Trying to playMonacoat PAX, let alone talk to the developer at length, was a practical impossibility if you didn’t have a lot of time on your hands. The small booth housing Andy Schatz’s IGF-winning title and Chris Hecker’sSpy Partywas overrun for the entire show. Gamers flooded the area in droves to get in on some of the four-player crime caper gameplay.
Thankfully, at the smaller and more intimate Fantastic Arcade event in Austin, TX, I was able to spend plenty of quality hands-on time with the game that had so many people buzzing. After getting a stronger sense of whatMonacowas all about, I set out to track Andy down in a more relaxed setting and talk to him at length. And boy, did he oblige.
What follows is excerpts from our hour-long conversation where we touch on the fecal implications of mispronunciation, Monaco, game design, the secret fraternal order of indie developers, the way to build a great console RTS, and how my #1 favorite dinosaur never actually existed.
