‘Bounty Star’ director Ben Ruiz talks fusing genres and working with Brother Dege

nme.com:

Annapurna Interactive Showcase today (June 29), Dinogod founder Ben Ruiz has spoken to NME about Bounty Star, their studio’s upcoming base-buiilding mech game.Announced last year, Bounty Star follows ex-soldier Clem, who must build up her base of operations while hunting bounties in her mech.

Thanks to Bounty Star‘s elements of farming, base-building and 3D mech combat, along with its “post-post-apocalyptic” Western setting, fans have been struggling to find an existing game to compare it to — something its director, Ruiz, is pleased with.“I think it’s cool that that’s the response,” Ruiz tells NME. “I like the element of wondering — from the player side — what they’re looking at.

It’s obvious there’s an action game, and it’s obvious there are these farming, chores and base-building elements. Players know what those are, but I like that they don’t really know how that would feel.

That’s fun for me — I’ve always done that, I like mixing genres in unexpected ways.”While Ruiz jokes that Bounty Star has pulled from the likes of Stardew Valley and Big Buck Hunter, the game draws more on his own experiences of growing up in Arizona and exploring the Southwestern United States.“A lot of this game had to do with wanting more things to take place in my desert,” says Ruiz. “This feels like an opportunity to get my desert out into the world.”Ruiz’s own taste in music has also slipped in, as songs from delta blues musician Brother Dege — best known for ‘Too Old To Die Young’ — form much of Bounty Star‘s soundtrack.As for how that collaboration happened, Ruiz says he reached out to the musician while he was still the only person working on Bounty Star in pre-production.