How to make games funny (w/ Luis Hernandez)

And he’s a Podtoid listener; God help us

On the latest episode of Sup, Holmes? (now on iTunes), we talked to an attractive and fancy fella named Luis Hernandez. From humble beginnings creating games with Valve’s Worldcraft level design tools from the mid-’90s to a successful career of making games he doesn’t really like such as Beetlenaught, not much about this man comes across as typical. One second he was talking about Tito Puente, the next he was lamenting his weakness for Heavy Metal that makes him feel like he’s trapped in the center of the sun. I bet that line drives the women bananas.

His biggest project, Jazz Punk, is well on its way to release this year. It’s got so much going against it, which is exactly why I think it’s going to be a hit. The project started in the post-Portal craze to create the next big “eureka”-packed first-person physics-bending puzzle adventure title.

A few years later, Luis and Jazz Punk co-creator Jess Brouse noticed that they were turning the game into a comedy; a comedy influenced by the films of Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker films, Monkey Island, minimalist fine art design, degaussing, and (of course) Tito Puente. They’ve gone to great lengths to make sure the game is not like most “comedy games.” Instead, they want Jazz Punk to be funny. The strategies that Luis and Jess have devised to meet this end (including the creation of a periodic table of comedy and a “jokes per minute” meter) are nothing short of astounding. 

You’ll find all that and more in this episode of Sup, Holmes?. Thanks again to Luis for joining us on the show, and tune in this Sunday at 1pm PST/4pm EST when we welcome David Wreden of The Stanley Parable to the program. It’s going to be sugarbeartastic.