Gori: Cuddly Carnage Interview – Feline Mayhem Meets Neon Dystopia

My name is John, and I am one of the co-founders of Angry Demon Studio. I’m the main Writer, Game Designer and 3D artist (Environment, character, lighting, etc).

There are many sources of inspiration for Gori: Cuddly Carnage, but there was one spark that ignited the core of the game – Far Cry: Blood Dragon. It has a dystopian, yet hilarious future that was very appealing and set the bar for what we wanted to create.

The fact that Gori is a synthetic cat developed over time as the synthesised organic toys – “Ultra Pets” took shape within the story of the Universe. Gori then fell very naturally in this category as a cat that is a bit “more” than the average cat, since we’ve never actually met any hoverboarding cats… yet.

The combo system is a combination of traditional Hack and Slash and old-school skating games.
Every enemy destroyed gives a point value connected to the enemy, + a multiplier score. On top of that, there are special “move bonuses” used to destroy said enemy (While grinding, using power moves, etc).

In short: Enemy score plus bonus score (move, grind, etc) multiplied by the number of enemies destroyed is what the players are using to get insane scores.

To maintain the combo, players can delay the timer by grinding rails or doing wallrides before destroying a new enemy to reset the timer.

The biggest “no no” for the best scores is damage. To get the highest scores, players will have to develop strategies on which enemies to destroy first to keep the maximum combo for the maximum time.

In the world of Gori Cuddly Carnage, there are a ton of things that will try their best to end cuddly cats..

Lasers, laser walls, spike rolls, pouring acid, and boiling tea are just a few of the dangerous items players are facing.

The main threats to our furry protagonist will always be the horrifying inhabitants of the world. The wide array of different enemies that stand between Gori and the final goal.

We’ve never really taken Gori super seriously as a concept. We only wanted to make a fun game that the player will enjoy, to feel like a superhero while enjoying the banter between the characters. This is where Far Cry: Blood Dragon played a great role as inspiration.

With the attitude that in the game “You’re a cat on a hoverboard that’s fighting unicorns”, while keeping the “Blood Dragon” close, writing the scripts and getting ideas to fall in place fell quite naturally.

The creation of every level of Gori: Cuddly Carnage was made quite methodically with a rhythm to it. From level 1 we start in a city overrun by evil toys. This was our baseline for “our insanity” to not throw the player into the weirdest thing right away, turning the entire experience confusing. Thematically, the next level always has to be stranger and more dangerous than the first, while also being of a theme that we like and are passionate about.

If the levels and the themes fit the overarching story, we stuck with them, and that’s when the real fun started. We had to make every level have the right music, enemies and more to really drive in the theme that was picked.

The main credit for maintaining fluid and engaging gameplay goes to our community. Since June of 2020, we’ve frequently dropped free demos for anyone to try out. The feedback from our community on these demos, paired with any footage we could find on mainly YouTube and Twitch, has given us a crazy platform to step by step make sure the gameplay is smooth and satisfying for a lot of different players.

There are plenty of items in Gori: Cuddly Carnage to give players replayability. The three main ones would be scores, unlockables, and theme.

Every level is ended by grading the player on High Score, Top Combo, and time, which awards Bronze, Silver and Gold stars. The final star is the unlockable Cuddly Carnage difficulty for players who really want to push their skills to the max.
By finding keys in the levels, players can also unlock specific short challenges, which were super fun but also a bit “outside the box” of our regular gameplay.

We think that many players will also like to replay their favourite levels because of the themes. A lot of times, I just want to replay specific levels in games for the theme and feel of it.

During the development of Gori: Cuddly Carnage, we have had five developers continuously full-time. The entire project has taken 5 years to complete.

A big thank you to everyone in our community, without you, Gori: Cuddly Carnage wouldn’t have been the game it is today. Your continuous feedback has been the core of the entire development.

An even bigger thank you to everyone who has gone above and beyond for us during the last 5 years of ups and downs. You know who you are, and we wouldn’t have made it without you.