Content Warning: Landfall Game's April Fools Triumph
For the Content!
It would seem that an April Fools joke of a game has resulted in overnight indie success. Landfall Games, a beloved indie game studio, has a yearly April Fools tradition they call “Landfall Day”, where their devs put together essentially a parody of whatever game is popular at the time. They’ve parodied everything from DayZ to battle royales (Twice, with Totally Accurate Battlegrounds and Knightfall), and this year it would seem it’s Lethal Company’s turn.
Lethal Company is a game known for silly co-op shenanigans that seem to instantly translate into YouTube content- and Content Warning takes that idea and turns it up to 11, making being an influencer a part of the game mechanics. You and a group of friends take a diving bell to “The Old World”, a spooky map filled with monsters and traps entirely for the sake of internet entertainment value. With a single camera and 90 seconds of film, your group has to make the spookiest, funniest video possible- because your only source of income is Spooktube, and that revenue doesn’t come easily.
It's such a brilliant parody of both the horror genre Lethal Company tapped into and the loop of content creation in the internet age that it, somehow, wraps around to being an excellent game in of itself, though Landfall is no stranger to finding gold through satire. Previously, their first battle royale parody (Totally Accurate Battlegrounds, a riff on PUBG) found some success, enough that Landfall turned it into a full venture. It’s not as popular nowadays, but it IS legitimately good- and Content Warning seems to be turning out the same way with its initial popularity and engaging premise.
Typical Content Warning video result, featuring myself, @thatpocketninja, @squiddskipp, and a third friend who requested to remain anonymous
In the space of video game development, April Fools seems to be not so much a “joke” day, but a day that allows ideas to be thrown around that might not otherwise have been considered, which can lead to majorly creative leaps of faith. With examples like the Yakuza series’ pivot to turn-based combat, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon’s continued success in the midst of a floundering Ubisoft, and even Lilith Walther’s upcoming definitely-not-Bloodborne Kart (now known as Nightmare Kart), the idea of “joke turned legitimate gamedev venture” isn’t exactly new.
I actually had the pleasure of exchanging emails with Hanna Fogelberg (@thebirdmountain on Twitter), Landfall's Head of Community, who provided some insight into Content Warning’s development and the overwhelming response in the interview below.
1. What's it like to go to bed seeing some success, then waking up to find your joke game is a viral hit? Did you expect this at all, given the surprising amount of polish it has?
"We couldn't sleep to tell you the truth! Even if the team said good night at about 2am we kept texting the player numbers to each other throughout the night, we were very wired! We always knew there was the potential of the game going really well, there's something about the design and shareability of the videos you make that we knew could hit it big but it's still surprising it went THIS well."
2. How long did it take to develop Content Warning?
"Content Warning was made in about six weeks of active game development, but the idea came to us back in December!"
3. What were your main inspirations for the game? (Beyond Lethal Company, of course)
“Lethal Company and similar games were an obvious reference for the gameplay loop, we love that game! That said, what was most interesting to us was the core of the game - the filming and video creation. We were inspired by YouTubers and influencer culture, there's something interesting in people risking life and limb for content that we wanted to play off of.
Other than that, the vibes of The Older World were inspired by Junji Ito and a specific H.R Giger painting while The Over World references the Swedish children's book Pettson och Findus.”
4. How experienced was the dev team?
“We're pretty experienced, the Landfall team has been making games for over 10 years with previous releases being Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, Stick Fight: The Game, Clustertruck and Rounds to mention a few.”
5. How does this experience compare to the last semi-viral success Landfall had with a Landfall Day game? (TABG)
“This game outdid TABG in player numbers several times over! So it's hard to compare, this is by far our most viral hit to date.” 6. Any plans for the future of the game? Or just basic bug fixes and some more content?
“We will see! Currently, we're focusing on fixing bigger bugs and other issues but we already have some new content planned. We're kind of playing it by ear at this point, it all depends on how things go in the coming weeks.”
Some may attribute Content Warning’s success to multiple factors- the 24 hour free period, how it riffs on Lethal Company and the tropes it already employs, or even that it was “designed to go viral”- but you can’t deny that, even as an iterative piece, it still manages to find its own identity and already seems to have captured the content creation hearts of everyone who gives it a chance. Games like this, that aren’t reliant on micro transactions and are buoyed by the PEOPLE you play with, rather than the money that one must spend on it, are the hope- and, hopefully, the future- of the video games industry. You can find Content Warning (No longer free, but still very cheap!) at the link below: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2881650/Content_Warning/
MY FIRST ARTICLE LFG
