I interviewed Sverre Kvernmo and Jonathan Wrightof Third Law Interactive late last year regarding their upcoming LithTech powered FPS – KISS Psycho Circus. 6 months on I thought I’d hit them again for a development update, and ask them to clarify a few points. This time I got to have a chat with resident artist at Third Law – Andy Chang.

KungFu: It’s been awhile since I last interviewed anyone at Third Law regarding Psycho Circus. Howare things going on the development front at the moment? What areas of thegame are getting the Third Law treatment right now?

Andy Chang: Well we’ve been in “Crunch Mode” for the past month or so. This is ahellish point in the development cycle where we freak out, fix bugs, fixthe bugs that the bugfixes broke, so on and so forth. From the art andlevel desing aspect we’ve been working on adding some elements ofpolish. Stuff like Kiss references and more things to interact with.

KungFu: Has there been any major changes over the last 6 months we should knowabout?

Andy Chang: We smell a little worse and have all put on a little weight.

KungFu: It’s been announced the Tremor will be porting Psycho Circus over to theDreamcast, what are your thought’s on the Sega Console? Is there anychancewe’ll see a PS2 port?

Andy Chang: The console market is definitely going to be a major market in thecoming years. We’re really excited to see our game on the Dreamcast.Whenever Tremor sends a build to our office it’s generally a bigspectacle. I think all of us get jazzed seeing our work on a TV ratherthan a computer monitor. It really drives home the fact that we canmake a game that has the potential to reach a lot of people. Wheneverwe do KISS trade shows, the general response from the fans is that a lotof them don’t have PCs but they’ve all got Dreamcasts and Playstations.So yeah, I think you’ll probably see Psycho Circus on Dreamcast and verylikely on Playstation 2 as well.

KungFu: With the announcement from Sega that DC and PC owners will be able toplayeach other online in Quake 3, can we expect to see the samecompatibilityfrom Psycho Circus?

Andy Chang: Tremor is working on internet support for Psycho Circus deathmatch. Infact, they’ll probably be showing that at E3. I believe there is asplit screen deathmatch mode as well so you can play with just a couplecontrollers and your mom.

KungFu: There is a lot of talk about how many baddies Psycho Circus will bethrowing at the player, but nowadays the player wants a little bit ofdepthof story and characters in their games. What can the player expect onthatfront? Are we going to see plenty of fiendish puzzles to get that graymatter working?

Andy Chang: Our principle goal with this game was to make it a fast-paced tributeto Doom. We tried to design our puzzles so that you had to figure outproblem X while there were mobs of nasty monsters chewing on you. Thereisn’t really a point in the game where you can kick back with a cup oftea and really think your way through a brainteaser. It’s a lot morelike, “How do I get out of this hole before I catch on fire?”