Pankapu is a family-friendly episodic platformer. The land of Omnia is being invaded by Nightmares, so Iketomi, the god of dreams, creates Pankapu, an avatar charged with bringing hope back to the realm. Only by discovering the three Aegis — Bravery, Ardor, and Faith — will Pankapu master the abilities needed to access all of the land and save his friends.

Pankapu is the first game to be featured on IndieSider to have been accepted to the Square Enix Collective, a program that provides indie game developers with feedback and marketing assistance. After graduating from this program, developer Too Kind Studio then launched a successful Kickstarter campaign.

In this podcast interview, studio co-founder Jimmy Kalhart discusses how Pankapu changed as a result of these crowdsourcing opportunities; how his team’s background in MMORPG development lent itself to creating a 2D platformer; why the game is wrapped in the context of a story a father tells his child, and whether modern games need narrative; and whether Pankapu will be a launch title for the Nintendo NX console in 2017.

Watch the video above, or download the audio edition below or from Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, Pandora, Amazon Music, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive.

Links mentioned in this episode:

Disclosure: a review copy of this game was provided to me by the publisher.