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Episode 50: Bobby Vanden aka Danga Games (He Who Watches) - our next published game!!
237 Plays4 days ago
In this episode, Alan and Syrenne are joined by Bobby Vanden, the creator of He Who Watches. We just announced that we're publishing this game, so obviously we're very excited about this one!
Topics discussed include the inspirations for the game, how to accommodate for motion sickness in a game that can be very disorienting, and what it's like to publish with Draknek.
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:13
Speaker
you
00:00:21
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.
00:00:33
Speaker
Hi there.
Meet Bobby Vanden and 'He Who Watches'
00:00:35
Speaker
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?
00:00:46
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.
00:00:56
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.
00:01:09
Speaker
Yeah, no differences whatsoever. ah wellll We'll get into all of that in a minute. But first, can you...
From Software to Game Development
00:01:16
Speaker
Give yourself sort of an introduction for listeners, um specifically like how you got into games.
00:01:22
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.
00:01:42
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.
00:02:04
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.
00:02:15
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.
00:02:29
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?
Evolving Game Mechanics
00:02:45
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.
00:02:56
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.
00:03:13
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.
00:03:29
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.
00:03:50
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.
00:04:23
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.
00:04:41
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.
00:05:00
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.
00:05:12
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.
00:05:24
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.
00:05:37
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.
00:05:52
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...
00:06:10
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.
00:06:23
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.
00:06:37
Speaker
It's not exactly like a logic puzzle type thing. For the timeline, how long ago like what year was the Jam?
Development Timeline of 'He Who Watches'
00:06:45
Speaker
Oh, no. Well, the jam version started.
00:06:50
Speaker
was like, think it was spring 2022. You say, oh, like you were about to say 2013. But.
00:07:00
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.
00:07:16
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.
00:07:29
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.
00:07:44
Speaker
And at what point did the ah narrative of the game start to seep in?
Narrative Development of the Game
00:07:50
Speaker
Like, it's still fairly light-touched narrative, but I'm curious at what stage you started thinking of it in those terms.
00:07:58
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.
00:08:13
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.
00:08:26
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.
00:08:37
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,
00:08:50
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?
00:09:01
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.
00:09:20
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.
00:09:33
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?
Feedback and Community Influence
00:09:47
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.
00:10:13
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.
00:10:36
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.
00:11:04
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.
00:11:17
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.
00:11:49
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.
00:12:02
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...
00:12:14
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.
00:12:24
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.
00:12:37
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?
Challenges of First-Person Puzzle Games
00:13:02
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...
00:13:19
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.
00:13:38
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.
00:13:50
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,
00:14:24
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,
00:14:40
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.
00:14:55
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.
00:15:12
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.
00:15:27
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.
00:15:40
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,
00:16:02
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.
00:16:15
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.
00:16:28
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.
00:16:43
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.
00:16:54
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.
00:17:12
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.
00:17:27
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.
00:17:39
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.
00:17:54
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.
00:18:17
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.
00:18:32
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.
00:19:05
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
Balancing Puzzles in Gameplay
00:19:15
Speaker
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.
00:19:39
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,
00:20:07
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.
00:20:31
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?
00:20:45
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.
00:21:01
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.
00:21:17
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.
00:21:30
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.
00:21:49
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.
00:22:03
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.
00:22:22
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.
00:22:41
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?
00:23:01
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.
00:23:15
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.
00:23:26
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.
00:23:39
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.
00:23:50
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.
00:24:01
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.
00:24:20
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,
00:24:44
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.
00:24:59
Speaker
Once that puzzle was in place, I feel like players started to get that a little bit more. Awesome.
Why 'He Who Watches' Fits Draknek
00:25:05
Speaker
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.
00:25:35
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.
00:25:46
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.
00:26:12
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.
00:26:27
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.
00:26:43
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
00:27:17
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.
00:27:29
Speaker
Yeah, I'm really, I'm really glad that you liked it and that you
Publishing Offer Experience
00:27:32
Speaker
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.
00:27:47
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.
00:28:08
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.
00:28:46
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.
00:28:59
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.
00:29:12
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.
00:29:32
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.
00:29:51
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.
00:30:05
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.
00:30:24
Speaker
Yeah. Awesome. ah Other than what we thought of the game, do you have any questions for us, Bobby?
Advice on Game Development Stages
00:30:31
Speaker
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.
00:30:40
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.
00:30:53
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.
00:31:23
Speaker
Um,
00:31:26
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.
00:32:07
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.
00:32:24
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.
00:32:34
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.
00:33:12
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.
00:33:24
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
Transitioning to Godot Engine
00:33:42
Speaker
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.
00:33:52
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.
00:34:03
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.
00:34:20
Speaker
I didn't even download the engine. Okay, fair. Fair. was not the least... ah is not the the least
00:34:30
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,
00:34:52
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.
00:35:13
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.
00:35:34
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.
00:35:55
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
Scoping Game Development Projects
00:36:01
Speaker
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.
00:36:16
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,
00:36:36
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?
00:36:52
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.
00:37:22
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.
00:37:47
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.
00:38:05
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.
00:38:23
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.
00:38:38
Speaker
It would be great if that were easy. Yeah, that's... But that is kind the crux it, right now the...
Visibility Challenges on Steam
00:38:47
Speaker
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.
00:39:02
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.
00:39:21
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?
00:39:41
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.
00:40:05
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.
00:40:21
Speaker
Alan? It's been good. I blacked out like half it, so we'll see.
Shifting to Turn-Based Gameplay
00:40:25
Speaker
There was something um you mentioned earlier um about ah switching the game from real time to turn based.
00:40:35
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.
00:41:13
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.
00:41:28
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.
00:41:47
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.
00:41:58
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.
00:42:17
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.
00:42:32
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.
00:42:50
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.
00:43:01
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.
00:43:16
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.
00:43:27
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.
00:43:43
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.
00:43:54
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.
00:44:08
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.
00:44:22
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.
00:44:34
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.
00:44:56
Speaker
um But I think it turned out well. Yeah.
Game Secrets and Future Content
00:45:03
Speaker
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.
00:45:14
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?
00:45:27
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.
00:45:42
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.
00:45:58
Speaker
Cool. Sounds good. Awesome.
Closing Remarks
00:46:03
Speaker
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.
00:46:12
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.
00:46:36
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.
00:46:47
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
00:47:28
Speaker
you