CREATORS EXCLUSIVE
The beast is unleashed in Skull Island: Rise Of Kong
KING KONG ISN’T simply an apex predator. He’s an apex icon, the ultimate survivor, still towering over 90 years of pop culture. But is our species too busy screaming in his hairy fist or tickling him with fighter planes to truly know what makes this great ape tick?
“We felt that a game where you play as Kong, to experience him as the main character, was needed,” says Daniel Winkler, creative director of Skull Island: Rise Of Kong, a new PC and console game that gives players total command of those mighty paws. “We wanted to be Kong, this emotionally deep and empathetic character, and allow fans to directly participate in his journey.”
The game was developed in collaboration with Joe DeVito, author and artist behind the Skull Island series of books, which take their inspiration from the man behind the immortal primate’s skyscraper-scaling debut in 1933. “This is the first game that expands the history of the original King Kong created by Merian C Cooper,” says Winkler.
“In videogames, the stories usually revolve around the people that encounter the King of the Island, and we felt it was necessary to introduce gamers to his own story as told through Joe DeVito’s novels. DeVito’s lore is incredibly comprehensive and there was a lot to pull from and adapt that has never been showcased in a videogame before.” The graphics bring a classic arcade game vibe. “The aesthetic was decided very early in development,” says art director Andrés Levineri. “We wanted to distance ourselves from the gritty and almost monochromatic style of other Kong games and movies, through a simpler, cel-shaded style that pays homage to DeVito’s novels.
“We were taking up a much older Kong story than the one that is in the current cultural zeitgeist, so we had full liberty to create a world of our own. We had a lot of fun reimagining the franchise in the full spectrum of colour.” As Levineri tells Red Alert, the look of
Kong himself was crucial to the game’s development. “He is an innocent, empathetic creature, so when designing him we wanted to feel his sheer power while also being able to communicate his inner thoughts effectively.
“His scale and strength are seen and felt during gameplay as Kong smashes creatures all over Skull Island, but demonstrating the emotional range of Kong also became a challenge as well, so we had to make his feelings clear through expressions and body language. In the end, his physical design was able to emote more than power, bringing Kong closer to revealing the uniqueness of his nature – not human, but far more than just an overgrown gorilla. Kong is his own species.”
The game keeps Kong
