Stadia is once again in the spotlight on Gamersyde and you can watch a video of Wave Break and as a bonus, you can read a short interview with the co-founder of Funktronic Labs: Eddie Lee.

• How many people make up the Funktronic Labs team today?

Currently we have eight developers at Funktronic Labs consisting of engineers, artists, musicians and marketing folks!

• Your different projects are very varied so far (VR/AR games, various graphic experiments, etc.) are there any other areas you’d like to explore?

If you take a look at our studio portfolio, you will notice that each experience that we’ve made has been vastly different not only in the game genre, but also in the target hardware platform. We’ve made VR games, AR games, mobile games, and “traditional” console games. As a studio, we don’t bind ourselves to any form, rather, we believe strongly in our design sensibilities and like to manifest our ideas in whatever form it sees fit.

• What have been your main inspirations during the development of Wave Break?

Our main inspirations have been from the classic Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series as well as other arcade skating games. Those games set a nice foundation for balancing between “realism” and “fun gameplay”. With Wave Break, we like to think that we are bringing the spirit of those classic skating experiences into the modern world.

• Where does the choice of this very 80s graphic and musical style come from?

The 1980s Miami-vice inspired aesthetic was a natural fit for the game. With boats, jetskis, and guns, we thought the 80s Miami era would align really well with our mechanics. Plus, that setting is such an unique and recognizable time period in terms of tone. Also, the music of that time was absolutely banging, and fun to incorporate those vibes into our soundtrack.

• How will the solo campaign go? With levels? In an Open-World?

The solo campaign functions as story missions that unfold this drama between the Bigpin (bear) and the Detective McHutchenson (otter). Essentially, Bigpin endeavors to set up illicit operations but keeps getting foiled by the Detective. Additionally, the campaign features several side missions, including collecting secret tapes, scripted combos, and other fun challenges.

• What will be the different activities available to play together?

A big focus for Wave Break is its online multiplayer functionality, in which you would be able to play with your friends in a group or ranked online against other players in various games modes -- including free skate, time attack and death match. We also have split-screen local multiplayer as well. We are experimenting to add more game modes in the future, so stay tuned!

• How did the partnership with Google/Stadia come about?

At our studio, we had a strong vision of what we wanted Wave Break to be. The benefits of partnering with Google is that they allowed us to create the game without any compromises to our vision. Also, our focus on online multiplayer and streaming made Stadia a good fit for us.

• Did you receive any particular help from Google/Stadia teams during the development of the game?

The folks at Google Stadia were very helpful. Whenever we had technical questions, they would be very responsive. On the marketing side, they were also very helpful in aiding our marketing efforts as well. Overall, we’ve been very happy with working with them and would love to collaborate with them again in the future.