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#4 | How Mina the Hollower Grew From a Solo Prototype Into Yacht Club’s Next Big Game
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In this episode, game developer Alec Faulkner talks about creating the original concept for Mina the Hollower, his work on gameplay and level design, and what it was like helping shape Yacht Club Games’ first major new original universe after Shovel Knight.
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Transcript
Origins and Early Concepts
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everyone, welcome to the Game Dev 1 on 1 podcast. I'm your host Glenn and today i am joined by game developer Alec Faulkner. Alec is a designer at Yacht Club Games and was one of the key creative forces behind Meet and the Hollower.
00:00:13
Speaker
And correct me if I'm wrong Alec, but you originated the concept, started the early prototype on your own, and by that point it wasn't even intended as a game that would be publicly released. And then you went on to serve as the game's original director and worked deeply on its gameplay and level design. Is that right?
00:00:30
Speaker
ah That's all right. Yeah. um I've been working on this project at Yacht Club for the last six years, and I've been working on this project in general for the last step seven, eight years, maybe. Yikes.
00:00:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's amazing. I can't wait to ask more questions about that. um But before we delve deeper into how Meet in the Hallower was made, ah first of all, how are you feeling, Alec, now that the game has been out for over a week? It's the best reviewed game of 2026 so far. It's doing very well commercially. How does it feel to see something that you started as a side project all these years ago turn into such a massive success?
00:01:14
Speaker
um so Certainly gratifying and validating. It's hard to look back a little bit since I feel like we're we're still in it. you know ah we're We're fixing bugs. We're marketing the game. It's going to be hard to reflect until I...
00:01:30
Speaker
can actually take a vacation, I think. um But super grateful that people are liking the game, ah or that people are picking up what we're putting down, so to speak.
00:01:43
Speaker
um Really validating overall just to see that there still exists an audience that really, really appreciates the types of stuff that we value, that being ah really, really really gosh dang good game design, innovative, fun new concepts. um it's it's It's heartwarming. you know When you work in isolation for so long, I think it can be easy to let the doubt creep in you know and think, are we even relevant anymore? Are people going to care? I mean, heck, this game doesn't even have ah a battle pass or hotline multiplayer. Are people going to care? I don't know. it's a whole different world out there.
00:02:24
Speaker
Um, but I suppose some things, uh, never change in the, in the best way. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Um, yeah. Before I go deeper into, uh, Mirada Hallower, I'd also like to talk to you about how exactly you joined Yacht Club
Joining Yacht Club Games
00:02:40
Speaker
games. Cause I know you joined them in 2016 as an intern, but how exactly did you find your way to them and feel free to give as much background information as you want, because I'm also very interested in your game that journey before you join art club for sure um so i'll i'll just take you back to the to the start um for college i went to ah usc's school of cinematic arts here in los angeles california
00:03:08
Speaker
um I studied game design for four years and in that last year i saw that there was an internship opportunity at Yacht Club Games. um Two years, one year prior, I had played the original Shovel Knight on my three ds um I was in Scotland at the time. I heard it was so good that I made the trek down to my Locus to my nearest ah McDonald's so that I could use their Wi-Fi to download the game on my 3DS.
00:03:40
Speaker
And I mean, I just loved it. You know, ah i Shovel Knight wasn't super on my radar. I'm like, okay, another like retro indie pixel art 2D platformer. Like, sure, I've seen that before. But then this one came out and people were this one's good.
00:03:57
Speaker
And I thought, uh-huh. A lot of people I respect and admire are saying the same thing. um So I played it. I loved it. It seemed like such a focused platform. ah game that knew exactly what it wanted to be and did it perfectly. um And ah just from from a design perspective, I found so much I i admired about it. And I was shocked ah to find out sometime after that not only um are they also in los angeles uh but there's an opportunity to work with some of these folks um i applied initially as a pixel artist um since i had been doing a lot of pixel art at that time um went in talked to the folks here yacht club ah nailed the interview got the job
00:04:48
Speaker
um And it was pretty ah pretty soon into it that ah Sean, another designer at the company, recommended that I stop doing art um and start doing level design. Since when we would you know go to lunch and talk about games and stuff, it became, i think, pretty clear, maybe faster for others than myself. to identify that ah i I had a lot more to say than than just doing the pixel art. um
00:05:19
Speaker
And so then i got thrown on to Shovel Knight Specter of Torment, did all the level designs and and and such for that game, ah worked on other stuff were doing around that time, some like amiibo content, went on to King of Cards and Showdown.
00:05:38
Speaker
um And just to continue the story ah from there, we were wrapping up Shovel Knight Treasure Trove around 2019 and already kind of thinking about what should we do next. um And ah we wanted to do a 3D game um and we still are That's been a secret background thing for for a while.
00:06:04
Speaker
A not so secret secret. yeah um And we knew we got ah we need to. It's hard to make ah an engine for a 3D game unless you're actually making a game in that engine. And ah for the longest time, we were we're doing that as well. We were making our own 3D game engine.
00:06:22
Speaker
um And so we wanted to do a 3D game, but we also wanted to keep making 2D games. We wanted to make ah another Shovel Knight, but we wanted to also like make a game that wasn't Shovel Knight. We had a lot of desires, but not necessarily a project that could ah fulfill those desires, and a way to like make it all work. And so I was like taking it upon myself in the background in that last year or so ah of wrapping up Shovel Knight to try and explore what could be next.
Inspirations and Game Design
00:06:53
Speaker
um I was really into like Game Boy stuff at the time. i have a history with like modding Game Boys for like people on Craigslist and eBay ah before I had a job.
00:07:04
Speaker
And ah from an art perspective, it was interesting to me that like no one was really making projects that ah were playing off of that system's limitations. I thought those were interesting limitations.
00:07:18
Speaker
um And the idea started to form of like maybe not a a Zelda by by way of Nintendo, but like what if there was top down adventure action adventure kind of game ah that took more inspiration from something like classic Castlevania 1, 2 and 3 and Rondo Blood, especially Castlevania 3, though. i I really love that game.
00:07:42
Speaker
And yeah, what started as like a a fun little weekend project turned into full fledged prototype, pitched it to the team. ah And here we are six and a half years later.
00:07:58
Speaker
And did the the side project that you started on your own, was that before you joined Yacht Club or did you start on that project after you joined? No, no. Yeah, that would have been, ah i think it was like summer of 2018. I was at Disney World. That's where they, that's where, that's where Mina started. That's where the first like entry, the notes ah in my notes app about what the game should be is, I think.
00:08:24
Speaker
um But, you know, at at that time, of course, I was like still doing all the like king of cards, ah like design to get that game out of the door. So it was just a fun weekend project.
00:08:37
Speaker
Yeah. And it started as a, as a project to hone your skills as a coder and artist. Yeah. Especially I think towards the end of, of Shovel Knight. Um, uh, and, and I think this is a good thing. Uh, I, that those skills were getting rusty, um, you know, in, in college and such, you know, I would do art for my games and I programmed them and I'd do sound and music and everything. Right. But here at the Yacht Club, I ain't got to do ah all that since we have programmers that are better than me. We have a composer that is far more talented than me. We have amazing artists. um And so that's just like not how I can be most useful.
00:09:16
Speaker
um But yeah, I wanted to keep those skills sharp. I think I was also like really, really impressed um just by our tech and our tools here. um i you know I love that we have our own collision system and our own combat system. and Everything that comes along really with like having our own engine. I love the fine tuned control over everything in all of our games. And it made me want to like ah reopen the the toy box of some my old stuff and be like, what if I made some of these tools? Wouldn't that be neat? Wouldn't it be fun to like program my own collision system?
00:09:52
Speaker
That's, you know, that's my idea fun, I guess. Yeah. But then how, like, how did your, your coding project, um, grow, uh, to like a top down open world, Zelda and souls, like inspired game? Like, was there a specific spark that led to the world and the character of Mina?
00:10:11
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, like all things, it grew one step at a time. you know At first, there was simply um you know a widescreen Game Boy resolution of 256 by 144 and the idea of like a top-down thing. i was replaying Pokemon Gold, I think, at the time to ah ah one of my favorite Game Boy games. Mm-hmm.
00:10:35
Speaker
And there wasn't necessarily a first an idea of like scope, ah definitely, ah much less like genre even, or like what the game should be.
00:10:46
Speaker
But, um you know, once you've got a character kind of like walking around, interacting with collision, the next thought is like, well, I want to like give them some attacks. i don I don't think I'll ever make a game that doesn't have at least some like action element. right And ah yeah, there' was there's certainly love for Castlevania stuff around that time in my heart.
00:11:09
Speaker
And the idea of like a top-down Castlevania was really interesting. Something that had the same really deliberate ah combat and a the ah and a game that would require the player to like think really intentionally about their spacing. um Those are things that interested me. And I hadn't seen that before um from this kind of like Hammersburg perspective or in the style of game.
00:11:36
Speaker
um And I mean, that that all just seemed really interesting. I think nowadays we don't see, ah we we see some games with like, quote unquote, deliberate combat, right? But we see very few games that are really about like spacing and positioning the part of fighting an enemy that's like more of a dance than it is ah Simply playing Simon Says and pressing the the dodge button when they do their attack or pressing the parry button when they do their attack.
00:12:09
Speaker
um The idea of like bringing that back and doing something new with it is is really interesting because, yeah, I don't know about you, but when I play a game, I want my left stick or my D-pad in this case to ah to have meaning and to do something. I want to be using it to ah to move my character character around with intention and purpose at all times. I don't want it to just be the thing that I hold to go from one encounter to the next. Yet it seems like for so many action games, that's the extent to which I really have to think about that that left stick.
00:12:42
Speaker
um So then we've got ah the idea of a top-down Castlevania, you know, a thing where you've got a whip with really good range so you can be at the perfect distance between you and the enemy. But at the same time, if you if you whiff it, you know, then uh-oh, you're going to be locked in a cooldown animation for for enough time to penalize you for messing up.
00:13:05
Speaker
um But, you know, it's pixel art, so I can't just swap in a model or swap it out later if I'm going to animate something. ah i want to animate it once. Right. Yeah. so for that, ah we got to pick a character. Right.
00:13:20
Speaker
um i was already like doodling a bunch of characters uh i think the first one was like a uh a very like simon belmont-y looking like top down like uh lynx awakening style sprite it it honestly looked kind of badass um you know the same like three color thing but you can totally tell like oh my god that's a belmont um i i had that and i had some other like characters and one character in that lineup was ah the mouse we now know is mina right um and yeah there's there's a lot of reasons why that one seemed the most appealing at the time uh i'll start listing them off um
00:14:06
Speaker
If it's going to be a Castlevania kind of game, we're probably going to end up with a lot of like cool environments and cool colors as well as like dark environments and dark colors. So you probably want a character that can contrast really well with that. So if ah a character that is mostly like off white and bright red ah that that instantly helps a whole lot. um The very small size of the character sprite also means that readability is ah just as ah as an artist, I'm sure it's like you're on hard mode pretty much, right? There's barely any room to convey anything.
00:14:48
Speaker
And so every element of that compar of that character design needs to be very, very clear and and needs to fit in that box um and in a in a convenient way.
00:15:01
Speaker
um i think Mina as a character to design works really well for those issues because ah she has two massive ears on top of her head that allow you to ah find her on screen very easily as well as ah convey to the player very effectively like what direction you're facing, just based on like what those ears look like at ah at any given point in time.
00:15:25
Speaker
um It gives her a big face that we can use to emote. um You you want as much space as possible there. ah And the tail adds some good like secondary motion um that can be pleasing.
00:15:44
Speaker
ah just that can That can also help like sell character actions as well. Same same with the cloak. you know um When she whips forward, it can be hard to tell exactly how her what her anatomy is doing. but when the cloak... settles into place after one frame that kind of tells you everything you would have needed to know about like the action she was doing and and how that animation has resolved so just a lot of stuff that like makes a lot of sense i think for readable efficient good character design um and at that point yeah she couldn't even like burrow that that's the next oh really okay to figure out yeah because that's what i was wondering i was wondering if mina came first or the borrowing mechanic
00:16:32
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. um So at that point, right, we've we've got a mouse that can walk around and whip things. um Then she had to start jumping around. That really wasn't even a question for me. um If you're going to make a game that ah is riffing on...
00:16:49
Speaker
ah the feeling and certainly the art style of the Game Boy Zelda games and and specifically Link's Awakening. I think that conversation inevitably includes the rock's feather and the ability to to jump in Link's Awakening.
00:17:04
Speaker
Um... I mean, everyone loves that. That's like, I think pretty universally, right? Yeah. um and And, you know, we come from a background of making platformers. And so, of course,
Gameplay Mechanics Development
00:17:17
Speaker
there's of course there's going to be a jump button. That was just never even really a question. um Jumping in any game isn't just there, I think, to be silly or fun or whatever. i think it's a very easy way to get a lot of across, you know? even ah like it's It's fun to think about gravity. It's fun to try and predict the plot of a projectile in motion in your head. There's a reason that like dogs love playing fetch. you know like like There's a lot of like innate core fun that comes from our caveman brains, I think, there. Yeah.
00:17:57
Speaker
And so, ah you know, i love platforming and I love platformers and there's so much I think you can do there. ah So obviously, you know, there's there's got to be a jump button. um And so then you've got a character jumping around, whipping things pretty much ah a direct kind of like top down Castlevania game.
00:18:18
Speaker
game um And that immediately illustrates one issue, which is that in something like a 2D Castlevania, um you're essentially in one axis, right? When you're fighting an opponent or dealing with a challenge, you can be pushing them forward or they can be pushing you back.
00:18:38
Speaker
um And so unless you've gotten pushed back to the beginning of the level, generally speaking, there's always somewhere ah ah on that on that tug of war rope but ah for the player to go. Whereas ah when you tilt that camera and make it more of a top down game,
00:18:57
Speaker
um suddenly you know you can have a corner you can have an alcove in which you're cornered at which point uh what do I do right um you can whip them down and cross your fingers and and hope that you can out damage them and survive but ah that's not going to create super compelling gameplay that would allow the player to ah play around with it or or strategize or be better at anything right.
00:19:21
Speaker
um So the immediate thought is why not have, ah you know, why not let you like jump over enemies and stuff and and get out of danger that way? What if there's a Shovel Knight style pogo even? You know, those thoughts I think inevitably have to like cross one's mind.
00:19:39
Speaker
But ah before any of those got too far, um I realized that the camera perspective itself is kind of um a very limiting factor there.
00:19:50
Speaker
When you're jumping from this like pseudo-isometric perspective, it can be really difficult to tell exactly where you are on screen. Because if my shadow is here on the bottom of the screen and my character sprite is way up above, but I'm not really looking at that shadow. In the heat of combat, you might think you're actually up here when in reality you're like down here, but just high up. right it's It's inherently confusing.
00:20:13
Speaker
um And so i I think I identified like, yeah, I can't have the character jump like more than like this much before things just like don't get readable. um But that wasn't a scary thing. That's an exciting thing. You know, a new limitation to...
00:20:32
Speaker
to design around and and shovel knight certainly is a character that can jump very high and the idea of having another character whose strengths and weaknesses complement that i think is also fun and cool so let's not have the character jump very high but i wish that you know this being a game boy game they're needing to be somewhat of an economy around using as few buttons as possible um It'd be great if this like jump button could be evasive in a way that complements this character perspective. ah
00:21:06
Speaker
Is there a way that I could like jump through an enemy instead of over them? Is there something that this like button could do that I'm not thinking of? And I think there the idea revealed itself that like maybe instead of jumping over the enemies, um what would make more sense is if you could jump quote unquote under the enemies, right? Because when you burrow, um there's no longer a distance between my shadow position and my character sprite. where I am and where I appear to be is exactly the same position.
00:21:36
Speaker
um So that seemed to just make a lot of sense, you know, ah tying it to the same button also can ah create necessary timing, both getting into and out of the mood out of the move. So it's not free.
00:21:50
Speaker
um You know, I think it's really important when designing ah fun characters to control that they have strengths and weaknesses alike. Um, you know, Shovel Knight can't attack upwards, right? And that means that you can have danger from above that forces you to move around on the one axis you can control, right? Um, this is how you get fun, engaging setups that require you to, to use your brain and, and figure something out and allow space to get better at a game.
00:22:22
Speaker
Um, And so that all that all seemed to just make a lot of sense. Pairing it with the same button, it it it could be a move that helps you in combat, which is kind of the impetus behind the idea, but also it could help you with platforming, right? Since you could like burrow jump across. It can provide some contrast with your default state when you're playing the game running around. Mina normally is like pretty rigid. right She stops more or less on a dime. And moving around just on the ground and in eight directions is like very simple and controllable. So if you're going to have a cool you know other move or other mode...
00:23:05
Speaker
Um, I think that contrast is also fun having it be a little faster, a little more slippery, a little, uh, something that requires more thought and more planning before you just like jump into it.
00:23:17
Speaker
Um, I think that the timing element was also like strong, obviously, you know, once you're burrowing down there, the next question is, well, how long can I burrow? If I can do this forever, then I don't need to ever fight an enemy in the game ever. So that's not going to work. ah And having a pretty short duration on how long you can stay under there, i think is also like a lot of fun. It means when you're jumping up into the air, You're thinking, where am I going to go with this when I actually burrow down into the ground?
00:23:48
Speaker
And it's just enough time that you have enough wiggle room to plan for one action. Essentially, i want to get to the side of the enemy. I want to get behind the enemy. I want to back up a little bit. I'm just going to stall in place because the enemy is going to do an attack that passes over me. Whatever it is you're thinking and doing, ah it it felt like a good amount of time for for one decision and when one action.
00:24:10
Speaker
um And yeah, at that point, you've got a ah a wonderful move that can accomplish so much with so little, I think. It can help in all facets which the game wants to test you on. It can help in combat. um It can help with your platforming. And it can help with navigation and exploration in general. Since obviously if we can burrow places, then we need to be able to like burrow under things, burrow into secrets, go under fences, into little mouse holes and such.
00:24:40
Speaker
um and at that point an identity i think is is starting to form pretty pretty clearly right uh that's i mean that's the basics of the game right there and uh it kind of just went from there uh you mentioned the the like the the world and and how it became more fully formed and all of that i I think when it comes to the aesthetics and the tone of the game and the setting and the time and the place, i think all of that comes from just the kind of stuff I was interested in and where our brains were at.
Aesthetics and Tone
00:25:14
Speaker
um and Like the around that time, 2018, 2019, Specter of Torment came out and that's a very like Halloween-y themed game uh, full of like skeletons and ghouls and stuff. Uh, we, we liked working on that game a lot and it, uh, it was a natural fit, I think for, ah things we're interested in our sense of humor. um and so the idea of doing another thing like that, I think was appealing in the midst of working on King of Cards, which is very much a ostentatious kind of comedy game. Um,
00:25:52
Speaker
Um, so yeah, maybe that's why that's something that kind of straddles those lines that can have moments of tragedy, but also moments of levity, ah seemed like it would be fun. And also if you're doing like a top down Castlevania, isn't, isn't, it isn't part of that.
00:26:08
Speaker
that it should be like spooky and Halloweeny, you know, another thought I think around that time is that there's just like no Halloween games, you know, here here at the yacht club, we love, you know, celebrating some things annually. It was just May. So we did mega May an annual tradition where we all play a bunch of mega man games. Right. What do we do in October? you know that you can play, you could play Castlevania.
00:26:32
Speaker
I don't know. That's kind of it, right? Like, a costume quest, I think that's great, but I don't want to, like, do a whole RPG just to get in the trick-or-treating kind of mood. ah Why aren't there more, like, Halloween games? there's There's a lot of horror games, but, like, not a lot of Halloween games.
00:26:48
Speaker
ah So add all that up, and I and i think you get ah the the start of Nina the Hollower. Yeah, cool. And then yeah, you worked on that prototype. I think you call it the Gothic prototype. You worked on it for about a year.
00:27:04
Speaker
And then you pitched it to Yacht Club. um Did you feel confident when you showed it? Or were you nervous? um i i i suppose I felt confident. I mean, i thought through many elements of the game's design. I knew there was interesting, good stuff in there that my coworkers would appreciate. I think I knew that because so much of what I appreciate um and where my own...
00:27:32
Speaker
uh game design sensibilities come from is these same people is from yacht club you know um in college i think you you learn one set of skills and then in the real world you inevitably learn another right and uh when i joined the yacht club ah just listening to and hanging out with everyone there, I think really helped solidify a lot of like existing tendencies of mine and the games I was making, um, into something more of like a, uh, a ah holistic ethos about game design. And so I knew that, uh, my coworkers would love it because I love it and we all think the same.
00:28:12
Speaker
What do you think that they responded to first? Was it like the mood or the mechanics of, Was it the character or maybe the potential for a new IP? um i mean, i think the game design first and foremost, as is often the case with us, right? There was there were interesting ideas in there about combat and platforming and about like ah the the box in which a game like this could exist that I think tickled the brains of of all ah all the rest of the people at the Yacht Club.
00:28:44
Speaker
um We had... prior to this tried to make like a zelda um we we had tried to split the teams into and for a while i was leading the design of king of cards while ah another internal team was working on a prototype for a zelda e looking thing that never ever saw the light of day um and while we had a lot of ideas about uh the concept of that game and the world of that game and the story and the characters. There's a lot of like pre-production style stuff that had gone into it. um I think there were some things that weren't necessarily sparking a lot of imagination or ideas from the team or maybe that just wasn't happening because we had split the teams in two and we only had half of everyone's input. I'm not sure.
00:29:38
Speaker
Um, but, ah that game would have been like another one in the same n NES color palette and resolution. after so much shovel night, I think we were like getting pretty sick of that.
00:29:50
Speaker
It's not a good palette by the way. It's a, it's a horrible palette has a hundred greens and blues and like one red it's it's the worst. Um, one yellow, which is my favorite color. i hate it. ah so like ah Game Boy you know that it's a similar 8-bit style with similar like limitations but entirely different ones at the same time um making a game with a small spacing constraints, I think is, ah something we like doing and is also incredibly difficult. So the idea also of what if we had even less space to work with because it's a game boy game instead of an NES game. I think we're the type of sickos who, uh, got excited about that for some reason.
00:30:39
Speaker
Um, and, theming wise, certainly maybe, was a little bit more like in our wheelhouse or or immediately fun or like easy for other team members to to riff on. And so I think it was more just like providing an answer for for a question that we all kind of already had in our brains, which is like, what would our Zelda look like? And what should that look like? And what should that feel like?
00:31:07
Speaker
um So I think that's what like really grabbed people was that there were answers to a lot of those questions um and exciting gameplay systems ah ah on top of all that, be it the burrowing or the the feeling of the combat in general being, you know, something more hit stunning versus knockbacky ah and the healing system on on top of all of that, which is, you know, it's its own beast entirely. i think everyone was excited about all that stuff.
00:31:37
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And like once more people became involved with the game, was there at any point that you felt protective over the original idea as it was growing now?
00:31:50
Speaker
No, i'm not middle not at all. um Yeah, I mean, I don't know. We we work a lot as if we' we're a Nintendo, you know? And when it comes to a Nintendo, you don't really have, at least visibly to the outside, um you know, key figures associated with the games often, nor ah people who...
00:32:16
Speaker
make the game ah more about them than the than the game itself there was never that thought you know the the best thing that could happen to that project is that ah it it grows beyond what I could ever do alone and we we all run with it and the opinions of of everyone at the Yacht Club are incorporated even if I made that game on my own I would still want all of that because I love and I trust these people and I think they're all brilliant and geniuses And so I don't think the thought is ever,
00:32:48
Speaker
ah are we are they going to ruin it? I think the thought is always... oh, thank God i have all of these people. They're going to make all of this so much better in ways that I can't even predict yet.
00:33:02
Speaker
um Yeah, that I mean, that confidence, I think, and in this team has never faltered for me ever. And that's why it's where I've worked for the last 10 years.
00:33:15
Speaker
So like there was nothing like you had to fight for to preserve something that you personally really liked about the original prototype. um No, i don't I don't think so. If people are giving me feedback, then it's for a reason, ah regardless of whether that's the solution we should go with or not.
00:33:36
Speaker
um The thing that I was most hesitant about, I suppose, yeah was maybe like what we're going to do with the scope of it in general. ah Originally, what I had pitched was what I was already thinking about making, which is a game that I have the means to make on my own, which is to say it would have been like an hour long. it would have been just like Castlevania 1. You play through like five stages and then it's over. There's like one cut scene at the start. That's like 10 seconds long. And there's like one cut scene at the end. and That's like 10 seconds long. And and that's it.
00:34:13
Speaker
Uh, no dialogue, no, and not much story, uh, very linear shovel night style level design since that's where my head was at, at that time.
00:34:25
Speaker
um, That's what I had kind of like pitched. um Obviously, we did not make that game. We made something ah with a scope far, far larger. But even then, that's not me thinking we should do one thing and then us doing another.
00:34:42
Speaker
ah you know, i that's me bringing it to this team for a reason. um And that is to ah to to hear what everyone thinks. And yeah, it became clear, I think, pretty quickly that While that could be a game that's fun to make and fun to play, I don't think that's the game that people want us to make. I don't think that... ah I think people would be a little disappointed if they booted up our take on Zelda and it ended up being a game with like fun, interesting new combat, but nonetheless a a very similar, very linear structure akin to Shovel Knight.
00:35:19
Speaker
um I think that would have disappointed people. and And I think I'm right about that because after we did our demo, ah the most consistent thing I was reading was like, I hope the the rest of the game isn't this linear.
00:35:32
Speaker
And when I read that, I thought, oh oh boy, are y'all in luck. okay and so yeah your role kind of evolved from being the director of the game i suppose to more working on uh level design and gameplay um looking back now are you glad your role evolved the way it did or would you maybe have preferred to stay on as a director ah i'm i'm not glad things evolved the way that we did but i'm super happy that all of those changes happened um
00:36:09
Speaker
To give some background, ah you know we had been working on two games at once, that 3D game that I had mentioned prior as well as Mina.
Project Management and Team Collaboration
00:36:18
Speaker
um Neither project was going as well as it ought to have been. um And we you know had been ah hiring up, increasing the size of the company, staffing up.
00:36:30
Speaker
trying to like make it work. um and And I think both projects were just struggling. um ah That has an impact on morale, but it also has an impact on ah finances and eventually you start running out of money. So in 2014 or 2024.
00:36:51
Speaker
Oh, God. um And 20 in January of 2024. ah That's when the problem I think was like too big to ignore. And so since Mina was ah closer to being done, we decided, OK, we all need to like pile on to Mina.
00:37:06
Speaker
And if we're doing that, then yeah, Sean should absolutely lead the game. i think he's a lot better at ah managing people and he can fill in a lot of my blind spots as well. um And at that time, ah the macro level stuff in the game, um some of the structure stuff, some of the like, how are these overworldy areas going to fit in How are we going to balance all of this?
00:37:30
Speaker
um He came in and really like tackled those like large issues like that and it freed me up to focus on the more moment to moment stuff. Yeah crafting all of the levels and and the world through which you play the game and ah yeah am I happy that that happened. Absolutely i think we should always be playing to our strengths and ah you know working together to make the best game possible.
00:37:55
Speaker
um But it's also a little sad a little bittersweet I wish that our more grand ambitions could have planned ah could have worked out you know i wish that we could have ah multiple projects at once so that we could release more games ah we certainly have no shortage of ideas and as much of as our fans don't like us taking so long to release stuff we don't either you know we want to move on with our lives and put new games out Um, so it's sad, i suppose that I, I think at least for now that that doesn't seem like it's in the cards for us going forward. I think we, we have learned the hard way now a couple times. We need to be a one team studio.
00:38:42
Speaker
um yeah, one game at a time. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I don't know. It's good and bad. I'm glad we've like found our groove again and can, uh, you know, get back to actually like putting some stuff out and I'm excited to jump onto the other project now that Mina's wrapped up.
00:39:01
Speaker
Yeah. Um, I'd like to talk a bit more about the Game Boy Color inspiration and sort of the visual constraints. Um, Did the limitation of making like a Game Boy Color inspired game, did that make decisions harder or easier?
00:39:20
Speaker
um i think both. Harder, certainly, in the sense that everything is way harder. um ah You know, it's a game that is...
00:39:32
Speaker
gameplay-wise, very much about different layers. I'm under the ground, I'm on the ground, I'm above the ground. And yet it is a game ah wherein we are forcing ourselves to never use any transparency.
00:39:46
Speaker
Something that ah is really useful for showing one one thing is over another, right? ah Just in in general, like... also making a game with combat and encounters that are as deep as like a Dark Souls in in such a super constrained art style. Yeah, I'm sure that makes that job very difficult as well. um But for both of those things, I think it helps to it helps put you it can help to like put you in a smaller box um that can put you closer to the answers that you need to find as opposed to if you have no limitations holding you anywhere.
00:40:25
Speaker
um you know The question is not we can do anything, what should we do? The question is always instead, what can we do that would work on a Game Boy? And I think that that that helps just get get to decision making faster.
00:40:41
Speaker
Um, so yeah, I don't know. It's good. It's good. And it's bad. Something we've said like at the yacht club before uh, I don't like thinking outside the box. That's overrated. i like, I like thinking inside of the box and and being really good at that box specifically. Yeah.
00:41:00
Speaker
Yeah. Sounds like you were very like strict about sticking to those constraints. Um, were there ever like moments that you broke out of those constraints? Cause I know with Shovel Knight there were, there, there are some things where it would not have been possible on an n NES.
00:41:19
Speaker
Um, is that also true for a meeting the Hallower? Yeah, yeah. and And I think we're taking the exact same like style of liberties there. um For Shovel Knight on the n NES, ah we added four extra colors to the palette. A beige because there just wasn't one and Polar Knight Sprite wasn't working without it. um a couple of like more brown so ah ah colors so that we could have characters with darker skin tones. ah you know You just couldn't do that on the NES. They didn't think about that, I guess.
00:41:54
Speaker
um And beyond that, of course, you know it's a game with a widescreen resolution. i think if you just make a 4x3 game, it's going to as much as I wish we could do that, I think that'll just give people the...
00:42:08
Speaker
You know they'll say yeah or they'll think oh this is an old game when it's not and and that's just a difficult uphill battle so screw it let's not fight that battle. Yeah. um And that that's more or less it the other limitations from Shovel Knight tend to just be things that we don't think like have value like we're not going to do like sprite flickering when there's like too many things on the same line because that doesn't like make a game better. No, it would just be doing something ah that would only be for people that are so old that they remember that for everyone else. They would just think, this game's like glitchy or bad. It doesn't have value if you're trying to make a you know good game with classic timeless appeal. um
00:42:54
Speaker
And so for Mina, yeah, we're just taking that same tact. um Color palette-wise, things are a bit different, though, right? we the Game Boy Color doesn't necessarily have a fixed palette of exactly these colors for every single game. um That ah range of possibilities is busted perfectly wide open um and you can have any colors. But of course, games weren't doing that. They were still programmed with like more or less fixed palettes. They're still programmed with the intention of like, you know, you can only have this many colors per sprite. You can only have this many sprites on screen. You can only have this many palettes in memory at a time for those sprites. So you still ended up with games with like a cohesive look and feel ah to their colors.
00:43:39
Speaker
But they weren't necessarily always the same colors. So we thought, okay, let's let's nail that. you know Let's make our own fixed color palette, but one that's like all our own. And certainly we'll but we'll make it perfect and we'll address all of the issues we had with the and NES palette. And there will certainly be no need to edit it ever. ah And now that we're at the end of Mina, boy, do we have a lot of complaints about this palette. Yeah. And when it comes to stuff like the music in the game, you know, for Shovel Knight, we used ah just regular old and NES style chip tunes along with the VRC six ah expansion chip for some Famicom games like Castlevania three.
00:44:24
Speaker
um So it's a sound that's fuller than most games on the and NES, but still absolutely within the realm of possibility and certainly in you know a handful of games that did come out.
00:44:37
Speaker
ah There wasn't really a direct equivalent for that, for the sound in Mina and Game Boy, ah those four channels yeah on their own is, ah you know, it's it's the leaves left a little bit lacking. Can we like spruce it up a little bit? I remember at some point pitching to Jake, like, what if you just had like two Game Boys? So it's the same four channels, but you just had eight of them. but like Would that help? Yeah.
00:45:04
Speaker
Um, but ultimately like we needed a little bit more range just so that the music in the game can have more emotional range. Um, and so it was Jake's idea to pair, ah some MSX style sounds in there to kind of address the, some weaknesses of of game boy sound.
00:45:23
Speaker
um So another instance where it's like this is technically possible. We feel comfortable putting in this in the game, but ah yeah, it's not necessarily how you remember most Game Boy games sounding probably.
00:45:39
Speaker
And when it comes to other limitations, like three colors per sprite, um much like Shovel Knight, we adhere to that as much as possible. ah Sandy, who is the lead pixel artist on this game, um I think he took that mission to heart like very strongly and even more so than Shovel Knight. That attention to detail and that consistency should be there.
00:46:03
Speaker
Um, yeah, it's the same thing where if it's like, you know, let's, let's just break that rule right here. No one will yeah notice. It's like not worth our time and effort to think of a different way. I mean, sometimes that is appropriate just so, uh, you,
00:46:19
Speaker
can release a game and not spend forever working on it. So I'd say it saves the exact same approach. And i think that stuff is great, not just because, ah you know, it's cute to us old heads, but also because it creates a, a very cohesive experience that I think, uh, comes across as, as timeless and people can feel even if they can't quite describe what it is we're doing.
00:46:44
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Could you also maybe talk a little bit about the engine? I know it's a custom engine. Is it the same one that was also used for Shovel Knight?
00:46:56
Speaker
ah It's not the same engine that was used for Shovel Knight, but a lot of the tools are the same. um We had wanted to you know make a game engine that was more flexible, that could be used for any number of our future projects. I think a lot of studios have the same thought.
00:47:16
Speaker
Um, the shovel night one was cobbled together very quickly, um, on account of it needing to have a, uh, playable demo and a Kickstarter campaign and everything right out the door with within like ah a month or two into the project.
00:47:32
Speaker
Um, and, uh, unfortunately, you know, we, we didn't realize we also signed up for another like five or six years of, uh, Kickstarter stretch goal fulfillment and ended up making. a whole bunch of you know prequel games uh inside stories in that same engine and so we always knew like we we will for our next game we will not use this we will use a new thing it'll be used for 3d games and 2d games it'll be the perfect yacht club engine ah it's it's called propeller because it's the thing at the back of the boat that pushes it all forward
00:48:09
Speaker
Cool. And, um, uh, yeah, the we, that w that was just a ah given. And so, ah by the time we finally were done with, uh, all the shovel night stuff, uh, we, we were able to move, uh, really quickly because we had an engine kind of set up for us already.
00:48:30
Speaker
And, um, A lot of that stuff is more like under the hood when it comes to like how things are constructed or how things are rendered. You know, I don't have to worry about that that much with my job, thankfully.
00:48:44
Speaker
um And for the ah sake of making a efficient development, we decided to use a lot of existing tools on Shovel Knight that were still, ah you know, great tools. ah All of the levels are all constructed in an open source program called Tiled that we love you know very dearly. um Our hitboxes and such are assigned to animations via a tool called Cutter that we used on Shovel Knight and has roots going back to days at WayForward where a lot of my coworkers came from. um
00:49:20
Speaker
There's you know some elements of it that are ah very, very familiar for for us already. ah But ah nonetheless, it was time to, yeah, unveil a ah new stack under on top of which all of this other stuff is built.
00:49:36
Speaker
Yeah. Okay, cool. Um, I'd like to talk more about, um, me now's combat design. Um, cause I'm wondering how it kind of developed cause, um, it's, it's far more deeper than I thought it was going to be when I started playing. Um, so I'm wondering, yeah, how it just evolved over the years.
00:49:59
Speaker
Yeah, um ah it it evolved a lot. And it had evolved slowly, I think, as we would implement new ideas and try things out.
00:50:09
Speaker
um I'd say, like, I mean, it was just a lot simpler at the beginning. You know, there was one weapon, ah the whip weapon, There was one combat response. When I hit an enemy, they shake for exactly this many frames, right? There was, ah you know, only a couple side arms, uh, that being the ax and the boomer aiming knife.
00:50:32
Speaker
yeah Um, and both of those are simple ranged projectiles. You know, there's 14 or 15 side arms in the game now and they, there's, they're very different, right?
00:50:44
Speaker
Um, the uh the the your health bar and the healing mechanics i mean that has that was there from the start but uh all of the trinkets and whatnot that allow you to change how your health and your healing works those certainly weren't implemented either we had a really solid core and like anything we want to um make game content that doesn't simply get added on top of other systems or other ideas, but it always meshes with those other ideas, complements it or makes you change how you think about another part of the game. um I think we just took that same approach. um
00:51:23
Speaker
But Shovel Knight is like not about its combat. It's much more about its platforming. um And so in order for that game to be its best self, we shouldn't be making, you know, complex like fights with characters ah with like elaborate tells and wind up animations and mechanics because at the end of the day, Shovel Knight has two attacks he can do that that provide a very like fixed response.
00:51:51
Speaker
um But none of that is true for Mina anymore. And the more ah the more like level content we add, the more platforming you have to do, the more hazards and stuff that are um coming your way as you're trying to to go through an area in Mina.
00:52:09
Speaker
the more that affects the combat, because it affects where you stand and it affects um what you can do from the position in which you are standing. All these things are a lot more like intertwined, I think, in Mina. And so when we would advance one element, it would... arise ah it would It would bring to light questions and answers with another element.
00:52:31
Speaker
um you know There was no like metal floor at first, but ah if this is a game where you can burrow, it should also be a game where sometimes you can't burrow, and therefore that creates a feeling of fear within the player.
00:52:45
Speaker
um you know If you can burrow under some attacks, ah well, there ought to be so different attacks that you can't burrow under. a guy that like plucks you out of the ground, or you know ah a wave of fire that like goes through the earth and hits you out of the ground. um And if we're going to do what we usually do, which is create you know all sorts of ah challenges and and combination combinations and permutations of of things the player can and can't do in different scenarios,
00:53:15
Speaker
um With a game like this, then yeah I think that just inevitably creates ah a much deeper combat system given enough time to marinate. um and As we went, we had to like learn a lot about like what works and what doesn't, um especially given how much freedom Mina has under the ground and navigating around enemies.
00:53:37
Speaker
um It became even more important to find good ways of ah making the player not do that, making the player actually fight things. um Then again, you don't necessarily want every enemy to glue to to you the second that they're aggroed and keep up with you.
00:53:55
Speaker
um So we had to do things like establish kind of a set of best practices like, um you know, when you aggro an enemy, they need to aggro like as quickly as possible and they need to be a threat as quickly as possible. um We need to find ways of making it so that you can't simply spam down enemies, um especially given that when you hit them, they freeze and they stop in place, right? At least briefly, momentarily. And you need that freeze so that way it can cancel out essentially the
00:54:30
Speaker
the cooldown time after doing an attack. um So that way, if you miss the attack, you're vulnerable. Whereas if you hit the attack, you're more or less, you've traded your your vulnerability time.
00:54:42
Speaker
um But yeah, that makes a scenario where it's ah it can be easy sometimes to keep the enemy at bay, and we don't always want that.
00:54:52
Speaker
um We had to introduce other combat responses. Some enemies, when you hit them, they do get knocked back. Or some enemies, they like really don't. um We had to introduce like shields and some attacks in some states that would like block your attacks. um I mean, yeah, we just kept going with it and we kept doing the things that I think we knew would work best because all of us have played a whole billion action games before, right? We love it.
00:55:22
Speaker
um And at no point did the thought cross our minds like, is this too much for a Game Boy game or is this like not fitting? I think the mindset was always more just like, yeah, it's going to be so awesome to to have like this level of control and this level of depth in a game that you would like never expect from from this kind of art style or perspective.
00:55:47
Speaker
um and i'm i'm glad it seems to be landing at least with you yeah i have been playing nothing else but mina since it came out and i have to say hell yeah there are so many different enemies in the game um just a ton of enemy variety was it hard coming up with that many designs or did ideas just kept coming naturally to you and the team um I don't know. ah We could, we can always come up with more ideas. I think when I, about any game, uh, including our own and especially other people's games too. We always seem to, to have a lot of ideas for what would be cool or what would like riff on or accentuate the, the design goals of whatever game it is we're talking about.
00:56:36
Speaker
Um, So it wasn't that hard, but there certainly are a whole lot of enemies. And I'd say the bigger problem is um that we at times maybe didn't have ah the the differing perspectives that maybe we needed at that moment, you know. People have their habits and tendencies is is more the issue, you know. And so ah we ended up with like a lot of enemies that would like hit you from afar with a projectile. Right. Because in my brain, that's like, you know, I really like doing that. Whereas another designer might, you know, really like enemies that fly around or whatever. So I think the danger was more that, uh, yeah, we were like not realizing we were getting into the same patterns and needing, I mean, another, that's yet another advantage of folding the teams together. It's getting that input from other people and realizing, oh yeah, that, that has been a blind spot.
00:57:33
Speaker
Um, uh, yeah. we Yeah. And I'm curious, were there maybe enemies that like look good on paper, but then didn't work once placed in a room?
00:57:47
Speaker
Um, certainly, yeah that always happens. But that's never due to the idea itself. Usually that's always something that can be like fixed ah through its implementation.
00:58:00
Speaker
When the way that we design is very like um front to back, I suppose. um And we're like very rigid about that, ah about that process. You know, a design gets written up by either me or Sean,
00:58:16
Speaker
um saying exactly what the thing is, in this case, the enemy, um exactly what all their moves are, how big they are, what they look like, mock-ups for like what that ah should should look like, and and I think more importantly, sentences and bullet points about what it should feel like and what the what it is is forcing the player to do that is different than other enemies in the game.
00:58:43
Speaker
um And we only move forward once everybody is in agreement that that is a cool idea that is going to be fun and will work in this area and will complement the other enemies that are planned for that area.
00:58:57
Speaker
we We figure all of that out before anybody but does anything. That's all done before Sandy you know draws a single pixel on the screen.
00:59:09
Speaker
um But then, you know, we make all of that art, you know, we don't prototype it with like crappy art. ah We don't we we we commit to our ideas, I'd say.
00:59:22
Speaker
um And then when the programmer begins working on the enemy, they already have the exact design for what it should be and all of the art and all of the animations.
00:59:34
Speaker
um At which point, you know, we don't go back and rethink something because then we would have to redraw it. um So we've gotten in the habit of trying to work in that manner because we view it as being very, very efficient, as well as it being um a set of practices that forces you to ah come up with the right idea the first time. Yeah.
01:00:01
Speaker
Yeah. And I'd like to talk more about level design as well. Um, earlier you mentioned that you originally pitched it, uh, as a linear game with about, I think you said six levels. Um, how did that evolve into the open world? Was that like immediate feedback you got from your, um, coworkers? Like we need to make this more open world. This can't just be linear.
01:00:26
Speaker
Or was that more of a gradual evolution? Yeah. Um, it was pretty gradual, I'd say. i think, you know, We knew that like this is a game where you can go four directions. i can go up, down and left, right.
01:00:44
Speaker
Shovel Knight, I can only go like left and right. So why can I go in more directions if there's no reason to? If i I just ought to go from room to room, right? It seems like a fundamental element of the game that if it were missing, it would feel missing to people.
01:01:03
Speaker
um But how we accomplished that, I think, was always more of a question throughout development than than I wish it were, or maybe it should have been.
01:01:15
Speaker
um since at no point did we desire to make a what I think comes to mind when someone says an open world game. you know When I hear that, what I think is it's like a normal game, but like stretched out over a massive field, and instead of it taking me five seconds to find something cool, it takes me five minutes.
01:01:38
Speaker
And I don't like that. I think that's boring. the... so the and so how do you accomplish that? How do you have a world that is, that feels large, that feels like it, uh, is giving you that sense of adventure that comes through exploration.
01:01:56
Speaker
um when what you want to make is something with design that is tight, you know, I, I, I just look at it in, in those kinds of like raw numbers like that, you know, and link to the past. How long does it like take me to walk from one screen to another? like five seconds, right? Like six seconds maybe.
01:02:18
Speaker
um And what's on a screen in Link to the Past? Like some enemies to fight, like some rupees or whatever, but also like usually like one unique bespoke thing, at least for like for that area, be it like a gameplay idea or like an NPC or a shop or a little side quest or what, whatever. um That means by definition, every five seconds I can see something cool and new.
01:02:43
Speaker
ah Whereas in something like A Breath of the Wild, ah you know, the game doesn't have 80 enemies like Link to the Past. It has 10 and it doesn't take five seconds to walk to another screen. It takes five minutes to walk over a hill so you can see a different thing.
01:03:01
Speaker
Um, none of that is, is appealing to to us. I think we don't, we want to make games that really respect the player's time and are always giving them, um, but an interesting, fun challenge, uh, and, and a unique challenge.
01:03:17
Speaker
Um, where we don't like asking people to just do the same thing twice. And so, ah very early on, we were like thinking about all those questions, trying to talk about solutions and figure it out.
01:03:29
Speaker
Um, FromSoft games have a structure somewhat similar to this, right? Those are certainly like big open games that you explore that you don't rely on a map um to to get around. In fact, there is no map in all of them except Elden Ring, I guess. But even that like is more of a suggestive map than it is like a literal one.
01:03:52
Speaker
um That seems like a good a place to start in terms of like how we might want to structure a game like this. um But we immediately run into some issues, right? And in a game like that, it's in 3D so that when I'm standing here, I can see that that's over there. Whereas in Mina, you can only see what's on the screen at any given time. So we came up with a bunch of ideas for like how we can keep those little like loops of exploration smaller, ah similar to something like Resident Evil 4 or something. Um, where you get into an area that provides avenues for exploration and is open, but it always kind of loops back on itself, uh, letting you know, like, oh, and that's how this connects to this.
01:04:41
Speaker
And, and giving the player opportunities basically to load things into their brain, but also to eject the things from their brain. Because i don't know about you, I can only hold like three things in my brain at at one time, right? And so you have to construct levels that, ah you know, show you, oh, hey, there's a thing up there, but then also show you like, hey, there's nothing back there. You like did this part and look, now you're here. Therefore, like you don't need to worry about that anymore, right?
01:05:12
Speaker
um and so i think that it mostly just manifested as like very very deliberate very intentional game design and or level design rather that uh that is always thinking about not only what is in the room but like what is before it and after and how it is going to connect and how uh the way in which it connects can also be as like interesting and unique as the content of the room itself um And yeah, I mean, i don't know if that was, that was all just like super hard. It took a while clearly. And, uh, the, the, the structure of it also kind of necessitated a different approach because if you're going to have a, if it's going to be Disneyland style where you've got like a town in the middle and points of interest, you know, spread out and a perimeter around that, or I guess kind of like Majora's mask style. Mm hmm.
01:06:07
Speaker
Um, that means that this, know, we know that that town will be interesting to return to because it has to be in and that'll, you know, it'll be full of content, of course. And we know that those areas at the furthest points of the map aren't going to be that interesting to return to. Right. because they end with a boss fight that you've already done, just by definition. right yeah um But that middle space in between, ah that's that's the big question. What do you do with that and how can that be engaging to run through multiple times? And so I think that's where we had to ah do more than a Souls game would have to figure out in that regard. How do we have like puzzles and such that ah are fun to think about when you're walking back
01:06:54
Speaker
as opposed to when you're walking forward through the area because when you're walking back you have a piece of knowledge in your brain that you didn't have before or you have a key that you found in the level that you could use for any number of locks and maybe if you uh if you open all the locks in one area that'll only encourage you to be like maybe on my downtime in between the big scary difficult areas i should instead explore this little part of the map yeah um stuff that just gets you moving around and plotting different courses of like how I'm going to move around and where I'm going to go based on what you have at any given time, either in your pocket or in your head.
01:07:37
Speaker
um And yeah, that I mean, that stuff took the the most amount of work. I'd say that was like the first thing that we had to really, really figure out after um we folded those teams together back in 2024. Until that point, um we really only had, ah you know, the quote-unquote, like, core levels of the game. A.K.A., like, when you see that, like, big panorama, when you, like, go to a new area. yeah Basically, from that point until the boss were the only, like...
01:08:10
Speaker
chunks of the game that we had and and they're all assembled in a way that wasn't like really interconnected at all. um So yeah, figuring out ways to make that both fun and interesting and ah less frustrating but was difficult.
01:08:25
Speaker
um We had to figure out the mirror warping system. We had to figure out where our train stations are going to be. We had to make sure that all of these systems unfurled themselves ah in a manner that was both natural um and intentionally delayed. you know We don't want to overwhelm the player and we want them to always have something to be thinking about or like looking forward to.
01:08:51
Speaker
um And then you've got a big map of uh what the player can where they can go and when and all of those things aren't necessarily the same for any given player um yep fun fun to level design yeah i i have to be honest like for the longest time i didn't know that mina was open world um and i actually became more interested in it when i learned that it was open world because I really like exploration in video games. um But I agree with you. Like, I don't want to spend five minutes in an open world before I stumble onto to something.
01:09:30
Speaker
So, um yeah, I think games like Elden Ring and modern Zelda games, they do it very well um in terms of open world design. And yeah, I think Mina does a fantastic job, like,
01:09:45
Speaker
presenting this open world and having all of these secrets and you just jump from one secret to the next. And yeah, it's just amazing. i i appreciate it. And, especially by the end of it, I think I've, I've started to look at it in a similar way.
01:10:02
Speaker
um Maybe we should be marketing it as it we made like top down two dimensional Elden Ring because I think structurally that's probably the closest. Yeah, yeah, I'd say so. Yeah, because it's very Souls inspired, ah the combat and and the the yeah yeah or a structure of the game, how it just loops into itself.
01:10:22
Speaker
Um, yeah. Um, I'm wondering, um, when you were designing areas for the game, how did you decide on like the central idea for an area? Did you like start with a mechanic or a theme? Was there maybe like an enemy had in your head and then you design an area around that enemy?
01:10:44
Speaker
um Yeah, we we plan it all out at the start. And I think the first question is ah for designing a world like this. The first question has to be aesthetic or environmental, right? Okay, where do you go in this?
01:10:59
Speaker
are we going to have like a snowy area? Are we going have like a swamp, you know, ah pinning down those things? ah That's the first step, right? Then I think the second step for us is...
01:11:13
Speaker
What makes this swamp interesting? What makes this snowy level different? You know, ah adding twists onto it that are either in narrative or in gameplay or in colors that you might expect from from something like that.
01:11:31
Speaker
um Once that's like feeling good it would provide a ah fun sense of fantasy and adventure. um We look at all the colors.
01:11:44
Speaker
We make sure, okay, you know, these are going to be distinct. Okay. We have one that's blue. We have one that's green. Oh oh no, we forgot red. Where's our, where's the red going to be? ah You know, it I'm sure you've seen like maybe when people post images online where it's like one frame,
01:12:01
Speaker
ah for like every second of a movie or something and you can just tell like oh yeah this whole movie is like gray yeah ah that's whatever the game equivalent of that is is what we're trying to avoid um and then you got to start working on one area right let's say it's like the the crypt Queensberry crypt one of the first ones we did um then you start thinking okay what kinds of like enemies and objects are are going to be in here for the player to interact with
01:12:31
Speaker
For us, our golden rule ah has kind of been like five unique enemies to any given area and five unique gameplay objects.
01:12:42
Speaker
um For the crypt, i mean what do we got? There's that like ah torso that splits into two pieces independently. That's like three enemies right there. um There's Bonebird who like flies at you. That's a fourth.
01:12:56
Speaker
uh and a little little purple slime goober i suppose he's he's the fifth right maybe i'm forgetting some i guess those worms yeah those those count and then for objects yeah you've got those rollers that like go back and forth those arrow traps that like shoot an arrow when on a timer when you like step on a button um ah As well as for that level, we're counting like some of the more simpler gameplay objects that are more prevalent through the game, like just moving platforms, going under fences in general, things like that.
01:13:27
Speaker
um When we're designing all of that, we you want to consider it both as a set and as individual elements. um It's good, I think, when combined together, all of those things that create an identifiable feel for the crypt, there's a feeling of like...
01:13:47
Speaker
ah it's It's almost Indiana Jones-y, you know? There are precarious traps everywhere that feel like they are specifically designed to say, screw you, player. it has like that...
01:14:03
Speaker
has that kind of feeling whereas something like the bayou has a very like open feeling um and the enemies and objects that are there are more about uh i'd say like intent very intentional aggro everything in there is something where like the second you show up they all pay attention basically um be it like you know the merman that runs at you at a million miles an hour or the boss itself that like stalks you throughout the level and and pops up and tries to bite you um and once we kind of know like yeah this this level have like this feeling um and these elements seem like they could work well together you start designing the individual elements themselves um and when it comes to that i think uh
01:14:53
Speaker
for me, I, it's my tendency often I've noticed, uh, to always try and like subvert some expectation or put some kind of like twist on something. Um, that's, I mean, that's why like King Knight grinds on ice and you can use it to do like, uh, to go right into his spin as opposed to just slipping on it.
01:15:15
Speaker
Um, or how Mina can like burrow through the water instead of simply falling in it and dying. Um, finding ways to make it essentially ah such that the player thinks, oh, i've like I haven't like seen that before.
01:15:32
Speaker
that's That's what we want to do there. And then, ah yeah, then you just balance it and consider it as an individual element on top of that. Is this fair? like Can I... Can I design a room around it? right are there Is there enough flexibility here with the other things that are in the level that I have enough to play with that I can make 60 rooms in a row of of ah totally unique combinations of things that create different challenges that the player has to approach differently.
01:16:04
Speaker
yeah um and at this point yeah it's it's less of a conscious uh thing and more just our our process i suppose this is how is how all the levels have gone from shovel knight to mina and beyond i'm sure um one of the um maybe main talking points about mina is um its difficulty um So I'm wondering how did the team think about difficulty? um Because the opening hours of the game can be especially challenging. I think once you start getting into the game and locking more things, it gets easier along the way.
01:16:41
Speaker
So were there maybe like debates internally about how hard the opening hours should be? um No, and I'd say that the team is a little surprised, but not that surprised um that this has become a talking point at all. Really, I think we approach difficulty the same way we always have. We want to make a game that is challenging, but ultimately fair. Right. A game where when you are ah killed, when you are when the player is punished, uh they think not that was impossible and instead they think uh well i shouldn't have done x y or z i it was this close or i could have done this right right um i think more than anything else what's changed is uh the landscape and the people playing the games if i'm being honest um i think that uh there aren't
01:17:39
Speaker
Back in the day, there weren't a lot of games. And so all of them were new. and And when you picked any of them up, you didn't know how to play it. And that was cool and fun and exciting. And if a game played the same as another one, that would be lame and not exciting.
01:17:57
Speaker
yeah I think ah the mindset has shifted a little bit. And something that is new is seen as like scary and uncomfortable. And some people, ah when they encounter that,
01:18:09
Speaker
they may think to themselves, well, the game is the problem because I know how to play games because all these genres have solidified so much, right? I know how to play an action game. I roll out of the way and that's not working in this one.
01:18:23
Speaker
So it's bad and I'm not the problem. like I think that ah mindset is like worth challenging and that's what I think about often when I see this discussion around the game's difficulty.
01:18:34
Speaker
um And I think that's evidenced by the way so many are talking about it, including yourself, you know? um that curve at the beginning of the game, that's a learning curve. That's ah a player figuring out how to play the game and getting better at it.
01:18:49
Speaker
That's cool. That's fun. That's the point. Right. But yet some are say ah some nonetheless, I think, see that as ah the game not accommodating them enough or they see it through that lens, I suppose.
01:19:04
Speaker
um Ultimately, you know, it's a game about using everything at your disposal to get stronger or get through an obstacle.
01:19:16
Speaker
um You know, it's an RPG. Leveling up can help you with this, ah with whatever your objective is. You can equip different trinkets that ah change your loadout and give you new abilities that may address issues that one has with combat or platforming or anything else.
01:19:35
Speaker
um you it It has a very open structure. If one area is like too difficult, I guarantee you there are at least five other things that the player could be doing.
01:19:47
Speaker
And by having ah there be contrast like that, it forces the player to navigate the world, to explore places, to think, where should I go? And what we're trying to do when we design games is get you to think, get you to use your brain, get you to engage in the fun of problem solving.
01:20:07
Speaker
um We don't want it to be that the player is ever on autopilot. You know, we want the player always to be thinking, how could I optimize this further? And so I think the game, ah like any game we would design is, is well designed in service of those goals, right? That ah the enemies at the start of the game, they,
01:20:28
Speaker
kill you in a few hits, right? They hit hard. That's because ah you shouldn't be getting hit by the enemies. You should be avoiding them. and if you ah And if you can tank through them, then the end and then the player will do that. They won't avoid them and they won't learn.
01:20:45
Speaker
um If it's a game where the fun of the combat comes from mastering this burrow, then all of the enemies in the game should be asking you to think about that burrow. And I think for so many people, they're not used to a game asking so much of them. And ah that feels more like an indictment on other games than ours, in my opinion.
01:21:08
Speaker
um And yeah, like ah those beginning hours should should stress what the rest of the game is about. That's why that knight has a shield. What on earth do I do? When I hit him, it doesn't work. I would hope that the player, the gears start turning and one thinks, well, maybe I shouldn't stand right in front of him. How how could I get around him? Maybe by using the burrow. Yeah.
01:21:32
Speaker
ah Yeah, is same with like that first boss fight. um I've seen so many people say the first boss was like really hard, but the second was really easy. The first being Hulk Trooper, the second being that fight with Thorn.
01:21:48
Speaker
That's definitely not true. Hulk Trooper dies in like six hits. like We use him later on as a regular enemy like all the time. um Whereas Thorn has a big giant health bar, unique attacks that like must be observed, some that like reveal themselves only after time. He's objectively like a much harder fight, yet people struggle so much more with the first one. ah That's because they don't know how to play the game yet. And they're running right at Hulk Trooper, and they're trying to mash their face at him, and it's not working. Hulk Trooper kills them. And then they have to walk back to Hulk Trooper. They have to spend 15 seconds thinking, how am I not going to die this time as they go up and then right and then up again.
01:22:33
Speaker
And, ah you know, eventually it has to click with you. Oh, maybe I should like use the burrow. Maybe I should like use, ah you know, the the main mechanic of the game.
01:22:45
Speaker
And at at which point I think, you know, it things things in general click a lot more. I think that's why maybe a lot of people would think, yeah, Thorne's like not hard at all because now I'm like burrowing to avoid his attacks.
01:22:59
Speaker
ah Yeah, I want I want discourse in general to establish the difference between a learning curve and a difficulty curve, because one of those things is about baggage from other games. And one of them is about what's in the game itself that you're actually playing.
01:23:13
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It's funny you mentioned that like Thorn is actually the first boss because in my head, like the Duchess was always the first real boss. um Well, that that is the first one we implemented. so okay you may be thinking back to like our Kickstarter demo or something. I feel like the Duchess was the first real boss. I gave you like an actual challenge. I felt everything before that was not easy, but it wasn't like the real the real first challenge in my head, at least. Yeah.
01:23:43
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, i'm I'm more responding to a minority of players, I think. and Whereas as you seem to be someone who approached the game with an open mind and had the intended experience.
01:23:55
Speaker
I'm wondering, do you think maybe that it's a talking point because it looks like a Game Boy game and it doesn't look like Elden Ring, for example? Do you think that maybe shifted people's expectations? Yeah.
01:24:08
Speaker
I think that can certainly be um a part of it um as well as the fact that like maybe because it feels Zelda-y, you know, people might expect like a cozier, easier time. um But neither of those things make sense to me, right?
01:24:28
Speaker
Games with older aesthetics tended to be a lot more challenging. You know, I haven't, I haven't picked up a new game and thought how on earth do you like get good at this? Like what it like I need to like figure this out. I'd say like the last time I felt that was like I don't know UFO 50 and before that like demon souls like I like serious like you know um it's ah it yeah blows my mind. um
01:24:59
Speaker
And on top of that like I encourage anybody who says this game is difficult to go back and play, not even Zelda one or two, but like link to the past, you know, like, ah I think maybe people are just not used to the idea of a game where you don't have a dodge button. A game where you need to think about where to stand. A game where the B button is not an instant get-out-of-jail-free card, where the second I press it, I have invulnerability frames immediately.
01:25:31
Speaker
I think people's... ah Yeah, I think you know it's it's easy for us to not think about how much time has gone by, but in between Shovel Knight coming out and now is 12 years, right?
01:25:45
Speaker
uh, their entire populations of gamer that simply have never seen a game that is asking them more. yeah Um, so yeah, I would hope that, uh,
01:25:58
Speaker
the experience of challenge is one ah is a is a flavor that is maybe spicy, but also delicious. And I would hope that ultimately many people are identifying that maybe there's a lot of fun to be had in some of those older games that ah may seem clunky on ah on account of not feeling identical to everything else.
01:26:24
Speaker
Now the the game does have these modifiers. um So I'm wondering why did you go with modifiers instead of maybe ah like an easy medium hard mode?
01:26:37
Speaker
Yeah, I'd say when we make the game, what we want to do as artists is, ah you know, create one game, Nintendo games, uh, especially, especially the ones that I really loved growing up, they would have one difficulty. They're one experience. Um, I, I find that more appealing in general, uh,
01:27:01
Speaker
It's mean making one game is like hard enough and making multiple ah of it that you're sure will be a good fit for anybody is also ah i mean that just seems impossible.
01:27:15
Speaker
And on top of that when you present a player with those options I don't know about you but like I have no idea what those mean right. I think typically for like a modern game, hard means like normal for me. And and easy means like it's impossible to lose.
01:27:32
Speaker
And normal means it's like it's just not challenging in any kind of way. But things tend to be balanced for normal, not for easy or hard. it it it Yeah, as does sound like normal would be the experience that that the designer set in mind. But...
01:27:50
Speaker
it's yeah It's too easy for for people that play games a lot. Yeah, and it and it creates a scenario where it's now impossible not to think, well, maybe the game's better on a different difficulty, or maybe like I'm not doing it right, or like you know maybe my thoughts about the game or my issues or my complaints can be summed up and into like a choice that I made.
01:28:15
Speaker
Um, and I don't like that feeling. Uh, I, I like when there's one vision and like one game. Um, having said that, you know, we want our games to be played by more people. We want, uh, anybody to be able to approach the games. And I think that we do that in the games themselves, you know? Um,
01:28:36
Speaker
Even in Shovel Knight, which is much less of an RPG, you can nonetheless collect a gold, buy upgrades, increase your maximum health, find ways to help you as a player or get through whatever it is like you're struggling with. Mina certainly takes that to to the extreme um before you even open the modifiers menu. You can level up, you can buy trinkets, you can ah you know you can change your play style, you can... you You have a whole you have a ton of freedom, right? um And I think modifiers are simply an extension of that exact same philosophy, because regardless of how much ah help we can put in the game itself,
01:29:16
Speaker
There are ultimately some people for whom that will not be enough, either like people disabilities ah or, you know, like my grandma, right? She, she, ah she bought Shovel Knight, but she can't get very far on it. She gets to the Bubble Dragon and
Accessibility and Inclusivity in Gaming
01:29:32
Speaker
then...
01:29:32
Speaker
you know, I mean, it's's it's tricky for her. yeah And ah I don't want to compromise, you know, the the vision of the bubble dragon, right? We want to maintain that enemy as he is, but it would sure be great if my grandma could like see the rest of the game, ah have a conversation with me about like the story in the game or like the environments or the characters or the, uh, the, the clever little enemies that we designed, but we can't have that conversation because she, it will never be able to see those parts of the game naturally. Uh, and Mina, she can, you know, she can go in there and do whatever she's got to do to, to get through it. Um, same goes for like younger kids, right? Um,
01:30:16
Speaker
You know, I I now have a nephew, you know, in a few years, I don't I don't think he's going to be able to like play Mina all the way. Right. Or like Sean's nephew is very interested in like the the the games we make and and the worlds. Right. And by having a met new like this, it is now possible for them to like have that experience together.
01:30:38
Speaker
Um, so that's how I see the modifiers menu more about making the experience possible for people who, uh, otherwise, you know, would not be able to,
01:30:52
Speaker
um And I think in general, just offering that kind of freedom is cool and fun. um You know that this used to be a lot less controversial back in the day. They were just called cheat codes or bonuses and like people loved it. You know, um I had like a game shark and an action replay growing up. Those let me do anything to any game, you know, any hex value that could be changed anyways. Yeah.
01:31:17
Speaker
um And I think that was also really cool and maybe a little ah formative as well. you know i think that's the first time I started like thinking about games as like things that were made by people when like some of those parameters and variables started being exposed to me wait you can just like increase the jump height by like changing a number oh and these and games are like made by on computers like by people like it started like you know turning those gears in my head ah ah bit I think as well so for all those reasons and and so much more um
01:31:52
Speaker
Yeah, we've we've created this modifiers menu that seems like our best attempt yet at ah fulfilling all of those goals, which aren't
Development Challenges and Team Morale
01:32:02
Speaker
new goals. You know, Shovel Knight had like 300 cheat codes or whatever. Yeah, I'm all for it. um I don't use the modifiers myself, but I do think like accessibility in general is important and it's good to see more games implementing that in their game to see more developers implementing that in their game. So, yeah.
01:32:21
Speaker
Yeah. I want to see accessibility taken further. You know, I i have ADHD and when a game yaps at me for too long and conversations go on forever, you know, I tune out I want to see, i want start seeing some toggles for like skip all of this conversation, yeah skip all the, skip all the texts. That's my accessibility. That's what I need.
01:32:42
Speaker
And, and two, I, I think ah it's really great and cool ah to provide options ah for like, you know, the the more niche parts of of the fandom or community of a game, right? We love, ah you know, speed running. We love, ah you know, a good randomizer. um And that's why, like, we want to build into the game toggles for, like, that kind of play. um Not only for our sakes and for, you know, the the types of hardcore gamers we are, ah but also for players so they can, you know,
01:33:19
Speaker
make their own challenge runs and in context in which to enjoy the game. It's it's awesome. Yeah. Now, um, Mina took a while to make, I think probably about six years, um, from when you pitched it to Yacht Club.
01:33:35
Speaker
Um, what was the hardest stretch of development or what was maybe the the biggest bottleneck during development? I mean, but that's tricky. the The whole thing was hard and just for different reasons at different times. You know, it's it's hard to pick favorites there um for, I'd say, you know, for a while.
01:33:58
Speaker
um a lot of it, a lot of the issue is like growing pains, um figuring out how to like work with new people, figuring out how to work without old people.
01:34:09
Speaker
Um, figuring out how to work in a way that is remote, you know, ah the project kicked off in early 2020. I don't know if you remember something else happened around them. Yep. Um, forcing us to become a entirely remote studio for the first time, you know, um,
01:34:29
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, figuring out all of those things was a constant struggle. I think we're still learning how to ah figure some of these things out. And ah I'd say those things only really stopped being an issue once, um you know, we had folded our teams together. and we We're all on one project again. But that brought with it like new issues, you know. um At that point, it was like, okay, we need to like finish this game ah up and get it out the door. Not only so that ah we can keep getting paid, but also so that ah you know we don't blow our brains out. We all want to move on from this project, right? No one wants a game to take six years as much as any fan wants it to come out sooner. I guarantee you, we want that more. Yeah. yeah how How did you keep the morale up during development? Because, yeah, six years is a long time. Yeah.
01:35:23
Speaker
I mean, yeah, I don't know. I mean, at at a couple points I came in, I like decorated the, the, the Mina room of of the office. And, you know, you'll try to do little parties here and there or get togethers with the team outside of work hours and all that kind of stuff. But,
01:35:41
Speaker
um I mean, it's hard. I think that's an area of failure of the game. ah you know um We were all very, very burnt out and ah and tired you know but about the whole process, I'd say, especially like towards the end.
01:35:57
Speaker
um So only only now that it is the highest rated game of the year that we're starting to think of it in a positive light. Yeah. How come like after all these years of development, how come there's not a single cheese pun in the game?
01:36:15
Speaker
That's funny. Um, early on, uh, I, I, I didn't want that kind of thing. um i remember us like very, very early having a discussion about like you know who else is in that world. And when you pitch a game where you're like a mouse and there's like you know a handful of enemies that are just kind of monsters, right um I think people people can only think about what they know. And what they know is that there's a mouse in the game. And so if you let the thought terminate there, ah then I think that you're doing yourself a disservice, especially if you're making, you know, a an adventure, you're making a Zelda-y kind of thing um that's all about discovery and and and meeting cool characters and seeing what they're like and piecing together the boundaries of the world, right? You're doing yourself a disservice if...
01:37:17
Speaker
You have those goals, but then you also say, okay, but everyone like has to be a mouse because it's weird if there's like mice and like people next to each other or something. Um, that was like a really early thought. And I said, you know, that's not weird. We shouldn't like limit ourselves in that way.
01:37:32
Speaker
You know, there should be people and ah and animals together and animals of all types and monsters that are neither human nor animal. um I think people second guess that sometimes when they shouldn't, you know, some other games that do that, like Banjo-Kazooie, Sonic the Hedgehog, Mario, Zelda, love it but Pokemon, like like everything. Yeah, yeah.
01:37:56
Speaker
um And so i don't think that was necessarily like a hard and fast rule. There's no cheese and that's not allowed. It's more that like, why would we add that if we're going to add anything that's about like flavor or if we're going to add something that's about the world of the game or whatever.
01:38:15
Speaker
then it should be in support of that and its goals and the thematics of the game, right? And the theme of the game is not a mouse is hungry for cheese and she needs to go steal it from Dracula so she can have dinner. The the game is about, ah you know, a whole lot of other things. yeah ah So, yeah, why spend...
01:38:36
Speaker
you know we don't We don't want to write a single line of dialogue. We don't want to make the player read more than they have to. So with our very limited a number of text boxes, we're allotting ourselves. Why would we waste one on something so obvious and something that says so little?
01:38:53
Speaker
right Oh, the mouse eats cheese. Yeah, I get it. ah Okay. do yeah And yeah, and that was ah that was a conversation early on Six years later, we we just hadn't really thought about it at all. And then the game comes out and we all kind of had to remind ourselves like, oh yeah, oh yeah, there's no cheese in the game. That's funny.
01:39:14
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's probably also because Mouse came out recently and that had a lot of cheese buns. um So, yeah, I think it was mainly that. Yeah. And I mean, i don't know. i haven't I haven't played that game. From what I can tell, I don't think they're going for, you know, ah ah a wide Zelda world that gives you the feeling of adventure and surprise. I think it's supposed to be funny and yeah more about that kind of thing. Yeah.
01:39:42
Speaker
But yeah, one one must make decisions, I think, that align with the goals of the game. And the goal of Mina was not to be a a funny game about mice. Yeah. Before we round up the podcast, I just quickly want to talk about the release and the reception of Mina.
01:39:57
Speaker
um When it was released, what was like the first moment or like the first reaction that like really hit you emotionally? Because you were... Basically, you know, you came up with the concept, you originated it. How did that feel when it came out?
01:40:15
Speaker
Um, I, I don't know. I, I, I'm numb to that kind of positive feeling, I think. right Yeah. I mean, when I think about it I mean, I'm, and I'm sure this is my, you know, unhealthy mindset. Um,
01:40:32
Speaker
the thought isn't oh I'm so glad people liked it the thought is more like that's what we hoped would happen that's what I worked really hard to make it happen uh if this didn't happen i would consider that and myself a failure and so it's more relief that things are going how I wanted them to than it is surprise and delight and euphoria ah about it um but yeah i don't know that's that sounds messed up i should probably learn how to be more grateful it's it's crazy uh maybe it's it's too crazy maybe it's overwhelming to think that like a thing that i was like doodling in my in the guest bedroom of the last place i was at with my ex-girlfriend is now a whole game that yeah millions of people have to learn about whether they like it or not maybe that's a weird thought that's hard to think about so i so i don't yeah are you maybe like more receptive to like some of the criticism that the game received and i'm one like were there maybe be criticism that you ultimately agree with um
01:41:46
Speaker
Not much. I think I read one thing that i was like, oh, that's ah that's a valid point, but I'm i'm struggling to remember like what it was. um Usually, to me, it indicates either a like a lack of experience with or an unwillingness to learn the quirks or systems that make this game interesting or unique.
01:42:07
Speaker
Um, but yeah, I mean, as, as designers, that stuff is always, I think a lot, a lot more interesting to read. Uh, you know, when someone says you did a good job, they're telling you things that you already know, but when there's negative feedback, well then there's something to figure out. Why did they think that? I wonder what happened, you know? Um, and even if it's on a surface level, I think it's fun to know those things so that you can, ah calibrate.
Release and Market Strategy
01:42:36
Speaker
ah and and adjust for your next game. Not necessarily in the ways that people want, right? But maybe in ways that alleviate specific things that for whatever reason feel a little too spicy for people. um You know, and for Shovel Knight, which is a platformer,
01:42:53
Speaker
uh, the most common criticism there was that it's like unfairly hard because if you fall in a pit or if you touch spikes, you instantly die. It's a game with instant death, you know, like super Mario bros, the first platformer ever. Basically every platformer on the and NES. Right. it's It's to me, that's a hilarious comment. Um,
01:43:15
Speaker
But, uh, you know, in some ways, Mina's response to that, right? There are still absolutely elements in Mina that will, ah test you. And if you fail those tests, then the, you will be punished.
01:43:28
Speaker
Um, but the ways in which we're playing with that, those can get mixed around. Right. And Mina, you can fall in the pit. Like, four to 20 times based on how big your health bar is, you know? so what do you think of that players? Now it's four to 20 times kinder. It's, you know, it's, uh, it's mostly fun. I think to, to read things like that and think about where these opinions come from more than, uh, than the what of it. Yeah.
01:43:58
Speaker
Yeah. Now that Mina has become such a big success already in just in less than two weeks, is there room, you think, for more Mina the Hollower? Because it does feel like it's the start of a larger world. And I'm wondering if that was always the ambition.
01:44:19
Speaker
ah yeah i mean, yeah, I i think we we kind of think of everything like that. There was never a thought where it's like, We never thought we're going to make Mina, but like we'll never make another one.
01:44:30
Speaker
Like that was never in anyone's heads ever. And I think it's natural, too, as you're working on anything to come up with places it could go or ideas for the future. Certainly when you're writing story, you you have to think about those things, whether you want to or not.
01:44:48
Speaker
um And so on our end, I'd say, yeah, there's there's absolutely a lot of ideas about where we would go with it. um If ever there was going to be a game that that is Mina 2, I think we know like exactly what that would look and feel and smell like. um And beyond that, yeah, you know, i I see no reason why couldn't one day like make a 3D one or yeah know a cart racing spinoff or anything. you know Characters, ah having classic cool characters is fun and cool. And we want like a cool lineup, you know, that that we can do all sorts of things with. Yeah.
01:45:33
Speaker
You know, that's not what's on our minds at the moment. We've been pretty laser focused on all for a long time about ah just getting Mina out the door now that it's been what, like a week or two. that Now everyone's asking where's it going to go next?
01:45:50
Speaker
ah and ultimately you know we did pause another project so I think regardless of what the future may hold the immediate future is going to have to be you know going back to thinking about that game which is yeah already well into development um so yeah at some point Absolutely. For now, I'm not sure. It also depends a lot on like what people want, you know, you don't, you don't want to get too far into planning something like that because what if Mina bombs? What if it sells 10,000 copies that, you know, and we think to ourselves, oh crap, can't do that again. Okay. Only Shovel Knight games from now on, you know, uh, who knows? Yeah. Was that a genuine fear or
01:46:33
Speaker
like i assume there must have been this idea like it's gonna be successful how successful we don't know or did were there people that really thought okay no this might not be what people want from us to a degree i mean i think so um you know the thought is never like the game is not good and people aren't going to like it The thought, the worry was always like, you know, we know this game is amazing. I hope others recognize that and I hope others buy it.
01:47:06
Speaker
Right. And um that feels like a different conversation. and that feels like, it includes elements that like, aren't even necessarily in our control. Um, you know, I've, I've seen great games come and go and like not find their audience. It, it, it can happen.
01:47:22
Speaker
Um, you know, where the news cycle is at that time can have an impact. What games people are playing at the time when it comes out can have an impact. Um, You know, it's you you can't take anything for granted and you can't predict anything really. And I think in general, we try to be very, very ah conservative when it comes to how we estimate stuff like that. When it comes to like finances, for example, we always assume like Shovel Knight will sell zero copies from tomorrow until the end of time. and And we need to work with that assumption in mind because we don't know what's going to happen. um you hope for the best but you prepare for the worst and yeah i think that's that's more where our heads were at at that point in time isn't preparing for the worst uh thankfully you know our friends and family were right the game is great we we are we are perfect and special don't don't worry alec everything will be okay you know it seems to have worked out but it's still it's still early days you know i think we're
01:48:30
Speaker
We're a little cautious regardless. We have to be. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Have you already moved on to the next project yourself or are you maybe still fixing bugs in a meter, the hollower?
01:48:44
Speaker
Yeah, um i'm I don't got to fix many bugs since I'm not a programmer. Right. You know, there's only been a handful of things that required my attention. um Mostly just in marketing mode for me right now. okay if you're If you're watching any of those TikToks we're putting out about the game, that's I'm putting those together. That's my voice. Okay, yeah. um yeah And yeah, everyone everyone at the company is kind of like in that state of flux, figuring out what's next, fulfilling obligations. You know, we we had a whole Kickstarter campaign. We had to get an art book out the door. got a vinyl, a CD, ah ah a copy of the GDD a, with, ah with
01:49:25
Speaker
you know everything in the game in it uh there's plenty to do even when uh when a game ships especially for us since we're you know an indie that does everything ourselves we don't have a publisher that can take it from here right right yeah yeah that's yeah that could have been a whole other topic is yeah talking about not having a publisher because that yeah that must have made things much more difficult Well, and easier, you know, if, if Mina did have a publisher, it would have come out three years ago and it would have been like a seven out of 10.
Conclusion and Future Outlook
01:50:02
Speaker
ah But certainly in terms of ah helping out with this kind of stuff, the release of a game, yeah. Yeah. publisher can do a lot of the heavy lifting but also i think we like being able to do all that stuff ourselves you know we we like being able to decide exactly how the game should be marketed um i think for us that that ah demonstrates itself as a lot of like very design focused um marketing and discussion we think that the game is amazing and good
01:50:37
Speaker
not because of the incredibly appealing art or the banger soundtrack, that's all there to like get people in the door. But what we're actually selling is interesting game design.
01:50:51
Speaker
And so, you know, I, I like not having a publisher because we can focus more on that aspect of it which I think ah not only speaks to the game's strengths better but think it's just more fun and more interesting um so yeah I don't know good good and bad a publisher is absolutely the the right pick for lots of games and teams yeah yeah Okay, well, we've talked for almost two hours, so I'm going to let you go. um
01:51:23
Speaker
Thank you so much for joining me, Alec. um It was great talking to you, learning more about how Mina was made. And yeah, just congratulations on all the success it's getting. Thanks so much. um that This was a blast. And for everyone listening, go go buy Mina the Hollower. It's the best game ever. It's 20 bucks. It's so cheap. It's so cheap.
01:51:44
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. i I also wanted to ask about price, but yeah, I also didn't want to just bombarding you with questions. um Yeah. It's so, it's so cheap. I also recommend anyone listening, go buy it, go play it. It's,
01:51:58
Speaker
It's my game of the year so far. So yeah, thanks everyone for listening and I'll see you in the next episode. Goodbye.