Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 56: Blookerstein (Dittori)
314 Plays6 days ago
In this episode, Alan is joined by Draknek & Friends' Publishing Manager, Ben Wilson, and they chat to Luke of Blookerstein Games, the creator of Dittori. Topics include the reception to the game’s announcement and demo, learning when it’s the right time to optimise, what it’s like to work with Draknek & Friends, and early inspirations for Dittori.
As mentioned in this episode, here's a link to the Dittori Demo OST.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:21
Speaker
Welcome to the Dragnet Confirmed's official podcast, where we peel back the curtain on puzzle games and the people who make them.
Introducing the Hosts and Guest
00:00:27
Speaker
I'm Alan, the head dragneck at Dragnet Confirmed's, and today I'm joined by Ben Wilson, the publishing manager at Dragnet Confirmed's.
00:00:34
Speaker
Hi. Today we're joined by Luke, aka Blucherstein, who you may know from their work on Dittery. How are you doing today? Hello, I'm doing pretty good. How are you doing? Yeah, pretty
Discussion on Dittery's Demo Success
00:00:46
Speaker
good. ah Because we just announced your game yesterday. we did. It was very nervous, but cool.
00:00:54
Speaker
Yeah, how how are you feeling? Are you are you less nervous now? I am less nervous now. It went well. ah We got a good amount of wish lists and people looking at it, and the game did not horribly, the demo that people were playing did not horribly fall apart.
00:01:09
Speaker
So that's pretty awesome.
Secrets in the Dittery Demo
00:01:11
Speaker
I've seen some really nice comments already from people playing on Steam. Yeah, people are finding a lot of secrets. I was kind hoping that some secrets wouldn't go as found, but people did, and that's okay. I think we knew fact that there were secrets there that could be discovered.
00:01:31
Speaker
i think I knew in my heart, like yeah, people people are going to... there it's going to be ah an awareness that there's this stuff existing. It's not going to be a case where when we release a game, it gets like, ha ha ha ha, was in the demo all the time. The good thing about that, though, is that it seems like the people who are discovering those kinds of secrets are the people who like the game the most.
00:01:54
Speaker
Yes. It's not a case of like, oh, you found too much, now you're not going to buy the game. I would say from like, if you're just playing the demo normally, it's like a 20 minute experience, probably.
Player Feedback and Reviews
00:02:07
Speaker
so um I consider a very good sign that we already have like a review on steam from somebody who spent like seven and a half hours. yeah it so say Good, good sign of a good, good game. Yeah.
00:02:22
Speaker
uh yeah play the du if you haven't played the demo play the demo like what are you doing i don't know how much we're going to do spoilers on this on this but like one if you're listening to this podcast and you haven't played the demo i guess you could be like one of these people that doesn't play demos as a thing and like yeah that's fair and if we do do spoilers we'll like mark it so you can stop listening um but it's a real good demo i think it will be like it won't It won't spoil the whole game for you, um I think.
00:02:48
Speaker
And I think it will overall get you more hyped for the full game. And if you think you don't need to be more hyped for the full game, well, that's good. But if you think you could be more hyped full game, if you're like, well, I know Dracnex publishing it, so I guess it'll be good.
00:03:02
Speaker
But, you know, I'm in no rush. Rush! Rush! Check out the demo! It's great. And wishlist the game, please and thank you. And wishlist the game and ah join our newsletter. we don't We don't plug the newsletter lot, but we we do every every month. We do Think He Said Thursday and you can sign up to that to get both monthly game recommendations and ah you will just email you whenever we announce or release a game. and So that's good. so love checking that.
00:03:29
Speaker
You can see in which games you're highlighting. Pretty good. But ah yeah, back to Dittery. You've been working on this for a while. um do you want to start talking about like what what your initial inspirations were? like what What the context was for starting this project?
Origins and Evolution of Dittery
00:03:48
Speaker
Yeah, so um so I started actively working on this ah in late 2023, but technically i started of working on this game in 2018 and that's when I came up with like basic ideas, and then I just kind of put it on the shelf for a long time.
00:04:04
Speaker
But i was in high school, and I had just finished Steven Sausage Roll, which was very good. And it was also kind of... i think Steven Sausage Roll isn't, like, one of my favorite games. Well, I don't know if would say one of them, but it's not, like, my favorite game of all time.
00:04:18
Speaker
But... It is ah the game, one of the games that has the the most been like inspired me with its design philosophy, especially at the time. And so I looked at that and originally I was in i was in high school in 2018 and i was just thinking all the time about weird pipe dream ideas for games.
00:04:40
Speaker
I came up with one puzzle that was was good. And at the time I came up with that puzzle, the game in my head was like a ah time loop puzzle platformer where you takes place on like a city where gravity had been shifted sideways. So you're like standing on the sides of buildings.
00:04:57
Speaker
It's nothing like the game is now. oh But I came up with one puzzle and that puzzle is still in in the game in a different form ah in World 3. It's not in the demo, but... And it's like the fifth puzzle in the World Eight.
00:05:12
Speaker
Privately, I'm trying to think about whether I remember which puzzle that is. It's called Mirror Madness, I think. But it's a very, like... concise and very simple puzzle that still people have gotten stuck on. And like the first time I i adequately play tested it, someone got stuck on it and then we stopped play testing. And then like, he called me on the phone the next day and was like, oh my gosh, I know how to solve that thing. now And I was like, okay,
00:05:39
Speaker
a good puzzle So um and the the game had absolutely, it was a puzzle platform. It was 2D. And also it didn't have like the entangler mechanics that are there now didn't exist. It was just the like two blocks.
00:05:55
Speaker
And so that was kind of the point where i knew this is a seed. There is something that this can connect to to make more puzzles. I'm not sure how yet. And then at that point, I was working in Unreal Engine and I was in a computer science class that was like, I'd finished all the normal computer science classes. And now in the one where you can just do projects and kind of do whatever you want. And then you have to present it at the end.
00:06:21
Speaker
So I was like, I'm going to take up Unreal Engine. I'm going to i going to figure out, like combine that idea that I had and try to flesh it out into something that's like Stephen's sausage roll. So that was my initial idea. And I started programming. um And at the time I was very inexperienced in programming. And so in my head, I was kind of like, you know what?
00:06:42
Speaker
Computers are so fast. i don't really have to worry about optimizing this as long as it works. Right. And that was not the case because I didn't know anything. And so I had all this stuff. And by the time I was almost done with it, it was like, I tried to create like a couple more complicated levels and on one of them I would like push a button and i have to wait like two seconds before the movement.
00:07:06
Speaker
And this is still back in 2018? This is back in 2018, yes. And so then I learned that optimizing is a thing that is still real and not just something that people did in the 80s.
00:07:17
Speaker
um And so I optimized that build and I finished a build in Unreal Engine that was incredibly janky and had no art or anything.
00:07:28
Speaker
And it didn't even have like tweens between movement. It just jumped. But I finished that and it had 16 levels. And those levels are ones, ah like, I think four of them are still in some form in the game, maybe five, and they encompass the first, like, they're spread across what is now the first, like, three areas the game or something.
00:07:53
Speaker
And then put it on a shelf and thought about it as, like, yeah, I should finish this for, like, five years. Um... That was where it started. And then I did a bunch of other creative pursuits that were cool. but anyone this is This is something that's very odd not the same community Thinky Games, but I was part of a YouTube channel called Siva Gunner, and I still am, but that was kind of where my creative pursuits lie. And it's... a lot of making jokes and making remixes of songs to turn them into bit Specifically songs from video games to turn them into other songs from video games.
00:08:30
Speaker
And a kind of um culminated in 2023 with a big project that I led with a bunch of other people that was called. the shop fusion club and that was a video that went up where we modded or edited 38 different games to have shopkeepers from other games and also music from other games, but in the style of the the first game in this big like chain format. And it's kind of hard to explain, but... And the video is also kind wacky, but that was a ah huge project that like sixty people worked on and i led that and That was kind of my first experience of leading a big creative project like this.
00:09:13
Speaker
That was a crazy awesome experience. But then after I finished that, I had a job that was kind of simple and I didn't really do... I was also at school, but wasn't taking really
Technical Development and Engine Transition
00:09:23
Speaker
hard classes.
00:09:23
Speaker
I didn't really do anything for a little while and I was like, okay, I need to start working on something else. And that was... So then I started pick this back up late 2023 and started working on it.
00:09:36
Speaker
that's where it started i uh briefly want to come to your defense when it comes to your thoughts about optimization because i think you did learn that the right way around um i think when you're when you're starting making games it is i think important that you do just get to the point where there's something on the screen as fast as possible and then when you get to it learn the you know proper way you should be doing that i think there's like you open up a game engine like a modern game engine is like looking at a aircraft cockpit right there's just so much and i think it's if you were compelled to do things the right way right off the bat you would just never make anything um and i think like so much of that like
00:10:27
Speaker
early having the enthusiasm to keep going is is from like the you know being able to make something quickly and just you know let that guide the rest of your development i think that's absolutely true and also i i think it's important to to like have a little bit of failure because like i don't think i would have internalized um things about how optimization works well if I hadn't have had that experience. I've had to redo a bunch of stuff because it was done poorly.
00:10:58
Speaker
So yeah, I totally agree. And the other thing was, um So in ah once I started picking up the game and working on it again, I totally redid it in Unity.
00:11:09
Speaker
And um I found that Unreal Engine is not a good tool for people who are starting to learn how to make games, in my opinion. Unity is so much easier to use.
00:11:23
Speaker
It's not even comparable. And like an Unreal Engine is is really powerful, but it's designed for big teams already know what they're doing. And so I've had, I feel like over the past couple of years, I've come to the point where in unity where I feel like I can pretty much figure something out, how to make things and figure out how to make things that feel like they were made properly, which I'm very happy about. And I do not feel that way about it in real life, even though I've worked in it for some years too.
00:11:56
Speaker
Did you have prior Unity experience before you started picking this project back up, or was this your first Unity project? I did not. This was my first Unity project, although I had then, compared to when I started working on the the game originally in Unreal Engine, I had gone through ah several years of of college programming education, so that was definitely so i know what I was doing a lot more.
00:12:25
Speaker
But this was where I started learning Unity. And it just, like, especially because I'd already learned in Unreal Engine for a while, switching to Unity was like, it was a breeze. And everything was so much simpler and more concise. And there was so many more ah tutorials. it just felt less ugly to work with.
00:12:46
Speaker
It felt like I was doing things the right way rather than janking together something that worked. And you said that ah this this was originally inspired from having just played Stephen Sausage Roll.
00:12:59
Speaker
What put Stephen Sausage Roll on your radar in
Influences and Design Philosophy Changes
00:13:02
Speaker
the first place? It was probably the same thing as as most people, which was ah Jonathan Blow suggesting it, I think. And I actually, i'm I like The Witness, but I'm more of a fan of...
00:13:16
Speaker
afraid and that was the thing that Like, I think, I mean, I was pretty young, so this was kind of a funny situation. But in like 2016, I started getting, or maybe it was little earlier than that, it might have been 2015, I started getting really into...
00:13:34
Speaker
I started buying a bunch of games on Steam for the first time ah with Summer Sale or whatever. And I remember i was specifically, I was really excited for No Man's Sky, and then it wasn't good. And so then I was like, okay, I'm going to refund this. it also didn't work on my computer. So I was like, I'm going to refund this, and I'm going to spend the money that I paid for No Man's Sky on a bunch of $3 Steam games.
00:13:53
Speaker
And um I played most of those, and Braid was the one that I played that was like, wow, this is amazing. and especially world four of afraid where you're move and forward and time moves and move ah backwards and time moves backwards.
00:14:08
Speaker
That is still like one of the things it's like that's it's so much fun and it's so like joyful and goofy and funny and de a the things that it does while also putting on a straight face and I feel like ah putting on a straight face makes everything feel so much funnier.
00:14:24
Speaker
That's like one of my favorite all-time memorable puzzle things. And that got me to look for more games like it. and
00:14:35
Speaker
And after you played that, were there any other memorable puzzle games that you you you played around the same time? um Yes, so think around that time i joined the Thinky Puzzle Game Discord.
00:14:52
Speaker
That was a while ago. I think I made a Discord account to join it. But I remember really liking Recursed. I really liked Infinity Factory specifically over some of the other Dektronis games. I don't know if that one was just more approachable for me, but I liked Optimizing for Part Count on that.
00:15:10
Speaker
And... and I really like Portal. Portal actually is probably um like I played Portal 8 or Portal 2 way earlier and that was my favorite game for a while. on But then I kind of got more refined with I still really like Portal but I just like some those other games a little bit more I had a bunch of... I liked Snakebird, but Snakebird kind of very difficult and felt kind of a little bit torturous, especially to being less experienced with puzzles, but I still love the whole thing.
00:15:46
Speaker
I think... okay The thing with Stephen's sausage roll that kind of captivated me about it was how it's, especially at the time, um it was very minimalist in a way where everything ah grew out of the course the mechanics and I hadn't seen Things do that before, like and in that it didn't really introduce anything new.
00:16:09
Speaker
And so that was like a core thing in my head that was like, that's very cool. I want my game to be like that, where there's like a a small set of things that are introduced at the start. and then it's just twists on those things that existed the whole time.
00:16:25
Speaker
I think that's very cool. Although at this point, I've kind of moved a little bit away from that philosophy in my head because I feel like it's a philosophy and very appealing to developers, but it doesn't really matter as much to players. And it also makes for a kind of game that feels like a study almost like an educational rather than a work of art, which is more, requires you to be more vulnerable, I think, and do more things that are kind of weird.
00:16:59
Speaker
Because you're trying to invoke a specific experience in the player, and and that specific experience that Steven Sosser told us hadn't been done before, so it was very interesting to me. But I think, like...
00:17:12
Speaker
In in the the game that I have now, I found that um being more vulnerable and having more ideas that are in there that aren't like... like the The good thing about Steven Sausage Roll's kind of design is that it makes it feel like you could make something that's perfect.
00:17:27
Speaker
um Because you have like this little set of rolls, and then there's this giant sprawling complexity that comes out of it, and it's like it's almost like you're you've got like a fractal, right?
00:17:39
Speaker
And you're... you're taking that fractal and you're exploring it and giving it to the player, but you didn't make the the fractal, you're just exploring it, right? And I think that design is really appealing to designers and especially kind of puzzle game designers who are usually kind of like science-brained, I think, a little bit, is which I am, or like math-brained.
00:18:01
Speaker
um But I don't think that, even though it feels so appealing from a developer's perspective, I don't think that that makes for a better game. It just makes for a game that like feels safer for the developer to make, but also feels like um like you can still make incredible, intricate, complicated um systems that are like really beautiful, but there's always this level of like you don't have to be vulnerable and they express he yourself and then put things in that aren't perfect.
00:18:31
Speaker
So I feel like over time, my preference has shifted more towards games that are weird and imperfect and um more artistic than making a of fractal That's an interesting distinction. I ah kind of feel like a can of wormholes maybe did a really good job of balancing those two factors. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, there's a lot of weird things in can of wormholes that aren't like like the things with the fence that aren't necessarily things that this obviously is the natural conclusion to come to from this. But instead of like, I think this would be cool to have this weird thing happen that introduces these more possibilities. I think that's a good.
00:19:10
Speaker
Yeah, in the podcast episode we did with Stephen a couple of months ago, we got into that design philosophy. um And yeah, it's really, really interesting to hear how you like started out from a similar place and then like pretty much like shifted over time and thought, no, and maybe what I want to make is like something slightly different to that. Mm-hmm.
00:19:33
Speaker
And feel like that, especially the biggest shift happened a little bit more recently with, like, the game now has a lot of secret stuff, and the secret stuff is not, like, so the original thoughts that I had when developing a lot of this game was that the whole game should just be about this entanglement and mechanic and exploring the complexities of it.
00:19:57
Speaker
um But then I got to a point where I was like, i don't think I think I can have there be other stuff in here that I think is cool. And I think that that that other stuff, even though it makes the game feel less perfect, I think it makes it better as a work of art um and makes the the experience that is delivered feel more sprawling.
00:20:20
Speaker
I keep saying in vulnerable, which is a very developer-side thing. but i think it it reflects in the the final product if your thing has all these ideas that are kind of going all over the place. and It's not like it can be encapsulated in a single idea that's very deep, but it is more a interesting. And I'm still very much... on ah developing that figuring out what that means.
00:20:49
Speaker
But the, like a lot of the, all the the stuff with the hub and some other things, um, if you've played the demo, uh, they're not really directly related to the core idea of the game, but I think that they, they still serve a ah really important purpose in pacing and they serve a really important purpose in making the game feel like you're,
00:21:13
Speaker
So basically, originally this game was just bunch of levels and there were optional levels that were hard. And now the optional levels that were hard are hidden. And I think that makes it feel...
00:21:24
Speaker
like kind of fundamentally different and way better than it did when the optional levels were not hidden because you're kind of given sense that, like I'd like to it to be possible and feasible for people to play through the entire thing without finding any secrets.
Gameplay and Design Innovations
00:21:44
Speaker
And so when you do find secrets, it makes it so that it feels like rather than coming up to an optional level and it being too difficult and being like, well, this game's too smart for me, you come to a level that it feels like you've on the depths of you've found a secret, but maybe you're not supposed to yet.
00:22:00
Speaker
And feels like I'm ripping this game apart at the seams and I'm feasting on the juice inside. and I think that is by the time you've, you've got to the level that might be hard. You've already got the dopamine of like, ha ha, I found the secret. Yeah. And it it it feels like, um, you're, you're doing these things that you're not supposed to. And that, feels kind of exciting and like it's an expression of your own curiosity and your own sense of drive an exploration, your own savviness for these kinds of things.
00:22:34
Speaker
And I think that makes it feel a lot different than if it was just a an optional thing that is clearly marked you can try this even though it's hard. So been something that I've been um gradually implementing the past little while.
00:22:54
Speaker
and has that's what i think is best shown in this demo. I think the good thing ah too about this this demo is originally, before I started working on these changes, the is definitely the weakest part of the game.
00:23:07
Speaker
And it probably still is. And so seeing... i was worried about like how can Because if people... Even if you mark something, I was like, this is optional hard. You should come back to her later. Nobody will come back to it later. Everybody will grind their heads against it until they need it.
00:23:24
Speaker
And a lot of times I was seeing people do that with... these levels and ram their heads against a difficult, like finale, optional finale level of the the world.
00:23:36
Speaker
And then finally beat it and be like, okay, I'm done with the game. um Because it was kind of like, Well, obviously everything's just going to get harder from here, even though that's not the case. And so now I have kind of a... The goal is to have a streamlined path that's kind of a layer one path through the game.
00:23:54
Speaker
It's very concise and people don't really get stuck on it. It's almost kind of the tutorial stuff. And then tons and tons of secrets that you discover by being savvy. And those secrets have the more difficult stuff within them.
00:24:09
Speaker
um But also the... important thing about that that I arrived on was that those secrets can't really be just stuff that you learn later in the game that are, that come from the, this core mechanic, because then it doesn't feel like you are discovering something new.
00:24:29
Speaker
And so, yeah, I had to introduce new ideas and be more vulnerable in and and not just be like, there's this core idea that's so good. Now that naturally without me doing anything, I had to like stress myself.
00:24:45
Speaker
Talking as we were earlier about influences, I'm sort of curious about, we've talked a lot about sort of what games you were playing and what was sort of swirling around sort of at that time. I'm curious about sort of whether you have any influences that have affected this project outside of the world of video games.
00:25:10
Speaker
Like whether that's sort of affecting the sort of thematics or just something that, you know, been plucked from outside of games that you can very clearly sort of feel in this game.
00:25:22
Speaker
Honestly, there should be because I should be watching a lot more movies and reading more books and stuff. But I just play a of games. So I've got a lot of influences from games and not much from other things. You see, this is almost a trick question because I asked this question with a conversation we had a couple of months ago my room. And I think maybe we've you've just forgotten this conversation, but um that's also interesting. ah um Because it sort of, i mean, i think it speaks to something that is not really, doesn't really have much of a presence in the game yet, but maybe we'll sort of come back to as development goes on. But um yeah, that's interesting. Okay.
00:26:07
Speaker
umm And like going back to game references, I know that a reference point that's been mentioned several times is Hollow Knight, which is probably not really obvious in the current demo, but maybe by this time the full game gets finished, there'll be a little bit more Hollow Knight in there.
00:26:24
Speaker
It's not really like in in terms of the the kind of game it is, but that is like one of my favorite games in this game spent a lot of time in. And so i and ah the other really good thing about it, I think, is is that it is very the development of it is very budgeted in a way that absolutely does not feel budgeted at all.
00:26:44
Speaker
um And so it's it's kind of inspiring in how it's it's like this massive world, but they they do they are absolute kings of making like any amount of work they do as an incredible bang for its buck.
00:26:59
Speaker
And that's something that I've kind of been studying as I've been working on creating this world because like, I'm not good at art things. There's, what I've been like learning how to do as much as i I can because I'm doing a lot of things. I have several people who are helping out and um I've got two people that are helping with like designs and and concept art and textures and things.
00:27:26
Speaker
And then I've got one person who's helping set up some scenes in Unity and do some other programming in Unity, and another person who's done all the for the character and all the animation there.
00:27:38
Speaker
But I'm having to do a lot of things. And I've found that the things that I'm best at are shaders and lighting and
Artistic and Public Engagement Challenges
00:27:45
Speaker
particles. And I've also found that if you leverage those things effectively, especially like lighting and shaders,
00:27:54
Speaker
and particles, I guess, especially all three, it can really do like 80% of the heavy lifting. So if you get to like 30% and then just make the scene feel good with those things, it can take the rest the way there.
00:28:06
Speaker
And then another thing that I've been thinking about, and that this this is not there in the demo, but... Polonight is very effective at crafting a world using story and having NPCs that are are very cheap, but and in terms of they're not doing much, but that what they do do, like they're not walking around the world. Well, in some of the things that do, but for the most part, they are stationary and they're doing kind of one thing, but...
00:28:39
Speaker
the The way that they're placed and the way that they're written makes it so that it has your brain fill in all the gaps of all these... like It makes the world feel very vast and and deep in a way that I think is really interesting.
00:28:53
Speaker
So that's something that I i want to strive for. And that's not something you're going to see in this demo because I've prioritized the puzzle aspects for this. And I didn't really have time to work on story stuff much.
00:29:06
Speaker
But that's definitely something that I want to strike for in the full game. I have a question, and it's about... I don't remember when this episode is coming out, but as of recording, we are one day away. We are one day out from having...
00:29:23
Speaker
Announce the game publicly. i guess there's a follow-up question which I'll just hold until after this, but I guess I wanted to ask what you have, given that this is the sort of first time around for you, this sort of experience, what have you learned? Is there anything that's like surprised you about this experience of like announcing a game and putting a demo out there on Steam?
00:29:49
Speaker
Not really, honestly. It went pretty smoothly. um I kind of had the experience of testing the game with a server of full of people that are very awesome and nice. And I feel like the releasing the full game has kind of been that at a bigger scale, except for I can't see most of the people testing it.
00:30:11
Speaker
And, but it seems to have gone pretty much out the same way that it went in testing. And it was very exciting. I had, my family were watching the, uh, the ThinkU Direct.
00:30:22
Speaker
It was exciting have that show up at the end and be like, yes, there it is But it's supposed to just comment really smoothly. I guess as a tag on to that question, again, as of recording tomorrow, you're going to have another sort of new experience, which is live de demoing the game um at Portland Indie Game Festival.
00:30:43
Speaker
Are you nervous about that? Or are you feeling any kind of way about that? Or are you just sort of also chill about it? or I think I'm nervous about, I'm i'm nervous about kind of, it feels weird for me to talk about myself and show off things that I've done.
00:30:56
Speaker
And so I think i'm I'm nervous about that, but I also think it's going to be because it seems like a cool event. And it's also not like a high stakes thing, right? It's not like if I don't show off the game, right it's going to fail.
00:31:10
Speaker
I think it's just going to be a Yeah, we were talking about this earlier and I'm interested to talk to you about it once you've been and come back from that, which unfortunately we won't record because it won't be part of the podcast. But um yeah, I'm really just curious about like your experience of doing that for the first time because it was so long ago that like I had that experience for the first time. But yeah, I i think you'll you'll get something out of it for sure. definitely think it'll very valuable.
00:31:39
Speaker
It's interesting doing a lot of these things for the first time. um because i'm I'm just out of college and I don't have a lot of experience doing stuff. And so this is kind of like, I think doing something that you love like this is always going to be ah difficult in bit of a long shot.
00:31:56
Speaker
But I do feel like like if i if I had never tried to make this be a career, i would definitely feel it in the back of my head and like regret it and so even if ja doesn't like make it so that I can have this be my career for the rest of my life I'm very grateful that I'm able to have this opportunity and I think it's I think it's going to do well I think people like it because people are like it so far yeah I mean hopefully we can get ah just thousands of thousands of people to see it and like it and uh that's going to be sort of uh yeah as we as we discuss so often on this here podcast marketing for block-based puzzle games pushing puzzle games is a solved problem and we can do it perfectly
00:32:45
Speaker
i yeah A little earlier, you were talking a little about some of the other team members working on the game.
Team Contributions and Music Composition
00:32:52
Speaker
you want to give call-outs to anyone? Yes, I do. So I've got Moralum. So two of the people working on it are from college, and two are from the Sea of Gunner YouTube channel I was talking about.
00:33:05
Speaker
ah And they're all awesome. um And some other people have have contributed too, but that's the... people who have contributed the most so far. And I think um I'm going to get some more people to help with some other character stuff for you later probably.
00:33:22
Speaker
my friend Moralim and Joon Kim are the two that have been working on ah the des designing things and they're both like so talented. been so, like, Morelum is really, really good at designing things that are, like, really simple, but really striking and, like, perfectly communicate things in a very, ah very cool way. And June's just been really good at it helping me get, like, anytime i of have a room that's like, I'm not sure how to make this look good. I just, like, send screenshots and then June, like, draws over them and is like, here's how uh this thing should look and it it always ends up looking just so um just for clarification by uh helping you designing things that's primarily like visual design and concept art and that's yeah um yeah yes and and like sketching things they're not working in unity but uh and then um sasha is a also from cv gunner and uh the new at uh i just added her uh
00:34:29
Speaker
couple
00:34:32
Speaker
but She's been helping a lot with Unity stuff. And then Sierra has done the the character things and is going to some more character things coming up. That's been really good to work because I do not have the experience of animating rigs at all.
00:34:50
Speaker
I can animate little squash and stretch stuffs in the environment well, and that's been a lot of fun, but more complicated things.
00:35:02
Speaker
very
00:35:05
Speaker
And the music came out of nowhere. Yes. Oh, yeah. Sorry. The music is by my little brother, Josh. He's been doing he's doing so good. And he's he's also been doing the sound design. I love the songs that he's been making for this.
00:35:19
Speaker
um Classic big brother move to forget to call out your. He's also going to be coming to the the can convention tomorrow. That's going to be making you things cool. It's making me a lot happier than that I'm going to to double-team the booth and stuff.
00:35:36
Speaker
It's going to be great. But he's so good. And a lot of the songs, he's got really long tracks for for each one. They have different mixes that fade depending on um what part of the game you're in.
00:35:49
Speaker
And we're just going to doing a lot of fun stuff with the I'm really excited about it. Also, he just he just released the tracks that are in the demo album on Bandcamp. So you might put that in the description. But if you, it's just a couple tracks, but they're very good.
00:36:08
Speaker
And I listen to them and enjoy them lot. Cool. ah So are there any questions that you have for me or us? um I do. I was wondering, ah so you've been kind of, it seems like you've been kind of pivoting from making games, like heading up making games to publishing other games and helping with that side of things.
00:36:35
Speaker
Is there a specific reason that you chose to do that and how have you been seeing, have you been enjoying it? Yeah, mean, I would say officially we are alternating rather than pivoting. yeah um it happened initially. so The reason we bought published Bonfire Peaks um was towards the tail end of Monthly Expedition.
Publishing Strategy and Future Plans
00:37:01
Speaker
um we i was chatting to cory and was like oh this is a cool game uh it's i think it's really strong you should pitch around to some publishers and i gave him a list of publishers and then at the bottom i'm like well i guess also me maybe i don't know what i'm doing but uh i have some reputation and and then the rest is history um
00:37:25
Speaker
But the thing that also helped like post Bonfire Peaks, well, helped in quote marks is I was really burnt out after finishing Monster's Exposition. Yeah. ah So I did not have the brain for making another type another game for some time.
00:37:43
Speaker
um and I did various other things in that post-Monster Petition time period. That's when Cerebral Puzzle Showcase spun up. um That's when some of the grant stuff was done was either started or inspired from.
00:38:00
Speaker
um But yeah, there was a long period where we were publishing games kind of because I was still like a little too burnt out to spin everything up.
00:38:12
Speaker
um But we did we did release two of our own games last year, The Flying Instant and Spook Express. And at that point, the goal was like, okay, we're going to spin up development and we're going to publish games at the same time. And we're just going to balance them and we're going to do both and it's going to be great.
00:38:29
Speaker
um but it turns out making your own games is like really expensive and like much harder to justify than um finding a really cool project that like has already like proven itself and going oh like we can we can support this and get a lot of um we can get a lot of bang for buck for just supporting this existing thing rather than making our own game and so it in terms of impact that is something that uh it felt like oh yeah like we we absolutely should not stop publishing games um and it's there's no project that's like oh this is a no-brainer to spin this up and we'll definitely not lose a lot of money on it um so that's been why we're publishing more games now and i we haven't announced something internally developed yet
00:39:28
Speaker
um Long term, I think i we'd still like to do both. There's a possibility we will be getting a small amount of funding ah to start a new internally developed game and for for a lot of 2026.
00:39:47
Speaker
And we'll see how that goes. That's awesome. A lot of it is just bandwidth. I feel like I also answered a similar version of this question on the Adam Saltzman version of this podcast. So um i feel like a I gave an okay answer, but also if you're interested in feeling my answer to that similar question on a different day, go back and listen to the ah Adam Saltzman episode.
00:40:13
Speaker
um Yeah. Was there anything else? Yeah.
00:40:20
Speaker
I guess you asked how I'm feeling about it. And it definitely is a bit bittersweet to be like, to have fewer of my own projects. But at the same time, it's really rewarding helping other people work on their stuff and make it better.
00:40:34
Speaker
And, um... yeah, i can I can support you in a way that's much more like long-term sustainable. can just like give you like a little bit of like direction and feedback and you can just go running with it. Whereas um if we've got an internal team, i need to be slash my control freak urges force me to be way more involved and it's much more intensive process.
00:41:09
Speaker
Nice. Well, yeah, i'm I'm so grateful that you you reached out to me and are publishing the game now because it really feels like that was like like a ah stability and a having civil and having someone who knows what they're talking about um like back you up.
00:41:27
Speaker
It feels much more like I'm doing something real than when I'm trying to do it by myself. And so that's just so awesome. I'm so grateful. I also have ah another question. I'm wondering, and this might not be a substantial question, but how have you liked working with me so far? has it Have I been good?
00:41:46
Speaker
This is actually your performance review. ah Well, I guess, Ben, as you as as Luke's line manager, you should really... Oh, gosh. We should abandon this bit, please. Okay. Shh.
00:42:03
Speaker
ah
00:42:06
Speaker
Oh, yeah, go ahead, Alan. No, I mean, it's been good. Like, ah you have gotten so much done over the last couple months. It has been i keep playing this ah very impressive. Thank you.
00:42:21
Speaker
This is also something that I'm going to need to learn to to balance well, because I was kind of crunching for the demo. But I think, especially now that that deadline is
00:42:34
Speaker
Yeah, and I i think that's like been the the the most notable thing about working with you. is like And we've we've had this dynamic with a lot of people. We've published the games. It's like finding the way to like get you to both both do good work and also take care of yourself and work sustainably.
00:42:57
Speaker
And that... That's really tricky. Like you're, you're young, you're passionate, you have like all this energy and we, we we sometimes look at it and go, wow. I mean, yeah, Luke's, Luke's doing Luke's, Luke's working on on this thing. And like, gosh, I hope, hope you're not burning out. I hope can we, how, how, how do we best like convince you to like, hope, slow down, slow down. You don't need to do all of this in the next week. You can, you can spread this out. Um,
00:43:31
Speaker
Yeah, and that's, I think that's, it's it's fun, but it's also like, oh ah there's some tension there, which is like an interesting, like,
00:43:44
Speaker
thing Which is another big difference between publishing projects and internal projects. um if that's I kind of can't tell you to you like slow down. and like ah I can't say, hey, you're working on this and like I know you think it's really important, but ah like you you you can't work sustainably if you try and get all this stuff
Production Challenges and Process Learning
00:44:04
Speaker
in.
00:44:04
Speaker
kind of have to go, well... Here's the risks. we We don't think it's a like we don't think you you have to do all of this, but ah we can't stop you if you go wild and and ah don't take care of yourself as much as we hope you do. But hey, look, does that answer the question?
00:44:24
Speaker
Yep. Yep, I gotcha. We got there. Yeah, I mean, I guess to echo what I was saying earlier in the last two months, two and a half months, that sort of period, like the... Not just...
00:44:43
Speaker
progress in terms of you know how polished the build is looking but also there's been so much development in terms of sureness about what the shape of the game is as well um i think part of that is like you know comes hand in hand right you know you have something that you can see on the screen and that sort of helps reinforce or turn you away from certain thing. But like, yeah, like, it's yeah, I can't overstate how much has happened just in, you know, the last couple of months. So that's been really cool to see also.
00:45:22
Speaker
Awesome. Yeah. Cause like three months ago, a lot of stuff that's in the demo, that's the best stuff about the demo was just ideas. yeah And they were promising ideas, but had not been moved out. And they weren't even like, here's my plan ideas. It was like, maybe we do this sort of ideas. And you got from like, maybe we do one of these three things to really narrowing down what the thing is and what the best version of it is and getting it into a demo. And yeah, I think that's a real achievement.
00:45:58
Speaker
Yeah, and it it was... Definitely not out of the question that you could have been like aiming way bigger than you could achieve.
00:46:10
Speaker
think it was a very real possibility that you started making this demo with high bar for what you're aiming for.
00:46:22
Speaker
And then we get partway through development and we're oh, this is not coming together. I kind of did aim for more than I could achieve. I just then cut the stuff that I couldn't achieve. revance this is Alan, this is why we have production calls. This is why this this is what scoping is. it works. Yeah, I mean, I guess um far on the other side of that, like how are you finding this production process and like learning like to...
00:46:52
Speaker
like scope down and like to prioritize and like what's the process like to be working with a publisher in that context it's been like so helpful i mean it's it feels so much more like i said before it it feels so much more like i'm doing something real than before and i think just having people who know what they're talking about makes a massive difference and think that like, especially before, um, before the the past couple months when I was working on, i would work on certain visual things I would not be sure how to, how to do stuff. And would kind of get hung up on details that I now realize didn't matter as much.
00:47:36
Speaker
And things would just take a lot longer, especially for things like visuals. Cause I'm, I'm not visual brained. And I think that something happened where I got into a flow state and,
00:47:49
Speaker
you started getting a more excited about the things that I was working on. And i got into a different frame of mind where it was like, yeah, I'm not sure how this is going to look eventually, but I just keep moving forward. And I think that productionion calls up a lot with that but yeah I just keep moving forward and I know now that if I do that, it will eventually um come together in some way because it has for everything so far.
00:48:17
Speaker
And I think that has removed a lot of the anxiety from working on things that I'm less experienced working on. Yeah. It's that thing again of sort of coming full circle to like, you know, learning game development of like taking small steps, getting a thing done rather than the perfect thing done and then taking it from there, you know? You can't really, um, it is not as effective at all to, to learn something if you don't do it the wrong way and fail first, I think.
00:48:48
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Before we wrap up, is there anything else we wanted to touch on?
00:48:57
Speaker
I do have a... I realized that I think the um first time I had contact with you... Well, not have contact with you, but I remember watching... um I think it was like Jacksepticeye play A Good Snowman's Hard to Build in 2015 when I was little.
Influence of Other Games on Design
00:49:15
Speaker
on And it was just funny. I do you not want to think about how old you would have been. Yeah, making both Alan and feel very old. Sorry.
00:49:30
Speaker
That's fun. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's interesting how a good snowman, like kind of like is a touch point for some people for like puzzle games or like block pushing games in a way that like,
00:49:47
Speaker
isn't really reflective of like how well that game did financially. Oh yeah. There's just something about, and it didn't do terribly, but like, it's not, it didn't do Steven Sausage Roll or Baba Vue numbers, but like, I feel like it's like a, a touch point for people more often than I expect.
00:50:04
Speaker
it's It's a very, ah it's a game that's easy to get and easy to like, think. Yeah. Yeah.
00:50:12
Speaker
And it it does its gameplay concept and then just says, yeah, and that's it. That's the game. Cool. All right. Well, ah where can people, why people you you don't have much of an internet presence deliberately, right?
00:50:26
Speaker
don't. I probably should. Where can people find
Podcast Closing and Listener Engagement
00:50:28
Speaker
you? You can find me by getting on the Thinky Puzzle Discord messaging Great answer. And you can find Dittery on Steam.
00:50:40
Speaker
ah Thank you so much for your time, Luke. Thanks for having me. And thank you for listening to the Dragneck Friends official podcast. Our music is by Priscilla Snow, who you can find at goonnoisemusic.com.
00:50:53
Speaker
Our podcast artwork is by Adam DeGrandis. Our podcast is edited by Melanie Zawodniak. Please rate and review us on your podcast service of choice, and be sure to tune in next episode for more interesting conversations.
00:51:07
Speaker
The