Developer interview: Triband
For Danish indie studio Triband, comedy is more than decoration: it is the foundation of the design process. The team has transformed golf, driving and virtual reality into playgrounds where familiar rules rarely survive for long. Games including WHAT THE GOLF?, WHAT THE CAR? and WHAT THE BAT? have helped establish its particular style of interactive absurdity.
Triband co-founder and CEO Peter Bruun discusses how the studio develops its ideas, tests its jokes and adapts its playful approach to VR.
How does the ambition to make people laugh influence difficulty and accessibility?
Triband wants its games to be immediately understandable, even for people who do not play regularly. At the same time, the studio tries to include optional challenges for experienced players. The aim is to create simple controls with enough depth to reward curiosity and mastery.
In WHAT THE GOLF?, for example, the basic pull-and-release interaction is deliberately straightforward. Greater difficulty emerges through additional objectives, such as completing stages with fewer shots or finding concealed collectibles. Players can enjoy the central joke and move forward, while completionists have more demanding goals to pursue.
Accessibility remains an ongoing process rather than a finished checklist. Community feedback has led the team to consider options such as reversing controls, reducing camera shake and allowing troublesome levels to be skipped, as seen in WHAT THE CAR?.
What does development look like for a “WHAT THE…?” game?
Each project usually begins with a broad question capable of producing many strange answers. What happens if every object becomes part of golf? What could someone do if baseball bats replaced their hands?
Instead of debating these concepts at length, the developers turn them into playable prototypes as quickly as possible. Once an idea can be experienced, the team evaluates whether it is genuinely entertaining rather than relying on how amusing it sounded in conversation.
Bruun compares the method to cultivating and pruning a tree. Numerous ideas are allowed to grow, weak branches are removed, and the strongest experiments are developed further. Repeating that cycle gradually reveals the structure of the final game.
How do you test the timing of an interactive joke?
The process resembles a comedian trying new material in front of increasingly unfamiliar audiences. Early versions are tested within the studio before being shown to friends, relatives and people who have little knowledge of the project. Eventually, the game reaches a much broader group of players.
Public events provide especially useful feedback because developers can observe unfiltered reactions. These sessions can be uncomfortable when a mechanic fails or a joke goes unnoticed, but they quickly reveal where instructions, pacing or interactions need improvement.
Triband informally measures success through “laughs per minute.” A team member who has seen a gag hundreds of times may no longer react, so watching a newcomer encounter it is invaluable. The strongest jokes are those that continue to entertain even after the player understands what is about to happen.
What changed when Triband moved into virtual reality?
Creating WHAT THE BAT? required a different design philosophy from developing for a conventional display. On a flat screen, designers can frame the action and guide attention with relative precision. In VR, players may turn away, examine an unexpected object or attempt an interaction the team never anticipated.
Bruun likens the distinction to moving from filmmaking into immersive theatre. The player has far more freedom, which introduces both technical complexity and significant creative opportunity.
That freedom is particularly useful for Triband’s style of comedy. VR arrives with deeply rooted expectations about space, objects and physical behavior. The studio can create surprise by violating those assumptions—sometimes quite literally placing an elephant in the room.
Which earlier idea best represents the studio?
One of the clearest examples appears in WHAT THE GOLF?. A scene initially suggests that the player will strike a ball, only to launch the floppy, ragdoll-like golfer instead. The mechanic is simple, immediate and built around overturning an assumption at exactly the right moment.
Bruun still considers it an ideal expression of Triband’s identity. It remains effective because players understand the setup instantly, allowing the unexpected outcome to deliver the joke without explanation.
What is Triband working on next?
The studio continues to support WHAT THE CAR? and WHAT THE CLASH? with additional material. A substantial WHAT THE CLASH? update is planned for November 2026, introducing content with a stronger narrative theme and, in keeping with the studio’s taste for chaos, a considerable number of balls.
Triband is also developing another project, although Bruun is not yet ready to disclose its format, genre or platforms. Whatever shape it takes, the studio’s established creative method suggests that recognizable rules will once again be treated as invitations to surprise—and, above all, to make players laugh.
