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#1 | Creating the Kingdom franchise, selling the IP and starting over
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In this episode game developer Thomas van den Berg talks about creating the Kingdom franchise, selling the IP and starting over.
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Background
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everyone, welcome to Game Dev One on One, the podcast where I sit down with game developers to talk about how they got into the industry, the projects they've worked on, the struggles they faced, and everything they learned along the way.
00:00:12
Speaker
I'm your host Glenn, and today I'm joined by Thomas van den Berich. Thomas is probably best known as the creator of Kingdom, the minimalist strategy game that went on to grow into a whole franchise of Kingdom games that have sold a combined total of well over 4 million copies.
Early Inspirations and Programming Journey
00:00:26
Speaker
Since then, he's worked on games like Cloud Gardens and Pizza Possum, and he's currently working on a new game called Garbage Country. Thomas, thank you so much for being here. How are you doing today?
00:00:37
Speaker
I'm good. Thanks for having me. How are you? I'm doing good. Yeah, excited to to talk to you. Yeah. So like you've done a lot of things. You've made very different types of games. um So I'm very eager to know how all of that went down.
00:00:51
Speaker
But before we talk about Kingdom and your other projects, um I'd like to learn more about you as a person and talk about how you got into developing games, just to kind of set the stage. Does that sound all right with you?
00:01:04
Speaker
Yeah, totally. um I got into games fairly early. i think I started programming as an early teen.
00:01:15
Speaker
I remember messing around with with Lego Mindstorms, you know, it's the programmable Legos. That was one of my first introductions to programming. Then I think at some point it was Flash. And I think that's really, you know, that would be considered a game um or some kind of interactive things that I was building in Flash. And Flash was really such a a nice little playground where you have the graphics, you have the code. It's all like in one little package.
00:01:40
Speaker
you can You can upload it on the internet for people to play without any installation. Honestly, we've never even gotten to that point since anymore where you can just like go on a website and play a game that somebody made without any effort.
00:01:53
Speaker
and So I think with Flash, I really started making little games, but I i rarely made anything that had like like a start and an end a point and you can win or lose, you know, was kind of like interactive things. The first thing I built was like a little flower simulation where you you crossbreed different flowers and then they turn into different colors. But it was kind of like an open-ended, more sandboxy thing.
00:02:13
Speaker
yeah and yeah i guess that was kind of the beginning okay cool cool so like before anyone knew you as a game developer like what were you like as a kid um i i i always i mean i think i was a i think i was a relatively quiet kid i just liked play with my stuff i i remember you know playing with legos a lot just like on the floor of my room building all sorts of contraptions and worlds. And I think the idea of like, you know, imagining and building a world for someone is, is kind of close to game design. I mean, I, I get, I have the same satisfaction that I had as a kid where you're like, you built a world and then you have a friend over you're like, look what I built, like, here's the pirate cave and you can go in. And if you go in something, had like, you know, this like idea of, of, of creating ah an adventure for someone else. So I guess that, that kind of tracks, I didn't know it back then. Um,
00:03:11
Speaker
Yeah, that's kind of that's that's kind of me as a kid. I also always liked technical things. I like to take things apart, put them back together. um That you know also fits perfectly with the game. its It is in the end also a technical endeavor and I really, really enjoy that part of it as well. Okay, cool. So like was there anyone around you who encouraged that? Like maybe your parents or friends?
00:03:35
Speaker
My parents gave me loads of Legos, which was you know ah definitely encouraging the the technical part. um And then I had a ah friend, ah his name was Simon, and I think he I think we were i think were the same age, but he was quite a bit better at programming than me. And he kind of taught me to program in Flash. Like I would go to him with like, how do I make a sword do
Childhood Gaming and Creative Spark
00:03:56
Speaker
so-and-so? And he's like, do you know what a for loop is? I'm like, I have no idea. And like, he like was very patient with me and like showed me how to program different things. And I really remember through that, like slowly I started like understanding what I was doing in Flash and I could could also kind of make the things that I was imagining in my head.
00:04:13
Speaker
and Yeah. yeah Okay. Okay. And like were games a huge part of your childhood or did that maybe come in later? Oh, yeah, and definitely. i had, um I don't know exactly how old I was, but I got like the first DOS PC from my parents.
00:04:30
Speaker
So I had a couple of DOS games on there that I would play ti till late at night in my room. and I also just remember as a kid, you know, you've got like like a PC with three games on it and and half of them are like shareware demos that you don't even realize it's just the first level. And you're just playing the first level over and over again. You can get so absorbed.
00:04:49
Speaker
in these worlds. And I really remember that feeling fondly. I guess everybody remembers whatever they were doing at that age fondly, but Yeah, I was definitely playing a lot of games. One of the first games that I actually finished where I realized, hey, you know, this game, it's not just the first demo level, like you can actually play through it and then there will be like credits and it's over was Commander Keen.
00:05:09
Speaker
I think it was Commander Keen 3, the first game that I actually finished start to end. And I was like so proud of myself. i' like wow, I could just finish a game. Like it's what they're what they're made for.
00:05:19
Speaker
Yeah. Were there like any other like memorable gaming moments from your childhood? um The first game I bought with my own money was Red Alert 2.
00:05:30
Speaker
That was, you know, and that was, of course, a big big thing. Also, the level editor of that game was great. I was just like building cities. And um I remember once, you know, in Red Alert, you have Yuri, right? Like he can take over units. So there was a map in the campaign, I think, where there's like a city. I don't know.
00:05:47
Speaker
I built 100 Yuris and I used them to take over all the civilian cars in the cities because there's like just bystanders, like I guess in Red Alert or like collateral damage, you know, you drop a nuke and like whatever.
First Steps in Game Development
00:05:56
Speaker
But I took over all the cars, like little ambulances, the little regular cars, and I gave them all patrol routes so that they would go on a loop through the city.
00:06:03
Speaker
So I kind of like repopulated this city and I have gave them really elaborate patrol routes so they would all like cross and go through the streets. Then I saved my game, was really proud of myself. And then I noticed that Rattler 2 actually doesn't save commands in the save pile.
00:06:16
Speaker
So all the patrol routes are gone. So it's pretty sad. Okay, that sucks. Okay, yeah cool. That's a fond memory. Yeah. Okay, and so yeah, you talked a little bit about how you first got into like making games and like how or how old were you again?
00:06:34
Speaker
um I guess, I think I was like, i remember somehow being 14 is a number that sticks to me as when I kind of started with Flash and it kind of started making some sense to me. like Before that I was programming stuff, but I was just literally copying the code from a book that I got. I would just type it like letter by letter and and it would do something, but I had no idea what I what i did there.
00:06:53
Speaker
And then I think like 14, 15, it started making a little bit of sense to me in Flash what I could do with some simple scripts. yeah Yeah, like that that flower game. Was that like really one of your first attempts at making fleshed out game?
00:07:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. It's the first time also that... you know I thought, hey, I can finish this. like I can market it as like, hey, this is a finished product that you can play and you will have fun. And not just like, oh, hey, I made something move on the screen and that's it.
00:07:20
Speaker
But it was quite a bit later that I really wrapped it up. like it I think I was maybe 18 at the time when I you know put everything together and put some credits in there and a splash screen. And was like, okay, now here's a game. And I put it on Newgrounds.
00:07:34
Speaker
a Okay, yeah, cool. cool and So did you then went on to go and study game design? or No, I actually i didn't even consider it. I didn't even know it was a real thing um that one could study and and and and or make money with. So I studied AI, actually. I graduated it with a degree in AI.
00:07:59
Speaker
Oh, But during that time, I still kept making games. And especially near the end, like AI is an academic endeavor. And it was kind of before the current AI hype, which um i imagine would have been more interesting to be inside. But there was a period of AI where it was, I don't want to say boring, but they like all the current exciting stuff was not happening.
00:08:21
Speaker
What are we talking about? 15, 20 years ago. Or maybe it was, but I didn't see it. um So always while writing reports and writing articles, I was kind of like on the side, just messing around with games.
00:08:34
Speaker
um AI is also about machine learning. So at some point I built a little game engine for two machine learning learning agents to play against each other. And I remember just really making all the pixel art for a little game engine, which was completely unnecessary. But, you know, those sort of things that I was really enjoying doinging doing.
00:08:51
Speaker
okay cool yeah no that that that tracks that you've yeah studied ai because with kingdom there's a lot of ai happening in the background uh so yeah that that that tracks true but you do learn that um ai like academic ai and and and uh what's the words cutting edge ai and game ai are very different like In a way, what I learned with Kingdom is that it's better for for NPCs to be dumb but predictable because you're playing the game, you want to and kind of know what they're going to do. If they get too smart,
00:09:30
Speaker
Even if you as a game designer think, no, but this is better. It's better if they're strategic, it's better if they act so-and-so. But if they're if if that makes them unpredictable, then it won't be a good experience for players either. So you also end
Lessons and Philosophy in Game Design
00:09:41
Speaker
up dumbing down things quite a lot.
00:09:43
Speaker
Not in a bad way. In those like early years where you were making game, was there anything that you like completely misunderstood about making games?
00:09:57
Speaker
I often think if I had gotten a job at a larger game studio, I would have been able to like skip past some levels that, you know, I had to find out by hand now.
00:10:10
Speaker
I'm trying to come up with examples, but... you know you you do end up learning things the hard way as an indie developer. I think it's also cool because you do things differently and sometimes it turns out good and you do things differently in a way that surprises people. So then you you make something new, but you also ending up kind of like just making mistakes that were unnecessary.
00:10:30
Speaker
i don't i don't really have an example right now but maybe i'll come up with something later yeah okay yeah um maybe maybe if i phrase it a little differently um it might spark something did you ever have to like unlearn something to get better at making games
00:10:53
Speaker
that is a good question I'm not sure if I got better. This is a thought that I've had a lot. like Am i am i even getting better at making games? like i mean I don't know if this is like getting ahead of things, but like I often look at Kingdom and I think like this might be the best thing I ever made and it's so naive and dumb. you know And also because of my lack of skills, I was forced to keep it very limited and really you know do only what I can do.
00:11:15
Speaker
And also, you know of course, i have everybody has big dreams when you make a game. You think, oh, we're going to add this and we're going add these monsters and these features. And in the end, you just cut everything. but also being somewhat more limited in my skill set meant that I had to cut things much earlier, which might've been really good for the game. And the more like technical skills you get,
00:11:34
Speaker
the more you're like eliminating eliminating your own limitations. And because of that, you you maybe dream up things that you shouldn't be dreaming up in the first place. So maybe i'm what I have to unlearn is what I learned. Like i have to I have to keep it small. I have to keep it more stupid and just, you know, kind of re-grasp this, what do say, naivety that I had back then.
00:11:57
Speaker
But I'm not there yet. Yeah. Okay. um Going back to those like early projects, what did those early attempts and projects at making games teach you? like What was like one of the the more valuable things that you learned?
00:12:20
Speaker
You learned that you can just make things. like that like when you start creating things in the beginning, you kind of feel very, like you want to make something, maybe you have an idea, but you just don't have the tools.
00:12:34
Speaker
And, and maybe also you're not flexible enough with like how to, with how to make it. Like, imagine I wanted to, make a game about a king on a horse and I would be like oh but how do I 3D animate a horse like I don't have the skill set like oh I could never make something I can never make a game about a kingdom whatever but then you know through making games and learning pixel art you kind of learn like you can't just make things and a horse can be a pixel horse but it represents something and the and the resulting product product is is is something good and that gives you a kind of confidence where it's like if you would ask me now to make a game about anything I would be fairly confident just starting somewhere because you know that
00:13:11
Speaker
you have these avenues of of creating it in different ways. And maybe it would have to be pixel art or low poly 3D, or maybe I have the confidence now that if I need to learn ah high HD modeling, like I could probably also do that. Like, I think that's one of the most important things, just kind of this like creative, creative confidence that you get where it's like, Oh, if you want to make something, you can just make it like, you can just start somewhere and it will be fine. And I definitely had a lot more anxiety about that when I was younger, where it's like,
00:13:38
Speaker
I can't do this. Like, I don't know how to do all of this. Like, this is hopeless. Like, what do we, where do i even
Kingdom's Evolution and Impact
00:13:42
Speaker
start? But you know, you you just start. Yeah. So maybe you would have like a bigger idea, but then you just take a chunk out of that idea and you start with that. And then you put all the chunks together eventually. Yeah.
00:13:57
Speaker
And also a lot of chunks, you never make it, but it's okay to to dream big because that's also the motivating part. You know, like you, you start, you start pixel arting this little horse and you think like, oh my God, it's going to be a knight there's going to be other knights and they're going fight and going stats they're going to be so cool and it's going a story. And in the end, you just have a horse and that kind of like a weird looking king on it. But, you know, that's also something.
00:14:19
Speaker
And also when you're starting out stuff, it's it's kind of amazing how how proud you can be of just having done the this smallest thing. And that's so motivating, you know, like when the horse was doing a little running animation, I was like, I created this. This is the best. Like I'm done. Like...
00:14:34
Speaker
you know and And that feeling also really is is very motivating. Okay. um So, okay, you went to study AI and you graduate.
00:14:49
Speaker
And then like what before Kingdom happened, what did your life kind of look like? Like, were you planning on going into the AI industry? Or like, were you thinking about maybe I can become a game developer, start as an indie developer, work my way up to maybe join a company? Or what what was that like? um As I was finishing up,
00:15:16
Speaker
I was already kind of clear to me that I didn't want to pursue like a PhD or something because I found the research to be a little bit too dry and too political. Like I wrote a paper and I got into ah an academic argument with another scientist and I just felt like, oh, we all just want to invent cool stuff. But like, why is it such a swamp of like,
00:15:39
Speaker
you know trying to get published and you know trying to figure out what really works and what doesn't. So that kind of like already put me off that track. So at that point I was more thinking I will just be some kind of developer. I quite enjoy programming, maybe ideally something slightly creative.
00:15:54
Speaker
um you know, like like working in Flash or whatever. i was I had some part-time jobs with some different ah small companies developing for them. So I kind of just thought it was going to be that. And then I was doing Kingdom on the side a little bit as a hobby thing, which I quite enjoyed.
00:16:11
Speaker
And even during the, um when I started what would eventually become Kingdom Newlands, the PC Steam game, ah with Marco, at that point, I also thought, oh this is going to be like a side project that I'm going to do with him together.
00:16:26
Speaker
We're going to make ah an iOS port of this game, an iPad version of the Flash game. And we're just going to, you know, just release that little thing. released that port of the flesh game I wasn't really thinking like oh this is going be a full-time job it was kind of only through that process and then having a publisher involved that I realized oh you know there's real interest for this and I can do this maybe full-time also with you know the publisher pay paying us a monthly amount so that that kind of slowly took everything over and I kind of dropped the other side projects and focused fully on that
00:17:03
Speaker
Okay, okay. And like let's like, let's really get into Kingdom now and talk all about it. Because yeah, i'm I'm super curious. How did Kingdom like first begin? Like what was the spark behind it? And did it start during college? Or was it like right after?
00:17:22
Speaker
Definitely during. Yeah. The spark was me learning some pixel art. There was this animation program called Pixen, and I was kind of like using this to do little animations.
00:17:35
Speaker
um i did I was inspired by what's the game? There's this game engine in Flash called Flixel. um by Adam Atomic, who did Cannonbolt. And like in the early indie days, this was like quite a big deal. you know This like pixel art flash engine that you know would render everything in crisp pixels, and and pixel art was anyway kind of trendy.
00:17:57
Speaker
So that kind of really got me into like, oh, you know I should try to do some pixel art as well. And it seemed easy. Also, Sword and Sorcery, of course. you know You have these little characters, and they're like 16 pixels, and it just seems so appealing. Like, oh, if I just put two eyes in there, like it'll look like a little guy. And And that kind of got me onto making some pixel art characters, amongst which to the horse and the king. And then I had a little landscape. And I was like, well, what should you do in this landscape?
00:18:22
Speaker
And I just started adding more and more stuff to this little world, like some grass, some trees, some walls. I wanted it to be something like you know like kind of like a sim game where all your characters are like making money and you have to kind of like invest it in different things, like a deeper simulation. But I couldn't really figure that out.
00:18:39
Speaker
So in the end, I just added enemies and I was like, well, you know what, I guess they can shoot some enemies and then it will work too. Okay. Um, so at what point did you notice that like this idea was special compared to maybe one of your previous earlier ideas?
00:19:00
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting any in any case, the the like what makes you think an idea special, you know because maybe you think all of your ideas are special. And also looking back now, i think maybe Kingdom was more special than I realized at the time, because back then I thought, oh, you know I'm just going to move on to the next game. and it's going to be It's going to be equally as big as Kingdom, no problem.
00:19:20
Speaker
um But what makes you realize it's special? I think when you create something, maybe you don't even always know what makes it special to other people. Like you're so deep in it and it's all very special to you and you kind of just have to see the reaction from others. And I think for Kingdom The Flash game got quite some traction and people thought it was special and cute and it had a vibe to it. And I heard that and I thought, okay,
00:19:41
Speaker
I, that's also what I like about it, the the vibe and the ambience of the, you know, the little crispy pixel art nature. Um, so then I kind of rolled with that, so to say. Yeah. Okay. And yeah, cause, um, it started as a flash game, um before it was fully formed and it was fully finished as a flash game. Like what did the prototype look like back then? And like, what did the earliest version of that get right and what did it maybe get wrong?
00:20:12
Speaker
It is
00:20:16
Speaker
the earliest versions, but also maybe Newlands. like As a strategy game, it's not like a super solid strategy game. like There's not a lot of different tactics that will win, or there's like there's not a lot of synergy between units or any of that stuff. like It's quite shallow. And also, it's just like a good game should have multiple winning strategies maybe. And I think Kingdom It's almost more like a puzzle strategy game. it's like It's about figuring out what works and then applying that and like figuring out the mystery of like, oh, what does this unit do? Oh, that's how I use it. And I just use it that way. But like beyond that, there's not a lot of depth.
00:20:51
Speaker
And while making it, I also realized like that that is kind of a flaw But I also didn't quite know how to fix it whilst keeping the minimalism, you know, because you don't want like a UI that floats up where you can pick different units or have upgrade paths. Like I felt everything would kind of ah negatively affect the elegance. So...
00:21:12
Speaker
I think having stuck with that makes it stand out. And there are a couple like kingdom like games. And though I think they're indubitably much deeper strategic games, I do think they lose some of this minimal mystery of just looking at a scene and, and knowing that it's all on the surface. Like everything you see is there, you know, if there's a little guy walking, that's just a little guy walking. Like he doesn't have other stats except that he's there and yeah he's alive and you can throw one coin at him, you know?
00:21:40
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. um When did you release Flash version of the game? Just to kind of have like a timeline? 2015 off the top my head was that or 2013? Either one of the two.
00:21:52
Speaker
always mix it two thousand thirteen either one of to two i always mix it up um Yeah. Okay. to that Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then like what compelled you to pursue it further? Because then, yeah, you wanted to port the game, I believe, right? To iOS.
00:22:11
Speaker
Yeah. That was Marco's idea. he approached me. He had played the Flash game on Newgrounds and he said, hey, we should turn this into an iOS port. that was it like he said let's do that and initially I thought okay he's gonna he's gonna handle it he'll just do it and I can do other stuff and you know let him handle it and over the over the development I got more and more involved because I also saw so much more potential to like expand the game beyond just this what was in the flash version which is really very minimal you know the flash version there's like
00:22:43
Speaker
You cannot go into the forest. There's just one little castle in the middle with two forest edges on the side where the monsters come from. You can build some walls. And I think there's only you're kind of only supposed to survive 10 nights in that game. like It's kind of like geared towards if you make it to night 10, you won the game. So the Flash version is very minimal. And i throughout working on the port, I thought, no, you know what? We should just make this into like a full game for whatever definition of a full game.
00:23:10
Speaker
Yeah. And how did Marco like exactly come into the picture? Cause you said he, he reached out to you, but like, what was this, his role specifically? Like, was he also a developer or was he more? Okay. He was, uh, I, o an iOS developer.
00:23:26
Speaker
He had done a couple iOS games in the past. Um, and he just thought this would be a good candidate for port again. He found me online and he reached out and and got in touch. Okay, cool.
00:23:37
Speaker
um Is it right that you did a Kickstarter for the port? or did that Yeah. Yeah, because I did read about that. So I wanted to ask you, like, what was that like? And how did that start?
00:23:51
Speaker
Looking back at it, like you said before, like, oh, what things have you learned or what things do you need to unlearn? Like, I don't know. I also look look, this whole Kickstarter thing was also quite naive, but it was like what everybody was doing at the time, you know, like, oh, do a Kickstarter and going to make a million bucks and now you're going to make an amazing game. Like, in retrospect, I'm quite happy that we we did not succeed the Kickstarter because it can definitely be a trap.
00:24:13
Speaker
um We asked for, i think, $8,000 total to finish the game And we didn't make it. We got about halfway. And then we also kind of realized that doing a kick a Kickstarter for and an iOS version is kind of BS because you cannot give away the game. There's no such thing as like Steam keys on iOS.
00:24:34
Speaker
So even though people back the game, they would still have to buy it on iOS. So the best thing you can do is like give out t-shirts. And then if for $8,000, you end up having to give out like 200 t-shirts, that would have just been such a bad deal. So I'm really glad that we actually pulled the plug on it before it actually even either failed or barely succeeded, which would both have not been good. And that's also kind of the moment where a publisher stepped in, I guess, because they saw, Rough Fury saw the interest and they were like, hey, do you not want to work with us? Whereas before, during like the year before that, I always said, no, I want to do it full indie. I don't want a publisher. Like, you know, let's just do this ourselves.
00:25:12
Speaker
But at that moment during the Kickstarter, I kind of saw like, okay, maybe this is a little bit harder than I thought it was. So maybe it's nice to have a publisher. Okay. Yeah. And was the Kickstarter, were you still in college then or had you graduated by then?
00:25:28
Speaker
and Then I had graduated, then I had like another side, i had a part time job and I was doing like Kingdom on the side. Yeah, okay. And what was your part time job, if you don't mind me asking, like, because I just want to have like a picture of like what your life as a developer was like around that time, like right before your first big hit.
00:25:50
Speaker
So I had two, I had two part time jobs. and One is I helped out with art installations in public spaces like public games.
00:26:01
Speaker
And this was more like so subsidy driven, so like public funding driven. um That made me a little bit of money. And the other one is I did like flash development for, um, for the chat app inside a dating websites.
00:26:19
Speaker
Okay. wow So like where you can look at other people's pictures. Like I programmed this like gallery where you can go through the pictures. This was like very like early internet times where that kind of stuff was still in flash. Yeah.
00:26:30
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. And this, you were, uh, living in the Netherlands then, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK. um So, yeah, let's now just get into the port then.
00:26:46
Speaker
um Because that's, was the port like a straight port of the Flash game or was this also like a newer version of the game? the The port actually originally was intended to be a straight port of the Flash game. So we started working in, it was called Cocos 2D, I think, which is like a game framework for iOS.
00:27:06
Speaker
um and I learned Objective-C to be able to contribute there. But during the process, and I think kind of like around the time of the Kickstarter, and we decided to switch to Unity.
00:27:17
Speaker
And that's also where it became more than just a one-to-one port of the Flash game, but turned more into like a like its own game. And, you know, us coming up with a lot of extra features that would would make Kingdom 2 what it is now.
00:27:31
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. So yeah, let's, let's talk about that. Um, what were the most important creative principles guiding you while we were making that port that like bigger version of the game?
00:27:47
Speaker
um
00:27:50
Speaker
Well, if you know Kingdom, one of the main things is that it it's supposed to have just one button to interact. Like you can walk left and right and there's one action you can do.
00:28:02
Speaker
And... I think it's really neat that the Flash game got such a good response because that kind of confirms this um philosophy and then it's easier to stick to it. I imagine if we had designed this game on paper before anybody played it and said, oh, we're going to make this game and it's going to have only one button and it's going to be a strategy game, that then you you get into trouble and then you're maybe inclined to let go of that and you're like, well, you know what, but we need a second button because you need to be able to upgrade buildings or whatever.
00:28:31
Speaker
um But the fact that the Flash game was out there and it worked kind of gave gave us, gave me some ah some backup or what do you call it? Like some some confidence to be able to say, no, you know what? The one button thing works. Let's really, really stick to it.
00:28:47
Speaker
And so that's of the most obvious thing. The other thing is, I always like things to be like one to one, like one coin is like one coin in the game world that it represents one coin. It's not like a box that has a hundred gold or there's not like 50 cents or whatever. It's like everything is one.
00:29:05
Speaker
And if you give one coin to one of the little NPCs in the game, he becomes your citizen. That's also one. It's not like, oh, you have to pay him three or like, how many do you have? Like, I really like to keep things...
00:29:17
Speaker
like countable you know you can see on the screen okay i have 10 archers so it's it's like 10 of them because they're like individually there also the way you have to buy one bow or another hammer like individually for each of them that's also something that i really wanted to stick to this kind of like one-to-one representation that then means you you have to do less with UI. And of course, as the game grows, you want this progression where it goes like, well, you can upgrade the wall and then it costs two, four, eight.
00:29:43
Speaker
And it gets hard because like, how do you, if something has to cost 30 coins, how do you represent it on screen? That's a bit, you know, gets a bit unwieldy, but it also makes you creative. And then maybe sometimes you think, well, then we just don't have anything that costs 30 coins.
00:29:58
Speaker
um Like the boat you're building at the end of Kingdom Newlands, there we just had to split it in like individual boards that you're like hammering on the boat and each of them costs two coins to just kind of like split it up.
00:30:10
Speaker
And those things we we stuck to and pretty pretty strictly. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, restraints was a core part of the design.
00:30:22
Speaker
um even with like the newer version that you were making, um, was it hard to keep the game that simple? Were you ever tempted to do something more?
00:30:34
Speaker
Yeah, all the time. and But then there's always this thing of like, well, if we do that, we're crossing some kind of threshold. So let's just mitigate the issues as much as we can before running into that threshold.
00:30:50
Speaker
It's like how, for example, in combat, every unit is like standing in the same place because they all have to like walk up to the wall. which doesn't make for like super strategic combat.
00:31:01
Speaker
So like you could think of something where they like line up in a formation, but then you're crossing this threshold of like, no, that's making it like too complicated and unwieldy. So just kind of like do the best you can for them all standing in one place. And then you mitigate it somehow in a different way where it's like, well, if a boulder smashes into them, they don't all die because they're standing in the same place. Like you come up with some hack to make that like kind of acceptable without going up to like a next level of complication. And it's constantly these things where it's like,
00:31:29
Speaker
If we had to do this properly, we would make everything more complicated. So let's do it like 75% properly and hope that it's fine. And it's all like this kind of like balancing act of making things not too shitty while sticking inside this constraints, as you said.
00:31:45
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Um, were there any kinds of like different features that you wanted to add, but maybe would have broken like the minimalism and the purity of the game?
00:31:58
Speaker
Well, an interesting example is we often talked about having different kinds of resources. um And it's something that I always resisted because I said, no, there's just a gold coins and I don't know how to represent it And i held off the boat on that. But then in two crowns, there is a different resource. There's the gemstones.
00:32:16
Speaker
And i actually think it works great. And I should have just maybe been on board earlier because the gemstones just go into the same bag. It's all very one-to-one. If you have one, you see one. So it there was actually not as much as an objection there as I thought there would be.
00:32:30
Speaker
But that's one of the things, like having different types of resources, Or kind of like going into a whole meta game where you can like choose different loadouts when you start a game because you do end up thinking like, how do you keep it interesting that every run you can choose a different, have slightly different units at your disposal and that kind of stuff. But I just never could figure out a way to do it intelligently while keeping the player like inside the world and not like zooming out to a UI where it's like, now choose your loadout or whatever.
Design Choices and Challenges in Kingdom
00:33:00
Speaker
Yeah. Were you ever worried about that during development, like actually worried how people, players were going to respond to that? um No, what worried me, I think, was the AI was pretty, you know, they often don't exactly do what you want. Like, I think that's still, I still get emails where people go like, oh, but I would like to control how many soldiers go to the left and to the right. You know, and that's one of these things that would introduce some kind of UI or you would have to like really clutch your way around it with like a building that calls them all to one side. i think you can do something like that, no? In two crowns.
00:33:36
Speaker
Um, but then I just kind of always, well, I'll try to distribute them as well as I can. And then players will just have to suck it up. Yeah. okay Um, kingdom is also very, um, it's not handholdy at all. It doesn't really explain much. Um, how did you decide what not to explain to the player?
00:34:02
Speaker
Yeah, it that's also one of the things that you said earlier about like unlearning. And I think I just didn't really know how games were made or how how people interact with games. So I just kind of thought like, oh, people figure things out. And I'm not sure if that's true in general or if that was just true back then. Because, of course, if you go back 10, 20, 30 years, games are a lot less handholdy in general, right? If you play an old Nintendo game, you're like...
00:34:28
Speaker
what am I supposed to do? yeah Like I was, I, I, I played through the halo series a while back and I was playing halo one. And I was like, this is a button. This console panel on the wall is a button that I'm supposed to press. Like, how could I ever have known? Like you just, it's just a, you know, and new games are like objective here outline, arrows, map compass, you know, they're all like, they're definitely make sure that you know where to go.
00:34:51
Speaker
Um, so maybe a bit of it stems from that, uh, that philosophy or that like, branch of game design but what i wanted to say it's also it's it was also I'm not sure if you could make this game today where like people would accept knowing so little. Also, i'm not sure if I would have wanted it where people have to go on Reddit to figure things out, right? That takes you out of the game like a lot. Like then it's better if you have it in game that takes you out of the game a little bit. But if I have to alt tab into Reddit and go like, what does this little guy on the back of my horse do?
00:35:20
Speaker
It's not very elegant. I just kind of had him. I just thought, yeah, people will figure it out somehow. And I just didn't think about it much. And I was also more concerned with like cluttering up the the the view or like cluttering up the yeah the the world with with tutorial stuff.
00:35:39
Speaker
Yeah, so you you basically trusted the players that they would be able to discover things on their own. Yeah, what I did always try to make sure is that there's always a visual...
00:35:51
Speaker
tie from one thing to the other. So you never press a button in one place and then something happens in a different place unrelatedly. Like everything that happens happens on the screen while you're there. Like if you build a wall, the wall comes up while you're standing there. If you build one of these like portal teleporter things, i always make sure that it's visual on the screen what's happening. Even the little hermits on the back of your horse If you grab them and you bring them somewhere and you follow what they do, then you should see what they are doing. Like you can figure it out by like looking at the things. It's not like a disconnected, but then you realize that's all well and good. But like what is disconnected for people is different. Like not everybody can, can follow these threads if they're like very thin. So even though I justified it to myself, it's like, no, no, you can just follow, look at what the hermit's doing. Like he's going to build a little tower for you. Like if you lose him, then you still don't know. And it's still not maybe great. So I think in my newer games, I'm more, I'm more,
00:36:39
Speaker
I do explain more. Yeah. um Yeah, you already talked a little about the UI in the game. um I'm wondering, did you ever keep something because it felt right aesthetically, even if it wasn't the like optimal design choice?
00:36:58
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Is there anything particular that you're thinking of? I mean, i think I think the whole game was built like that. like It's like, oh, we should have...
00:37:09
Speaker
a little knight. We should have a monster that looks like this. We want to have a monster that like throws a rock. Like it's all based on how it looks. Like we want to have cool tall walls made out of so-and-so stone. And most of it works because it's like all the medieval trope things like archers and walls and the kind like you expect what they do.
00:37:26
Speaker
But it almost always starts with how it looks in the world. The water wheel, for example, like the farm issue upgraded has to have a water wheel because it just looks cool. And then we'll figure out, okay, what does it do then?
00:37:39
Speaker
Yeah. And now that we're also talking about the aesthetics, like Kingdom looks beautiful, like it's beautiful pixel art. How did you learn to, like yeah it sounds like you made a lot of progress um because you you were learning pixel art as you were basically making the Flash version.
00:38:00
Speaker
But then, yeah, how did you get from that to to the newer version of Kingdom? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of learning as I went.
00:38:13
Speaker
um And it's also, it's a kind of pixel art that's fairly basic, you know, and and especially if you look at the early kingdom, like the walk, the walk cycle is just their legs moving like this. Like their legs are always like vertical and they get closer and then one leg is moving. Like they're not actually like stepping or anything. That was only added later by Martin who did, you know, a great version of those characters.
00:38:36
Speaker
But I think... Pixel art is just a really nice hack to have things consistent. Like if you limit yourself to a low resolution, no matter what you make, it's going to look consistent. And then Kingdom has a world that is procedurally put together in the sense that like the trees are like, just put, like I drew one tree and then I just with code put a hundred trees on the screen.
00:38:56
Speaker
And this repetition also just gives it a a pleasant look. Like you can do a bunch with, with the procedural aspect of it by just like randomly placing some trees and some shrubs and they don't all have to be good individually.
00:39:07
Speaker
But the whole, because it's very consistent, they look good together. And I think that's that's how Kingdom looks good. And now, of course, with Newlands, we had Martin who did really, really great pixel art for like the the little knights with their swords and stuff.
00:39:21
Speaker
And then in Two Crowns, there's a whole team of pixel artists that are so much better. It's like every individual piece looks great as well there. But to start with, just combining many simple things ends up looking good too.
00:39:37
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Okay. um While you were making it, were you actively trying to remove layers between the player and the world? Layers in what sense?
00:39:50
Speaker
Well, in the sense that, like, because again, we talked about the minimalist nature of Kingdom, the minimalist UI. There's also no, like, spoken dialogue.
00:40:03
Speaker
Like, were you... Were you setting those boundaries boundaries from the beginning? Like there's not going to be UI, no spoken dialogue, no text showing up um just so that the player basically only sees the world. Were you actively doing that or did that just naturally happen?
00:40:22
Speaker
No, I think i did want to have everything in the world and not, you know, now I know that's called like diegetic game design and you don't always have to chase it. But every every indie dev is like the holy grail. Like, oh no, everything is in the world. Like you open your backpack and everything is just physically there. Like it's cool. It has a high coolness factor, but it's also definitely something I tried. And part of it, maybe I didn't know so well how to do things. Like I wasn't super familiar with making UIs or I found it cumbersome also, like it's somehow populating a UI with numbers is, it can be complicated in programming as well.
00:40:59
Speaker
So then i just, those two things kind of coincided and and I just tried to keep everything visible and in the world and not not required to take you out of it. There's some texts in the tu in the tutorial where the the ghost talks to you and goes like, recruit an archer or something.
00:41:13
Speaker
Yeah. and But that's from playtesting, we noticed that that's really needed like this, you know, just to get started first five minutes. And I always underestimated. And then then we did another playtest and the tutorial got a little bit longer because it was like, no, no, no. We need to tell the player to get another archer and to recruit another citizen because otherwise you're not going to make it just to like really reinforce this idea of what they have to do.
00:41:40
Speaker
And like in your opinion now, as a much more experienced developer, um what do you gain when information lives inside the game world instead of in menus and bars? And what do you lose?
00:41:56
Speaker
The most obvious answer, I guess, would be you gain immersion and you lose potentially depth. um You know, keeping people inside the world, you're not you're not showing as much of the games under the hood, so to say.
00:42:12
Speaker
Like you let the world be the world and you're not like
00:42:17
Speaker
lifting the curtain and going like, oh no, but it's really a simulation with numbers and here are the numbers and it's plus 10% so-and-so and plus 50%. You know, it's it's immersion and I think different players value immersion differently.
00:42:30
Speaker
but But I do like a game that just... What's the world like pulls you in and keeps you in yeah like you're just doing it. You're not like paused and it's like, hey, do you want to make this choice?
00:42:42
Speaker
You're just kind of like constantly ah confronted with that choice, like in Kingdom, like the enemy show up in your gate and it's like, OK, what are you going to do? Like nobody asked you, oh the enemies are going to show up in at your gate in two minutes. What do you want to do? It's like you're just in the world
Transition and Expansion of Kingdom
00:42:55
Speaker
doing these things. So the more you can keep a player in the world.
00:42:59
Speaker
I think it just it just helps you to to to immerse yourself. And I don't know what what's so pleasant about that actually, but I also enjoy it a lot myself in the games that I play. Yeah. Okay.
00:43:11
Speaker
Now the side-scrolling format of the game, did that create like constant design headaches or? So much.
00:43:21
Speaker
Yeah. Like it's, that's one of the things where there's really a lot of friction that again, we never really solved, but we just like mitigated it So like 75%, that's kind of like what I keep in my head, you know, it's like, well, if we can make it not terrible, then it's fine, I guess. But one of the things, for example,
00:43:41
Speaker
um In Kingdom, you have the castle in the middle, and then the enemies spawn from these portals out outside. And there is a fixed day-night cycle that runs on a timer. And you know what I would like in the game visually and for the experience is for the enemies to like hit your walls at nightfall. right You want this timing to coincide. But depending on where these portals are, and it's a little bit procedural as well, depending on the level layout, they're going to take so much longer to walk through your walls depending on if they're far away or not.
00:44:12
Speaker
So you have to like calculate how long of a way they have to get to your walls and you have to like spawn them way before. But that means sometimes they spawn during the day already. And if you happen to be there, that means you've got monsters walking around during the day, which is also no good.
00:44:26
Speaker
And then you have enemies of different speeds. So you're like, no, wait a minute. They actually have to all... walk as slow as the slowest one because otherwise the fast critters are going to arrive first and then two days later the slow guys will arrive.
00:44:36
Speaker
So you have to do all sorts of stuff to make sure that the experience of oh it's nightfall and they're at the gates like that that works and under the hood it's just kind of a mess because they have to walk so far because that's what you get in a 1D side-scrolling game like you have to lay out everything on a thin line so it only gets further and further from the from the center and that was This was never great. like It never fully worked, but I'm really glad that it doesn't didn't bother players to such an extent.
00:45:03
Speaker
Okay. Was there anything else that like... Yeah, what we talked about before, the fact that all the units are standing in one position. There is no positional strategy. There is no like... What do you call it? Like...
00:45:18
Speaker
formations or you know, units being able to defend others. Like it kind of barely works where you have to the knights with their shields. You know, the more coins you give them, the more hits they can take. And they're also all standing at the front, but one of them always takes the hit and then moves back a little bit. So again, it's just like fudge that it kind of works, but it was never fundamentally solved. And I think...
00:45:39
Speaker
It can be tempting as a game designer to go like, no, you know what? The system is flawed. It needs to be 2D because otherwise it's going to be no fun. But then you're like crossing this threshold. Oh, well, the actual doorbell went. Give me a sec. Yeah, no problem. Go ahead.
00:45:54
Speaker
Yeah, good. We can actually pick up from ah the port, the mobile port, um because once the mobile port was done, um like what kind of feedback did you receive and how did you then transition into the PC version?
00:46:18
Speaker
um Well, ah we never actually finished the mobile port. Okay. We decided to just ah pivot, so to say, to a game built-in Unity.
00:46:30
Speaker
Right, right. So after the Kickstarter, you immediately thought, okay, we're going to drop the mobile port and now we're just going to focus on a PC port. Yeah. I had been thinking about that for a while.
00:46:43
Speaker
Also because all my friends were using Unity and I was like, oh, Unity is cool. Like, can we not use Unity? That seems like cool. Like, I want to get into that. And so I was kind of, and also the publisher thought it would be a good idea to, you know, make it make it a PC game just because you have such a potentially larger market.
00:46:59
Speaker
a Yeah, I have some, I think I have some screenshots of like the early mobile version for you also. Okay, great. If you want some. Yeah, I'm going to show as much as I can during the video version of the podcast. Amazing. Yeah, I'll try to send you whatever I have of this like early materials. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Great.
00:47:18
Speaker
Um, yeah, you actually just talked about your publisher. And so I also want to transition into how that happened, how you got in touch with a publisher. um cause that doesn't, that seems like one of the more difficult processes, uh, for an indie developer, before they had the first big hit is finding a publisher.
00:47:41
Speaker
yeah Um, so how did that end up happening?
00:47:47
Speaker
The indie games market has changed a lot, I think, in the 10, 15 years since I worked on Kingdom. um So I think it was also just easier back then.
00:48:01
Speaker
I also, it feels like everybody who was making indie games kind of knew each other from the TIG forums. Like everybody would post what they were making. It's like, oh, you're you're making this game. Oh, you're from that game. And it was kind of like,
00:48:13
Speaker
It just felt like a handful of people. I know it wasn't like it must have been more, but it it did have that feeling of like, you know, if you basically if you go on TIG, you know what indie games are being made and a publisher can go there and they can just be like, oh, there's like five cool games. Let's see if we can sign one of them, which again, I'm sure it wasn't actually the case, but it felt a little bit like that. Yeah.
00:48:32
Speaker
In this case, um Jonas from Raw Fury was a new Marco. They were friends. So they kind of got in touch. And and through that, I got in touch with them. And it was their first it was their first game also. Okay.
00:48:46
Speaker
um But I think they were a lot less picky. I think there was something like if you were doing an indie game back then that had certain characteristics...
00:48:57
Speaker
like maybe like pixel art was of course a a trendy cool thing then i think there was almost automatically some interest from publishers yeah yeah yeah and the did you have to be convinced to work with a publisher because it sounded like you thought maybe you could do it on your own without funding yeah um yeah
00:49:21
Speaker
Because we had talked with them before, i had talked to Jonas during this like first year where we were where we were still doing the iOS port version. And there I always said, nah, let's just do it on our own. you know That's how I had released the Flash game.
00:49:36
Speaker
Also, at that point, I wasn't really thinking that this could be a full-time job. So I just kind of, you know I wanted like the ownership of it. And I wasn't really sure what a publisher did anyway. But in part, like doing this Kickstarter kind of showed me how much work it is to market a game.
00:49:50
Speaker
And I was like, oh, and this is just this is just a tiny preview of what it means to relate to release an actual game. So maybe it is nice to have some help. Right, yeah, because they took care of all the marketing, I assume.
00:50:05
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly. They signed us up for shows. The first show I went to was Gamescom. In Cologne, I remember showing the game for the first time there, which was like very exciting.
00:50:18
Speaker
i had no idea what I was in for. like The game didn't actually work on day one. I had to like go in and fix it, decorating a booth, like all that stuff. I don't think I would have even known where to look if it wasn't for a publisher. like I didn't even know that Gamescom was a thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
00:50:34
Speaker
so Did you have any conversations with Raw Fury that did you need to convince them of ah of Kingdom, the project, or were they already open to it because of Marco?
00:50:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's ah the the luxurious position that that we were in that they really wanted to to do this with us and and they were trying to convince us to work with them.
00:50:59
Speaker
Right, right, right. Okay. um Yeah, because I also wanted to ask you maybe a couple of questions about, you know, things like what makes a project feel fundable in the eyes of a publisher? Because that might be interesting to the people listening. Yeah.
00:51:17
Speaker
Do you maybe have some um has some wisdom to share about like what you should prepare for when talking to publishers?
00:51:28
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know if it's useful advice, but I have some thoughts. Like I always, like when people ask me for advice in terms of like, you know, I want to make an indie game, what shape should it take? Like, how should I do it? I always used to say, and might have to reevaluate this, but I always used to say like, if you can do it as a side project, do it, like pour your love into it and and do the parts that are fun.
00:51:54
Speaker
And if you made something good, there will be a response. rather than from day one, putting yourself in debt by, you know, quitting your job or like starting to work on it full time or trying to find a publisher.
00:52:10
Speaker
But I know that's a, that's, you know, that's a lucky situation to be in where you can do it on the site and, you know, hopefully something comes out that actually appeals to people. But on the, but on the other hand, the risk is also, or it's much harder to get funding these days as well.
00:52:26
Speaker
yeah, And I think there's a bit of like, ah obviously there's like so many games like that. I see it now at shows. Like I said, I used to know which games were being made. Like you just kind of felt like, oh yeah, that's the indie dev community. You kind of know what's going on. And now you go to a game show and it's like,
00:52:42
Speaker
I will know zero games of all of that's being made. And they're all coming out in the next month. and i'm like, wow. And for publishers, it's the same, of course. So they can be a lot more picky. They can afford to be a lot more picky.
00:52:53
Speaker
They have to be because not all games will
Navigating the Indie Game Market
00:52:55
Speaker
be successes. So how do they pick? And what has started happening is a little bit this thing that I don't entirely agree with where publishers are looking to fund games that are basically already successful. It's like, oh yeah, if you have a hundred thousand wishlist, they'll come in with money.
00:53:11
Speaker
But like to get there, what do you need to do? And I think
00:53:17
Speaker
it's it's just tricky all around. I have this romantic picture of like game studios where like five, 10 people work. They're really good at their craft. And you know that if you give them money, they will make something great. And you know, but but maybe that time is also just over and it's just a bit more precarious. Like publishers are looking for solo dev wonders that they can just fund a tiny bit and then make a million. Like I'm sure that you know, the the listener viewers can come up with a couple examples of those types of games.
00:53:46
Speaker
Um, but it's also a risk for them to fund bigger studios. Well, anyway, this is like a huge tangent to your question of what makes a game appealing. I mean, essentially, if you can show that it appeals to people, like if you can show any kind of like, Hey, I posted this on Twitter and I got a hundred retweets, like just showing that if you show something about the game, that, that it, that it clicks with people, like that is the most important thing. And that's also the, the, the one thing that I work towards. Like I want to make something that if I can show a tiny bit of it, people go like, Oh, Hey, this is interesting.
00:54:18
Speaker
and And if you can show that to a publisher, then I think you almost don't need anything else in terms of like and numbers and and projections and genre soup.
00:54:29
Speaker
yeah yeah okay oh that's uh that's really good advice um feel free to feel free to disagree with me by the way if anybody has different thoughts you can always reach me on the internet and tell me no you're so wrong about this because i i love to to to revise my my opinions okay um Yeah, let's go back to Kingdom because then yeah you've made the PC port and how did it feel to finish like that version of Kingdom? Because then after that one, you made Kingdom New Lands.
00:55:06
Speaker
Yeah. But with Kingdom, it when the PC port, it became clear like, oh, we have something on our hands here. Yeah. So...
00:55:18
Speaker
I am really bad at planning. I still am. um So when Raw Fury said, hey, should we launch the game in September? i said, fine.
00:55:29
Speaker
ah We'll do it. like I like deadlines. I think deadlines are like the only thing keeping you sane. Because like no matter how deep you are in development and like you know how stressful it is, just the idea of like there's an end to it. like No matter what, it will be finished in some way, shape, or form at this date, I think.
00:55:45
Speaker
is what really helps me a lot. But it is stressful also. And like I said, I'm really bad at planning. So we had so many features that we wanted to put in. And as an indie dev, like the concept of gold master doesn't apply to you. You know, it's like the three days before launch, you're adding features into the game. So then what launched this first Kingdom, which is now known as Kingdom Classic, was in my eyes quite flawed.
00:56:08
Speaker
There was just bugs, but also gameplay-wise, like there wasn't really a way to win the game. like I felt like it wasn't like a well-rounded experience. So we asked Raw Fury, like you know should we not do a kind of 1.5 re-release, new title, the definitive version, director's cut. That's what, for me, is New Lands. like That version that the first game should have been had we planned it correctly. But we were lucky enough that the first version also was successful. So it gave us the the confidence to say, like okay, we can spend another...
00:56:38
Speaker
I think we spent another year to build new lands. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the version that I first played. That was a new lands. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. I think there was always a bit of a point of disagreement between Rhea and Raw Fury, which is fine. Like they're free to do whatever they want, but they wanted to keep classic around as its own game.
00:57:00
Speaker
whereas Whereas for me, because some players say, oh, it's a different experience and it's cool. So then Ruffury said we should give them that. But for me, it's kind of a bit of a it's a flawed game compared to Newlands. So it's interesting that they, i think it's also free. Like they use it as an introduction to the to the franchise or something.
00:57:16
Speaker
And then you play Kingdom, what's can now called Kingdom Classic. It was never called Kingdom Classic. ah Only in retrospect did they brand it as Kingdom Classic. And then you're getting experience that I think is just in many ways worse than Newlands or almost in all ways, i think okay Is it maybe fair to say but that like Raw Fury maybe sees New Lands as a sequel, but you see it more as like this prototype version of the actual game?
00:57:41
Speaker
so Yeah, something in along those lines. or it's like
00:57:47
Speaker
Yeah, it's something like you you make a game and you realize it can be so much better. And I also think we shouldn't be too strict about like what's a s sequel and what isn't, you know, like a game is like something, it's a product that's like constantly evolving, especially nowadays.
00:58:00
Speaker
So you make a version of the game and some things are good and some things are bad. And as a creator, you want to make it better. So then you you release something better. And it's kind of nice that you don't have to decide, is this a full on sequel? Because that comes with expectations.
00:58:12
Speaker
ah And it's also okay if some players are like, oh, but I like the old version better and you keep that around as well. So I actually am i'm on board with it too. Okay. Yeah. Was there something that went very wrong maybe during development, maybe specifically Newlands?
00:58:31
Speaker
um Or was it like smooth sailing after Kingdom, now known as Classic, had already been released?
00:58:42
Speaker
That was actually the smoothest part because we knew what the game was. We knew it would be so much better if we added a couple of things. We could hire some people to work on it. um So from classic to Newlands was pretty smooth. I also remember that's when I stopped working from my bedroom, which was, I think, good for my mental health.
00:59:03
Speaker
And I just kind of it felt like, okay, this is a sustainable day job. Whereas the run up to the first launch was fraught with more like anxieties and like, uh,
00:59:16
Speaker
You know, there was also, it wasn't always smooth between me and Marco, I must say. Like we had some disagreements about how to implement things in the game. And i would go in in the weekend and like code things up to show that like my imagination like was right. And like, you know, look at this, like I built it like this. Don't you think it works now?
00:59:33
Speaker
And like, you know, there was definitely more of this, like, yeah, it felt like more pressure. And then after this first version was out, Kingdom Classic was out and we worked towards Newlands, it felt more like, okay, now,
00:59:45
Speaker
we can sail towards what the game should have been. Then it felt more yeah chill. Okay. Yeah. Cause on kingdom classic, it was just you and Marco and Amos doing the music already.
01:00:01
Speaker
um and I'm thinking if I don't forget anybody in a very rude way that only
01:00:13
Speaker
It might've been just the three of us, me and Marco and Amos who did work. And then of course, from a few readers, Gordon, Jonas, who like did the publisher things and Gordon also, you know, always helped us with game design things, but yeah. Okay.
01:00:28
Speaker
okay And were you still now doing part-time jobs or maybe when new lands, when you were developing that, were you already like full-time working on kingdom?
01:00:40
Speaker
yep Yeah. okay pretty much Since we signed with Rock Fury, I started working on it full time because they were funding it. So I was getting and
01:00:49
Speaker
i was getting a salary where I thought, wow, that's so much money. and We're like so ripping them off. Can also be, ah you know, the fact that we thought we could build a game for $8,000 with Kickstarter was also...
01:01:04
Speaker
you know showing the kind of attitudes that we had back then, which is good. you know be Be scrappy. Just build build it. OK. um Maybe um one last question before I want to transition into the sequels. um What was maybe the the emotionally hardest part of making Kingdom? You already maybe talked about that there was some, a little bit of friction between you and Marco. Was that the most difficult part emotionally for you? Or was there maybe something else?
01:01:40
Speaker
um I think they always say like, you're not you're not your work, right? Like, you you are not a game. But as an indie dev, you do inevitably identify really strongly with what you're building. And every day, you just think that what you're doing defines your entire like person so that just can be hard but it also makes it so satisfying when it works like I'm not even against that like if you're making any kind of art and I'm not saying that all games are art or even that this one is but you also do identify with it and I think that also makes things good so yeah
01:02:21
Speaker
Okay. And then, yeah, you release Kingdom New Lands. um That became, yeah, like a really big hit. um But when did it start to feel like it might become more than just one game? Like, how did that transition happen? Because there there's been more sequels. Yeah.
01:02:42
Speaker
How did that, what was that like? I think that's around the time where i I also left Raw Fury to take care of the franchise because at that point, like starting from the very first pixel art I did to, you know, the end of New Lands and then like the support cycle on that,
01:03:03
Speaker
had been seven years or something. I had been working on little pixel art knights and archers and things for seven years. And also all these things that we talked about before, like these areas of friction where it's like it's a 1D side-scroller strategy game or, you know, it doesn't have UI, you start feeling them also. So like your creative space is beset on all sides by compromises where you're like, yeah, we had to do it this way because otherwise this other thing doesn't work.
01:03:29
Speaker
And that just made me really feel like I'm not sure if I can contribute to this in know in a fun way while i'm while I'm also enjoying it. So then we started talking to Raw Fury and of course they they you know it was it was selling well and they thought it deserves a sequel.
01:03:46
Speaker
And that was kind of that prompted us to talk about me handing it over to Raw Fury for them to build the sequels that they wanted. Yeah. Okay. So you were not much involved and with Two Crowns, I assume.
01:04:00
Speaker
Two Crowns only, i didn't program on Two Crowns. i just consulted on like, you know, how how to how to carry forward this this game design, like how to how to make sure it's a kingdom game.
01:04:13
Speaker
Right, right. Okay. And when exactly did you chose to sell the IP? um Around what time was that again? Yeah, that's a good question. I would have to look it up off the top of my head.
01:04:33
Speaker
Maybe there.
01:04:36
Speaker
something around there And I thought at the time, like, oh, you know, i'm just goingnna I'm just going to crank out another hit, no problem. Like I did one, so like I have a, my so my score is 100% now, so I'll just do another one real quick, which was also um humbling to realize that, you know, not not everything in Kingdom was just like me spinning gold for my fingers, but it's also, there's a lot of luck involved and of course everybody else's work that can just come together in a way that makes one game singularly nice and you know there's no guarantee that you can just replicate that but uh yeah i did really want to go on and do different things um yeah and then i'm i'm just wondering like why why not choose to keep the ip but like hand the reins over to someone else someone else yeah yeah i think
01:05:33
Speaker
financially I would have been better off that way. Like not, not that I'm not to say that I'm not like well off now, this was a good deal, but I think, you know, of course with hindsight, you could say that would have been smarter. And I think somebody who is like business smarter would have also done that in any case.
01:05:51
Speaker
But for me, it's also a I thought it would be baggage. Like, I don't want to, I don't want to be involved because I don't want to worry about them making decisions that I don't agree with creatively. You know, I wanted a clean cut to be able to say, look, I'm going to do something new, like fully. I'm in general a person who can kind of only do one thing at a time. I can really fully focus on one thing. So that's also why I just prefer to just hand it over and say, look guys, it's it's yours now.
Post-Kingdom Projects and New Directions
01:06:18
Speaker
And I'm going to do different things. Right. Yeah. Because otherwise you probably would have still have to be involved in some way. They would still come to you, maybe ask questions and what can we do? I mean, rationally, probably not. Like, I think if I would have just said, Hey, I'm keeping a so-and-so percent stake, uh, but don't ask me anything that would have been, would have worked.
01:06:39
Speaker
It's just psychologically for me. I just, I just wanted the clean slate, you know, the cleanness and not, yeah. Okay. Um, yeah, now I'd like to talk to you about what that success was like for you.
01:06:56
Speaker
Um, cause I'm wondering, you know, if there's maybe something that people misunderstand about the moment a game breaks through, like, what was that for you? And, and what is something people maybe misunderstand about that specific moment of like, okay, my game is a big hit.
01:07:16
Speaker
Like what what are the feelings that, that what did you feel? good
01:07:23
Speaker
I would say the feelings are mostly good. um It also felt really validating to be, you know, kind of like recognized in this community of indie games that I had been looking at on the internet for so long, like following all these other ah famous indie games. And now, you know, through, of course, commercial success and also ah from critics kind of being put on the same...
01:07:50
Speaker
a shelf. No, that's not a saying, but you know what I mean? As them and just being like, yeah, you know, I'm really an indie game dev now. So it definitely feels good. um i don't think I kind of went from just, I never saw what's in between, you know, i went from small online experimental games to kingdom so i also kind of thought like oh this is normal like hence also what i said before maybe a little bit of arrogance of me going like oh yeah i can just do another one and it all just go exactly the same um
01:08:30
Speaker
so i i might at some points maybe i could have even enjoyed it more if i had known what a unique situation it is you know like yeah kind of i mean i also tweeted this the other day was like is kingdom really the best thing i'm ever going to make like Fuck, if that's true, oh, sorry. and If that's true, then start then then I should have maybe even like actively enjoyed it more. But I definitely, ah it it was really cool to to show the game to people and to get this response that they really enjoy it. It's it's a special feeling. And it's also, in a way, it's addicting. like That's why I'm still making games, because you hope to to get that. you know An email that you get where somebody says, like oh, this game was so special to me. like The world is so beautiful or whatever. like It's the best thing.
01:09:10
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Did the success like change your taste or your confidence as a game developer?
01:09:22
Speaker
um Yeah, like I said, you know i thought i could... and and mean I'm not sure if I really thought I would immediately replicate it, but I definitely did hand over Kingdom and think, okay, I'm going to immediately make the next genius thing.
01:09:36
Speaker
um And it's it's definitely was a bit of a roundabout way before I worked on Cloud Gardens, which was also a success, but not the scale of Kingdom. um So I do think I'm just happy that i You also see some indie devs who make it so big that they never make another game because at that point, you know what are how are you going to top like this enormous success or like anything you do will be put in in relation to this earlier game?
01:10:05
Speaker
And maybe you also have this feeling of like, well, I have a prototype, which is cool, but it's not that cool. So like why would I even continue with it? you know You're like looking for something of such a high bar. I'm really happy that I i didn't experience that. like I'm really happy creating things And I can still kind of let go of the need of for them to be very to be very successful.
01:10:25
Speaker
um I remember thinking Cloud Gardens, like I just have to make this. And if it flops, I'm i'm happy that I made it because it's what I wanted to create. And that's if you have that attitude, then you've already won by the time you shipped your game because then you just made the thing that you wanted to make.
01:10:43
Speaker
Now there's definitely a little bit more Anxieties about financial because financial financial things because I'm in quite some time with garbage country and you know, you you pour a lot of time and money in it and I've got people working on it also like it's definitely no longer a three, four people team.
01:11:02
Speaker
So then you kind of start having ah different thoughts about what defines success, you know, like breaking even and stuff. Anyway, it's a long, long detour. line So it's not like you felt trapped by expectations after Kingdom. You felt confident that you could just replicate that success again. Yeah.
01:11:25
Speaker
I'm actually kind of happy that you put it that way right now because it's giving me a new thought because you know you said, oh you were you trapped by expectations? like I always thought, oh, I was a bit naively arrogant that I could do another successful game so quickly and easily.
01:11:40
Speaker
But now that you frame it that way, you could have also been trapped by your expectations and and not think like you can make an another successful game and always... compare yourself to that. So in that sense, I'm happy about being a bit naive and just going on to the next thing because that's how you make something at all.
01:11:55
Speaker
Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah. After spending so much time with Kingdom, what were you hungry to do differently with your next game? Because I i know that Cloud Gardens was basically a chunk of this really big game that you were trying to make.
01:12:15
Speaker
um yeah you wanted to do that immediately after Kingdom or like how did the idea for your next game kind of form yeah I wanted to do something 3D I guess I don't know I just wanted to also evolve beyond pixel art and make 3D I don't know if that's smart because there's an elegance to 2D games that just let you focus on game design and 3D is quite hard I've discovered now six years later um but a that's That's one of the things. And yeah, it was part of this where I started working on this MMO because at the time there was also a game engine called SpatialOS or like a multiplayer engine that whose pitch was like, oh, everybody can make an MMO now. It's like super easy to make an MMO.
01:12:57
Speaker
So I was kind of like experimenting with that, I think. It wasn't even huge. I just got stuck between the technology and the game concept and and spatial earth oh Spatial OS was changing every month what it was, what they wanted to do. like Then they turned into like a metaverse company and they're like, i don't know, like they were also constantly changing. So I was building trying to build a game on that. I also didn't know how multiplayer games really worked. So the technical process was just really slow.
01:13:22
Speaker
And I mean, it's also, it's the cliche, right? Like, oh, indie dev thinks they're going to make an MMO. Like, that's like the one thing you tell everybody not to do. And I kind of thought it, but it was, honestly, I think in retrospect, it would have been closer to like what we now call like friend slop, just a bunch of people doing something fun in the world rather than like a full on MMO with like stats and blah, blah, blah. It's more like,
01:13:43
Speaker
I still think it's just really fun if you put people in ah in a multiplayer world. Like when we were playing Counter-Strike, like sometimes you don't even play the game, you're just jumping around together and that's just already fun. And I think, you know, it's just fun to make use of that, like whether we call it like friend slop or not, but being in a 3D world together is just, yeah, fun. Yeah, it's also, it's,
01:14:07
Speaker
It's funny because it sounds like this new project that you were working on was like almost the exact opposite of Kingdom, where Kingdom was very like small and minimum and more simple.
01:14:20
Speaker
Or were you actively trying to make something very different from Kingdom? hmm.
01:14:29
Speaker
I think it would have had some of the trademarks of what I now would consider like how I like making games. Like I did want everything to be this, have this one-to-one representation in the world. Like the items that you carry, I wanted them to be physical and you could pick them up as a player and put them in places.
01:14:47
Speaker
I wanted an emphasis on nature. i wanted some themes of like the um the finiteness of things, you know, like in Kingdom, you can never really win. You just have to build a boat and leave.
01:14:59
Speaker
Like, so I think in some senses it would be similar, but it would be, it was going to be a 3D multiplayer game. So in that sense, definitely very different. Okay. Yeah. And how long,
01:15:12
Speaker
How long did you work on it? I i thought I read maybe two years before you decided this is not working. And yeah like, how did you come to that decision? Yeah, it was two years. And then there was, I mean, you know, it's all like so long ago now, but there was this argument between Unity and Improbable, the company behind SpatialOS, about some licensing fees.
01:15:35
Speaker
And then I just thought, what am I doing here? Like I had made so little progress on the game concept itself. I was trying to like hit a moving target in terms of like tech technological implementation.
01:15:47
Speaker
ah and then also where I was like, well, what if Unity and Improbable don't work together at all anymore? Then, you know, that's just the end of it anyway. And that just made me realize it was too slow. And then in the game was this plant simulation already because you could build things together and it would be overgrown. And then I just thought, okay, I'm going to salvage the plant simulation and turn it into a game. And that game is cloud gardens.
01:16:08
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And,
01:16:12
Speaker
Did it feel maybe refreshing to work on Cloud Gardens after that? Because I've heard in like other podcasts that you were just trying to salvage something. What yeah made you want to do that instead of just starting with a completely starting over project? Yeah.
01:16:30
Speaker
Yeah, I guess I felt the need to have something to show for that time, you know, to have the feeling of like, these two years were not for nothing. Like I built something in that time that I that i that i turned into this game.
01:16:42
Speaker
But it's more like an accounting strategy where you're like, nope, the time was not a waste. Like I put it into something. Yeah. Were you also maybe worried around in that time? Because you you were working on for two years and I imagine you didn't really have an income. You probably were you working on other things to to make money or were you just living off of the money you've already had?
01:17:06
Speaker
Yeah, the latter. um I had also because I was working by myself, of course, it's relatively cheap. And I could also um fund some people working together with me on Cloud Garden still.
01:17:20
Speaker
um So that was okay. I always had in my mind that like, I have the money for one flop, like I can do a flop, like I'm not in debt or anything. yeah And then that's ah that's a comforting feeling.
01:17:36
Speaker
that you have at least the, there is room for one game to go bad. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And luckily it didn't. So that's good. Now I have another, i have again, room for one flop.
01:17:51
Speaker
Um, what part of you as a developer comes through more clearly like in cloud gardens, because cloud gardens is like very Zen.
01:18:04
Speaker
Is that, are you like as a person very zen was that intentional to to make this just a very chill and zen experience was that maybe a reflection of how you were feeling around that time or yeah or how you want to feel or how you want to feel exactly yeah um i the zen i just really like You know, like any game is a simulation, like no matter if it's just the the blades of grass waving in the wind, you know, and just like having that on your screen is is just so magical to me that I think any game will have a strong dose of that where you're just looking at the world and the way it's put together and the way it gently moves.
01:18:46
Speaker
And I don't know, it just tickles a part of my brain watching that myself. So add that's something that I chase in in Kingdom, in Cloud Gardens. And now again, you know, like garbage country.
01:18:57
Speaker
also has a lot of nature and moving and water and yeah something about it appeals to me at a very base level i don't really know where this comes from okay um then you've also worked on pizza possum um and yeah like that again has a very different energy than yeah your other games like yeah um what attracted you to to pizza possum um So the that project started with me and Friedemann, a friend of mine, just saying, hey, we should work together.
01:19:34
Speaker
Let's just find a project and work on it together. And we went through some prototypes. And in the end, he had this funny little character, the boss from peterap possum Possum. And then we just decided, yeah, let's let's make that game. And it was very much about...
01:19:47
Speaker
You know, the thing I said earlier about like, oh, you identified with the project and it's like so much struggle. And if it succeeds, you succeed as a person and you like you tie up your whole person in it. um Pizza Possum was kind of like the obvious, the ah opposite of that, where it's, you know, we're going to come into the office together. We're going to have fun making fun stuff.
01:20:07
Speaker
and we're going to go home at 4 p.m. to exercise and have a life and just really have like that this the process be very pleasant. And it worked out that way. Like I think it was the most fun I had building a game because you're not so constantly putting yourself in the struggle mindset, you know, where it's like,
01:20:26
Speaker
if this game is not the best thing ever, you know, it was kind of more like free creativity. and And I think the game also shows that, that it's like just fun, bouncy, cute. And it turned out quite good. Also a limited time period, you know, because the longer a game goes on, the more you can have struggling feelings where you're thinking, oh, snap, I'm two years in What am I doing? Is it good enough? Does it justify working on this for two, three, four years? So limiting the time period is also a very good way to avoid struggle and to get real world confirmation that what you did was okay. And you know, right, right. Cause yeah. So you set a deadline for yourself when you started making like pizza pasta, cause how, yeah how long did it take you to, to make that?
01:21:12
Speaker
Less than a year. We originally intended six months. We didn't quite make that. I think it turned out to be more eight, nine. And then we did some support because when Raw Fury wanted to pick it up for publishing, we also jumped in for a couple of months later. So it it did get a little bit outside of that. But yeah, the idea was to do it really in six months.
01:21:31
Speaker
Okay. Kind of modeled on, in Berlin, there is the the university, HDW, and they have these like semester projects. And that's something that Friedemann took from there, like the shape of the project where it's like in one semester, so six months. You start with one month prototyping, and then rest is production, like this kind of.
01:21:51
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay.
Current Projects and Design Philosophies
01:21:54
Speaker
Let's, um, fully move on to garbage country. Cause I, yeah, I'm very eager to talk about that. Cool. Yeah. Cause it seems like another big shift for you. Um, cause yeah, you did cloud gardens, you did pizza possum.
01:22:07
Speaker
Um, what first pulled you towards garbage country?
01:22:14
Speaker
Yeah. Um, So the name came kind of later and it was also the name of this MMO I was building, but that's maybe a bit besides the point, but it was similar to Kingdom where I had the character controller. You know, I had this off-road vehicle where I built this little raycast physics thing for it.
01:22:34
Speaker
And I was just driving around and I was like, this is kind of fun. And that's exactly the same The same way it happened with Kingdom where I had this horse and I was walking back and forth with the horse and I was like, hey, this is kind of fun.
01:22:46
Speaker
and And from there, I just started expanding. um It's like, okay, there's a car. What kind of world should it drive in? Like it should be, I guess, a little bit of this overgrown ruins world that I like. There should be nature, et cetera. Yeah.
01:23:02
Speaker
Definitely overscoped immediately, where you know I could have just made a clean driving exploration game, but instead I turned it into like a big game with items and stats. And there's tower defense in there because I thought I have to go back to the roots a little bit. Like Kingdom has tower defense. People like tower defense. I enjoy tower defense a lot. So I just put a whole tower defense game in there, which I'm not sure if it's super smart future me would go back in time and say don't don't do it just keep it small um is there a certain design itch that garbage country is scratching for you that your earlier games didn't um is it maybe the the 3d aspect or is it something else i really like
01:23:48
Speaker
um having a world that you can explore from different, like doing different things in the world, like just giving you a canvas to have fun little interactions, like a short hike does this really well.
01:24:02
Speaker
And I think that's something that that game has that I never did before, but I'm also seeing now that it's hard and the the larger you make the world, the exponentially harder it gets. And that's why ah we're now also with closer to seven people rather than one.
01:24:20
Speaker
Okay. um How would you then like describe the the heart of garbage country in your own words? Because like you said, it mixes driving, exploration and tower defense.
01:24:35
Speaker
um Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a bit it's a bit too... you know
01:24:43
Speaker
I already see that a flaw of this game is that it doesn't really mix the ingredients. Like the tower defense, they're like boss battles. Like you're exploring the world, upgrading your car, and then you're finding these locations where you do a boss battle and the boss battle is tower defense.
01:24:57
Speaker
And I mean, a lot of games have like, exploration and fighting kind of like separated right like take mirrors at your shadow of the colossus or whatever like there's always kind of like an exploration period and a fighting period so that's how i justify it to myself but i definitely do see that like were this to be like a master class game design these two elements would be integrated more like it's they're um But well, it is it is what it is now and players and enjoy it a lot. I also enjoy it.
01:25:25
Speaker
I think there's also something fun about having the two phases just to keep the other thing interesting. You know, you're like driving around and then you see this like boss battle area and you're like, oh shit, it's going to go down. And then you like make sure that you're ready for the battle and then you go in and then once you win, you're relieved and you can like go explore some rivers again.
01:25:41
Speaker
um So yeah, I think that's kind of like the feeling of the game. Okay. And um how long have you been working on Garbage Country? um
01:25:55
Speaker
I'm almost about to say three and a half years, which would be crazy, but I think it's true. Okay. Yeah, because I'm wondering how long... it maybe took for all those elements to start making sense.
01:26:11
Speaker
Because yeah I also wonder, was there like a gradual introduction of those elements or was it from the beginning, like we're going to mix all these elements together and then yeah did it take a while for for all those elements to work together? Yeah, it's the latter, definitely. i i I thought one day when I had the car controller and I was thinking, okay, what kind of game is this supposed to be?
01:26:32
Speaker
I also thought i wanted I want to go back a little bit to my comfort zone of Kingdom where it's like, you know, it's tower defense. just fun. So I thought I'm going to put tower defense in there. I wrote it out. It's going to be driving and tower defense and you loot stuff. So you get more stuff for the tower defense. And then from the tower defense, you get upgrades for your car. And on paper, it seemed like perfect game loop.
01:26:53
Speaker
And that's what we've been working towards since, as you said, like... it takes a while for everything to come together and now it is slowly coming together but I'm not sure if I'm a fan of this process where you design a game on paper and then you're just working towards that goal because there's so many in-between steps where you where you could have done something different that may be more fun but then in your head you have like no we gotta we're aiming towards that game over there in the distance because we wrote it out on paper and that's what we're making um and I think the next game I really want
01:27:25
Speaker
write nothing down and just basically sit down every day, play the game with the team and be like, okay, what can we add? What's fun? Like, where does this need to go? Like be more flexible, but maybe it's not in my personality either. I don't know. Okay. Yeah. So it sounds like the the mechanics came first.
01:27:45
Speaker
And did you then start thinking more about the world and the atmosphere, what the general vibe was going to be? Part of the motivation was also I wanted to create cloud gardens, but you can drive around in it because cloud gardens has these really nice overgrown worlds, yeah but you're interacting with them in a very superficial way. you know, you're just throwing plants on them.
01:28:07
Speaker
And I thought these worlds also have something evocative and it would just be really fun to explore them like by going in it. And that was also a little bit of the motivation. Okay. Okay.
01:28:19
Speaker
um What has been like the hardest thing to figure out so far while making Garbage Country?
01:28:29
Speaker
um Many things. It's it's hard. like It's in so many ways hard, both technically and gameplay-wise. And It has a procedural map, but it's also a game with fixed levels where you can drive to and having players navigate that world without issue is very hard.
01:28:46
Speaker
um Making sure the world is interesting enough to explore, even though you're headed to these like main locations. um In the beginning, we had characters you could get out of the car.
01:28:58
Speaker
It was kind of like modeled on like Pacific Drive or Caravan Sandwich or something like that, you know, where you have a character in a car. And I just thought it would be fun to run around outside the car. But that was a nightmare because players would spend so much time outside the car.
01:29:13
Speaker
Then they would lose track of the car. and And I'm like, well, if this is a driving game, you know you should just be in the car all the time. um So that was like, but I'm good that we that we decided early enough to get rid of the the character on foot so that you just are the car.
01:29:30
Speaker
Sometimes I wish we had been brave enough to get rid of the tower defense. But then again, there are so many driving games out there that I'm also happy that Tower Defense sets it apart. don't know. It's one of the things that I'm most conscious about that it's like a whole can of worms, you know, and and yeah.
01:29:49
Speaker
So there was like a version of garbage country, like prototypes where you could get out of the car and explore and do stuff. Yeah, you can still explore. But the problem is that if you can get out of the car, you have to do or you have to almost do double the level design because you have to make sure that every every level is suitable for the car and for the player on foot.
01:30:07
Speaker
Like I mentioned, there's a lake or something and the car can drive through it, but the player can also get into it. like Then you have to make sure that all the riverbanks are not too steep that the player cannot get out. like You really have to make every square meter suitable, both for driving and for walking. And that was also just so much effort. So I'm really happy that we did that.
01:30:26
Speaker
Wow. It sounds like you did have to scrap like a lot of work. Oh, yeah. That's another downside of not really thinking things through and just building stuff that you end up throwing away a lot of things. But I think every game throws away a lot of things. There's always this feeling of the grass is greener on the other side. When you look at other games, and you're like, whoa, this worked out so well. They probably went from start to finish in a straight line, but no game does that. like I think every game ends up just tossing stuff out because it doesn't work.
01:30:54
Speaker
Yeah, okay. um Does garbage country like reflect the shift in how you think about, you know, game design compared to kingdom? Or are you approaching it mostly in the same way? Like, I'm also wondering how you approach to and stuff like that in garbage country.
01:31:14
Speaker
Yeah. There is still this feeling that I want things to be represented, even though Garbage Country has an inventory with items, but at least the items are icons that are just, you know, kind of like World of Warcraft style. Like you have this satisfying little grid of little things in your inventory, which I feel is still pretty one-to-one to me.
01:31:34
Speaker
um But in terms of, The process, I think it's the first game where I wrote out a lot and then said, okay, this is the game we're going to make. Whereas in Kingdom, it was really more of this like day-to-day thing of what can we add to today that will make it more fun.
01:31:49
Speaker
and But through doing this, I'm coming to see that maybe the other process is more enjoyable and might even yield a better game. Just like keeping things more spontaneous and and loose rather than planning out this huge game and then you just have a to-do list that lasts three years to build it. Okay.
01:32:11
Speaker
um
01:32:14
Speaker
Besides like being able to get out of the car, um something that you scrapped, how much has the game changed since you started making it? Was there other parts that you scrapped or wanted to implement other ideas?
01:32:32
Speaker
There are still a lot of ideas. Like we're also not done yet. And there's definitely, if you ask me again in three months, I think the answer will be different because now I'm still at way too optimistic as is in my character about all the stuff that we'll be able to add.
01:32:47
Speaker
um I think we're at the point where we're adding a lot of life to the world as in things that happen, little NPCs that are flying around or just more stuff.
01:32:59
Speaker
And there is a list of stuff that I also want to add. And I'm sure that some stuff, some things will get cut from that list. Like we cannot have certain environment interactions, like a but I don't even know, like it's going to,
01:33:13
Speaker
Yeah, boats. i don't know if we're to have boats. I kind of would like to have something that floats, but who knows?
01:33:21
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, and how do you approach... like certain, how do you approach like the, maybe the mystery around the game when you're playing it or the story is, is it a similar approach to, to kingdom in that sense?
01:33:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's a good question. um This is the first game. Well, Pizza Possum had a little writing, but this is the first game that has like characters and quests that I ever make. um So it's definitely different because there are just characters that will tell you things about the world for some reason.
01:33:56
Speaker
The game felt like it needed it, like you're driving around this world and if there's nobody there, it maybe feels a bit sterile. And it did feel a little bit like it would be fun if sometimes you meet somebody and they have something to say about the world.
01:34:07
Speaker
We're doing like very traditional classic quest line thing where it's like, hey, get get me this item. Like, can you help me out from here? And it's the first time I do it. So it's also quite hard.
01:34:19
Speaker
Like to make it good, like now that I'm seeing it, I'm like, is this something I'm good at? Like, is this fun quest? are they Are they adding something to the game? But we're kind of like slowly getting there. um Definitely different and something that I will think of think think of twice. Like I think as everything, I underestimated a bit how hard it is to have cool characters with good writing that fit in a world with fun quests.
01:34:40
Speaker
um But yeah, it's a work in progress. Yeah. And like, are you putting the same amount of trust in the player or is there more tutorial, more explaining this time around in garbage country?
01:35:00
Speaker
I think it's a success if you can teach the players the basic interactions and they trust that like, okay, this is all I'm going to need. and the rest I can figure out. So that's what we're trying to do here as well. Like when you learn to drive and you learn to press one button for interacting with something, hopefully the rest they can figure out. And I think I'm also...
01:35:24
Speaker
better at it technically, like we can, um we're able to to tie cause and effect closer together. Like we can do animations, like Kingdom has very little actual animations, you know, but now it's like, okay, well, if if knocking over this pillar is going to crash this bridge over there, then we should actually make it look like, okay, you knocked over the pillar and now the bridge is going to crash, like really tying cause and effect together.
01:35:46
Speaker
It's just more work, but also it's something that I wasn't able to do so much in Kingdom. So hopefully that that helps to show the player how the world works. right right and yeah talking about the world of garbage country like what drew you to like this this sort of like post-industrial setting yeah i think i have a ah permanent fascination with this i love also the photography of you know abandoned places on on earth things that are overgrown i just think there's something aesthetically very satisfying about it i mean
01:36:22
Speaker
It's also a very grateful photography subject. you There are lots of photographers taking pictures of these things because they look good. um I don't really know why or what I'm trying to say with it.
01:36:33
Speaker
um Same for Cloud Gardens. It's more like an aesthetic venture rather than like having a clear message. Maybe for a next game, I'll kind of think twice about like what does the world say about the game or like what am i trying to say with a certain types of aesthetic.
01:36:47
Speaker
ah But for now, I just kind of like followed... a very superficial urge so to say to like model these things in crispy 3d pixel art of course okay and because you talked about the photography like was there a specific like image or or mood that that unlocked the idea for you or the the game for you um ah Yeah, i don't I don't know if you've heard of but of Edward Bratinsky, the Manufactured Landscapes um documentary, and also The Anthropocene are two movies that I think have influenced a lot how this game looks.
01:37:29
Speaker
Just the kind of scale of industry that humans build and alter the planet with, and the idea that um there is just something really ah aesthetically pleasing pretty about those kind of landscapes. And that just kind of fascinates me.
01:37:49
Speaker
Okay. um Yeah. Let's go back to um like some of the design choices that you made um and while making them, um what kind of problems does garbage country create for you that your previous games maybe didn't like, what are some of the new challenges for you that you're facing?
01:38:12
Speaker
Yeah. i mean, it being a three d game, is just you can't even imagine... If you walk through a 3D games world, and the fact that you don't get stuck everywhere is like a miracle that level designers pull off.
01:38:25
Speaker
There are so many nooks and crannies that you could get stuck in in any game, and you don't even think about it as a player. You just walk around the world, and but there could be a ah pit in the ground, and you're in it, and you're stuck.
01:38:39
Speaker
and That's definitely... It's a challenge in a sense that like you one could underestimate how much work it is to just like really design these levels in a very smooth way um where the player can move through them and feel also feel good about the movements. like in a In a first-person game, maybe your movements are kind of more limited because you're a character that's always straight up and you can spin around your axis and look around and you can jump.
01:39:05
Speaker
But a car has so many different ways of moving in a not satisfying way. Like a wheel gets stuck or even if you do make your way from A to B, but it just doesn't look nice. Like the appeal of this off-road exploration is also, in my opinion, a very specific feeling of how a car moves across the terrain where if you see it you're like oh yeah that's cool that feels nice like it's bouncy but but not not jittery bouncy but like smoothly bouncy and all the terrain has to be built in a way to to let that happen which is it's yeah it's a lot and then doing this in a kind of open world game means you also have so much ground to cover uh with that yeah i'm i'm wondering is it like fully open world or do you go from like area to area
01:39:49
Speaker
It's fully open world. um It's even a bit procedural in a sense that no player's map will look the same, but the boss fights are hand-built locations, but just where they appear in the world is different, which also makes it so that the order that you unlock the items in is is different for each player. So whereas one player will start with one upgrade for the tower defense, maybe another player will start with another one. So they will have a different experience of like how to figure out how to win these battles. Okay, yeah. And it's also... It's it's a fully single-player game. Or is there any um local co-op component there? Or is it... It's a fully single-player game. yeah
01:40:27
Speaker
Every time I... Especially in the beginning, I was kind of careful to... um provide for the possibility that someone would one day decide to make it a co-op game. The more the schedule goes on and the more we are pressed for time, the more I'm like, no, I don't have time for this. There's one player. I'm going to assume there's one player. yeah um But it would definitely be a lot of fun, I think, to drive together. or You see how much fun people have in Kingdom.
01:40:52
Speaker
Just playing is playing the game together. Pizza Possum is greatly enjoyed by players in co-op. So... Yeah, I mean, if the game is a success, it's something that I think will be a very fun mode to just explore together. Like, you don't even have to do something together. That's also what I'm realizing about co-op games.
01:41:14
Speaker
Just being in a world together is great. Like, it doesn't you don't even have to interact or anything. Yeah, i know that's true. Yeah. Okay. And... um is there is there um is When is it slated to be released? Have you pinned that down yet? or We haven't pinned that down yet. I have a publisher for this game now.
01:41:36
Speaker
And, um, we have to see where we're at. i have a couple of milestones to deliver and then, you know, when that's done, we're going to see, okay, what's a realistic release date.
01:41:47
Speaker
Okay. Also fitting it in between other games that are, you know, going to release. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you, yeah, you have a publisher now. um how, how did that go?
01:41:59
Speaker
cause it's not with raw fury then this time. Yeah. I pitched the game around um when I had worked on it for about two years. I just saw how much money I had invested and how much more it would take. Most of all, like I was realizing at that point, I thought maybe I was going to be done, but I was not, we were not done yet.
01:42:21
Speaker
um So at that point, I thought, okay, i have to'll I'll have to pitch it around to publishers and see if they want to finance the the last bit of development. And I talked to a bunch and yeah, in the end, one of them was a good fit. Okay. And can you talk more about those conversations? um Like, how did you pitch it? What did they think? Were they asking certain questions where you weren't prepared for or um
01:42:53
Speaker
i I'm not super good at the business end of things in a sense like I didn't have a super professional pitch deck with numbers and sales projections and and sales numbers of competing games and that kind of stuff but I think for the publishers it was more important that they saw like this game is getting good traction um on on Twitter for example or on social media like people like the way it looks and Pardon of me. I also went to Gamescom with the game independently and I had a booth there, a small one. And for some publishers, it was important to see that other players were enjoying the game. Like they would come and rather than playing the game themselves, they would just look at what's the experience that other people are having with it.
01:43:38
Speaker
what What is maybe Garbage Country teaching you about yourself that Kingdom and your other projects didn't?
Reflections and Advice for Developers
01:43:49
Speaker
Yeah. That's an interesting question and it's something that I think about a lot. um It's showing me that I never really think about what a game means or what's like the message of the game. Like I always follow kind of like superficial aesthetics and superficial, not in a sense of like,
01:44:08
Speaker
shallow but like superficial just like i like the way this looks so i'm gonna create more of this and and i think maybe in the future i want to think more of like what does the game mean you know what's the message like i guess the message of cloud gardens is like pretty pixel plants look pretty like that's the whole thing you know and with this game i'm more and more thinking like you know, you're kind of making an art project and, and you can have a message or you're trying to say something or, ah yeah, you know, you, you, you don't always just go blindly in the direction that appeals to you the most, which is something that I definitely do. And I'm thinking I would like to, ah um, uh,
01:44:49
Speaker
train train myself or like level up a little bit in a sense of like, I want to have a bit of more of a thought, like what, what is this project going to mean? And also maybe you don't have to work four years on it, but that's what you always say.
01:45:03
Speaker
Um, okay. ah Before, uh, we end the podcast, um, I'd like to ask a few more questions, um, to hopefully share a bit of wisdom, uh, for other like aspiring indie developers.
01:45:17
Speaker
Um, so if someone listening right now is early in their own journey of making a game, uh, what's one lesson you had to learn the hard way that might help them right now?
01:45:42
Speaker
I mean, first and foremost, just shipping something is the most important thing. I mean, it's so cliche that everybody will say it, but just whatever you have, whatever state you think it's in, whatever you think other people might think, just the the experience of wrapping it up and putting it out there is so good for for both you and for the thing.
01:46:01
Speaker
that is something that's you know I'm also getting more comfortable with now, like just saying, look, this has a timeframe, then I'm going to ship it. and And it doesn't have to be perfect. I think that's something that's that's hard to... Because you feel maybe like this is the one chance because you're sitting on something good now, but you will be sitting on something good again after.
01:46:22
Speaker
and then you have one thing done, which is really great. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And maybe in that same vein, like... Is there something that you know now that could have saved or that can save someone maybe a year of development?
01:46:38
Speaker
Because, yeah, you say like you can wrap it up, but are there other maybe tricks or techniques or like it's hard choices? It's insane the degree to which all indie devs or game devs delude themselves as to what they think they can do. It's also fun to think about all the cool enemies and swords and guns you're going to add and all the cool game mechanics.
01:47:00
Speaker
But like, you know, there was this joke on social media the the other day of like, don't be afraid to make an indie game. Don't be afraid to spend two weeks making an indie game. Those three months will be the best five years of your life or something.
01:47:13
Speaker
Or talked to, I think it was, well, it doesn't matter, but he said like, if my strategy for planning is just think how long, think honestly how long it will take me to do something and then multiply by three.
01:47:27
Speaker
Like we're just so delusional about how long things take and like take that serious, you know, like just make the smallest thing. It's like, if your game concept is like, oh, it's a little guy and he can jump around. That's a good cut. Like just make that, like just make a little guy and he can jump around. Like before you think of other things, because...
01:47:44
Speaker
it is just an an insane rabbit hole and, and making something small good and then making it slightly bigger is way less anxiety inducing than making something huge and just starting on the top left and seeing like how far you get into this huge idea, you know?
01:47:59
Speaker
Right. Yeah. So like scoping down a project is like a skill that matters more than people realize. Again, so cliche, but like, you know, you're going to spend X amount of time, no matter what, like either you're going to spend two years and have something where you feel like you got done the things that you wanted to do, or you're going to spend two years and you feel like you only did 10% of what you wanted to do. So in the end,
01:48:23
Speaker
you know But I'm also telling this myself, like I'm going to listen to this recording and be like, listen to what this guy's saying, because it's also really, really hard for me. Yeah, know I can imagine. yeah yeah um As maybe their project starts becoming more serious, um what should indie developers protect as it becomes more serious during development? Yeah.
01:48:52
Speaker
I mean, your relations to people on and off the team, you know, I think is one. Like, you know, make sure that, ah you know, as things are more serious, that you still ah have a good bond with the people around you, whether they work on the game or not.
01:49:09
Speaker
um i I never really... i don't think you can... I don't know if you're getting at protecting like what you're making or like you know like somebody might clone it. like Yeah, that happens a lot. But if you're good at what you do, nobody can like realistically copy that. Making a game is so complicated and Anything that you make is going to be in such a niche of your imagination that nobody can even get close to that because of all the decisions you've made along the way that, you know, are not replicable. Yeah.
01:49:42
Speaker
because we didn't really touch on that at all. um Like how you were managing, not just making Kingdom or Cloud Gardens or Garbage Country, um but also like, yeah, your relationships in general. um Yeah. Is that something you struggle with or?
01:50:02
Speaker
no I mean, as I said earlier, during the work on kingdom, there was some friction between Marco and me, which I think was in retrospect, maybe unnecessary because I put the projects above, you know, like I thought it was worth it. Um, I think I got better at it. i also work with a lot of freelancers who of course have different projects. So, you know, there's not as much, you know, cabin fever or whatever.
01:50:28
Speaker
But I actually also think in the future, you know, looking back at Pizza Possum, that was just like the most pleasant process. And the goal of it was also like, let's make something fun together, like with people. And I would also like to get back to that.
01:50:40
Speaker
Yeah, I just ah want to thank you so much for coming on to the podcast, the first episode. Well, thank you. Yeah, that was a great conversation. um It's something new for me. um I've never done this before. So it was exciting to talk to you. And um yeah, I hope I can just do this more often and get more involved in the community. Yeah.
01:51:04
Speaker
That's super cool. And I mean, i also, um I guess I learned a lot of things just by talking about it. Like there was a lot of things that now actually by verbalizing it, I'm like, oh yeah, that's a good thought. So it was, it was definitely very interesting and I hope it's, so I hope it's fun to listen to for viewers, listeners. Yeah.
01:51:23
Speaker
I hope we can do this again someday, maybe yeah closer to when Garbage Country is releasing. That would be cool. yeah Yeah. Thank you so much, everybody, for listening. Till the next episode.
01:51:34
Speaker
Goodbye.