Duncan Withers, Art Manager at PikPok, Lead Artist on Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days – Interview Series

PikPok, a New Zealand-based studio best known for its wide array of iOS and Android titles and its frequent collaborations with DreamWorks Animation, is currently gearing up to deliver a new chapter for the ever-popular Into the Dead series. Eager to learn more about the so-called Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days and its place on the monopoly, I decided to reach out to Duncan Withers, Art Manager at PikPok, who was kind enough to fill me in on all the details.

It’s great to hear from you! Please could you introduce yourself to our readers? Tell us a bit about your journey in the gaming industry. How did it all start for you; and what brought you to PikPok?

Duncan: My name is Duncan Withers and my job title at PikPok is Art Manager. I’ve served as Lead Artist on every previous game in the Into the Dead franchise, and also on Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days.

I’ve been here a long time. 17 years ago there wasn’t much of a game development scene in New Zealand, so a job in the industry didn’t really seem like a possibility. The best employment prospects for a 3D artist like myself was generally to try for a job in the film industry. I wanted to go a different direction though, so when I saw PikPok advertise for a junior artist, I jumped at the chance. Since then I’ve worked across a wide variety of platforms and genres. Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days is our first title built from the ground up for a PC audience via Steam, and I think it’s our most ambitious title to date.

Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days is creeping up on its long-awaited Steam debut, which is due to arrive on October 28, 2024. Tell us, are we nearing that all-important gold status, or are there still a few nuts and bolts left to fasten?

Duncan: There’s definitely still a large amount of work to be done before Early Access, but things are under control. We have a lot of ambitious plans for this game, and we know not all of them will be in place for Early Access, so we’re having to be selective about how we apply ourselves at this point in development.

The team is just putting the finishing touches on the demo now, so we’ll start looking ahead to that Early Access release and start figuring out what other exciting features and content we can add in the lead-up to that first release. We’re looking forward to seeing the response to the demo and using feedback from our audience to guide us through the next phase of development.

We’re getting hints of Little Nightmares and This War of Mine with this one. Are we in the right ballpark on this, or have we overshot the mark? Either way, we would love to hear more about the process of finding the inspiration for Into the Dead! Could you tell us a bit more about how it all came together?

Duncan: Not a bad observation! In the early stages of conception for the project, we played both of those titles. You’ll notice the two games don’t share a lot of similarities in terms of game mechanics, but what they have in common is an ability to elicit an emotional response in the player. For Little Nightmares it’s tension and fear, for This War of Mine it’s a sense of empathy for your characters, and a hopelessness from living in a world beyond your control. We knew from the start that we wanted Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days to be an emotional experience that blended mechanics from different genres, so we looked far and wide for inspiration.

Speaking specifically about the art direction for the game, we looked to horror films of the late 1970s and early 1980s to influence the visual and tonal direction. Not just zombie films, but slasher films, monster movies, and the body horror of David Cronenberg and John Carpenter.

Let’s open the book up on the game’s premise. From the sounds of it, our characters’ development and hunger for survival will play a crucial role in the story. Could you tell us a bit about how we, as players, will be able to influence the outcome of this post-apocalyptic event?

Duncan: It’s been a cornerstone of the Into the Dead franchise that we tell personal stories set against the backdrop of a world-ending threat. So the focus of Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days isn’t so much about influencing these events as it is about collectively surviving them with your small group. It might be for another month, another week or simply one more day, but survival is the goal. Our game sets up the scenario, then fills Walton City with many potential ways out. What your group has to do to survive, and who they do it to, will be up to our players to decide.

You’ve previously touched base on certain gameplay elements such as shelter management and “painful” consequential quests. Are we right in thinking that one wrong move might just result in the drastic loss of our survivors? Will the weight of the world really rest on our shoulders, or will we have the opportunity to share the burden?

Duncan: Yes, that’s correct. We cemented the idea of character permadeath very early on in development. We wanted our game world to feel like a punishing place. It’s a foundational aspect of any zombie fiction—that nothing is ever truly safe. Even the most controlled situation can turn deadly in the blink of an eye, and permadeath provides that tension for our players.

You’ll start the game by selecting a starting pair. As you explore the city—and if you’re paying attention—you’ll be given multiple opportunities to recruit other survivors into your group. So if you’re careful, your survivors will always have others with which they can share the burden. However, if things go wrong, you can very easily find yourself with just one remaining survivor on their own in Walton City. That’s certainly not a comfortable position to be in.

I think a few pro tips and tricks might be in order here! Do you have any words of advice for those who are looking to take a big ol’ bite out of Into the Dead when it graces the Steam shelves?

Duncan: Don’t be a hero, and know your limits. Our game’s stages, and gameplay in general, are intentionally non-linear. You can enter and exit locations as often as you see fit. Sometimes the best strategy is to take what you can and get out quickly. Fighting zombies head-on is an extremely dangerous strategy. As you said—one wrong move and you could lose a survivor for good, so don’t be afraid to run away with your life (and hopefully some good loot).

📢DISCORD LAUNCH!📢

Ahead of the demo release for Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days next month, we're launching a Discord for players to connect with one another and share feedback and suggestions with our team.

Join here: https://t.co/wf1AirhkKL pic.twitter.com/10WMVR9Ahj

— Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days (@intothedead) September 23, 2024

How can we stay up to date with Into the Dead? Are we able to share any social feeds, streams, or upcoming events with our audience?

Duncan: You can follow us across social media, on Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.

Is there any hub you would like to add before we go ahead and wrap things up?

Duncan: Stay up to date on the latest developments by joining our Discord.

We appreciate it! Best of luck with the upcoming launch!

For more information on PikPok’s Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days, you can check in with the team over on their official X/Twitter channel here. You can also wishlist the game on Steam for additional updates here.