Killer is Dead from Grasshopper Manufacture and Kadokawa Games is designed to be like a TV show, but each episode ends with a bloodbath. The focus of the game is its boss battles where Mondo Zappa executes super criminals.
"I wanted to create a game where you can concentrate on one button and perform all of the moves from there," creative director Hideyuki Shin said to Siliconera. "For a person who isn’t good at action games, it makes it accessible," added Goichi Suda. How did the team come up with ideas for the creative boss fights?
"One creature is a 73 meter high alien being that stole Earth, that itself doesn’t make any sense but you will be fighting that," laughed Shin. "Mainly, everything came from Suda-san’s story. From there the team tried to dissect the idea and figure out how to execute this into gameplay, but it’s mainly based on what Suda-san had in mind. Originally, for the alien Suda said he wants Mondo [the playable character] to fight a giant. It could have been 10 meters tall, but we decided to go for 73 meters!"
I asked Suda if there were any other interesting tidbits about Killer is Dead that changed while the game was in development.
"Originally, I thought Mika would be someone like Jessica [Nigiri] because originally I wanted her to have a different costume every time she appears in the game. We weren’t able to implement that, though. Vivienne (pictured on top) was originally 80 years old, but she always looked like this. She just had a lot of work done," Suda revealed.
