Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Draknecker Friends official podcast where we peel back the curtain on puzzle games and the people who make them. I'm Alan, the head Draknecker at Draknecker Friends, and today my co-host is Ben Wilson, the publishing manager of Draknecker Friends.
Speaker: Hi. Hi. And we also have here Bobby Vanden, creator of He Who Watches, which at the time this podcast goes out will be released.
Speaker: Hello, hello. Hopefully the next couple of weeks went well and the game works and it's out and people like it. If you go to the store page and it is 0% positive reviews, then you know something terrible has happened. But that's not going to happen.
Speaker: Yeah, surely not. Only only positive reviews. yeah Yeah, we'll see. I still have a long to-do list and plenty of opportunities to break things. So, you know, we'll see. five I think the time we've been working together, you've broken very few things. Below below normal number of things.
Speaker: ah Maybe you just don't see it, though, because I'll break something. and then Although I have pretty good testing in the game, and I think that that is responsible for a lot of that. Yeah.
Speaker: We didn't really have a yeah thing a list of things to chat about. You want to talk about that that testing pipeline? That's maybe interesting content. Yeah, sure. So every single puzzle in the game has a test associated with it that just runs through the inputs and asserts whether the player reached the ending or did not reach the ending.
Speaker: And so in addition to every level, there's also a bunch of tests for like any time I encounter a bug with how a mechanic should work. I will like fix it and then make a test for that bug. And so what this allows me to do is be really confident anytime i make a change to like the logic of how how things interact, where I can just run all of these tests and it runs like I think there's like 430 of them now.
Speaker: And it just plays through them all and asserts the player state. And that's super useful because literally yesterday, one of the play testers was like, hey, I got a stack overflow bug. Like my game crashed when I did this thing. I'm like, OK. And so like during the fix, I thought I had fixed it. And then I ran the test and there was like one level that broke because of it.
Speaker: And stuff like that, I feel like is a nightmare if you don't have appropriate testing set up. And I just feel like the game scope requires it. so Yeah, we had similar tests on Monster Expedition and it really, really helped.
Speaker: Towards the end of Bonfire Peaks, we also added them. They weren't quite as comprehensive on Bonfire Peaks. I think the interesting difference between those two games is that Monster Expedition had test cases for individual levels and test cases for like...
Speaker: fake levels that were designed to like showcase like lots of edge case interactions. Like we'd have like a test level that was like, here's what happens when you push this log this way. is what happens when you push this log into this. um Do you have both level solution test cases and like here's some edge cases that might or might not break?
Speaker: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. there's There's a bunch of tests that are like, here's this really weird series of things that like, uh feels like it should break it um and then i also have a couple levels where it's just like here's a bunch of objects in the game and i'm just going to interact with them in a bunch of weird ways and then record the whole thing and play the whole thing back right um and do you do you have it so that it's testing not just did you get to the end but like are all the objects in the same state of where they were I actually took a shortcut and it's only asserts the player's position and rotation.
Speaker: And so what that means is every time I'm doing a test, I need to interact with the, with the thing. So like I will, the test will run. and then if like some block is supposed to be in a specific way for the test, I need to go up and like walk on it.
Speaker: So it's just a it it should, but just the way that like how the the game is coded and like how entities spawn is kind of a nightmare to keep track of like which entity is which. um I've been very impressed with your approach of building tools for yourself during development.
Speaker: The one I've obviously had more experience with is the suite of tools you used for making footage capture easier, more easily trailers gifs and such.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so that was, um, yeah so that was um That's actually extended from the same testing thing. Um, so basically this the story is, is for the release, not the release date trailer, the last thinky direct trailer we had sleep Gary work on the the trailer.
Speaker: Um, and, uh, a lot of what these trailers are like doing beats or like doing actions in the game to the beat of the music. And so like to a specific BPM, um,
Speaker: um And so I made a tool where you can record movements and then play them back at whatever speed you want. And so you can kind of identify and say like, this song is 130 BPM. So I'm going to do these actions at 130 BPM.
Speaker: And then you record it. And when you record footage, it just like lines up for you, which is really nice. um And that is extended from the same like testing code with like replaying actions back. And so now when you go into any level, there is a secret key you can press that brings up that tool and just plays the test for you. And so you can kind of like scrub along the the test and like you can pause you can rewind, you can view things that should should happen. And so when the test breaks, you go back into that level and like really dig down into what's happening.
Speaker: yeah Yeah, I feel like making tools is really worth the time. i feel like especially for a game of the scope, every time I've made a tool, it's paid off. It's always worth it Are there any other tools that you've particularly valued having?
Speaker: I mean, there's level editing tools, obviously. Level editor is like the biggest one. i think ah within the level editor, it's a little jank and hard to work in And so i do wish I spent more time in that. like polishing it out because there's a lot.
Speaker: There's like hundreds of hours of like fiddling with the janky level editor. And if that was a nicer experience, it would be better. um but like one edit I made to a level editor recently is sometimes in the game you'll have like these cracks on the walls that kind of span a single block or like more than a single block like at a whole wall. So I made like a bit of a painting system in the level editor where you can kind of paint on these cracks and things.
Speaker: rather than going through every single hub level and placing them individually. Because I did that for the first one, and it took four ever. For all you're saying about it being janky, like I saw you doing this and it was like impressively user-friendly looking. like To just paint on that. Yeah, well, really cool it looks it looks that way, but it's when you're actually in there doing it, it's it's still not great.
Speaker: No, it's it's been good. Like, it's, I feel like, yeah, the making tools has always been worth it. Specifically, yeah, going back to the testing, like, I would be a wreck right now if this these tests weren't set up. This would be a really bad two weeks.
Speaker: and Yeah. Obviously, we don't know how the game's going to be received, but, like, how are you feeling about everything as we approach the final push?
Speaker: I feel good. um It's like the the to-do list is still long and it's not like all of the stuff is kind of like saying to some edges here, like fix these little things. There's couple slightly bigger things, but yeah,
Speaker: Overall, I feel really happy with where the game is at. There's like, it's hard to say, like, I don't think it's ever quite like there's the saying where it's like art is never finished. It's only abandoned. And it's true and not true. Like there are definitely things where if I had an unlimited amount of time,
Speaker: and budget and energy to work on the game, i would still add more. But with where it's at, I feel really good about it. I feel excited to get it out there and nervous to get it out there. And i don't know, it's like ah it's a process I haven't gone through before. So we'll see how it goes.
Speaker: Yeah. And the funny thing is that once you you're on the other side of that release, your perspective suddenly flips completely on like the importance of all those things that didn't get done. It's like, oh no, I never got to ah do this thing. Oh, no. And then you start coming in like,
Speaker: Yeah, I guess if I'm actually okay with that. Yeah, yeah. It's hard to know what those things are right now. It's like, there's like specific things like there's on the map screen, like, there's like some more art I wish I could have added.
Speaker: But I'm not quite confident enough in my own 2D art skills. And so getting it to a place that would look good would take forever. Yeah. What you've done here is, I remember when we were talking about this particular thing and I said, Bobby, it's going to be fine.
Speaker: Nobody who's playing this game is going to miss this thing that is just not there. And unfortunately, now you've you've mentioned it into a microphone. Oh, no. People know that it's absent. Oh, But they they don't they they don't have, like, an image in their heads of what you have in your head. Yeah. yeah um ah This kind of takes us back to um tools again, because one of the tools you threw together quite recently was, like, this tool for making these...
Speaker: murals, these stained glass murals that you've touched around the levels. and I think that was literally something where we chatted about it on a Thursday and we came back on a Tuesday and were like, oh yeah, i've done I've made this tool and I've already made this art. im like oh yeah It's a lot of Substance Designer that you use. This game lives and breathes on Substance Designer. It's like every texture, every everything is is that. and so like yeah With the stained glass,
Speaker: There's a substance designer set up where I literally feed it like this really terrible looking MS paint drawing. Um, and it's like, it takes it and interprets it and kind of does a ton of filtering on it. And then it looks like a nice stained glass art at the end of it. And I feel like substance designer is just magic that you can set these things up.
Speaker: Like, for example, it looks for the pixels that are black in this MS pain image and filters those out and turns those into like, the but like metal soldering on the substrate on like the stained glass.
Speaker: um And then it takes the colors and it just like runs a couple filters over them to make them look like stained glass panes. It does some like It does some like, ah there's this tool in there called edge detect, and you can like make the edges rounded. And so it makes all of the solder look like melted together in a nice way. Whereas in the in the MS Paint drawing, it's just like these harsh, sharp lines. And yeah, I feel like that program is magic. Magic, ah if you spend enough time with it to learn how to do all the tricks...
Speaker: Yeah. The true magician of you. but thank you. um no, I feel like I i just started it, started working on it before or started like working with it just before the start of this game.
Speaker: And so a lot of like, I've learned a lot about it through working on this game. Um, And like, yeah, the the very first version of this game, the brick texture was like the first brick texture I made after watching a tutorial. And yeah, some of those early textures are still in. Like the brick texture now is like the second one I made. And that is still in the game. And it is like very prominent.
Speaker: um And there's like some shaders and stuff to make that look a little bit nicer. Yeah, you're getting a lot of mileage out of that one brick texture. I know. It's very prolific. possibly too much mileage uh hey you could uh in the next two weeks you could make a a different brick texture and then uh you've got twice as much variety yeah that's like that's another game basically i know that is kind of like almost one of my regrets on the thing is that like
Speaker: Puzzle levels don't look that different from each other. um There's a variety in how the puzzles are structured. There's variety in how the hubs look and some of the different like sections of the game look, but we're in the actual puzzle levels, it's like very samey.
Speaker: It does give it that sort of like portal-esque task chamber feel, though, which I think, like to my mind, always felt sort of intentional that it's like, OK, you're in this sort of, like it is oppressively visually similar to similar from from chamber to chamber, and that sort of has an effect to it. you know um I guess that's my, your ah interpretation of it as someone who has regrets and my interpretation of somebody who's like mostly just, you know, like on the receiving end is I guess different, but yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah i feel like um it's I feel like it works with the the vision I have with like how the test chambers kind of work. I don't have like a super clear vision of like where in space they are in relation to the hubs and like how exactly that works, but I have kind of this like floating idea. and I feel like them being like almost like stuck in time and you're going to this thing is nice.
Speaker: And so in in that way, I feel like they're fine that they they look the same. Speaking of floating idea, ah is there anything that has made it into the game that has sort of surprised you with like, oh, this made it in pretty late, but it's actually like really good and I'm really happy that it made it in? like Yes. um Yeah. So as you play ah as you play the game and you get a little bit farther, it's a bit into spoiler territory. but I'll be a little bit vague, is like the look of the hubs changes as you go a little bit. And that whole thing was added like weeks ago. it is that came in crazy late.
Speaker: And I feel like when you're playing through it, that actually has a pretty big impact. and I feel like it looks a lot nicer in the later game. Nicer is a weird word, but it looks... more interesting as you go. And I didn't know if it was going to get to that point. Like, that's always something I kind of wanted to add.
Speaker: But then it was like weeks ago and I was like, OK, we have to do this now. This game is going to come out. And so, yeah, that was a very late edition that I feel like worked well.
Speaker: Same with the mean, we were talking about the stained glass like that was also added pretty late. That whole thing, yeah, it was just earlier this summer, i would say. I feel like both of those things add a lot of nice visual variety.
Speaker: I feel like prior to that, I was mostly focused on like getting the visuals good enough and then trying to get the puzzles to be like really solid and the gameplay to be really solid. So yeah, having this time to kind of like flesh out the visual design of of some of it has been nice.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm curious, as look back at what you originally envisaged this project would be, um like how does that differ from what the game was when we signed up for publishing? And how does that differ from what we have now?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, it it has changed a lot. um There were I feel like it's changed a lot, but it's also not changed a lot. Like, I think a lot of the specifics for how I wanted like secrets in the game to work and how want to like metastructure for the game to work has changed. Yeah.
Speaker: and just it's kind of settled into what was viable and what ended up being good and like cutting the original vision where it didn't end up working well and like I guess for an example there this is not in the game so it's not really a spoiler it was like an original idea for like a metastructure was to have uh The hubs on the map, the squares, and then you would find a room where you can push them around and then you could connect to them in different ways and do something there.
Speaker: you find and kind of like a control room where you can move these hubs around and connect them in different ways. And then you would have these like porthole travel exits appear in different areas when you move the world around. And so you could like do things in a different order.
Speaker: And so I feel like that was an early idea that I really wanted to work. But as I worked on the game, I realized it made the structure of the hubs be really, really rigid. um Make it so as you went, you couldn't really change them too much. And those needed to be really flexible just because like moving levels around all the time and like changing the design.
Speaker: So that didn't end up working out. And yeah, no, I feel like the game has ah turned out. To be a better version of what I thought it would be, I feel like it's like, for example, I guess when we signed the game, like a lot of the puzzles that exist in the game now kind of existed then. Like it's not like they have been new since then, but I feel like everything around that has coalesced really nicely.
Speaker: Yeah, I feel like since then, like the the the meta structures like hub structure hasn't changed too, too much, but it's like everything has been smoothed out really nicely. Yeah, I don't know. It's a good question. um I do like looking back at old builds and being like, oh, this idea was in this old build and it didn't end up in the game. But it's like interesting to see it.
Speaker: um Or just like, wow, the the camera controls at this point are horrendous. Like, I can't believe I sent this off to play testers thinking it was fine. And when when you say camera controls, you mean like how fast the camera rotates when you move around? or Yeah, like if you, like, there's there's a lot of little things that go into walking around and like looking around, like...
Speaker: Um, when exactly the camera re centers to the grid position, um, like right now, centers, whenever you're rotating or like walking onto a different surface, um, so like, uh, like you pivot onto the new surface and the camera looks forward at that in during that same rotation.
Speaker: So that helps you kind of like get an understanding of where you are now standing. And before, for example, there was free look. But if your mouse hovered along the edges for too long, would like almost push your camera back to the center of view to be like, hey, you're looking forward. This is actually the direction you're looking. But then that felt really bad because you're like fighting the system kind of.
Speaker: And so there's a lot of things, a lot of like little subtle things that had to change to make it feel good. and it was even something we were talking about recently, whereas like sometimes people at the beginning of the game struggle to know which direction they're looking in. And we're like, oh, we can try to tweak the camera to make it a little bit more obvious.
Speaker: And I did and I went back and I was like, oh, it just feels worse. Like, I feel like it's at this like kind of almost like local maximum of where like tweaks around it aren't going to be good.
Speaker: um it makes it feel kind of worse. And I don't know, maybe you could do like some drastic change to make it feel better. But it's a really tricky balance to make it work.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's not obvious how much work you've put into the game feel of just like moving around. Right. And making it like by default be as non motion sickness causing as possible.
Speaker: Mm-hmm. It's yeah like sort of technical magic trick where, I mean, the game is a, you know, grid based game, but you can sort of fool yourself into thinking you're just playing a regular first person game. Like you can sort of, you know, the controls are that sort of,
Speaker: The controls and the the the way that you know the first person view is presented is is that sort of seamless that you can sort of let your mind glaze over the fact that you're walking in discrete sort of steps and you're just sort of navigating a space in the way that you're sort of used to if you play first person games, which is, ah yeah, really hard to do.
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's one reason why. so i like to watch playtusters more once they get to like the halfway point of the game. And a lot of that is because at the beginning, it is hard to get used to the movement. It's just like, is the thing of the game? It's not.
Speaker: It is like as good as it can be for this game, but it's still different from any other game. And and so you you aren't coming in with this like natural, like like training you've had playing a bunch of other games. It is like something new that you kind of need to get used to.
Speaker: And so it's a little painful to watch people play in the first couple of levels, but like once it clicks, it clicks. ah you You got to subject yourself to watching those though.
Speaker: Oh, i yeah, it's painful. You have to. it's it my le You have to know what what the... like You have to know how painful those first moments are ah because that's how you like...
Speaker: very, very slowly go like, oh, I can tweak this and it's going to make it like 5% better. um Yeah, it is less painful. On the other end of the scale though, speaking of ah players who are like comfortable and sort of ah good with the movement, I you remember that time speedrunner contacted us and said, hey, there's an entry now on speedrun.com for the demo of you who watches.
Speaker: um And there's somebody who has completed the demo in seven minutes and 24 seconds. al which which I think is is pretty impressive. Oh, it's awesome. Now every time i I sort of, when we have our sort of one-to-ones and I watch you sort of just running through a level really quickly, I think of like, yeah, this this game is, the speedrunners are going to love this game. It's just so sort of, it has that juicy speedrunner quality.
Speaker: Yeah, we we watched that speedrunner play through and I like, I want to be like, oh there's like, want to tell them like there's an optimization here you can make. Like there's something you're missing here. I'm watching you do this the long way around. Or like there's a a setting where um you double tap to walk on wall. That's on by default, but you can turn that off to just do one single tap. That's like one less action you need to do every time. Shout out to Sol Clovet on speedrun.com.
Speaker: I mean, Bobby, there's nothing stopping you submitting a speedrun for your own game. That's so true. It feels bad, though. Something about it feels wrong. i need to let the the community do that. and I don't maybe I'm overconfident to be like, well, I'll just sit on Taff. I'll just sit at Taff. I think what that is, what you're creating there is a situation like if you ever play like Mario Kart and the Nintendo Wii, every time trial course would have like a staff time on there, like just already on the ROM. So it'd be like an invitation for speedrunners to like, beat the developer. And that's the sort of gold star sort of level. I was actually running through the ending like a lot recently. And I'm like really used to doing these movements. And I realized we recently added arrow key support for moving at the same time as WASD.
Speaker: So some secret speedrun tech is if you tap both at the same time, you go so fast. It's going to be like the Tetris flicking, you know, like how... Yeah, yeah, yeah. How they like roll their thumb, kind of.
Speaker: Yeah. I can't wait. I hope people are already getting started on that too into each time when the game ends up. If there is one speedrun end-to-end of the game, i will be so happy. Whoever does that, i will that'll be awesome.
Speaker: I wanted to rewind us back a little bit because we were talking about playtesting a little bit and iteration a little bit. And that's one of the things that we did or sort of started a few months ago now. But i I guess I wanted to ask how you found that process of Particularly what we did where we started was you were sort of uncomfortable with like, you know, the back half of the game and particularly the extra content, the non-mainline content of the game because it was just sort of less trodden through. and so we we, you know, we ran out a play test sort of focused on that.
Speaker: um Do you want to talk about like just sort of that process of having people walking around in that part of the game and what you learned and how that process was? Yeah, yeah. so So first off, the the way that you guys do playtesting and the way that I had done it previously was pretty different, where I would get like one or two people to work on the game and I would get like a video every once in a while and I would really closely sit down and watch it and like really be intentional about it. Um, and that took forever. Like people did not get far all the time. And so it was not effective. Whereas signed with you guys and we're like, okay, let's get some new play testers in. And you're like, how about 20 play testers at the beginning? And I'm like suddenly getting these firehose videos. I think we studied with like a dozen.
Speaker: But it was a dozen very keen people. yeah. yeah A dozen people who are all sending videos all the time. so I'm like, okay, now I have this fire hose of videos to to try to wrangle.
Speaker: um and manage. But it was awesome. Like it was so cool to have people in the discord, like talking about the game and being like chatting about like one person be like, Oh, I'm stuck on this puzzle. Like, does anybody have a hint for like what I should be looking into? Then someone else would answer that was not me. And I'd be like, Oh, this person like understands this other person understands the game. Like they get it.
Speaker: um Yeah, that's its own sort of feedback, right? When yeah you can sort of create an environment that is like a little tiny bubble version of what the internet will be like post-release, right? Where people are just sort of talking amongst themselves about the game.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. it's It's super cool. It's nothing. I hadn't done anything like that before. So it was really cool to like see these people play through it, talk about it. And then also to be in a nice position where like I can directly respond and have a conversation about them with people.
Speaker: like whatever they're stuck on or like um whatever ideas they had and stuff like that. um It was awesome. Yeah. I would highly recommend getting a lot of playtesters.
Speaker: Shout out to everyone who helped us playtest. Seriously, there is a bunch of them. That is ah that is like a big Discord channel at this point. um we We didn't even get through the entire list of people who expressed interest.
Speaker: um yeah That's awesome. Seriously, big, big shout out to all the playtesters. The game would not be the same ah without it. It would be much, much worse.
Speaker: um It's crazy like how many you watch like one playtest video and it's like, oh, this thing needs to be tweaked in that thing in this. Like it's just like hundreds of tiny things and then, you know, several big things, too. But it's been amazing.
Speaker: Did you, did you, what was your approach to, um figuring out how to consume this like hours and hours and hours of footage? I still don't have it down. I'm still behind. ah um, it's, it's a lot of like, I have started to watch them quite a bit sped up. Like I,
Speaker: I still sit there and watch them. It's not like ah there was ah the talk by the Blueprints developer where they were talking about the same thing. um And they were saying like they can almost just like keep it on a second monitor and like understand what's going on just by listening.
Speaker: I don't feel like I could really do that. I feel like I had to sit there and watch it. um And I think it's just that's probably down to it's a different type type of game. um So would sit there and watch, but it would be pretty sped up.
Speaker: And then i would, when there was a problem, i would like slow down, back up, try to understand why the problem is there, like what they're kind of getting stuck on.
Speaker: And then in addition to that, i also kept some like analytics. So I have a bunch of stats about each level and like, How many people tried it and failed it? How many people succeeded? How many people used hints? How many people like the average time to completion?
Speaker: and then in addition to that, I have how important is this level to the mainline path? And so I can kind of filter it where I'm like, oh, give me the levels that are really important to the mainline path that people really struggled on. It's like, okay, this is definitely like a point where I need to focus.
Speaker: And so beyond that, i would I would get that. And then the videos were a really nice way to be like, okay, why did these people struggle on this? Like, what about this is going wrong? And I could kind of use them as like a specific reference point there. And I feel like that is almost more helpful than just sitting down and watching them in some ways. Maybe not more helpful, but it's like a nice supplement to be able to kind of like fine tune and and pinpoint those issues.
Speaker: Mm. Yeah. And sort of step through a specific area you're you're looking up and use the video as like the detail or context that you need.
Speaker: yeah yeah, exactly. It is hard, though. like There's like some part of the game that's non-linear. like Most of the game is pretty linear, but there are so like optional areas you can go. There are different... At points, there are different... like options for the order in which to do some puzzles and like for the most part that is pretty rigid like it's like I'm trying very hard to make sure that the player learns a specific thing before moving on but even so there's still points where it's like you could do either one of these puzzles and learn the thing
Speaker: um And so in those instances, you do need to watch and be like, okay, why, like, if you are supposed to know a certain thing by this point and you are struggling that, like, why are you struggling on that? And then you kind of have to like rewind and figure out which puzzles they've done in which order and maybe either revamp those or revamp the puzzle they're working on.
Speaker: Yeah, ah I'm thinking of a particular one, but like are there any mechanics that would be interesting to talk about? Like, oh, there players weren't really getting this and like what what you needed to do to to enforce that. to Yeah, I think we're thinking of this.
Speaker: I'm sure we're thinking of the same one. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's a mechanic in the game. To explain this mechanic, I need to explain a different one first, where you are welding two blocks together and they are connected entirely. And so when one block moves, the other one moves and they are like they become one rigid object.
Speaker: and then there's a separate mechanic that's very similar where you can balance blocks on top of each other. So they are not welded, but they still move together due to just like gravity and due to friction. And so like up to the point where they played that they've done the welding thing so much, like hundreds of times and they've gotten like very comfy with it.
Speaker: But then you need to be like, okay, instead of actually welding it, you're just like setting this thing on this thing. And that one has been so tough to teach. Like there are multiple puzzles ramping up to be like, no, you do the thing and then watch what happens. Like do the other thing again and then watch what happens.
Speaker: Because inevitably people get to the the one puzzle i'm using is like a gating point where it's like, okay, prove to me that you know what to do in this before the rest of the hub opens up. That specific puzzle has had a lot of like a lot of conversation in the playtesting Discord.
Speaker: And so we've done a lot to... like Introduce a better ramp up and then at the point where you get to the gating, there's second optional puzzle that's open now that is like, here is yet again, another way to do this, but in more of a structured way where you don't need to like do the whole setup, like half of it's kind of set up for you. Yeah, that, that mechanic is very tough to get people to know, it's very important because.
Speaker: It opens up this whole new branching path of possibilities. um And a lot of the rest of the game uses that. Do you think there's any lessons you've learned are like generalizable to other games about like how to teach mechanics in a good, effective way?
Speaker: That is a big question. ah Yes. I mean, I've learned a lot throughout the game in general. So it's, I guess, before I had almost no idea of how to do it. And now I have an idea of how to do it. see So with this game, it's kind of hard in particular because there are two aspects. And I think we talked about this on the last podcast, where there's like a logic aspect and a spatial reasoning aspect to a lot of these puzzles.
Speaker: And so whenever in the game I'm trying to teach something new, trying to make it so like the spatial aspect of this is very straightforward. Like you are just on the ground walking around.
Speaker: that's the same thing as all the... As straightforward as it can be in a game like this where you can walk on all the walls and ceilings. Yeah, but I really try to try to clamp it down so that like there's not that many surfaces you can walk on. There's not that many paths that you can take.
Speaker: So a lot of it is like forcing the player to do something Or forcing the player to fail at something and then having them try to understand why it failed. And I feel like that second one is it happens a lot and it it happens with the same like balance mechanic lead up and having having people fail at something and then try to deduce why feel like really it does teach a lot.
Speaker: I don't know. It's like a, it really depends on the specific thing you're teaching and where they're at. Like, I feel like there are some general lessons in how to do it, but I think it just depends so much on the specifics.
Speaker: Like for, for example, I guess like a lot of the hint levels, was, I was, was kind of saying a second ago, you preempted the question i was going to lead us on. Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead.
Speaker: The hint levels are like are kind of that for every single level where like you go into the hint version and it's like here is the same mechanic that you are trying to do maybe be presented it in a slightly like different way.
Speaker: But the level is very straightforward and like you usually can't walk on the walls on the hint levels like let's remove the whole spatial aspect entirely and just focus on the logic bit and then once you learn the mechanic and learn what the logic bit is you go back into the main level it's like okay now apply that in a more spatially complex area or like maybe with one more or two more lead up steps that you have to put together before you can do it Yeah. And it works to varying degrees. The hint hints are mostly good. They're not all great. They're like, you know, they were originally made pretty quickly and there are a lot of levels. And so there are a lot of hints to get through. But I feel like for the most part, they really do well at at teaching the thing.
Speaker: And it's kind of funny that ah I'm not saying we will do this, but like hints feel like the kind of thing that it's kind of fine to just drastically change after launch in a way that would be weirder. mean, you speak like...
Speaker: I don't know if I've ever released a game where there's been zero post-release level tweaks, but they they're usually pretty minor. um But I feel like if a hint level isn't working, again, we might not do this, but it would be kind of fine to just like go, well, okay, let's throw that one away. Let's to have a totally different hint level that works better. And it's not like you're messing with the core game. You're just messing with the hints. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. Hints feel sort of non-canonical in that way. Yeah. Yeah. They're just dreams. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's, that is part of it. Like we tried to make it so the hints, you know, be originally they were just a menu button that you clicked and now they're like in the level and you have to like go up to a thing and interact with them.
Speaker: But still most people are not going to see the hints for every level. So like if they get changed, it's most people won't know or care. You also do a thing which I think is kind of interesting. a lot of the levels, the hint, you can kind of like look around and find it, but it's a little bit out of the way.
Speaker: yeah you You often need to like go and walk on the ceiling to get to the hint or walk to a part of the level that you might otherwise not just like walk directly past. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't want it to be.
Speaker: It feels worse somehow if you're stuck on a puzzle and it's right in your face. Like there's an easy way out. Like go do this thing. It feels a little bit worse. So it was a bit of a balance to like put it in the level, like kind of tuck it away a little bit. But like this thing is here if you need it and you can go seek it out and find it.
Speaker: But it's not going to be taunting you. Yeah. I can be in your face. I think we talked about that a lot when you were sort of thinking about the presentation of the little, you know, hint zones and the desire to not have it be like a let Luigi do it for you sort of like big red arrow pointing to, know. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. I think it's a good balance. Yeah, and I think part of them feeling like kind of innocuous and not in your face is that they've got this fake wall in front of them that only disappears when you're nearby them. And like it's interesting that...
Speaker: came from my design constraints of like, oh, let's add these hints to these levels in such a way that we're like very confident it's not going to break the level. um And so we're like, okay, well, you always need to be able to stand on this wall because this level was designed for this to be a wall and not for this to be like a little alcove.
Speaker: And i think we probably could have designed it such that the hint alcove is always like literally an alcove. Yeah. um Like... The number of levels that would have been broken from that is extremely small and would have been very easy to quickly fix them.
Speaker: Yes, but there's also like, this game is so dangerous with unintended solutions. Like, the possibility space with being able to walk on a wall to change the gravity is so scary. so I was like, I'm adding, I'm like, okay, I've got these hint doorways and I've got like over 100 levels that I need to add them into. i really want to do it in a way that...
Speaker: ah does not change the level. And like, so yeah, the the like hint doorway is still a wall. You can still walk on it. um Or in levels where you're not supposed to walk on the wall there, it is also not a walkable doorway. It's got the same kind of thing.
Speaker: So yeah, I do feel like that that is um yeah that is a ah design constraint and it could have been changed, but I like it. I feel like it's a nice, it looks cool. I don't know. It's got a cool sound effect when you walk up to it. yeah It worked out well.
Speaker: I think it's cool. It's just sort of eye-catching enough to for somebody encountering the first time to be like, oh, what's this? And then actually like figure out, like oh, that's my hint. Okay. But then once you know what it is, it's sort of out of the way enough to just sort of not pervade your senses. achieves a good balance.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. There was some, you're talking about one of the original looks for that doorway. Like right now you look at it and there's kind of like holes peeking through and you can kind of see through it. so that invites you to like walk up to it.
Speaker: Originally I was like, what if I just put like a a little like almost square around the doorway, like the same square that goes around gates and a lot of things like that. What if I just put that there and like throw some candles in front of it and you have to find it um And that way it's like really fades into the background.
Speaker: But then it was like, oh, nobody actually is going to find this thing. Like it's, it's too subtle. um So you're like, how about it? It's always open. and I'm like, I still don't like that. And so yeah, that's where the to like so playing a fun game with the reverse psychology of knowing that people don't like to use hints yeah when they need them. Oh, what if it's a secret? Ooh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It's inviting. It's like, yeah. um People don't like to use hints. It's true. People are stubborn and don't like to use them. But I feel like the way that they're done in this, which was stolen from Can of Wormholes. So thanks. It was like, yeah, no, that I mean, that came...
Speaker: The way they're they did their hints was like super innovative where you are playing kind of an easier version of the level that teaches the mechanic. And that feels so much better than being like highlighting an area and being like, look at this thing.
Speaker: ah You're not looking hard enough. Look in this spot or or whatever. Like it's it's a nice way where you can kind of still get that like aha moment where you are like oh this is like this makes sense this is the mechanic I'm doing and then you go back in the main level it's like okay now apply what you've learned again um which I don't know even how you would do it in that other way for this game like like and actually sort of present it in a way that was like okay I know what I'm doing like I feel like it would just be so visually weird and cluttered and I don't know
Speaker: i can't I can't picture another version of the hint system now that this is the hint system. I know. It's, um it's ah yeah, I don't know. i think it's the only one that really works well for this game. um gosh, what is the game? What's the name of the game? I can't believe I'm forgetting the name. Croquet Conundrum. was talking the developer of that when I was making...
Speaker: this game um and the hint system for that game is really nice in that it's basically it is show me bring me back to the state of the level where i was the closest to the solution and so it's like it's really nice because it says like oh this is the track the right track keep going from here um I think that is a really nice other way to do it. I think it's really hard to implement for this game where there are so many options. Right. The state space for your game is so much wider that, like, closeness to the goal is, like, much less helpful. Yeah. um
Speaker: The one interesting thing I found about the hint system in Croquet Conundrum is it's a little bit more brute forcible than the playable hint thing where it's like, okay, well, you you yeah you know, okay, this is as close as I got to the solution. But from that point, there's only a limited number of moves you can make.
Speaker: And ah then... you can't stop the hint system from giving you a better hint every time. Either it gives you the same hint, and okay, well, the thing I did was wrong, or it shows you, like oh, yes, this next step was also correct. So it's like confirming it whether or not you wanted it to.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, that's an interesting point because it's almost like you're trusting the player to right make the best experience for themselves. And I feel like that is something that i want for the game. And like for for my own game, I feel like you do have to trust the player to make the best fun. But players also naturally kind min-max things and be like...
Speaker: it's like the term optimizing the fun out of the game. Yeah. I was just thinking about that saying, but hints are actually the one hints in puzzle games are the one place where gamers do the opposite. Yeah. that's just that You like, you do have to trust people to yeah they want the best experience.
Speaker: Yeah. And maybe in puzzle games, Puzzle games naturally like they're different in other games where other games a lot of them are like numbers go up and people try to like min max that thing where puzzle games are like people want to have these like interesting moments and interesting ideas and like interesting.
Speaker: things that happen and realizations. And so it's like, it's similar to like watching a movie that has been spoiled for you or not. Like you don't really want to min-max the movie and be like, okay, tell me what this movie is about before I watch it.
Speaker: I know someone who did that. I can't. There's one person I've met in my life who who does that. And that's crazy to me, but yeah, the point stands. Yeah.
Speaker: not gonna out them on the podcast i've already said too much does this person listen to this podcast next question oh uh yeah i mean was there anything else we wanted to cover before we wrap up i don't know anything you're excited about people encountering in the game um i'm curious how many people go into the secret path of the game it's not something that you have to do at all and like maybe i don't know maybe we'll leave it there not spoil it but it's like maybe we can cut the whole thing i don't know uh i mean there's there's achievements uh yeah doing all the secret stuff right yeah yeah sad so like yeah there's hidden achievements
Speaker: Right, but you know the achievement is there. You know there's achievements. There's also sort of an allusion to secret stuff in the Steam description. So I think we're good. I think you've given anything away. The reason I bring up achievements is I think like if somebody wants to like walk away from the game go, yes, i've I've got to an ending. i can feel done.
Speaker: That's there. And if people want to like go, like I want to find everything here. The game will, like, the game and the Steam achievements will tell you if you're missing something. Yeah. I think it's ah yeah kind of fine. Yeah.
Speaker: I'm looking forward to seeing how people interact with it and those, like, moments of discovery, I feel like. Those are some of the most fun moments in the game, so. Ben, from your perspective, what are you most excited to see people interact with?
Speaker: e um I think I'm going to try and just watch whoever decides to stream the game during the launch week. I will be doing a lot of that, as is my sort of habit now whenever i er I'm working on a game that I you know get to the end of.
Speaker: That's, yeah, that's there's a real joy in just seeing people sort of na naively approach something that you've really like just been looking at every day. so Yeah, once once it's on Twitch, it's real.
Speaker: Once it's on Twitch, it's real, exactly. Yeah, that might be too close to watching playtesters for me. don't know if I can take it Yeah, I i hear that. It definitely is... very hard to separate those modes yeah to to not be on a release stream and yeah oh oh there's a thing oh there's thing yeah yeah yeah That's why we're going to watch the streams for you so that you don't flashbang yourself with the feeling of having playtest video. Yeah, yeah let me know let me know how it goes.
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's exciting. um I think if you're listening to this podcast, then you're going to enjoy this game. ah It's a real good puzzle game. it's It's delightful. like It's really unique. It does...
Speaker: It's a class of three-dimensional mind-braining like thing that like hey there's not a lot of reference points. And ah yeah, I think it's really cool. I'm really glad we decided to publish it. I'm really glad you wanted to work with us. I'm glad too. The game is so much better for it. Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah, the game's been out for a day as this podcast releases. So if you haven't already picked it up, please do. And tell your friends, tell your neighbors. If you have picked it up already and have been playing it, please ah rate the game on Steam. Yes. A whole bunch with visibility.
Speaker: Yeah, it it actually, yeah, that's that's a really good call out. i want to We want to hit a thousand reviews in the first week, so get on it. Surely that will happen.
Speaker: And no negative comments. Not one. oh No negative reviews. You can leave a negative comment, but please leave please do the thumbs up as long as it's a thumbs up review. There's a give feedback button in the game.
Speaker: That's where you can direct the negativity. You're leaving the feedback system in post-release, right? I think so, yeah. Um, yeah, if you're- if you- if you hit anything that you're like, oh man, this is such a bad experience that I want to leave a negative review, don't leave a negative review, just leave a feedback comment, it'll go to Bobby, it'll hurt Bobby's soul, but... I will read every single- well, I'll read every review and comment regardless, I do like...
Speaker: On every social media post I will go through. Okay, we gotta help you disengay... After the first week, it's fine to start reading with Steam reviews. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Cool. Well...
Speaker: Thanks so much for joining us. I just like reading them. and I don't know what they're saying. Just rebrand the name of the bug reporting tool to chat with Bobby.
Speaker: It's a one-way chat. Although there is an email field now, so it could be a two-way chat. but it's ah piece We also have an email on the website if you yeah want to. it Actually, and that i I stopped reading like all the Steam reviews for our games a while ago, but I do still read all the emails we get. And occasionally we'll get like a really, really heartwarming email from somebody who like really enjoyed something. of like, yes, this meant something to me and I'm going to tell you. And that's always lovely.
Speaker: That's awesome. So we'll we'll we'll get some of those for this game, I reckon. Yeah. So more of that. Yeah, that sounds good. Awesome. Well, ah thanks for joining us. And thank you for listening to the Jack Neck and Friends official podcast.
Speaker: Our music is by Priscilla Snow, you can find at ghoulnoisemusic.com. Our podcast artwork is by Adam DeGrandis. Our podcast is edited by Melanie Zawadniak. Please rate and review us on your podcast service of choice and be sure to tune in next episode for more interesting conversations.
Speaker: you
