapon come from in DWVS? Thirdly: while this weapon is cool, I am woefully terrible with it…have any advice on effectively using it?
A: Fender Strat with a Boss ME-70 effects board or, more lately, just the canned GarageBand effects. The Dekkentozter was created partly to satisfy James’ friend Adam, who had been insisting on James somehow adding a squirt gun to every single game James made. James added in the toaster because science. The Dekkentozter works as a great way to turn some extra breathing space into a huge damage opportunity, but its poor mobility means you’ll want to use it as a secondary weapon and only when you’re almost entirely out of dodge. It’s also great for the Yuki/Creeper boss fight, turns out Yuki hates water.

Q: Did Michelle do the voice for Perfect Nightmare?
A: No, Michelle did not join Ska Studios until most of Vampire Smile was complete. Mary Morgan is the voice of Yuki and Perfect Nightmare.

Q: How many weapons there will be in the game?
A: It depends on what you consider a weapon. There are many objects in the world that can be broken apart and thrown as a weapon. There are close to 65 usable weapons in Charlie Murder, but they span about a dozen classes (e.g. lead pipes and claw hammers have the same attack, but their durability, damage adjusters, and special debuffs vary).

Q: Your favorite characters in the game.
A: James’ favorite: Charlie. Michelle’s: Skelekitten.

Q: Where did the idea for The Creeper come from? I’m guessing the movie Jeepers Creepers. And what’s going to be the most humorous thing in Charlie Murder? Oh and will Fernando make an appearance? I’m talking about the angler fish from ZP2KX.
A: The Creeper was initially just an enemy James drew up in Dead Samurai, but Vampire Smile introduced him as a character with background and a story, slightly reinventing him as more relevant to the Dishwasher universe. Design-wise, he’s a bit of an amalgamation of all things horror, though James has been drawing scruffy trench coat wearing shotgun wielding archetypes for as long as he can remember.

As for Fernando. Maybe? Maybe not. Not everything is set in stone and varnished just yet.

And finally…
Couuuponnnn!
Did you know that April is the anniversary of both The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai and The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile? It’s true. Even though the anniversaries were earlier this month, we’d like to celebrate a little late with a 10% merch discount code! Apply ‘dishwapril’ when you add anything to your cart to get that tasty discount. Check out all the goods over at our merch store!

————————————————————————————————————–

Q: How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll lollipop?
A: 3 or 42 depending on your point of view.

Q: In Charlie Murder, Do gear/stats carry over in drop in drop out multiplayer?
A: Yes. Gear and stats are persistent.

Q: There will be other playable characters in Charlie Murder?
A: For now we’re only mentioning the original five band members, but by wording it that way, we may have already given away too much.

Q: What are James’s inspiration for the music in Charlie Murder? I’m guessing Bad Brains and Melt Banana. Or did he just come up with it from past experience?
A: Stiff Little Fingers, Exploited, Sex Pistols, Black Flag… Gwar?

Q: What inspired the strange and Gothic art style you used in your games?
A: Much of Dishwasher’s style was influenced by Japanese movies like Versus and Machine Girl. Charlie Murder is a bit of Jamie Hewlett meets Return of the Living Dead.  Of course, at the end of the day our style is something we’ve spent years evolving, and we’re stupidly proud of it.

Q: Will Charlie Murder feature a way to delete character stats so you can start fresh if you want to?
A: You won’t directly have a way to clear your character stats but you do have five characters to work with, and, as we previously alluded, that number may go up. If you really, really want to start fresh, you can delete your save file or throw your hard drive in the lake, but the game warns against this (well, it used to).

Q: What is your all time score on Dish Challenge in DWVS? Also what are your favorite load outs for Dish Challenge?
A: James’ is around 170 million, but he swears he was closer to 700 million on the dev version, which has separate leaderboards. As for favorite load out, James’ is Yuki – Conviction and Cloud Sword and Michelle’s is Yuki – Conviction and Painkiller.

Q: What would you guys want a fan to ask you?
A: Why did you make this game?  What do you love about it?

Q: How many players will be able to play at once in Charlie Murder?
A: Charlie Murder is a 4 player co-op game. The 31-player Ska Band is a myth.

Q: Bradley Cooper visited Schenectady tonight. Did you privately stalk him and get him to say yes to creating an entire video game about his life – where in the end he gets his head cut off?!? haha
A: Uhm Nope. What? Ok, maybe a little.

Q:How do you feel about others getting your game art as tattoos?
A: It’s super humbling, maybe a bit daunting. What if we make a new Dishwasher game, and it’s horrible?

Michelle and James Play Video Games
It’s a little known fact that we don’t have the free time to be playing around but somehow we pretend we do and ended up making a YouTube series we’re fondly calling Michelle and James Play Video Games. We have only Dark Souls videos up so far, and they may be cringeworthy.

And finally to end on an awesome note, look! Dishwasher plushies!

————————————————————————————————————–