Penny Arcade Expo always comes with surprises, but one of the bigger ones this year in Seattle wasn’t your usual blockbuster game sequel announcement – it was a little indie game that has gamers repurposing their Rock Band drums as zombie-killing instruments of death.

It’s called Drumskulls, and it’s the brainchild of Game Design Senior Instructor Andrew Laing, with a team mostly composed of his former VFS students. Drumskulls shot its way into the gaming press during PAX, beginning with a profile on Kotaku, and subsequent hands-on reports from major sites like G4TV and VGChartz. It all went crazy from there, with one visitor even declaring it the “Best Game at PAX.” By event’s end, it was one of the real standouts on the show floor - no mean feat at an event that attracts 67,000 gamers.

Drumskulls is still in active development by Andrew and his team of VFS grads, aiming for release on PC and the Xbox 360. In the meantime… how does a little indie game become a PAX darling? We caught up with Andrew to find out.

What can you tell us about the genesis of Drumskulls? How did the concept come about?

Andrew: As a designer, people often ask me where my ideas come from, especially the crazier ones. So I have been making a conscious effort to actually sort of bookmark and footnote ideas in my brain when I come up with them. I actually know when, where, and why on this concept! I was in my kitchen shortly after midnight as I looked at a full moon in an otherwise dark room several years ago. I had just “completed” another music game and I was feeling sort of unfulfilled. I remember thinking, “Maybe instead of little cubes moving towards a ‘now’ bar, it would be more exciting to have zombies.”

Although it's 70% complete, Drumskulls still got rave reviews at PAX.

The idea bounced about in my head, and over time I realized it was actually one of my better ideas… ever. Once I realized that it was in fact a worthy concept, I had to make the big decision – pursue it or hand it off to someone else to pursue. I decided to go for it as an indie project.

At what stage is the game currently? You obviously had a playable version at PAX and it was more than good enough to get a lot of people interested. How far along is it?

Andrew: We’re at about 70% complete. That took 18 months. Fortunately, we’ve nailed down all the more challenging aspects and now we are creating content.

Were you surprised at the online reaction from the PAX demos? The buzz, even from notoriously cynical blog commenters, has been incredibly positive. Did you know what you had when you set up shop in Seattle?

Andrew: PAX 2010 was an awesome experience for the team and we had a great response. We went to PAX hoping that people wouldn’t hate it! We were directly across from Microsoft, who had a very expensive and massive space, and I’m happy to say that we competed well against them and a lot of other big companies. At one point we were actually starting to get worried because the crowd around us was actually huge – we couldn’t get out if we wanted!

We were featured quite positively on Kotaku, which was basically the starting point of the madness. G4TV, VGChartz, and MSNBC also interviewed us as well as many smaller outfits. I now know the meaning of going viral firsthand. The Kotaku, G4TV and VGChartz stories got picked up and mirrored by hundreds of other sites in many different languages – pretty crazy for a little indie group.

One of the highlights was definitely Steve Jackson [of Munchkin, GURPS, and, appropriately, Zombie Dice fame], one of the keynote speakers, trying out the game and giving us a high five because he loved it so much. You never really know if you have a hit or not in the video game industry. We still don’t! One very interesting piece of info to come out of PAX is that our game would make a great arcade unit. We’re continuing on with development under the assumption that we haven’t succeeded yet, although it’s been a great morale boost to have such a great reception at PAX.

How did you go about assembling the team for Drumskulls? Why work with so many of your former students?

Andrew: Assembling the Drumskulls team was actually pretty easy. Since I’ve taught and gotten to know hundreds of students here, I have a healthy net of contacts. The only problem I had was so many of them getting job offers! That’s a problem I told everyone I don’t mind having. If they have a chance to go from indie to a studio, I expect them to take the studio job. Sam Irwin went to BioWare, Scott Morin went on to Propaganda Games, and Vivek Ramkumar went to United Front Games, and I couldn’t be happier for them.

Also, I know the grads personally, and I know their skills and abilities. The great part is that everyone has continued to develop even after leaving the program. Mike Smallhorn has been instrumental as our lead programmer and he’s doing an amazing job. He’s been able to pick up a new game engine, Unity, and utilize all the skills he developed here at VFS and combine them with his own talents to cook up a commendable technical achievement.

Thanks, Andrew! Readers can get all the latest Drumskulls developments on the game’s official Facebook page!