able to put out there, and it’s lovely to see that those who got to play it feel the same.” Future versions for other machines, however, are still up for discussion.
“The academy trainers would like to do a Commodore 64 version, but that’s clearly not going to happen,” jokes Habgood. “I guess the Nintendo Switch would be logical, but we’ll have to see.”
While Sumo Academy will continue on, it’s unlikely that Zool will be a part of its plans for the future. “We’ve got irons in a couple of fires, but a Zool 2 remake is unlikely. We’re moving on from the Nth Dimension,” confirms Habgood.
But would the students that worked on Zool suggest that future students, or other would- be developers make their own remakes to learn the ins and outs of design, then? Well, that all depends on which game is being worked on. “I think remaking Zool was a bit of a blessing, as it’s a game that people have fond memories of, but people don’t often actually replay,” says Lyons. “This means people’s memories of the original are more nostalgic, fuzzy and less specific. If we had to remake a game that a larger portion of people are still actively playing, people are a lot fussier
September 2023 MCV/DEVELOP | 51
about maintaining the exact mechanics of the original. “The amount of wiggle room that we were allowed on Zool Redimensioned let us express ourselves and explore ideas we were interested in, but we got to avoid lots of the issues that face developers when working on completely original projects like feature and scope creep, a lack of direction, or a clear endpoint. That’s a privilege I’m not sure we would have been granted on a remake of a more iconic game - not that Zool isn’t iconic in his own way! Working on a remake also gave us a clear target audience and lots of points of contact for established industry figures which was a real benefit for us as completely new developers.”
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