PAX East 2023 delivers so many gems on the show floor and we had the honor to stop by the Polterguys booth to check out what this interesting game was about. We had the honor to chat with the Co Creator of Skate and creative director Andy Santos of Mandorium for Polterguys.
How are you? Please let us know your role with the game and what Polterguys is about?
Hi, my name’s Andy Santos. I’m the creative director of Mandorium. Behind me is Polterguys, which is kind of like Mario Kart but it is not a race it is a chase. What you do is you go around, you collect abilities, you use those abilities to push one another into harm’s way.
The mode we’ve got on display today is called Last Polter Guy Standing. So the goal is for you to feed all your friends to the monster that’s chasing you.
What made y’all want to make a game where you’re trying to defeat everybody by doing mischievous stuff?
Yeah. It’s a game about sabotage and, you know, the, the little ghost creatures hiding in costumes to escape the monster. The monster can not kill you first time around, if you’re in a costume, so you want to be in a costume because that’ll keep you safe. If you’re a ghost, and the monster gets you, it’s an Insta kill. If you’re in the costume, you can look to fight another day. And if he hits you the first time. Wow. So eventually though, you know, if he hit you enough times, he’ll, that’s a wrap.
I love the play on name Polter-Guys like Poltergeist, So are you like a huge fan of like, scary type movies and characters and stuff like that?
Yeah I love it too. Well, it’s, it’s funny. have to credit the owner of the company (Richard Yandle) for, just coming up with a plot. We have these characters, we didn’t even think of them as ghosts. We thought of them as gooey creatures. When he came up with the name Polterguys, which works really well, this pun.
It is fun when there are featured characters, like when companies and developers work with different characters or themes.
Well I’d love to see all the characters from the Ghostbusters movie. I’d love to do a crossover with Pixar, one day maybe we’ll be a huge game and they’ll want to do Toy Story. Imagine the bedroom in [Polterguys] as a level. Buzz Lightyear bringing him to life, we do have robot already.
Or even like Monster’s Inc?
Monster’s Inc. is another great reference. If you look at the wooden planks, I remember watching the movie, saying “we need wooden planks like that look like they come from that movie.” And that’s what we ended up with. We are passionate fans of Pixar. We do want that sort of playful art style.
And then we have our Humph and Letty that we use on all the key arts. We are trying to make a narrative around those two characters. (Letty) I mean, she’s a cute, sassy, smart girl.
So we’re making an animation right now where she’s running into an attic and she’s trying to find armor because something’s coming. Humph is possessing things like a mop so he has long hair. There’s other ghosts that are having fun in the attic. And then there’s a knock on the door. Before they go to answer the door, splash, splash, they get squished by the monster.
Wow. I love the concept. This is a game that I can see definitely playing with friends, especially streaming it. Talking trash at the same time.
That’s exactly where it comes from. Me and the founder ( Richard Yandle) of the company, we played games together when we were young. And we always remember moments in certain games. Like there was an old arcade game called Gauntlet. They had a character called Death and you could accidentally unlock that character and then he’d start chasing you.
Well, we kind of lived out that fantasy today with the mod technology. We’ve done it on purpose. We want the sort of game experience where we start friends arguing about what’s going on in the game. Like, why did you do that to me? Oh, man, you used that ability and you pinged me over there and then we got trapped and the monster got me. That’s exactly what we’re after.
Modes currently?
We also support split screen. So you can play on the couch together. We have team modes, we have a battle mode, we have a soccer mode. So there’s a lot of things that are in the pipeline. And hopefully we’ll make the game, release the game, probably around Christmas time.
I love when friendship or anything inspires mechanics in the game because it really pays attention to what us gamers want. For gamers, by gamers. I love concepts like that.
All the team is involved with every aspect of creation here. So a lot of the powers that we have, we have more powers than, say, a game like Mario Kart. It’s because we keep thinking of things and we go, let’s just try it out. And if it works, we keep it in the game. It’s as simple as that.
So you said it’s going to come out around wintertime, probably around the holidays. Do you have anything else to share with the fans?
It’ll be out. It works on Nintendo, it works on PlayStation, it works on Xbox. We’re showing it on Steam Decks today. So, yeah, it’s almost ready to go in this form where it’s an online multiplayer game. But we need to add a few more features before we release it.
So I have one last question. I’ve been asking this all throughout the show. What got you into gaming and what made you stay?
Well, my story starts probably when I was six years old. My father was a sea captain and I went to Japan in 1982 when all the arcade games were exploding, like Galaga, Pac-Man. I was bored on the ship. Then when I arrived in Japan, I wasn’t bored anymore. My parents were probably fed up with me and they gave me some yen and I started playing arcade games.
That’s all I wanted to do. I wanted to play arcade games all the time. Then eventually my parents got me a computer, I started making my own games from the age of about six all the way through to now.
So for me, everything turned full circle about 30 years after I first visited Japan when I made a Resident Evil game. I directed it and it was a number one in Japan, that was Biohazard Operation Raccoon City. So, yeah, it’s moments like that that keep me in the game. I want to make more number one games. I want to make franchises like Polterguys. That’s what I want to do. I love it. Love it, love it so much.
Polterguys Key Features
- Up to eight player versus solo multiplayer
- Split-screen couch play for up to 4 players, who can also go online together and play as a party
- 10 levels packed with physics-based traps and toys
- 20 collectable costume possessions to discover and level up
- Daily and weekly challenges
- Weekly leaderboards
- “The Spooky Trail” to travel along for progression
- Personal space called the ‘haunt’ that can be customized with in-game addons