Feature: 'Schadenfreudian Slips: The Making Of Accordion Hero'

Continuing their "Schadenfreudian Slips" columns for Gamasutra, notable German developer Schadenfreude Interactive has submitted an exclusive postmortem on their recent smash hit rhythm action game Accordion Hero, in which you must "Polka your way up from Der Rathskeller to Oktoberfest in Munich!". Gamasutra is, as ever, not liable for any carousing caused by perusing this postmortem, but nonetheless, we present this explanation of the concept behind the game, and the machinations behind its pictured prototype controller: "Our beautiful Black Forest region is known for fine cuckoo clocks, delicious cake, and accordion music (most of you will probably only be familiar with the cake). Like wearing socks with our sandals, accordion music is part of being German... Our sound engineer, Alex Voll mit Aalen, is a professional accordion player who has toured with The Titisee-Neustadt Children's Orchestra, Ratte-Salat, and Bavarian-Turner Overdrive. Plus, everyone knows that accordion players get all the girls (I assume this would hold for the ladies as well, as accordion playing calls attention to the bosom in a delightful manner). We wanted to bring this experience to gamers everywhere. Although most of us had played the accordion, we had never designed a game controller before! I quickly threw together a prototype made of dryer ducting, two cheese graters, tape, buttons, and a few Werther's Originals. It took a great deal of imaginary accordion playing to determine where the buttons should ultimately go, and the cheese graters scratched Crispin's hands up pretty horribly. But we told him that one must suffer to become a game tester, and one must be a game tester before one can be anything in this industry (of course we did not tell him that the rest of us were never game testers. Ah, it is to laugh)." You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject, including just why Schadenfreude's Karsden “Cougar” Morderhaschen has a photo of tester Lothar in a Sailor Saturn cosplay outfit (no registration required, please feel free to link to the article from external websites).