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Episode 23: Annika Maar (Duck Detective)
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In this episode, hosts Alan and Syrenne are joined by Annika Maar the developer behind Duck Detective. Topics include the development of the game, short development timelines, and making approachable and funny games with deep thinky mechanics.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:22
Speaker
Welcome to the Drakkneck and Friends official podcast, where we peel back the curtain on puzzle games and the people who make them. I'm Seren, the producer at Drakkneck and Friends, and I'm joined as always by Alan Hazelden, the head of Drakkneck at Drakkneck and Friends.
00:00:36
Speaker
Heya. Today, we're joined by Anika Mar, who you may know from her work on the Duck Detective games. are you doing today? Hello. Very good. Thank you. Thank you very much for joining us. ah Can you introduce yourself?
00:00:52
Speaker
Absolutely. So I am the ah founder and creative director at Happy Broccoli Games. So I will do things like, you know, the writing. i will do the art direction, some of the art in the game.
00:01:05
Speaker
ah the game design I do together with Johnny, our programmer.
About Duck Detective
00:01:09
Speaker
And yeah, we've been going for five years now at Happy Brookly Games. That's awesome.
00:01:15
Speaker
So for people who don't know what Duck Detective is, and first of all, shame on you. You heard me talk about it during our Thinky Game of the Year 2024 podcast. How could you have forgotten?
00:01:26
Speaker
But for anyone who's joining us now, ah how would you describe the game? So Duck Detective is kind of a more casual take on Obra Dinn and Case of the Golden Idol.
00:01:40
Speaker
So opposed to those games where you are kind of playing a detective that doesn't have, um you know, a character themselves. In this one, you take on, um you know, the character of the Duck Detective. So it's it's kind of more like an Agatha Christie type of mystery, you know, where you have an Hercule Pro-Raw that you follow around.
00:02:02
Speaker
And yeah, and you're just there going into this office that you get called into where ah there was this terrible crime of a lunch theft.
00:02:13
Speaker
And you're the one that has to figure out what's been going on. So you can go in interrogate people, you know, analyze the crime scene. But the player is actually asked to understand the case and what's been going on and has to then fill out these sentences.
00:02:29
Speaker
Awesome. So obviously you named Obra Dinn and Golden Idol. Were those direct inspirations for this or were you toying around with ideas like this before one or both of those games?
00:02:43
Speaker
So, I mean, i always loved detective fiction, right? I've been reading a lot of, you know, like Agatha Christie or playing a lot of Sherlock Holmes games. So I kind of had the feeling um I always wanted to make a detective game, but then playing Case of the Golden Idol,
00:03:01
Speaker
was really, really inspiring. Because I feel like I i haven't really seen a game before that has done it so well, where it makes you feel smart, where it makes you feel like you're actually the detective and you have to pay a lot of attention.
00:03:19
Speaker
There's no hand-holding you're kind of all on your own. And I love that feeling so much that I felt that, you know, us as a team, we could make something um that has our style kind of, you know, where it's, you know, a bit more casual, a bit more wacky, a bit more ah character focused.
Development Process and Challenges
00:03:41
Speaker
And how much of the game you ended up with did you have from the first moments of thinking about this idea and how much came out through development?
00:03:54
Speaker
So I would say, okay, because this game was developed in a very short amount of time, right? We made it in ah six months and then another three months of you know marketing and porting.
00:04:06
Speaker
So we didn't really have much time to iterate. So kind of, you know, the first ideas that we had kind of had to make it into the game. And I would say that we just had some things that got developed while we were working on the game or that got added on.
00:04:26
Speaker
So first off, obviously, we wanted, you know, the sentence filling in mechanic kind of similar to case of the Golden Idol, but we wanted to, you know, iterate a bit on that. and then the ah inspection mechanic that we have in the game, which originally was inspired inspired by SpongeBob.
00:04:44
Speaker
You know how sometimes you have these really grotesque, ugly drawings of the characters when you see them detailed. And I just thought, you know, oh, how fun would it be if we have these cutesy looking animal characters, but then you look at them and they're actually absolutely horrifying.
00:05:00
Speaker
And um we started with that, but then while we were developing the game, I realized that you know we needed to give ah more information to the player here and there. You also had to inspect ah the environment.
00:05:16
Speaker
and And then you know we had these design discussions of, okay, what do we do here? um and we thought it would be really fun if you couldn't read it at first, what it said. It was just squiggly lines and then you look over it and then you can actually read it. And for some reason that just feels very fun. So that was something that came organically.
00:05:36
Speaker
Awesome. ah Was the short length of the game always ah goal? I mean, you were, I'm assuming that the short development cycle was a goal, but was like the scope of the game, of the shipping game, basically what you had hoped it would be?
00:05:55
Speaker
It turned out to be longer than what we expected. So actually the goal was to make something around 40, 50 minutes long because, you know, we knew we didn't have a lot of time. And so we thought that's what we could make ah in six months.
00:06:12
Speaker
But then, of course, when you start making things, um it always kind of ends up more than you thought it would be. But I think it was a very good goal of us to set it very, very small, because then you're always going to end up with double of what you expected it to be.
00:06:30
Speaker
And so it still remains within what we were able to make in that time. Oh, classic stories that warm my producer heart. i love I love the ambition of starting small and getting bigger.
00:06:45
Speaker
That just makes me so happy. Hey, Alan, you should take notes. Oh,
00:06:52
Speaker
um And did you know the tone of the game like before you started getting into development? You were talking about you know loving detective stories. Did you always know that you it it needed to be whimsical?
00:07:11
Speaker
I mean, i would say it's kind of in the team's nature. i would say ultimately... ultimately put in their humor. i would say even if we set out to make something very serious, I don't know, some kind of serious horror game, I think it would always slip in. So I knew, you know, would kind of end up being that.
00:07:32
Speaker
But i want what I wanted to push for as well was this noir feeling, you know, we wanted a bit more ah dark humor, you know, just some jokes, you know, that would go over kids' heads. It was very important for us um to to start out with not, you know, making ah kids' game or something that people think it's a kids' game, um because I feel like that would kind of be ah the death of the game in terms of marketing.
00:08:02
Speaker
um especially when the game you know looks so cute. um So I always wanted to try in terms of you know the key art and ah what kind of marketing language we use that people ah understand. Okay, it looks cute, but you know adults will very much enjoy this game.
00:08:22
Speaker
Did that present any difficulties in balancing some of the noir imagery and themes versus the cute?
00:08:33
Speaker
Like, not not not even necessarily during marketing, just literally during the development process.
00:08:40
Speaker
Yeah, a bit. I mean, you know, we had things like, um obviously, you have to stereotypical, you know, alcoholic detective, and we didn't want to do that. But then it kind of came very naturally that, you know, bread is bad for ducks. Okay, perfect. You know, he's addicted to bread. And that kind of um really made it easy for us.
00:09:04
Speaker
And I would say just, you know, having a very depressing setting, you know, like this sad, decrepit office with all these, you know, kind of sad, overworked ah people in it who are just trying to make the best of life.
00:09:22
Speaker
That was very, very fun to do. um and it's something that we and enjoyed anyway. So and in those terms, I think it, you know, didn't feel...
00:09:33
Speaker
you know, like we had to try very hard to make something different from what was natural to us. But I have to say that I'm terrible at writing um these noir monologues.
00:09:45
Speaker
So that's that's definitely something I'm not good at. And so Johnny, our programmer, had to help help me out there. Also, I mean, he's a he's a native speaker, you know so I feel like it's maybe in that sense a bit easier ah for him.
Publishing and Porting Strategies
00:09:59
Speaker
But i would say otherwise it worked out surprisingly well. Yeah, so i I guess you were writing the English as the reference text. Yes, yes. I was writing it first in English um and then we actually had someone else translating it into German because, yeah, I'm just, I'm not a good translator at all, but obviously it helped that, you know, the team knows German so we could look over it and make sure the puzzles are translated correctly.
00:10:28
Speaker
Yeah. When we spoke to the ah Golden Idol dev, they flagged localization as big, big nightmare um thing for this kind of game. Did you have any issues with localizing the game?
00:10:44
Speaker
So we knew that it would be almost impossible do a good localization unless you know we had someone on a team to look over it, which is why we were strictly against um localizing ah for release. Also because you know we didn't have any time, we didn't really have any money for that.
00:11:03
Speaker
um But also afterwards, we were very, very careful with it. So we have some fan translations. that ah people could do on Steam. Some of them are quite good, but I would say in a lot of them, at least you know when I spoke to people who ah speak those languages, that ah many of the puzzles, um the fans just hadn't translated at all. They just left it as it was and it wouldn't make really make much sense because, yeah, I mean, it's difficult.
00:11:36
Speaker
And ah therefore, with the German translation, ah which was Marcel Weyers, who did it for us, we made sure to pick someone who has done, um you know, comedy adventure translation before so that, you know, the humor gets translated correctly.
00:11:54
Speaker
And yeah, but then also with the puzzles, we had to look over it ourselves. And so i'm yeah I'm very nervous about trying to translate into a language that we don't know o ourselves, definitely. yeah Yeah.
00:12:10
Speaker
Yeah. All of the games that I've localized that have genuine work like word-based puzzles that would need to get translated, like the only viable solution has felt like hiring a puzzle designer in that language. Right.
00:12:29
Speaker
yeah getting someone to ah effectively redesign the puzzles for that target language and that is which apparently Cryptmaster did this um but they're like literally the only example I have in my head of people who've like decided they want to put themselves through that much extra work um I mean it's crazy ah Escape Academy did Okay.
00:12:57
Speaker
Did not know that. Because it's an escape room with a lot of word-based games. our word based puzzles yeah i played it i love that game oh thank you yes that game that game is quite wonderful but uh yes that trust trust me uh they we we very much had uh like a wild west draw about trying to lock down the languages where they're like as few as possible and i'm like as impactful as possible and uh yeah what did what did you go with
00:13:32
Speaker
ah It ended up in, i believe, French, German, Spanish, in addition to English.
Gameplay Experience and Accessibility
00:13:39
Speaker
So just those. We wanted to do ah Asian languages, but it just wasn't in budget at the time.
00:13:48
Speaker
Yeah, it's such a shame that puzzle games are so and incredibly difficult to translate. well, but that's just, yeah, that's just the nature of it. Yeah, either divorce the meaning of words from puzzle solutions, or you suffer.
00:14:03
Speaker
Those are basically the only yeah the only two options. yeah So, one thing is that I really liked about playing Duck Detective one, but Dark Detective specifically, was that by taking some of the sentence-filling mechanics from Golden Idol, it actually put me in like a headspace where it it was it was not like a stressful or like demanding experience because of the vibes, because of the story, because of the stakes, and yet I still found myself
00:14:47
Speaker
you know, thinking through a lot of the stuff and doing like doing actual puzzle solving. And I was wondering if that specific contrast is something that you were looking for.
00:15:01
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah, the idea was that people who might look at a case of the Golden Idol and would think, oh, that's that's too much for me, right? That looks stressful, that looks difficult.
00:15:13
Speaker
um But I think if they would try it, they would actually enjoy it very much. And so it was kind of the idea that, oh, people would... you know, might start with Duck Detective because it looks less intimidating, you know, it's more inviting.
00:15:28
Speaker
It's, yeah, you're you're there just for the world. um And then you find out, oh, I actually really enjoy, know, deducing these stories, filling this in.
00:15:40
Speaker
And then you find out, oh, it's a whole genre, you know, there are all these other amazing detective games and it kind of opens up this ah world to them. At least that's what I hope, you know, what Duck Detective would do to some of the casual players.
00:15:55
Speaker
I hope so too. um I feel like every episode our listeners are hearing us talking about the difficulty of getting people to move from one game in the show in a thinking genre to another.
00:16:09
Speaker
Do you feel like you have managed to tap into that like ah that that web of games like, oh, like if you if you like Duck Detective, like people are actually going to other games. Or if if you liked Oba Dinn, people are actually finding Duck Detective. Do you think that's actually happening? to Or to what degree do you think that's happening?
00:16:28
Speaker
I'm not sure, but at least ah we've had some reviews. That said that, oh, they thought they wouldn't usually enjoy um these detective games, but they enjoyed Duck Detective very much. I mean, they haven't said, oh and now I'm going to go out and play all these other games.
00:16:47
Speaker
ah But I'm hoping that's what happened to to these specific people. Yeah, I honestly, i hope so, too. I also, you know.
00:16:58
Speaker
know that the game is in multiple bundles with other different detective games on Steam. And hopefully that also gives people multiple tastes of what this kind of experience can offer.
00:17:12
Speaker
um We don't have to get into it if you don't want, but I'm curious because your previous game, Kraken Academy, had a publisher. Was it intentional to not go with the publisher at this time?
00:17:26
Speaker
Yes. um Well, yes and no. So I mean, for our first game Kraken Academy, um because I felt like we didn't really know what we were doing. It was a bit scary, you know, having your first game and I didn't want us to do it alone. i thought it would be good to have someone there who helps us, you know, with the marketing and the platforms.
00:17:50
Speaker
And all these things. And i think it was very, very helpful. um But then after that, we kind of had this desire of just wanting to take more control and so learning those things ourselves. And then after Kraken Academy, we felt ready to do so.
00:18:10
Speaker
um Obviously, you don't always have the choice. You know, many times you're with a publisher, well, because you need the funding. um But with Duck Detective, because it was such a short turnaround time, we simply didn't have time to ah pitch the game.
00:18:24
Speaker
So basically, you know when we had ah prototype, if you will, well, the game was already halfway done. And so then what's the point? By the time that we sign, and then the game would already be completely done.
00:18:35
Speaker
So there wasn't really a point to that. So it's forced us ah to self-publish, but I'm very, very happy that we did. And I mean, we did work with a marketing agency.
00:18:48
Speaker
We're working with ah future friends who are absolutely lovely and amazing. And I feel like that kind of partnership where we ah feel in control, but we have, um you know, people that we can rely on if we want to, but we don't feel, you know, trapped, let's say, or we feel like, yeah, I don't know, we can't do things the way we want them to do. We don't feel that when we work just with an agency.
00:19:16
Speaker
Totally get that. And we have a lot of experience with ah Future Friends specifically, and so co-sign that they're lovely, lovely people for anyone listening.
00:19:28
Speaker
How important was porting the game to different platforms for you? um So I would say that, I mean, Duck Detective did do the best on Steam.
00:19:40
Speaker
So, I mean, revenue wise, it wasn't crazy, you know, on Switch and Xbox. um However, I think it's still nice just to reach, you know, a different type of audience who will not, you know, play on PC.
00:19:59
Speaker
They just, you know, just have a switch or maybe, you know, it is a younger audience as well, or I don't know, families that play together. So in that sense, I think it's nice. Financially, yeah, I mean, not super great, but I think, I mean, obviously we still made them the money back from putting in the effort of porting it. And so that's what we'll do in the future.
00:20:23
Speaker
And it's also like which just very impressive that you were able to include porting the game on your very short timeline um because the console versions were released at the same time as the PC for version, right?
00:20:37
Speaker
Yes, I mean, our poor programmer. Yeah, I feel for him. And especially because Xbox was very short notice because, yeah, we managed to get into their, what they call it, ID Xbox program, you know, where they help you with porting funding. Exactly. And then I think we had a month or something ridiculous to port Oh goodness. Jesus. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:21:08
Speaker
Yes, it was intense. Oh my yeah yeah we thats Yeah. And we managed to do it. hope gave you more money than I think they gave you for that.
00:21:19
Speaker
No, it it was worth it. It was worth it. Yeah. And we yeah we had another contractor on, ah Dan Collier, who helped us out and who definitely did a lot of ah work over the weekend there just so we could get it done. So yeah, shout out to him. That was that was great.
00:21:38
Speaker
Wow. ah Yeah, I am so sorry. that's i'm As someone who has shipped on consoles probably 70 to 80 times, im that sounds like a uniquely terrifying experience to do Xbox on that turnaround. So congratulations.
00:22:01
Speaker
Thanks. And you you did mobile versions too more recently, right? How did they go? Exactly, yeah, so it's going to be released on mobile and on April 9th and well, oh god, it it was very difficult, I have to say, with um the UI and just the tutorialization because obviously that's a whole different market and a tiny screen, right? It's much different from porting something to Xbox and Switch where we can basically just leave it the same.
00:22:37
Speaker
um So there we had to make a lot more changes of you know zooming the camera in more and then, oh, these icons, they have to be much, much bigger. We had to ah change the UI of how you put in the names. um We had this small box, the small scrollable box where you select the names.
00:22:55
Speaker
And then we were like, oh, it would be much nicer just to have a big box where you see all of the words at once. And that was actually just a much better design. So we ended up also putting ah that version into the ah PC and console builds.
00:23:10
Speaker
So you know that was a great learning experience there. Performance-wise, I mean, thankfully, you know the game ah isn't that crazy artistically or systems-wise.
00:23:21
Speaker
um However, you know when we... ah were making the game. We didn't have that in mind, and so it didn't run on mobile at first very well, and so we ended up just turning off the light sources and then kind of calling it a day. We're like, well, you know, it looks ah fine, at least if the experience, the detective experience is the same, um you know i will i will take that.
00:23:47
Speaker
And then, yeah, obviously just having some things of, oh, adding the tappy finger off you know, click here, do this thing. What we definitely didn't want to do was to make it easier on mobile, which was something that our publisher pushed for, which we had to stand our ground on.
00:24:08
Speaker
because you know i just believe that you know people who play mobile games, I don't think they're stupid. I don't think you know that you need to dumb it down for them. I think that they will have an enjoyable experience um you know just having it the same as on PC.
00:24:26
Speaker
And we do have an easy mode, right? So if they want to play that, they can choose that on mobile if they want to. And this might not be as interesting for the people who are listening to this because it will, the I believe the mobile version will be out by the time this episode is, but we're recording it before it is.
00:24:48
Speaker
It looks like you're going with a free to start, like an unlock and unlock full game. ah Was that a publisher recommendation or is that something you felt like you wanted to push for?
00:25:00
Speaker
ah was It was a publisher recommendation, but ah it made sense for us um because, I mean, what it is essentially is just you play the demo and then you're asked if you want to play more and if you want to pay for it, which is...
00:25:15
Speaker
you know, similar to what we do on PC anyway, right? Where we let people play the demo. I mean, we don't, you we're not going to have it up for release. um But I feel like ah it's a similar enough thing that, you know, it makes sense to me that it would work.
00:25:33
Speaker
I mean, obviously, I don't have experience in the mobile market. But it it just, it felt right to me. Yeah, and what's the pricing going to land at on mobile? Is it going to be the same as the PC version price, or is it going to be lower?
00:25:51
Speaker
It will be a bit cheaper. I'm not sure how to exact amounts. I'm not going to say a number, but it will be cheaper. Yeah, you're good. You mentioned the easy mode. I don't know if I realized that the PC version had an easy mode. I'd love to hear what the mechanical effect of that easy mode is and how you feel about it.
00:26:12
Speaker
So um basically when you fill out these sentences, you fill out these deductions, in the normal mode it will tell you when um you have when three or more are wrong, when three are wrong, and then when it's ah two or fewer.
00:26:28
Speaker
And by that sense, it makes it harder to brute force, right? um And it also, like, it doesn't show you which words exactly are wrong. And if you switch to easy mode, it will highlight the words that are correct and that are wrong.
00:26:45
Speaker
So that's, yeah, it makes it easier for you to then guess, you know, what it could be, because I see it a lot when people get confused over the things that they have correct, right? Then people start second guessing themselves.
00:27:00
Speaker
So, um and I actually think it's quite satisfying, you know, to see the words um surrounded by green or red. And so in a weird way, I feel like it's it's quite a fun way to play the game.
00:27:14
Speaker
um But yeah, for for people who feel very strongly about not wanting to be, yeah, of not, you know, accidentally brute forcing the game and ruining the fun for themselves, you know, they can just play the normal version.
00:27:30
Speaker
Oh, and also when you do um ah like puzzles, right, when you put in ah like in the combination log, for example, there it will also show you which numbers are correct and which ones aren't.
00:27:43
Speaker
Got it. Makes sense. um Do you you have a sense of, like, did people, did most players successfully gravitate towards the the mode that was a better fit for them?
00:27:54
Speaker
um Like, do you have a sense of how many people use easy mode? Yeah, unfortunately, i don't have ah the statistics for that, but just based on watching streamers and reading the reviews, I think most people pick um the standard mode.
Duck Detective 2: Development Insights
00:28:11
Speaker
And so I think that's because, well, one, we ah wrote down recommended, and then also ah we called it ah detective mode and ah story mode.
00:28:24
Speaker
um And obviously, it's ah you know people are like, well, I'm a detective. Obviously, I'm going to pick the detective mode. um And then some people were still frustrated and clearly they would have enjoyed the game more if they had picked easy mode.
00:28:36
Speaker
And so we want to make some changes there as well, where yeah we take the words you know recommended away. ah We're not calling it detective mode anymore. I think we're calling it sleuth mode now.
00:28:47
Speaker
um And then maybe people who would enjoy you know the story mode more will be more tempted to pick it, but we'll see. Makes sense.
00:28:59
Speaker
What's the development timeline for the sequel? Is it also like about six months plus three months marketing or are you spending longer on it this time? We're spending longer on it this time, yes. so we we started, um yeah I think around May.
00:29:18
Speaker
um So i think, yeah, this time we're going to spend but around 10 months on it, actually. um And then, yeah, another couple months for a porting and so on.
00:29:30
Speaker
I think it mainly has to do with still having to deal with the first Duck Detective while making the second Duck Detective. um Because, you know, we didn't have a publisher, so obviously we have to do everything ourselves while, you know, it's nice, you're in charge, but also it's a lot of work.
00:29:49
Speaker
um And so, yeah, it was just admin and yeah just dealing with marketing things here and there that significantly slowed down the development of the second game, unfortunately.
00:30:01
Speaker
Ten months is still pretty good going. That is still a very fast turnaround. What was the development timeline on Kraken Academy?
00:30:12
Speaker
That was longer. um That was about one and a half years. So yeah that was definitely way longer. But yeah, that game has playtime of about five hours.
00:30:25
Speaker
How do you playtest a game like this where it feels like you wouldn't be able to reuse playtesters? Oh, you can't. You really can't. So everyone is really valuable. Six months, like in ah in a development time that short, there's not a good time to slot playtesting It's very difficult. Yeah, you basically just have to ah pull your friends out. you have to be like you. You're sitting down now and you're playing this game. um And then, yeah, you take notes and the game will be half broken and you'll you'll have to tell them, oh, like excuse me, let me just get into the editor and fix this for you. And then they continue playing. So it's not something you can just...
00:31:07
Speaker
where you can just send the key to someone and then have to play, you have to sit next to them just in case because you know the game is actually not ready for playtesting in that state, but you desperately need the the feedback ah before it's too late.
00:31:25
Speaker
Was there something specific that you got out of playtesting? And i don't I don't just mean, like obviously, the experience of watching people, but like was there a mechanic or feature or ui element or something that it that was not in the original plans, but it became very clear that you needed it?
00:31:44
Speaker
Um, I'm trying to think. Or was it more, uh, like, oh, this character trait is not obvious enough or like, oh, this motivation, yeah people are, people are not picking up on it with a lot of like story specific stuff you had to tweak from playtesting.
00:32:00
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. Um, a lot of story stuff. I would say weirdly enough that the UI worked pretty well. Um,
00:32:13
Speaker
But, oh yeah, I would say, I mean, okay, one thing that didn't work well in the UI was that people kept forgetting to put in people's names before they can put them into um these deductions. So we ended up um just putting ex wiggling exclamation marks in there, which isn't great design.
00:32:30
Speaker
um In the second game now, we ended up doing it so if that you can put in a name and you haven't yet. When you open the book, it just opens it on that page right away. i think that works much, much better. and terms of things about the story, um i would say we were definitely way too worried about people figuring out things too soon.
00:32:50
Speaker
So we were always way too vague with things, um which then also doesn't make it exciting for the player because they have If they have no elements that they can wonder about characters that they could accuse of something, then it doesn't make for yeah a very interesting story.
00:33:11
Speaker
And so that definitely changed our minds a lot um in terms of what we give out to the players. So we became much more generous. um you know, giving people information and, ah yeah, about just evidence or relationships between characters.
00:33:28
Speaker
And then even if, you know, there was someone who could guess early on, you know, who the perpetrator was or what was going on, it still felt satisfying to them in the end. Like they didn't feel cheated or that it was cheap.
00:33:42
Speaker
And so, um yeah, I felt i felt more ah calm than in that regards. I was always way too anxious about that. I think something that a lot of people making games in this genre have mentioned is that the difficulty of a puzzle ends up being a lot harder and like they'll they'll end up designing like the first puzzle they design, they end up needing like, oh, I need a tutorial puzzle before that and then a tutorial puzzle before that. What was the first puzzle that you you designed for the game?
00:34:18
Speaker
So the very first puzzle um was the reception. So the one um about Sophie's birthday. And yeah, and we realized that it was a bit much to ask of the player to to, you know, put in the name, do an inspection and then fill them out in a sentence all at once.
00:34:40
Speaker
um and For that reason, we then added in the apartment of the duck where you started in. That was supposed to be just a cutscene that plays out, um but we thought that actually it would make for a perfect tutorial where you know you have no names, you have no inspections.
00:34:59
Speaker
It's a very chill way to just show you this deduction mechanic.
Behind the Scenes: Production and Management
00:35:05
Speaker
Yeah, it works really well for that context. Do you have any questions for us?
00:35:12
Speaker
Yeah. So i would love to ask both of you um what your most and least favorite tasks are when you're making games or just working on games.
00:35:26
Speaker
Ooh, Alan, we're going to you first. Put you in the hot seat. um I mean, i really like designing puzzles. um That's probably my sweet spot. And then like playtesting the game and like just watching people, um like watching somebody play the game will give me like five times as many ideas for new puzzles. And so it's just like very, very creatively rewarding for me to to watch people play puzzles.
00:35:57
Speaker
So yeah, like those two things is probably my favorite part of the game. At least favorite, I mean, it's it's a slog. It's not any particular task in the slog. It's just like that ah period where the game, like you you've been you've been working on it long enough that it's not exciting, but the finish line is still far enough away that it's not imminent.
00:36:22
Speaker
Like everything everything in that zone is just like no no good. Definitely, yeah. I mean, also for Alan, his least favorite, sending emails.
00:36:35
Speaker
Oh, yeah. um Yes. ah For me, it's tough because so from so from the producer's perspective, honestly, ah my two favorite things are one,
00:36:56
Speaker
When you're gearing up to announce the game and you know that you're excited about it and you and you're just very excited to see other people's reactions to it.
00:37:11
Speaker
ah That is terrifying. That's surprising to me that you enjoyed that. I mean, I think that it's...
00:37:20
Speaker
It's not on every game. There are certain games that I've had the privilege of working on that i have known from very early on that this is something very special and that ah this will be received very well by the people who see it. And the hope is just enough people see it.
00:37:41
Speaker
but like feeling very confident in what it is. And that's, that's something that I can, I, I think that I have the privilege of as a producer of being close enough to the project that I'm seeing it every day, but not so close to the project that I am stare whenever I see, I only see the flaws.
00:38:04
Speaker
Mm hmm. I think that I am at like the perfect distance for that to not be as terrifying. um And then in terms of.
00:38:19
Speaker
Oh, the the other favorite is when people on the dev team get really, really creatively inspired by something.
00:38:33
Speaker
ah That usually is just like, one, it's contagious. So like when Alan comes back from a playtest and has these ideas, it's very good. Sometimes that happens like three months before the end of development and I want to scream because I'm like, Alan, this is not the time to be getting creative inspired. This is the time. Three months is nothing. One month is when you can be annoyed. This is the time where we need to lock in and shift the game. Oh, we need to get it across the finish line. Oh my gosh.
00:39:03
Speaker
But... i'm making I'm making level edits to Electrifying Instant based on Nexfest playthroughs. Of course you are. You didn't need to tell me that. You could have just lied about that.
00:39:15
Speaker
could, but i I just wanted to to let you know. I thought it was important to be honest in this moment. Yeah, yeah, definitely not trying to get another reaction clip from me. Didn't work this time, buster.
00:39:27
Speaker
Ugh. And then the... In terms of least favorite, I think it's when I end up being the bearer of bad news regarding things like ah that's out of scope now or we have to we have to shelve it maybe for DLC.
00:39:50
Speaker
But like a big part of my responsibility is in... being mindful of at all points what is the current work back look like i just have that all in my head and so when i hear like i joke a lot on this podcast about alan and his scope creep habits or whatever but like when i hear something and i legitimately think oh, that would benefit the game.
00:40:22
Speaker
Also, I need to tell you that it's basically you get option A or B and and A is ship on time and B is um time and on budget.
00:40:34
Speaker
And then B is we make the game better. That is never a that's never something I like to do. And it's not something I have to do in every project. I'm very grateful all the projects that I don't. But like sometimes sometimes the producer is the villain.
00:40:49
Speaker
It's so important though. Someone has to do it. So yeah, no, but it doesn't make you popular. It doesn't make me popular. It doesn't make me happy. But I also know that the whole project like like it It is at that point that the producer like shows up and puts in, like showcases all of their work, of like all of their complete understanding of the development timeline, to just be able to go, actually, no we we can't do that. If we do, you're either going to be crunching, you're going to be...
00:41:28
Speaker
ah working weekends, you're going to be delaying, you're going to be overstressed, you're going to be whatever. So sometimes sometimes we just have to not do it.
00:41:39
Speaker
And then sometimes if you're Alan, you just go ahead and do it anyway and then don't tell anyone until it's done and they say, I did it anyway. And I'm like, Alan, what is the point of having a producer if you don't listen to her?
00:41:51
Speaker
I listen. i got Your perspective is always greatly valued. No, you hear me, you don't listen. You hear me. There's a very big difference there.
00:42:03
Speaker
That's what the team did to me. I remember one day I was ill and then I came back and they put in this sandcastle that you can kick over as a duck. And they were like, yeah, now Annika's gone. Let's put it in. And I'm like, what? Like, now we, you know, now the sound designer has more work and this and that. Like, oh God. Well, well, now it's, now it's in. Now it's too late.
00:42:26
Speaker
I've, i've cut I've cut things that are already in the game before. Ooh, brutal. And I'll do it again. I'm not at the end of my career. I know that that's going to happen again sometime.
00:42:41
Speaker
um But sometimes it's also for the, you know, it makes the game better. um to take something out. so Yeah, like if if the trade-off is sound effect for kicking over the sandcastle or sound effect for this important cutscene.
00:43:00
Speaker
Yeah. um Sometimes the trade-off is ah you're having fewer levels, but every level becomes more impactful because you're ah not repeating this mechanic that many times.
00:43:14
Speaker
u sometimes like sometimes game design is from is removing content it's not it's not just changing content sometimes content shouldn't be there Absolutely. Oh, that's a really good point because actually Duck Detective, we were meant to have likeyquest but the character is like Isn't that crazy?
00:43:34
Speaker
It was going to be some kind of like adventure puzzles, right? that um Well, not not really puzzles, but just quests, right? That you would do on the side. And we kept procrastinating and kind of pushing that until the end. so And then we were like, okay, now it's time to make these.
00:43:51
Speaker
And I felt... it would do the exact opposite, right? It would make the game worse because it's like, that's the last thing I want to do Distract players from the case. you know They need to remember all these things. I don't want to send them on a wild goose chase. It's great for, i don't know, some RPG or whatever where you want to mix things up. But when you have a puzzle game like that, you really don't want to do that.
00:44:13
Speaker
Especially
Looking Forward: Duck Detective 2
00:44:14
Speaker
if it like is pulling vital memory like information out of a player's potential short-term memory. t Yeah. Like, no, I totally get that. I actually, when you but you mentioned that, I was like, ooh, yeah, like I can see why. Like, it would be cute to, like, spend more time with the characters, but that might actually be frustrating from a game design perspective.
00:44:38
Speaker
It would absolutely be. Yeah, and then you have so many people just coming back to the sentence fill out and just brute forcing everything because they forgot what was going on. Yeah.
00:44:49
Speaker
Yeah, no, I really think that you made the right choice on that. um So talk to me about Duck Detective 2.
00:45:00
Speaker
Right, so yeah, we're working on Duck Detective, the ghost of glamping. And yeah, this time the ah duck detective and his assistant now, Freddy, Freddison, the crocodile, they're going to go on holiday together where um yeah a ghost strikes and they have to figure out what's going on.
00:45:22
Speaker
And um yeah, we're kind of in the process of ah wrapping things up and Yeah, and I'm excited to see what people will think.
00:45:33
Speaker
I'm absolutely terrified that, you know, people will say, oh, well, I like the first one better. so I hope, you know, people enjoy this one just as much as the first one. Yeah, i I'm very much looking forward to it.
00:45:47
Speaker
um Is there, like, what... What is, would you say, like the number one thing from like learning after releasing the first game or rather after being able to sit with the first game for a little bit ah that is different in the sequel?
00:46:07
Speaker
I would say one big thing we changed was the hint system. So it used to be that um it's just a dialogue scene.
00:46:18
Speaker
So you have the duck, you know, voicing out the hints and then you can pick dialogue options to see um what hint you want to receive. And that was very frustrating for players. It took forever just to read through a hint or have it read out to you.
00:46:32
Speaker
um And if we knew it was bad, but we just didn't have time to change it. game had to ship. But then we thought, okay, now with the second one, we have the opportunity to make that better. And so now we have this kind of like tiered system where it's just ah in the UI.
00:46:47
Speaker
No one reads it out to you, so it's quicker. And you can decide just how much in detail you want to go ah with the hints so it doesn't spoil anything to you if you don't want that.
00:46:58
Speaker
That sounds wonderful. Like I said, this i'm I'm very excited for this. ah game. I again, just personally ah big fan of big fan of the last one. ah Very excited to get going on the sequel. ah You have not announced your release timing yet, so I will not ask you about that, but thanks it is this podcast will be coming out in mid-April. So um yeah, no, I i can't wait.
00:47:34
Speaker
i'm Awesome. Yeah. Alan, do you have any last questions?
00:47:42
Speaker
um I mean, do you feel like you want to keep making duck detective games? um like hey do Do you feel like you might want to do something different next?
00:47:57
Speaker
yeah How are you feeling about this universe? Yeah. I mean, i love Duck Detective, don't get me wrong. It's a lot of fun, but also i think for now I'm good.
00:48:07
Speaker
know and i feel like the team the team as well kind of had enough of Duck Detective. I mean, at least for now. you know The first one we made so quickly that we still had the energy and the inspiration and we felt, ah, just make like another one. you know This is so much fun. This was so smooth, weirdly, making the game.
00:48:27
Speaker
Let's do that again. um But now, at this point, um we feel like we just we don't have any inspiration to make a third one right away. We don't want to disappoint fans. It's the most important thing for us that just each Duck Detective game that we make um you know is is exciting and lives up you know to the standards that we have set.
00:48:49
Speaker
And so the next game will be something else. um I hope our fans will not be too disappointed, but you know I'm sure at some point so um they're they are going to get their third Duck Detective. But that's after we're refreshed and we feel ready for it.
00:49:06
Speaker
Amazing. It sounds like you you already have some ideas for what the next game is going to be. We'll not ask you about that, but... Kind of. Yeah, I mean, yeah we have we have some ideas spinning around. We haven't really the been set on anything, but yeah, we're going to have like a prototyping phase and we're just going to try a bunch of things because thankfully now we can take the time and we don't have to just decide on the first best thing.
Closing Remarks and Outro
00:49:33
Speaker
Awesome. um you You said something that made me remember a question I wanted to ask, which was, ah um like, you described the first game's development as actually very smooth, which I think to to ship something of that scope in six months, I think it kind of has to be smooth.
00:49:51
Speaker
um I'm curious if the second game's development has also felt smooth. Not as much, unfortunately. It definitely was fun still, but I feel like um we ran into of...
00:50:08
Speaker
problems i feel like we kind of not forgot but we didn't necessarily see what made the first one good and um just easy to develop because for the second one you know the already just setting that we picked i feel this like glamping side already just makes things so so much more difficult because because you know it's uh an exterior and um Yeah, and it just meant that we had to redesign a lot of a lot of the things that we had already set in the first game.
00:50:42
Speaker
um you know It just came so natural that um you know we had characters that would sit in front of their PCs and then they would move at some point and then you can drag the PC and this and that.
00:50:53
Speaker
That's how you get some personal information. And now we're like, okay, I mean, there are no PCs at the glamping site, or it would be weird if you just randomly place you know a laptop next to a tent and all of these things.
00:51:06
Speaker
And yeah, the level design was a bit of a nightmare, I have to say. I think we fixed it now, but it's all these things that obviously the players won't see. Yeah, I think it's really interesting the kind of non-obvious things that come up, especially when developing a SQL. It's like, oh, yeah well, this is this is going to be easy. And then it's like all the things you just took for granted.
00:51:32
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah, that's exactly how it felt. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a real pleasure to talk to you. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. It was a lot of fun, yeah.
00:51:45
Speaker
um Where can people find you online? ah So we're obviously on, um yeah, the game's obviously on Steam, Switch and Xbox. We have a TikTok.
00:51:57
Speaker
We're on Twitter. We have a Blue Sky. We have an Instagram. We're kind of everywhere. Awesome. And is that all at HappyRoccoliGames?
00:52:08
Speaker
Yes, so ah I think pretty much if you Google the platform and ah Happy Broccoli Games, you should find us. That is awesome. ah Well, thank you very much again. Thank you too.
00:52:23
Speaker
Again, personal. Can't say it enough times. Can't wait for the sequel. Awesome. And thank you for listening to the Drack Naked Friends official podcast.
00:52:34
Speaker
Our music is by Priscilla Snow, who you can find at ghoulnoise.bandcamp.com. Our podcast artwork is by Adam DeGrandis. Our podcast is edited by Melanie Zawadniak.
00:52:45
Speaker
Please rate and review us on your podcast service of choice, and be sure to tune in next episode for more interesting conversations.
00:52:58
Speaker
you