Modern shoot 'em ups can often be dark and imposing, but not so for Dogfight: A Sausage Bomber Story from Katsu Entertainment and Hound Picked Games. Dogfight is colorful, a little bit silly, and more approachable than many shmups. Most impressively, it supports 4-player local co-op. We interviewed Anthony Marinello, Director of development at Katsu Entertainment, about Dogfight's gameplay, quirky humor, alternate titles, and more!
Co-Optimus: Thanks for taking the time to fly to our hidden compound for this inarguably in-person interview. First, could you tell us a little about your experience in game development and some of your favorite non-shoot ‘em up games?
Anthony: Sure thing; we thought the secret entrance to your compound behind the waterfall was a nice touch. As for us, we are Katsu Entertainment, an indie game studio made of Anthony Marinello and Stephane Imbert. We have worked together for over two decades, first on sports titles at Electronic Arts, and now on our own indie games. We are lucky as an indie studio to be able to call upon coworkers and friends from our past lives to help out on the games. This is exactly what we did for Dogfight: make a game we love, with people we love to work with.
My favorite games ever would have to be the Guacamelee series, and Stephane is currently busy getting to 100% completion on One Piece Pirates Warriors 3, 4, and Odyssey, so that will take him a while.
Anthony Marinello
Co-Optimus: Ooh, I love Guacamelee as well! Well then, Dogfight: A Sausage Bomber Story is a side-scrolling shoot ‘em up. What are some classic shmups that impressed you, and have you played any noteworthy modern ones?
Anthony: One of the main inspirations for Dogfight was Thunder Force IV (AKA Lightening Force) on the Sega Genesis. We love the tight gameplay, exciting bosses, and that oh so memorable soundtrack. There’s just something deeply satisfying about playing through the game end-to-end in one sitting: no grinding, just pure gameplay. We aimed to recapture some of that old school excitement with Dogfight. We are particularly thrilled about the awesome soundtrack that Dale North created for us and how much energy it adds to each level.
Modern shmups are a little trickier, as most tend to fall in the bullet hell genre which we deliberately steered away from. We did enjoy the simplicity of Andro Dunos 2 and the fun universe of B.Ark. Steredenn, while in a slightly different genre, was also interesting for their visuals and polished presentation. The Darius series is both classic and modern, and clearly we got inspiration there for some of the boss intros.
Thunder Force IV
Co-Optimus: Those are cool inspirations! Now let’s set our sights on Dogfight, Katsu Entertainment’s first non-mobile game. Dogfight is a sequel to Sausage Bomber, I take it?
Anthony: That’s right. The gameplay is completely different from the original game, which was more of a physics puzzler. This time around we wanted to make a fun shoot ‘em up like the kind we grew up with in the 16-bit era. It was natural for us to go back to the Sausage Bomber world because of all the planes, and because it’s just a fun place that makes us laugh. Hopefully, people will have a good time with Dogfight and then decide to check out the original Sausage Bomber game as well for some on-the-go fun.
Sausage Bomber (mobile)
Co-Optimus: I’m hoping you can clear up a little confusion about the game’s title. On Steam, Switch, and PlayStation, it’s simply listed as Dogfight, but Xbox and the actual soundtrack call the game Dogfight: A Sausage Bomber Story. Why the different titles? It seems like the shorter name might lead to mix-ups with other games like DogFight (a Steam VR game) or Dogfight, an unrelated mobile game.
Anthony: That is an excellent question. The full name of the game is Dogfight: A Sausage Bomber Story, and in an ideal world, this is how we’d refer to the game everywhere. Unfortunately due to the different requirements on the store fronts, fitting this much text everywhere was a challenge, and we sometimes had to choose between the longer and shorter version of the name. We realize this can lead to some confusion, but let’s be honest, we’re the only game out there with sausage weaponry, we should *clearly* be the ones with priority on the name (hot)Dogfight.
Dogfight - Vega Nation Concept Art
Co-Optimus: Fascinating! The game itself takes place in a world that’s populated by humans, but places are named after food items, and players’ aircraft fire sausage bombs (in addition to regular artillery). Can you tell us about the food theme and how it came about?
Anthony: Sausage Bomber was originally just a funny game title that someone came up with while we were out at dinner. It made us laugh so much, we figured we had to make a game around the concept. I love that there's this one preposterous conceit, that a desperate nation turns to sausage bomb weaponry to turn the tide of a losing war, and everybody in the world takes it so seriously. Like, sure, that makes sense. There are scientists and engineers drawing up blueprints of sausages, and the entire population gets behind the effort. It may also be a commentary on the absurdity of war in general.
Co-Optimus: Yum! How long has Dogfight been in development? Did you gain any useful feedback from the release of the Steam demo back in June 2022?
Anthony: We started working on Dogfight back in 2019, but it got sidelined for a while as other projects took priority. I think the delay was useful, though, because it gave us time to pick at the design here and there, and really figure out how to make it fun and bring personality and humor into it. Shoot 'em ups are conceptually really simple, but there's a lot of hidden complexity in there. A good shoot 'em up level is like a piece of music - there's a rhythm and structure to it, and the extra time helped us develop that sense of rhythm.
The Steam demo was useful, but I think we got some of the best feedback seeing people play the game in person at conventions. We set up a 4-player arcade cabinet and watched friends, families, and strangers all play together. It was really useful to see, oh, everybody dies in this spot, maybe we can message this thing better, or, wow, I didn't expect a player to do that, maybe that's something that could be fun to incorporate more of. Mostly, it was really encouraging, as folks had a lot of fun. A lot of people said, "Wow, this is like the stuff I used to play back in the day, why aren't there more games like this anymore?"
Dogfight's Level Editor
Co-Optimus: One of the game’s coolest features is that players can equip two weapons from an unlockable arsenal of 24 total weapons. How do we unlock new armaments, and do you have any favorite combinations?
Anthony: New weapons become available as you play through levels and earn stars, so you can go back, replay a previous level, and get a new unlock from it. For me, my loadout just depends on what level I'm encountering. The Bubble Gun is great when there's a lot of dangerous stuff on the screen, so I tend to pick that as a backup later in the game. The Wave Gun provides good screen coverage, so that's a pretty good combo.
My two favorite individual weapons are the Missile Volley and the Atomic Andouille. The Missile Volley reminds me of mecha anime where missiles are flying everywhere, and I'm a sucker for that stuff. The Atomic Andouille just because of how bizarre the idea is.
There's over 250 possible different weapon combinations, so lots and lots of replayability with trying out different loadouts. And that's just for one player! When you're going co-op, it's fun to strategize loadout combinations between everyone on your team.
Co-Optimus: What kind of power-ups or pickups can we find during levels?
Anthony: During a level, you can pick up power boosts and drones. I think those things will be familiar to many players and easy to figure out right away. Over the course of a level, you can boost your weapon's power from 1 to 5, so by the time you hit the stage boss, you can be slinging some serious firepower. The drones give you a little buddy that flies along with you and provides some backup.
Co-Optimus: How many levels make up the game, and how have you created replay value?
Anthony: The game has 9 levels with unique environments, unique enemies, and mega bosses. This goes back to the desire to let you play through the entire story in one sitting if you so choose, keeping the game a fun couch co-op activity for the whole family or when you have friends over. If you just want the pick-up and play experience, this is the approach for you.
As mentioned [earlier], as you play the game and collect stars, you will unlock new weapons that play and feel differently. We let you choose any two weapons for your plane, without restriction, so you can try to beat the entire game using only short range weapons like the shotgun and the sword, or only bombs and no bullets. It’s entirely up to you.
For the players looking for a bit more of a challenge, we have four difficulty levels and seven different speedrun settings. We are particularly proud of the way we integrated speedrun into the game. Each enemy you destroy will increase the speed of the game up to 1.6x speed, and each hit you take will reduce that speed. It’s up to you to get the best time possible clearing the game knowing that the more enemies you destroy, the [faster] time you’ll get, but the more difficult it will be. We can’t wait to see playthroughs of people using crazy weapon combinations to get the best times.
For a real challenge, try beating the game in Atomic difficulty, with a single life, single player, at 1.6x speed armed only with the Bubble Gun and Haggis Mines.
Co-Optimus: What kind of enemies can we expect to battle in Dogfight?
Anthony: We wanted to keep Dogfight grounded in the world of Sausage Bomber, which meant staying away from the usual staples of the genre: alien spaceships. This is not to say there will never be aliens or spaceships in the world of Sausage Bomber - who knows what the future holds. You’ll shoot big planes, small planes, tanks, helicopters, jeeps, etc. Most of the smaller enemies you’ll run into will look vaguely familiar, with a few surprises down the road. One of my favorites has got to be the massive weapon platform walker that shows up in the Soda Mountains. It was a lot of fun to design and animate, and it’s a blast to shoot down.
The mega bosses are certainly the stars of the show. We can’t wait for players to discover them all, especially the mega boss in the last level, which we won’t spoil for you.
Dogfight - Walking Platform Concept Art
Co-Optimus: What kind of options does the game have to make things harder or easier for players? I like shoot ‘em ups in general, but bullet hell games are often too tough for my taste.
Anthony: It sounds like we have similar tastes when it comes to shoot ‘em ups. We know that bullet hells are a popular subgenre with some incredible titles, but we wanted to go a little more casual and accessible with Dogfight. If there’s a choice between fun and challenge, we’ll lean more to the fun side of things.
With that said, we do have options so that you can really dial up the difficulty. On the Atomic setting, a single bullet will zap all your health, and they come faster and more plentifully. You can also turn the speedrun setting up to the max, so as you score consecutive hits on enemies the game will speed up, requiring quicker reflexes. You can set the number of lives down to 1. You can choose more challenging weapons in your loadout. There’s all sorts of knobs you can turn.
Likewise, on the other side of the equation you can easily scale down the difficulty, give yourself more lives, etc. We think the default settings provide a great balance, but it all comes down to what kind of play is going to be fun for you. \
Co-Optimus: Dogfight: A Sausage Bomber Story features 4-player local co-op, a feature we’re quite fond of. Can you tell us about the pilots and aircraft the team gets to choose from?
Sure thing. You can choose between four pilots, both veterans from the Sausage Wars and young new recruits to the Sausage Bomber corps. It was fun to give our pilots from the original Sausage Bomber a bit of a back story and add two more pilots to the roster. Each pilot comes with their own plane, and each plane has slightly different stats under the hood, though we never tell you exactly what these are, so you’ll have to try them out for yourself. Each plane was inspired by an existing fighter-bomber of old; we’re curious how many players will recognize the originals.
Dogfight - Pilot and Mechanic Concept Art
Co-Optimus: In co-op games, if a player runs out of lives, when do they get to come back?
Anthony: If a player runs out of lives, they get to jump back in on the next mission. Initially, we tried having a pool of lives that all players shared, but that got confusing in the heat of battle, so we went with this more traditional, arcade-familiar approach. The difficulty settings allow you to give players more lives per mission, so if you want to make sure everybody gets to stay in the game the whole time, you can always bump that number up.
We also have a fun keep-alive mechanic, where if your plane gets shot down you aren't going to lose that life immediately. You can button mash to fill up a repair meter while your plane is falling. If you fill the meter before you hit the ground, you're back in the fight without loss of a life!
Co-Optimus: I was pleased to see that Dogfight is Steam Deck compatible. Did you have to do any Steam Deck-specific optimization, or did the game work well right off the bat?
Anthony: The Steam Deck has unique dimensions for its display, so we needed to tweak the UI a bit in order for everything to fit properly, but otherwise we were really happy with how well the game worked right off the bat.
Steam also provides Remote Play, so if you can't get your buddies over to play on the same couch, you can still co-op together.
Co-Optimus: Finally, is there anything you’re proud of about Dogfight: A Sausage Bomber Story that we haven’t already touched on?
Anthony: We keep coming back to the notion of having fun and getting people to laugh. We want you to sit down and have a good time for an afternoon, maybe with some friends or family. It's a good feeling to see people doing just that. I especially love seeing parents play the game with their kids.
We hope the whole family will enjoy the game and have a laugh at this absurd yet believable world we created.
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Dogfight: A Sausage Bomber Story costs $17.99 on Xbox Series S|X, PlayStation, Switch, and Steam, and $14.99 on Epic. We'll have a full co-op review soon!