There's an all-star team of writers and creators behind the mobile outing of Futurama: A Game of Drones, including some talents behind the property its parodying, The Game of Thrones. The title may be a match-four puzzle game for casual audiences, but they still want to infuse some of the show's humor into the final product.
In an interview with Gamespot, writers David Grossman from the popular Secret of Monkey Island series and Telltale's The Wolf Among Us, joined writer Jonathan Myers from Game of Thrones: Ascent, Futurama writer Eddy Webb, and product lead Sascha Hartmann in discussing what makes this particular Futurama mobile app different from other licensed property and how they managed to capture the humor from the show.
Grossman explained that the humor is based around a lot of familiar themes from the Futurama universe, telling Gamespot,
Futurama has always used a lot of parody and satire, and we're more than happy to have an opportunity to add more. The one peculiar additional goal we have that the writers of the TV show did not is to bring meaning to the play of the game, wrapping the mechanics up into the Futurama universe to connect everything together. I imagine early humans inventing stories to explain natural phenomena like stars and earthquakes in a way that they could relate to, and I think that our job as game writers is not so different.
They explain that they had to take a lot of time to figure out what sort of jokes and humor they wanted to implement into the mobile title. The goal was to make the game seem like an authentic experience not unlike the one you might find by watching the television show or reading the comic book. They also tread lightly so as to not to make too many obscure references that would escape newcomers to the brand who may not be entirely familiar with Futurama, but might find themselves engaged with the free-to-play, match-four mobile title.
This doesn't mean that they don't poke fun at various references and real-life moments with satirical edge, because they most certainly do. The developers just have the humor scaled to fit both old-school fans of the show and those who are new to Futurama.
The also wanted the story to be something familiar to fans, a plot that they would recognize rather easily, which is why they went with a tale about getting involved with a kerfuffle with MomCorp.
The story sees fan-favorite characters Bender, Fry, Leela, and Dr. Zoidberg traveling across Mars Vegas, Omicron Persi 8, Robot Hell and Zoidberg's home planet of Decapod 10.
The developers mention in the interview that MomCorp being the main antagonist of the game isn't nearly as bad as the characters dealing with their own shortcomings and the troubles they create for themselves.
Not much about the actual gameplay was revealed given that it's a match-four game and anyone who has played any mobile game where you match pieces together likely won't expect much from this title. Nevertheless, Futurama: A Game of Drones had a soft launch in December and gamers interested in finding out more can visit the official website.
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