Initially revealed in 2020 as part of an itch.io game jam event, Free Lives’Anger Footis now kicking its way onto player’s PCs across the globe. PartHotline Miamiand part door entry game similar to Sierra Entertainment’sSWATseries,Anger Footis a frantic and vibrant first-person shooter that thrives on twitch reflexes and delivers a power fantasy that makes the player feel not at all dissimilar from the titular hero of theJohn Wickfranchise. And while the visuals and polish ofAnger Foothave certainly received an upgrade since its initial reveal 4 years ago, the initial concept and core gameplay loop remain largely intact in the finished product.
Game Rant recently had the opportunity to sit down with key members ofAnger Foot’s development team at Free Lives, each of whom provided insight into the game’s influences, the journey from concept to development to release, and the studio’s philosophy on making games.Anger Footis undoubtedly a Free Lives game that will feel familiar to fans of the studio’s previous work, as well as another unmistakable title fromDevolver Digitalthat showcases the publisher’s keen eye for picking out and distributing indie titles with mass appeal.The following transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Anger Foot’s Journey From Initial Concept to Going Gold
GR:To start, could everyone introduce themselves to readers?
Luc Wolthers:Sure thing. My name is Luc Walthers, and I am co-designer and lead artist on the project.
Jason Sutherland:I’m Jason Sutherland, and I’m the audio designer and handle the music.
Robbie Fraser:I’m Robbie Fraser and I do design and programming.
Jem Smith:I’m Jem Smith and I also do design and programming.
GR:Anger Foot’s development began back in 2020, and its official announcement trailer dropped in 2022. With the game now released, can you describe the journey from conceptualization, to the reveal, toAnger Footgoing gold?
LW:Robert, do you want to speak to that?
RF:Yeah, sure! So I guess I’ll start with the origin story, which is basically…there’s an annual game jam onitch.iocalled the 7 Day FPS Jam. And, yeah, we…it was kind of like the end of the first year of COVID and we went away together for one week and just jammed on the game.
That early jam version kind of had most of the DNA of what it is now. You know, it had the game loop, it had the kind of hard bass music, it had this sort of basic footprint for the levels, and we kind of just grew it from there without trying to change it too much. And then the next, like, three and a half years have pretty much been kind of relatively smooth sailing, but just making the game bigger and kind of more ridiculous without trying to make it deeper and more complicated.
GR:So it sounds like, fromAnger Foot’s initial stages, from the itch.io concept, that it’s remained mostly the same but just polished over the last few years.
LW:Yeah, I think it’s important for us to keep the identity of what we originally set out to create.
RF:From a design perspective, it’s kind of been difficult not changing it too much, if that makes sense. Because it’s such a simple idea in a lot of ways, like the way that the enemies one-shot you and you one-shot them, it doesn’t leave a lot of room for changing things up in a lot of ways. I think one of the biggest challenges, design-wise, has been finding ways to make new content for the game to keep things exciting that isn’t just different from that core experience.
GR:Free Lives has had multiple projects that they’ve been working on and released since development began onAnger Foot. Did that workload affect the game’s development cycle or was it more a case of just making sure thatAnger Footwas ready?
RF:I think aside from Jason, I don’t know if Jay wants to comment on this, but it’s mostly been, you know, different kinds of sub-teams within Free Lives. But Jay’s done a bunch of work on all of the games, so it probably affected him the most. But the rest of us didn’t work onTerra Nil. Jem did a bit of work onStickman, actually.
Jem S:Yeah, a little bit. But it was actually just before I joined theAnger Footteam. Generally, we’ve been lucky enough to be able to kind of laser focus in on justAnger Footand kind of dedicate all our time to that. We do sometimes have situations where people get drawn between two or three different projects, but we’ve all been pretty much solidly onAnger Foot.
RF:I will also say that I do think it’s strictly a net bonus to have different people all in the same house working on one project. You know, it makesAnger Footbetter that there are people working on super cool other games alongside it as well.
GR:Have there been any insights from other projects that have bled over intoAnger Footin the time that the game has been in development?
RF:I think welearned fromTerra Nilthat we don’t want to do any porting until after the game is done. That was our biggestTerra Niltakeaway.
Jem S:Yeah, I mean, between the teams we also sometimes sort of share tools and things, but we’re actually…lately, we haven’t been great at that. There are a lot of times when people come together, and they look at the tools we’ve made separately for two different games and then kind of go “Oh, we should have probably merged these at some point and shared our ideas.” But yeah, we’re trying to get better at sort of letting those inspirations crossover between projects.
Working With Devolver Digital and Anger Foot’s Inspirations
GR:It’s safe to say that, at this point, Free Lives has a great working relationship with Devolver Digital, who also seem to know a great thing when they see it. Was there ever any question of working with another publisher forAnger Footor was it always going to be Devolver?
LW:In the very, very beginning we did humor a little bit of back and forth with Apogee who publishedTurbo Overkill.
RF:Yeah, 3D Realms
LW:Yeah. But for the most part, we were pretty confident. We just wanted to make sure that this was something that Devolver Digital was interested in. As soon as I expressed that they were really excited about it. We were absolutely happy to go with Devolver.
RF:I think from a Free Lives perspective, the question is usually between self-publishing versus getting a publisher at all. I feel like if you are going to have a publisher, you would probably want Devolver. I don’t think it’d make sense for us to sign with a different publisher. Maybe if we made a very different style of game, something that really fitsAnnapurna, or something like that.
Like you said, we have a great relationship with Devolver. I think it’s very beneficial for them. They don’t really fund any of the projects so it’s kind of low risk for them. And from our perspective, we’re lucky to get almost all of our games published by Devolver, who’s kind of one of the biggest indie publishers and brings the most audience. So it’s kind of a mutually beneficial arrangement. We’ve done enough games with them that there are no surprises for us, which is nice.
GR:Anger Foot’s most obvious gameplay influence isHotline Miami, but there are quite a few nods to other similar titles in its gameplay. Can you walk us through some ofAnger Foot’s biggest inspirations?
LW:Hotline Miamidefinitely does form a big part of the inspiration, especially when it comes to the style of the game and kind of a seedy, underground, derelict world replete with crime. But, truth be told, Robbie and I looked a lot atSWAT 4and other “door entry” games when we were initially considering how we were going to handleAnger Foot. Because, inHotline Miami, you have knowledge of what’s behind the door, but inAnger Footyou don’t and inSWAT 4you don’t. So we were trying to figure out ways of resolving that issue largely in design. We were looking quite a bit atSWAT.
Jem S:Yeah, I think from a world-building point of view,Sludge Lifeis another big one for us. Just the kind of absurdity of the world and even just the format of sort of walking around and talking to these very weird characters in weird situations.
RF:Yeah, I agree. I agree with both of those. Definitely need to give a shout-out to Terry Vellman’s games, soSludge LifeandHigh Hellas well. I really likedHigh Hellbut thought so much could be done differently, if that makes sense. There’s a tiny speedrunning game calledRefunctas well that I also really like that was a bit of an inspiration for some of the speedrunning influences on the game.
GR:Anger Footcan be blasted through at a breakneck pace, but players can also take their time and try to complete each stage’s bonus objectives. How did the team decide on the parameters for the bonus objectives that completionists can chase down?
RF:So for each level, you get one star for just finishing the level any way you can. The second star you get from a subset of different ways of finishing it. Those are there to encourage different play styles and to kind of attempt to prevent players from optimizing the fun out of the game. Things like forcing them to play without shoes on or to play really fast. Or to do things so that players don’t just pick the one shoe that really works for them and cheese their way through the whole game or play really slowly and cautiously and never die, but also never have fun. The second goal is trying to just encourage players to mix up how they play. And, you know, if they hadn’t been playing fast, doing a speedrun goal might teach them that the game is actually really fun if you just run as fast as you can.
And then the third goal, and maybe Jem can speak a little bit more about this, but they’re a little more puzzly. We kind of took each level and considered “What’s an interesting thing you could do on this level?” or tried to make them a little unique, incorporating lateral thinking or out-of-the-box situations.
Jem S:Yeah. So, the whole idea of making a puzzly style to some of the levels is a little bit at odds withAnger Foot. But we were quite surprised to find how many levels could be made a little puzzly by means of choosing a certain shoe or using a certain play style, so those were quite fun. We’d kind of sometimes take a level and look through it and go “What can we find here that’s sort of a fun way to mix things up?” But yeah, just fun puzzly things about each level and weird ways to explore the environment and interact with the props and things.
GR:Broforceshowed that Free Lives has a deep knowledge of and respect for pop culture, andAnger Foot’s environmental design and art style go a long way toward reinforcing that. From goons that look like the Koopas from 1993’sSuper Mario Bros.movie to rugs featuring the pattern seen in the Overlook Hotel fromStanley Kubrick’sThe Shining, Anger Foot is bursting with pop culture references. What were some of the team’s biggest cultural touchstones in terms of the game’s visual aesthetic and Easter Eggs?
LW:Oh, I looked at a lot of slum and derelict things. Uh, one of the lesser known things, and I mean, I’ll spoil it, but I kind of hope people organically find out about it, is that the couch is specifically designed from the couch that Charlie and Frank have in their apartment inIt’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. There are just little odes to scummy culture all over the game, but I don’t want to spoil too many.
RF:Yeah, I think early on there was a lot of like…I remember Luc sharing music videos of Tommy Cash and sort of trashy Eastern European aesthetics. WhileBroforceis like a loving parody of, you know, American foreign policy, I thinkAnger Footis, in some ways, like a loving homage to things like wearing Adidas tracksuits and vaping. Those kinds of things that it celebrates and treats as super cool are a simpler kind of parody.
Jem S:Yeah, I think that’s a good point. It kind of almost captures a feeling and experience rather than a specific time period or movie genre or anything like that. It’s the experience of trashy Eastern European Todd house music, or whatever the case may be.
Free Lives' Unique Style on Display in Anger Foot and Humor in Games
GR:Anger Foothas the same offbeat sense of humor that somewhat pervades several of Free Lives’ other titles. Given the propensity for over-the-top violence in some of the studio’s games,Anger Footincluded, does having comic relief become a necessity to balance things out tonally?
LW:I think principally we want all of our games to prioritize fun and frivolousness. You know, we don’t want violence to become an obstacle to people enjoying our games. So in that way, framing stuff is important. Everything’s jokey and everything’s silly and everything should be taken as lightly as possible. It puts people in a playful mood as soon as they start playing the game.
Jem S:Yeah, I mean, we didn’t want to go too over the top on the violence. There were a couple of things we thought about doing, like dismemberment and things like that. You know, all the traditional gory first-person shooter trappings. We kind of tried to keep it silly and that also spread out to other aspects of the game. For a game that’s about this city riddled with crime and degeneracy, it’s kind of wholesome in many ways. These characters in the Debauchery gang talk about how they’re holding hands and that being debaucherous.
And there are no overt references to certain drugs or anything like that. I mean, murder is obviously everywhere in the game, but other things are a little “turned down” in some ways. We kind of wanted to keep it very silly. I think it started more with wanting to make the player feel exclusively badass, and then we started bringing in some of the silliness too and that kind of balanced things out.
RF:Yeah, I guess I’m speaking for myself here, but I think most people at Free Lives are the same. I just really enjoy adding jokes to things. You know? I just think it’s super fun. It’s fun as a game developer to make a non-serious game where you just get to make a silly joke every time you go to work. I really miss that if I work on a slightly more serious game. It’s like a superpower; once you’ve discovered you like making joke games, you’re able to’t go back. It’s just not as fun. So that’s how it works.
LW:There was a sort of serendipitous moment when we added in the dancing when you die. That very much goes towards what we’re saying here, where even when you’re losing the game there’s something silly and something ridiculous to enjoy in your death, which I hope kind of offsets some of the frustration of having to repeat levels over and over again or kills or deaths that might feel unfair. It’s like “Oh, it’s so ridiculous and it’s so stupid. It shouldn’t be taken so seriously.”
RF:I also think that the feeling of fun and, like, cartoonishness does come from the developers having fun. I think if you have fun while making it that can show in the game that people play. I thinkAnger Footis a game that feels like the developers had fun making it, and that’s important to us as well.
Jem S:Yeah, I think that’s very true. There’s also just a gauge sometimes where we decide if something goes in the game. Somebody will float an idea, and if everybody’s just giggling like a bunch of 10-year-olds you know that’s a pretty solid indication that it’s at least going to be tried. We had a huge amount of fun making it.
GR:Anger Footplays on the traditional beat ‘em up cliches by having the protagonist chase down his prize sneaker collection instead of a damsel in distress. Was this something that came about because of the gameplay or was the story and injection of sneakerhead culture always something the team had in mind?
LW:I think as soon as the game was calledAnger Footwe knew that there had to be a sneakerhead emphasis in your goals. But not chasing a damsel was also kind of quite a deliberate decision, because we just don’t like those kinds of stories and that kind of framing. It didn’t suit our vision of the protagonist and the world where everyone does crime because they love to do it. There shouldn’t be some exalted “special” crime like stealing your girlfriend. You all participate in this and this is how the world works. We really wanted to, again, keep things light and keep things frivolous. That’s why shoes just became this really fun way of saying “This is all violent and this is all very important to your character, but it’s also not very serious.”
RF:Yeah, we always thought of the protagonist as like more of a force of nature than, like, a person. We even joked that he was plant-based or something, and at one stage our primary story reference was the classic filmDude, Where’s My Car?where everything is kind of trivial. We really liked the idea that he just loves shoes and he kind of saves the world or changes the world by accident. He doesn’t care about the Crime Minister and the whole fate of the city, he just wants his cool shoes back because he loves shoes. I think that’s also a little bit of a response to all the gritty, self-important games. We wanted to make something where the protagonist’s personal stakes are super low.
GR:The sneakers themselves are somewhat similar in terms of mechanics to the masks that the player gets inHotline Miami. Can you walk us through how the team decided on the various abilities they grant and any challenges that arose from their incorporation in terms of the game’s balance?
LW:Blood, sweat, and tears. Jem, do you want to talk to that?
Jem S:Sure. Yeah, I mean, I guess at first it was just choosing which shoes spoke to us or things we talked about and thought “Oh, this would be cool. We’ve got to try it. We’ve got to try this set of shoes first.” Then we kind of thought a fair bit about play style and strategy and things, but as Robbie kind of pointed out at the beginning, it’s a very simple concept, and we didn’t want to expand on it too much and make it too complicated.
So, the shoes that do change your gameplay significantly don’t have the luxury of being able to give things like double health and double firing speed. There aren’t those kinds of granular variables in the game. There are a couple of shoes that do quite dramatic things to the gameplay, and there are a couple of shoes that just do really silly things, like the clown shoes that just make everyone fly away and make confetti and clown sounds everywhere. So it was kind of just a mix of shoes that we thought would be cool for changing up your play style a little bit and just ridiculous, ridiculous things.
Anger Foot’s Emphasis on ‘Flow State’ Gaming
GR:When things get going inAnger Foot, it’s entirely possible for players to enter that sought-after “flow state” where movement becomes in sync with the excellent soundtrack, and the brain switches to autopilot. Was this “flow state” something that the team intended for players to experience, or a happy accident resulting from a perfect mix between gameplay mechanics and sound design?
LW:I think that brain-emptying flow state is something that the team has been in for the entire period of development.
RF:I would say it’s definitely intentional. From the very first jam version, we wanted to have this moment of kicking down a door, and the music is completely insane, and it’s sort of sensory overload. Then it’slikeJohn Wick, you just fire six bullets and shoot six guys, and you’re like “What even happened? I killed 10 people in that room.” Then it calms down, and it all happens again at the next door, and you just keep going. It’s kind of like this sort of fever dream where you die a lot, but when you do get it right, you feel like you just blitzed through this whole level in five seconds, and you’re some kind of unstoppable force. That was always part of the fantasy we tried to create.
Jem S:Yeah. And the hope is, too, that people don’t feel like they have to kind of get really good at the game. That’s the goal. No matter how somebody plays, they can still, at some point, get into some of that flow state.
I mean, it’s likely that if you play really well and don’t die much, you’ll probably experience more of that. But we really didn’t want to convey to people that they have to be really good at this game in order to enjoy it. I hope we’ve done that. I often play very slowly and cautiously and still find it really fun. So yeah, hopefully, that flow state can come no matter how you play.
GR:What were some of the thought processes that went into making a soundtrack that propelled the player forward and incentivized continuous movement?
Jason S:I guess one thing that helps sort of move everyone forward is that the tempo is the same in every song. Basically, after a long time of playing, your legs just subconsciously are tapping on the ground and you kind of get into a bit of a flow state that way. At least I do.
GR:Players might find that if they playAnger Footas a sort of rhythm game and lose themselves in the music, they become more successful than they’d be if they were rushing through levels haphazardly. Was that something intentional when crafting the game’s soundtrack?
Jason S:Maybe it’s just the brain not being overloaded, and you can actually focus. It was more Luc’s idea to use the hardcore Gabber influence in the soundtrack. I didn’t know anything about Gabber, really, but I made a whole soundtrack in the style. I kind of intentionally tried to not listen to anything in the genre, so I could kind of just make my own interpretation of what I had heard. Hopefully, it works.
GR:RegardingAnger Foot’s pacing, how did the incentivization for speed impact the game’s level design and difficulty?
RF:The gameplay loop relies on it being super punishing, and the level design is really important for that. So, the fact that the levels are really short is important because if you have to replay a 10-minute level because you died right at the end, I think the game would be incredibly frustrating. The other key thing is the fact that the levels are learnable as well. Luc mentioned earlier theHotline Miamithing, where you can kind of see an overview of what’s behind the door. InAnger Foot,you can’t, so we don’t have enemies that patrol, for example.
It’s like, when you kick down the door, that guy’s always going to be in the same corner. So you could kind of learn and replay. Even if you do die a bunch of times, hopefully, you’ll be able to improve and learn to live a little longer. Outside of that, we didn’t really design much for speed or speedrunning. It’s mainly just about keeping the levels short and learnable and making them restart quickly.
We did figure out very early on that the levels need to be quite linear because of the flow of just going from door to door and shooting everything in your path, feeling like a total badass when you don’t miss your shots. That kind of falls apart if you get lost or if you have to backtrack. There’s a little bit of that in the game, but we basically learned that it’s better to just make the levels kind of linear and just flow in one direction just so the player can keep moving and stay in the zone.
GR:I would assume it also helps out with the fact that death inAnger Footcomes quickly, but you can jump right back in just as quickly.
LW:Yeah, exactly. We tried to make sure that there was little downtime as well. After death, you just kind of go straight into the beginning of the level, no loading screens, no nothing.
[END]
Anger Foot
WHERE TO PLAY
Anger Foot is a lightning fast hard bass blast of kicking doors and kicking ass. Crash through the caffeine-fuelled fever dream of Shit City, putting the boot to a menacing menagerie of merciless gangsters.Unleash the world’s deadliest feet on a colourful cast of anthropomorphic enemies. Clearing out slums, sewers, and skyscrapers as you grab new weapons, unlock new sneakers, and upgrade your powers in absurd and wonderful ways. Kick and shoot your way to the exit as you leave behind a smouldering trail of shattered doors, broken bones, and crumpled energy drinks.Fast-Paced Ass Kicking Action: Shit City is a disease and your foot is the cure. Lace up a capricious collection of formidable footwear to fight through a diverse series of deranged city districts.Vibrant Visuals, Relentless Beats: Enjoy a concussive, bass-thumping soundtrack as you stampede through a feverish criminal underworld. An assault on all your senses. Including common sense.Run. Kick. Repeat: Are you the god of style, speed or power? Discover secrets and unlocks that encourage replayability - and learn to tackle levels in new creative, ridiculous and devastating ways.Master The Foot: Become one with the toes and be quick on the trigger. Your skills must surpass human comprehension if you are to prevail and learn the secret of the Anger Foot.
