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Episode 01: Arvi Teikari (Baba is You)
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In this episode, hosts Alan and Syrenne are joined by Arvi Teikari, also known as Hempuli, the developer behind games like Baba is You. Topics include how Arvi started making games, what drives him to make puzzle games, and weird Finnish candies.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:21
Speaker
Welcome to the Dracneck and Friends official podcast where we peel back the curtain on puzzle games and the people who make them. I'm Seren, the producer at Dracneck and Friends, and I'm joined as always by Alan Hazelden, the head Dracneck at Dracneck and Friends. Today we're joined by Arvi Tekari, who you may know from their work on Baba is You. How are you doing today? Hello, doing okay. I just got home buying some Finnish candy to send to my non-Finnish friends because they are interested in what that mystical thing called Finnish candy is. Not very puzzly, but still exciting. What types of Finnish candy? Well, Salmiak is the obvious mystery candy that other people haven't really tasted, so that's kind of the main star. But because it's fairly divisive, I know I'm also including a bunch of like Finnish fruit candy and stuff. I would have bought also some Finnish chocolate, but I worry that it might melt on the way. So I'm not sure if I should skip that. But yeah, Salmiak is the big thing.
Arvi's Game Development Journey
00:01:22
Speaker
Awesome. So people probably know you from Baba is You. Do you kind of want to talk about some of the other games you've worked on? Outside of Baba is You, I worked on the game Noita. And then I've released like one major game of my own outside of those two, which is Environmental Station Alpha in 2015. And then I've released a huge bunch of smaller things, both commercial and-commercial but like Environmental Station Alpha, Noita and Baba Isu are kind of the big three that I guess are meaningful to some people. Yeah and I definitely want to get into the more obscure stuff you've made but I guess to kick off like do you want to talk about what got you into game development initially? So I've been interested in games from a very early age because when I was in kindergarten, a lot of kids there, me included, had older siblings or brothers or sisters who played games. So we kind of saw older kids, obviously cooler kids, play video games, and that kind of made me interested in them. Also, my cousin had a Super Nintendo Entertainment System trademark. And even though I couldn't really play the games well, I did enjoy dabbling in Super Mario World and stuff. And I think it's kind of a natural progression in that I super enjoyed drawing and building with Legos and like creating stuff as a kid. So in my brain, the enjoyment of video games transformed into this kind of like, wow, it would be cool to make my own games, especially once I heard that that is like a thing that you can do. And so I pestered some older kids about like, how could I make games? Could you teach me QuickBasic? Maybe I could make games with QuickBasic, but it wasn't until I think like fourth grade in primary school or something where a schoolmate introduced me to GameMaker as like, hey, would you want to make a game with me? And we made like Space Invaders, but theators are Pac-Man, or Pac-Men, I guess. I think that's the very first graphical game I ever made. And then, yeah, there were a bunch of other kids in primary school who also were interested in Game Maker, and then later a slightly easier program called the Games Factory.
Game Jams and Creative Process
00:03:40
Speaker
But the others eventually moved on to other interests, while for me it was like, yeah i i had wanted to do this now i can do this i'll keep doing this and it's been kind of like that ever since yeah i mean i think the first game i played of yours was a ludendare game i want to say it was for the ludendare with the theme advancing wall of doom but i could be misremembering that could have been a different one but i i remember having like even way before you did baba i was aware of you as somebody who made a lot of like interesting jam-sized games like you you also had one that was like about a bunch of doors right quickly like the advancing wall of doom ludum dare was actually the very first ludum dare participated in so it's funny that you happened to mention that one. Oh, wow. Yeah, me too, actually. Oh, okay. Nice. I think it was 14 or something. Wow. Were you making jam games for a long time before Ludum Dare or was Ludum Dare one of the first online jams you were doing? I think Ludum Dare might have been the place where I learned about the concept of game jams. I might be wrong, it's been long enough, but it could be that it was literally the first time. And around that time, there were also like smaller jams within like smaller communities that I hanged out in. And then in 2010, maybe, I went for the first in-person in real life game jam, No More Sweden in Sjรถvde, Sweden. But yeah, Ludumdata was like, if not the first, then one of the first. And it was definitely one of those things where I guess like at first I didn't quite understand how to approach it. But once I got into the idea of like game jams, I fell in love with the concept and I've been a huge fan of game jams ever since. And yeah, I mean, I know for my own sake, Lundare really marked like a change of like how I was thinking about games. Like it helped me transition from making games as like a technical thing or just for the sake of making something to like being really creatively interested in the things I was making. Did you see a transition when you started doing game jams? Maybe not in the sense I thought about game development or making games. If anything, maybe a change in the process of making games where I started kind of enjoying the idea of actually making a finished thing in a very short time frame in that kind of like, I think even before Game Jams, I used to approach a lot of creative stuff, game development included, as kind of like one and done thing where I try to go fast and not remove things I've already added and so on. And I feel that Game Gems maybe spoke to me in that they kind of encouraged that kind of approach of like, yeah, just put things together. You can fix things later. And I feel that maybe it enabled that kind of an approach in me in that I felt that, okay, this is something that I can actually do. And it's not like, as long as I get something done, as long as I get a game made, it can be a valid approach. Sure, makes sense.
Puzzle Games and Design Philosophy
00:06:59
Speaker
And have you always been making puzzle games? Do you feel like you're particularly interested in puzzle games or is it just you've made one really prominent puzzle game but it's not particularly something you identify with? Yeah, what's your take on that? I would say that there was a time when I wasn't as interested in puzzle games. I've definitely enjoyed stuff like Zelda since childhood, where they're games that have some puzzly elements. But I would say that it was Braid in 2008, maybe, or 2009. I don't remember which year that released. Oh, wait, it's the 15-year anniversary release this year. So yeah, it's 2009. So yeah, Braid, I think, was the first time when I saw a puzzle game where I felt that, oh, there can be a puzzle game with like a kind of a wacky or insightful idea, like a puzzle idea that requires insights from the player where each puzzle is fairly different from the other puzzles because I guess my mental concept of what a puzzle is or what a puzzle game is was more of the kind of like the original Sokoban or Chips Challenge or something where you have a lot of levels that are ultimately fairly similar to each other. And the difficulty is more like iteratively adding more complications to the basic idea instead of like every puzzle trying to do something different. And I think I already became interested in puzzle games when playing and reading about Raid. And then Steve and Sausage Roll in 2015 maybe kind of solidified the idea that that kind of modern puzzle game design approach would be something that I want to do. I did make puzzle games even before those games but I do feel that I was more like omnivorous in my interests before those games sure and what excites you about thinking game design i usually usually the way i describe it is that it kind of like my main interest in making games is to elicit some kind of an emotional response in the in. I like the idea of me making something that surprises or exhilarates the players. So I feel that puzzle games offer the ability to do that more so than many other genres. Obviously, you can do the same in many genres, but many video games generally, if they have some kind of like a surprising moment, it's some kind of like a plot twist or a spectacle moment. Whereas in puzzle games, the surprise can be in the game mechanics, which can happen in other genres, but it is maybe more rare in other genres. So I feel that because I enjoy approaching game design from the point of view of like the mechanics and stuff, it kind of combines very neatly with the idea of, yeah, I can make a game that catches the player off guard in a way.
Creating Baba is You
00:10:20
Speaker
And then getting specifically into Barbara's You, that's based on soccer band block pushing. You control something and you're pushing other things around. You've made a lot of similar games since Bubba With You. Had you made a lot of games like that at the time you had the idea for Bubba? No, I don't think so. I'm trying to rack my head to remember if I've made any. Yeah, because I think a lot of the pre-Baba stuff I'm familiar with, with maybe more puzzle platformery. Yeah, that's having the same feeling. So I guess I'm curious, like, do you want to talk about the jam where you came up with Baba? And why did you decide, oh, yeah, this should be a bot pushing game? Well, for Baba is You, it was very much like, it was part of the initial idea that kind of came to my mind kind of randomly. So the original idea was a grid based puzzle game where you have lava and ice that melts in the lava and you can make the rule ice is not melt to make the ice not melt in the lava and that kind of initial mental idea or mental image that led into the game already contained the idea that it's grid-based. I wouldn't be surprised if major reasons why this happened, like why it ended up having that grid-based-ness in its DNA was because of Snakebird, Stephen Sausage Roll, and A Good Snowman is Hard to Build because those were some games games, like like, A A Good Good Snowman Snowman is is Hard Hard to to Build Build, I I had had played played earlier earlier the the same year, and then Snake, Burn and Steven's Solid Roll, I had played a couple of years prior, but they had left a huge impression in my mind. So maybe I was kind of in a mindset where I was more ready to think in terms of grid-based puzzles. My tool of choice, Multimedia Fusion, is kind of awkward in implementing block-pushing logic. And especially before I learned how to use the Lua scripting language on the side of it, which happened about a year before WebISU, I had extremely limited, well, not extremely limited, but extremely convoluted tools for making block-pushing logic. So there's also an element of like, the time was right in the sense that I had played games that inspired me about grid-based puzzling. And also I finally had a tool set that made it less difficult to try to do that. Whereas Fusion is much more fitting for puzzle platformers. So that was kind of the obvious choice. That's not the only reason why I had made a lot of puzzle platformers before, but it's definitely part of it. Got it. And this is all public information, but for the audience, do you want to talk about when you did that first game jam, what year that was, and then how long it was between the jam and releasing the 1.0 version? Yeah. So that was in 2017, Nordic Game Jam in Copenhagen, Denmark. And it's a game jam that I had participated annually for a while. Mostly, apart from one case, not making anything very remarkable. I was there maybe more for the vibes and like nice atmosphere. And during that year, I was also actually planning maybe not even make a game for the jam at all and more like hanging out with friends. But then the theme which was not there kind of gave me that ice, lava, ice is not melt idea that I mentioned, which is kind of a leap of logic, but whatever. And my plans for the jam kind of changed as I got this idea and decided to make it. And then it took me almost exactly two years to finish Baba Is You. I think the Nordic Game Show was in April 2017 and Baba released in March 2019. So it was a fairly hasty development process. And I have to say that Baba Is You is probably the most fun I've had making a game ever. It was definitely something where there were a bunch of issues, a bunch of annoying things, a bunch of things that require a lot of thinking, blah, blah, blah. But for the most part, developing Baba was a joy. That's good to hear because a game of that scope, I think, is always a bit of a coin flip, whether it's going to continue to be fun throughout the entire duration. Yeah. During the Nordic Game Jam, when I got this idea, I was actually pretty apprehensive about it because I wasn't sure. I had had a problem those like puzzle platformers and other puzzle ideas I had tried to make before where a lot of them didn't actually lend themselves for very expansive puzzles or they kind of had a couple of nice ideas and then I would run out of ideas and not know what to do. So I was kind of expecting the same to happen. And the other part was that I was expecting that I would run into some kind of technical issue. Like if the rule system, as I envisioned it in my mind, sounded like something where I would run into some kind of a recursive logic loop that would be really annoying to fix and maybe not feasible to fix during the timeframe of the jam. So yeah, I definitely felt that it could have gone really wrong. Yeah. And you mentioned that worry about like, oh, is this going to like implode the programming side of it? Like it's primarily a solo project. Like I know that you got some help with some ports, but in terms of like the actual core game, was it just you working on it for like the entire time? Yeah, I don't think there was like, obviously I got a lot of help, like feedback from testers and comment from other developers and so on. But I think all of the like Lua script script like the actual code base of how the rules and such work was by me yeah I'm pretty sure that's the case and I guess I'm curious like where you were at with your like game dev journey at the point you started like you'd already released a commercial game environmental station alpha but I'm I'm assuming that that game hadn't sold well enough that you were able to just live off games full time at that point well it hadn't sold very well no but I was at the time in a like stable economical situation, partially because I was still studying psychology in the University of Helsinki and in Finland. During your studies for the first couple of years, you get like a monthly payment that is mostly enough to cover your cost of living if you are living very frugally. And then after ESA released, it didn't make much, but it did make enough that I could keep the student lifestyle up for several years. I also got some extra money from making Noita. We had kind of a, the situation with that was maybe a little bit confusing because technically the idea with Noita was that we make a game and then the like payment for the game comes from the, when the game releases, like we do a revenue share at that point. But because I was a student with not much money, we agreed that like some salary for making Noita would probably make sense. So yeah, it was kind of the combination of ESA, Noita, and then a couple of other factors. I did also inherit some money from a relative dying before setting up my company. So setting up my company would have been much more difficult without that, which feels unfair because that's not something you can cause happen except by random happenstance. But in 2015, when I set up my company to sell Environmental Station Alpha, it cost โฌ2,500 to set up a company at all. No, wait, sorry, โฌ2,800. So it would have been, I guess I would have had to take a loan to be able to afford that if there hadn't been a bit of inherited money for a bunch. Yeah, I mean, talking of Noita, actually, I think a lot of people are aware of that game. Some people might be aware that you worked on it. I don't think it's particularly well known that you were working on that at the same time you were working on Baba with you. I don't think Noita was even announced when Baba released, is that right? Noita was announced when Baba released. Noita's first trailer came up in summer 2017. So I had been working on Baba for a couple of months before we put out the first trailer for Noita.
Balancing Multiple Projects
00:20:01
Speaker
But yeah, it's kind of funny to think that I started working on Noita in 2012 for one summer. Then we took a break and then in 2013, I returned to work on Noita. So basically, both the entire time I was working on ESA and and the the entire entire time time I I was was working working on on Babaisu, Baba is You I I was was also also working working on on Noita. Noita and And technically, technically Noita Noita was was my my day day job. job and And ESA ESA and Baba were like my free time projects and I feel like this is a theme that's continued because it feels like you're always juggling a lot of stuff like you said you were studying at the time you made Baba but then you went back to school after it was released as well I think so the the thing that happened with the studies was that I started studying 2011 and technically I never stopped studying so the entire time I was making Baba is you while also working on Noita I was also doing my studies which is why my studies took me 12 years instead of the intended five and a half years but yeah there there was a bunch of slightly too many whatever however you say it in English like too many things going on at a given time yeah and do you like that sense of like juggling five different projects at once or is it just something that's happened to you well depends on the thing. I feel that for games or creative endeavors, having more than one project going at a given time is something I do enjoy. I like the idea of when I run out of steam on one thing, there's something else I can return to. And for example, right now I have the sequel to ESA and then a Baba spin-off project as my kind of major things that I work on actively and that I kind of have officially announced to be working on I guess but when it came to Noita because Noita was a team project and not my own thing and because of certain details about its development that made it maybe a little bit more exhausting than my own projects and also because my studies were not something I had a very high motivation about that time when I was making Baba ISU on the side of both studies and Noita was not a time where I would have like freely chosen to do that. It was definitely a situation where I kind of, I wanted to make Baba. I had agreed to make Neuta and then I wanted to get my studies done even though I wasn't really enjoying studies. So yeah, a mix of motivations. Yeah. Going back to Baba for a bit, there's so many things I could pick your brain about it. One thing that's like, I find really interesting about Bubba's view is the difficulty in the pacing. In some ways, it's actually surprises me that it blew up so much because like the initial like 15 to 30 minutes pacing is like really great. It throws so many good jokes at you. And then I feel like after the initial set of level packs, it actually gets really quite hard, quite fast to the point where a lot of people seem to bounce off it at that point. And you've got like an early end. You can trigger the end of the game pretty early to kind of give people a sense of like satisfaction. But yeah, how do you feel about the difficulty? Was that an intentional thing? Was that just something that happened? It was kind of like early on when I was planning to start the development of Baba Isu, I felt like I had to make a choice of whether to make like a more puzzly, more hardcore kind of game or whether to go more for the playful sandboxy approach. And I decided in favor of a more hardcore puzzly thing because I had enjoyed some fairly difficult puzzle games like Snakebird and Steafed Sausage Roll. And that was kind of a, I kind of knew that I would want to showcase people the playfulness and encourage the playfulness. But at the same time, I felt that I did want to have the difficult stuff in there as well. So I feel that maybe the early game is kind of the part where I front loaded the kind of fun, playful stuff. So that people who don't really enjoy super difficult puzzling would still get enjoyment out of the game because the concept definitely seemed like one that could interest people who are not looking for some kind of a very difficult experience. And I feel that another element that affected this thing was that I had a huge problem with killing my darlings, where if I got an idea that I thought was interesting, I more likely than not wanted to include it, even if I felt, or testers pointed out that it was confusing or felt unfair or something. So I feel that the kind of, especially the kind of post-end game part of Baba has a bunch of those kinds of puzzles that I do think have something interesting going for them, but might not be as elegant as some other things. Also something that I noticed while developing the game was that in Baba, the rules changing allows for a bunch of playing with the words and creative approaches. I wanted to encourage people to be playful with with the the words, words but but I I realized realized eventually eventually that that if if my my approach approach is is that that I I want want to to encourage encourage people people to to be be playful playful with the rules and such as the levels get more difficult the amount of freedom I can afford the player becomes smaller because in the earlier levels if the player finds an alternative solution to a puzzle that kind of quote unquote breaks the puzzle it's still interesting it's new for the player it's something they haven't seen before so they can get the enjoyment of oh I solved that puzzle my own way but I still had to do a puzzle to solve it. And that's kind of what I wanted to see. And then in the more difficult puzzles, it seemed that if the player, like most of the alternative solutions or unintended solutions started being things that the player might have already seen in earlier puzzles, And also many of those alternative solutions would skip the intended insights or aha moments of the puzzles. So it started seeming like in the more difficult puzzles, if I tried to give the player similar amounts of freedom in playing with the words as in the earlier levels, it would kind of work against the concepts in those more difficult puzzles because the player could bypass the puzzle and eventually also bypass the puzzle in ways the player had already experienced. So it would potentially lack the kind of fun surprise of, hey, I saw this in an unusual way. It's less interesting if there there's a late game puzzle which is meant to be all about this specific interaction or this specific trick and then the player just does something that they've done a few times before and they just find a novel way of applying that trick they're like oh this again yeah so basically in the later levels i sometimes when an opportunity arose i tried to make it so that the player could kind of approach it in different ways. But I tried to only allow that in situations where the alternative approach still kind of resulted in the player experiencing the thing that I felt was interesting about the puzzle. And that became increasingly hard without just limiting the player's options. So I feel that these factors both affected. And I don't really think that Baba maybe keeps things together in a very satisfying way if you look at it with a critical eye. There's definitely a lot of bloat that could have been cut to make a more elegant more overall enjoyable experience but I also don't really regret approaching it that way so I'm sure that during development there was a lot of playtesting and you would have had to like oh this this puzzle puzzle has got an unintended solution. You've got to fix it. How much of that was there after launch of having to update the game to fix unintended solutions? I had noticed already in Environmental Station Alpha that after the commercial release of a game, I would have a period of maybe a couple of months where I would very actively maintain the game and keep updating it based on player feedback and blah blah and Baba Is You was no different in that I think it was the game released in March I think it was like in June or July that year when I slowed down on tweaking and touching up things and even adding new puzzles and such. So yeah, there was a lot of both fixing things that were not working, but also adjusting things that people were finding confusing. In some cases, even moving puzzles or removing puzzles that people were having trouble with. So I fairly actively watched streams of the game. And when I noticed that a given puzzle gave people a lot of grief in a way that I felt wasn't enjoyable or that made me sad or where I felt that the players had a good point about why something wasn't enjoyable, I would fairly readily change that up a little bit to make it better. There were also some things where people had earlier pointed out something like this level isn't very fun or this level doesn't make sense or this mechanic is, where I had initially discounted that feedback for whatever reason. And then after release, once I got more feedback along the same lines, I might change my opinion and actually change that. This actually became a little bit of a problem with this post-release, very active updating thing when I released the level editor update a couple of years later, because that also had a similar phase of me touching up and adding and removing and moving things in the new levels added in the update. And at least one youtuber actively kind of got frustrated with that because they felt that they can't trust that they are done with the game if they have technically beaten every level but then a day later another level might be added or a level could be removed or something. So I kind of noticed that, okay, I'd better try to avoid this in the future where I kind of jump to adjust things too actively after a game's release because while I might myself feel that there's a reason for the changes or updates or whatever, for the players, it can feel frustrating. Yeah, and I'm curious if there was any changes you made post-release that you think are particularly interesting or notable that you remember? I guess the most notable changes were those cases where I actually removed a level entirely or added a new level. So there was, for example, one level that had an interaction that what testers had already mentioned was kind of annoyingly obtuse, where you kind of had to understand the underlying code of the game or like the underlying logic of the game to understand why a certain approach worked while a different approach didn't work. So I kind of there was one level like that where I put the level in at release and felt like, okay, well, it's gotten some criticism, but I still like the level, so I'm going to include it. And then after release, I kind of thought about it more and realized that, yeah, okay, actually a level where the puzzle hinges on a detail of the rules that is not related to the rule changing mechanic, but rather the like block pushing rules. Maybe that's not worth having if people are going to be frustrated by it. And what is actually funny is that you yourself were the person saying that it's too obtuse because, spoiler alert, Alan here was one of the testers for Baba is You.
Game Design Techniques and Updates
00:33:32
Speaker
So you personally said that the level secure cottage wasn't very good. And I agree. So I ended up removing it. I'm sure I didn't phrase it quite like that. Oh yeah, you said that it's the worst level you have ever played and I should feel ashamed. No, knowing Alan, he probably asked if he could fix it himself. And you felt ashamed enough that you did gut it. Yeah, and I do think it was ultimately a good choice. I feel that in general with Baba Is You, one of the kill your darlings things, so kind of removing things that don't add to the game, even if I'm happy with them myself. One of the biggest lessons I should have realized was that the main thing about the game is the rule changing mechanic. So levels that hinge more on the block pushing part of the game, kind of the spatial relations of things and how specific game mechanics work are inherently less interesting than the levels that hinge on understanding something about the rule changing of the game. So there are a bunch of levels where I like the puzzle and wanted to include them. But in hindsight, the levels are less about the kind of interesting part of the game and more about the kind of the spatial puzzle mechanic stuff. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And because you have so many keywords in the game, there probably are a lot of puzzles in the game that are only, there are spatial puzzles, but they are spatial puzzles that are only possible because of the rule changing gameplay. And so in some sense, like this is the only game that specific puzzle could exist in. It's not like you could take out the core puzzle and move it to something else. But it's interesting that if the crux of a puzzle doesn't focus on the rule changing, but is just a consequence of the rule changing, that feels maybe less special or less focused. I try to make sure that every single level requires changing the rules. At least there wouldn't be any puzzles where the rule changing mechanic is not used at all. But there are definitely puzzles that were, as you mentioned, it's more like a coincidental side thing instead of in the limelight. Yeah. And how did you figure out when you were done with the game because i feel like a lot of people would have spent twice as long as you did on this game just like making it perfect figuring out like oh no i can cut this i can add this i can cut this i can i can tweak this it's it's kind of hard to say at this point, I guess. Well, I mentioned already earlier that my approach to game design is very kind of one and done, where I try, if at all possible, not to return to things that I've already mentally considered finished. And I would imagine that with Bub.isu, the development process was, or the length of the development process was informed by a slightly similar logic of me kind of like adding things as long as I could think of interesting things and then leaving the things that I had already figured out in and then just kind of semi-arbitrarily at some point, realizing, okay, I have a bunch of mechanics now. I guess this is enough. One, like the only major thing that I feel affected this in kind of like a, as a directly consequential way, is that when I started working on Baba, I knew that I wanted some kind of a meta puzzle thing in the game because that was something that I had appreciated in some other games. It felt like the game would be lesser if I didn't have some kind of a surprise lying under the hood. And it took me a bunch of time, probably at least a year, year and a half probably a year I guess to figure out what that would be and then when I figured out what it what it would be I needed to add just some fairly fundamental systems of the game to allow for that meta meta thing thing to to be be in in the the game game. and And maybe maybe figuring figuring out out the the problem problem of of what what that that meta element would be and implementing the necessary tools for it was kind of the signifier, like the beginning of the end, because then I felt that I had kind of the necessary building blocks for making a finished game. But yeah, so I would say that for the most part, it was kind of an arbitrary thing. But then there was that kind of like a signifier that told me that, okay, now that I'm here, I could technically decide that this is enough. So whenever I feel like it, I'll decide this is enough. Right. You can look at it and go, oh, there's nothing big that's missing here. Yeah. Yeah. And obviously I had a lot of ideas later that I added for the level editor update a couple of years later. So like new keywords introduced themselves in my brain even after releasing the game. But I felt that I had a pretty good collection of keywords even during release. And what is funny is that when I was making the meta puzzle stuff, I did some brainstorming on how it would work and what the elements would be and what it would be about and implemented it. And then I showcased to the testers the kind of initial draft of how it would work. And again, it was actually you, Alan, who said that if you're going to go for a really in-depth meta element, you should consider going all-in and make it extra involved. So your suggestion was adding an extra layer to it that I hadn't considered. And I ended up doing that. So thank you, Alan, for that. But I do find it funny that I was kind of feeling at that point that most other people would say that, okay, you have already... This game is so complicated and difficult and convoluted already. You should probably stop. And then actually someone told me that, hey, if you're going to go for convoluted and difficult, you could go even further. And then I did. Yeah, I mean, the end game content of the game is like really special. It's like possibly my favorite thing about the game. I find it such a shame that most people will never see it. But I think for the people who get to the end game content and the experience, like, yeah, I think it's just a really special experience to have. Okay. And then moving on from Baba, this year you've been really prolific. I mean, I know you're pretty prolific most years, but by my count over the first five months of this year you released almost 25 tiny block pushing games um and they're all really good and really clever what happened there yeah so uh wait now i need to count the exact number i think it's 23 and then there were two that predated this year. Yeah, yeah. There were two that I made in 2022. And then 23 that I made this year. So yeah, what happened here was that there was a discussion in a puzzle development discord, the Thinky Puzzles discord, about move counters in puzzle games, which is an interesting topic because there are puzzle players who enjoy that kind of optimization. And then there are some, including me, who really don't care for optimizing their solutions. And I don't remember anymore what the thought process was there, but I just randomly thought when reading that discussion about like, what if I made a puzzle game where a move counter was the puzzle mechanic? Like, could I do that in a way where it would be fun for myself as well? Because I don't usually enjoy the kind of like move counters in their intended usage as like optimization tools or like ways to evaluate how well you solve or how quickly you solve the puzzle. And so I made a simple puzzle game around that idea. And the nice thing about making that is that I have a later version of Multimedia Fusion, the program I made BubEyesU with, has HTML5 exporting support. And I've tried it a couple of times in the past years, and it's kind of limited and crummy in its ways, but it does certain things well enough. And so once I had made the engine for that move counter based puzzle game, I realized, or maybe even while making it, I realized that I now had a simple block pushing puzzle game engine that I could easily export to HTML5. And so I had kind of, when making the move count puzzle, I had ideas for other puzzles. And then also my game ideas notebook had a bunch of ideas for fairly simple block pushing puzzles with some kind of a twist that I had accumulated over the years. So when I finished that move count puzzle, I thought that, okay, I could use this same basic engine to realize some of these other ideas. And at that point, I told Alan that I would probably have ideas for about three games in total. So the original move counter puzzle and then two more. And as I was making those two other puzzles, it just kept happening that I got ideas for more kind of like block pushing with a slight gimmick kind of things. And also I started looking at other ideas in my ideas notebook and realizing that, hey, this idea is something that I want to make eventually. And I've been kind of fretting about the fact that it's going to take me a bunch of time if I make it as a kind of a full-fledged game. So what if I made this game instead as this kind of really small, no audio HTML5 puzzle game, so that I could mark the idea as done mentally without having to spend as much time as releasing kind of a fully fledged game, quote unquote, needs. So I wouldn't have to worry about like settings menus or gamepad support or anything like that. Just a simple browser game. And so this process just kept repeating. And I was really happy to notice that there were maybe five ideas that I've had for years that are kind of like ideas that I think are interesting, but that might not support a full game or that might be too small to really justify making like a full thing out of. And it was really nice to get those out of my system this way. Yeah, they're all great. I've really enjoyed playing them. Have you got it out of your system now? Is there going to be more? I had ideas for maybe like six more or so. I've currently, I kind of ran out of steam around late May or June, and I still haven't really recovered from that. And also, I have to admit that I've been slightly worried that now that there's been a longer break between them, some of the ideas that I have are fairly kind of basic ideas where it's just like a fairly small change to the basic Sokoban block pushing format and even though I know it's a bad mindset I haven't been able to help it and I've worried about people kind of being disappointed that the next game in the series would be less wacky than some of the latest installments. I do think that before the end of the year, I will try to increase the number to 30 because that would be a pretty fun round number. But we'll'll see we'll see if that ends up happening because this was supposed to be kind of a very low effort light-hearted thing and it might not be a good idea to try to force it into like a specific goal so yeah we'll see what happens but i would like to make more. The stakes seem pretty low either way. That is, yeah. Yeah. Like if someone tells me that, hey, I was looking forward to a new one, but now I'm disappointed because this is not as interesting as I was hoping, I maybe shouldn't give that feedback too much thought because... Right. But also the next one might be less interesting, but the one after that or the one after that like like you keep making them there'll be good stuff in there yeah yeah and it's just like the point is not for me to make increasingly interesting games the point is to go through random ideas that might not be worth making into like a multi-hour game and that worked fine as a 15 minute thing in a way it's been kind of silly i've realized that i've been kind of doing what people do in puzzle scripts but because i have my sense of wanting to make things myself in my brain is too strong i haven't been able to allow myself to do this in a puzzle script and instead I've done my own engine which is fine. It just feels kind of goofy in a way because like many of them could have been made in puzzle script. Yeah does puzzle script feel like it would be cheating or like it's too much infrastructure that you don't have a hand in just feels wrong to you or? I think it's partially like a this inherent feeling of wanting to do things myself if I have the skill to do so. So it feels nicer to do my own engine, even though it's done in a game creation tool. So it's like the sense of doing it myself is at least partially fake anyway. But also I feel that it's the same problem I have with something like Pico 8, where since I already know how to make games with a specific tool, it would feel somehow disappointing to learn a different tool that doesn't make games kind of like better than what I already know, just different. It would feel like I was using my time to learn like a side grade instead of spending my time learning like a the next step in my process again developer which again i acknowledge is not like i could just do that for fun it doesn't have to be some kind of like a advancement in my career or something but it's hard to shed this mental approach. Yeah. I mean, you've also, you make a bunch of paper puzzles. You've made a bunch of solitaire games. Do you have the same sense of like, oh, like these have to keep being good with those? To some extent, yeah. I do feel that inevitably, anytime you do anything like this, at least for me, your personal standards are going to increase slowly. So it's kind of like when I was making the solitaire collection, I still want to add more solitaires to it. But I've definitely noticed the thing where while I was making the solitaires, I was more okay with thinking that, okay, this solitaire is not very fun to play or it's not a very good solitaire, but it's an interesting idea or an interesting take on the concept of a solitaire. And now it would feel more difficult to accept that, like adding a new solitaire to the collection while thinking that, yeah, this is not a very good solitaire, it's just a funny idea would feel a little hollow. And I get with paper puzzles as well. My first paper puzzles were more like a messy, more janky, because I didn't really mind that or I didn't have a comparison point or a standard for what I accept from myself and at this point I maybe have more of those kinds of standards I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing but it's definitely something that inevitably happens yeah I mean you want a bit of a filter but not too much of a filter I think yeah agreed uh before we wrap up is there anything you want to ask me or pick my brain about uh how do you keep your
00:50:51
Speaker
through a brain straight handling so much like in the business organizational stuff is it something that you personally enjoy or is it something where you have meditated 10 years under a pear tree in order to gain the necessary like peace Yeah, agreed.
Business Management and Community
00:51:10
Speaker
of mind to be able to organize things and be like hiring stuff and handling things and being like a figure in the community? I definitely don't enjoy it. I spent the first five years of making games full-time deliberately not doing business stuff, like to the maximum extent I could get away with. um I would be like, oh, it would be really sensible to look into this, but I would have a bad time. So I'm just not going to do it. Things shifted somewhat with Monsters Expedition, where the funding and the budget of that was high stakes enough that, oh, well, we need we need funding to finish this game. And once we've got funding, I guess we need to treat the funding seriously. And the deadlines are going to be real deadlines. And then um started working with Saren who was able to help with some business stuff, was able to help with like the the serious side of like, oh, we should put our games on consoles, I guess. And and still business is still not my my happy place, but it's it's kind of something that has to happen. And so I've, yeah, with Seren and now Mari joining the team at Dragneck, I have like a small group of people who I can like offload, think about some of it too, or like this like it's not just me thinking about things in a vacuum. I can like discuss things in a small group. So that helps. Yeah, having people who i can offload the really boring administrative work helps uh having people who who can keep me honest and go like hey alan you don't want to think about this but you got to think about this it's time it's time to to eat your greens um or you need to stop thinking about this or or that you Any of the above. I've just personally noticed that I set up a Discord server for myself and my games in 2018. And just maintaining a server, I've just noticed that I'm really not cut out to be an administrator or moderator. I stress out about it so much and it kind of diminishes my enjoyment of life so much. And I still have the server, but i've been kind of it's been very quiet and I've been keeping it very like small. And the idea of like maintaining things, being in the like role of maintaining a community and organizing events and stuff just seems like something that I could never manage so huge props to both of you for doing this kind of stuff but yeah it's it's scary you scare me I mean one thing I guess with the discord server I run is like I specifically set it up as a thinky puzzle games Discord server rather than a Draknek Discord server. And I think if it had been a Draknek Discord server, I would have had the same reaction that you did of like not a feeling awkward about it and not really wanting to maintain it and not wanting to put effort into it but I made a very deliberate decision that it should be broader than just Dracneck and that helped me I think value it more because like if it was just a Dracneck promotional space then I would have probably felt very cynical about it and be like, well, like this is not worth putting time and energy into like financially or like in terms of like building up a sustainable business, it might be worth putting the effort in. But in terms of like a moral sense of like, yes, this is a good thing. I wouldn't, I wouldn't have that sense. And so by making it a more general community for a wider set of stuff than just the stuff I'm working on, I think I valued it myself more. And then it became more, it felt it feels better to maintain that community. It feels like I'm giving back to the community rather than just running something self-beneficial. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for making it. It's been a joy. Yeah. I'm i'm glad you like it. And yeah, final question. um What have you been playing recently?
Gaming Experiences and Interests
00:55:37
Speaker
I i had a time for years where I had games that I wanted to play and never got around to playing them because playing games felt more like work than fun. I've been maybe breaking that habit a little bit lately. So i played I played a bunch of games that people have recommended me that I won't mention by name because for the most part I haven't enjoyed them all that much. And I don't really want to bash on a random game out of the blue. But for this year, for example, I played Linelith by the Patrick's Parabox developer. Oh yeah, Linelith is great. Yeah, Linelith was super good. Also, there was a I played a little bit of Leaf's Odyssey. Then there's Leap Year, Campfire Cooking. All of these have been good experiences. But for the past, like ever since COVID started, or maybe a couple of years after COVID started, I've been maybe more of a board game person when when it comes to playing games. So I've been playing a lot of Agricola on Board Game Arena lately and I kind of... I do want to play more video games. I have Outer Wilds on my to-play list and it's been there for years and I know that I'm going to enjoy it once I get into it. But it's just, yeah, getting started on a game that you really want to put all of your attention to is rough. Sure. Yeah, you need to find the space, make the time for something that you know you you want to be like kind of enraptured into. Yeah, yeah. It's unfortunate, like you get into the situation of this is a game that I know I will enjoy. So to show that I will enjoy the game, I want to be in the correct headspace and really immerse myself into the game, which inevitably means that I will never actually play the game because there will never be a time when I'm in that correct headspace. Not quite, but like it sometimes it feels like that. Yeah, definitely. And anything you're looking forward to? I guess ah Malison the Cursed City is a game that a game that a friend Frankie Pixel Show is making. It's not a puzzle game. It's more like an old school RPG ah in the style of, I don't even know what to compare it to, but like in the style of maybe classic CRPGs. And it seems really interesting and it's been in development for a long time. So I hope I can eventually get to play it. Cool. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a great conversation. It's been fun to listen to you talk about all of this. Where can people find you online? ah Under any given rock, if you look hard enough. I have a hempuli.com that has, well, it has my games, it has my blog, it has my contact stuff. For example, I do a newsletter about my own games. And then I'm on Mastodon. Is it like.gamedev? Like the main gamedev, Mastodon, is where I am. I'm also on Blue Sky, but I haven't dared to post anything on Blue Sky. I'm for some reason super scared of Blue Sky. So I do have an account there, but I haven't done anything with that. Gotcha. Drackneck, are you, or sorry, Alan, are you on Blue Sky? Yeah, I'm on Blue Sky. um Are we friends? My my heart is on Mastodon, but Blue Sky seems to be the one with a bit more momentum. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely, it has seemed like Mastodon and co-host are interesting in their own way. But when it comes to joining a community in order to have like a replacement for Twitter, they do their own things, but they are not quite that. And Blue Sky maybe has the highest chance of being that. But yeah, I'm still in the process of gathering the courage to establish myself on Blue Sky. I'm sure it will go fine. um Yeah, like Alan is saying, I'm sure that you have nothing to worry about. Thank you for listening to the Drack Naked Friends official podcast. Our music is by Priscilla Snow, who you can find at ghoulnoise.bandcamp dot.com. Our podcast artwork is by Adam DeGrandis. Please rate and review us on your podcast service of choice and be sure to tune in next episode for more interesting conversations. Thank you.
01:00:46
Speaker
you