Last month's excellent 'Ode to Castlevania' DLC has got us diving into Poncle's beautiful bullet hell, Vampire Survivors, all over again. We've been having such a good time with the latest expansion that we'd be perfectly happy to see waves of DLC added to this one for years to come, but naturally, Poncle may one day want to move on to a new project. And yet, whatever comes next, it seems we shouldn't expect it to blow the current project's scope out of the water.
That is according to the game's creator, Luca Galante, who, in a recent interview with Metro, stated that he wouldn't want a follow-up game to "try and do something bigger just because it’s what everyone is expecting". Instead, Galante claims, he'd rather keep working at his own level: "It would have a higher budget," he told Metro, "but it wouldn’t be dramatically different in terms of scope, than Vampire Survivors".
This is all a matter of comfort, it seems. The creator went on to clarify that while he'd hope to put more funding into production on a future project, that project wouldn't be packed with motion capture, voice acting, overarching narratives and other complexities that he's not comfortable with:
I will definitely be spending a lot more in terms of production. But in terms of scope, I don’t want to suddenly start making games that are bigger. I want to stay on the same level.
I won’t suddenly start adding complex narratives to the game, hiring actors to do motion capture or voice-acting. All those things are on a completely different scope and something I’m not comfortable with.
So it would be crazy for me to try and do something bigger just because it’s what everyone is expecting. That’s not going to work well. I want to keep working at the level I’m comfortable with. Maybe just one little step ahead, but just a little one.
It's understandable that Galante has such considerations. Vampire Survivors' award-winning debut year would naturally produce certain expectations about what the studio should do next (the creator told Metro that he's "had all sorts of proposals" which were "turned down very quickly"), so it's rather refreshing to hear that any future project would still be in the company's wheelhouse.
While Galante doesn't share any information on what (if anything) the studio is working on next, the interview also sees him comment on Poncle's publishing plans, his love of Castlevania and how he moved to London to pursue his game dev dreams. You can read the full conversation on Metro.