An Interview with the Minds Behind Mari0

A few months ago, Mario was one of the most talked about games on the internet. Luckily, the geniuses behind this project (Maurice Guégan and Sašo Smolej)  were willing to set aside some of their time to answer a few of our questions. Unluckily, this site went down for a few months shortly before they had replied back to my questions. Now we can finally reveal the interview. Here it is!

DorkTech:  Now that you have a working game for Mario, are you going to move on to another project?

A: The developers: Well we have a rough plan of where we’d like to go, but it’s too early to say. More games will come once we put some good ideas to paper.

DorkTech: What was the hardest thing about building the game? What was the easiest?

A: Making sure Portal elements go well in hand with Mario elements, which is also one of the reasons we decided to keep all blocks in the original map pack portalable. Can’t really say what was the easiest. Though Marice, being the Mario coder did have a lot of “Well that was easier than it looked like” moments.

DorkTech: What was the inspiration for fusing Mario and Portal? 

A: Dorkly Bits: Mario with a portal gun. That’s pretty much it.

DorkTech: Out of all the games you have made so far, which one is your favorite?

A: Mari0 of course, especially considering the attention it got. Though I have to say I wish Ortho Robot got more exposure. Partly because of personal reasons – I was much more involved with it as far as game assets go (levels), partly because it feels like something completely different. An original game. The concept of course has been used before, but still. It’s about the feel.

DorkTech: Are there any secrets and/or surprises in the game for players to find?

A: Not really to be quite honest. Perhaps leftover code from unused features. Unless you’re willing to dive into the code, you won’t find much that hasn’t been discovered already.

Currently, the two-man team is working on the special edition version of the game, which includes even more features and cool stuff. Be sure to support them and donate if you want the SE version to be even more awesome! And while you are on their site, download the original version for free!