Why Knack is the PS4's Hidden Gem

We chat with Mark Cerny about the development of Knack and what exactly it means for the PS4.

For someone that's been working on a PS4 launch title, Mark Cerny is a pretty calm guy. At the PS4 reveal, Knack was one of the games that were showcased, and we couldn't quite figure out what it was really all about. Half puzzle, half platformer, and all kinds of adorable, Knack has plenty of tricks to show off, and Mark assures me that we haven't even begun to see the game's full potential.

Give us a 60 second pitch about what Knack is.
Knack is sort of a mash up between a Pixar style film and character action game. It’s all based on the very unique character of Knack who can grow and transform different parts of the environment and incorporate them into his body. He will get larger and pick up special abilities based on what he’s been picking up.
Were you happy that they showed it at the PS4 reveal?
I was so happy. It was my Jerry Maguire moment.
Now Obviously the character in Knack can pick up things from the environment. Can you talk a little bit more about how that works? Will players be able to pick everything or only certain artefacts?
In some of the stages you’ll grow slowly. As soon as you start, you are a cute three foot tall mascot styled character and then end up as a thirty foot tall monster. In other stages it is much faster; you might pick up icicles which make you get big very quickly, and you can bulk up. They’re kind of like armour because when the enemy hits you they fall off and you can always pick up more icicles. Then if you go out in the sun, they melt so we have some setups where there’s an army of enemies outside and you have to rush out as a giant ice character and take them out before the sun melts you back down to size. Other levels you have transparent parts so you can go through security beams. We have a level where you’re picking up wood which is great until they shoot flaming arrows at you and light you on fire, and it’ll burn you back down to size. So each level is an opportunity to try something different of the character Knack.
Is there any limit to how big Knack can get?
Knack gets to be around thirty feet tall.

And does that give him unique challenges in the level like there’s some areas where he’s small again and then big again? Is that how you’ve designed some of the levels?
The way it tends to work is that Knack is repelling an invasion and the goblins are invading the human city. He starts out small and can’t really do too much, but by the time he has fought his way through to the city and gotten up to size, then he can take out planes, tanks and the giant goblin boss.
One of the things Knack focuses on very strongly is it being more of a puzzle game than a platformer. Why did you guys decide to make Knack as more of ‘you need to think about what you are doing’ rather than just blitzing through a level?
I actually don’t want to over sell that. For me it’s really getting back to that joy of that Crash Bandicoot feeling of running through the levels, enjoying what you are doing, not thinking too hard. That isn’t to say that there aren’t some puzzle elements to the game. You need to work your way through the environment, find something specific. But overall the fun factor of the game is your interactions with the enemy, and that feeling of how you’re going to take out the next enemy.
In one of your other interviews, you were describing about when Knack becomes small again and all the objects fall off of him, they each have their own physics and polygons. Obviously the PS4 is a powerful device so how are you able to harness everything to make a game that complicated but at the same time look very simple?
Because PlayStation 4 has very high performance, we can quickly try out an idea and if it’s good we keep it, if it’s bad we don’t, so you can quickly iterate conceptually, which I believe one of the results of that will be the title being a lot richer in terms of content. For us, the most straightforward way we are using all that performance is the character of Knack. When he gets big he has five thousand parts in him and it’s all driven by a custom physics simulation.
And how are you able to use the new and updated PS4 controller and integrate it into the game?
I’m trying to have a simple but deep move set so there are not many moves that you can do but you must understand how to do them. You want a challenge? Crank it up to hard, and you’ll have a challenge. But given that’s the concept, we’re not in fact even using the shoulder buttons in the game. This is not going to be one of the cases where we are using fourteen buttons in a game. We’re trying to make sure that anyone in the family can play it on Easy, because it doesn’t use that many buttons . But on Hard, as somebody who is used to play these games, they’d better be alert or they won’t be getting through that level of the game.

Now obviously you have spent a great deal of time with the actual console. What was it like developing for the PlayStation 4?
I’ve gone around and visited various publishers and developers and I had a big speech about how the PlayStation 4 was easy to develop for and then I started my own project and very ironically it turned out to be true. Of course we thought that was the case but to really feel it with somebody making a game was great.

At what point after the game comes out will you be able to say if it’s a success or not?
[laughs] The smile on my nephews face! We’ve been working very hard to ensure that PlayStation 4 is a family friendly destination and so for me to have a game which is a family title is a big thing. Sure we have Watch Dogs and Killzone for most gamers, but you can get Knack for the rest of the family or even for yourself if you’d like action platformer games.