Young Horses Inc are hard at work on Octodad: Dadliest Catch, a genre defying ID@Xbox game climbing across from PS4 and PC to Xbox One.

I caught up with Young Horses Inc's Philip Tibitoski to discuss Octodad, ID@Xbox, future projects, and much more!

Q 1) For those that are new to the game, how would you sum up Octodad? Octodad: Dadliest Catch is a game about destruction, deception, and fatherhood. The player controls Octodad, a dapper octopus masquerading as a human, as he goes about his life. Octodad's existence is a constant struggle, as he must master mundane tasks with his unwieldy boneless tentacles while simultaneously keeping his cephalopodan nature a secret from his human family. Q 2) I saw on your website that Octodad started as a university project. The themes reminded me of Disney's Ratatouille and similar cartoons where an animal is masquerading in a human role. Did you draw on inspiration from any particular movies/media/other games when coming up with the concept? The initial concept for the game was born out of the ideas in the film Being John Malkovich which deals with living within another person's mind, sometimes controlling them. We also drew influence from the game Jurassic Park Trespasser for the mechanics of micro-managing the movement of Octodad. Best VPN providers 2020: Learn about ExpressVPN, NordVPN & more Things like Animaniacs, Rocko's Modern Life, and Ren & Stimpy also influenced the visual aesthetics of the game. Q 3) Will Octodad make use of any of the unique Xbox One features? I envisage some sort of insane body contorting controls using Kinect (that would probably cause injuries however...) We are looking into Kinect controls, but as cool as you might think they'd be for Octodad it's very difficult to figure out an intuitive way to control him using your body. Otherwise one thing setting it apart from the PS4/PC versions is that it will come with the extra 'Shorts' levels from the start.

Q 4) Have you guys approached/been approached by big publishers for Octodad? Would you consider joining them if so? If not, could you explain your reasoning? We've talked to a few publishers in the past, but have yet to see a deal that would actually be in our best interests. At this point the game has sold well enough that we're all full-time at Young Horses. We're getting to work on our next game which is something different from what we've done in the past, and self-funding it is our first choice. Starting our studio has always been about maintaining all control over what we do to create weird/delightful games, and we're just where we want to be. Q 5) Would you agree that independent studios have a stronger voice than ever in the console gaming space? or do you guys think there's more work to do to on the part of Xbox/PS4 to level the playing field so to speak? It's easier than ever to publish your own game on a console. Many of the platform-holders will also help you out anywhere they can and that's doing good for the community. As far as leveling the playing field goes everything still comes down to having a good game that stands out because of its own merits. Q 6) The wider gaming media have frequently criticised ID@Xbox's 'parity clause', but Octodad seems to contravene that to a fairly large degree - is the policy as rigid as some worry? How have you found dealing with ID@Xbox in general? I think we're in a unique position with Octodad because we started working with Sony and PS4 about 3 months before the ID@Xbox program was announced. This gave us some leeway when it comes to the parity stuff since we didn't know it existed until we'd already made plans for other platforms. Another thing is that when speaking with platform-holders almost everything is negotiable if you've got some sort of leverage. Whether you've got exclusive content per platform or previous accolades to lean on it seems there are multiple ways to get around or bend policy in general. I think the best advice I can give for independents looking to put their game on consoles, if it's their first go 'round, is to build the reputation of their game and studio through showing it at public events like PAX. It comes down to the fact that if a lot of people want your game on their platform of choice then the platform-holders will be more motivated to make that happen. This is a business after all.