Adventure Time, Regular Show use gameplay to support humor

Adventure Time: Explore the Dungeon Because I Don't Know and Regular Show: Mordecai & Rigby in 8-Bit Land players will see both shows' personality reflected in gameplay, Joe Fletcher of developer WayForward Technologies said.

We spoke with Fletcher, who serves as the producer on Adventure Time and the associate producer on Regular Show, during PAX Prime 2013. Fletcher said while cutscenes offer the most obvious link to the shows, gameplay had to be "a little bit wacky" in order to keep humor running outside of the narrative.

During our demo with both games, we saw this manifested in power-ups and items. As Mordecai in Regular Show, we picked up a mullet power-up that gave us special attacks. In Adventure Time, we used a "kitten gun" that blasts enemies with cat heads.

Adventure Time and Regular Show are both the product of heavy collaboration between WayForward and the show creators, Fletcher said. J.G. Quintel (Regular Show) and Pendleton Ward (Adventure Time) check on their games frequently to make sure they deliver the correct attitude. While Quintel and Ward also decided what kind of game each would be, WayForward worked on balancing style. This posed more of a challenged on Regular Show, which combines platforming, space shooting and a top-down exploration — each world represents a different genre.

"Getting all three of the styles into the game — platforming, space shooting and the overhead — is relatively easy," Fletcher said. "We can get that to work together. But actually getting all three balanced, and getting all three fun on their own right was a little bit rougher. It took a lot of work."

The solution, Fletcher said, was to treat each as a separate piece.

"We made sure that [each style] works by itself," Fletcher said. "Once we figured that out and had each of those types running, then it was a matter of level design where we were pushing those pieces together."

Regular Show: Mordecai & Rigby in 8-Bit Land will be available on 3DS. Adventure Time: Explore The Dungeon Because I Don't Know is expected to launch for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U, Windows PC and 3DS. Both games will be available this fall.