How ‘Replay — VHS is not dead’ became the game it is today

In recent years, Neko Entertainment has become known for their supportive publishing initiatives. The French studio has seen fit to bring titles such as Kung Fu Rabbit, Wooden Sen'SeY and others to new habitats such as the Wii U. It's also been a developing theme with them to work with student teams and bring their creative projects to market, first with Puddle in 2012 and now Replay — VHS is not dead.

The puzzle-platformer, which is available today on Steam, transports players into worlds inspired by movie themes, where the object in each level is to make use of a rewind mechanic to guide main character Harvey and a supporting character to their respective goals. Ensuring that the game world supports the execution of its core ideas was a directive that the student team kept as a focal point, which is why, as GameZone learned, the project had to go through multiple conceptual phases before arriving at something sustainable.

According to game designer Danial Karimimanjili, Replay — VHS is not dead first had an altogether different approach at work. "After a lot of brainstorming with different game ideas, we were thinking about making a game about theatre and plays," Karimimanjili shared. The gameplay features in our mind were the possibility to switch between different characters and the ability to go in the backstage at some places."

By the sounds of it, that original idea would have made for some interesting gameplay layers. But again, the matter of sustainability had to be addressed realistically, and looking ahead, the team realized the need to change direction for this very reason. "We quickly realized that this universe wasn't that popular among gamers and we ourselves lacked references to do a funny parodic game. So we changed the universe of the game into something more nostalgic for us and for the gamers: The VHS Movies."

With this new direction, they found it helped generate ideas on how to structure gameplay in such a way that would connect with the properties of the game world, particularly with "time bending" at the forefront. "This feature is the 'Rewind' ability that allows the player to switch characters (actors) and make him play with his 'past self' to increase the challenge and the puzzle-game aspect."

When it came time to decide on which genres to represent, Karimimanjili shared that the team had "a lot of ideas" but not all would work in the context of gameplay. In the end, they made choices on the basis of popularity, although the pirates theme was a bit of an exception. "The first world may be less popular than the others, but we decided to keep it because it fits very well with the [initially] simplistic game mechanics and also because we like pirates!"

In light of its origins as a student project, GameZone was also told how challenges and lessons learned during the game's development helped shape the end product for the better. "The game has been through a lot of changes to improve it and to turn it into a professional project," Karimimanjili said. "For instance, one of the challenges I faced was how to make people understand and enjoy the concept of the game. To overcome this, I applied what I learned by working with my team and by doing playtests on people that had never played the game. These steps taught me a lot about the learning curve of the player and the difficulty curve [of the game], which are key elements in game design/level design, especially for a puzzle game."

When asked about the genre itself, Karimimanjili opined that "a lot of interesting things have already been done." Despite that, he still sees room for growth. What it calls for, he related, is "a strong will to innovate with the gameplay mechanics and the game universe," adding that ideas on their own are great but putting them into application in a game design sense brings its own difficulties.

All in all, the team is very proud of the journey they've had in bringing their project to life. "We made this game with things that we loved when we were young: VHS movies and 8/16-bit video games," Karimimanjili said. "We hope that people will enjoy playing it as much as we enjoyed working on it."