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Episode 58: Martin Binfield (Schrodinger's Cat Burglar)
314 Plays11 days ago
In this episode, hosts Alan and Syrenne are joined by Martin Binfield (Schrodinger's Cat Burglar). Topics discussed include similarities between puzzle games and stealth games AND similarities between puzzles and jokes, how much Schrodinger's Cat Burglar has changed over the past eight years, and speedruns for A Monster’s Expedition.
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Transcript
Introduction to Dracnugged Friends
00:00:22
Speaker
Welcome to the Dracnugged Friends official podcast where we peel back the curtain on puzzle games and the people who make them. I'm Seren from Dracnugged Friends and I'm joined as always by Alan Hazelden, the head of Dracnugged at Dracnugged Friends.
Guest Introduction: Martin from Abandoned Sheep
00:00:35
Speaker
Hello. Today, we're joined by Martin from Abandoned Sheep, who you may know from his work on Schrodinger's Cat Burglar. How are you doing today? ah Yeah, I'm doing great. It's a nice, cool winter day in Australia, so it's a nice change from the usual climate, especially for a Brit.
00:00:52
Speaker
I mean, it's ah it's a relatively cool day here for our Fahrenheit listeners. It's 64 here, which is probably something to the effect of like 14, 15 Celsius.
00:01:04
Speaker
Yeah, that's a calculation I can never do in my head. It sounds sounds nice. yeahve i've I've mostly just gotten good at doing gut checks.
Martin's Industry Journey and Game Development
00:01:13
Speaker
um So yeah, can you introduce yourself more to our listeners who are not familiar with you, your team, or your game?
00:01:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's ah very understandable because this our first game. But yes, I'm Martin. I've worked in the industry since about the year 2000. So I'm a bit of an old hand. I've worked at places like Sony and Jagex in the UK ah as an animator on various projects there.
00:01:37
Speaker
um And then around about 2018, I embarked upon a personal project um featuring a cat that can be in two places at once. And that has grown and grown ah into the game Schrodinger's Cat Burglar, which just came out recently.
00:01:52
Speaker
um And yeah, we now have a small team with me and another co-collaborator, Ziggy, and then a a bunch of um contractors as well. But yes, I've went from animator into game designer, programmer, director, like just for this project. And it's gone pretty good.
00:02:08
Speaker
Honestly, you are i think one you think you're one of the first podcast guests that we've had that has fully outlasted my tenure in the industry. I i started i started in 07, and I'm used to being considered like the old person. yeah i um I technically started, I was on a PS2 game, but the PS1 was still being worked on when I joined Sony. So that's how old am.
00:02:31
Speaker
Yeah, that, oh gosh. No, that's a whole other podcast episode to get into. But digging in, um what prompted you to want to kind of strike out and learn all of these additional skills?
Relocation to Australia and Game Conception
00:02:47
Speaker
um So essentially, I went from um living in the UK to moving to Australia to be with ah my now wife, but then fiancee.
00:02:59
Speaker
And I went from a full-time job at Jagex Studio to, um you know an entire different continent where I didn't have any kind of prospects or anything. um And yeah, so I went from there, like with no particular idea of what I would do, but I kind of thought, well, I'll get some contract animation work and that'll keep me going. um And around about that time, I'd been variously like toying with the idea of like designing games and having game ideas. And um I'd been working on a different game idea that hasn't gone anywhere. And maybe we'll go back to at one point. But it basically was it featured like animals as the main cast, as it were. um But this current idea I had, which in my head I was calling The Entangle Men, was about two burglars who...
00:03:45
Speaker
got entangled together by quantum means. And I was like, I felt like I wanted to like prototype that. um And so I was thinking about the models I had from the animal game. And I realized that there was a cat model that could be usable. And then that kind of stuck in there with the like,
00:04:00
Speaker
the quantum stuff as a Schrödinger's Cat thing and that kind of like made everything gel together. So it wasn't initially like a Schrödinger's Cat game, it was just a quantum one. But yeah, like the desire to get into that designing a game and you like all the kind of like programming stuff was kind of like ah a means to an end because I had this idea I wanted to exist. And so it was like, well, if I want that to exist, I've got to learn how to make a game, I guess. So kind of like that was the start of it, I think, just that that core idea.
00:04:27
Speaker
um And then just the availability of like unity and the prevalence of like teach yourself how to code guides on on YouTube and stuff kind of like really ease the way through that.
Evolution of Schrodinger's Cat Burglar
00:04:37
Speaker
And were you excited about the puzzliness of the idea or was it more just like a concept and it happened to be a puzzle game or were you even thinking of it as a puzzle game at that time?
00:04:50
Speaker
It's a good question because like ah initially it was going to be more of a stealth game. um yeah Because like the idea of sneaking into somewhere and cameras is a very stealthy thing. And like the game has always had like a kind of a Metal Gear Solid inspiration in it, which just hasn't really like bought out into the mechanics so much.
00:05:08
Speaker
But yeah, it was like the idea I initially like really liked was that you had a kind of push-pull with the being seen by the security system. like You had to be seen to like use your quantum powers, but also you would trigger alarms and stuff. And like trying to make that work was very, very hard, primarily because like I'm not a very good programmer and AI systems and pathfinding is not in my skill set. So it kind of didn't really bear out that way into a game that kind of made sense, but it really lent itself into the puzzle mechanics. and kind of like So like going from that idea of it being a stealth game into a puzzle game with a kind of stealth aesthetic kind of, I think, paid off better in the end.
00:05:47
Speaker
Fun fact, Patrick's Powerbox also started as a stealth game. Really? How? That's such a puzzle game. Like, it's it's so puzzly. I mean...
00:05:59
Speaker
if we're If we're looking at like, if we were to try and map the genus of video game genres and like genre by interactivity, ah trying to solve for navigating in a tight, like in a confined space while avoiding things like um in like stealth is very close to
Stealth vs. Puzzle Mechanics
00:06:20
Speaker
puzzle. It's certainly a lot closer to puzzle than a lot of other genres. Yeah. Right, and people describe the new Hitman games as very, very puzzly.
00:06:27
Speaker
yeah Yeah, I mean, it's kind of... It's funny. i wouldn't describe the games as puzzly, but I would describe one of the primary verbs that you would use as the player as puzzling out.
00:06:39
Speaker
in ah Where it's all a lot of big, big clockwork simulations and things that you do have very clear and direct ramifications, and so you're trying to, like... ah figure out, like puzzle out the the systems and adapt to your own strategies. It's it quite fun. Yeah. Yeah, I think, i um <unk> i get you can totally see that in stealth games. They're basically puzzles with ah like a fail state where you have to sit still and do nothing for two minutes, essentially. Yes. And I...
00:07:13
Speaker
I love the Hitman games. I like many stealth games. There is like a I don't know a single person who comes to stealth games because they love the fail state.
00:07:24
Speaker
Like, I think the fail state is like just plainly the worst thing about stealth games. Yeah, I agree with that. We have um a set of puzzles in Cat Game, which are called a lockdown, and they have a kind of a security system motif. But there is no cool down on anything. There's just like, oh, you've triggered it. There's a button to reset it. There's no like, wait. Yeah.
00:07:48
Speaker
And it's like, yeah, I think in a game like Thief, which is so heavily atmospheric, hiding in the shadows and just waiting for a guard to go back to the thing is really evocative. And that doesn't really carry over to like a really thinky game. I think it's much more of an inner setting kind of thing. Yeah. So how would you describe the puzzle design of Cat Burglar to someone who has not seen a trailer?
Puzzle Design Inspirations and Mechanics
00:08:15
Speaker
m I mean, we kind of, i think and we still have this on the Steam page. I sort of semi-regret it because it's a bit on the nose, but we do describe the game as portal with cats. It's kind of that series of rooms where we hope to give you a sense of epiphany by by revealing an extra kind of like layer to the tool set each time you go from room to room. And it's more that kind of puzzle than it is... um like you know like ah um but Obviously, you know soccer bands. You're very blessed in soccer bands. But how soccer bands are like so order of operations and steps and you know you can hit a dead end and you can undo and you can like reset and you can all that sort of stuff. And like we've designed the puzzles much more like Portal where...
00:08:58
Speaker
any step you make can just be undone by just, you know, doing it in reverse and there's no like dead stops um in the game. So it's much more forgiving in that respect and left and like, you know, much lighter, I guess. um And yeah, the puzzle's based around like the core mechanic of
Quantum Mechanics in Game Design
00:09:15
Speaker
the game. I don't know if I've actually clarified it, but like the...
00:09:19
Speaker
You play a cat who can be in two places. So it's kind of like there's two cats, but actually there's one cat in two places. And it's the fact that the the two instances of the cat are the same cat is what kind of gives the game the uniqueness. So you pick up an item with cat A, And then Cat B is also holding that item so it can drop it on the other side of the room instantaneously.
00:09:39
Speaker
um If Cat A is observed by a camera, then Cat B stops existing and becomes theoretical. And then it can do like basically go through doors. It becomes a ghost at that point. um And so a lot of the puzzles are based around that idea and how that fits into a world with... you know doors and fields that stop split cats and and all this sort of stuff. So it's kind of like, yeah, I think a closest comparison, like the the points of inspiration making the game were Portal and The Swapper. They were the two main ones.
00:10:08
Speaker
And The Swapper, I don't know how many people know about that game anymore, but it's a real classic from like 2013, I think. Oh, don't, don't tell me it's that old. The sad answer is probably older.
00:10:21
Speaker
ah Yeah, like, there's good chance that a lot of people listening to this aren't really familiar with the Swapper. I feel like, Alan, I feel like there's a real rife episode that is just the two of us talking about, like, the ur-texts of the puzzle genre starting at, like, Sokoban.
00:10:42
Speaker
but Yeah. I'd be all ears for that myself.
Balancing Theme and Challenge
00:10:45
Speaker
I mean, the original Sokoban has like walls that you can walk through, but they look like normal walls. Yes. It's ah an interesting one to revisit.
00:10:57
Speaker
It's a little sociopathic in its design. um In an era where a lot of games were being very yeah player hostile. So i think when you look, and this is my own impression, so I'm not putting words in your mouth, Martin.
00:11:14
Speaker
ah when I think when I look at Cat Burglar ah pretending I have not played this game before um I look at the footage and I think that this is going – like this is very cute. It is very wholesome. It is leaning into a lot of the um catness, I guess, for lack of a better phrase.
00:11:40
Speaker
Like the feline nature of it. ah It's very cute, wholesome, approachable. And then some of the puzzles have teeth. yeah And so i think my i think my question is, how do you balance the idea of making a game with thematic broad appeal while bringing those players along to some more advanced puzzles? Paulie, I think is how I'd say we handle that. Yeah, that's one of those situations where we kind of
00:12:15
Speaker
Like all the way through the game. And as you know, I've been working on this for eight years. um So it's kind of transformed a lot. We maybe dig into the previous versions of it as well before it landed on its current side view camera era.
00:12:27
Speaker
But um all the way through, i just kind of had this thing where I was like, I think this game will be good. And I like it. And I'm really hoping other people do as well. And there's been like a real kind of like, we we always try to make sure that, you know, when we make a puzzle, we kind of build up to that puzzle with the concepts that are required for it. So we don't leave anyone behind.
00:12:48
Speaker
But um yeah, I think now that the game is out, I think it's it's been interesting to see that, yeah, the game appears quite, um what's the word for it?
00:12:59
Speaker
Cat simulator-esque. Yeah, and approachability was definitely what we were aiming for. like We've had some really weird, like the reviews, like the bad reviews we've had, which I'm staggered to say are very, very like in the minority. We've had a really good response. But there's been a few reviews from people saying these puzzles are just too easy.
00:13:20
Speaker
And then there's been people who've been like, these puzzles are way, way too hard. And I don't, I mean, this is probably a good question for later, but like, how do you, how do you make it so that like people don't find the puzzles, but simultaneously too hard and too easy? Yeah.
00:13:34
Speaker
And I think the thing is the, these puzzles are too easy reviews have come from the real puzzle sickos who we don't necessarily serve as well as we could. And these puzzles too hard from people who just want to make the cat jump on desks and knock things off. And so like we kind of, we have fallen in between those two stools, but I don't think it's been too detrimental in the end. I think it's found a group of people who are just like not sicko enough, but also above wanting to just be a cat.
00:14:01
Speaker
So it kind of feels like it's okay. But yeah, the the true answer to how we've approached it is we've just tried to treat every kind of new mechanic we bring in with introductory puzzles leading you up to the point where you hit the, you the, the, the,
00:14:14
Speaker
the tough puzzle. And I think the demo is a good example of that in the, there are like basically five puzzles in that demo. And the first one is teaching you about how to interact with items when they become split, because that's a kind of mechanic that rolls in about halfway through the game. And the first puzzle is just split an item, stand on the pressure pads and put it on the other ones. Second one is a little bit more complex. Third one introduces two items that can be split. So there's four split items at once. And then the fourth one is a real catch moment. but it it rev involves It involves you having to split an item and then make a logical leap of how to make the item not be split again. And then the fifth one is that but expanded upon. And that's definitely like the demo is like a walk in the park until you hit that fourth puzzle. And then people can spend, you know, half their time just in two rooms at that point.
00:15:05
Speaker
So I think, yeah, we try to do it right, but I don't think we've we've done it exceptionally well, but it doesn't seem like we've done it terribly either.
Design Transition and Camera Perspectives
00:15:13
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think the catness of the game is always going to be great for like drawing people in and then they're going to encounter the puzzliness of the game.
00:15:27
Speaker
And I do, a lot of the time I do think of it as like these separate modes, like you're getting people to try the game, and even just for a second. And then there's the experience of like, okay, well, now they're in front of the game. how are they How are they finding it?
00:15:39
Speaker
Do you feel like after you've grabbed people and they're trying the game because of the cat potentially, does the cat, I feel like there's still some element of that that's like still keeping people engaged and it's like um convincing people to like stick with it through to the next puzzle maybe. Do do you have thoughts on on that?
00:16:00
Speaker
Yeah, I think um like i think if we where we've been successful with the game is, and arguably, I don't know if we've been fully successful as a puzzle game, because I do think that there's a lot more juice that can be wrung out of the game in terms of its mechanics. And we do, like this is the thing as well, the game is long. I guess that's what happens when you work on it for eight years, but it's like,
00:16:22
Speaker
Um, people, I know someone who has played the game so long that their in-game timer ticked over 24 hours back to zero. So it looked like they hadn't spent long in it, but yeah, they've just been like taking ages. And I think, um, I've completely lost my train of thought there. What was I talking about? Like the Katniss keeping you focused on the game.
00:16:42
Speaker
Um, yeah, I think there is a lot of like downtime in between the puzzles. Um, where you kind of like you're exploring this big facility. And I think for a lot of people who are just here for the puzzles, that is um dead but dead time for them. like you know It's like, oh, just take me to the next puzzle room. But for other players or people who've come for the cat stuff, then those are the points where they can kind of just ease up again and the thinking doesn't need to happen for a while, so they can just jump on desks. and I've been watching streamers play the game and...
00:17:16
Speaker
A number of streamers are so dedicated to knocking every single thing off every desk they encounter, which I didn't, I thought people would get bored of that after a while, but people do seem to take pride in being as cats as they can, even though it's thematically incompatible with being a cat burglar.
00:17:32
Speaker
But yeah, they really, that does seem to keep people going, I think. And I do think like um the characters and the, what's the word for it? the The whimsy, I guess, is the word I'm looking for. The kind of the um back and forth between the main character and the support hedgehog on a headset. That keeps people going as well, which I think is kind of like makes people endeared to the project. um Yeah. So I think, yeah, it's the game. So to dive into the history of it, and yeah, you two can definitely like talk to this having seen previous versions of the game.
00:18:05
Speaker
I think you both encounter the game ah in version one, I'll call it, when it was just a top-down puzzle game. um And at that point, it was very not cat. It was just you know move an object, move a character around a flat world viewed from above, solve puzzles.
00:18:21
Speaker
And there was a point where it felt like it needed a chase camera and it felt like you wanted to be down there with the cat and the cat jumping on desks and feeling more like a cat.
00:18:32
Speaker
And at that point, it really did, the cat aspects of the game really came to life. Just like I spent a lot of time working on a jumping system and like you know that would like work out targets and jump you from point a to point B and and this sort of thing. And that definitely made the project feel so much more um catty and enjoyable to move around the world in. um And the problem there, which is what you know maybe is...
00:18:59
Speaker
seen us take eight years was because when you bring a chase camera down to ah a game where you can be in two places at once, the moment you split, you then have to have the camera jump from character A to character B, you know swapping who controls who. um And it really lost the kind of quantum aspect of it.
00:19:15
Speaker
like It made it so much harder to tell the state of one cat based on the state of the other when you were only looking at one cat at the time. And it also removed the possibility for co-op because we weren't going to do split screen. That didn't feel right. So yeah, so the chase camera era like made the catness really come to life, but it kind of stopped the puzzliness of the game coming together. And then when we realized that a side view camera would give us all of the kind of catness and the puzzleness together, that's when the project came together. that's when it started to really kind of like, you know, race to the finish.
00:19:49
Speaker
But yeah, I think um people coming for the Katniss, they are stuck with, you know, they stick with the project through. And I'm, yeah, it's really, honestly, the player dedication that I've seen has been like really gratifying because people have like stuck with the game all the way through the long duration, all the way through to the end. And I've really, really enjoyed it.
00:20:09
Speaker
Yes, that's good to see. Yeah, and I mean, it was interesting because the... where Back when i was watching you make the sort of chase cam version, it felt like...
00:20:25
Speaker
The scope just kept ballooning every time we talked about what it would take to make one room up to like a level of quality with like such a small team.
00:20:35
Speaker
yeah um Can could you talk about how the kind of production scope changed over the course of development?
Production Process and Team Dynamics
00:20:45
Speaker
um Yeah, ballooning. did a lot of yeah but There's that concept of the double diamond where you know you kind of like start small, you grow, and then you shrink, and then you grow and you shrink again. Yeah, we were like five diamonds maybe all the way through, and they kept getting bigger.
00:20:58
Speaker
um And yeah, like in terms of... like like the day-to-day like studio ins and outs um at that point was mostly me doing everything but then andrew who's the other um employee of the company joined as an artist um and his like role was initially to just be doing the you know the art of the level designs that i come up with but he's subsequently become a level designer and a puzzle designer and an artist and done like like amazing work on that stuff. And I think that um has kept things much more achievable in terms of like the production for the game is that now we work in um Unity and we use ProBuilder to build the levels. So that's kind of quick to just prototype a shoebox space and put some mechanics together in it. And then um going for an art pass through that is been, you know, dress the set with the the appropriate materials and then put like, um
00:21:52
Speaker
uh set dressing and furniture in there and it's been an interesting one to balance and i think um when it was third person that was a that was um a situation where the art cost would have been much higher than it ultimately turned out to be because the cameras can get up so close to everything um and this new kind of camera view, the side view thing is much more doll's house-like, so things can be a little bit lower resolution. And just not having a fourth wall lets you design a space in a much less believable way.
00:22:23
Speaker
i think you know when you're looking into a little room like this, you can be a bit more expressionistic with the architecture of the space. It doesn't have to make 100% sense. Whereas when you're in a third-person space, you kind of expect it to be like you know every door to lead somewhere and the rooms to be connected in a sensible way.
00:22:42
Speaker
And that was another thing as well as like when we were in third person mode, the game was set in a building above ground. And if it's in a building, you can't just have like dead space in between the rooms. You kind of need everything to be, you the walls have to have a thickness and there needs to be something within the walls or so like designing spaces like that was like quite restrictive. And, um,
00:23:00
Speaker
Yeah, moving into like setting the entire game underground in a basically a James Bond villain lair, like really frees you up in terms of what shapes the the space can be. And yeah, I think that was, there were some roadblocks while we were doing the third person stuff, which really moved away when we made the dual change of side view camera and underground.
00:23:21
Speaker
um And then, yeah, essentially like I would just be doing all the programming and like, game design stuff and animating. And then Ziggy would be doing, Andrew, his nickname is Ziggy, would be doing the level designs and level art. And so we didn't really tread on each other's toes that much. So it kind of helped us to just kind of like really beaver away in two different ways. And also the team being as small as it was,
00:23:43
Speaker
meant there wasn't a huge amount of like leadership for me to do. like you know I didn't have to like oversee Andrew too much, um which kind of let me work more on my own stuff. And then we had the big sound team and the musician, and we had a producer who was overseeing this all.
00:24:02
Speaker
and some support artists doing some work alongside as well. So yeah, it was kind of, um yeah, that's kind of how it shook out. I think it was pretty, um we got lucky. in terms I got very lucky in terms of finding like Andrew who, yeah, hit the ground running and like yeah fit into the project extremely well.
00:24:18
Speaker
Is there anything you learned about what made a good puzzle for this game that might be interesting to talk about? e Yeah.
00:24:31
Speaker
That's an interesting I think what makes a good puzzle for this game ah is' kind of close to what makes a good puzzle for any game of this ilk. Like, we basically tried to keep in mind that... um That thing of you know ah the the best, quote unquote, the best puzzles being the ones which is it looks like a straight line to the finish. And then there's a wrinkle at the end that makes you rethink what you've done to that point.
00:24:57
Speaker
um And then it reveals an aspect of the puzzle that you haven't or the mechanics that you haven't considered. We tried to do that as much as we could everywhere. But that is ah a well that runs dry after a while because there's only so many um revelations you can find.
00:25:13
Speaker
um We did have... um We tried to avoid doing using the theoretical state for a long time in the game because it felt like it was one of those situations that could be a bit confusing for people to get a handle on. So but the early game doesn't really have what I considered the signature mechanic in it as much as it could do. And I think maybe that's something that we, is ah a little bit of a mistake and like bringing that back in would be like when we got it into the puzzles fully from that point on, it kind of really helped um glue them in a way that makes them unique because no other game does that.
00:25:45
Speaker
um But yeah, I think, The idea of having two characters in two plate two different places and a connection between them um yeah worked well for the game. Be that either you pick up an item with one and drop it somewhere else, or if there's an exposed power cell, you touch it with one cat and you can transfer the power somewhere else with the other cat. um and then also the yeah If you can get one cat theoretically, you can get it to go through it to another place.
00:26:13
Speaker
um Yeah, those are the bread and butters. And I think, yeah, trying to set those up with the um the the last second obstacle that makes you rethink the puzzle was, know, we tried to do it. I don't know if we necessarily like nailed it, but um yeah, I think we got there. There's an interesting mechanic in the game, actually. I think only literally makes it into one bonus puzzle in ah in a level that is very easily missable.
00:26:38
Speaker
um And it's that the cleaner robots that roam around the facility. they um Well, actually, before I start talking about them, we have Heisenberg fields in the game. And this is basically a magic field that stops you going through if you're split, so that it's our attempt to like limit where a theoretical cat can go. Otherwise, when you're theoretical, you can just run to the other end of the level. So we put Heisenberg energy in, which doesn't let you go through if you're split.
00:27:04
Speaker
um And the cleaning bots in the facility, when they cross those fields, they block that energy. um So if you put a split cat on a cleaning robot and it crosses a field, you can have the cat on the other side of the field.
00:27:17
Speaker
And I was like, this is going to be such an awesome mechanic. And it shook out that basically it's a ah one and done. like you know Once you've done it once, there's not really... much interesting to do with it because it's wrapped up in using a distraction to make a cleaning robot move where you want it to and then sitting on it.
00:27:35
Speaker
It's like that was that as deep as that mechanic got. So we've used it in one side puzzle. um and I think, yeah, that's the that's one of the things about the game that um initially it was just going to be, oh, you can be in two places at once, but then when you try and dig into what you can do with that and getting depth,
00:27:51
Speaker
Then it was like, okay, I think we need um you know objects. The heavy object you can leave on a pressure pad is like, okay, yeah, classic box-on button kind of stuff.
00:28:01
Speaker
and Then the idea of charge levels. so You can have things that require three charge, and you can drain three batteries in it. So a lot of the con of core mechanics are are very familiar um because it's all about know balancing numbers and resources. And then when you layer the kind of like the cat stuff on top, that's that's where they kind of come together. So I think a lot of the really exotic mechanics for the game only really worked nicely when they're combined with much more standard like puzzle game mechanics in that respect, I think.
Development Reflections and Self-Belief
00:28:32
Speaker
Awesome. and ah
00:28:35
Speaker
knowing everything that you learned from this project, what would you not do again? Hmm... Big think. um Yeah, because... how How would you have made this game in a year and a half just by making all the right decisions? Yeah, exactly. Because, I mean, there's, this like, two entire eras of the game don't exist. Oh, I mean, yeah. So...
00:29:02
Speaker
to To be honest, taking a step back, like my my question was a little bit in jest, but it is also like, other than knowing exactly what the final shape of the game is going to be at the start of production, was there like one thing that you like, like a design exploration that you really wanted to go in on and like you came out of it being like, I got nothing out of that, I learned nothing. Was there like Do you feel like you didn't ah set aside enough time for pre-production so that you just kind of spent all of your exploration time in production? Like, how do you how do you look back on the last eight years in like a sort of post-mortem way and like yeah identify lessons to be learned?
00:29:53
Speaker
Yeah, I think um I was chatting with some friends in the pub last night and talking about like, they were like, oh, congratulations for getting this project done. Eight years, that must have been hell. And it wasn't like every every day I've worked on this project, I've enjoyed it. At no point has it felt like a chore.
00:30:11
Speaker
And I think... um that yeah thent necessarily That doesn't say that there were no points that were like you know went wrong or that I wouldn't do differently. But even then, like you know ah I guess you could argue that moving the game from being able to control two cats on the same controller into a third-person chase camera where you have to swap between them, which completely fundamentally broke the strength of the quantum mechanic, you could argue that was a mistake. But if we hadn't done that, we wouldn't have ended up with so much like catness in the game, which I think is a real strength of it.
00:30:43
Speaker
um And I think... Yeah, so it like the ideal would have been that we would just have you know ah drawn the rest of the owl, as it were, and put all that cat stuff in when it was ah a top-down game. But I think we needed to be in ah in a wrong state to get that to then move away from it. So I don't think I would have done that differently. i think the only thing really...
00:31:05
Speaker
um that i look back and think I should have done differently was I think I should have, and this is going to sound quite arrogant now I think about it, is like I should have believed in myself more. um At certain points, like the the going theoretical mechanic, um I had feedback at certain points that would like i don't like people were not necessarily sure that it would work.
00:31:27
Speaker
ah Like it would be too complex to train. And the fact that when you go theoretical, there's nothing for that cat to do because it can't interact. It's like, these are risky things. And I kind of just felt like it would work.
00:31:39
Speaker
And I kind of felt like, you know, it was worth pursuing, but I did have a point. I i sort of alluded to it earlier. And we kind of moved the mechanics away from that and into other aspects of being one thing in two places. And I kind of feel like, um,
00:31:54
Speaker
that was a mistake. Like I think if we just stuck, if I just stuck to my guns on that and believed in that a bit more, then it would have, and it's not like it doesn't feature in the game. It just, it comes in after about two hours of play. So it's like, which is only about a quarter of the game. Yeah. So it comes something in the end quarter of the way through and it possibly could have been there like sooner.
00:32:13
Speaker
um But I don't know. I think we probably introduced mechanics well enough. um The game is big. um So yeah, maybe, letting the game run for eight years has resulted in a game that maybe is too big but equally i yeah i don't know if you have this as well but like how do you know if a game is big enough like I always were like is this going to be enough game and then we came up with a game that took people oh gosh well from Draconex perspective like as a team I'm always pushing to make it smaller yeah spoken like a producer i mean I and and my answer is the game knows how big it wants to be and you just listen to the game
00:32:50
Speaker
Yeah, i think I think that's true. Because I think that's like with with Cat Game, it in my ears, it wanted to be like two different kinds of game, a cat simulator and a puzzle game, which probably explains why it's twice as long as it could have been.
00:33:04
Speaker
But yeah. buts I know i know when we were chatting about the game ah at some point, like you had a very clear sense of like the scope of the game and how many different sections it would have and how... Like, okay, we wanted to introduce this mechanic and then we wanted to introduce this mechanic. How much of that stuff was like, just stayed the same throughout the mountain? Like you were just executing on that plan versus how much did you cut or how much did you move things around?
00:33:36
Speaker
e A lot. um like I think the the bones and the the general thrust of the game was pretty unchanged since the early days. But the content of those areas changed quite a bit.
00:33:48
Speaker
We did um initially think that there would be a level based around being pursued by like robots that would try and trap you. like They would be like pathfinding, it would be like you know like guard patrols and stuff like that. And that completely went out the window because of my inadequacies in programming.
00:34:07
Speaker
um But that didn then did become, like we reworked those to be like static threats with a kind of an area in front of them of of like, if you step on that, you just get sucked into this like robot hound and like deposited in the starts. They but they did feature. But again, it's like, you know, I think that's a sign of,
00:34:24
Speaker
The identity... Crisis is too strong a word. The identity change in the game from being like a stealth thing to much more puzzly is that yeah they were just like ah you know they were a mechanic in a toolset. and we often like so In these kind of situations with these robot hounds that will gobble you up and reset your progress, they're often a benefit. like You know you kind of need to be gobbled up so that the cat can get somewhere that it couldn't get to you otherwise.
00:34:51
Speaker
um So yeah, that kind of... like We definitely threw out... Especially when we went from third person into like side view, there were like entire level layouts that were just thrown away because they were designed for third person camera.
00:35:04
Speaker
um But what they the purpose they served in the kind of overall narrative and the the direction of the game... um you know that was replicated the idea of like starting at the start working through a series of levels and then at the end you realize you have to go back to the start and then you find and a secret area from there onwards sort of thing that would that had been there for a long time i think um And talking about like the game having different identities, a third identity that I haven't really talked too much about in the game is a kind of Metroidvania.
00:35:33
Speaker
um And it was this thing where kind of you can revisit every level in the game once you've been there. You can go back in and go back to areas where you've you've been through and completed all the puzzles you need to.
00:35:45
Speaker
and We imagined at a certain point that there would be bonus puzzles that you could or couldn't do and you could just walk past them and you know like come back to them later, which is why we have that kind of returning mechanic. But then we didn't ever settle on any bonus mechanics it felt like a bonus puzzles. It felt like a waste to have a puzzle that you didn't have to play. We just made every puzzle a puzzle you have to play and didn't have any bonus ones.
00:36:09
Speaker
And also the idea of going back, I kind of imagined that you may have a growing power set, um but that never came to be because that would kind of upset, um you know, how you can finish the puzzles and areas. So, yeah, so we're kind of like a revisitable Metroidvania game without any kind of power escalation. So that kind of feels a bit moot at that point as well. um And that was kind of the idea of being able to revisit was there from like the early stages
Level Design and Metroidvania Elements
00:36:35
Speaker
the project. Yeah.
00:36:37
Speaker
And I think, yeah it yeah, that's a hangover. And I don't think it's a detrimental hangover, but probably the way the the project shook out in the end, it didn't need to have that revisibility. visibility But I think it's kind of nice that it can be there. We've got the bonus pickups that you can go back and find. So there's something. But yeah, it's um yeah it definitely, the bones stayed the same. The the yeah the stuff in the in the project changed quite a bit, but I think it kind of hung together.
00:37:04
Speaker
So do you have any questions for us? Because you've like sidebarred a couple that you felt like you wanted to ask us. That's a good point. Can you remember any of them? My mind has gone a bit like blanket points.
00:37:17
Speaker
um Yeah. Well, I guess that's, I mean, the one thing I'd say, Like from having played um a number of dracnet games, like I guess the idea of a meta puzzle and like the meta layer, which is like once you've kind of cracked what it is, it's like the good world gets bigger.
00:37:35
Speaker
um Always had the idea that we'd put that into cat game and it didn't quite come together. um How did you plan for that? And how did you make that happen in, in you know, a master's expedition and things?
00:37:50
Speaker
I mean, in Minster's expedition, it kind of just came from how breakable those puzzles were when you put like multiple islands near each other. And it was literally just like...
00:38:04
Speaker
yeah laying them out, finding like, oh, oh no, you can do this. ah that That totally breaks things. Oh, but it's pretty cool. It's okay. that That's a puzzle. So in some ways, the problem with Monster's Expedition was not finding like like like making the meta puzzles. It was like corralling them and stopping them from like escaping containment and just like making the game completely broken.
00:38:32
Speaker
it was like, figuring out which ones to prune, which ones to keep, which ones to take the idea but reimplement it in a more focused way so that it was like more signposted or easier to execute.
00:38:48
Speaker
But yeah, a lot of it was just like paying attention to the game and going like the game would present a interesting puzzle. and Okay, great. Yeah, that's a that's a good concept. And I guess one thing that I don't know if we did amazingly on Monster's Expedition was like making sure that each one is kind of like unique and not just like the same trick over and over again, because it's every if If there's something that's like, oh yeah, you do this and this and this, and that lets you like reach a new island, and it's the same steps every time, that that kind of gets old pretty quickly.
00:39:27
Speaker
e Yeah, from like playing it, I guess that's one thing that's interesting about these like step-by-step Sucker Man-style puzzles is that they kind of inherently feel unique because they like the steps are so prescribed. like In a game like Portal or Cat Game, it's like you know there is it's it's a big...
00:39:47
Speaker
ah analog blob between the key points in the puzzle and they don't feel like distinct whereas like the actual step turn step step like that the number of steps makes each puzzle kind of feel unique which I think and and not yet but the sheer number of islands definitely um none of them feel identical which I think is a quite astonishing about the game um so yeah And also the other question I had about that as well is that the the moment where you first encounter the raft mechanic, like at what point did that come into the project? Was that how you wanted to make, like when you realized that you could have this moment where players, like their minds would explode from the possibilities was like what drove the project or was that a happy accident?
00:40:33
Speaker
No, um I think I've told this story before, possibly on the podcast, possibly not, probably on the podcast at some point. But like my, i the rawest mechanic in of itself within the project from a fairly early stage, I'm pretty sure that was one of Ben's ideas when we're just throwing around ideas like, oh, what what happens when you've got just these logs that you're pushing around.
00:40:58
Speaker
um And he, I think he figured out like, okay, two logs on a water square, make the raft. If you're on a raft, you can push off from something and then you travel. um And so i I always knew that it would be a cool thing, but for a long period of time, i e thought that that would be like the ultimate, whoa, you could do this the whole time thing.
00:41:25
Speaker
And so I don't remember how much of the project time, but like there was certainly a chunk of project time when that was like a late realization you could do like three quarters of the way through the game.
00:41:39
Speaker
And once you learn you can do that, it's like, oh, well now you can go back and find all the places throughout the earlier part of the game where you could have done that, but you didn't you didn't know it was a thing. And that would have worked, but... And I don't i don't even remember why we originally made the decision to try moving it earlier, but it's... Because of Apple.
00:42:05
Speaker
can you Can you elaborate on that? Is it... it Because Apple wanted a very strong opening impression? ah Maybe. i don't remember that kind of a directive.
00:42:18
Speaker
ah Specifically, they wanted a big moment to coincide with a first-time user experience. Yeah, mean my my memory of that is it kind of happened the other way around. Like by the time we were looking at those, that that guidance of like, okay, we need to like we need to trigger this achievement because this is this is how they they use their stats logging. And like, I don't know Yeah, there was some some funny, ah like that they're issuing a guidance on how we use our achievements because they want to use those achievements to log how far people are getting in the game. Right.
00:42:54
Speaker
But I think by the time we were thinking about that stuff, the structure of the game was probably pretty locked. Because I think, yeah, like it's it going to gush a bit, but it feels like a like ah a masterwork that like leading the player to think that they'll push a log over and it sends them off the other way feels and like dropping the title. It's like that felt so perfect. Yeah.
00:43:17
Speaker
it's ah It's a tremendous joke and I don't know if we'll we we'll be able to come up with a joke that good again. i think describing it as a joke is underselling it. It feels like, yeah, I'm i'm gushing now. But yeah, it just feels like of those things of like either that was like what made you want to make the project or it was like, oh, we have to put this in in last minute. But yeah.
00:43:38
Speaker
yeah no one One thing I wanted to do was you have that moment and you get a title of screen and then i wanted it to do like five or six different title screens throughout the game. ah Like each time it would give you like a slightly different title for the game or something. things So this is the thing about Alan and this this, I think this comes through in his personality on the podcast, but has not always come up through the stories.
00:44:04
Speaker
He just wants to fill his games with bits. Yeah. He just loves bits. I mean, a good puzzle is just, it's just a a joke on the player.
00:44:17
Speaker
This is true. Yeah. It's, I mean, there's people talk about how comedy and horror have the same structure. It's like, you know, the the buildup and the release, that's puzzles as well. Right. Yeah. I mean, yeah, puzzles is – mean, a lot of puzzles is about teaching a player why why doing something the way that they thought they would doesn't work.
00:44:37
Speaker
e And that is also what bits are. So – It's like, ah, you you thought you thought you had it, but no, I have you, and now you're sailing ah south for an increasingly long time.
00:44:54
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah, like pulling the rug in a way that's like, yeah, like that is yes is very strong. I definitely had one bug that I... For the longest time, I didn't even want to report the bug during like testing, but I ended up doing it. um Just because I didn't know if it was a prank from Alan or not, because it was like on a bespoke one-off build to go capture footage. And when I ah set off on the raft, it took me out of the world.
00:45:26
Speaker
yeah So like the raft just kept going and going and going. Yeah. Because i think, I think it was just missing the islands that you're supposed to land. on Yeah.
00:45:38
Speaker
That's a, that's an interesting thing. The cat game is like people have been speed running it and they found those like things that get them out of balance and stuff like that. And it's like, yeah, I've kind of, I've now got a list of do not fix these bugs. Cause it's like, if people like can use them, I'm going to leave them in there.
00:45:55
Speaker
Yeah, so my ongoing recommendation for developers on that is that if it is a bug that is negatively impacting any user, but speedrunners are also using it, that is the perfect opportunity to ah make a historical branch of the game on Steam. Yeah.
00:46:15
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense. Push the fix to the main branch and then your speedrunners are also your engaged players who will jump through the hoop to download a historical version of the game through the Steam branches. Yeah.
00:46:27
Speaker
And also the thing I find interesting there is like, I don't know, because I'm like, there's a ah channel on Discord for speedrunning and I see what they discuss and I'm like, Is it wrong for me? Like ah one of the things I did was like, there was collision on a glass panel on a long elevator shaft. So people worked out how they could drop off an edge and it's like, oh, but then there's no way back in. And I was like, well, I'm just going to open that window. Cause like, that's not gonna, that's, know, cause otherwise it's like, I think that's fine yeah give ah to help the speed runners a little bit. Yeah, and it's something of like, I don't know if I should do it and not tell them, or if I should say, is this okay? Do you want me to do this? But yeah, they're a lively bunch and they feed back, so that's good Yeah, Monsters Expedition speedruns are unhinged because you can move one tile per frame.
00:47:14
Speaker
Oh my god. so so yeah ah the these pro strat is basically get the game running in 240p at like 360 frames per second and then task your way through and then the whole game is like 15 seconds.
00:47:31
Speaker
Wow. Do we have a task? i thought I thought there was a task. um Maybe there was a task in a really old version. There's also a couple players that have just like decided to no life their keyboard inputs. And like, young, they can do that. I mean, for for the for the people not using like, okay, I'm going to program something to automatically enter the input. Like, it's actually a bad thing. Like, you might think, oh, well, the the the skill ceiling is really high. But like, no, like, this is just a uncomfortable. This is not a good way to, you ah like like, I think the speedrunners would have preferred a version of the game that ah didn't have such fast
00:48:13
Speaker
uh a birdie to execute yeah just because it it feels it feels like if they want to get faster then they'd like have to like contort their body more um it's i don't know it's it's also very interesting um because sometimes uh if you are going like some of the speed runners like i remember one speed run they have to sit and wait for like 30 frames because they need to wait for an animation to complete ah because otherwise some like some jank part of the physics because no part of the physics engine of of the logs was built around the concept that you would be going at 360 tiles per second.
00:48:56
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, because I imagine, like, the log rolling completes before the next turn. Like, it knows where the log's going to end up, so it's just animated. Mostly, yes. Right, yeah. So, like, wow.
00:49:08
Speaker
yeah job But, like, to be clear, if you're if you're going at a reasonable pace, ah at, like, reasonable pace in terms of, like, you're going very fast but not abusing the hell out of the code, um the actual any percent run is for like, two minutes. Yeah.
00:49:25
Speaker
Wow. ah you basic Basically, ah there is a way to, at the beginning of the game, before the before the windmill raft sequence ah that we were talking about, ah to make a raft, ah kind of reset, glitch it a little bit ah to two islands away, and then just push off and it takes you straight to the exit.
00:49:50
Speaker
Right. Yeah, that's pretty fun. That's, yeah, I guess there's, yeah, because like in cat game, the main strat that people have found is that one of the emotes that you can do moves the cat ever so slightly further. Oh
Community Engagement and Future Plans
00:50:03
Speaker
my God. So they jump onto an edge.
00:50:07
Speaker
Yeah, and I had no idea I'd even, I think it's just a tick box in the anime importer and I would have unticked it had I known, but I can't now. Like it's like the main crux. There is, ah when I was working on Manifold Garden, ah we found out about the speedrun because it was being done at GDQ.
00:50:23
Speaker
And ah we sat we all got in a call and we watched the GDQ run live because it was like during the workday. And ah essentially the main strat outside of like knowing the map of the game, which is like they were doing a lot of strats, by the way, that like because I had played that game hundreds of times before release.
00:50:45
Speaker
um I was actually really, really happy with the fact that no, no, a lot of the strats I found were in fact the strats. And I wasn't like, oh, and now here they're going to show me how I could have done my work way more efficiently. um But yeah.
00:51:03
Speaker
Basically, you just walk right up to like there's like four corners of the game, five corners, something like that, where you just like run your first person ah character rig into the wall and then just shakes the mouse as violently as possible, holding W. And sometimes it lets you through.
00:51:20
Speaker
Wow. And everyone internally was like, what? How do you even find what? And then we we just kind of we were able to recreate it. We weren't able to find any errors in the collision. And we were like, it's not even worth fixing. Cause like, who cares other than speed runners, but like, how, what the hell? Yeah. In Cat Game, we have like office chairs that just are physics objects you can push around. And they are either you will send them to the stratosphere or they will send you to the stratosphere if you run into them. And it's like, well, I can't even fix this if I tried. So it's definitely not getting fixed. But yeah, there's a couple of points where people can use chair skip to like fire up to a higher level.
00:52:02
Speaker
It's fun. Oh, that's incredible. oh i'm I'm so happy for you that your game is out and that people are receiving it well. i am Yeah. this I think... yeah That's the thing I think for me. like um I would never have dreamt that we would get 98% approval around Steam. That's way better than I thought. i for For people's reference, because we didn't... We we gave the timeline of eight years. um By the time as that I started working with you on the game, which was about a year across 2023, it had already been five years. and
00:52:38
Speaker
i And you were excited, but you also looked tired. Yeah. And then, you know, three more years of development. And so, no, I'm just genuinely so very happy that the game has come out and been received well.
00:52:54
Speaker
Yes, thank you for that. it's it's It's been really super gratifying. And yeah, like, I guess we talked about it, I think, briefly earlier, but like, Everyone in the Discord and on the Steam forums, like there's been no rudeness. I think that's kind of unusual for Steam discussions, right? Oh, it really It's reputed to be awful, but it's just been really nice people all the way down. So yeah, it's done it seems to have attracted the right kind of like crowd as well, which has been really good.
00:53:18
Speaker
But yeah, thank you. And yeah, like, you know, it's been great to have, I've still got like an hour and a half video of you, Alan, playing through puzzles in the game and like critiquing them back in the third person like era.
00:53:30
Speaker
And it's like, yeah, it's great to go back and watch where it's been and like the changes that we've made and stuff. Oh yeah, yeah. For people who are curious what was helped with, I helped with general production stuff and Alan helped with build and puzzle feedback.
00:53:49
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. it It was great to have you both on project for a short period, but yeah. It's really good finish up what was yeah where we were going with it. So now I'm going to ask you the million dollar question. So take a deep breath. ah what What do you think's next?
00:54:07
Speaker
m So next for Cat Game definitely is bonus puzzles. So we'll be putting them into the game. Possibly by the time this episode goes up, they might be in there already. um But yeah, we're going to be supporting the game on Steam for a little while. um Definitely want to get it on consoles. So we're looking into that next.
00:54:27
Speaker
And then after that, who knows, a new project about which I will not say anything.
00:54:35
Speaker
Because you don't know what it is yet or you don't want to jinx it? I know exactly what I want it to be, but I don't know yeah i don't know what it will turn out to be. I'm waiting to start a new project, yeah a new Unity project and explore it, but yeah, that's not jinxing it. Fingers crossed ah that you can hit seven or under.
00:54:54
Speaker
for amount of years working on this and next the one. I'm i'm hoping two, like at most. you know yeah And if you think you can make a game in two years, that means you might be able to ship it in four. Yeah. And if it's if I'm planning for four, then might as well be eight again, right? No, no, no, no. You're not planning for you. No, no. The crucial the crucial thing is never to admit to yourself that two years has become four. Okay, got it.
00:55:18
Speaker
Okay, it's definitely two. That's how, I will tell you, Alan, that's how every development-held project I've ever worked on has been, is refusing to admit that the game has gotten out of control.
00:55:31
Speaker
ah Yeah, okay, two years, no more. We'll just ship whatever there is after two years. That's the lesson I've learned from We'll see you back here in 2028. Yeah, yeah, well'll we'll we'll set a reminder and we'll air a follow-up in two years asking where the game is.
00:55:46
Speaker
And it'll be not even into pre-production by that point. I was going to say, will it be announced? m Yeah, let's say. I'll aim to have announced it in two years. Let's go with that. That seems achievable.
00:55:57
Speaker
That seems very achievable. Excellent. All right. Thanks for having me. Of course. Thank you so much for jumping on. I know the Australia, UK, US triangle is a little difficult for everyone, but I'm so glad that we got the follow-up on jumping in here.
00:56:17
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. i was, yeah, I was, like i say, I love the podcast. So being on it is a real honor. So thank you very much for having me here. Oh, of course. I'm glad. ah the end of every episode I mention rate and review us And nobody does So the only signs of life I get Are the listener analytics Which does show that hundreds of people Listen to every single episode Oh no, that's just that's just my mom 100 times but That's just your your mom 400, 500 times every episode She's got a board of like mobile phones. like She's bot farming Apple podcasts. ah But no, i no one no one rates the reviews. So honestly, just meeting up with other developers or having people who listen to the podcast come on the podcast is like the actual sign of life I get.
00:57:11
Speaker
absolutely absolutely No, truly, when I say rate and review us on your podcast source of choice, please do. I would love to hear what people like about the podcast. We've been doing this for, what, two years now Coming up.
00:57:26
Speaker
Coming up on two years now. And I don't think we have any reviews on Apple. Really? Well, I'll go leave one right now. Well, thank you. No one actually wants to go review us. ah So I feel like if I cut it out of the outro, the only thing people would notice is that I definitely do it live because it's definitely gotten shorter.
00:57:50
Speaker
um All right. Well, with all all of that said and my plea to actually go rate review us, where can people find you and your game online, Martin? Well, we are available on Steam ah currently. Hopefully in the future we'll available on other platforms too, but currently just Steam. So go search Schrodinger's Cat Burglar. I think um it'll autocomplete all spellings, but just in case, it's just an O. No Amlao, no E. So S-C-H-R-O.
00:58:17
Speaker
We'll go from there. We're on blue sky. We're on Instagram. We're on Tik TOK. We're on YouTube as various forms of abandoned sheep or underscore abandoned sheep. um And yeah, I think that's pretty much all the places you can find us. Yeah. Keep an eye on our quote unquote socials. I believe that's what people say nowadays.
00:58:36
Speaker
Yeah. Well, they don't want to say ah Twitter. yeah ah i yeah I mean, we we're on that. No point mentioning it. One last question that I just remembered. Speaking of autocompleted, oh my gosh. i I should have written this down because I did almost forget. ah What was your reaction to finding out that you were launching within a week of a game called Schrodinger's Call?
00:58:57
Speaker
Uh, wasn't surprised. Cause I had seen them. Like we were kind of like, like they were our bigger, like they were casting shadow over us for a number of like months. Cause they were announced and they had a demo around about the same time as us as well. So I knew that was there. Um, and it was like, I don't think we can beat this. And we didn't. So yeah, it's fair enough. but now It's just, it's just the fact that it's between, it was one week apart. It was just so funny to me. And then seeing that the two games like,
00:59:23
Speaker
people were like, here's the open critic scores of the week. And it's just your two games right next to each other in scores too. We were initially going to launch the month before we were going to launch on April 16th. But that was when Gecko Gods and MousePI and Pragmata and a bunch of other games so it all came out at once. It's like, we should probably not release on that day. So yeah, then we moved to closer to Schrodinger's Call.
00:59:48
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, might I might i recommend ah what's the current hell date? September 24th, where like everything is coming out, or ah coming out the same day as Grand Theft Auto 6. Oh, yeah.
01:00:03
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like... Because I'm sure there was like it was a game at there was at least one game I was aware of who was trying to launch on the same day as Silksong. But like no one else is going to be on this day apart from Silksong, so it will be the number two game that comes out on this day.
01:00:17
Speaker
It's like a good tactic, I think. Yeah, maybe. I think the only significant game that has a November release ah outside of release date scheduled as of recording, other than GTA, is a Barbie retro game collection. Oh my god. ah Because they have planted their flag and said, there is going to be no overlap here.
01:00:38
Speaker
yeah That feels very Barbenheimer. It feels like yeah I could see people playing host games. yeah um All right. Well, thanks again. And thank you for listening to the Dracneck and Friends official podcast.
01:00:52
Speaker
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01:01:09
Speaker
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01:01:31
Speaker
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