“Gosh darn it to Hell.”
Just because WASD Live 2024 is now over and the doors are closed until the next event, the fun is far from over. With many games played and lots of developers and publishers to speak to, in today’s interview, we’re joined by Ozan Drøsdal, the man who knows everything to know about the upcoming The Holy Gosh Darn. From impending doom and rewinding time to where do cats go when they die, here is our complete WASD Live 2024 interview:
Ozan Drøsdal | Creating a Hell of a Good Time with The Holy Gosh Darn:
Miketendo64: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your role with Perfectly Paranormal?
Ozan Drøsdal: Hello! My name is Ozan Drøsdal and I am the creative lead, writer and animator at Perfectly Paranormal.
Miketendo64: In what capacity are you involved with The Holy Gosh Darn?
Ozan Drøsdal: Full capacity I’d say! I have written and animated it and done lots of directing. Both on the visual and narrative side. I also directed all of the voice over.
Miketendo64: What first attracted you to The Holy Gosh Darn?
Ozan Drøsdal: Lots of different things accumulate into what we ultimately pick as the next game. In Manual Samuel and Helheim Hassle we explore Earth, Hell and the different realms of Norse Mythology. We wanted to expand the universe further without straying too far away from the settings of the first games on account of lots of the characters interacting and knowing each other. So the obvious choice was to pick Heaven as the setting and see what those angels are up to!
This next sentence is a minor spoiler but only if you haven’t played the first 20 mins of the game. The plot idea started with the idea that God has decided to just make a painting but of course it ends up being so good that it can be used as a weapon and of course somebody has stolen it. We’ve had complicated stories about a guy who has to do everything Manually for 24 hours and then ends up battling Satan, about undead Vikings helping Horsepeople of The Apocalypse picking up swords in Helheim and stuff. Just wanted a nice simple story about a mcguffin that goes missing and you have to find it.
The gameplay mechanic is also an accumulation of the earlier games. In Man Sam and Helheim we had this mechanic where if you skipped a cutscene then the characters would react to it. You would skip the cutscene in real time rather than just “skipping” it. We wanted to expand on it further and ended up with making the skipping of dialogue the core gameplay. But if you’re gonna run around and skip dialogue then you’re gonna need a reason for it and a way to retrigger certain conversations in case you ended up skipping something important, so that’s when we figured it has to be a game about time travel.
So there. A little wall of text about what attracted us to the setting, plot and gameplay of The Holy Gosh Darn.
Miketendo64: Can you provide us with a brief overview of what The Holy Gosh Darn is about?
Ozan Drøsdal: The Holy Gosh Darn is about Heaven blowing up at six o clock and it is all Death’s fault! He seeks out an old friend (Cassiel of Celerity / you) who happens to be the fastest angel in Heaven and gives her temporary time travel powers and the mission to save Heaven which turns out can only be done by finding an artefact God has created called “The Holy Gosh Darn.”
Miketendo64: Who is the main protagonist of The Holy Gosh Darn and what motivates them?
Ozan Drøsdal: That’s Cassiel of Celerity. She was once the fastest angel in Heaven, dealing with urgent matters such as gathering two of every animal on Earth and dropping them close to an ark (you can’t expect a North American Snapping Turtle to make it to the Middle East on his own in 7 days). But after about 2000 years without much to do she is bored and slow. When Death gives her the mission to save Heaven she is motivated by two things: Heaven being her home and all her friends living there, and there finally being some Lord’s Work to do!
Miketendo64: If you had to compare The Holy Gosh Darn to another game, what would be its closest match in terms of gameplay or theme?
Ozan Drøsdal: Plot-wise it’s probably close to The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, but the time travel game mechanic is more akin to the likes of Braid and get this: Forza Horizon! I tried that game the other day and I’m like what, you can rewind time just like in THGD! Of course in Braid and Forza you can’t fast forward the time (as far as I remember) which you can in our game! Pretty gosh darn cool!
Miketendo64: You can’t have time travel without a couple of hijinks, so what are some of the hijinks that are in store for Cassiel in The Holy Gosh Darn?
Ozan Drøsdal: When she starts messing with clock upgrades and figures you can bring items with you back to the past, things definitely get hijinksy! Also of course the amount of hijinks that occur simply from the nature of the characters she has to interact with, the culture crashes of having to hang out in places like Helheim and Hell, having to interact with those pesky humans on Earth and stumbling over other events that are going down around the cosmos that are just as, if not more significant then her own “trying to save Heaven” adventure going on.
Not to mention the hijinks that occur when she has to do stuff in the past to affect things in the future, and the other way around (sometimes without meaning to.)
To be honest, it is too much hijinks to put words on. You’ll have to experience it!
Miketendo64: If all dogs go to heaven, where do cats go when they die in The Holy Gosh Darn?
Ozan Drøsdal:They go to Cat Hell and Cat Heaven. The comprehensive mechanics of where anything ends up when they die is explained by different characters on a couple of occasions in the game too, dont’cha worry!
Miketendo64: With Helheim being a place best known as “the Realm of the Dead,” what purpose does Helheim serve in The Holy Gosh Darn when Heaven, Hell and Earth are all explorable locations?
Ozan Drøsdal: Helheim has the best black smiths in cosmos and both angels and Satan are a little old fashioned when it comes to weapons because they prefer swords (even Odin and Helheimians themselves have moved on to weapons manufactured by BoomDuck inc). Anyway since this is the both Heaven and Hell still do business with Helheim so they have connections there. That makes Helheim not a dump place to look if you’re looking for a missing artefact created by God.
Miketendo64: Lastly, would you be so kind as to list all platforms The Holy Gosh Darn is coming to?
Ozan Drøsdal: PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch aaaaaaaaaaaaaand you guessed it! PC! Is it coming to Mac? I don’t know, I never asked! I don’t think so? Probably not!
For more WASD Live 2024 content, be sure to click on this link here:
About The Holy Gosh Darn:
The Holy Gosh Darn is a narrative adventure with a time-travelling twist. Time travel to jump between the past and present across Heaven, Hell, Earth and Helheim. Uncover information in one timeline to alter things in another in a bid to stop your heaven from going bang. Again.
Rewind time and save the future in this hilarious time-travelling adventure game. In six hours, Heaven will be destroyed. Unless you can save it. Use your powers of time travel to jump freely between the past and present across Heaven, Hell, Earth and Helheim. Uncover information in one timeline to alter things in another in a bid to stop heaven from going bang. Again.
The Holy Gosh Darn is a narrative adventure with a time-travelling twist. You play the angel Cassiel, who must prevent an army of Phantoms from overrunning Heaven, which is really annoying because that’s where you live Discovering the existence of the Holy Gosh Darn, a mysterious artefact created by God thousands of years ago, you must strap on your time-travelling watch and set about hopping between the past, present and future meeting a cast of ridiculous characters across dynamically changing locations in a bid to uncover the secret to life, universe and… well, everything.
It’s a laugh-out-loud action adventure spanning multiple time periods and genres, which will answer all of life’s most enduring questions, such as why time travel makes you barf; why only angels get to swear and why skipping dialogue is totally fine when you’ve only six hours
to save Heaven. Expect outrageous humour, inventive puzzles and laugh-out-loud set pieces with Metroidvania-style progression – all expertly crafted by Perfectly Paranormal, the team behind Manuel Samuel and Helheim Hassle.
Features:
- Four different worlds to explore, across both Space AND Time!
- Unique time-pressured narrative requires players to hurry along NPCs as they uncover new information.
- Uncover fresh narrative strands which are triggered by progression, time, space and logic.
- 23 Heavenly Elders to insult! Gotta dis them all!
- Meet all your favorite characters from the bible!
- Exactly 4,250 dogs – none that you can pet.
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