Sound Improvement

I made a little Flash cartoon called "Voodoo Vince Prehistory" years ago during the production of Voodoo Vince. I wanted to show how Vince would have looked in the early 1930's, had he existed during the era of creepy rubber hose-armed animation. When I finished this piece I just dropped in a music track from the game -- a piece called Zombie Guidance Counselor by Steve Kirk. The eighteen people who bought the game may recall this as Steve's score for the selfsame level in the game. It's a great piece, but I always felt that the cartoon would have worked better with real sound design.

Nine years later, Steve Kirk and a band of fantastic musicians have done just that. Steve re-scored the cartoon and did some stellar sound design. It's almost, well, funny now. Or more disturbing. Either way, it's 1000% better. Enjoy!

CK

Czech Please

It makes me nervous when I do an interview for a publication in a distant land and the only word I can understand in the headline is "idiot." Fortunately, this refers to DeathSpank... At least it does this time. Pavel Dobrovsky wrote a nice Q&A for the May edition of LeveL, a gaming publication in the Czech Republic. The questions were mostly about DeathSpank, Voodoo Vince, my current misadventures at Microsoft and whether my name is fictional or not. Run out and get yours today!

CK

Musical Voodoo Toon for Mardi Gras

Today is Mardi Gras! It would be a shame to let the day go by without a Voodoo Vince-related post. Imagine my surprise and delight when I found this swell cartoon up on Newgrounds, set to some of the music from the game. It's an embedded Flash cartoon and you need to click past an ad, but it's worth checking out. I think Mr. Emanhattan (if that's his real name) did a bang-up job!

One correction, though. While he does credit the music from the Voodoo Vince soundtrack, he seems to have missed the fact that the music and lyrics for the Vince theme song are actually by me, not Steve Kirk (who did a superb job arranging the tune). It's an easy mistake, since Steve did compose virtually every other piece in the game's soundtrack.

Anyway, this made my day! Laissez les bons temps rouler!

CK

A Spanking Good Year

DeathSpank made the 20 Best Games of 2010 list over at Wired.com. Very cool! Seems like yesterday he was just a lump of modeling polymer, not to mention a pitch document that languished on the desk of publishers all over the world.

To celebrate, here are some random images, including some concept work for stuff that never made it into the game, and a screen mockup dating back to the very first concept document.

CK

A Fistful of Mobile Splodeyness

 A game I designed for Windows Phone 7 just went live a couple days ago. Crackdown 2: Project Sunburst has finally been unleashed on the world. I think I'll defend my home town against zombie mutant freak things. Or maybe I won't. Folks never become self sufficient if they believe someone will always come along with a particle beam and save them.

Here's a nice review on wmpoweruser.com.

CK

Vanity, Thy Name Is Clayton

Some people read these things called "magazines." These are created when people grind up some trees, make flat white stuff called "paper," then print words and pictures all over it. It's like a blog, but you can smack spiders with it. One of the finer publications is Gamefan, which was resurrected a few months ago.

There's a nice, if somewhat dense, interview with me in this month's issue. Editor Dave Halverson grilled me on all sorts of topics, including DeathSpank, some recent artwork, Kinect and my projects at Microsoft. Pick up a copy at your local Best Buy, Target or Barnes & Noble if you really want to know what I think about... stuff.

CK