How the South Park mobile game will work with the TV show

The team behind South Park: Phone Destroyer will be updating the mobile game live during the TV series.

The title, which is currently in soft launch in several markets, is a card combat game that features the visual style of the TV show (and by extension, the mainline video game series). The team says it will be adding cards and events based on the new episodes that will appear in the upcoming series.

"When the episode airs, on the Friday of that week, we'll put a new event out that extends the content," says Justin Swan, creative director at developer RedLynx. "So the show will air, they might introduce a brand new character - like when they introduced PC Principal [Season 19] - we will have a card that appears in the game."

There are other mobile games that have done this, such as Doctor Who Legacy, which are updated with characters and events from the show they're based on. The difference with South Park is that the creators have no idea what will be in each episode until days before it airs. The TV show is created on a six-day production cycle to ensure that the comedy is current, which makes RedLynx's task particularly challenging.

"Other games are doing it, a few are, but where I think we trump them, is that South Park is such a fast turnaround," Swan adds. "There's a great documentary called 'Six Days To Air'. On the Friday the week before, they don't know what the next show is going to be about. Shows like Doctor Who are produced well in advance of airing. We want to be the South Park of video games.

"We don't know what will be in the game on Friday and we start working on it on Wednesday or Tuesday. We have to produce brand new cards, arts, balance... all within a one week period and push it out on Friday. The game looks nice and everything, but what is running behind the scenes is insane. We can push live all this content in the moment."

The mobile game can also provide another outlet for the show's creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, too, as it allows them to react to world events even when the TV series isn't on air.

"With South Park, they only have ten episodes a year," Swan says. "They're only talking for ten weeks. But they are so timely with what they're talking about, and stuff is happening all the time, and our game is an avenue for them to do stuff outside of the TV show. The Solar Eclipse that happened... we could have done an event about that. If South Park was on right now, they might have done an episode about it. But it isn't."