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Episode 11: Alex Diener aka ThemsAllTook (Leaf's Odyssey, YouTuber)
247 Plays2 months ago
In this episode, hosts Alan and Syrenne are joined by Alex Diener AKA ThemsAllTook, the developer of Leaf's Odyssey and a puzzle game YouTuber. Topics include the development of Leaf's Odyssey, the running of the YouTube channel, and how playing and covering games intersects with making them.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guests Introduction
00:00:21
Speaker
Welcome to the Dragneck and Friends official podcast where we peel back the curtain on puzzle games of 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. Hey. Today, we're joined by Alex Diener, who you may know from their work on Leaf's Odyssey. How are you doing today? Yeah, you're pretty good.
00:00:43
Speaker
ah Do you want to kind of give a bigger introduction for yourself? Sure. so Hi, I'm Alex Diener. You might know me around the internet as themselfook.
Alex Diener's Game Development Journey
00:00:52
Speaker
I'm probably best known these days for doing puzzle game Let's Plays on YouTube, which I've been doing for some time.
00:00:58
Speaker
But more recently, I released a puzzle game of my own called Leaf's Odyssey. And I've been around, you'll see me in lots of places. I've been working on various things like this for about as long as I can remember. So, yeah. Awesome. Well, you say about as long as you remember what originally got you into this.
00:01:20
Speaker
So, oh boy, I have, uh, I have a rough timeline put together in preparation for this. So going all the way back, um, do we want to do like the the long version of this now or, uh, yeah. All right, sure. So, um, way back, ah yeah, again, as long ago as I can remember, my father worked at a computer store and we had a Macintosh at home.
00:01:46
Speaker
And I loved to tinker around in HyperCard and various other things. Best I could trace back, I've been doing some form of programming since I was about six years old. And yeah, just kind of kept at it. It was something I've just always loved, just messing around with things like that. When I was 16, I got my first professional programming job in Macromedia Director.
00:02:09
Speaker
for the company that made the Rosetta Stone language learning software. so I got to work with other developers and i guess their learn from their experience. I learned the C programming language a couple of years later and fell in love with it instantly. so That's what I prefer to write all my stuff in these days.
00:02:28
Speaker
I joined a Macintosh game development community a year after that, and that led to me releasing my first game that was ah publicly available. It was a little platform game called Water Tower, made in three months for the UDev Games competition, which was something that the development community I was in used to run.
00:02:49
Speaker
And yeah, that was a good experience. Just got to network with a bunch of other game developers and learn how they do things. And things just sort of continued from there. I learned OpenGL and started doing 3D graphics a couple of years later and did a bunch of other small game jams and stuff.
YouTube Channel and Community Building
00:03:07
Speaker
In 2009, I started work on my own open source framework for cross-platform game and application development in C. This is called STEM.
00:03:18
Speaker
It's like the stem of a flower. It's like the the thing that supports the flower that is your application and provides new at nutrients and stuff. That's the the metaphor. and I released released the first game that was made with that framework for the final UDev Games competition that I yeah participated in a couple of years later.
00:03:38
Speaker
And then, let's see, a little after that, I started my YouTube channel, so I was watching Let's Plays and decided to start doing some Let's Plays on my own. Pretty early on, I kind of took a focus on puzzle games for doing Let's Plays. It was kind of an experimental thing at first, but yeah, Deadly Rooms of Death, DROD, one of my big inspirations was one of the first big puzzle games that I played on my channel.
00:04:06
Speaker
And that sort of led to me getting involved with the Droude community and the developers reached out to me in my comments section. And I think somehow from there, I got involved with Thinky Puzzle Games afterwards. um There was a game jam a couple of years ago, the Thinky Puzzle Game Jam, where I made a game called Throw Rock, which was Originally just supposed to be a test of some productivity tools that I was working on, so in addition to this game development framework stem that I've made, I've also made my own image editor and audio synthesizer, and I wanted to see if I could, if these tools would be good enough for me to use for a full video game. and Through a Rock was that video game, and then that went pretty well and eventually was what led to Leaf's Odyssey, which I can talk about in more detail in a bit, I suppose.
00:04:58
Speaker
Cool. And what is it that excites you about making games and making puzzle games? Because like it it kind of sounds like you started a bit from a like a technical background of like, oh, I want to program and games are a fun thing to program, which is kind of similar to how I got started actually. But like, is that true? Or was it like, oh, I've been playing a lot of games and I want to make games like these or?
Design Philosophy and Player Engagement
00:05:20
Speaker
Yeah, definitely some of both. I suppose like that second thing, that was kind of what led me to it in the first place. I played some video games when I was very young and I remember my family telling me that I would always tell them that when I was older, I would be a game developer. So I guess I was chasing that dream.
00:05:37
Speaker
I don't even remember having said that back then, but that was just always who I wanted to be. And yeah, a lot of it is just ah technical curiosity, like video games are just a good way to make a responsive, interactive thing and touch a whole lot of areas of programming. They are one of the things I like to work on. I also do productivity software and a little bit of ah web development. um I like ah a variety of things, but video games just kind of bring it all together.
00:06:06
Speaker
And, uh, puzzle games, um, I have interest in a lot of different game genres. Like I'm not actually a hundred percent sure I would say puzzle games stand above the rest for me. It's one of the many things that I do, but I do enjoy the, uh, the picking a part of ah a very specific situation, like presenting a, um, a conundrum for, for players to work through. Just like,
00:06:30
Speaker
thinking through how to create a thought process in the player who's going through a thing that I've made. And puzzle games just the most direct way to do that and don't have reflexes involved and other things. Just a very, very pure way to have kind of like a ah ah cerebral relationship with the the player who's playing my game, I suppose.
00:06:49
Speaker
Is that what particularly interests you, that idea of a conjunction or like something that you're interacting with and and prodding at and figuring out? Is that like a core part of why video games are interesting interesting to you?
00:07:01
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, certainly. Um, a lot of it is just, I don't know. I like to write these magical incantations in a text editor that makes things move around on my screen. I just, I feel like a wizard when I'm doing that stuff, but, and on top of that, there, there is certainly the the player interaction, the idea of giving someone a positive experience, just being able to guide a person through something that they will enjoy and remember. Like that's, that's very special to me, certainly.
00:07:29
Speaker
yeah And yeah, like you you said that you're like, and like as a YouTuber, you're seen as a puzzle game YouTuber, but you actually do play plenty of non puzzle games too. So like, what do you think is it that makes it that the puzzle games are the part that people identify with, with the stuff you stream? Is it just because that's the most consistent three line or?
00:07:51
Speaker
Yeah, that's certainly some of it. ah One thing that I hear a lot is um apparently from what I hear, I'm pretty good at explaining my thought process as I go through these things. so i think I think my audience likes to see the the the entire through line of like seeing a situation, working through its implications, figuring out how to solve it.
00:08:14
Speaker
I suppose I'm kind of extrapolating a little bit here, but one of the things I've enjoyed in watching other people play puzzle games is that in doing that process and talking through how they approach a situation, how they think of it, they're teaching the viewer ways to think in that way for themselves. So just seeing the inner workings of someone's mind and how how to what are some different ways to understand and pick apart a situation, I think that's very, very informative. And puzzle games are good at presenting those situations and ah just giving something to think about, like a way to think about thinking.
00:08:55
Speaker
And as you're thinking about that kind of dynamic with your audience, with your play experience, with your game, with with the games that you're playing in that, what kind of, to you, makes a game good for like streaming and video and what makes it not good. like Not just like what makes a game good, but specifically for that purpose. So I gave a whole talk on this for Think eCon not too long ago, actually. um It was maybe a little bit more technically focused on like what things a game can do to be well suited for Let's Plays. But in terms of like the game design and mechanics and stuff,
00:09:41
Speaker
um Boy, that's it's a little bit of a challenge to summarize, but one good thing is certainly to be able to give everyone an individual experience. so like If each person's playthrough is likely to look different, then each person who plays it can put something online that they know is their own. They're having their own unique experience. and can share that with like, I suppose, I imagine most of the people who watch the things that I do, ah the videos that I create have played those games themselves and want to see how someone else approached them. So a game that has, I guess, some room for creativity, um different in in a puzzle game, different paths by which you can arrive at conclusions. That's certainly a thing that helps to just have some variety for each person's playthrough.
Game Selection and Streaming
00:10:34
Speaker
um Not to say that a game that mostly goes the same for everybody can't work, but it definitely helps to have just a little bit of extra wiggle room for someone to insert their personality into it. I guess that's the first thing that comes to mind for me. And how much do you decide what to play on your channel based on like what you want to play or what you think is going to be a ah good game for your audience or ah yeah, like what what goes into that?
00:11:01
Speaker
Yeah, so that's a complicated process. Early on, um it was a little bit harder for me to figure out what it was that I wanted to play because I didn't didn't have a strong idea of what I was doing. These days, I have a text document with like a list of 300 games in it or something that I've just, every time I see something online that looks like it might be a good candidate, I save a link to it away in a place where I can pick through it later and say, well,
00:11:28
Speaker
ah This is what I feel like playing today. This seems like it's a good fit with the rest of my lineup. um Yeah, so in terms of what goes into deciding which game is which, certainly like if several people in my inner circle are talking about a game, that will ah will sort of bring it to the front. A lot of the puzzle games I play are like that just because of ISC.
00:11:50
Speaker
discourse about it on the Thinky Puzzle Games, Discord server, and other places like that. Just thinking, okay, there's ah there's a lot of energy around this game. This might be something that I want to get to know and a lot of people would be interested in watching. I do try to follow my own um my own intuition for what I think would be interesting a little more than trends and what everybody else is talking about because I really want to give my own spin on things and I like to find hidden gems so sometimes it helps me to like if I see a game that I think no one in my audience will know about sometimes that makes me more likely to play it just because I can show them something new and interesting
00:12:33
Speaker
But yeah, so I do try to strike a balance. I run ah four regular time slots on my channel at once. So that's four different games um that I'm playing. And I do try to strike a balance between something that's like well known and popular, something that's obscure. And I'm maybe showing for the first time, maybe something that I have a lot of personal channel history with, like people, longtime viewers will know.
00:12:58
Speaker
So yeah, I just try to get those that variety of different streams in there at the same time if I can. Got it. And I guess before we move on to Leafs Odyssey, I'm also curious, like what is it that keeps you going with the YouTube channel? like what What are you getting out of it? and do you Do you have goals for it?
00:13:15
Speaker
So initially, one of the biggest things that I noticed I was getting, I kind of just started it on a whim more or less. I was like, okay, I've seen these Let's Plays, let's see what it's like to do my own. But what I discovered very quickly was it was a great way to get regular speaking practice.
00:13:31
Speaker
So I have a lifestyle where I'm actually just at home a lot of the time on my own and I don't really talk to other humans regularly, like certainly not every day, like several days in a row will go by when where I don't say a word to another human.
00:13:46
Speaker
And speaking ability is very ah useful when i when I need it on those days when I do talk to other humans. So just having a ah having an outlet for regular speaking and listening back to myself as part of that editing process and hearing, oh, this is what I actually sound like. maybe I don't like the way I sound when I say this and ah maybe I'll change this habit over time. My voice and mannerisms and word choices and everything have dramatically changed over the years as I've done this. If you go back and listen to some of my earliest work on the channel, it's it's like I'm a completely different person. so yeah just It's a means of personal growth and I continue to be surprised. like I
00:14:30
Speaker
I keep imagining that it's like, okay, I'll spend like three years doing this, then I'll have learned all there is about talking to people. But no, like at any given time, I can go like one year back in time and listen and hear just differences in how I was, how I yeah how i would say things, how I'd talk about things, and just just my voice itself changes over time. So I guess really it's just it's a continual personal growth thing for me.
00:14:56
Speaker
and that's That's on a personal level. It also has given me a lot of networking and connections to โ I made a lot of friends from this process. I have my own small private Discord server for ah people who support me on Patreon for the YouTube channel. and That's just an entire friend group that was spawned from ah from this YouTube channel that wouldn't exist without it.
00:15:21
Speaker
so I guess it started with curiosity and I've just sort of discovered the benefits as I've gone along and um it's continued to be very beneficial to me. So as far as I know, I'll be doing it for the foreseeable future. Certainly have no plans to stop.
00:15:38
Speaker
and That's great. Yeah. Cause it feels like you've got kind of maybe the right size community. Cause like, there's so many YouTubers who have like massive, massive followers. And like, it feels like at that level, in some ways it's like a burden of like, oh, you're on this treadmill that you have to like keep going whether you like it or not. But I feel like you've you've found a community that's like fairly small and can be like supportive in a way that a larger community might not be.
00:16:04
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Certainly. Yeah. So um for me, this is very much not a business venture. This is just ah a personal hobby and I don't monetize any of my videos. If you see ads on any of them, it's not by my doing. But ah yeah, just the being able to have that personal connection is nice with the the community size that I have. I do worry sometimes about getting a bunch of exposure and ruining that vibe, but but I think I don't need to worry so much about that because there was a time a couple of years ago when some random video, like two or three videos in a row, just in the middle of a Let's Play I was doing, this was of Kingsfield 3 on the PlayStation 1 was the game,
00:16:49
Speaker
ah YouTube just decided to apparently show that to many people, so where I usually get a couple hundred views for video per video on average, ah I was suddenly getting 10,000 for these few videos that just randomly got promoted to a whole bunch of people. and That was an interesting experience that didn't really lead to ruining the vibe, so I feel like my audience self-selects itself for that kind of vibe. just because of I suppose just because of the way I approach things. I don't do all these big flashy transitions and fancy editing. and you know I just try to be more down to earth and a genuine human being.
Leaf's Odyssey Development and Community
00:17:33
Speaker
and The people who are interested in genuine human connection, I feel like, are the ones who stick around. That's that's what I've seen at least.
00:17:40
Speaker
No, that makes sense. And it's good to, from there, kind of think about the community aspect of that. Have you found any of that kind of community aspect with sort of Leaf's Odyssey and your experience there and the people that have played it?
00:18:06
Speaker
Yeah, a little bit, on ah certainly on a smaller scale. um I have met a few new friends from, this was mostly, I would say, because I included a level editor with the game. So people were creating their own puzzles and campaigns and sharing them. And in doing so, they ended up sort of connecting with me with bug reports and, you know, have was submitting a world for public download does involve interacting with me a little bit. So that was ah largely what it is from like the people who are building puzzles for it. In terms of the players for it, um
00:18:47
Speaker
I feel like the game hasn't quite achieved that so much for me, but part of it is just because that was I felt like that was kind of rolled into my existing communities. like the um A lot of the people who watch my videos have played the game, so I i already knew those friends and people on the Thinky Puzzle Games server. It's been nice to have conversations with them.
00:19:09
Speaker
but it hasn't exactly created a whole new community for me. Though at the same time, um I didn't create my own like Discord server dedicated to the game or anything like that. So perhaps that's something that I could have created if I had gone out of my way to do so, but it it didn't just just sort of spring up on its own except for the the spaces the game already existed in, I would say. Yeah. Before we dig into Leith Odyssey too much, do you want to just give a brief overview of the game as you describe it?
00:19:37
Speaker
Sure. so Leaf's Odyssey is a puzzle game with a strong exploration component. and It's basically a ah ferret goes on an adventure through a world and the means of interacting with that world is puzzle solving. There is combat.
00:19:57
Speaker
so Combat and puzzle games might be a little bit unusual, but there are some other examples. The sort of overall template for this game was Deadly Rooms of Death, so I would call this a drawd-like game. So if you've played that, it's the it's a similar sort of experience. So you're going from room to room.
00:20:18
Speaker
solving individual puzzles that usually involve fighting monsters which behave predictably and move when you move. So the moment-to-moment gameplay is just figuring out how to pick your way through this combat situation. And once a room is cleared of all the monsters, that's the puzzle solved as soon as you can safely exit on your own.
00:20:39
Speaker
and ah Clearing rooms progressively gets you, ah unlocks ways to progress to more rooms and that is pretty much the game. You go through and get to an end point from just, there's there's a system for like unlocking rooms as you go. You can pick up keys and open doors, but yeah, that's the that's the game pretty much.
00:21:04
Speaker
Yeah, and I guess the yeah the other notable component is, yeah, there's just like a few different types of enemy and they're all like meaningfully distinct from each other and they all have kind of a nuances of behavior that you learn over the course of the game. And yeah, I mean, obviously, Drod is like a big point of comparison, but it's very streamlined in comparison to Drod in ways that that I think like are really two least odysseys benefit in a lot of ways.
00:21:32
Speaker
how How consciously were you trying to take the drug template and make something a bit more approachable, a bit more streamlined versus how much is that just what happened? Yeah, so I suppose this is pretty interesting. In its earliest incarnation, Leaf's Odyssey was actually a fairly different sort of game. It kind of evolved into a Drod-like during the course of its development. Like early on, I was going to focus much more on the exploration and less on the individual puzzle solving. It was going to be more of a
00:22:08
Speaker
wander around and collect things and there'll be puzzles along the way, but they're not the central focus sort of thing. But as I tried to work on the game in that way, I just felt like there was this component missing and just more and more little pieces of like what what makes up the DROD formula crept in. And eventually I just said, well, I guess I'm making a DROD-like. I think that's what's going to but's going to work best for what I want the game to be.
00:22:36
Speaker
so Yeah, I did actually sort of shift gears maybe a month or so into development to just kind of change the game the way that the game worked. and I always try to put my own spin on things and kind of try to arrive at things from ah from core principles rather than just say, okay, this is what Drog did, therefore it's what I'm going to do. so I feel like that happened very organically.
00:22:58
Speaker
but just being able to take lessons from the existing game that I know so well and understand how to apply them, having gone through the the the process to arrive at that is, ah that's kind of how I got where I am with the game. Got it. um And you you said you made that shift about a month into but development. People might hear that and think like, oh, basically it will start then. But like the entire development of the game was, am I right in saying just seven months total?
00:23:27
Speaker
I think that's right. Yeah, it was developed pretty quickly. Yeah, so I i have sort of a more detailed timeline for this. um At the end of 2022, I had left my day job due to a change in company ownership and um I had some financial runway and was able to to pursue one of my long running dreams, which was to to be a professional game developer and um sell these things and sustain myself that way. So this seemed like a good good time for that. At the beginning of 2023, I planned to make and finish a game during that year, but the I wasn't 100% sure at that time what that game would be.
00:24:14
Speaker
And the first project that I tried to to make for that year just ended up scope creeping a little out of control. And I had to shelve that one and say, well, I'm not going to finish this this year if I keep going with it. So then in October 2023, I decided to start work on the project that would become Leaf's Odyssey.
00:24:38
Speaker
And the original plan there was to scope way down and say, all right, I'll build one little game entirely in October. Like, I'll start on October 1st, I'll release it on October 31st, and that'll be my my first project.
00:24:53
Speaker
And, you know, things evolved naturally. That's not quite how it ended up happening. So I just decided to roll with that. I was pretty happy with how like how I was conceptualizing the game about a month in. So it was it was about a month and a half before I had created the first actual puzzle that went into the game. Everything prior to that was technical and design and sort of like going through this evolution process of like what even is this game.
00:25:22
Speaker
But yeah, i the very first puzzle that went into the game actually ended up staying all the way through the final release. um But yeah, once I had that in, I realized, okay, this is what the game is about. This is this is good. I'm going to going to make the rest based on this. So I suppose it makes sense that that puzzle went in because it's sort of the the essence of the game distilled.
00:25:43
Speaker
If anyone is curious and has played the game, the puzzle is called Assembly Hall, and it is in Angry Eye Canyon. That was the first one ever made. So um after I had decided what the game was, I just sort of worked on filling out the puzzles and was able to get a build to play testers right at the end of the year. So the very first build had 32 puzzles in it. It's a lot smaller than the final release was.
00:26:12
Speaker
There was no UI or anything, no level editor. You just started up, play these puzzles, and that's the whole experience. And with lots of good feedback from that, I was able to get much more um much more complete experience put together a couple of months later. And yeah, I had a i had a good external deadline for this, um which was the Oh, I'm blanking on the name now. You know what I'm talking about, Alan. The Cerebral Puzzle Showcase. Yes, thank you. I just could not think of the name. Yeah, so the Cerebral Puzzle Showcase had a deadline in May 2024. And once I had decided that that was the the target that I was shooting for, it just was was the perfect length of time ah was, yes, somewhere around seven or eight months since the development of the game started. and ah
00:27:06
Speaker
That was when it released, and I was really happy with what I was able to do in that amount of time. Yeah, I mean, it's very impressive. Yeah, the the way to make a game in seven months is to try and make a game in one month, but even so, like it's, a I think, yeah, very, very impressive work for it to have come together so quickly, so well. um did you Did you have a lot of playtesters, like a large playtesting pool?
00:27:33
Speaker
Yeah, it was quite a few. um I mean, well, I suppose large is relative. It was certainly a lot more play testers than I've ever had on ah a previous game. um The list of those people is in the game. I don't have the number on hand, but I would ballpark it at like 20 people or so. um Yeah, so the first round of playtesting that happened at the end of 2023 was just with maybe five people, um five or six, something like that. and I got some real good feedback from that, but the larger group with the first round of playtesting feedback incorporated ah that that I had had done afterward gave me a lot more of a yeah a lot more of an idea of what I was doing with the game. I don't know. It's um
00:28:22
Speaker
it was It was an experience of learning as I go because I had i had actually never run a playtest like this for for a game like this before. And one of the things that I was pleasantly surprised by was since a lot of my playtesters were from the the community who watches my videos,
00:28:41
Speaker
What I got during that playtest was basically them making their own little let's play like things for me to watch of playtesting my game. So that was a pleasant surprise because I had ah' sort of seeded this community with the idea of recording video and commentary for it in the but style that I do it. So that was that was what I got back for the playtest and that was nice to see.
00:29:02
Speaker
key I'm curious about the editor tools, actually. You've already mentioned them a few times. um What made it so that that was something that you wanted to really prioritise? Because I feel like a lot of developers would have just gone, okay, well, I'll make the game.
00:29:18
Speaker
And then I'll release it, and then I guess if enough people play it, then I'll get this sense of like, oh yes, there's enough of a demand here for ah editor tools. um But you you made like you you wanted editor tools in the 1.0 when it first came out.
00:29:34
Speaker
Yeah, so um I suppose some of my earliest ah game influences were built around level editors. This is just sort of something that goes way back for me. One of the inspirations I listed in the about page for this game is an old Apple 2GS game called Explorer. It's fairly obscure, but um it is something that I spent a whole lot of time with when I was younger. and it's very much a โ so it's it's an exploration โ a game where you explore a world and um sort of fight your way to a central goal. So kind of the the same โ like in broadest strokes, same sort of structure as Leaf's Odyssey ended up being.
00:30:18
Speaker
And yeah, this game just sort of had a strong influence on how I think about just video games in general because it was was built around a level editor and a lot of a lot of my time playing that game was in custom levels and making some of my own.
00:30:35
Speaker
And there was another game that I got into a few years later called Glider Pro, which also had a level editor and a strong community around it. And this was maybe one of the first internet communities I really engaged with was around building levels for for this game.
00:30:53
Speaker
so It's sort of something that's just always in the back of my mind. I i just really like games with level editors for some reason. and um For this one, one of the things I had been working on in in the years leading up to it was my own suite of productivity tools for game development because I just had these little annoyances with things like my my yeah image editor that I was using and my means of producing audio and things like that.
00:31:21
Speaker
That just eventually I said well, what if I wrote my own tools for these things? So I ended up with an audio synthesizer that's actually used for the game This doesn't quite have to do with the level editor, but it kind of kind of plays into it This is part of why the file size of the game is so small because all of the audio is synthesized from some small ah Mathematical descriptions. There's no no actual like wave files or anything in it So it's just ah just about two megabytes on desk total just because there's it's all stored so compactly And ah in addition to the audio synthesizer, I made a graphic editor and tile set editor. And that was what I was using at the very start for putting together the levels in the game. So I would draw out the game elements as tiles, then go into my tile editor and place them down in a room layout, then import that into the game as a puzzle.
Level Editors and Player Experience
00:32:16
Speaker
And just thinking through that, going back to my um predisposition towards really liking the idea of level editors in games, and Drod has a very good one of these. That's another another example. It certainly was an influence here. um I just wanted to have this process be easy and slick and nice to use within the game, because I like that sort of thing. But I also had a secondary motivation for this.
00:32:43
Speaker
um Being that my YouTube channel was a hobby that I'd had for quite ah quite a while now, one of my dreams of a thing I could do to sort of merge that hobby with my game development hobby is if I could release a game that had a means of creating things that I could play as a let's play on my own channel in a game that I've created with ah puzzles that other people have created.
00:33:10
Speaker
So, Leaf's Odyssey was a way of me realizing that dream and making a ah good, ah very usable level editor was ah was the way to get there. And it did the job. I was very happy with the with the results from that.
00:33:25
Speaker
Are you interested in making the kind of game that is more of like a, oh, you can just play this infinitely game? Like, I mean, like a lot of roguelikes are the kind of game that you could make, but you could also stream yourself playing it. Is that equally interesting to you, to two puzzle games that have like predefined content, which you can really learn play once?
00:33:48
Speaker
I would say it's not equally interesting. I do have an interest in those things, but my experience with roguelikes has been that most of the time I have liked them despite the roguelike elements, not so much because of them. um it's It's certainly some of both. There's back and forth. that Yeah, I have a more complicated, not quite as positive relationship with roguelikes compared to puzzle games.
00:34:14
Speaker
it's It's definitely an interesting concept, but I feel like all the times that I've actually gone through the experience of playing a roguelike and engaging with that system, I've just felt like I would prefer a a handcrafted experience that has a defined end. um But I guess that's maybe a thing about a level editor is like it I can have the handcrafted experience of the levels that come with the game, but then more can be created and that expands the game with handcrafted stuff, which is not just infinitely procedurally generated. So it kind of gives the best of both worlds in a way. You get and an ever-expanding set of things you can play, but with the care and attention of um of a human making all the decisions about it.
00:35:03
Speaker
I suppose that's what I'd say about that, yeah. Yeah. And of course you you also get to have that like relationship with like a specific other person who made this thing and made the thing for your game. Yeah. When it comes to level editors, as you know, we're kind of still talking about that. What in your, from your perspective, kind of makes a level editor itself really good and exciting versus maybe one that is overwhelming or underwhelming?
00:35:36
Speaker
um I suppose for me that would start with the mechanics that go into the game in the first place. So the entire time I was like deciding what my core puzzle mechanics were, I was considering the idea that ah of other people placing these in puzzles and figuring out how to use them. and um One thing that I've seen a lot in games with editors is just like, sometimes you have to use a lot of restraint in what you create in order to not make it be a guessing game or just ah overwhelming to the player. So the the game mechanics kind of inform that. Like, let's say, for example, ways of hiding secrets. If you could place a wall in your game that looks exactly like any other wall, but you can walk through it.
00:36:23
Speaker
can be great for hiding secrets if um if used with care, but including a mechanic like that in a game where just anybody can make a level with no particular standards for for how that's used ah certainly affects the output like the the resulting levels just sort of come with a different expectation of one having to learn the author's individual language for hiding secrets and communicating with the player and how how kind they wish to be to the player experience. um Yeah, so just like a set of mechanics that is is conducive toward um making a pleasant player experience, I suppose, is where that would start from.
00:37:08
Speaker
but also just like the overall complexity of how to use the the mechanics. There are some examples I could give in DROD, like certain elements that are sort of...
00:37:21
Speaker
puzzle elements that are kind of a puzzle in and of themselves to interact with rather than to to use as an element in an overall situation. It's a hard hard thing to describe, but there's there's certainly an an interplay between like a monster type that is just you put it down and the way you interact with it is the puzzle in itself.
00:37:45
Speaker
or it's something that has interlinking utility with all the other things in the game, the other elements. um And just having more things that are ah not like elements that are not so much a puzzle in themselves and just are there to support the overall puzzle that is the room that they're placed in, I would say is a useful thing for making making the editor work well. um Hopefully that's getting at what you were asking about. so Yeah, no, it is. It's just, um yes. there's I've seen a lot of games, especially in this space, that involve level editors where maybe the
00:38:29
Speaker
content that is being created is not necessarily proportional to the popularity, like directly proportional to the popularity of the game and the audience size. And so that's just something I've been thinking about of like, what kind of factors drive players to be more or less excited about engaging with that kind of stuff.
00:38:50
Speaker
Yeah, so I think one thing with Leaf's Odyssey is that I'm kind of committing a puzzle game sin in that the main campaign leaves a lot of mechanics on the table, not necessarily unused, but perhaps not fully explored. And just having that mechanical richness, all these interactions you can have, um leaving some space open for the four level builders to experiment with and make their own puzzle constructions.
00:39:18
Speaker
that goes beyond what's actually shown in the game. I think that is that is helpful. So just having like a little bit of extra extra room to expand beyond what the the game originally is, I feel helps, instead of just having basically the option of doing something that's lesser or equal, but slightly
Achievements and Player Engagement
00:39:36
Speaker
different. Yeah, just like not necessarily unused mechanics, but mechanics that have have lots of extra room for more exploration in them, I suppose.
00:39:45
Speaker
Makes perfect sense. Is there any question before we let you go here that you have for us anything that you kind of wanted to rock our brains about? Sure. So one of the things that I was curious about is what is your take on Steam achievements or achievements in general in puzzle games? Because this has been a little bit of a point of contention between me and my yeah my larger player base. They all want, have been recommending that I have achievements in my game and I don't know, I have my own thoughts on those and I'm not not really so so enthusiastic about them, but I'm wondering if you have any other thoughts on that. I have some pretty strong thoughts, but Alan, do you want to go first? I know you also have thoughts.
00:40:33
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, i I have mixed feelings about a lot of Steam's um feature sets when it comes to like, what what they allow games to support. um I think achievements I'm mostly fine with and like,
00:40:52
Speaker
Like the audience on Steam expects achievements and I don't feel like it's a a massive um attack on my development sensibilities to include them. um And so achievements are something that I feel like. Yeah, ah might as well. It's going to make some people happy. It's going to pet give people like a something x external to the game that lets them like cross off their progress and go, yeah, i did i I did make a lot of... ah of I feel i feel good good about the time I've spent there. And like you shouldn't need people to have that but achievement to to feel good about it or to feel like, yes, i can I've crossed off this game. I can ah can move on now. but
00:41:34
Speaker
i I can also accept that people people do get some value in that. I hate trading cards. like Trading cards ah should not exist.
00:41:47
Speaker
um yeah like kind of evil. um And when people ask them, i like oh why why would you want want that for me? and like i like I don't even have a conscious theory for why I feel one way about achievements and another way about trading cards. ah Because trading cards are monetized? Yeah, yeah it could be that.
00:42:11
Speaker
um And that that's funny because we did support training cards on Monster's Expedition ah to try and support more Steam features, to try and please the almighty algorithm. Right, yeah, the other side of it is like there this fear that like, oh, if I don't support all these Steam features, will will Steam look at it and go, oh, you you haven't been deployed into that? Well, that's a minus 20% on visibility for you then.
00:42:38
Speaker
And so, and it's funny because the one game that we've supported trading cards with is the most successful. I don't think that's, you know, obvious cause and effects. Yes, it's an effect, but it is, it is very funny and ah definitely got some people calling Alan out. It was to be clear. That was my decision on the trading cards. I will take full responsibility for that, but it was very funny to hear people be like, ah, Alan, you hypocrite, you hate trading cards so much. And yet here they are.
00:43:08
Speaker
So you actually got backlash for them. That's interesting. For trading cards specifically, yes, because Alan has been so outspoken about his distaste for them. And then I persuaded him to go for it just on Mazza's expedition. And yeah, the other thing, my overall feeling about achievements, I mean, first of all, if you're coming to platforms like PlayStation and Xbox, achievements are mandated.
00:43:33
Speaker
and So and your mandated to have a certain ah quantity of achievements. It's not just like you it's not just you have to have one. It's like you have to, um for example, on Xbox, you need to have 1000 points worth of achievements, and no achievement can be worth more than x points. So Like you you are mandated to think about it a little bit. So in terms of like, if you're if you're planning a multi-platform release, i and as a producer, I like to ah start thinking about achievements and start talk telling teams to start thinking about achievements a couple months before shit, usually when like the final content has like really started to form. um But for me, I think that
00:44:22
Speaker
it's It's funny because I think that achievements are rote when it is just like finish world one, finish world two, finish world three. And I also think that achievements are can be bad when it's just like jump a hundred times. It's like that is actively bad because if someone like has it in their brain to go and be a completionist,
00:44:51
Speaker
If you're guiding them towards so an interaction that is not interesting, I think that you have actually fucked up. like You have made the game worse for the players that have whatever brain worm in their brain they want to be a completionist. They liked the game so much that they want to have that 100% on their profile to remember it by. like If you are using achievements to guide players towards a non-fun interaction,
00:45:15
Speaker
you have made, you have actively made your game worse. I think, for example, the best, the best uses are guiding players towards um I think it's because an achievement is a reward. And I like actually how PlayStation calls them trophies. And I like that a little bit more because that's something like, oh, what is what is like this thing that I can show? Like, like, it's just like a slightly different. It's the same exact thing, but it's just a different framing of it. And I think that there are, for example, on Monster's Expedition, the late title card has an achievement.
00:46:01
Speaker
And I think that is a good one also because it double reinforces because that moment can feel to some players like they messed up. Oh, yeah. um So I think that one, it reinforces. No, no, no, no, no. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're doing this right. But it also can be just be like a reinforcement of like This is it. This is like the first achievement. This is like the first big milestone in your journey. This is like the first big progress. ah If you're going to make milestones for milestone progress points. I think another thing is also in a monster's expedition, having the achievement to see all of the secrets
00:46:48
Speaker
Really i so I think and I don't I don't have data on this and we don't have data on this but I personally think that That encourages more players to go through and be like, okay. Well, they're saying that I need to go find these friends throughout the world. What does that look like? And then they get what? And then they might realize, oh, that was a really rewarding experience. Now i the the achievements have incentivized me to to take this extra journey to go be a little bit more completionist, and then the game itself rewards them. So the achievement can
00:47:26
Speaker
being on the achievement list can serve as sort of a like a push towards something that the game already rewards. Whereas like if it was just like go find these friends but the journey like the journey itself wasn't fun, I think that that would be weak. But I think that having that And like on PlayStation, where we have very clear percentages, it's something it's a shockingly high percentage of players, considering how difficult some of those are, have gone through and hit 100% on that game, ah who have done every puzzle, found every friend. I think it's literally something like 20%.
00:48:09
Speaker
like a very high percentage on PlayStation have gone through, presumably also because of the on PlayStation, there is a very clear there's they have a concept called the platinum trophy, which is this trophy that auto unlocks once you've gotten everything else in the game. um It's just like a it is it is a one stop shareable I 100% in this game confirmation.
00:48:34
Speaker
And I think that also has value. So I think like it really comes down to how it's implemented with the game. I think there's it's very easy to make bad or boring achievements. And if you have achievements that are not interesting, especially like if the developer is not interested in achievements, it really frequently shows. And then it's just like, OK, well, that didn't add anything. And I think if it didn't add anything and it wasn't mandated, you probably shouldn't have them.
00:48:58
Speaker
But I do think that there are some really good interactions with the kind of push-pull flow of rewarding a player and like also solidifying the expectation of that was the loop of the game.
00:49:13
Speaker
like this is what the loop Like, this is what the kind of essence of the full loop is. you Like, you you start this, you explore, you find this, you get rewarded, and then a trophy in our achievement pops up and it's like, ding, congrat like confirmation. That is what you're doing in this game. It's just like a different avenue of um affirmation.
00:49:37
Speaker
So I'll get off my sort of soapbox, but like I said, i have ah I have very strong feelings about achievements. Yeah, that's all very interesting. Like, I like the ah the distinction you drew between like, achievements used for good and achievements used for just making the game worse. Yeah, but I think that there are neutral achievements, bad achievements and good achievements. And I think that good achievements really genuinely do add things.
00:49:59
Speaker
yeah Another thing I found interesting is like the the way you mentioned different platforms having different requirements, like getting parity between like all the platforms you're going to release on. That's complicated. like something It's something you'd have to understand and incorporate into this ah the entire system you put together here. That would take a lot of thought.
00:50:21
Speaker
Um, and that is, uh, that is one of the things I have a lot of experience in personally. And, uh, you know, when I market myself on the job market as someone with like console expertise, one of those things is like, yeah, I understand if you just want to shove your shove the job of designing achievements at me. I've done that like a dozen times, but I will say that of the, of the platforms that have a certain threshold of requirements.
00:50:51
Speaker
All of those platforms are basically in parity with each other already. So if you make a list for PlayStation, you can just use it again for Xbox. That is very simple. The big thing is Steam. You can have zero achievements. You can have two achievements. You can have 3000 achievements. Steam is very out of step with everything else because it's because they don't have account wide value. Whereas like on ah PlayStation and um Xbox, they are a little bit more rigid about their requirements because there is a profile level associated with like, what's your gamerscore? What's your trophy level? How many how many games have you 100%ed? There is some level of like platform level layer abstraction that really doesn't exist on Steam.
00:51:47
Speaker
And I guess on the flip side, that means that if you're making a game that's not planning to be ported to consoles, you have a lot of flexibility over like what adding achievements to your games even looks like. yep um like You could just have a single achievement for, yep, you got to the end of the game. And is that what the people clamoring for achievements are asking for? Maybe not. But is it a perfectly valid Um, number of achievements we're going to have. Yeah, totally.
00:52:21
Speaker
Absolutely. um I will also say that, like, personally, just anecdotally as a player, and I am not the average player, I want to be very clear. When I click on a game in my Steam library, I will sometimes have my eye gravitate towards that us towards that achievement um section, just as like a reminder of like, did I ever beat this game? Like a game from a couple years ago? Or like, how how far have I gotten?
00:52:49
Speaker
Like, I will use that as a sort of ah memory assist, honestly. Or if it's if it's very clear that, like, it says I ah did the main story and nothing else, then that tells one of two stories to me. Either I didn't have enough time to actually go back and finish it, or I had an actively no desire to. And so, like,
00:53:19
Speaker
what what the achievement means to the player, like what what what the achievement progress means to the player is like another factor there, but also because there's no standardization of like, achievements are meant for progress or achievements are meant for dumb BS or achievements are there because like there are some games on Steam that literally market themselves for 99 cents. It's like, we have 3000 achievements that you'll get within a second.
Podcast Conclusion
00:53:43
Speaker
It's like, okay, that's stupid. That,
00:53:48
Speaker
is actively meaningless. You've just reduced all mental value of this for your game. like This is potentially the absolute worst implementation. So congrats, I guess, at for all like we your weird art thing, I guess.
00:54:06
Speaker
but um yeah I don't know. It's it's weird. there Again, there's a lot to think about there. It's not a very straightforward thing, but but it it is something that I have spent a lot of time thinking about. so I appreciate your insights, both of you. That was ah very interesting. I have a lot to think about now. Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, I'm glad we can kind of dig into that, the tail end here.
00:54:39
Speaker
All right, well, we're basically at time, so thank you so much for your time. Obviously other, you know, including your channel, but not just your channel. ah Where can people find you online? Well, the Thank You Puzzle Games Discord server is one of the best places. I hang around there and Yeah, other than that, I don't have a whole lot of online presence, actually. It's something I might work on at some point, but ah to some degree, I kind of enjoy not being like on Twitter every day or anything like that. But yeah, so thinky puzzle games, that's a place you can talk to me. Great. Thank you so much for hanging out with us and diving into this. Yeah, thanks for having me. This was great.
00:55:20
Speaker
And to the listeners, thank you for listening to the Drag Record Friends official podcast. Our music is by Priscilla Snow, who you can find at googlenoise dot.bandcamp dot.com. Our podcast artwork is by Adam DeGrandis. Please rate and review us on your podcast source of choice and be sure to tune in next episode for more interesting conversations.