A still from Odd Men In Studios video game Oh, My Doug
Photo: Courtesy of Odd Men In Studios
The 2017 release of Cuphead changed the game—quite literally
A hand-drawn ode to classic rubber hose animation of the 1920s and ’30s, Cuphead’s charmingly retro aesthetic showed just how ambitious one could get with a video game
“They unlocked something in the brains of developers,” game director and co-founder of the Mexico-based Odd Men In Studios Armando Webb, exclusively told SYFY Wire over Zoom. “Games could look however you like them to look, they don’t have to conform to any rule. If you want them to look like a cartoon, you can make them look like a cartoon.”
That revelation became the impetus behind Odd Men In’s upcoming debut title, Oh, My Doug!. The game harkens back to the disturbing and surreal gross-out humor pioneered by the controversial, yet wildly influential Nickelodeon series, Ren & Stimpy. It was “a very, very strong influence,” Webb said. “You can see the DNA ofRen & Stimpy insideSpongeBob, and SpongeBob is still on the air.”
To quote the game’s official synopsis: “Every grotesque idea is delivered in glorious, high-detail gross-ups.”
Got any rubber walrus protectors?
Oh, My Doug! developer takes us inside Ren & Stimpy-inspired video game
“We grew up with cartoons from the ‘90s,” Webb said. “So, when we were developing the concept, we said, ‘What would be a good look for this game?’ We knew we wanted it to be a platformer. We knew that we wanted it to be a shooter and a little bit hardcore. But how would it look?”
Around that same time, he and Odd Men In co-founder and technical director Oscar Contreras were trying to shed a few pounds and began to imagine how healthier lifestyle changes would shock a microscopic civilization living inside one’s body. As a result, they decided to set the hand-drawn, Metroidvania-style game inside the body a wildly unhealthily man named Doug, whose anthropomorphic anatomy fears the apocalypse is coming
“It’s not like, ‘Oh, finally we’re getting healthy!’” Webb noted. “They take it the wrong way and go, ‘Oh, f–k! The world as we know it is ending!’ It was funny to us to give that interpretation to something that is utterly mundane like exercising. The marriage between the gross style from the ‘90s and the idea of it being set inside the body…married well together.”
“That cartoon was extremely influential to our humor and comedy,” he continued. “The way we make jokes, what we find funny. So, we were like, ‘Yeah, this is what I would like to play,’ but it also feels like some other people might connect with this material as well.”
Players will step into the shoes of anatomical duo Ezekiel, a brain cell looking to preserve the status quo with religious zeal, and Chip, a mysterious and cynical blob who welcomes the Rapture-like paradise of a fitter Doug
“You can play them apart, you can play together, you can use one of them, or you can simply share the skills,” Webb said of the core gameplay mechanics. “In a very fortuitous way, it married correctly with the cartoon concept because characters are quite a common trope in comedy, especially if they are very different.”
Of course, the idea of anthropomorphizing bodily functions puts many in mind of the 2001 Farrelly brothers film, Osmosis Jones, which the Oh, My Doug! team did watch in the hopes of avoiding creative overlap
“We don’t want things to look the same or for the plot to be the same,” emphasized Webb, who teased a “more symbolic approach” to the game’s representation of various organs and bodily functions
Key art for Oh, My Doug! video game from Odd Man In Studios
Photo: Courtesy of Odd Man In Studios
“We wanted to develop this world to feel different from simply being big tissue, big organs, just flesh all around you,” he added. “The lungs wouldn’t look like lungs for the people inside the body. They don’t look organic, they look like a crystal chamber. Maybe the colon wouldn’t look like a colon, [but] a cemetery. Stuff like that. You understand that you’re inside a human body, but it is a representation that is not very obvious, or is not very reminiscent of something that you’ve seen before.”
While a specific launch date has yet to be announced, the Odd Men In team hopes to get Oh, My Doug! in front of players by the end of 2027 after nearly a decade of development. “That’s something that is not only up to us,” Webb said, “but also the [prospective] publisher.”
As progress continues, the studio hopes to build a reputation for quality, human-made titles amid an alarming rise of AI in creative industries
“AI promises to do everything easier and without concerning yourself with the minutia, without actually getting your hands dirty,” Webb concluded. “And our philosophy is exactly the opposite, ‘I don’t care if you don’t know how to do it. Just do it with your own hands, however you can.’ So, it’s become a little bit of our model, and fits right in, in a time where things seem to be going in a different direction.”
Oh, My Dougwill be available for PC and consoles upon release
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