We put Zombie Cow’s Dan Marshall in the CGI hotseat to talk about a day in the life of an indie developer, upcoming releases and Hitler’s poo!

What do cartoon deathmatches in space, shiny block-based puzzling, Nazi dinosaur cyborgs and the fourth dimension have in common? Well, they’ve all been explored and exploited by Zombie Cow Studios, a Brit-based indie developer specialising in one major thing: FUN!

Starting out a couple of years or so back with cutesy multiplayer toon-shooter Gibbage, Zombie Cow are arguably more well-known now for their forays into adventure gaming, taking the indie web world by storm with two barnstorming little point-and-click adventuring gems – Ben There, Dan That! and Time Gentlemen, Please! – and winning the hearts of many gamers and critics who feel that in this modern world of ‘Space Marines and physics’ a little sense of good ol’ fun has been lost. We caught up with head honcho and adventuring daredevil Dan Marshall, to pick his brain about life as an indie developer and some juicy behind-the-scenes info.

Matt ‘Hot Fuzz’ Gardner (CGI): Welcome to Casual Game Informer! Here at CGI we like to think of ourselves as a pretty friendly bunch, would you mind taking a moment to introduce yourself and say hi.

Dan Marshall (Zombie Cow Studios): Hello! My name’s Dan, and I make funky little indie games for you to play in between big, proper releases.

CGI: In true CGI style we simply must ask one question to begin with…..what are you drinking? I’m guessing as the ale appreciators your cartoon alter-egos seem to be we can happily expect Coors Lite to be spat upon as the piss water that it is!

DM: I currently live near the old Young’s brewery in London, so 99% of pubs round here sell it. It’s an amazing, delicious pint and relatively low in alcohol, so you can drink as much of it as you like and not wake up with a bad head……Ben’s the only one who drinks that fizzy yellow muck.

CGI: Gotta love that real ale! Right, down to gaming business. Let’s kick off with a couple of classics…Do you have a favourite game of all time?

DM: No, not really. It’s a toss-up between Sonic, Syndicate, Lumines and Half Life 2. If someone could meld all the best elements of all those games together somehow, I‘d be a happy man.

CGI: So a game involving a hedgehog on speed that solves brick puzzles with a gravity gun?

DM: Something like that, yes.

CGI: Actually, I’d probably buy that! What are games are you currently playing at the moment and are there any in the pipeline that you’re really looking forward to?

DM: I’m really looking forward to Uncharted 2 – that pulp GOLD/ JUNGLE/ BADDIES genre has a very special place in my heart. Beyond that, there’s loads of amazing stuff coming out, it’s a great time to be into games.

CGI: Indeed, and it’s nice to see a small British indie development company garnering such critical acclaim. From Gibbage onwards, Zombie-Cow Studios has amassed a growing, loyal fan base; how did it all begin for you?

DM: It started with a lot of hard work, making games every evening and weekend for several years. Once the company had made enough cash, I could afford to stand on my own two feet and do this full-time. It’s terrifying!

CGI: Could you give us a snapshot of what an average day at Zombie Cow Studios is like?

DM: There’s no average day. It could be anything from spending the entire day in front of a monitor desperately trying to blag press coverage, to sketching out funny and/ or stupid ideas over a pint.

CGI: Cruxade, your Lumines-esque slice of puzzling awesomeness, was built using Microsoft’s XNA developer tools. How user friendly did you find this process and does this mean we might possibly see a Zombie Cow production jump across platforms in the near future? A Xbox Live release for your back catalogue perhaps?

DM: XNA’s amazing, and I thoroughly intend to use it in future. It’s incredible how easy it is to make something look pretty and shiny with even a fairly-basic understanding of code. The only problem at the moment is from the End User’s point, there’s a load of stuff they have to have installed on the machine in order to get the game running. But for Indies XNA is great, and opens up the Xbox as a potential platform, which is mindblowing if you’ve got the time to craft something special…

Having said that, I don’t think BTDT or TGP will be getting the Xbox treatment, but it’s definitely an exciting avenue to be looking at. I’ve always said as soon as the company’s able I’d like to remake Gibbage for consoles. It’s a great little game and I think it’d do really well with a makeover and online multiplayer…

CGI: Yep, Gibbage in HD sounds pretty good to me! Getting round to your adventuring double bill – the excellent Ben There, Dan That! and its sequel Time Gentlemen, Please! – what persuaded you to go from cartoon deathmatch to point-and-click affairs?

DM: Ben and I wanted to do something script-heavy, and try our hands at something that was an out-and-out comedy. It was also intended to be something that was the antithesis to the two years hard labour I’d done on Gibbage, so development was fun, first and foremost.

CGI: Both games are bursting at the seams with references aplenty – the LucasArts classics and the Sam & Max games are some of the more obvious ones we picked out – but what were the main influences in for you in creating these stories?

DM: I don’t know, really. We’re probably influenced form all over – British sitcoms of the 80s and 90s mostly, I should think.

CGI: The sheer volume of text in BDTD and TGP is mindboggling; what with all of the humorous item combo responses, it must have taken you ages to hammer out the scripts. What was the development process like on those two games and how did you and Ben come to write the text?

DM: Code and Art is what takes all the time. Designing the puzzles comes next, because that’s quite a lot of back-and-forth between Ben and I to get things right. Putting in the sound effects is a right pain as well, because sourcing, converting and implementing over 200 effects is a full-on job.

So relatively speaking, the script’s the easy bit. We hammer out all the jokes and lines pretty damned quick – I think by the end I was writing every possible interaction for an entire room in about a day. Maybe it’s because that sort of thing comes easily to us, I’m not sure, but there’s no big meeting where we’re chewing over every response, that’d slow things right down…

CGI: Both BDTD and TGP have received increasing acclaim in the press, but they don’t seem particularly geared towards a mainstream audience. Whoever thought Hitler’s bloody stool would come in useful for anything?! Was the choice of adult humour a conscious decision you guys made or did it simply develop naturally?

DM: It develops naturally. We’re grown ups, and when we’re sitting talking things through over a pint, anything that makes us laugh really hard is pretty much a shoo-in for inclusion in the game, even if that thing’s pretty fruity.

CGI: We agree…mature toilet humour will never lose its appeal! Speaking of acclaim, just how much of a difference has the positive reaction from the press made? Has it led to increased exposure for you guys?

DM: Yeah, loads of lovely press, lots of people suddenly aware of BTDT and TGP, which is great. Hopefully at £2.99 it’s a nice little impulse buy to keep you entertained on a Sunday afternoon.

CGI: Having played through both BDTD and TGP many times each now, it is clear that they are games built with great care and affection for the subject material and the genre in question. Do you have any advice for those who might want to follow in your footsteps?

DM: Keep it short and sweet. By-and-large, people don’t have time for great massive long adventure games these days. They’ll be playing yours with a walkthrough open in another window, keep that in mind at all times.

CGI: As a pioneering indie company on a small island in the North Atlantic, how do you find the British indie scene? Have you found there to be much support for the indie gaming sector in this country?

DM: There’s loads of us, and we often meet up for a big hug and bit of backslapping. It’s great.

CGI: And finally, after basking for a little while in the glow of press success following TGP and the non-existent great British summer we’ve had this year, what’s next for Zombie Cow Studios?

DM: Well, there’s going to be another chapter in the tooniverse of Ben and Dan entitled Revenge of the Balloon-Headed Mexican. I don’t know that there’s much to say about it at the moment- we’re still ironing out the details. Suffice it to say that Dan and Ben are in a bit of a pickle, this time facing off against a balloon-headed foe from Mexico [Ed. This isn't descriptive, apparently he actually has a balloon for a head!]… but you’d probably worked all that out already, right? We’re also going to be working with Channel 4 on a funky little sex education title. I can’t really talk about it, but it’s going to be brilliant.

CGI: Well, we’ll be keeping eyes peeled for both of those! Thanks so much for taking a couple of minutes to answer a few questions here. We here at CGI are big fans of your work so far, is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?

DM: BUY MY GAMES, please.

CGI: Thanks again, and all the best for the future!

DM: Thank you, you’re awesome.

CGI has reviewed both Ben There, Dan That! and Time Gentlemen, Please! and you can download both games now either direct from the Zombie Cow website or now via Steam for the price of a pint or two.