The first time I was introduced to Jack King-Spooner's work was when he sent me a copy of Sluggish Morss: Pattern Circus over the hospital wifi late one night. The game was a bright spot in a bad moment, which may seem odd given that Sluggish Morss often resembles a whale's stomach being upset, but it's such a feverishly inventive creation. It blew the dust off my synapses.
The same goes for Judero, King-Spooner’s upcoming game, which he’s collaborating on with Soul Searching developer Talha Kaya. You play as a “pagan seer” armed with a big stick, scouring the mythical borders of Scotland for evil creatures to beat up. The game looks breezier and more airy than Sluggish Morss, with a heavier emphasis on mechanics like combat, but it has the same 3am energy. It also has a release date – September 16 – and a new trailer below.
Watch on YouTube
As with many of King-Spooner's games, Judero uses hand-animated stop-motion. The pagan seer with the big stick is an actual action figure, photographed in various poses to create animations – and if you think this sounds like a “primitive” way to create a video game character, next to Ye Fancy Inverse Kinematics or something, then all I can say is: wham bam, get smacked.
Judero doesn't have time to worry about your precious procgen walk cycles, he's got some disgusting clay monsters to take down. Luckily, he can possess some of these stop-motion creatures and use their abilities. The full game will also include various mini-games, like a side-scrolling shmup where you shoot hearts at giant crows (citation needed), as well as branching dialogue and “concise, aphoristic NPCs.”
Here's some information from the Steam page about the game's visual direction.
Judero is made up of handcrafted objects and custom figurines, animated in the stop-motion tradition. For us, this art style evokes something nostalgic, partly comical, but perhaps also a little scary. These real-life elements are then rendered in a 3D world to evoke a unique visual style. Through this style, we can integrate digital techniques such as real-time lighting, shaders and post-processing effects. The cutscenes will be done using traditional stop-motion animation techniques with higher fidelity to give a more cinematic quality.
Here's a little more about the music:
Judero's music is a tribute to traditional British folk music such as that documented by Francis James Child. Many of these songs are hundreds of years old and it was an honour to research and learn them. We retain acoustic and essentially authentic instrumentation to the originals (mostly) but with contemporary arrangements and harmonies.
“I love that I don’t fully understand what’s going on with Judero after playing the demo, its mix of past and present, hand-made and hand-painted, fantastical and mundane, gentle folk and unexpectedly intense boss fights,” wrote Alice0 (RPS at peace) in 2022. She also expressed a desire to learn more about the folklore of the Scottish border, having spent time swimming in the region’s rivers, investigating its ruins, and cycling through “heather-lit valleys.” Are you reading this, Alice0? I can picture you wandering the borderlands beating up stuttering gremlins with a stick.
Again, Judero will be released on September 16th. There is still a demo on Steam. If you like the developer's methods, you might also like Harold Halibut.