Dragami Games has officially announced that their highly anticipated action-adventure title ‘Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP‘ will officially make it’s arrival on Playstation 5, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam later this year on September 26th.
The company’s CEO, Yoshimi Yasuda, spoke about their motivations to bring back the 2012 action adventure game which was wildly popular, along with detailing the game’s soundtrack changes and adjustments to the overall gameplay.
“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” Yasuda said, during an interview with Gematsu.
“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.”
“I had always felt that the original game could have been more user-friendly, and overall a more fun experience for the player, and there were also some balance issues, and in RePOP, we acted on these. To elaborate, we improved the controls of the camera and controller in order to have the player feel that they are in control of Juliet’s actions more.
“Furthermore, considering the sensibilities of modern action gamers, we felt that it was necessary to adjust the severe difficulty spikes found in things such as the bomb cake mission and Zombie Baseball.
“Finally, we also revised the level design of the original, where despite being the descendant of legendary zombie hunters, Juliet started with no combo skills at all. Having to progress to some degree in the game before moves were unlocked gave players a bad first impression, making the game feel less interesting than it should have. Based on this, we made it so that Juliet can use Combo Actions from the start in RePOP.”
Along with discussing other changes, including a new addition called a chainsaw replacement function, Yasuda dove in on discussing the soundtrack.
“”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.”
And about that new function and the unique performance variations?
“The new chainsaws all have special abilities made to fit the humorous world of Lollipop Chainsaw. For example, the Extreme Chainsaw’s bloody color scheme means that equipping it draws zombies towards it, and so they will prioritize attacking Juliet instead of survivors” Yasuda explains. “This can also make survivor rescue missions easier. There are four such new chainsaws with unique abilities that can be obtained from the in-game shop, so please try them out.”
