PixelHive recently shared details on the origin of Kaze and the Wild Masks, the development process and their admiration for the 90’s gaming era.

90's inspired platformer Kaze and the Wild Masks is a dedicated five-year project by Brazilian development studio PixelHive - a small team with a big love for retro games. Kaze and the Wild Masks embraces all the classic 90’s platformer elements and gives it a personal touch with modern-looking pixel art graphics. The vibrant colors, lively characters and various environments show that PixelHive puts a lot of love and care in bringing the world of Kaze and the Wild Masks to life. In an in-dept interview with one of PixelHive's team members, they shed light into their motivation behind creating a retro platformer in these modern times.

Could you tell us a bit more about yourself and the team behind Kaze and the Wild Masks? Where are you guys from and what’s your story?

Hi! I am Paulo Bohrer, the music composer and sound designer behind Kaze and the Wild Masks and one of the founders of development studio PixelHive. We are a small game development team based in the city of Porto Alegre, the capital of the southern state in Brazil. Most of the team have been developing games for many years prior to Kaze and the Wild Masks, and we all shared a hive mind-like desire to develop a retro game that we could actually call ours, something that went back to our roots as young gamers and shared the magic of those “simple” yet powerful games that we grew up with.

As a game development studio from Brazil, how is the game development scene there?

There are so many great titles being released from all corners of Brazil - we definitely have a lot of talented developers here. The game development scene here is always growing, but at a slower pace than we want. We face all challenges of a country still in development, not enough incentive programs coming from the government, and funding is somewhat complicated since many investors are very conservative and don’t yet understand the industry well enough to invest in games. We have organizations and entities putting all their efforts in trying to change this scenario though, and even with all the challenges, there are many Brazilian studios able to release games that stand out to the whole world.

How long have you been walking around with the idea of making Kaze and the Wild Masks and when did you start developing the game?

Kaze and the Wild Masks has been in development for about 5 years. The original idea came from Cristiano Bartel, a programmer, tech artist and also one of the founders of PixelHive. He wanted to make a retro-platform game inspired by the 90’s classics, so he came up with the first prototype build for the game. The main character was a male grey bunny, running in boots and wearing a hat - the name of the character wasn’t Kaze yet and I think at that time we referred to the game only as “Project Bunny” haha. That’s when the team behind Kaze started to take shape; we all felt the connection with the game Cristiano was making and saw the full potential behind it. So, one by one we started to join the project that ultimately led to the creation of PixelHive Game Studio.

Browse through our existing coverage for Kaze right here on @XONEHQ and head over to the official SOEDESCO site to read the complete article. Kaze and the Wild Masks will be coming to Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch.

Official Site: here