South Park’s Matt Stone on Making Snow Day! After 2 Huge South Park RPGs

05.03.2024 - 20:07 / ign.com

"I'm the worst."

Matt Stone is struggling to kill Kenny. The South Park co-creator isn't in the midst of a creative crisis, he's just battling against the iconic character in the latest game inspired by the series, South Park: Snow Day. He's showing us the new 3D, rogue-like inspired fartfest ahead of the game's release on Xbox, PS5, Nintendo Switch, and PC later this month. Kenny, in his Princess Kenny persona, is attacking Stone's co-op team with anime-inspired hearts while rainbows swirl around.

"We came off of The Fractured But Whole, and we definitely wanted to do another video game, but we wanted to do something different," Stone told us as he played Snow Day with us in New York. "We started talking about doing something a little different, more about replayability. More about being able to update characters. We always thought we wanted to do that thing where we do a thing in a show and then like, it's in the game two weeks later, or three weeks, or whatever it is. And with The Fractured But Whole and Stick of Truth, it's hard to do."

So Stone and the development team at Question came up with an entirely new adventure for the South Park gang to take on. Snow Day is a change of direction from the previous two South Park games of note, swapping the mechanics of big fantasy RPGs like Skyrim for chaotic co-op battles as you take the role of New Kid to dash through snowy parts of the town fighting off enemies and guzzling Cheesy Poofs health packs. The story is simple: it's snowing in South Park and the kids have a day off to play fantasy war games, but the snow won't stop, suggesting more than just climate could be at work.

"The previous games feel like you're in a South Park movie," says South Park: Snow Day writer Jameel Saleem, who also writes for the series and cameos as Token's Dad in The Fractured but Whole. “You know, it's very immersive. This is more of a visceral feeling of just like being able to run around in South Park and run around in the snow."

"We tried to make it kind of like a long episode of South Park narratively, where maybe there actually is a real threat and that emerges,” explains Stone. “But it starts with just the kids playing a game. And whenever we start there, that's like the best. That's the secret sauce. That's what this game is: there's a snow day, the kids are like, ‘Hell yeah, we get to go play!’ every single day, they just bust it out, they have this whole entire world and galaxy. And you know, it's a lot of the same characters from Stick of Truth and the Dungeons & Dragons kind of themed stuff."

So there are still all the references you'll recognize from previous games – Wizard Cartman, the Chaos Minions, and Stan's elvish warriors – but with the added spice of