Also what does ‘Hela’ mean? Does the mouse have a name? I had so many questions.
Showcasing a froggy backpack-wearing, web-swinging mouse, open-world game Hela has piqued the interest of many since its showcase trailer’s debut. I decided to chat to the Studio Head of Windup Games Alexander Benitez to see if I could get some answers on the upcoming title.
We sat down to play a pre-alpha build of the game at the Hela booth at Tokyo Game Show. For a game that had already won multiple awards at Gamescom, beating out huge titles like Donkey Kong Bonanza and Mario Kart for them, the developers had not yet divulged much info. My research had revealed little in terms of the game’s story and, appropriately for an interview, it had left me with a bunch of questions.
“How much do you know about Hela?” Alex asked me, smiling.
“I feel like I know a lot, and yet nothing at the same time,” I laughed in reply.
“It's basically a fairy tale about an old but kind witch that's fallen ill. So her small familiar sets out to find a cure for her and at the same time take care of the witch’s business,” he explained. “Hela is a Swedish word that means ‘the whole thing’, but it also means ‘to heal’. So as you're playing these familiars, you're out to forge a lot of ingredients and great brews, and the big core game loop is basically to find a cure for the witch, and at the same time taking care of the witch’s business, because she's getting older. It's a coming of age story more than anything, where the mouse learns, explores, has a fun little ratatouille experience with a big cauldron, et cetera.”
So we got started finding the ingredients for our big ratatouille cauldron moment. To make collecting them easier, Alex taught me how to swing and glide through a beautiful Scandinavia inspired landscape. I could attach to Alex's character with my rope while gliding or just swing wherever I pleased, and the movements were already very fun and fluid for a pre-alpha build. I enjoyed the action of flinging my familiar through the woods as we chatted.
“Getting that swing mechanic and making it natural to just traverse in a fun and cool way, it's been something we've been working quite hard on,” Alex grinned. “You can swing from the trees, you can really do a ‘spider-mouse’ experience with it.”
Magic ziplines are another way to traverse through the world, they feel zippy and fast and I laughed as I tried them out.
“It's all about creating an environment where you have a lot of fun,” Alex said. “An open, sandbox world.”
While the beautiful flora and fauna in the game reminds me of a fairytale, the inspiration behind the landscape is a very real place in Northern Sweden, where part of the development team resides.
“We're actually in a pretty big villa just by the river in Umeå so it's very bright, very light, big windows and just super inspirational,” Alex told me. “The fauna is something you can find in Sweden and Scandinavian woods … It's inspired by, I mean, the backyard basically … We go out into the forest, we've been scanning a lot of things.”
He also said that the non-linear gameplay in this sandbox world will reward curiosity by including a bunch of objects and easter eggs to test and ‘spark playfulness’.
“Yes, you will have a story, you will unlock a lot of things, but then the tools and the toys that you unlock, is going to be for you to have fun with the sandbox … we're going to have minigames in the game as well. It's not in this build [but] If you're playing together with someone, you can trigger a mini game.”
When I asked how many minigames there would be, Alex said they currently had 4 in the works including games similar to Floor is Lava and Hot Potato. The open world feels expansive, but you have plenty of tools that make it easier to navigate. Players can not only create markers that every player can see, but also teleport to each other with the press of a button,
“Because if you find something cool over there, you don't want to wait five minutes for me to go there. It's like, yeah, let's go. And that's the same mechanic we use then for the shades.”
The ‘shades’ Alex mentioned are shadow copies of yourself that you can create and then teleport to. They aren’t just useful for teleporting however, but also for solving the game’s many puzzles which Alex says vary in difficulty, catering to both easy puzzle enjoyers and advanced puzzle solvers.
“If you're climbing in a high tree, if you fall off, you don't have fall damage, but if you fall off, you need to climb up again for five minutes or whatever it might be. So instead of having to do that, you can just spawn a shade. And if you fall down, you can just spawn back to that shade ... If you don't have any friends around, you can spawn shades that were doing the thing that you were doing to solve the puzzles.”
When I asked if the game would still be fun as a solo player, Alex stressed to me that the team wanted to remove as many boundaries as possible.
“We haven't created a single or multiplayer mode, it's just one mode, and then you can play it how you see it best.”
As well as the single-player accommodations, Alex explained that the team also aimed to create a collaborative in-game environment for people playing with others.
“When you solve those tricky puzzles, if you're playing with a kid or a less experienced person, [they] can always call for help, right? … We want people to not just compete against each other, but solve problems together.”
When I asked what inspired the team to create an environment like that, rather than a competitive one, Alex attributed the motivation to the team’s creative director, Martin Sahlin, who created the Unravel series.
“I think what we saw in - especially Unravel 2, how people play in that collaborative way [was that] it's fun to play together without it being a race to the top.”
As Alex and I worked together on puzzles, figuring out how to bounce to the top of a tree, I asked if the mouse had a name and was shocked by the response.
“No, it doesn't. You're free to name it?” Alex laughed, likely at the surprised look on my face.
“So it’s just a mouse?” I asked.
“It's just a mouse,” he replied. “Well, not [named] yet, at least. Let's see [what happens].”
Content creators and gamers in general seem to have fallen in love with the game’s froggy backpack, which Alex explained could be upgraded by either befriending or outsmarting other animals. I had to know if I could deck my adorable, unnamed mouse familiar out in any other clothing.
“Of course.” Alex replied, “I mean, the mouse is cute for sure. But would it be more fun with a hat or with a macaroni bow tie or whatever it might be? So yeah, you're going to be able to unlock different customis-ables. You're going to have some fur patterns as well to make it more ‘yours’ and different colors.”
I asked how the team felt about the massive public interest.
“The content creators are picking it up. They're really having a lot of fun with it and we still haven't told them a lot,” he admitted.
“It really talks to the amazing team that we have … and also a testament to the hard work that they put in every day. For me, it's also, I mean, we've always had a promise to the publisher, to our investors but we really need to deliver on the player promise as well, right? So it's even more, I think, a bigger driver for the team to just have a lot of people hoping for this to come out as soon as possible. One of the most common questions [we get is] when is it coming out? When can we do that? Which is super fun. So we're going to start talking more about the narrative and the witch in due time.”
Alex explained that the game will have both online and split screen co-op for up to 4 'mice'.
“Is this going to be Steam Deck compatible?” I asked.
“Yeah, I mean, we want as many people as possible to be able to enjoy Hela. And given that we're doing the Switch 2, I think, yeah for sure … that's nothing that we've announced or talked about. It's going to be cross-play, we haven't talked about that either. So that's obviously something that we just want to make sure that as many people can play it, however they want. It's taking away as much boundaries as possible ... If we can, we will, for sure, support that in the best possible way,” Alex replied, truly expressing the team’s want for player freedom that we had been talking about the entire interview.
“You're a mouse with a magic froggy backpack, so what can go wrong? No fall damage, it's just very forgiving in that sense. So it's just a matter of… try things out. Just be curious, poke at things, and you'll be rewarded for it.”
“… try things out. Just be curious, poke at things, and you'll be rewarded for it.” - Alexander Benitez, Windup Games
