Pieces Interactive is an amazing group of talented individuals with a mindset to creating amazingly innovative games. They have recently worked on Puzzlegeddon and the spectacular Fret Nice. We sat down with Calle Kyhlberg and Mårten Brüggemann, co-founds of Pieces Interactive, to talk about their past, present and what the future might hold for these amazing developers.
(TheGamersHub) Tell us a little about yourself and your company.
Calle: First off thanks for inviting us to this interview. The people doing this interview are me, Calle Kyhlberg and Mårten Brüggemann. We both work as Game Directors and are two of the co-founders of Pieces Interactive.
Pieces is a small company located a small town in the southwest of Sweden but with big ideas and ambitions of creating interesting, innovative and meaningful game experiences (and getting paid doing it!).
We started the company in 2007 but began working together some time before that. We all met here (in Skövde) several years ago as students. Soon a few of us decided to start our own game development studio.
Puzzlegeddon and Fret Nice are both actually projects that were started before officially starting the company and both were winners in the Swedish Game Awards 2007. “Riding” on that success and boosted confidence we began work towards getting those games out to a larger audience, which brings us to the present day Pieces 
What gave you guys the idea for Puzzlegeddon?
Calle: Well to keep it short, we were interested in the idea of making a genre hybrid, as a test of skill and of curiosity. With that we decided early that we wanted to make a puzzle game as this sounded fun and relatively simple at the time. We soon started dabbling with the concept of having a puzzle element driving other game mechanics and components, combined that with a kind of light hearted competition of games like Super Smash Bros and the overall look and feel. Online multiplayer was always intended to be an important part of the game.
With the success it’s having are there any plans for DLC to add more levels or a sequel?
Calle: Sure there are lots of ideas and I hope we will be able to focus more on DLC now that the game is out. It would be fun to add some more game modes, backgrounds, islands to play as etc. No sequel in production at the moment, but you never know what happens!
How many levels are in Fret Nice?
Mårten: There are 20 unique levels in Fret Nice.
The game has a lot to offer currently but is there any plans to add DLC?
Mårten: We have lots of plans! Fret Nice is a game that lends itself great to further content additions, both new levels and more customization clothes etc. It all depends on what the fanbase would like to see!
What gave you the idea to use guitars as a platformer controller? & How did you come up with such an amazing and unique platformer as Fret Nice?
Mårten: I guess it all was born out of the guitar and the idea to incorporate music into the platformer. When the Guitar Hero games first came out I was fascinated about the new mechanics it brought to gaming. So I started experimenting with trying to blend these mechanics into other concepts.
The 2D platformer is my own personal favorite genre and for me it’s always the outset when coming up with game concepts. Fret Nice has taken a lot of inspiration from gems of the genre, and in a way it needed to rely on a lot of conventions as a counterpart to the things that are unorthodox about it, namely the controller and the musical attacking system, so a lot of the game’s design came out of the struggle between the old and the new! Both to get them to work together, but also to emphasize on the differences between them.
How is the development on the XBLA version? When should we expect a release?
Calle: The development for the XBLA version of Fret Nice is done (yay!) and the game will possibly be released very soon!
I saw the prototype demo of Walkie Tonky on your site. Could you tell me about the game?
Mårten: Walkie Tonky is a physics-based action game where the player controls a big robot called Tonky that is dumped on Earth by his kin. The robot needs to fight the humans in several well-known cities & locations to search for his true purpose and perhaps even make a friend. It’s sort of an ugly duckling story told with a lot of humor and destructive arcade gameplay. In the game Tonky can pick up anything and use it as weapons or use his devastating eye laser to wreck havoc.
The concept art for Kite looks graphically inspiring. Could you tell about that game? Any release window, platforms in mind?
Calle: Yes we can certainly tell you a few things at least but I wish I could tell more! “Kite” is a game that we hope we will be able to bring to market next year and something we’re very excited about. It’s an Aerobatic Action-Adventure that is our most ambitious title yet and the next step for us in terms of creating interesting and meaningful game experiences. It’s targeted for digital platforms and for a slightly more mature audience than our previous titles. The word kite refers to the main character of the game in more ways than one, but perhaps shouldn’t be taken literally. The translation of the word in Swedish also holds much meaning!
Thank you for your time. Is there anything you’d like to say to your fans?
We’d simply like to thank all our fans, it makes us very happy and we will do our best to continue delivering interesting game experiences!
We would like to thank Calle and Mårten for talking with us along with the whole Pieces Interactive team for creating such amazing games. Check out our Review For Fret Nice OUT NOW ON PSN COMING FEB 24th For XBLA.
