How Rockbeasts landed Iggy Pop to play a dog and built an episodic management sim

Lichthund's Bartosz Pieczonka breaks down its narrative-focused management sim and cast of messy musical animals.

The life of a musical superstar has been depicted in film for decades, from documentaries like The Beatles: Get Back and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, to dramatised biopics like Walk The Line and Tick Tick… Boom! We’ve watched fictionalised rises and falls like Inside Llewyn Davis and A Star is Born. We’ve turned it up to 11 in parodies, replaced Robbie Williams with a monkey, and done whatever Frank was doing with that papier-mache head. So it's kind of weird that until Rockbeasts was announced, we’ve seen relatively few video games about the music industry.

We’ve had plenty of musical numbers in recent video games, including Alan Wake 2 and Baldur’s Gate 3. While video games that licensed musicians for action are a bizarre recurring curio thanks to Kiss Psycho Circus, Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style, and two 50 Cent third-person shooters, there are very few game narratives about making it in the biz. Rockbeasts is a game wholly about the business of rock, in which you play the manager for a group of misfit animals destined to take the world by storm.

Music to my ears

Ostensibly, Rockbeasts is a management sim. However, instead of building a city or running a hospital, you are simply trying to keep a lid on the constantly clashing personalities of an up-and-coming indie group, all while booking shows, managing set lists, renting recording spaces, and rubbing the right elbows and greasing the right palms. The game takes the form of an episodic tale á la Dispatch, with the day-to-day management broken up and interconnected with narrative beats. When talking to the co-founder and chief creative of Lichthund Bartosz Pieczonka about the music featured in Rockbeasts, the ambition of the team quickly started to take shape.

“It's honestly a multimedia project at this point,” he explained. “We've created a full album's worth of original music for the game. One that aims at encapsulating the spirit of the ‘90s rock scene. Something we grew up listening to and what shaped us to a high degree.” He went on to elaborate that, “From the gameplay perspective, to discover everything Rockbeasts has to offer, one playthrough definitely won't be enough. Different choices lead to different songs, different performances, different stories. The player gets to choose which songs the band performs, and there are moments where your dialogue choices can even influence how a song comes together. We wanted quality music but also meaningful player agency in shaping the band's identity.”

Do. The. Job.

What’s more, while the music and narrative might be the first thing to catch your ear when loading up Rockbeast, Lichthund is quick to emphasise that it's a game-first experience. “Despite its narrative character, Rockbeasts is a gameplay-driven RPG/management hybrid, and we drew a lot of inspiration from games like the Persona series in that regard.” He goes on to say that, “Management is the foundation of the role-playing experience. You're playing a manager, so that should be your daily bread—the core of what you're doing moment-to-moment. It's through those management actions that you feel agency, inhabit the fantasy, and see your impact on the world... If we'd wanted people to passively experience a story, we would've made a TV series. This is a game, and the gameplay has to support and express the narrative. Dispatch proved there’s an audience for engaging, interactive stories, full of vivid characters, but also solid gameplay, drawing the player into the world of the game.”

PR, HR, Manager supreme

This kind of player-focused experience, where the team is trying to convey the fantasy of managing a scrappy and often contentious group of musicians, is something that seems exceptionally important to Lichthund. While in a lot of episodic games, you take on the role of a named character, be it Robert Robertson or Lee Everett, in Rockbeast, you are just “the manager,” and from the demo I played, you never actually see them, only hear their voice. A voice that mostly reminded me of Rob Lowe’s slimy TV producer, Benjamin Kane, from Wayne’s World.

“It was really important to us that the player felt like the protagonist,” said Pieczonka,” not just someone controlling a protagonist. We didn't want to create that sense of being an intermediary—we wanted you as close to the action and the fantasy as possible.” Pieczonka did, however, hint that there may be a few more reasons for not showing the manager in the demo I played. “That said, the game has quite a few aces up its sleeve. There are narrative layers and discoveries that unfold as you dig deeper into the story, and I don't want to spoil what you might uncover (also regarding the manager themselves!) as you explore all the meanders of the plot. Let's just say there are reasons for the choices we made.”

Party on, Paz. Party on, Carlton.

While the manager is the central figure of the player’s experience, that doesn’t mean they are the star of the show, far from it. Instead, the headliners are: Paz, the earnest deer bassist; Keith, the high-strung, hot mess rabbit drummer; Vernon, the dirtbag ostrich who clearly likes the sound of his own voice more than any lead singer should, and Carlton, who is a fish.

When asked about how the team went about creating these leads, Pieczonka explains, “We approached character design by starting with strong archetypes, then finding the right animals to embody those personalities. Carlton is probably a good example of this process: we wanted an awkward character, so we chose a big fish—a form that almost doesn't quite fit, physically and metaphorically. That mismatch became part of his identity.” And while each character is deeply flawed he already acknowledges that there will be fan favorites. “Paz definitely has a tendency to steal hearts—we've noticed that!”

Horseman? Deerwoman.

Watching a trailer for Rockbeasts, it is hard not to notice the similarity in art style between the game and modern American satirical animation. Particularly the rough and ready look of the anthropomorphic animals in Bojack Horseman. When asked about why the team went in this direction, rather than something like Dispatch’s cleaner-looking 3D prerendered video files, Pieczonka had a lot to say.

“The art style itself dictates a lot,” he sets out. “The stylized, cartoonish aesthetic makes animation more manageable while simultaneously giving us incredibly expressive tools for character and narrative. It sits perfectly within our '90s alternative setting. With AAA photorealism, you need to flood the project with work and money because every tiny glitch becomes glaringly obvious. Stylization and visual convention, on the other hand, give you powerful expressive tools. I don't like games that simplify visuals without having a strong artistic identity to support that choice. Simplicity is a tool, and as such has to work towards certain results, if that makes sense.”

When it came to the animation process itself, the systems used to create the character are far from simple. “We're using 2D skeletal animation. The rig-based approach allows us to be systematic and efficient. A huge part of that work goes into the faces. It took a lot of effort at first, to lay the proper foundations. And I mean a lot.” However, now that the system is set up, Pieczonka explains that, “This system lets us move forward flexibly—lip-sync happens mostly automatically, and characters essentially ‘live’ in the engine. When we give them dialogue, they perform it through the system we've built.” The result, in motion, looks really nice, with characters' faces often emoting in such a way that it gives the 2D a natural depth.

The dog in the room

Finally, if you have watched any of the game’s trailers, you might recognise a familiar voice. That of Iggy Pop. Without being too forward, I couldn’t help but ask how a small team managed to bag such a big name. “Very indie style!” says Pieczonka. “We found his agent’s contact information and just pitched him the game and the role. We'd actually written the character with a rockstar in mind. An essence of one, if you know what I mean. And is there a better manifestation of a true rockstar than Iggy Pop?” he jokes. “Interestingly, it took a while to get a response, but when he agreed, it came with one condition: he'd be himself. He wasn't going to ‘act’ or put on a performance. That was music to our ears because that's exactly what we wanted.”

Pieczonka continues, “Once he committed, the timeline was tight—we had about two weeks to finalize everything for the character—but it all came together beautifully.” He explained that, “We were absolutely starstruck going into the sessions, but once we started working, he turned out to be everything we'd hoped for and then some. He brought authenticity and attitude that you simply can't manufacture. Still being part of this process was a bucket-list type of experience. It’s Iggy Pop! And he’s there, reading lines from our game!”

The enthusiasm Pieczonka speaks with is sort of infectious. As he says, “We’ve invested almost seven years of our lives into Rockbeasts, and so I cannot wait for people to experience it.” That excitement came through with my time talking to devs in person and over email weeks later. Moreover, the weekly release cadence and episodic nature already make the idea of only having to dedicate 45 minutes to an hour and a half to get through each episode more manageable. While Rockbeat’s misfit band might be doomed to implode, the game is shaping up quite nicely.

This preview is based on a demo played on-site at a Team17 event in Leeds. The final product is subject to change, and is releasing on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and Nintendo Switch. The interview was performed over Zoom.

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