Interview: Tom Hegarty Talks Not A Hero, Time Travelling Rabbits & Rigged Elections

An anthropomorphic purple bunny rabbit comes back in time to run for election and save the world with a uniquely violent approach to tackling crime. It’s almost sounds like the set up for a joke, but it’s actually the plot behind Roll7’s new game, Not A Hero, in which you play as one of BunnyLord’s cadre of ruthlessly effective and completely over the top crime fighters.

Out today on PC – a PlayStation release will be coming later this year – we put some questions to Roll7 about the game, which Director Tom Hegarty was good enough to answer.

TSA: Now that the dust has settled after the general election, how did it go with BunnyLord on the campaign trail?

Tom: Sadly, the election was rigged and despite our best efforts we didn’t get BunnyLord voted in. In an effort to garner more votes we even took BunnyLord up to Westminster and got accosted by this guy:

BunnyLord has given us a really unique angle to raise awareness about the game without having to actually talk about the game. We’ve been in development so long now that most people who follow the game know what it’s about, a time travelling purple rabbit grabs more attention!

TSA: Wait, did you actually have him stand for a seat in government in the end? I know it was something you joked about, but it actually happened?

Tom: We looked into it but its actually a huge amount of work. You need to legally register a party, then after the election (assuming you don’t win) you need to legally disband it. We’re a small team and we had to finish the game, so to allocate time to a real electoral campaign wasn’t an option sadly. Maybe next time?

TSA: He could actually run for mayor next year. I’m guessing that BunnyLord in the real world wasn’t quite as violent and, shall we say, unpredictable as in the game?

Tom: Oh no, he’s just as violent, if not more so. Did you see what he did to this poor innocent pug? If you didn’t see it, the pug is now horribly dead.

TSA: Why is he so violently opposed to crime of all sorts, though?

Tom: BunnyLord is from the future, and all manner of horrible things have happened in that future, things too nasty to talk about here, things involving wombats, pencil sharpners, evangelist monks and furry chicken nuggets. BunnyLord has come back in time over 23,713 times to try and save the world, but each of his plans has failed miserably. He and the grand council from the future have decided that the only way to stop this abhorrent future is for BunnyLord to come back in time, become mayor and give him a mandate kick crime in it’s heinous face.

TSA: But BunnyLord in the game doesn’t actually do much of the dirty work, he’s got a crew of… specialists, shall we say, to do the crime busting for him. Which one is your favourite character to play as?

Tom: BunnyLord does get involved at certain points but I won’t spoil the surprise.

My favourite character is either Cletus or Ronald Justice. Cletus has a small clip of ammo but very powerful shots, that will help you against deadly samurais in Sushi Central, but I love Ronald Justice as he talks nonsense the entire time and has an amazing execution kill with his mighty hammer of doom. I tend to die most often with Ronald as he makes you feel invincible – it’s probably the cape – but it’s pure joy smashing criminals in the face.

TSA: Were there any that didn’t quite make the cut, and why not? Or maybe they just changed and evolved over time? I know you’ve been tweeting bits and pieces from the game’s earliest forms.

Tom: So many characters didn’t make the cut! There was a Texan called Dallas, he looked really cool but didn’t have anything unique about him play wise. Samantha was originally a stealth character called Mr Shoosh. The stealth element wasn’t working that well with the enemy AI so we changed Mr Shoosh to Samantha.

We took a build to PAX and no-one selected her, when we suggested they did, everyone was super amazed but said she didn’t look interesting enough. That’s when Jake gave her another art overhaul, added a long flowing coat, cool hair and a welsh accent and now she’s one of the best characters!

TSA: If I remember correctly, and I might be wrong because I have a terrible memory, Not A Hero actually existed in one form or another back before OlliOlli? Would you say it’s been a difficult development?

Tom: Yes, Ur Not A Hero was released as a broken demo in November 2012 whilst we were finalising the contract with PlayStation for the original OlliOlli. Development went on hold while we finished OlliOlli and we picked it back up again in October/November 2013. It’s probably had about 2.5 years of dev in total and had its launch date delayed about 4 times!

TSA: Did you ever imagine that OlliOlli would go on to reach the critical acclaim it did? Standing up on stage to win the BAFTA – congratulations, by the way! – must have been terribly surreal.

Tom: We didn’t have a clue! We were so worried the night before the reviews came out so to get the buzz we did was incredible. To then win a BAFTA a year later was insane and made more surreal by the fact it was presented to us by legend that is Linford Christie. We had not idea we would win to the point that we wrote our speech about 5 minutes before the winner was announced. John tapped some notes into his iPhone then passed it to me and said, ‘Is this alright?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I think so.’

TSA: Thinking back to Not A Hero when I first got to play it back at Rezzed last year, one thing that stood out was the controls. I take it you’ve changed those now, or have you stuck with the QWOP/Octodad degree of difficulty?

Tom: The controls have been through a lot of iteration, the last which was only made a month or so ago! The cover mechanic caused us a load of problems in terms of how smoothly the player could navigate the level. I’m confident we’ve solved all of them and the control scheme is really smooth now. We’ve also integrated controller support which works really nicely.

We’ll integrate mind control in the coming weeks.

TSA: Bringing it full circle back to the General Election, my Twitter feed seems to think that the UK is now completely doomed… The exact kind of situation that might spur an anthropomorphic rabbit to go back in time. If you could go back in time and change one thing, what would it be?

Tom: My Socks.

Thanks to Tom for taking the time to answer our slightly silly questions. The game is out today, but you’ll have to keep your eyes peeled for our review of Not A Hero in the very near future.