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Episode 05: Ánimo Games (Star Stuff)
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In this episode, hosts Alan and Syrenne are joined by the team at Ánimo Games, the developer behind Star Stuff. Topics include how games can relate to education, designing an approachable programming puzzle game, and balancing difficult optional content while keeping forwards momentum through the campaign.
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Transcript
Welcome and Guest Introduction
00:00:21
Speaker
Welcome to the Dragneck and Friends official podcast, where we peel back the curtain on puzzle games and the people who make them. I'm Seren, the producer at Dragneck and Friends, and I'm joined as always by Alan Hazilden, the head dragneck at Dragneck and Friends.
00:00:35
Speaker
I know. Today, we're joined by the team of Aniwo Games, ah who you may know from their work on Star Stuff. ah Can the three of you introduce yourself with your name and pronouns? Sure, I'll start. I'm Sylvia Ganyaga, she, her. I'm Daniel Levitt, he, him. And I'm ah Michael Weintraub, he, him. How are you doing today? We're doing well. Excited to talk to you
Game Concept: Star Stuff
00:01:00
Speaker
all.
00:01:00
Speaker
Awesome. So can you give a brief description of star stuff for audience and listeners who have not played the game? Sure. Okay. Yeah. Star stuff is a programming puzzle game, uh, where you work alongside bots. You program to fix a star factory a little bit more about the gameplay. You basically are solving logic puzzles with code.
00:01:28
Speaker
Uh, you have control of, you know, your main character Mija, which creates a little bit more of a dynamic feel in how you code and solve problems in the game. So yeah, you are programming bots and then you yourself as the main character have a role in the puzzle as well. So it's about working with your bot until your bots become.
00:01:50
Speaker
Well, they go they go rogue. There's a moment in the game where we switch that up on you. Awesome. So for the three of you, what kind of got you into game development in the first place?
From Education to Game Development
00:02:01
Speaker
So we were actually all worked together at a nonprofit that taught coding to kids mostly in Los Angeles.
00:02:12
Speaker
And while we were there, we had started on very much on the educational side of, ah I guess you could maybe call it a game, but it was really a more of a tool for teaching a coding concept where you start with one where you basically just painted squares and you could create different. So there's like a sandboxing mode where we have lessons that involve teaching and The goal was to paint different kinds of pictures and basically just introducing kids to coding that way. Then we were in the middle of ah creating something that moved inching slightly closer to the game side of things. We were making what we were calling immersive lessons. So it was more of like a more game-like experience that also included the kind of teacher guiding the class through this lesson in which there was a whole kind of world
00:03:05
Speaker
um, and story involved in it. And then at one point it kind of just got decided that we should, uh, spin out and actually make a game, where which was something that we were all very interested in doing anyway. So yeah, we got to work on what would eventually become star stuff. And had you worked on games previously or like, were you dabbling in like game jam projects at the time? Um, yeah, go ahead, Michael.
00:03:35
Speaker
i was we we I wasn't. um i don't I don't know. um But yeah, my journey was pretty similar to them where we were all. an after-school program ah called Nine Dots here in Los Angeles. So yeah, none of us really had made games before. So this is all very new to us, but very exciting, you know, other than the small kind of games that we were working on at Nine Dots, which was like Daniel said, ah for the classroom. I don't know. I don't think dabbling in Unity tutorials counts. Definitely had a phase where
00:04:07
Speaker
That's what I would do on my off time. I don't know. I feel like that counts because it has a lot of the energy of starting something up and like learning a new task, like learning a new skill. So it's personal development. Yeah, it counts.
00:04:22
Speaker
So you got into games kind of through the education side of things, getting into the puzzle space specifically.
Designing a Coding Game
00:04:32
Speaker
I mean, it makes sense because when you think about like the a lot of the education system, especially like a lot of the American education system, so much of it is about problem solving and like finding the correct answer to something and giving that answer. But was there ever a moment when you were thinking about moving into games that you were thinking about moving in to a different genre space? I mean, for me in particular, it's always been me having a fascination with games as ways to open windows into different worlds and kind of learn just, you know, um
00:05:08
Speaker
I was really inspired by James Paul Gee, who talked a lot about games as learning machines. In another book I was reading on, as I think titled Games Art as a or Agency, Art as Agency, one of those stuff ah words cobbled together, but basically the idea that um games give you the opportunity to kind of pick up any identity and really dive into it. So for me personally, that's what excited me. And it really kind of just fit what we were doing at Nine Dots and what we wanted to do with Star Stuff because essentially we wanted to make it feel safe to experiment and encourage um you know curiosity and trying new things and logic puzzles. And for us in particular, using code
00:05:56
Speaker
to solve those logic puzzles just made a lot of sense with the kind of philosophy that I was interested in. But, you know. Well, I think we were always planning on making a game about coding first. That was kind of the plan when we started.
00:06:11
Speaker
So it was mostly about figuring out for our first game what we were going to do differently in that space from other you know coding games that were out there. So i think I think that was kind of the bigger question that I think we had kind of all decided as we were kind of creating this company that we were going to start with a coding game. So it was going to kind of be in sort of a, if not puzzle space, then puzzley adjacent space for sure.
00:06:39
Speaker
Yeah. And for me, I think, you know, coming into this, we wanted to make a puzzle coding game and we're already interested in that and working on that. But prior to that, I've always been kind of just loved puzzles and interested in them, you know, not just video games, but, you know, I love crossword puzzles and, you know, always.
00:06:58
Speaker
Looked at will shorts and thought like oh, that'd be a super cool job just to be able to make these puzzles all day So um as soon as this opportunity kind of arose to you know work in this field and be able to kind of just make puzzles It was a very exciting opportunity and you know wanted to do that. I think you asked what if there are we were thinking about other genres as well. um I mean, i I would be interested in doing other things like I really like platforming games. But, you know, I think doing puzzles is more interesting for me. And even if I were to do something like a platforming game or Metroidvania or something, I would still, you know, heavily want some sort of puzzle or thinkie element in there. It just makes the experience much more rich for me.
Game Mechanics and Accessibility
00:07:44
Speaker
So when you were deciding, oh, we want to make a game about programming, it sounded like you were familiar with a few different programming games that already existed. But yeah, how did you decide the structure and the focus of the programming game that you wanted to make? um Well, I think we had, before we started, um we had talked about and had some ideas around kind of adding I think partly from coming from a more educational space trying to figure out things that would maybe make it more engaging and the idea of having
00:08:19
Speaker
a playable character that was involved with the puzzle solving with the coding was something that we had thought about pretty early. And that was kind of something that yeah we had been planning. And then we had, of course, played a few of the coding games out there, played a fair amount of, you know, human resource machine, seven billion humans. We played some of, what can't I think of? as is electronic so yeah the x x punks yeah exunks
00:08:51
Speaker
So yeah, we played kind of a lot of the bigger coding games. And obviously, those have have a much bigger solving puzzles, but it's it's much more open. And I think one of the things that we kind of landed on was this idea of ah logic puzzles that are where you're using coding to solve the logic puzzle instead of the kind of that more open paradigm that you would normally expect in a coding game, which was mostly because of having the player character kind of necessitated that we plant that down a little bit because the possibility space becomes pretty wide open when you have a free-moving player involved in in the mix.
00:09:30
Speaker
And I think a big part of it also was, you know, trying to do something a little different with, with the genre where, you know, most of the time it's code the thing, watch it and, you know, adjust afterwards, you know, refine it, maybe try to achieve some efficiency score or do it in the fewest lines of code, which is a lot of fun, but we just wanted to do something a little different. So it was, you know, how do we kind of continue the player's engagement within this game loop? So you're coding and then.
00:09:59
Speaker
Not only are you watching it play out, but you are part of that program. So, you know, you're kind of the, the code that you don't code. So you're coding your robots and then the program is only going to succeed if you, the player also do the correct things at the correct times. Not that the timing is ah is a factor in there, but. um Yeah. I think Daniel coined the term, think outside the bot, which I really like. I don't think I was lying. No, but I really enjoy yeah the like dynamic feel. it kind of For me, it feels like you're in this Ruth Goldberg obstacle, where it's like, right I have my goal. I need to get there. And I'm working with you know these buttons, these switches, these bridges, these bots. And how can we all kind of you know work together to get there, which made it a lot more exciting.
00:10:51
Speaker
Yeah, and I think, as someone who loves this game, that by building in a lot of, especially like more traditional video game mechanics, like, you know, switches and doors and character control and like characters and everything, it manages to make the programming game feel less like a programming game while still reinforcing those concepts.
00:11:14
Speaker
And I don't mean that as in like you didn't make a real programming game, but I mean that isn't like you made a programming game that doesn't feel like it's work or that is teaching you things. And as someone who ah works in the game industry, that's very impressive. me Yeah, it was ah interesting to hear some like tester feedback. I think there was one player and specifically who mentioned that being and It felt like an introduction to a puzzle game because you're kind of you know you're introducing all these very widely used tropes in puzzle games where you have you have buttons, you have switches. So it it made it feel more accessible in that way.
00:11:52
Speaker
And it's it's nice to hear people say that because it definitely is, you know, we want you to use coding as a tool to solve the puzzle. There are certainly puzzles where, you know, the, the structure of the code and what you can do with code is, is the puzzle, but oftentimes it's just how can you use this as a tool to solve just a fun logic puzzle rather than overtly teaching you, this is how a conditional works. This is how this works. And, um, you know, it just kind of.
00:12:18
Speaker
slowly dulls out new code blocks so that it just kind of feels intuitive. Yeah, I mean, was that an intentional part of the design that you had this idea that by adding a player that's like separate to the coding part, you could make the coding part feel a bit less central, a bit less intimidating, and make it more approachable?
00:12:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, from the, from the get-go, like the, we definitely wanted to make this as approachable as possible to, you know, at somebody who doesn't code. So just starting with these very basic things. I don't know what you guys thought about it, but I don't know. I don't know that I would say that.
00:12:57
Speaker
the player was introduced as a way to make the coding feel secondary. But I think it was, you know, if we're doing this more simple coding thing, how can we keep the game interesting? Um, and what else can we do to kind of put a twist on the simple, um, you know, a lot of kids games are, are stepped forward two times, step right three times. And then, you know, we wanted to offer something maybe a little more interesting is than that. And, you know,
00:13:25
Speaker
make it not a kid's game, and but something that like anybody could enjoy and maybe find interesting even with those simpler code blocks. Yeah, I don't know if the player character, or at least when we thought of it, I don't know if that that was necessarily all planned. It kind of worked out nicely that way. But I do think, like Michael said, we have kind of a planned emphasis on thinking more big picture, like logically about the whole puzzle, which, you know, we want to avoid, like Michael said, move forward, move forward, move right, move right. Like instead, just go to this thing because we wanted the player to be thinking about
00:13:59
Speaker
The idea of the solving the problem instead of individual code box and like how they were going to do some very low level specific things and Yeah, I think that with those, we kind of were able to, and then we also kind of decided pretty early on that we were going to limit the amount of the number of lines of code pretty heavily in the game because we didn't want the player to be spending a super long time like just writing out a long sequence of code and instead wanted it to kind of feel more like you know you generate an idea, you can code it quickly and test it out, which allll kind of I think came
00:14:38
Speaker
because we added the player character, but probably not specifically planned out when we had the idea to add the player character.
Balancing Difficulty and Player Feedback
00:14:45
Speaker
Yeah. It also became a bit of a necessity because, you know, in lots of coding games, you can just kind of step through or test bits of code, but you can't really do that since the player plays such a central part. So it became like, okay, we need to limit this to a certain amount because Otherwise, you're going to have to play through the entire sequence as the player over and over and over again. So keeping them you know kind of concise while still having like an interesting kernel of an idea in every puzzle was a big thing for us. Yeah, and the ah the idea of wanting to avoid the step forward three times, you know turn 45 degrees, step right.
00:15:24
Speaker
that That mostly came from this feeling this question of like, all right, well, what do we not really like in existing coding games? um Specifically, you know the ones that we had so much experience with at Nine Dots. And how can we yeah how can we make that more interesting? So I think generally that's a fun way of thinking about game design. and What do we not like about this genre that would make me want to play this genre more? My impression is that by making it more exciting and like removing a lot of friction barriers for people who are experienced in it, that's also reducing a lot of barriers to entry for people who have never given this type of game a shot.
00:16:07
Speaker
So keeping that in mind, what other ways did you use to kind of balance that level of depth, but approachability, um especially with like pacing and the difficulty of the game? Cause it's like, it's not a game for kids or young kids, but it's also a game that is deeply, I would describe it as successfully walking the tight rope of depth and approachability.
00:16:35
Speaker
I could speak to the world and narrative, but I think yeah Michael, Dan, if you want to talk about the ah progression. From the beginning, um you know I think we took cues from lots of different puzzle games, but you know just giving the player lots of options in what they can do, and you know you don't need to do every puzzle to move on. At the start of every section, we have pretty basic puzzles to kind of introduce you to the concepts and let you get familiar with them.
00:17:02
Speaker
and um you know later in the section there's going to be harder ones and you can skip those or you can you can try them as long as you want. I think we um maybe be underestimated also how much how stubborn people are going to be and how important it is to make it clear that you know not everything is required. and We also have bonus puzzles that are definitely a step up from the rest of the game that are kept completely separate, that are more in your menu so that It's there for the people who want it. But you know in testing, seeing um just you know people's need to, I guess, complete everything that is at least you know in the overworld, the normal overworld map. So I think it was really good that we kept kind of a separate area for those other puzzles that made it feel more optional.
00:17:45
Speaker
And then I think also to Alan's credit and then consulting with him many times, just you know making sure that we really honed in the first area and made sure everything was clear and tested that over and over and over again. And we did a ton of testing in the tutorial and first area just to make sure that that part was really smooth and that people were getting through it and understood the game.
00:18:08
Speaker
Yeah, I also think that maybe because of the different facets of how levels can be created, like there can be new problems created by things the player can do or bots or a combination of bots. There were so many different elements to play with. ah yeah You could maybe show a lot of interesting ideas without necessarily having and novel ideas without having to make something super complex. So I think maybe that worked to our benefit as well. Just being able to kind of keep a steady flow of kind of interesting ideas without having to make a complicated program that you have to write to solve it. ah Yeah, when we talk about approachability and um I think from the beginning we also wanted it to feel like as you walk through the world for it to feel like an environment you want to explore and then you want to it's you know easy
00:19:03
Speaker
to walk in and out of levels, even down to like how the UI works when you have you know the main sequence of levels that you are required. Anything that you complete extra is just like ah in the UI kind of pops up as an extra piece of star stuff. So it's from the beginning, you you know how much you need. And then anything you complete that's extra is just like very much so communicated as, oh, you did more than you had to.
00:19:33
Speaker
And then thinking about when it feels good to take breaks in puzzle games, because I know personally I could only play a puzzle game that's puzzle to puzzle for so long and I need to take a break. um So we were really aware of that. Also very surprised how long some streamers could play our game. um Delighted, but surprised. But yeah, I wanted you know to have little things like bulletin boards that you could read, little bean bags you could sit on. You could go to the shop and like customize your outfit or search for that rare cosmic die if you don't want to.
00:20:09
Speaker
go straight to another puzzle yeah and also to what daniel was saying just about the level design just really i mean back to testing was was a huge part of it but you know seeing what extraneous things maybe we can remove from puzzles and refine them reach the approachability that we were shooting for, you know while also keeping them novel. Thankfully, we had ah Stephen Miller, who deserves a huge shout out in this game, who's just an endless dwell of ah great ideas and puzzle design. So that was really great. But then you know taking those ideas, refining them, testing them, and making sure that they're clear and achievable. You know, we've made lots of other choices in the game as well, like limiting the lines of code, which was kind of a late game decision for us to kind of have this like predefined number of lines of code that essentially is going to be how many lines of code you need to solve the puzzle with a little give and take here and there. But um that just also came from testing and just seeing, you know, people were having a better experience with the game.
00:21:12
Speaker
with those kind of guides in place and you know it would prevent a lot of rabbit holes and you know just things that were maybe not fun um you know in the beginning of our game when when the line limits were much more open also people would try all these sorts of things that just weren't fun you know even if they were avenues that were interesting to explore, people like just, you know, we have like a wait command in the game that the bots can wait or listen for you to press a button before they continue the rest of their code. But, you know, time and time again, we would see people, you know, just have a bot walk back and forth and back and forth indefinitely to save time and, you know, eventually
00:21:51
Speaker
Either they could maybe solve a puzzle that way if they had too many lines of code, and it just kind of felt bad. Or they would just try it over and over again throughout the course of the puzzle, the entire game. you know So it was just putting these kind of limits and testing and just seeing how we could guide the player was really helpful.
Hint System Development
00:22:11
Speaker
Yeah, the hint system was also another kind of later game. ah We solidified it late game.
00:22:18
Speaker
and that We had a few ideas there, but we settled on let's just give players the sequence of blocks and have them fill in the arguments. And that felt didn't feel too bad. It didn't feel bad because we want we definitely wanted to avoid giving them too much of the answer of the solution.
00:22:40
Speaker
But since our game also involved the player, there were several times where you would use a hint and then you know there's still some thinking involved in how you are involved in the puzzle. So that seemed to go well.
00:22:53
Speaker
Yeah, and an important part of that that we also found from testing was, you know, the, we tried a few different hidden systems and and some of them led to, you know, people asking for a hint and then it not being good enough where it wasn't really giving you the information or helping you. And then it feels even worse almost because you're getting this hint and then you're still not solving it. And we really wanted to.
00:23:13
Speaker
provide the the right amount of information where the player now felt like they had a new idea or you know could explore something new immediately. So testing out that hint system. And I think also to Sylvia's credit, making sure that that hint system unlocked an achievement. People really felt like, OK, I'm supposed to do this. This is OK. And they really liked that. And it made the experience for somebody who's maybe struggling on a puzzle that much cleaner and just felt good.
00:23:40
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's definitely we've noticed, um, or at least I have with like direct nick games and like, especially when we were testing out the hint system for muscles expedition. There are a lot of people being like, no, but I don't want to rely on the hint system that feels like admitting weakness. like Being able to destigmatize that is awesome. yeah Yeah. I mean, I'm actually curious, like, did you do anything particular to find playtesters who would be particularly representative of the audience who might find the game at the end? Because like, I think once we've released games with hints, people use the hints, but a lot of our playtesting pool have been people who don't tend to want to use hints.
00:24:23
Speaker
which makes it really hard to test the hint system itself, but you were getting feedback on the hint system, so you're clearly doing something right in the playtesting process. A lot of it was friends. um we did do ah Early on we did um some testing with a service, which actually I don't think was good representation of the people who were going to play the game, but it was a good representation of just a wider range of players in general who maybe also didn't you know feel Like they needed to solve everything without hints. They were approaching the game more like somebody that would actually do it and didn't feel some obligation, I think, which was really good for us. You know, I think it's very important to, to look at who the play testers are and, you know, if they are in your audience or not, but even if they're not, you know, I think for our, actually for our hint system, some of the best feedback was from people who maybe be weren't our target audience, surprisingly enough.
00:25:19
Speaker
or at least not the diehard audience. yeah maybe Maybe people who are more on the edge of it. And then later, I think we also, you know but once we had put out a demo, we got people who were from our Discord and I think maybe Maybe it has to do with the vibe of the demo that there were some people who were maybe slightly more casual puzzle enthusiasts would um join us. But I think even I think the other thing was maybe some unrefined puzzles that felt especially hard where people who I think normally maybe wouldn't have wanted to use a hint that end up using it later on because I guess some of the puzzles maybe were a bit
00:26:02
Speaker
maybe maybe close to unfair even. So I think that almost helped us test it as well. And I'm curious, like what does an unfair puzzle look like to you? like By the end of development, could you encapsulate why a puzzle was or wasn't a good fit for the game? And when you were iterating on puzzles, what were the qualities that you were trying to bring out?
00:26:28
Speaker
I think a lot of times i mean i think a a big thing was just how long it was taking people. It was something we were always aware of. A lot of unfairness would i think quote unquote unfairness would be ah people going down avenues that were fruitless for much too long without any indication of maybe why it was wrong or that it wasn't going to work. So ensuring that kind of what the puzzle about is about is clear and You know, like I think the most interesting puzzles in general and in our game are ones where you kind of know exactly what you need to do. It's it's not a mess of 20 different things on the screen and it's hard to parse what's even being asked of you. So it's just kind of refining things down to like, okay, I know exactly what I need to do here.
00:27:15
Speaker
how do I do it? you know how What is the kind of trick here? And sometimes you know if that's too unclear or there's just too many elements in the puzzles causing people to try you know different things, it was how do we kind of gauge that and direct them in the right way to just kind of achieve the right balance that we were going for? um you know And I think what is fair or unfair is an interesting thing to discuss, but it's more about the level of difficulty and approachability that we wanted to achieve in in this game. So what can we do to achieve that? And what can we shave off puzzles to kind of elevate just the most interesting parts and kind of bring light to the crux of the puzzle?
Refining Puzzle Fairness
00:27:57
Speaker
Yeah, I think i think ah Michael hit on the end, which is what I want to say. But unfairness is probably relative to the expectations you've set for the player in the game previously. So I think we saw definitely, towards the end of the game, I think what I was calling unfair was maybe just puzzles that we definitely saw a fair amount of frustration from players on. And I think that had a lot to do with what they had come to expect from the game up until that point. and then um Yeah, and and then I think the other part that was maybe definitely universal for our game as a rifle test, which was just that we didn't want anything to feel hidden from the player in terms of what the problem is. as The problem should always be obvious. Also the placement of puzzles in this in you know the trail of puzzles that you're walking has a lot to do with just what felt good. So testing that a lot.
00:28:51
Speaker
and smoothing out the flow of difficulty helped. Yeah, and I think also making sure people get enough experience with certain mechanics or kind of, again, back to testing. I think testing is so super important. But you know maybe we taught Nick a mechanic 20 puzzles ago, and you know we we thought people understood it, and they didn't. and Or they did understand it, but they just weren't thinking about it. And some of it's about you know priming. so How can we have another puzzle to maybe remind the player of this? Or or sometimes you know early on, we would find a puzzle that had a mechanic that we thought was interesting, but actually it was you know three different mechanics that we kind of needed to teach separately and break out into three different puzzles so that the player could kind of understand the intricacies of the game.
00:29:38
Speaker
I think especially with our game where you have this kind of interactive element of the player doing things as well as, you know, how do these code blocks work? And sometimes there's, you know, weird edge cases that people really need to understand on both sides of that and making sure that we have the puzzles in place to make sure people understood that as well as making sure they're continuing to use that information and it stays fresh throughout the game so that they're ready to recall that when when they need it.
00:30:08
Speaker
And what was your threshold or what were you looking for for the bonus puzzles? Because obviously they're like post-game, they're like very clearly optional content. So you can kind of have as many of them as you would like, but it felt like you were still pretty reserved, like you you wanted to focus just on the most interesting ones. And like they all they all feel very different, like both the main game and the post-game puzzles all feel like unique and special.
00:30:36
Speaker
So I think you did a really good job of curating them. But yeah, I'm curious like how you decided which ones got to stay as bonus puzzles versus which ones got cut. I mean another shout out to Stephen Miller here but you know I think that structure came about also just because Stephen brought us so many ideas that we really loved and you know so many more that are still aren't even in the game just because we didn't have room um but most of it was just from testing and it was like oh we really love this idea but it's a little too tricky and people are getting a little too stuck on it but they were just kind of generally
00:31:10
Speaker
just core concepts that maybe the puzzles aren't intentionally more challenging or obfuscated or difficult. They were just kind of more challenging concepts that we saw people taking longer to figure out, but still have the same concepts that we love throughout the game, where it's just like this kernel of an idea that we really wanted to explore. um Yeah, and and sometimes that even means like it was a puzzle that we didn't intend to be hard, but you know, people just weren't seeing it for, for one reason or another, even when we boiled it down to kind of its simplest form. Um, so sometimes those just kind of moved to, to bonus puzzles just cause we loved them and wanted to keep them. And, um, also just wanted to offer, you know, people who wanted more or wanted more of a challenge. They have this other area to get that.
00:32:01
Speaker
Yeah, I think it did definitely boil down to like puzzles we loved, but in testing seemed like it was a little above the difficulty and approachability that we were aiming for. There's the name of our DLC.
00:32:21
Speaker
Yeah. So, so that we were, but we, those are puzzles that we all love. Like, you know, like, um, Steven and Michael, well one of them would create it and then, you know, they'd send it to us. We'd play at them. They were ones that were just like, yeah, the idea where you'd finish it. Like, Oh, that's so cool. But yeah, it also took me 20 minutes and I've played the game a lot. Maybe, maybe that's not one that, that should go in the main sequence. But I think we also found, I think part of the reason there aren't even more puzzles. I think there could have been more, but one thing was even the puzzles that were hard. We we found that a lot of people, even though, like you said, Alan, they are very separate and very clearly not required. A lot of people didn't feel that way.
00:33:04
Speaker
And if if they there was still a fair amount of frustration getting very stuck on, even though it's marked as a bonus and maybe the last one, the bonus, we found sometimes in testing that even that was still um maybe a bit demoralizing. It's it's a completionist mindset. Exactly. yeah've yeah I've done all of these except this one, so I i need to be able to do this one.
00:33:29
Speaker
Exactly, exactly. So I think that's why there's not a even more. But I think it was also that we wanted to, like you said, keep it so that each puzzle had some sort of interesting thing that set it apart even in the bonus. We wanted each puzzle to feel special. So I think that's not a reason that there aren't more. It's just we wanted to make sure that we kind of maintained that idea and quality throughout. Yeah, there's something interesting there where you know We were surprised to have so much of that mindset come about in watching streamers and play tests. There's like something interesting there about the human condition that we young people can't let go. But maybe we'll write about that later. Yeah, I love it when you see somebody who who you know maybe there's a puzzle, an area back that they couldn't do and throughout their playthrough. They keep going back to it. like They can't let it go. They need to keep going back to it. And and you see that a lot too, which is just fun to watch.
00:34:23
Speaker
um But I'm also curious, Alan, how you think about that, how you make sure to kind of keep those things separate and make people feel like they can, you know or if that is important to you.
00:34:34
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's really tricky. I think in in Monsters Expedition, we tried to do it just by making it very easy to be making forwards progress and like kind of shunt you on the easiest possible path just by the geometry of the world. And so you have to kind of resist the urge of forwards progress if you want to be completionist and if you want to see the harder puzzles.
00:35:00
Speaker
So that helped a bit, I think. And yeah, like in Monster Expedition, trying to hide the really hard puzzles behind medium puzzles, and hide the medium puzzles behind like slightly medium puzzles. So that if you're stuck on a puzzle, ideally you're not stuck on a puzzle that's like five difficulty levels above.
00:35:20
Speaker
where you're actually ready for. So you might give up on it, but like, if you do give up on it, then you haven't been stuck on it too long, hopefully. And if you don't get stuck on it, then you get to have that burst of enjoyment from solving a puzzle rather than, you know, like spending hours and hours and hours on a single puzzle. I think it's harder when you're gating things such that you have to solve the puzzles slightly less hard to get the really hard puzzles. Um, so clearly what you needed is, uh, like when you, when you beat all the bonus puzzles, it just unlocks a second stage of both and it just keeps going. Uh, this is just feature creep to my producer ears. And we certainly had none of that in our game. no no feature creek Um, are there any other questions that you had for us, uh, while we have you? Yeah. Yeah. Um.
00:36:17
Speaker
I think we're very interested as we're going into ideation for our game number two.
Future Game Project Ideation
00:36:23
Speaker
um Yeah, just like wondering how you all at direct neck go about ideating puzzle game ideas and Alan, this one is all you, buddy.
00:36:38
Speaker
um Yeah, I mean, I like to have a lot of different ideas before picking one. I feel like if you have like two or three game ideas, there can be a lot of incentives to go like, okay, well, this seems plausible. Let's do this. And like there's a desire to be working on like, oh, this is going to be a big project.
00:37:03
Speaker
But I think the more game ideas you have simmering or the more prototypes you have, the easier it is to get a sign of like, oh no, but this one, this one is a really special one.
00:37:14
Speaker
So to some degree I've done it just by like making a lot of jam-sized projects and then seeing which ones I come back to or like want to grow while I'm working on them. But that said I like the kind of the way we've done it has just been to start making something and go like okay yes this is gonna be a game that we're gonna sell and like just hoping that we can control how much the scope creep happens while we make it.
00:37:41
Speaker
um I think there's to some degree the actual game is a secondary consideration. Like at this point I feel like I could take any game idea and turn it into a good game as long as it has like the signs of like there being interesting interactions that could be interesting to explore. Like I feel like most things could be something that's a plausible project to make. it It really is a question of like scope and ambition.
00:38:09
Speaker
trying to figure out like, okay, well, this is a game that would be fun to make, but does it feel like a worthy success to Monster's Expedition? And like, we don't have to have the answer to that, but yes, to work on something. But it's kind of like, by deciding that something is worth making, we're kind of deciding that, oh, but these other ideas aren't worth making.
00:38:33
Speaker
Or less worth making. And like my standards, our standards have gotten really high, which makes it really hard to go like, oh yeah, well, this is definitely going to reach a bigger audience. It's a bigger audience. It's going to be.
00:38:50
Speaker
be five times bigger, 10 times bigger. And like trying to push back against that and go, well, no, really the only thing that matters is that it's a fun project and the people who are working on it are having a good time and we don't completely run out of money making it. Yeah, and it makes us money back. And this has led, the reason I cackled when ah you asked the question is because this does lead to a lot of having Well, first of all, it leads to a lot of Alan coming up with a new idea and being very excited about it for a week and then putting it in a list. And then a couple of weeks later, he has another really really exciting idea. But beyond that, it leads to a lot of conversation about like, is this the game that I want to spend the next X years of my life working on? Or is this just a really exciting like jam game idea?
00:39:45
Speaker
And there's been a lot of that ah conversation recently. Yeah. Cause I feel like the sweet spot for me would be a project that takes about a year to make um in terms of like happiness of development.
Social Media and Closing Remarks
00:40:02
Speaker
But that's like, but one, if you think you can make something in a year, then good luck finishing it in two. But also, the kind of ideas that feel plausible to make in that time are just a bit less ambitious than the part of my brain which goes, well, no, but I've got to make something like really, really great, something something that's like a worthy successor month to Monster to the Expedition. like You just can't make a worthy successor to Monster to the Expedition in less than a year. That game took three and a half years to make.
00:40:33
Speaker
um and Like if we were making it a game now, we could make the same game faster, but like each game has its own unique challenges, its own things that make it hard to make. So there's, there's no shortcut or the shortcut is just getting lucky. So it's tricky. Yeah. The question that comes up a lot for me is, um, you know, we, we made it a solid, like good game with star stuff. It didn't blow up on steam, but yeah, how, how do you get the exciting factor? Like, how do you make it?
00:41:05
Speaker
not just good, but exciting where people want to like share it and you know and reach you know the the success you've reached with monsters. and The answer is an unreasonable scope.
00:41:19
Speaker
yeah right or I guess other question was how do you know that you have that yeah before even you think it's very tricky. Like, I mean, even monster expedition, I felt like it was special, but like when we were starting to make that game, I couldn't have encapsulated the reasons.
00:41:36
Speaker
why it was special or the degree to which I could reasonably expect it to be a successful game and like it kind of I think that's part of why it's actually very important to keep scope limited is because even if you think you've got something special it's probably easier to be wrong than and right about that and so it's easier to to make something that's great if you make 10 small things than one big thing that takes 10 times as long ah But that kind of isn't very satisfying. That's okay. I wasn't expecting that. Yeah, like I think it's very hard like when you're thinking about ideas to tell if something has a special source.
00:42:19
Speaker
um but I think when you're in the midst of developing something, it is possible to not tell for sure, but to get a sense of it. And so being willing to cut your losses and say like, okay, well, this idea, like we could work on this for X time and it would still be a good game, but like actually does this hit standards for like likelihood of being amazing and being willing to either like stop working on it or massively reduce scope to just ship it and then move on to something else. It's very hard to do when you're in the middle of making it. I've never managed to do that, but I feel like honing that skill is probably one way to maximize your chances of of finding that goal. the When you're um prototyping these ideas, are a lot of them in like puzzle script or are you often like you know getting into a full-fledged Unity project? Or what does that normally look like? Are you doing it on paper? like what What's it normally look like for you?
00:43:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's usually puzzle script for me. okay yeah i like I used to be a programmer. I can still program, but I burnt out on programming. like I can ah can iterate in puzzle script without it feeling like work in a way that if I was just sitting in unity,
00:43:33
Speaker
I need somebody else there to implement things, to hook things up, to to implement gameplay mechanics. And so that's just a bit slower. So I'm able to prototype in public script so quickly, partly because I can just do it myself, but also because I've been making games in public script for over a decade now. right yeah So I'm just very familiar with it. And i also the kind of ideas that I have because I've been working in public script so long,
00:44:01
Speaker
The only ideas I have are games that you could prototype in puzzle script. That makes sense. Also, so where can people find you online? ah Yeah, so you can find us. Let's see. um Well, we have our Steam page up for Star Stuff, which has, you know, all the links to our website. Our website is animogames.org. We're actually working on a new project to get more eyes on Star Stuff. We're calling it the Star Stuff EDU project.
00:44:31
Speaker
So creating a web-based version of the game and marketing that for free ah to educators. So you can find more information on that on our website. We're on Twitter, Onimo Games underscore. All of our socials have different names. So our Instagram is Onimo Games and our TikTok is Onimo underscore games. Sometimes I put things on there.
00:44:59
Speaker
Go to the Steam page. Yeah, check out the the Steam page and connect with us on Discord. That's really the best way to contact us. Awesome. um Thank you so much for joining us. It's been a real real pleasure to talk to the three of you. Yeah, same here. Thank you, Saran. Thank you, Alan.
00:45:16
Speaker
Yeah, thank you so much for having us. Yeah, thanks. Thank you. Yeah, this has been great. And thank you for listening to the Direct Neck and Friends official podcast. Our music is by Priscilla Snow, who you can find at ghoulnoise.bandcamp dot.com. Our podcast artwork is by Adam DeGrandis. Please rate and review us on your podcast service of choice, and be sure to tune in next episode for more interesting conversations.