For this latest instalment of our 1V1 interview series, I was lucky enough to be able to talk with Giuseppe Enrico Franchi, Game Director for Carmageddon Rogue Shift at 34 Big Things. Carmageddon Rogue Shift is releasing on February 6th on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC via Steam.
Alongside this interview, we have our full review of the game, which is available here. Our resident racing game expert Gyozo had this to say – “Carmageddon: Rogue Shift is a mechanically satisfying destruction-based racer, offering high-octane and chaotic races combining bold weapons, lots of zombies and lots of crunching metal. Its roguelite twist offers high risk scenarios where you gotta think twice about excessively daring moves, but it also feels like something introduced partly to mitigate the game’s limited depth and variety.“
Please note this interview has been lightly edited for clarity, but you can watch the full thing over on YouTube.
Jon: This time around I have the distinct pleasure to chat to Giuseppe Enrico Franchi from 34 Big Things. He’s the game director for Carmageddon Rogue Shift, a new take on Carmageddon with roguelite aspects. Thank you very much for taking the time out of what I’m sure is a very busy couple of weeks in the run-up to launch. We’ve not seen a Carmageddon game in a while. How did 34 Big Things end up with the franchise?
Giuseppe: “Hello, thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here and to take a break from development once in a while. Even though you’re completely right, it’s a pretty hectic phase at the moment. It was funny, because we were exploring the chance to work with some IPs after our latest title, Without 2. And Carmageddon was one of them because TSQ Nordic held it since 2018, if I’m not mistaken. So we entered the Embracer group in 2020, and from there the conversation started. And when the game popped up, we basically accepted immediately because many of us have played Carmageddon in our youth as I’m sure you have. In one case, it’s funny because one of the other three founders of the company, Giacomo, Carmageddon was the reason why he got into making video games in the first place.
It’s like we have come full circle. It could be, that we’ll become obsolete after this game, we don’t know. But for now it’s a dream come true really.”
Jon: I have to admit, you guys revealed it in an interesting way. It was a little tease. And I’m like, is this Carmageddon? And then it was. And then we get the title and it’s Rogue Shift. I was asking myself, are they putting roguelite into Carmageddon? And I have to ask, was it always the plan, we’re going to get the Carmageddon license and we want to make a roguelite game? Or was it more, we have this idea of a roguelite racer and Carmageddon is the perfect fit. What was the chicken and egg in this scenario?
Giuseppe: “It’s interesting. We basically set with the goal from the start to freshen up the formula a little bit. So after we obtained the IP, we experimented quite extensively in a few different directions with possible concepts. At the time, we were controlled by Saber Interactive. So the process happened under them. But the idea of going with roguelite mechanics kind of stuck with us once it popped up, because there aren’t too many games in this kind of space that mix the two elements together well. So either way, it was also very challenging because we had very little reference to study and to build upon, but it was also very interesting.
We thought immediately that this could be a good fit because to us Carmageddon means exploring, trying to find curious stuff around and mess with things. And we said, why don’t we channel this into, like a proper challenging system that you have to actually exploit in order to overcome a challenge. And so we came up with a series of crazy perks and stacking synergies that we said could be interesting – to build your own death machine and enter the Carmageddon and see how far can you get by actually stacking these crazy effects.“
Jon: I’ve played a little bit of Carmageddon Rogue Shift across my PC and on my ROG Xbox Ally X. It runs great on PC. It looks really pretty. Runs really great on the handheld. What were the sort of challenges that you and the development team kind of ran into as you were honing this idea of Rogue Shift?
Giuseppe: “Game development is a lot of fun, but it’s not easy. But it’s a lot of fun. I’ll go back to that. I would say I don’t want to overlook the fundamental aspects of this game that I think are very core to it. It’s the handling system and the way you drive your vehicle around. Because I think for a racing game, for any kind of vehicular game, the feeling when you drive your vehicle is paramount. So that was the first aspect that we really wanted to nail. I’m very happy with the results, by the way.
“But I wanted to put that in focus, because yes, the roguelite element is the novelty element, because this is a racing roguelite. It’s a little fresh, it’s a little new, but you know, you have to do your homework right. So the driving has to feel good, has to feel great. And on top of that comes the second challenge, that it has to be an interesting roguelite loop, so you need tons of effects, tons of upgrades, tons of weapons. And we basically started throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. Design would come up with this huge list of upgrades and pass them to tech and try to implement like every single possible effect that was even remotely feasible and see how they interacted with each other to the point that at some point we lost the plot of it. We were overwhelmed by the amount of crisscrossing effects.
It was weird in a way. But it was very cool. Then we realized that we created a system that was very flexible on top of an excellent driving system. And then we realized, oh, this could actually work. This could be actually very, very interesting. And balancing these two things was, It was very challenging because we didn’t want upgrades that just tweaked numbers of the system under the hood. We wanted upgrades that felt significant, that had a visible effect, something that you would install and immediately see a super giant turbo, your car flaming out of it and say, whoa, okay, this is the upgrade I’ve just installed. It was not easy to balance the sheer amount of upgrades we needed and make them perceivable and interesting.
And the second point is balancing action and rogue-lite, because you want your players to get on board with both systems. One is very dynamic, so the handling of the car, the driving system, explosions all around, you have to stay in control. And the other is more tactical, like should I go for this or should I go for that choice? How do I stack them? How do I choose my vehicle? In order to successfully conquer the game, you will need to decently master both. And that’s a very interesting challenge in terms of design, in terms of development.“
Jon: I’m not going to spoil it, there is a little surprise for fans of Carmageddon when you first complete a run, which is very cool. I’m not going to say anything more than that, because that would be mean. Was it fun to kind of like play about with all of these things from the franchise and give people these little nods and hints to the history?
Giuseppe: “Yes, of course. It was a lot of fun as well because the material is not lacking. It’s super fun. It’s very interesting. And I appreciate you trying not to spoil it. In Italy, we call it the Pulcinella secret. It’s like a secret that everybody knows because it’s in the trailer and it’s in all the materials.
But you’re trying hard and I appreciate what you said about coming to the to the final boss with a build that you feel is super stacked and then getting kicked. Because like my idea was in order to beat the campaign for this game, you need a broken build. You’ll need to find ways to break the game because you can stack so many effects on top of each other.
But some people talked some sense into me, so it’s not that extreme. Some of the most skilled players in the studio can actually reach the end of the game with just some permanent upgrades. And with a high skill level, you can manage to complete the campaign, but to me, the most fun aspect of this game besides controlling a crazy car is to stack these kind of effects and see what happens.”
Jon: There are a huge number of different modes within your journey from, you know, in this roguelite path, from standard three lap races to figure of eight courses where you can meet people ahead or behind you coming the other way, loot scavenger hunts where you’re kind of risk rewarding a little bit, survival against boss rounds and things like that. Were there any ideas that kind of got left on the cutting room floor as you guys were designing that you just couldn’t quite make work? I’m just curious because there’s a lot of variety in the campaign.
Giuseppe: “Well, too many. There’s so many, but especially this was quite some time ago, because once you start to realize the scope of the game you have, then you have to go to the drawing board and say, okay, this is the list of features we actually want to have and be polished. Let’s get on with them and forget everything else. And that happened roughly a year ago, slightly above that. I basically forgot everything that was left out of the drawing board. But I do remember we had these huge vehicles like a bulldozer, for example, that wouldn’t fit in many of the track passages and would be too huge to handle and that had become a nuisance. So we got rid of it.
We also had a special zombie, that was like a giant infected gorilla that would charge straight at you from in front of you. It was terrifying to see, but it was also very hard to spot in the middle of the action. And sometimes you would just like be completely knocked over. And be like ‘what just happened’? it was the gorilla. We never managed to make it clear, so we just cut it. That was a shame, but we have some very interesting elements in the game nonetheless.“
Jon: I appreciate that you’re still in the run up to that launch moment on February 6th. Would you have any interest, you know, doing DLC, be it new tracks or new cars or new modes or anything of that nature? Do you think or is that, is it kind of more wait and see what happens post-launch and go from there?
Giuseppe: “The diplomatic answer is, let’s wait and see what happens. But of course, we would love to promise some stuff at launch, because definitely, for any game, no game is ever finished, right? If you’re a developer, I would love to do this, I would love to implement that. So there are a couple of things that we really would love to put into the game, and we hope we’ll be able to promise them soon enough. But just how much new content obviously will depend on the success of the game. I’m very happy that as a studio, we always managed to do DLCs right, at least I think. We never kept content hidden away for a future release.
Basically, what you get at game launch is what we have. And then we’re going to develop more stuff if the player base asks for it, which was the case with Red Out. Actually, we never thought about it. Well, we did imagine doing DLCs, but it was actually the community who wanted more content for the game because they were enjoying it. That’s the best way to do DLCs for both the players and the developers, because then you have an idea of what your players want, and you can go back to development. You can react and have a fresh enthusiasm, because after three or four years of development cycle, it’s kind of sometimes… you would like to work on something else for a break. But if you see that the launch is going well and people love it and they’re asking for more and they would love to see this and that, then you can go back to developing with a fresh enthusiasm and that’s very good.
So we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves and see what happens, but we’d love to.”
Jon: One other thing that I really liked throughout my playtime thus far is the soundtrack, which is full of wonderfully crunchy, heavy metal to enjoy and kind of nod along to as I’m destroying other cars and making my path through all of the carnage. Was that all done like in-house with your own audio team or did you outsource it? Who’s responsible for some of these riffs?
Giuseppe: “I’m very happy that you asked because I absolutely agree with you that we have a fantastic soundtrack. The soundtrack is original and it’s a collaborative team of Italian and Argentinians, composers, musicians, and producers. These are really talented guys that we managed to involve. We worked a lot to make it dynamic. So the soundtrack is fully dynamic. It responds in real time to various in-game events and creates an adaptive experience according to what happens on the screen. So if there’s a lot of action going on, then the riffs are going to go heavier and the mix is going to change. And that’s designed to really get your blood pumping. Whereas in other moments where you need a little more concentration or maybe you’re playing a different game mode and you need just to survive, then it goes a little either more melodic or a little bit more in the background. We’ve done a lot of work with that. And the music, well, I would advise not listening to it while you’re driving your car. Please drive safely in real life!
We love how it’s intentionally raw. The production is stripped down in terms of approach because the guys really wanted it to be aligned with the chaotic energy of the game. So it’s really visceral.”
Jon: One question I did have, which is the original Carmageddon, which I have very fond memories of playing, had the general population just milling around some of the worlds and levels. And, there were old ladies with Zimmer frames, if memory recalls. And there was a certain comedy to watching them go flying over your virtual car. Famously, the game became more censored in different countries. I think we had the zombies come in instead of the general populace. Blood was changed from red to green. And you guys have kind of brought back this, the world of this epidemic and you are basically racing for your freedom if you can make it through. Was there a particular reason from that outside of the obvious, it’s far easier to do zombies and not get in trouble with rating boards? Or was it more of a creative choice?
Giuseppe: “It was actually both. And I know this is kind of a sensitive topic for the original Carmageddon audience, and I completely understand that. And I’m pretty confident we’d be facing less backlash now if we had decided to keep pedestrians rather than actually do zombies.“
Jon: I haven’t seen any backlash. I think you’re okay. Like, it was expected. I didn’t go, oh, you know, where can I mow over people? Like, that’s, I know, it was more the comedy of it more than anything else for me, because it wasn’t real. It’s par for the course now with Carmageddon. It’s been like that for a long time.
Giuseppe: “It is. And I mean, this is really important to me. Like you said, we could have had trouble with the ratings board and whatnot, but the truth is, I think what we face and what we see in entertainment today far exceeds this kind of gore and I mean – the frontline of morality has shifted. We didn’t feel backlash, we basically feared boredom. We feel that running over polygonal people was fresh and had some sort of shock value in the 90s. That’s true. But I think the world has moved, we are convinced that the world has moved on. And of course, you may say that you’re stripping Carmageddon out of one of its core elements, and that’s one of the reasons why this game is a spin-off, and we call it a spin-off.
But again, our first obligation in terms of game developers is not to bore the player. And if there’s any chance that the loop might get stale soon, then it’s worth a shot to explore different directions. And I think we did something noteworthy with this because, first of all, zombies are part of the Carmageddon lore, but especially with zombies, you can do something different. Like you can, actually run over them with a different sort of glee, if you get what I mean. It’s still like you’re running over, well, zombies are people too, technically. Why discriminate? But you know, if they want to, the idea is they are many and they want to shred your car to pieces.“
Jon: Yeah, and it’s a gameplay element as well, right? If you accidentally crash or get stuck in a crevice and you’re like, oh, I need to reverse. They will rush you and they will damage your car. I imagine pedestrians will be running away. So there’s a gameplay element too.
Giuseppe:“Yeah, it’s a different kind of challenge. The pedestrian you chase, the zombie chases you, and then we give you a reason to mow them over because you get points and you get boosts when you do so. it’s slightly different in terms of approach, but I think it’s equally valid and hopefully time will tell.“
Jon: Last question from me. after playing through it, I feel like you’ve done real justice to the franchise of Carmageddon. What would be the dream scenario for the team at 34 Big Things? If you could bring any kind of racing IP back, doesn’t matter who owns it, doesn’t matter if it’s long dead. But if you could bring anything back for your next game, what would it be?
Giuseppe: “Where do I start? I mean, I feel conflicted because like we’re talking about us making a Carmageddon game. It’s amazing. Some of us couldn’t believe this when we started. So it’s really surreal to talk about this. And now you’re asking me what other IPs would you like to work on? Well…there’s a list.“
Jon: I always think that every developer I’ve spoken to, as I’ve been doing this over the last sort of six, seven years, they’re all creators. They all have these big dreams. And they knuckle down on a dream or two every three or four years, as you’ve said. But in the back of their minds, they’re always thinking about another dream. And that’s the beauty and the craziness of making video games. They shouldn’t work. They’re an insane medley of art and technology and code and passion and dedication. It’s a miracle we have them. So I always like to kind of pick a designer’s mind. Forgive me for asking, I’m just curious.
Giuseppe: “I think it’s a perfectly legitimate question. And I do have answers for this actually, because the two major inspirations behind our first game Redout were F-Zero and Wipeout and F Star Wars Racer, any of these. But also we made Redout Space Assault, so any kind of space combat game. I don’t know, Rogue Squadron or…I don’t know if you played that game called MDK? I have a list.”
Jon: Before we wrap things up, is there anything you would like to shout out, anybody you would like to thank on the team in particular? And just let everybody know, when is Carmageddon Rogue Shift coming out and on what platforms?
Giuseppe: “Well, it’s on the 6th, so… it’s slightly more than a week away. It’s coming to PC, if I recall correctly, it’s going to be on Steam, it’s going to be on Epic. It’s going to be on PlayStation 5, Xbox, Steam Deck, the ROG, and Nintendo Switch 2, if I didn’t mention that already.
Imagine what it is like to manage the submission for all of these different platforms. Each of them has different requirements and different submission processes. So I guess my first shout out would go out to the team handling the submission process at this very moment. They’re doing a heck of a job. But the entire team has done a heck of a job all the time. You know, you get used to extraordinary talent when you get to game development, because I think that game developers are, on average, very, very, very talented because it’s such a competitive space. And it’s one of those jobs that you couldn’t do if you didn’t care. It’s not one of these jobs that you can just show up to. It’s not a nine to five. It can’t be. I mean, just like any other creative profession, like art, photography, it requires some spark.“
Jon: That’s a great way of putting it – requires a spark. I completely agree. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time out. I know it’s a super busy schedule for you guys. So big thank you to everybody at the 34 Big Things team to letting you go and speak to me for half an hour just so we could chat about the game. And I wish you guys the very, very best for launch. Of course, if you’re interested in Carmageddon Rogue Shift, you can check out our review!
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