Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP interview shared: soundtrack changes, gameplay adjustments, and more

Gematsu: What was the motivation behind bringing back Lollipop Chainsaw for modern consoles and PC, and how did you approach preserving its charm while updating it for modern audiences?

Yasuda: “The licensing contracts for the music in Lollipop Chainsaw were not renewed five years after its released, meaning that sales of it had to be discontinued. Players were no longer able to purchase the game, and we started getting requests from fans to bring it back. We also received several proposals from companies overseas saying they would like to develop a remake, and these are what led me to start considering developing RePOP. Eventually, we decided that we wanted to answer fans’ expectations ourselves. At the time, though, we were in discussions with Kadokawa about going independent, and so we had to wait to confirm that all rights to Lollipop Chainsaw had been transferred to the new company, Dragami Games, before starting on development.”

The soundtrack now features primarily original tracks as opposed to the original game’s copyrighted tracks. I imagine licensing costs are the reasoning behind this. Since the copyrighted tracks played a large role in setting the stage, can you talk about the process of creating the replacement tracks?

Yasuda: “”Licensing costs were indeed a serious issue, and we also wanted to avoid the problem of no longer being able to distribute the game once licenses expire like with the original version of the game.

“As such, RePOP primarily uses new, original music. We enlisted artists active in Japanese film, drama, anime, and game music to make tracks such as a new original theme song for Juliet and background music for Star Mode and Nick Attacks.

“While the licensed songs were certainly great, I think our attempt to have talented contemporary musicians create music to fit the game’s world is equally great. Please look forward to the new music in RePOP.”

Juliet’s movement and attack speeds have also been adjusted. How do these changes affect the feel / flow of combat?

Yasuda: “Given the nature of the chainsaw as a heavy weapon, it would only make sense for it to have slow attacks with strong hit-stop. However, Lollipop Chainsaw is a game where you fight large numbers of zombies, and we had received feedback from players that constantly using the slow chainsaw felt tedious. As such, we introduced a new attack system called Chain Hit Hunting, where chaining consecutive hits increases the chainsaw’s attack speed, in order to alleviate monotony and sluggishness that might be found in the chainsaw combat.”

What adjustments were made to combo command acceptance times, and how does this affect the player’s ability to execute combos?

Yasuda: “In the original Lollipop Chainsaw, the input window for combo commands was relatively small, and we received reports of it frustrating players when they intended on performing a move but it did not activate. As such, one of the first things we worked on when starting on RePOP‘s development was fixing this by extending the input window as much as feasibly possible.”