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Episode 04: José Hernández (Sokobond Express)
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In this episode, hosts Alan and Syrenne are joined by José Hernández, the developer behind Draknek & Friends' Sokobond Express. Topics include how Jose started making games, how Draknek & Friends discovered and signed the game, and the long iteration process to making Sokobond Express the game you can play today.
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Transcript
Introduction to Dragneck and Friends
00:00:22
Speaker
Welcome to the Dragneck and Friends official podcast, where we peel back the curtain on puzzle games and the people who make them. I'm Seren, the producer at Dragneck and Friends, and I'm joined as always by Alan Hazilden, the head dragneck at Dragneck and Friends. Hey, though.
Silicon Express: Chemistry Meets Trains
00:00:37
Speaker
Today, we're joined by Jose Hernandez, who you may know from his work on Silicon Express. How are you doing today? Hi, how you are you doing? Good. Do you want to kind of talk about Silicon Express and explain what it is for people who haven't played it? Sure. Well, Silicon Express is a game that I made with Dragnet. And it's a puzzle where we mix chemistry with trains,
Jose's Game Development Journey
00:01:06
Speaker
Awesome. Now, what got you into game development in the first place? Well, I started liking game development when I was in university. I studied, I have a bachelor's degree in computer science. And while I was working on that, I didn't really knew what type of future I wanted, but game development seemed like something fun to me.
00:01:36
Speaker
So I started making games, ah small games for game jams. And yeah, I kind of doing it. And have you deliberately focused on puzzle games or is soccer bond express just one of many types of game you're interested in making?
Designing Puzzle Games by Nature
00:02:00
Speaker
honestly not sure about how to answer that question because i do really enjoy making puzzle games and like most of the games that i made are puzzle games but the thing is is that whenever i think of a new design or something new to make it's often a puzzle game is i'm not being delivered about it it's just that My mind tends to go into that genre
00:02:32
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think it's quite easy to get into a place where you design stuff, and then you have ideas like the stuff you've already made, and then you have ideas like the stuff you've already made, and then you have ideas like the stuff you've already made, and it can be kind of self-perpetuating. I know that's kind of how it's happened with me, where I'm good at making puzzle games. i I really like making puzzle games, but also I've been making puzzle games for so long that it's the only kind of ideas I have in the first place.
00:03:03
Speaker
Yeah, I can feel that like and I do have a few puzzle games that I know are a reference from a previous game that I made. so yeah ah Also, like ah when you're making something new, you do a research for things that are similar and that kind of works as your backlog for your next project. You keep building that experience on on puzzle games.
Subatomic Wire to Sokobon Express Transition
00:03:33
Speaker
So what was the original idea that you had first for Subatomic Wire? First, ah let's define Subatomic Wire. That's a game that I made previously to Sokolung Express, which you are an atom and you have to collect electrons on a track very similar to Sokolung Express or to what it is right now.
00:04:02
Speaker
yeah and the idea for that game initially i wanted to make a game that was a simplification of a space camp which is a chemistry game that meets mechanics with coding and programming so while working on that design i realized that i had very similar mechanics to Sokobon and to Cosmic Express. And yeah, I keep developing the game until it was finished. And yeah, I heavily reference those three games. Yeah. And I guess we reached out to you soon after you released that game. I'm curious, like in your own words, from your perspective, how did that conversation go from making Subatomic Wire to starting to work on what became Sokobon Express?
00:04:58
Speaker
Well, ah first of all, it was really an unexpected. Like since that point, I just published it games for free. The only thing that I did is that I will write to armor games and good math games. If they were interested in those free games that I was making for a licensing deal.
00:05:24
Speaker
But that was it. And just posting the game ah on Twitter. And yeah, they it was surprising that I got a DM from Alan. And at first, I was like, ah ah this is amazing. like I know that Alan is the developer of Cosmic Express and of Sokobun. So he reaching out, yeah I mean, that's amazing.
00:05:51
Speaker
But then you offered me to invest on something bigger that's so atomic wire I was like, oh my god, is this is this it real? but Okay, yeah, let's do it Yeah, I mean, from my perspective, yeah, I was just really delighted to see Subatomic Wire and see how it was playing with similar pieces to to some of my games. um But like, combine those ideas in a way that's like, so obvious in hindsight and so elegant, but it's just something I had never thought before. And it's like, oh wow, this is great. I wish I had thought of this.
00:06:28
Speaker
So yeah, it was, it was really cool to be able to think, well, we've got a bit of money from most of the petition. We could afford to front somebody else to make something. This seems like a cool thing that's playing in similar spaces to the stuff we've made before. So yeah. Yeah. And really like, I mean, I still am amaze. so I think and ah yeah I was just lucky, like I'm just making games and the games that I make are things that I'm not really going for a certain type of audience or certain type of person. It's just, I'm just making a game that I would like to see in the world. So to be that lucky for someone to reach out and wanted to expand that concept with me is really an honor. Yeah, it's been great.
00:07:21
Speaker
Yeah, no, we've had nothing but a blast working with you on this game and this game thrown out great.
Workflow with Dragneck vs. Independent Development
00:07:27
Speaker
What, from your perspective, Jose, like moving from developing games internally with just the hope that maybe people will play them and maybe you can get a licensing deal, what was the biggest change for you in your workflow, working with a publisher, working with us?
00:07:48
Speaker
There haven't been many changes. The first one that I can outline is that before I didn't really do that much prototyping. Usually I used to do two or three prototypes and just pick one of them and that's the game that I'm going to make and polish and unpolish. That changed quite a bit with Sokogon Express because at the beginning we did a lot of brainstorming but A lot. So, and in doing so, we had to make a bunch of prototypes and most of the ideas didn't make it to the game. Sometimes I try to complicate over stuff and I will say, no, this is too much. The scope is getting too big. So we cut back the scope.
00:08:38
Speaker
so yeah it was a game of balance where we already had a vision for it and we just wanted to push toward that vision whereas when i making a small game for free and i sometimes might get discouraged of that vision and just change gears to a new project in the middle of the development but of course development for these free games that I was making at most they will take three months so yeah I mean getting something me developing is like a month it's just a month an and a half of work so it's not really that much
00:09:24
Speaker
Yeah, and i and I guess we haven't really talked much about the the timeline. You posted our first game Subatomic Wire at the end of 2020, right? And then it was a little over three years from that to signing a publishing deal, maybe a month later to actually shipping the game like a little over three years later.
00:09:48
Speaker
And that's a long time to be working on the the same project. And I know keeping up momentum and keeping up motivation
Maintaining Motivation in Long Game Cycles
00:09:57
Speaker
is tough. Do you feel like you did a good job of keeping motivation, not burning out, not getting tired of the idea? Well, I think I could have done a better job. I mean, the I did.
00:10:13
Speaker
tried my best but I mean three years is it was too long for the project it should have taken less and to me I feel like most of that taking too long is because of my inexperience my inexperience being that this is my first commercial game and when you're making something that people are gonna pay for it to play the expectations kind of change. So you do really want to make a product that is worth that money. Whereas when you're making a free game, you don't really care. So I think because I didn't have experience managing that expectation, that was part of the failure that I had to really optimize my time and not
00:11:14
Speaker
take three years because of I mean things that took too long were designing levels and iterating on them like just design work design work taking too long is It shouldn't have. I mean, we did play testing at all. And that really helped. But also, I do think with the experience that I have right now, the iteration on designing the levels should have taken less. But at the same time, with the experience that I have right now, I think that I may i may want to increase the scope of the game.
00:11:55
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's always the thing. You always want to make something that's a little bit better than the ideal scope for practicality's sake. I think most developers always have that fire in them to just be a bit more ambitious than might be properly sensible. And then you get to the other side of the game. You've made it, you look at it and go, well, now I could make exactly this.
00:12:22
Speaker
much faster. Now I know what this is trying to be. So I could have if we'd known where we were going, we could have just made that. But yeah, there's always so many side tangents and things to explore.
00:12:34
Speaker
And it's very important to take the time to figure out what the game wants to be, what the game is trying to be. I don't think, as someone who, from a production standpoint, was watching over the game for three years, that it took too long, so much as it took time to find out what it wanted to be. And then once we found it, it actually came together relatively quickly there. And then the back six months was just a lot of polish.
00:13:00
Speaker
Yeah, that's the thing that I don't know. I feel like I gather a lot of experience from developing Sokobong Express, but at the same time, I do have quite high ambitions. I don't know if I still know how to manage the scope of my games. I hope me being aware of that, that helps.
00:13:27
Speaker
But yeah, let this be an advice for developers. Always be mindful of scope. And if you don't, well, what can you do?
00:13:39
Speaker
Yeah, it's tough. I mean, I guess leaning into this idea of scope creep, is there anything that you you worked on for the game that we we ended up cutting that you were cracking in hindsight and like, oh man, i I wish we had spent more time trying to figure that out and trying to get that to work. Because we explored a lot of gameplay possibilities that we didn't end up shipping with. I'm curious if there's anything that you wish we'd managed to make fit.
00:14:04
Speaker
The thing that I really wanted the game to have, but again, I don't have the skill set to do. So it was a narrative. I do want to include a narrative to it. And we talked with Peep that she was one of the writers of the game.
00:14:23
Speaker
in doing so but yeah this could have gotten too big in doing that so yeah i think it was a good decision not to implement a narrative into the game but in hindsight if i were to do the game once more i would really push for adding a narrative to it Yeah, I mean, I think that's one of those things that done well can make a real, real big difference to the quality of the game, but it has such knock-on impacts for cohesiveness. Like the moment you're trying to tell a story in your game, then you've got like this thing which needs to go through the whole thing and it impacts everything and it impacts the framing of everything, it impacts the context of everything and
00:15:13
Speaker
It can mean that something that would work standard line without story can suddenly feel off once you're trying to have a story. And so I think for that reason, particularly for puzzle games, I think story is just a really, really
Integrating Narrative in Puzzle Games
00:15:28
Speaker
hard problem to do well and to make it not feel like tacked on.
00:15:34
Speaker
Yeah, and something that while right now that developing of Sokong Express has dwindled down, I've been prototyping new ideas for future games and I'm finding out that I'm really bad at picking the appeal or having a compelling fantasy for for a game. Like, I could make interesting systems and mechanics, but when I'm working on having a why of why the pleasure is moving from left to right, why are you picking this up? well Why mechanics and systems are the way they are? I feel like I don't usually have the best ideas
00:16:22
Speaker
I may be strong at systems and mechanics, but there are parts of still design that I think I like. I wanted to pass this question to Alan. Is there anything design-wise that you struggle with your games?
00:16:39
Speaker
I mean, definitely struggle with the scope creep that we've already discussed. I was was doing okay for a few games, but Monster Expedition really bit me there. Mostly I haven't tried to do anything too ambitious with narrative, and that's because I think I know I would have a hard time with it. Like, we tried to be a bit ambitious with that in Monster Expedition, and It didn't really gel with the way that I design games, so that's definitely something that I don't think I'm well equipped to design games that also have a really, really compelling story. Other than that, ah like a lot of designers, I have a deep ingrained strain of ah perfectionism.
00:17:20
Speaker
If I can see that something can be better, then I will be willing to put in a lot of work and throw out a lot of work to to redo and reshape something to be a bit better. And that is not always the time efficient thing to do.
00:17:38
Speaker
And even for me, like i'm I'm finding these days, I get a lot out of like watching people play a game and like record a video and send it to me, and then I watch it back, and then I'll get a lot from watching that playthrough video, and then I'll be able to go, oh, I could tweak this, I could tweak that. um But increasingly, these days, I don't even have the time to watch all of that video playthrough content. Like, for Suckle and Express, like I didn't have to because it was your game, but we're getting a bunch of playthrough videos. And I was like, oh, I'd really like to watch these videos and so be able to chat more in depth with Jose about the design decisions he's making responding to that playtest data. But I just didn't feel like I had the time to watch everything that was coming in. And I think that is going to make designing the next game I make
00:18:31
Speaker
harder or if I can't block off time to engage with that input yeah I can see why that I mean that some of the time also like amaze me from you is that you are spinning too many plates and you still manage to like give meaningful feedback for the games that you are part of so yeah just pointing that out it is impressive Try. um I mean, I think a lot of the time the plates I'm spinning are actually fairly low priority. Like the games that we're working with, those are high priority.
00:19:11
Speaker
And like, I will try and make a priority to get you feedback when you needed feedback. But some of the other stuff we're doing at Dragneck was very easy to just like put on a shelf for a month. And so while there's always a lot going on, a lot of it doesn't necessarily have to get done right now a second, which helps a lot, I think. Sarin, I don't know if you have any, any other thoughts about how we manage plate spinning at Dragneck.
00:19:38
Speaker
It's honestly a lot of evaluating what is short-term, mid-term, and long-term in addition to the priorities. If something is like a mid-priority, but it's long-term as in like we have a few weeks, a few months to get to it, then that's a good thing to pick away at ah piece by piece what we have time.
00:20:04
Speaker
And if something comes up and it is urgent, obviously that takes up the immediate focus, but it's just a lot of... I don't advocate this necessarily, but with with there being a very, very small team, especially before our studio manager joined, it was just a lot of Alan and I kind of flying by the seat of our pants a little bit and just saying like, all right, this is what needs to get done this week and cannot be pushed. This is what needs to be done by next week. Let's get to it this week if we have a chance, but we probably won't. So, oh, God.
00:20:37
Speaker
But, and that's that's not how I like to live, but I've gotten used to it for Dragneck. Because any time that we start to get ahead of schedule, that makes Alan's ambition come up. And he wants to throw another thing into that opening. Alan. Guilty.
00:21:01
Speaker
Moving back to Sokoban Express a little bit, talking about some of the iteration that happened throughout the project.
Enhancing Visual Feedback in Sokobon Express
00:21:09
Speaker
Outside of like level design and mechanics, probably the clearest iteration from start to finish was visual feedback for what's going to happen when the player presses play.
00:21:22
Speaker
because in this game it is a lot of so drawing a path, setting up a path, and then in early iterations sort of hitting play and seeing if it all works out. But as you are progressing through the level, you are building up molecules which get bigger and bigger and more unwieldy, and so that could be a lot for the player to keep in their mind.
00:21:48
Speaker
from, like, from the start of the puzzle to the end of the puzzle. Do you want to talk, Jose, a little bit about the iteration there, about, like, showing what happens in real time or things like that? Yeah, well, starting from Suatomi Guire, I had feedback from people that they thought that the game was innovative and really good, but they thought that the controls were a bit wonky, a bit weird.
00:22:18
Speaker
so digging deeper into that I found out that people were making to me obvious mistakes because I was already used to the mechanics and the controls but to them like they were hitting obstacles and not merging atoms like they should have and then we began working on Sokong Express and doing the first iterations of that game and yeah it was also very obvious that you needed a way to see the progress that your molecule is going to make before reaching the end when you're building you should know how your molecule is going to look
00:23:07
Speaker
So I remember that the first iteration of that I placed a preemptive molecule that you are going to get on the top right of the screen. And that didn't really solve the issue. eight For some people, that was enough. For most people, it wasn't enough.
00:23:29
Speaker
So yeah, we were back into the drawing war and I honestly at first I didn't really wanted to place that pre-emptive molecule on the tileset because I thought that it would look like too many things on the same space but we just decided to place that there and see if it works, see if if people care and yeah, people like that change a lot and they didn't really care that the UI of the game would look a bit crowded around there because they were just getting the information they needed so yeah they were satisfied with that change and we kept that. Awesome. Speaking of being crowded, do you feel like the art style change that happened midway through development helped with that?
00:24:24
Speaker
Oh, yeah, the art on chains. That that's a funny story. Sure is. boy The game at first was going to have the original so called art.
00:24:40
Speaker
I was making that then after doing a lot of work and having the game in a way that it was almost ready to launch in quotes we got the cultural image for the steam page and they were just too pretty so much pretty compared with the art that the game had so Alan said Shouldn't we like improve the art style? Because, I mean, the art style on Steam captures look just too good. i I think we should improve the art style and do an iteration of that.
Art Style Updates for Market Appeal
00:25:23
Speaker
And yeah, I agree right away because I was really impressed by might those but it does a Steam captures. I didn't think that the game could look that much better.
00:25:38
Speaker
So yeah, we began working on that. That added more time to the development, but I think that's time that was worth it. Alan?
00:25:54
Speaker
ah Yeah, I mean, I think it was, it came later in development than it ideally would have happened, I think, but ah I'm very happy with how it ended up. In some ways, I think it's actually very interesting that like the original Sokoban's art style was fine for when that game released a decade earlier. But yeah by the time that we were making Sokoban's Express, kind of felt like there was nothing there that was like grabbing people and Even though it's like still a really clean, elegant art style, I i still think it looks good. like The production value is expected from commercial games. It just feels like they've moved on a lot and so you you can't really get away with clean abstract vector art in the same way you could back then. Yeah, and something funny that also happened with that change is that
00:26:45
Speaker
some playtesters didn't like the artwork change i mean it did look better But they were already used to the original soccer ball and they only care about the puzzles of the game. now yeah It's like the game got better, but I think it needed to be better not because of the target audience that we had, but mostly because the marketing that we wanted the game to have.
00:27:18
Speaker
Yeah, and marketing the game with a whole other kettle of fish that, um, I don't know how much we want to get into and... Was not easy. No, was not easy. I think that's enough for right now, but yes. Uh, not easy to get people to think that they like chemistry. Just unfortunate because chemistry is cool. It is. Uh, but yeah.
00:27:42
Speaker
I don't know what it is. I think it it might be boring chemistry classes in school or college. that make people not like chemistry, but I mean, it is fun. Yeah. I think there's also an element of something which is common in other puzzle games too, but it exacerbated by particular themes of like people thinking that they need to be smart or have existing knowledge to enjoy a game. And I think a lot of people look at a chemistry game and they go, well, I don't know chemistry already, so I guess I can't play this game or I guess I'm not smart enough to play this game. And I'm like, no, we're going to design a game that and like it will teach you the stuff you need to know. But like giving people the confidence to play it in the first place is tricky. Yeah, that's the thing ah to me. I don't know. I don't know if it's me personally that I have already played so many games that I just when I'm playing a new game that I don't know anything of, I just
00:28:46
Speaker
try to look at the systems i don't care that much about the teaming but more about the systems and see how teams work and if i like that then i lean onto the teaming like yeah i mean i'm doing this keyword puzzle or something like that and i have the motivation for doing so because there is this narrative a story about it so but i see many people playing games that the first thing they need to appeal with is the theme of the game so if a game is the theme about i don't know farming they're gonna buy the game and they're gonna play it
00:29:30
Speaker
they don't really care about how all the systems of the farming game interacts. As long as it's team has farming, they like it. So I think that's something that we as developers should be aware and balance of, like knowing that there are people that care about the systems and people that care about the visuals of the game and balance both of them to the best of our abilities.
00:30:02
Speaker
It's definitely a tough balance, but yes, just the industry right now is in such a weird and volatile place and so many games come out every day and players need to find the games that they're going to stick with. And we're all, I think we're all just trying to stand out against everyone else that's trying to stand out.
00:30:29
Speaker
Yeah, also something weird that it's happening right now.
Game Marketing Challenges and Algorithm Impact
00:30:34
Speaker
Well, for for me it's weird because I'm trying to get used to it, but it's still weird that algorithms are keen that you are not really trying to please a content creator or a audience or a platform, but you're trying to please the algorithms that are behind that platform. So things like you need to have 10 reviews on your steam page as soon as possible for the steam to promote your game i mean that's that's new trying to please an agreement that you don't have control of so i i find that weird like
00:31:13
Speaker
We are moving into a world where we need to predict how the algorithm is going to work in order to take advantage of that and have the most outreach we can with the things we make. Definitely. And it doesn't help that. No one explicitly knows how all the algorithms work. And if they did, they would just cheese them for their benefit. So... Yes.
00:31:42
Speaker
Alan, is there anything else that you wanted to ask or should we kind of move to the wrap up? No, I think we should wrap up. Awesome.
Episode Wrap-up and Credits
00:31:50
Speaker
Well, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us, Jose. Yeah, thank you both.
00:31:55
Speaker
Sokoban Express, which is available by the time this comes out now also on mobile. Yeah. On the time we're recording this, we are a couple days away from that still, but very, very excited for even more people to get a chance to play it. Where can people find you online? I have a Twitter account, Jose HCC1. It's my handle. I should i should post more.
00:32:25
Speaker
But if you send me a DM or anything, else I'll see. Awesome. Thank you for listening to the Dragneck and Friends official podcast. Our music is by Priscilla Snow, who you can find at ghoulnoise.bandcamp dot.com. Our podcast artwork is by Adam DeGrandis. Please rate and review us on your podcast service of choice, and be sure to tune in next episode for more interesting conversations.