What’s up, doc?

Our Meet the Team post is here!

Today, Game Designer Han Sel takes time out to tell you all about his role within the team, and everything he loves about the game and the franchise!

Meet our Game Designer, Han Sel

So what’s your role inside the team?

I’m a game designer in the content team, working directly with the battle system and the artists.

What do you do in your role? 

I focus mostly on the game’s upcoming Toons. For most of my day I’ll be diving deep into our internal scripts and systems, trying to bring Leopold’s designs into reality, and making sure that they survive the process from concept to release. I configure practically every aspect of the Toons into the game, which means I get to be with them in every stage of development, from pitching concepts to Dave (our WB expert consultant) in the hopes that he’ll align with our insanity, to brainstorming with the art team how certain animations will look, up to writing the flavor text in Toon’s descriptions and tasks. It’s incredibly rewarding to be able to open up the game and see the final result, and to know (or believe to know) how it all looks under the surface.

To simplify, I guess my job is to bother several people in several different areas. I bother WB to get approval for Toons, I bother the programmers to get new tools to work with, I bother the art team to get animations, houses and icons, and I bother QA to make sure the game won’t explode when we try to play with new Toons (that last part’s an inexact science).

I come from an illustration and visual design background, so once in a blue moon, I’ll be able to sketch a visual pitch of what I’m imagining for upcoming Toons and show them to the art team. For the most part that’s just for fun, but every so often they’ll clean these sketches up, make them a lot cooler, and work into getting them into the game.

Initial concept pitch for Revenant Road Runner (at that point just called Ghost Runner)

What is it that you love about the game and the franchise: 

If you’ve been alive at some point in the last 100 years you’ve probably heard of Looney Tunes. It’s an absolutely amazing franchise and every single character is bursting with personality, humor, and, most importantly, timeless charm. Working on this project has made me realize just how many neurons I’ve dedicated to random gags, lines, and sometimes entire episodes of the series. To be able to work within this universe and to watch classic cartoons as part of the job is downright surreal. I think I enjoy them now more than I did as a kid.

About the game, I’ve never seen such a large concentration of frighteningly talented people before. The artists and designers constantly surprise me with the new heights we’ve been reaching and there’s no sign of slowing down. Above all it’s great to just be a part of it all and to be able to add to this legacy. I mean, we get to create things that were never in the cartoon and get them officially approved. How cool is that?

What are you currently working on?

In general, Toons are developed up to a full year, and delivered roughly a full month, before their release. At this exact moment, I’m discussing potential options for the next year, working with the art team on concepts for Toons to be released in the next 3 months, and implementing Toons that will be playtested soon but will only release early next month.

This actually makes it really hard to talk about Toons in general, as we’re always time traveling and have our heads filled with concepts that, fully fleshed out as they may be, don’t actually exist yet, and can’t even be revealed. Visually, they’re really cool, though. Try to picture them, I’m sure you’ll like it.

Very first idea for Lola Frostbane (Don’t worry, folks, Ralph is fine, this is just his weekend gig)

If you were a Toon, Who would you be and why?

Certainly Star-Pharaoh Marvin. We both hold powers that we don’t trust anyone else with, and we’re both privy to eldritch understandings and technologies that have come from distances of both space and time and do not truly belong to anyone anymore. Also we both spend a lot of our day sitting down.

If I’m being fully honest, however, I’d probably be Egghead. I also have a little notebook where I draw up all sorts of formulas and theorems before putting anything into practice, and neither of us talks much, if we can help it.

What are your favorite Toons in the game: 

I always like the Toons that we invent specifically for the game, I feel they could have their own episodes someday. I’m partial to Cannoneer Canasta, Lunar Petunia and Master Speedy, and several new Toons that I can’t yet talk about. 

In general, my favorite Toons tend to be the ones that we’re still conceptualizing and approving.

What are your favorite Team Compositions?

My playstyle is far from optimal and I think that anybody who looked at my account would be really disappointed with all the half-teams I’ve got floating around. 

My most consistent playstyle involves using Lunar Petunia and Pepe Le Bard along with Devil Dog and some fun attackers like Nasty Canasta, Jester Bugs, or Witch Hazel. I like filling the battlefield with buffs and debuffs and watching it all resolve in explosions of Damage Over Time.

Tell us about some Funny/”oh-noes” development moments that you remember:

The craziest thing about development, particularly in this already-crazy game, is the amount of times where things just go the exact opposite of what you’d expect. Sometimes a simple buff patch ends up creating catastrophic bugs, and sometimes this absolutely monstrous and overall mysterious kit turns out to be a five-minute implementation effort. The craziest exchanges always occur with new Toons, however.

There are so many concepts that we pitch that we never expect to see the light of day. This was the case with the Ninja/Samurai Toons. Imagine our surprise when we not only got a full house of four amazing Toons, but also an awesome comic book to mark their arrival. On the same note, there have been some concepts in which we were pretty confident that ended up not just rejected, but flung into dark pits of non-existence from which they may never return, nor be remembered or spoken about.

All in all, it’s great fun.

Any other curious thing you want to tell the community – this is your moment to shine!

Oh no, if anything, I’ve said too much! Can I go back and remove some of it?

But seriously, I’d like to thank every dedicated player on Discord who plays the game and wants to see it grow. Especially those who take the time to properly recognize, test, and report bugs or suggest improvements. The players are as much a part of this game as every single person who works on it, and it quite obviously would not exist without them.

I’d also like to express my gratitude for being able to work with this glorious dev team, in particular the content team, who are the most talented and beautiful people I know, and the designers who manage to make even the worst of times absolutely hilarious.

JOIN THE GANG IN DISCORD!

Didn’t you know, bub? The Looney Tunes World of Mayhem Discord server is the place to be! Join us there to meet other Maestros of Mayhem, discuss strategies and share your feedback with Haruki and the game development team.