Finding more fun in the world of Fat Princess

Think of it as Diablo meets Fat Princess: A story-driven game powered by loot collection, leveling up your characters and a love of cake.

Fun Bits, a collective of developers pulled from Fat Princess creator Titan Studios, created DLC for the original game before turning to a new title: Escape Plan, for the Vita.

"After Escape Plan, Sony decided to allow us to take the Fat Princess franchise to the PlayStation 4," said Chris Millar, CEO of Fun Bits.

The idea was to create a game in the world of Fat Princess that was easy to pickup and play and a little Diablo-esque, a title designed for people who were interested in more than the team battle play of the original.

Fat Princess Adventures was unveiled during the PlayStation Experience event this past December.

Millar said the game was conceived in response to the community, not the developers.

"We would have loved to just create a straight sequel: Fat Princess 2," he said, "but this allows for us to create something much bigger and grow the franchise beyond the small game that started it all."

While that more obvious sequel isn't off the books, the team's focus right now is on Adventures, which has character classes, same-screen multiplayer and jump-in, jump-out play.

The game is a sequel, taking place after the red and blue teams have united in their fight to stop the Bitter Queen and her army, which is bent on destroying everything in the land.

"She has come in and kidnapped one of the princesses," he said. "And you have to save her.

"You're battling the queen, her minions, Ogurt the giant ogre. It's kind of exciting that we've gotten to explore this world more than we have before."

The end result, due out this year, is meant to be a six-to-eight-hour experience with the idea that players can go back in and replay the dungeons based on different goals, he said.

Millar says Adventures has the arcade action of the "satisfying button mash," feeling good as your character upgrades. It's a game designed to satisfy a very specific itch.

"I have an Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and most of those games are so huge and I love them," he said. "But sometimes I want to come home and play something when I have a half hour and not feel like I just chipped away a little bit of the surface. I want to feel like I made a little bit of progress with my character and I had fun."