MagicCarrot.com interviews Creative Team Alpha about their Ultimate Odyssey

Part 5

MagicCarrot.com sat down with Creative Team Alpha in April and talked about the Ultimate Odyssey, Killer Bunnies, and other games. Creative Team Alpha’s fearless leader Jeff Bellinger, Creative Director Jonathan Young, and Product Development Specialist A.J. Pfeifer answer fans’ questions and give tantalizing answers to our Odyssey questions.

If you missed them, be sure to catch Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

JB: They’re not laughing.

MC1: Actually, I’m trying to mute my microphone so I don’t breathe too much into the microphone here.

JB: I don’t know that the two of you were doing…

JB: I think originally, way, way back in the original structure of the game, that has to be before I met either one of these two, the penguins were called VIPs, Very Intelligent Penguins. All I can say is that has changed. Much like we’ve changed the name of the New Orleans Odyssey to just the Ultimate Odyssey. It was really kinda done out of respect because the game was supposed to take place in New Orleans and it was supposed to be in and around the streets, and the buildings, and the neighborhoods, and garden district, and all that kind of thing, and since a lot of that got wiped out a few years back, it kind of doesn’t really follow what I was going to do. Half of me thought it would be disrespectful to do the game with the older name and half of me said “Well, the game has evolved so much past that now that maybe we should just make a fresh start.” We kept the word Odyssey just for that handful of fans, of which the two of you are included, that remembered that. And thank you, by the way, because I hadn’t thought about VIPs in a long…

JY: I remember VIPs.

JB: You too? You do remember, okay. There used to be a Quest card called VIPs.

JY: Yeah.

JB: It got…

JY: It was drawn too.

JB: It was ditched. It was part of the Killer Bunnies Quest Onyx edit of 165 cards to 110. That was one of the cards that got ditched. We’re keeping the truth and the mystery of the penguins under wraps. But, I will say that all will be revealed in the “C” booster deck of Killer Bunnies Odyssey. That’s “C” as in Caroline.

MC1: Is this where we queue ominous music or something?

[Creative Team Alpha makes ominous music sounds]

MC2: [Laughs]

JY: Some of the booster decks for Odyssey have a theme to them. The “C” deck may have some flightless birds buried in them. The aliens have their own deck. The aliens that you see in Jupiter have a guest-starring role in one of the booster decks as well.

MC1: Very good—we love aliens! Almost as much as we love killing bunnies.

AJ: I’m sure you’ll love them even more.

MC1: Now, of all of the games that you’ve published within the Killer Bunnies series, are there some cards you wish you could rework if you had time to revisit them, and if so, what might those be?

JY: Are you talking about a mechanical-level or an artistic level?

MC1: Either one, actually, because each one of you work on a different aspect of the game development, so for Jonathan it might be “You know, that artwork didn’t quite come out right” and I’m thinking something might be like H.E.M.P. where the missiles don’t really look like they’d fit in the missile launcher. They kinda look like they’re at an angle, or something like that. And for Jeff, maybe it’ll be some game mechanic that didn’t quite work.

JB: Jonathan? What the hell’s with those H.E.M.P. cards?!

MC2: [Laughs]

JY: What’s up with the Bounty Mounty, Jeff? [Laughs]

JB: I’ll tell you what though, let’s pick on Jonathan first. There was a line missing from the Terrible Misfortune with the Hand Grenade, where there was an extra line, it looked like the grenade went through his belly. You remember that?

JY: Yes.

JB: But we fixed that.

JY: In a different printing.

JB: In a different printing, yeah.

JY: There are cards, on a mechanical level, that are not the strongest in the game. But you have to realize, you know, there are 715 published cards, not including any of the promos, just the ones in the starter and booster decks. And we play it quite a lot, still. And you know, we go to the conventions. We play the game a lot, and there are cards that we have still never played. So we don’t know if there are good ones or bad ones in there. There are some art cards that I really like and there are some ones that I’d like to re-do. There is discussion, which is very vague discussion, so I don’t know if you can quote me. I’ll look at Jeff and say “edit that out” or not.

JB: [Laughs]

JY: There is some discussion that the next round of promo cards, whatever we call those, or name them after, will be current cards in the new artwork.

JB: That’s a possibility.

JY: Ok.

JB: That’s still a possibility. I think what he’s going for, since you threw that right back at me with the mechanic…

JY: Well, you’re talking about my artwork, though!

JB: Alright. Bounty Mounty is the lamest Bunny card.

AJ: With Mob Hit coming to a close second to that.

JB: I invented Mob Hit to fix Bounty Mounty. It didn’t fix it.

AJ: At all.

JB: The bottom line is that no one is going to pay to kill somebody else’s bunny. So I tried. It was a swing and a miss, and then it was a swing and a foul ball, because at least Mob Hit has a really good picture. What are some of the other really lame-ass cards?

AJ: Really lame?

JB: Really lame cards. I mean, I’ll admit that there are lame cards in Odyssey, but at least they’re funny. Right? Functionally, functionally they may not do much, but at least they’re funny and the artwork’s great. But for Quest, [indistinct] and Jupiter, I will proudly say there is not one lame card or one card that doesn’t belong there. You see, Jupiter was a very tight game. Every single card slot really needed to be there, and AJ and I worked on this for years. Quest was always “Well, here’s 55 cards, okay. Here’s about 40 that need to be there and that are good. Now we’ve just gotta fill the other 15 and what are we going to do? And so we had a lot more leeway. But let’s think about what are the lamest?

AJ: Bingo Flamingo!

JB: [Laughs] Nobody uses Bingo Flamingo. It was a good rhyme and it was a “P” card. It’s a pink “P” card.

AJ: A pink pawn card.

JY: It’s so hard to win, though.

JB: It was unbelievably complicated and no one does it.

AJ: It was like Golden Ratio without the payoff.

JB: Golden Ratio I’ve seen people use.

AJ: It’s a great card!

JY: I’m leaving the room! Golden Ratio is one of the cards…

[Phone rings with Phantom of the Opera music]

JY: Can you hear that music?

MC1: Oh yeah, that’s great.

JY: Jeff developed that card after reading some mathematical book that he enjoyed, which I don’t understand.

JB: I’m totally into number theory and game theory.

JY: That card has references to about five mathematical equations and references in it and I had to do exactly, by the number, and I’m looking at the card and thinking “This is not funny, it’s not cute, it’s boring.” And I was able to throw the penguin, er, the bunny in there. That was one of the ones that he and I went back and forth on and I was begging and pleading and whining and moaning and griping and …

JB: He didn’t want to do the Penrose tiles, but they were the best part.

AJ: And nobody knows what a Penrose tile is.

JB: They turned into the Psi cards’ icons, right?

JY: Yeah. I have heard that… people have written me back, and said “We’ve love the artwork for that card, it’s great. It looks like you had fun doing it.” and I just cringe, because I did it. There are a couple of cards that are like that. Procession?

AJ: Yes.

JB: Procession you didn’t like to draw.

JY: I didn’t like to draw, but it was a good card.

AJ: It was a great card.

JB: Let’s get back to the original question.

AJ: What was the original question?

JB: What was the lamest bunny card, basically. There’s a group of cards that you asked if I could rework I would and that would be Noah’s Flood, Bug Off!… Is it Bug Off!?

AJ: Bug Off!

JB: Bug Off! and Diverse Portfolio! Because the way I describe these are as quasi-Specials. Because you have to have them saved in order to use them immediately like Very Specials. They should have been Very Specials from the start, but they weren’t. We did a revision of Quest, that’ll be… well, Playroom hasn’t decided when they’re gonna put it out yet. It’s kind of just like a… we went back and corrected a few typos and did stuff like that. We added an extra line of text that really saved the cards. But yeah, those three were never really supposed to be there the way they are. So with an extra line of text, though, they’re fine. But going back to the lamest cards…

AJ: Noah’s Flood, Bug Off! and Diverse Portfolio! Before Playroom picked it up, and you were making it, didn’t they all have one use too? When Playroom picked it up, we added it so they’d have an additional use, so they weren’t such dead-weight cards.

JB: Because back then, the game only had about 400 cards so it wasn’t nearly as bad. As we planned, we adjusted. But I’m thinking of like, really lame cards.

AJ: No, it’s funny, there are some…

JB: Off the top of my head, I forget. One of my favorites is Uriel’s Machine, because actually that’s based on the book “Uriel’s Machine” and the diagram came straight from the book. It is a fantastic book by Robert Lomas and Christopher Knight. I mean, absolutely fantastic, but it is only good four days out of the year. [Laughs]. So I’ve actually never played it. It is one of my favorite cards and the chances of playing it on an Equinox or Solstice and then getting the card…

AJ: I did it once.

JB: You did it once?

AJ: I did it once.

JB: But it was years ago, though.

AJ: Yes.

JB: I’ve never played that card, though. I wish I could.

AJ: Speaking of cards and the time frame you can play them, we’ve got one coming up in Odyssey… and how often do you play that one?

JB: We’ve got a card coming up in Odyssey. It just won’t be out for six years, I know. I won’t tell you the title, but its only good… no, I can tell you the title because its a Quest card: Venus Cycle. But in Quest you can use it any time but its really good every eight years. But the next year that Venus Cycle is really kick-ass is 2017.

AJ: So in Odyssey, you can’t use Venus Cycle at all unless it is one of those eight years. So the card is really good, but only if it is on one of those eight years.

JB: It’s fun. I like to read a lot and my reading material is generally non-fiction and its theology and then modern science, quasi-science, and numbers theory and game theory. So its a lot of fun.

I see what I can work into the game for no other reason than to amuse myself and see if anyone is paying attention. And occasionally I’ll get one or two emails from somebody who said “Omigod, that couldn’t possibly be there by accident!” and we bond.

MC1: [Laughs]

JB: I’m sure there are lame bunny cards… Adventures in Bunnysitting is kinda lame.

AJ: Yeah.

JB: I don’t even know. We’ve been working on Odyssey for a while and …

JY: For us it’s been done for three years.

JB: Quest has been done for you for three years. For me its been done for more like seven. I don’t remember every Quest card, its true. I know them if I see them. Currently there are about 2,800 Odyssey cards, which far, far surpasses Quest and Jupiter combined. Its four times the amount of cards. My mind is in the Odyssey universe these days.

MC2: What are some of your favorite cards?

JB: This could be another hour!

MC2: [Laughs]

JB: Start with Jonathan while I go get some water. What do you think art-wise?

AJ: Why not overall? That way, we’re not on the phone for an hour with this one question!

JB: I could write a thesis on this one.

AJ: How about the top three for each of us?

MC2: Okay.

AJ: You go first.

MC1: I knew this was going to be a hard question.

MC2: [Laughs]

JB: I will talk Quest first. I love Uriel’s Machine for what it does. Artwork-wise, I’ve got to say Athena because it is a blatant “Lost In Space” reference.

JY: I’m rolling my eyes.

JB: I made him draw Athena three times before he got it right. You remember the floating green lady…

MC2: Oh, yeah.

JB: …that was in love with Dr. Smith? By the way, she’s still alive and she still does conventions as the green lady.

JY: Omigod. [Laughs]

JB: [Laughs] She’s like… seventy years old now.

JY: The first draft of that bunny was round and puffy, and Jeff went “No, we have to do her… sexy”

MC1: I’d much rather see Susan Oliver.

JB: [Laughs] Well, there you go. So I like Athena. I like Uriel’s Machine. In Kinder Bunnies, I like Ace. The red bunny, Ace? Do you have Kinder Bunnies?

MC2: Oh yes, we do.

JB: Ace is after Red Dwarf. Ace Rimmer. He was great.

MC2: Ah!

MC1: We also actually play Kinder Bunnies with the nephews.

JY: I like the Terrible Misfortune from the Blue-Yellow deck of the guy cutting the bunny with the hedge-clipper.

AJ: [Feigning ignorance] Why is that, Jonathan?

JY: That’s me!

JB: Though, seriously, Sky Waitress is a better picture.

JY: The original artwork for the Terrible Misfortune, the one with the hedge clippers… you know the one I’m talking about?

MC2: Yeah.

JY: The original artwork, it was supposed to be an over-zealous hedge clipper and the original artwork from another artist had an older gentleman, who looked like he was about to fall over…

JB: Under-zealous.

JY: A little bit under-zealous, so when I drew it I thought, I’m going to draw me. So when I added myself to Sky Waitress as a Jedi, if you notice, I’m reading a newspaper, and the picture on the newspaper is the bunny that I killed in the first card.

MC1: [Recognition] Oh… Okay.

JB: Don’t feel bad. I didn’t get that until he showed it to me, either.

JY: I don’t think I showed it to him until it was published.

JB: There are so many other good ones. I like those Fabulous Bunnies because we love [British TV series] Ab Fab. [Laughs]. Patsy and Eddy will be making an appearance in Odyssey in the first year on a card called Drunken Women.

MC1: Good.

JB: I think Angry Hoe is the most hilarious card I’ve ever seen, and it took us forever to get that past Playroom. They were not going to publish Angry Hoe. It took like a year to convince them that there was nothing wrong with the picture and the title.

AJ: I have a big one on my wall—Angry Hoe.

JB: A poster-sized Angry Hoe. I think your drawing of Sam for your Celebrity Bunny was spot-on, with your drawing of the Stargate symbols. Jonathan looked up every Stargate symbol and made sure that every single one was accurate. That was kick-ass.

MC1: The Samantha card?

JB: There’s a Celebrity Bunny called Sam [indistinct] … oh, Samantha? What doProduct Development Specialist I know? [Laughs] I’ve never had her in play, so…

AJ: My favorite would probably have to be in the Onyx deck, the Celebrity Bunny Alfred.

JB: Alfred.

AJ: Alfred Bester from Babylon 5. I’m a big Babylon 5 fan. I really, really like Spiderbunny. I love everything about it. I think its a great card. And to go along with Spiderbunny, I think one of the best cards in Quest is Shockwave. That card is very good. The art is extremely good on it. I love the art. The functionality of it is great.

MC2: Yeah, that is one heckuva card.

Part 6 of the CTA Interview

Noah’s Flood

Noah’s Flood, Bug Off!, and Diverse Portfolio were intended to be Very Special cards, but were produced as Special cards.

Shown here is what Noah’s Flood might look like as a Very Special.