Okay, here’s the deal. During PAX I got a chance to play through what will likely be the opening moments of Trover Saves the Universe, the new game from Rick and Morty co-creator, Justin Roiland, and his studio, Squanch Games. Normally in these situations, we would rewatch our gameplay and record commentary for our New Gameplay Today video series. We did do that, but reflecting on our work, we realized since the game is so dialogue-heavy with Roiland’s distinct style of speech and improvisation that we were really doing a disservice to the bizarre experience by talking over it. So, we decided to post the gameplay without our talking so you can hear each and every joke, from the bizarre opening tutorial to the final oddly PAX-specific moments.
For some context, however, here are some of things we talked about in the now forever-lost commentary:
- Roiland is a writer and voice actor for animated comedy television, and since he comes from that world of storytelling, it shouldn’t be too surprising to learn that Trover Saves the Universe actually has an in-depth story with a fully realized world inhabited by people who live in chairs.
- Roiland told us he wasn’t originally planning on voicing so many characters in the game, but he recorded the majority of the scratch tracks (temporary tracks used until the hired actor can come in and re-record) and the team working on the game liked them so much that they decided to keep them. Plus, since it’s Roiland’s story and characters and he is in the studio anyway, it makes it very easy to change things. It’s the reason why, for example, Trover has dialogue specifically for PAX at the end of the demo.
- In case it’s unclear, you – the player – are inhabiting the person in the chair (the camera, basically) and controlling Trover with the left control stick and face buttons. In this way, the game is a little bit like a single-player co-op experience.
- The game was developed as a VR game, but Squanch Games is also crafting the game so it can be played outside of VR, which is how we played it here. When you buy the game, it will be a single game. There will not be separated VR and non-VR versions.
Trover Saves the Universe is coming to PlayStation 4 (with the option to play in PSVR) early 2019.
Source: Game Informer Watch Us Play Trover Saves The Universe's PAX Demo In Full