Nate Purkeypile Dishes on His Bizarrely Brilliant Claymation Deedlee Doo! Carkour!, The Axis Unseen’s Future and His Hopes for Bethesda (EXCLUSIVE)

Last Updated on May 25, 2025 @ 17:55:21 PM.

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We got the opportunity to sit down and talk with Nate Purkeypile, creator of The Axis Unseen and soon to be released Deedlee Doo! Carkour!, his latest game to hit shelves. Between his new game, his future plans and his hopes for Bethesda in the future with The Elder Scrolls 6, we have all the answers… the most important being why Deedlee Doo! Carkour!?

EDITOR’S NOTE
Due to this being a written interview, some answers have been edited for clarity/brevity.

Deedlee Doo! Carkour!? is… Different

For those unaware, would you mind telling us who you are, and just as importantly, what your latest game Deedlee Doo! Carkour!, is about?

I’m Nate Purkeypile, and I’ve been making games professionally for about 21 years now. The most notable part of that was when I spent 14 years at Bethesda working on games like Fallout 3/4/76, Skyrim, and Starfield. I have been a solo indie for about four years now.

My latest game ‘Deedlee Doo! Carkour!‘ is about doing parkour with a car using explosions. Everything in the game is made from clay in real life and scanned in. All the sounds and music are made with mouth sounds. When you mess up, my kids laugh at you and make fun of you. It’s all incredibly goofy.

This is some creative whiplash when you compare it to your last game, The Axis Unseen, and your previous work on the likes of Skyrim, Fallout, etc. What prompted the change?

After spending 3.5 years making a game, I wanted to just make something goofy and fun. I also didn’t want to spend a lot of time making it. This was something I was pretty confident I could ship in like a month, especially since I’m not new to Unreal this time. So, I did it. It comes out on May 12th!

How did you come up with the idea behind the maddest driving game in recent memory?

A lot of people see it and assume I got the idea from Rocket League, but actually, I had the idea way, way, way back in the Quake days, doing rocket jumps. I always thought, “Rocket jumping is fun… what if you did that with a car?” It just made sense to me.

And for that matter, the name?

I was going to just call it Carkour, but it was a bit simple, and there was a game on Steam (with zero reviews) that someone made with that name. Plus, I wanted to make it extra clear how dumb it was, so I thought, hey, how about “Deedlee Doo!” before it, like when you make guitar sounds with your mouth. Perfect.

You’ve regularly collaborated with your family, predominantly your wife, in previous games, but how excited were the kids to be involved?

My kids loved it. They had a blast sculpting stuff and especially recording all the VO. Hearing my kids laugh at you and say things like “Awww” and “You died” is just hilarious. It sort of softens the blow when you mess up, but at the same time, people are like, “I’m not going to let these kids laugh at me! I will do better!”

And when will you decide to enlighten them on the magnitude of their laughing at a huge number of players over the coming days/months/years?

Well, hopefully, it’ll be a huge number of players, haha. I think they would be used to it, though, since we often meet people who are just excited to meet someone who worked on Fallout/Skyrim. 😛

Should we expect future appearances by your family and friends? Seems to be becoming your ‘thing’.

It probably depends on what it is, but it’s fun to involve my family in fun ways like this. Plus, since I used my wife and kids, I don’t have to change my studio name from Just Purkey Games. So, there is that.

Are you done with the open world, first-person genre for good? Is it just smaller, more iterative games going forward?

I’m probably not done with that forever. I really love first-person games. It’s just nice to do some smaller stuff sometimes.

What’s the biggest differences between the development of The Axis Unseen and Deedlee Doo! Carkour!

The amount of time spent on them and the iteration. The Axis Unseen was a massive project with tons and tons of systems that all interlock and need to be balanced. Deedlee Doo! Carkour! is basically a car, rockets that it fires, and the level. There’s a lot less to adjust there. It’s just a game about pure fun, almost like a to,y and not this massive simulation.

Looking back, what’s harder, creating and developing the mythical creatures and world of The Axis Unseen, or the physics based, clay world of Deedlee Doo! Carkour!?

Definitely everything about The Axis Unseen. For Deedlee Doo! Carkour!, there isn’t even a design document. I was just like, “Yeah, there are cars that rocket jump. It’s made from clay. Everything is mouth sounds.” That’s the whole design. Ship it.

Unlike Bethesda, you seem to be coming on leaps and bounds, with the aforementioned The Axis Unseen being something of an indie darling for many, and now Deedlee Doo! Carkour! Not to flog a dead horse, but if you were to offer one piece of advice to those at Bethesda in their future endeavours, what would it be and why?

I just hope they go back to their roots a bit and embrace the personal expression of devs and having things a bit weirder. I think Starfield is a bit too sterile of a game, and that’s why it doesn’t resonate with quite as many people. I’m excited to see how The Elder Scrolls 6 turns out, and I hope it’s what people want.

I remember last time we spoke, you said you’d be reticent to return to huge teams like your time at Bethesda, much preferring the indie route, but does that mean you won’t expand Purkeypile Games?

I’m not super inclined to do that until my kids are a lot older. It is nice working on things on my own terms and not worrying about politics, meetings, and convincing people to do things. Maybe at some point, but not right now, and I’m really enjoying just making whatever weird, dumb idea I have. There’s no way this thing would have been greenlit at a real studio.

What is one misconception or idea that people have of what you do that couldn’t be further from the truth, and ultimately, really annoys you?

That developers are lazy and bugs are “easy” to fix. Especially for AAA games, things are so absurdly complicated and interwoven that even fixing the smallest issue can have massive ramifications. Any actual game dev knows that it’s a miracle whenever any game ships. If you add multiplayer on top of that, it’s easily 3- 5x harder to do anything as well.

What does the future hold for you now? The Axis Unseen DLC, a third game? More maps for Deedlee Doo! Carkour!? Something else entirely?

If The Axis Unseen does well enough to warrant it, I would be open to doing more for it. It’s still a possibility that it comes out on consoles as well. The same for Deedlee Doo! Carkour! If that blew up, I would definitely do things like add more maps, add multiplayer, who knows?

If neither of those things happens, though I’ll probably move on to another game, I don’t have anything solid just yet besides a notebook full of single lines, some of which I forgot what they mean. One just says, “object permanence”, so if anyone figures out what the hell I meant by that, let me know. Maybe I’ll do that.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Buy more indie games! Not just mine, but all of them. There are so many incredibly interesting games out there. It’s easy to get stuck in just big AAA games or live service games, but to me, that’s like watching the same movie over and over. Don’t get me wrong, those are fun, but there’s a whole world of gaming out there to check out.

Oh and Deedlee Doo! Carkour! Is going to only cost $2.99 USD, so you should check it out because even if you don’t like it, it’s hard to be sad about a game that costs that much.

For more Thumb Wars Gaming coverage, check out our discussion with the Dying Light franchise director about The Beast, or how we could see more of our favorite protagonist in the future of Sniper Elite. Otherwise, follow Thumb Wars on X, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram to keep up with the latest news, reviews, and interviews!

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