I recently had the opportunity to sit down and talk with Jamie Cheng, CEO of Klei Entertainment, and the man behind the indie puzzle game, Eets. Originally released on the PC, the game was released on Xbox Live Arcade on April 25th as Eets: Chowdown, complete with 120 levels and a brand new multiplayer mode. Jamie had a lot to say about where the weird ideas behind the game came from, working with a tiny development team, and how they made the transition from PC to console controls.

Who are you, and what the heck do you do?

I'm Jamie Cheng. I started off as a programmer at Relic Entertainment, they did Homeworld, Dawn of War ... I was actually the AI programmer for Dawn of War, so if you're playing against the computer, you're playing against me. I also went on to do The Outfit on the 360. After that, I started Klei Entertainment in July 2005. Graduated in Vancouver, and we're still based in Vancouver. Although, actually, I grew up in Hong Kong. 15 years in Hong Kong.

Give me your one-line description of Eets.

We sum it up as, "A fun combination of Lemmings and The Incredible Machine." So if people have played those games, they kinda get a pretty good idea of what the game is. Although people have called it all sorts of things. For example, GirlGamer called it, "Lemmings on crack."

Where did the basic concept come from?

Well, this was actually literally started in a basement. We wanted to build a game, me and some friends, back in university. And we just started brainstorming on what we wanted to do. We started going back and forth, and started going towards a Lost Vikings style of game. So we're thinking that there would be just one monster, who would go around saving other different monsters. And then you would get to use those other monsters.

From that, it started evolving. And I, in my spare time, was playing around with different kinds of physics, and I had written this physics test which is all pixel-perfect, which is the physics engine you see today in Eets. And from there, we started brainstorming and coming up with more and more ideas. So actually, the gameplay kind of came in first, where we knew we wanted to do a physics-based game because we had a physics engine we really wanted to use. And then, I had a friend who is an amazing animator, and he came up with the character. So if you actually look in the credits, especially for the PC version, his name comes up first. Drew Chang. He's a really good friend of mine.

It's got such a unique art style, I wondered where it came from.

The art style was not actually his. He came up with the original sketches of Eets, but the actual art style, funnily enough, was all done by programers. All programmer art. The entire game. I'm a programmer by trade, and all the platforms that you see, about 75% of them were drawn by me, and the animations were mostly done by another friend of mine, who's also a programmer.

How big is the team?

The team... well, that's kind of hard to describe, because we started off as a hobby project, and we were gunning for the IGF (International Games Festival) at the time, and that was actually back in 2003, 2004. So we had a lot of people coming in and out of the team, we had maybe 3 people who were always constantly there, but we had a whole lot of people who came in and out. just, you know, helping here and there. For Chowdown on the Xbox, we had a total of four people working on the team.

Wow. You look at it, and you think it's gotta take a bigger team.

Yeah, we like working in small teams. It actually works really well. I mean, I've done the whole, "really large team" thing too, but you can actually get a lot done with very few people. Like, Lumines, for example, is just one programmer.

Next question, and I mean this as seriously as possible: Are you afraid of marshmallows?

No. *laughs*

Are you sure? After seeing the Marshomech, I am.

Yeah, every single item in that game was sort of brainstormed by thinking, "How crazy can we go without being too weird?" So, for example, the Ginseng Factory was brainstorming on what can shoot stuff, and my girlfriend at the time, actually my fiancee now, was making ginseng soup at the time. So we just came up with some radioactive ginseng.

How long was the game in development? It came out in March of last year?

That's right. March of 2006. We started work on it in '03, I think. But it was really on and off. In fact, maybe even 2002 we had started already. But it was really part time, and it was really a hobby project. We didn't go full-time on it until I started the company.

What's been the difference between working on the PC version, and turning around and making a port for XBLA? Did you contact Microsoft, or did they contact you?

Well, from the business side of things, I have an agent. And we had approached Microsoft on this. But the interesting thing is, when we first started this company, we were actually pitching this game not for the PC, but for the handhelds. And for the PC at the same time. But because of that, I had made a controller version of this game, to show that you can actually play this game with a controller. We were just trying different things.

So by the time we were pitching to Microsoft, we already had a version that would run on a controller. So when I actually showed it to them, it was really easy, because by then I could show them the final game on the PC and they could see that it was really polished, but we could also show them the controls on the, well, we were using a PS2 controller.

It translates really well.

We had some help on that. My brother's a Usability expert, so I had him try some different things out. It was surprisingly good. We ended up liking it even more than using the mouse.

Tell me a little bit about the new multiplayer mode you added.

The new mode, we really like it. The interesting thing about Eets is, we really tried to do different things on all sides, so the single player and multiplayer game are quite different to most people. What I tried to do is gain the feeling of Typing of the Dead, which I love.

A little story about that in Hong Kong. Nobody can really type well in Hong Kong. They can type in chinese, but yeah. You go into one of the shops there, and they're showing Typing of the Dead and I started playing on it. And this crowd formed around me because I'm the only one who can type fast enough to play the game.

So I kind of wanted to recreate the experience of Typing of the Dead because it's a really fun game. And looking at the forums, it seems like people really enjoy it. It's really high praise calling it a Geometry Wars but better. I don't know if I agree with that, but that's high praise.

What's the response been to the Xbox version of Eets?

It's been really positive. If you look at the reviews it's one of the higher rated arcade games out there. In terms of visibility, it's harder because it's not pinball. You know. It's not something like, "Oh I know what I'm getting into." But we find that once people try it, they really like it. We're gonna put in a lot of downloadable content, and we're hoping that gives it the longevity it deserves.

In terms of downloadable content, do you plan on doing the same thing you did with the PC version, like new maps? Anything crazier than that?

Well, There were some concerns. On the PC version there are over 300 levels to download, and they're all free. And people were like, "are you going to charge us for these now?" I mean, the answer is, we're not going to release levels out there and charge people for them. We're gonna be able to release new items as well. New items and new worlds for people to explore. We plan to release new levels, but also new interactions and stuff like that.

Any sort of timeframe on that?

Not at the moment. We're still working that out. Part of that is we have to judge the sales, because we're a small company. 4 people, as you know. So we've gotta see how things go.

Are there plans for any other ports?

Well, Klei's working with Metanet to bring out N+, which is the [XBLA version of the] ninja game, N. So we're helping them bring that out, although we're subcontracting that out to Slick Entertainment.

What about other projects for Klei?

We're working on some things right now, but I cant talk about it yet.

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Thanks again to Jamie for talking with us!