Transcript
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Speaker: Welcome to the Drakkneck and Friends official podcast, where we peel back the curtain on puzzle games and the people who make them. I'm Saran from Drakkneck and Friends, and I'm joined as always by Alan Hazelden, the head Drakkneck at Drakkneck and Friends.
Speaker: Hi there. Today, we're joined by Bobby Vanden, who you may know from his work on He Who Watches. How are you doing today? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. How are you doing?
Speaker: I'm doing well, Alan. I'm doing great. Yeah, I mean, when this goes out, we all just have announced that we're publishing your game. So, extremely good. Yeah. Hello, world.
Speaker: The new Draknek and Friends published game, He Who Watches, which definitely looks so similar to every Draknek game that has come before it. ah You know, you you couldn't pick it out in a police lineup.
Speaker: Yeah, no differences whatsoever. ah wellll We'll get into all of that in a minute. But first, can you... Give yourself sort of an introduction for listeners, um specifically like how you got into games.
Speaker: Yeah, so um my background is actually more in like traditional software engineering and computer science, but it's always kind of been with the hope and goal of getting into games. I have more of a traditional like computer science background. with I went to like undergrad for computer science, and like meanwhile, was trying to do game projects.
Speaker: Nothing ever really released besides like some jam projects. And then after college, i started working full time and kind of took a step back. But then a couple of years ago, i was that sick of full-time software engineering, but um kind of wanted to get back into games and more of a creative space.
Speaker: um And so I started to do some jam projects again. um and then i was um scrolling through Twitch when I saw somebody doing a dungeon crawler game jam.
Speaker: And I thought that that was interesting. And there were four days left in the seven-day jam. So I was like, Sure, let's ah let's try to make something. And then the prototype for He Who Watches was made during that jam.
Speaker: And then after that, I was like, I'm going to try to take this to a full release and learn as much as I possibly can about games in the process. And then hop, skip, and a jump later, and we are here. So how did you get from dungeon crawler to puzzle game?
Speaker: So, ah yeah, it was kind of an accident at first. In the original Jam game prototype, it just had the mechanics of walking on the walls and shooting things as line of sight.
Speaker: And as I was developing that out, I kind of realized that that line of sight mechanic was actually an interesting thing for a puzzle game rather than a dungeon crawler. In the original Jam game, it's probably a puzzle game, even though the mechanics are terrible. Like I would i would call it a puzzle game.
Speaker: And so, yeah, I didn't have a lot of experience developing puzzle games at that time. And I had kind of just played maybe Portal and Baba's Yu at that point. But once I realized it should be a puzzle game, I started to play more and more and realized like, yes, this is a much more interesting direction to go for this game.
Speaker: Awesome. ah So what was like your earliest version of the mechanics? Oh, man, the mechanics have changed so much over time. yeah, that's why wanted to ask. Yeah, yeah. So the very first things in the Jam game was walking on walls, you have your bow, and there are eye switches.
Speaker: There was also like enabling and disabling blocks with the eye switches, but that core thing has always stayed consistent throughout now. Once I decided it was going to be a puzzle game and I kind of wanted to lean into more of this like spatial reasoning, logic reasoning type stuff, because I had not developed puzzle games, it took me a long time to land on the set of mechanics it currently had. In the beginning, um some of the main mechanics were ah more like you could pick up a block rather than kind of attach yourself to a block. And that had almost more of a bonfire peaks feel where you'd pick up a block and rotate it.
Speaker: um But the gravity would still be downwards for the block. So like you'd pick it up, rotate, and then you could drop it like to the left or right. Beyond that, I was trying to figure out how to introduce some more like Sokoban type elements to it because the meme of first person Sokoban is kind of too good to pass up.
Speaker: um But i was running into the problem where you couldn't see the blocks in front of you. Like that is kind of the classic problem there. And so to get around that, I tried to introduce drivable blocks where you would step on it and walk around. um And then essentially the block underneath you would act as your like Sokoban character.
Speaker: And that worked for a little while. But both of those mechanics kind of ended up becoming kind of merging those mechanics to to do the the main mechanic today, which is kind of the gravity block that you pick up and move around.
Speaker: And when did you know that it it was like super interesting? like When did it change from going like, oh, this is just a tiny jam game, to like, oh, there's there's something special? Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, so that happened um probably later than you might expect. ah The reason I wanted to bring it to a full game was because it did well in the jam and people thought it was interesting. And I'm like, sure, I can make it a full game.
Speaker: Surely it's not that hard. i was very wrong. um But it took a lot of iteration with the mechanics. And I think so, like in the beginning, the main mechanic was you had this moving block that kind of acted as an elevator.
Speaker: But I was running into the problem where the state space was not interesting enough. Like you couldn't do enough with that if you just had a block that moved back and forth. um And so I was really trying to figure out what worked well for like um like something you could interact with in a bunch of different ways. um And so once I got...
Speaker: the gravity block in and had the ability to attach it to others to create structures. That is the point where it really, really started to feel like this is ah a plausible puzzle game with like deep and interesting implications.
Speaker: And yeah, like for the the original Jam version, like how many levels were in there? Six, maybe? Five or six. They're mostly just pathfinding levels, like trying to find your ways through more of a maze or a labyrinth.
Speaker: It's not exactly like a logic puzzle type thing. For the timeline, how long ago like what year was the Jam? Oh, no. Well, the jam version started.
Speaker: was like, think it was spring 2022. You say, oh, like you were about to say 2013. But.
Speaker: No, the Jam version was spring 2022. And after it, I was trying to decide whether i wanted to bring that to a ah full length game or not. um And so the first thing I kind of did, rather than be like, oh, what are interesting mechanics, because I know what I'm doing, like that's what you should do.
Speaker: I was like, oh, let me do an art test to figure out if I can make a good art pipeline to make it look like a more polished thing. And so I did that probably summer of 2022.
Speaker: um And then fall 2022 was when I was like, OK, I'm going to try to make this into a ah real game. um And so I kind of scrapped the Unity project, started from scratch, and tried to work on a much more polished version of the Jam game.
Speaker: And at what point did the ah narrative of the game start to seep in? Like, it's still fairly light-touched narrative, but I'm curious at what stage you started thinking of it in those terms.
Speaker: So fairly early, it kind of always had this eye motif just because of, I mean, like obviously the this eye switches are inspired by Zelda. um And moving forward, I kind of wanted to keep that motif.
Speaker: But transitioning from like the eye motif to the actual narrative was pretty late. Talking to my brother, he he was trying to help me come up with some sort of narrative to retroactively apply to this game.
Speaker: And it wasn't, when I say retroactively, it was still very early in development, but like all of the the like motifs were kind of already existing. And so i was trying to figure out some sort of narrative that would fit into that.
Speaker: And so that probably came maybe a year into into development. When you put out the, game when you made the jam version of the game,
Speaker: Was there any like feedback or insightful response to that version of the game that helped inform the development or anything that stuck with you?
Speaker: um Honestly, not really. like The jam version, it all like it was a dungeon crawler jam. So a lot of the people that were judging it and playing it were from this like dungeon crawling community. um And so it kind of had that lens on it as opposed to a puzzle game lens.
Speaker: And so a lot of the feedback was like, oh, this is like a very interesting dungeon crawler. like I can imagine how you can have enemies in this kind of way, um whereas I wanted to push it more in a logic puzzle kind of way.
Speaker: And what puzzle games were on your mind, or like were you influenced by, or like were you playing at the time that made you want to take it, like want to make a puzzly dungeon crawler in the first place?
Speaker: Um, so the transition from dungeon crawler to puzzle game, like it kind of happened naturally with the mechanics, but the inciting incident, um, was watching Joseph Mansfield on YouTube and his Joe plays puzzle games. Um, and I was watching him play at the time. I think there was a moment, um, this might be a little bit later, but I was watching him play can of wormholes. And I was like, that is interesting.
Speaker: Like, That is what I feel like this game needs to start to like lean a little bit more into. And maybe that was just because that was one of the like earlier series of his I watched. But that that was kind of the moment where I was like, okay like this will be much more interesting to transition to like fully embrace the puzzle game nature and try to really sort out these mechanics and edge cases that will make this like an interesting and deep experience.
Speaker: So thank you, Joe. I'm sure he'd be happy to hear that because I know he is looking forward to the game a lot. Yes. ah Yeah, i'm looking forward to I'm looking forward to watching him play, but I'm also not looking forward to watching him i mean, he as someone who has watched him play a lot of puzzle games that I've been a part of, it's it's a pretty pleasant experience.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. It's I think by the time that he would play it on his YouTube channel, a lot of the like quirks are kind of ironed out and it's like been heavily play tested enough at that point. Yes. It's either good or you're desensitized to it.
Speaker: um And so, yeah, I'd love love for it to to be at that point. um I am excited to watch him play through it like. ah He and like that YouTube channel has been a really good source of trying to find almost like a target audience for the game or like what the target audience is looking for in puzzle games. And kind of because I don't have that experience with puzzle games as like a like a rich background, I was naturally kind of missing some norms that you would find in puzzle games.
Speaker: So like backing up the development process a little bit, when I decided to make it a full puzzle game, I still did not have the understanding of real time versus not real time.
Speaker: And so the game ran in real time. And there was a moment where I needed to make that shift to not real time. And that...
Speaker: essentially had me recoding the entire game from scratch. So like that kind of thing was a big learning experience, just the fact like the game originally didn't have an undo mechanic.
Speaker: And so implementing that after the fact was like such a big pain. um And I'm still using the same like undo implementation even after moving to the like state space.
Speaker: But no, Joe, i feel like using his YouTube channel as a resource for understanding what people need in a puzzle game and like what makes a good puzzle game has been super invaluable. nice Awesome. Are there any other channels or communities or places that you go to in the puzzle game space for inspiration?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, ah obviously the Thinky Puzzle Game Discord has been um leading kind of like the... Okay, that's not that was not intended to be at that level of question. Yeah, yeah. um Yeah, well, I mean, it it is. It's true. It has been a really good resource and like...
Speaker: You know, long before you guys were publishing the game, I was posting the game there and getting feedback and talking with people about kind of like the development process and trying to understand how other people solve problems or how other people were able to like modify their mechanics to make them a little bit deeper.
Speaker: That has been really good. Obviously, similarly, the Thinky Games Discord. um That has a slightly less development focus, so there hasn't been quite as much development talk there.
Speaker: But I feel like just like those two communities alone kind of make up my whole experience with like the the puzzle game community. As far as other YouTube channels, it's kind of hard to say. like It's hard to differentiate... um if I would watch them before or if I'm just watching them now to either do like market research or just understanding like what people are enjoying in puzzle games, you know, there's a bunch of them, obviously in terms of others, um Joe is definitely the main one, but there are others that I check out. Like,
Speaker: Aliens Rock is kind of the big puzzle game YouTuber. So like, I will go to see what he is playing. I watch puzzle junkies on Twitch. The the two sisters, they're really great. And B Rona and B plays puzzle games is really, really good as well. Um,
Speaker: She actually reached out to me saying she wanted to play my demo, ah but there was an issue where she gets really motion sick in first-person games. And so she was a big help in play testing the motion sickness settings in the game.
Speaker: um there are settings just wonderful yeah There are settings to instantly rotate the camera and have instant movement. And so if you have both of those settings on, she seemed to be able to play it pretty well. it's That's actually so funny because um some behind the scenes story here.
Speaker: I forget what the context was, but – no, I remember. well like A year and a half ago or so, ah I was playing a demo of the game, and I was also getting a little motion sick.
Speaker: ah Two For people who know any of my production background, I was also a producer on Manifold Garden, which is a very change gravity, get motion sick type of game.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. And so when I was looking at that build, like legitimately, I was like, oh, this is going to make so many people motion sick. I really hope that they can work it out, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then when I played a more recent build, maybe four or five months ago, i was just like,
Speaker: We'll all be damned. And Sarin, you were playing without enabling any of the motion sickness options too, right? that was I was like, by default on the settings, it was already feeling much better.
Speaker: Yeah, there's um there's been ah besides the motion sickness settings, there's been so much work that has gone into the camera of the game. Yes. um And that is just to help people not lose their orientation when they're switching gravity.
Speaker: And yeah, to to essentially do everything that I can to help alleviate motion sickness. That has been a big challenge with the game, actually. Yeah, actually, I'd love to hear about when you decided that the player should have free look.
Speaker: Because like in a like dungeon crawler game, it's like actually kind of weird and unusual. Yeah, so the Jam game did not have free look.
Speaker: when It was about the same time that I decided to to heavily lean into the puzzle game aspect ah because obviously a challenge with first-person puzzle games is you need to keep in your mind what is not on screen, and that is exponentially harder if you cannot look around the game.
Speaker: And so really, once I decided to lean into a puzzle game, I realized that there had to be some sort of free look and... for maybe a year of the development, there were like tons and tons of tweaks I had to do to try to get it to feel just right.
Speaker: And only like only once it felt just right. Was it good? Before then, it was a constant concern of mine that it would never feel good.
Speaker: When you were looking around initially, i was trying to balance giving the player free look and also showing their essentially front-facing direction because that is a huge part of solving the puzzles in this game is knowing kind of like your cardinal directions.
Speaker: And so I was doing a lot of things to try to push the player to look in a cardinal direction. And a lot of that ended up being... um like forcing the camera to like slightly move towards the the center of the cardinal direction. And then I realized just giving them full free look and center the camera on each rotation is probably the best way to go.
Speaker: And that that that kind of thing there, once I had the correct settings, it just felt right. And it was it seemed to no longer be a problem with people who were play testing the game. Yeah, like something that really struck me playing the game is like how three dimensional it is.
Speaker: um And like you like for for puzzle games like like Talos Principle, for example, like you could imagine like there's a version of Talos Principle where you're looking just from a top down perspective. And ah it's more playable because you don't have to worry about the first person perspective. You can just see everything, think about everything at the same time. But for this game, even though like okay, sure, you're limited. you You can only see things from your first person perspective. Because you're inside of the room, you couldn't see everything from a third person perspective either.
Speaker: And so um it's actually in some ways less limiting to be in a first person perspective than it would be for some other first person puzzle games. Yeah, totally. That is... um kind of like a happenstance thing. um Like part of the the reason that people think the first person Sokoban wouldn't work is because you like cannot see past a block, right? You have this perspective, but being able to go up on the walls and get a different perspective of the whole room almost emulates that top-down perspective in a way.
Speaker: And so it's kind of a a lucky break almost that that ended up working out. But that is definitely something that has worked out well for the game. Because of the first person perspective, like, and walking on walls, obviously these puzzle mechanics need to use that. And so um a lot of the work has gone into kind of like ah balancing um a logic puzzle versus a spatial puzzle with the with the third person perspective. Like,
Speaker: Having things on the ceiling is interesting on its own, but gets old quickly if there's not like a logic puzzle kind of backing that. And so trying to find that balance between logic puzzle and spatial puzzle has been kind of a big challenge. And I feel like I've i've gotten a pretty good balance, but um we'll have to see once more people get their hands on the game.
Speaker: That's really interesting distinction to make that I certainly haven't been like consciously thinking about. can you Can you dig in a little more on to what the distinction between a logic puzzle and a spatial puzzle is in your mind?
Speaker: Yes. so Again, i hate to keep going back to the Jam version, but if you go to that, it is just a pure spatial puzzle. like It is just trying to figure out how to get from point A to point B with this ability to walk on the walls.
Speaker: And so you are just spatial reasoning kind of pathfinding. um Whereas a logic puzzle is more like you see what you need to do for the solution, but there is a clear problem and you need to work out that problem.
Speaker: And so trying to balance the player pathfinding versus the player having to do some sort of like logical deduction to get to the solution has been interesting.
Speaker: And i think you'll find that a lot of the like earlier tutorial levels in the game really are either spatial or logic. And anytime you enter a new area and I need more of a tutorial area, it's more going to be a spatial puzzle. And then later in the area, it'll turn more into like a deeper logic.
Speaker: Right, and I guess that mixing both in the same puzzle is also kind of a a red flag because you don't want people to be stuck on a logic puzzle.
Speaker: Well, you don't want people to think that they're stuck on a logic puzzle when actually there's like a spatial trick yeah that they haven't realized or vice versa. like Yeah, I think there's kind of a thinking with portals moment in this game where you start to understand the spatial logic and spatial reasoning a bit better.
Speaker: um Like once you understand kind of how to pathfind, then the focus becomes on logic. And so, yeah, it you will find that in the levels where there are heavier logic elements, that the room is very simple. You might just be like in a box and it's it's trying to focus on the logic element.
Speaker: How much of a pain is this in playtesting? ah like i know when when I was playing the game, i found like a couple of solutions which were unintended, which were kind of like, oh, I found a spatial solution to a logic problem. Is that something that's happening constantly?
Speaker: think I've got a pretty good sense these days for like, what are the bounds of this like spatial reasoning to do that? There are some that slip through that play testers are finding, but it's not too much of an issue.
Speaker: um The bigger issue with play testing is that it takes a while for people to acclimate to that spatial thinking with portals. moat like It takes them a while to have that.
Speaker: moment. And so once they're there, the game becomes a lot more comfortable. And so a lot of the early game is just trying to focus on bringing players up to speed ah with how this works.
Speaker: Was there anything you've learned about like how to introduce people to the game that was like surprising to you? i think you just get acclimated to your own game.
Speaker: And especially this game with the heavy focus on like spatial reasoning, you really get acclimated to how hard it is for people to do that.
Speaker: And so what happens, like the most common issue I have in playtesting Is that kind of thing where people are trying to figure out the logic puzzle, but they are missing that spatial reasoning moment. And so a lot of that has been making it very clear that like, this is a spatial puzzle versus a logic puzzle.
Speaker: And early in the game, the first, obviously the first two puzzles are very simple and they're, they're just spatial puzzles and like kind of learning the mechanics. But there's one trick I do in the second level where you are entering the same physical space, but from a new direction. And so it really puts a huge focus on the player having to understand that, you know,
Speaker: this puzzle is solvable through pathfinding. like This may seem impossible, it may look like a logic puzzle, but it is only solvable through pathfinding. And I think that keeping that kind of key moment of insight has been really helpful.
Speaker: Once that puzzle was in place, I feel like players started to get that a little bit more. Awesome. Alan, question for you. What makes this a Dracnet game? Oh, it's such a dracnet game. I'm also hearing this, so I'm excited for this answer. um the The puzzles are just really, really good puzzles. And like I said earlier about how three-dimensional they are, they are three-dimensional puzzles in a way that like fell out. Oh, i I haven't had to think in quite this way in another game before.
Speaker: Each puzzle is like got a ah crux to it. That's like nice and satisfying and like rewarding. And the systems are like really, really deep.
Speaker: ah Yeah, I just had had a blast playing the game and it fails. Yes, please go on. Thank you. Thank you. No, I'm i'm glad that i'm glad that that's the case. It's always like when you give it to somebody who like you obviously have a much better much more experience in puzzle games than I do. And so when I first gave it to you to play test, i was quite nervous.
Speaker: I didn't know if you were going to think that the puzzles were like not that interesting because just because of that balance of like spatial and logic reasoning, like it's it's hard to tell what somebody who is like deep in the logic puzzle game world will think about it.
Speaker: And so, yeah, when when you ended up liking it, that was i was very pleased. Yeah, and like i I reached out too off to playtest the game. and like I reached out at a time when we were actively thinking about what our next publishing projects would be.
Speaker: But i kind of I don't know if I was expecting to be to come away from it going like, oh, yes, we should we should try and publish this game. like head at the back of my head like oh i know this is going to be tricky to um to avoid people having motion sickness it's going to be tricky to like onboard people to the game and i mean to be clear like we're still actively figuring out how to like get the pacing and like the ah make make some of the the disk difficulty come uh difficulty humps
Speaker: a bit smoother. But ah yeah, like I, it was the right time for me to be playing the game, but like I wasn't expecting to like it as much as I did.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm really, I'm really glad that you liked it and that you reached out. I know that you guys just finished up Spooky Express and I'm sure you're trying to balance ah like either moving into to more of a development direction on a new project and picking up like new published projects. So I'm glad it was the right time that, that, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, what was your reaction to getting the email from Alan? Uh, I was very surprised. i I woke up, obviously we're in different time zones. Um, and so I woke up and and saw it on my phone. i was like, Oh, like, that's amazing. i I couldn't quite tell from the play test videos, like how much you liked it.
Speaker: Um, and part of that is kind of my own like pain watching play test videos. Um, and so i was, I was really surprised and very excited. um and yeah yeah i'm also i'm also fairly ah unexpressive while recording playset videos. um Like i i will um I will not be effusive when I'm in that context. I mean, know I'm rarely effusive. Yeah, no, no, that definitely makes sense. So yeah, when when I saw that email and that you wanted to talk if if this would be great for publishing, I was like, oh yeah, like, of course, like that sounds, I would love to, that sounds great.
Speaker: And it happened really quickly too. Like I, it was like less than a month between me first playing the game, also first playing this playtest version of the game and a contract being signed.
Speaker: But it was also like, Yeah, it's like, oh, we should talk. We had a call. We had another call the next week. And the takeaway from that second call was like, yeah, I guess we should just send you a contract.
Speaker: It was like, ah this is like, we we publish, like we we we can work a lot faster than a lot of publishers in terms of like getting something from we're interested to do this in this to signing it. But like even by our standards, it's like, oh, wow, this is this is happening. Okay, this is done. Okay, let's let's make this happen.
Speaker: ah real Real quick turnaround from this game is on the table for discussing about publishing to like, okay, this is our next published game. Yes. No, it was a very fast to turnaround, but like it was it was the kind of internal turnaround where everyone just looks at something and agrees.
Speaker: Yeah, I really wanted to know what you were saying about it internally, because it's almost like after you have a job interview and you're like, did they like me? Did they did they like the project? Yes. Yes. The project was like.
Speaker: Yeah, so after the call, I'm like, well, I hope that went well. I think it did. ah and then it seemed to, ah because you know here we are. But yeah, it was a very, very quick turnaround. i was like, you know a month ago, we weren't even really talking. So it's it's kind of crazy.
Speaker: Yeah. Awesome. ah Other than what we thought of the game, do you have any questions for us, Bobby? I do, actually. And it's a little bit more um about the like process for your own developed games rather than as a publisher.
Speaker: So something that people can probably take away from this process is that I was very inexperienced with developing you know a full game. Part of the goal of this game was to learn as much as I can along the way.
Speaker: And you know obviously i have, but my question for you was more about like, at that, that pre-production point to transition to the production point. Um, like when you guys are in pre-production for your own developed game, do you have a very solid sense of like all of the mechanics of the game or is there still some like exploration you guys do there? Because my goal for my next game is to like come in much more prepared, at at that point.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: um Yeah, I mean, I think some games have done a smoother transition from pre-production to production than others. ah like We've talked about a Monster's Expedition on this podcast before, and that game like left pre-production and re-entered it and left it and re-entered it like several times. And every time we're saying, well, ah the schedule says we've got to be leaving pre-production now, and I guess we've got a plan. So we let's say we're into production now. And then like two weeks later, we were like, oh no, we have we have these like big question marks still. Like we we did not figure this out. We got to go back into pre-production.
Speaker: Whereas like Spook Express was such a smooth process. Like we were still like. that The start of that game's development felt like a prank, like a production prank. It was just like, all right, we're just going start now.
Speaker: So did you have ideas of what you wanted those mechanics to be before going into pre-production at all? um um Some. ah Yeah, just some.
Speaker: I don't, yeah, like we we had some ideas, they were mostly good ideas about specific monsters. um think a lot of those initial ideas didn't actually make it into the game. Like we, like kind of Lucas was the pre-production um focus of like Lucas would get the basic mechanics in and then try a mechanic and try and a mechanic and try a mechanic. And like, we just figure out like, okay, well this one's interesting. This one's not, um this one works well with the other one. um So yeah, it was just like trying a bunch of ideas, not being too attached to any specific idea or mechanic.
Speaker: um Like knowing that the core gameplay it was solid and fixed and we didn't need to innovate there. It was just like, okay, well on top of this, we can kind of put whatever.
Speaker: And so we've got a lot of flexibility to figure out what the best whatever is So is the goal to not ever have that moment of going back to pre-production and being like, oh. Yeah. Ideally. Yeah. I guess that's that's a dumb question. But um yeah. No, I mean, that that makes sense. And you switched to Godot recently. And so z Spooky Express is your full ah first full project in Godot, right? Yeah.
Speaker: So Electrifying Instant was our first full project, but it was a small project. And then Spooky Express was the larger scale. um So Electrifying was like a very small project.
Speaker: um But yeah, between the two of them, they're our firsts. um And yeah, I i really liked Godot, although I was the person who spent the last the least time directly touching Godot. Excuse you.
Speaker: I didn't even download the engine. Okay, fair. Fair. was not the least... ah is not the the least
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, that was, um, that makes sense. Um, I'm, I'm kind of struggling and trying to, so He Who Watches is made in Unity, right? And obviously Unity has had like some trials and tribulations in the last couple of years. Um, and so moving forward, I would love to explore Godot. So yeah, um,
Speaker: good to hear that that it seems like that transition went really smoothly for you guys. Yeah. like it wasn't ah like there was There was definitely some some teasing problems. um and like Some art pipeline problems. Yeah, some some art styles are probably easier to do in Godot than others.
Speaker: And it's getting better, but like with the mobile versions, there was um some some stuff that I think will be smoother in Godot six months from now than it was for Spooky Express and when we launched. But yeah, i mean, the the thing about Godot is it it's just getting better reliably.
Speaker: on a regular basis. And that's not the feeling I have with Unity. Yeah, yeah. Unity is, it's good. I love the engine. I feel very comfortable in it, but I, like, it feels like every mechanic, or not mechanic, every, everything that they add on to Unity is like a sidestep or is not exactly useful for like the purposes I'm using it for.
Speaker: So yeah, yeah, i'm I'm excited about Godot and I'm excited to jump into a new engine for sure. I did have one more question. I don't know how much time we have, um but I just wanted to ask, um so something that I've noticed with your games is that they're also starting to scope much smaller. Like obviously monster's expedition was quite large.
Speaker: Bonfire peaks. Um, he has co-developed as quite large. Enormous. Yeah. Yeah. The understatement of a century for both of those really. Um, but it seems like you guys are trending much smaller with games. And that is like something that I want to do moving forward to, because this development process has been like,
Speaker: long and grueling in some ways. um And I guess, do you have any like tips for that kind of thing? um Or is this just more, you need to, in I guess, essentially in your pre-production process, find the right scope for the game?
Speaker: Yeah, I think that's something I'm still actively feeling out. There is... a certain tension that I feel between, um something being a sensible scope for a development process that will be fun and enjoyable and sustainable and good for everyone on the team versus game ideas that are, that have a potential to like hit big and find a wide audience.
Speaker: Um, and it has been tough to figure out game ideas that do both perfectly. um Now, if you're just making games like in a low pressure, I'm just going to make something cool, I'm going to put it out into the world, and it doesn't really matter if it's successful, that's like a lot easier to square the circle.
Speaker: but With DracNech now, there's like a certain expectation of like, well, and just the fact that like i have to I have to pay people a fair market rate to do stuff. I can't just say like, oh, well, this isn't going to make any money. So everyone lets just work for RevShare. Yeah.
Speaker: That like means that however much effort and time we put into it, to be a profitable game, it needs to earn a certain amount back. And you get a certain amount of like diminishing returns with right that kind of thing, unless it goes crazy.
Speaker: So figuring out projects which are both like creatively interesting and also not a way to set money on fire is the key struggle that I'm feeling right now.
Speaker: It would be great if that were easy. Yeah, that's... But that is kind the crux it, right now the... right now the There are ah hundred interesting indie games released every day, many of which you are doing new things, great things, exciting things.
Speaker: And many of them are not getting noticed by anyone and not getting played by anyone. And the rise of the algorithmic driven storefront a la Steam ah pushes the most popular games to the top.
Speaker: And if you never enter the most popular games, you will never be visible. And so there's a lot of trying not to put all your eggs in one basket, because if you do that and then, i don't know, Silksong shadow dropped that day. What are you going to do about it?
Speaker: Right, right. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, it's ah it's it is crazy. like Puzzle games especially kind of have that problem, right, where you need to hit a critical mass on Steam for the algorithm to pick you up. And so trying to do that with a smaller game is almost harder, but it's also lower risk, right, because you put in fewer resources to that game.
Speaker: But then, you know, obviously with a smaller game, I think that smaller games in general tend to work well on different storefronts. Is there anything else that we wanted to touch on, talk about? I feel like this has been a good discussion.
Speaker: Alan? It's been good. I blacked out like half it, so we'll see. There was something um you mentioned earlier um about ah switching the game from real time to turn based.
Speaker: I'm curious if there was like, what was the inciting incident for deciding that was needed? And was there anything surprising that came out of that change? um Yeah, so I don't know. i can't remember exactly what the inciting incident was. I know that um I was thinking about a lot of puzzle games at the time, and I had a lot of feedback from people that were saying that they didn't like the real-time elements, especially because if you were in a level, you you didn't know if the solution was going to require that. And so a lot of the times people would be trying to essentially find cheese through doing something really fast.
Speaker: and So it was kind of at that moment. And was this like running along a wall while so a block was falling or something? Yes, exactly. um There's also gates didn't close instantly. So like they had a bit of an animation where you could squeeze through. sounds terrible.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah. it was There's a lot of lot of things like that. um And my goal was to essentially remove real-time movement. And so the first iteration of that was just pause everything while animations are running. Like, do not let the player move while other things are moving.
Speaker: And that technically worked. But it kind of presented its own problem where the player was just waiting around a lot. And so the next problem was, OK, I need to speed up these animations.
Speaker: But because everything was coded with real-time movement in mind, it's using the like standard Unity physics ray casting rather than kind of like state-based movement. um was running into a lot of bugs. For example, like the arrow would go through walls if you're running at too low of frame rates and you tried to speed up the animation.
Speaker: um And so it was kind of at that moment where I was like, okay, I need to take a step back and code this from scratch and essentially rewrite the game in such a way where you have a state and if you apply an action, you will end up with another state.
Speaker: And so all of that is offloaded from Unity kind of in its own way section of code where the animations don't touch that at all. And so if I want to speed it up, I can just run the states to their logical conclusion until everything stops and then let the player move again.
Speaker: Just kind of fast forward all of the like animation layers. And this actually is like such a big win for the game because there are so many times where you are waiting for a block to fall or something and you just want to take that next step.
Speaker: Right now, the player might not even notice that things get fast-forwarded because they'll just kind of be doing their own actions. So out of talk. I guess one thing I think is useful to discuss here is kind of how this almost like fits into what we were talking about with the camera.
Speaker: um But one one interesting thing about the game is that now that I've moved to this kind of like state-based and animation layer, not all animations take the same time.
Speaker: um For example, you could have... one block starting to fall while another block has already fallen three blocks. right And just because of how gravity works and acceleration, that second block, um or that block that just started to fall is going to move much slower.
Speaker: But with state-based animation, they're both moving one square, one tile, essentially. And so I needed to make a way to have all animations finish.
Speaker: But then that presented final problem, which was If the player is interacting with any of these things, for example, if the player is riding the faster block, ah they will so their camera will suddenly stop while the other animations go.
Speaker: And so there's a second layer to all of this where player animations are prioritized. And if the player is doing something that requires an animation, every other animation in the game is going to be warped to fit that same time.
Speaker: And so from the player perspective, everything feels very smooth. But if you zoom out to kind of a third person perspective, things might look a little bit weird.
Speaker: That's ah very interesting. Yeah, I didn't realize you were doing anything as complicated as that, which I guess is a a good sign. yeah Yeah, it's just one of those many things that made the game, like made making a first-person game that's also grid-based and state-based, making that kind of like a nightmare to implement.
Speaker: um But I think it turned out well. Yeah. And then before we stop, I guess the other thing we didn't mention at all that we shouldn't talk out about much is just the secrets.
Speaker: um And I guess all I really want to say is that I was excited for the game and we got on a call and you talked about some of the secrets. i was like, oh, oh this there's a lot of that, huh?
Speaker: yeah. Yeah, it's a lot of hidden in plain sight things that you might not find out until later. And yeah, trying trying hard not to spoil anything there. But that is something that I always wanted in the game.
Speaker: that took There were a lot of different iterations of what that might be. um ah Yeah, i think I think when the game comes out, we should maybe do a podcast that talks about some of that stuff. Yes, maybe a full game open spoiler post more, but definitely not now.
Speaker: Cool. Sounds good. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for jumping on the call and recording with us. Yeah. Thank you for having me. was like such a blast to get to talk about the game.
Speaker: Of course. um Obviously, people should go wishlist the game on Steam. Yes, please do. It's in all of our interest now. Where can people find you? um So I'm not that, I don't have a big internet presence. I think the main space can find me. Yeah, I guess. Maybe I'm i'm just kind of lurking. ah I'm on the internet. I'm just not posting enough.
Speaker: um The main place people can find me is probably on Blue Sky. And what is even my Blue Sky? It is just at danga.games.
Speaker: Okay. Okay. Thank you so much. And we will have to have you back on after the game comes out. will be coming eventually stay tuned thank you so much and thank you for listening to the drachnik and friends official podcast our music is by priscilla snow who you can find at ghoulnoisemusic.com our podcast artwork is by adam de grandis our podcast is edited by melanie zawodniak please rate and review us on your podcast servers of choice and be sure to tune in next episode for more interesting conversations
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