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Episode 49: Ben Taylor aka sunnyjum/munted finger (Can of Wormholes)
296 Plays18 days ago
In this episode, Alan and Syrenne are joined by Ben Taylor, the creator of Can of Wormholes. Topics include the design ethos of doing a lot with a little, how he came up with Can of Wormholes' innovative hint system, and whether or not Alan can be goaded into adding more content to A Monster's Expedition.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:22
Speaker
Welcome to the Dracneck and Friends official podcast where we peel back the curtain on puzzle games and the people who make them. I'm Seren from Dracneck and Friends and I'm joined as always by Alan Hadelden, the head Dracneck at Dracneck and Friends.
00:00:34
Speaker
Hello. Today we're joined by Ben Taylor who you may know from their work on Can of Wormholes. How are you doing today? I'm doing very well, thank you. so Yeah, go by the name Sunny Jum online, which you might have heard me by as well. Or Munted Finger Games, a variety of names out there.
00:00:53
Speaker
Awesome. ah So can you sort of give listeners who do not know you, maybe have not heard of Can of Wormholes, like how how would you describe yourself and how would you describe the game?
00:01:07
Speaker
For sure.
Ben Taylor's Journey as a Solo Game Developer
00:01:08
Speaker
Well, i'm ah I'm a solo game developer, first of all. So Munted Finger Games is is really just me. And Can of Wormholes is my first, i would say, full game release for both PC and console.
00:01:20
Speaker
In the past, I've done some ah mobile games on iOS, but um this is my first like full tier release, and um um I'm happy to have that. It's all gone. So Can of Wormholes itself,
00:01:32
Speaker
is a soccer bound game, which I'm sure we're all familiar with. Alan more so than most with your fantastic games. And it's at its core, a place to shape in the whole game. Like you control a worm, you're manipulating it around a 2D grid, and you're trying to make it match this hole in the ground.
00:01:51
Speaker
um And it takes some inspiration from classic games like Snake, where you can eat your pellets, and it makes the snake grow in length by one unit. um And a lot of the puzzles just revolve around how you physically manipulate this snake or worm, I should say, to to overlap the goal shape and fall in, I think is it in a nutshell.
00:02:13
Speaker
Yeah. And then there's just various mechanics which make it just a little bit cursed. Very, very, very cursed. i'm Cursed in a good way. Yeah. In fact, I've got the game in front of me right now on the Switch because it has been three years since it came out.
00:02:29
Speaker
ah That's right. Yeah, it'll be the three-year anniversary probably a little after this podcast comes out. Yeah, I'm kind of seeing it with with fresh eyes for the the first time here.
Design Philosophy and Puzzle Mechanics in Can of Wormholes
00:02:38
Speaker
um Really, every time I've played it in the past, of course, I've been in that developer mindset where in the back of your head, you know the solutions to all the puzzles and you're just going through the the rote systems.
00:02:50
Speaker
But it's been enough time now that I can jump into a level and not immediately know the solution, which is an interesting place to be in when you're the creator of the game. And it is really dawning on me at just how cursed this game. act Sometimes you have to be a little removed from it to be able to appreciate appreciate that you. You finally got to have an understanding of that sensation.
00:03:11
Speaker
Yeah. It's the game itself really, of course, started from the the puzzle aspect. So you've got the the puzzle side and then you've got the, the overworld side. um And I was always quite confident in the puzzles themselves and the the the puzzle design there. The overworld, less so.
00:03:30
Speaker
um In terms of that the puzzles themselves, my design philosophy was how much can i get away with or how much... ah how many interactions can I squeeze out of as few as elements as possible.
00:03:44
Speaker
So in the levels, you've really just got the platforms themselves, ah you've got the worms, um and you've got walls and fences, really. And they're just the only objects in the game. that You go through the whole game and you don't get introduced to any more um elements.
00:04:00
Speaker
And you've got your four directional inputs up, down, left, right. And I guess your undo button, but that's not really part of the gameplay itself. And I wanted to see just how much I could get away with by just those four directional inputs.
00:04:11
Speaker
But then putting all that aside, you've got the overworld, which ties things together. And I'm a bit more relaxed there. I'm using some other buttons to like, uh, throw like the wormholes at the levels to start them. There's another button to throw the can to roll around. So a kind of of a a bit,
00:04:27
Speaker
looser with the restrictions of what I put on myself for the overworld. And i kind of viewed that overworld as a um kind of like a cerebral relief, if that makes sense, because you can get stuck in a puzzle for quite some time and either give up or finally succeed and you exit back to the overworld. And I'm one of those people that just needs to be able to just mash a key on the keyboard and just have some some ah relief. And in the case of this game, it's just throwing like the little wormholes everywhere and just spamming them.
00:04:58
Speaker
um So I just wanted kind of a playground to tie the the levels together. um I can go into how actually I ended up settling on what the overworld itself was and what the character player was, if you like.
00:05:11
Speaker
But I just thought was interesting to touch on those two distinct design philosophies there. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'd like'd love to go back to the start and like hear what the starting point was. Like, did you always have for the puzzles that design philosophy of like doing a lot with a little or was that something you found like a little way into development?
00:05:32
Speaker
No, doing a lot with the little was the original design goal. It's probably no surprise that it's heavily inspired by Steven Sausage Roll, which I think is one of the games that does it the best.
00:05:44
Speaker
Absolutely. Doing a lot with the little. um But of course, in Steven Sausage Roll, the overworld and the the game world are kind of one and the same. I wanted to keep that to just the the puzzle environment itself. So I was like,
00:05:58
Speaker
Where do I start? Let's start with this worm character um that you're moving around the levels because I thought that in itself was interesting because because your player character, like this worm, was almost an obstacle in and of itself.
00:06:14
Speaker
Like based on your position in the world, you can be a wall or you might be locked into position. And I really wanted to think, how do I deal with the ability to to move backwards in a game? Because if if you're playing Snake,
00:06:27
Speaker
You think, okay, I can move forward, I can turn left, I can turn right. That's three buttons on your keyboard. What happens when I press the button that is facing backwards in ah ah relative to the direction of my head?
00:06:42
Speaker
like Do I retrace my steps? That would require, I guess, having a ah history of where the snake moved. That's too convoluted. um So let's make the snake, just or the worm rather,
00:06:55
Speaker
forgetting what my own character is. Let's make the worm move backwards based on which direction the tail is moving. But then the question is, okay, do I make the tail straighten out once it um the tile that the tail is on ah turns? Or do i make it remember its direction and and just start playing with that? And I found even just creating basic little levels just with walls and a goal on the floor,
00:07:21
Speaker
You could do a lot with that without even having food pellets or without having like pits to fall into or whatnot. There was just some interest there. So I knew I had something from just that very base level.
00:07:33
Speaker
And then I thought, okay, what can I do with this without adding a thousand different types of objects, basically? Nice. Yeah, it sounds like you kind of had the core movement idea like, OK, this is the game. You had the idea. implemented it. You were like, oh, yeah, this is good.
00:07:51
Speaker
And went from there. Yeah, exactly. And then um but the fences came into it because i was like, OK, I've got these walls. A wall is something which takes up an entire grid square.
00:08:02
Speaker
um What if I want a wall that sits on the grid line itself between spaces? um Do I just have that be a very thin wall? I was like, no, let's make that its own distinct element.
00:08:14
Speaker
And then let's see what we can do with that. And and players of the game will know ah there's a lot more to the fences than just being a wall. um In fact, I think it's like four or five different things you can do with them by the end of the game, um which isn't immediately obvious.
00:08:30
Speaker
And having so few elements... kind of means I can hide these extra interactions in plain sight. And a big challenge of the game was, that okay, how how long can I go hiding these elements in such a way that if you're really wanting to experiment or if you knew they were already there, you could use some of these advanced techniques in earlier levels. But the chances of you stumbling upon them accidentally was just very, very low.
00:08:58
Speaker
um I don't know if I succeeded in that or not, but that was one of the design goals. Yeah, i was curious like whether you had a sense of... ah Because did you after the game came out, did you like watch a lot of playthroughs talk to a lot of people playing the game? Or you just getting like a general vibe of like game is good without like getting into the specifics of like how people are experiencing it?
00:09:22
Speaker
I did. I ah did watch a ah lot of playthroughs. I think Aliens Rock was one of the earliest ones, which... ah i've got a In addition to to ah you both, um Aliens Rock was a big help in just getting the game out there. And watching a playthrough, both his and Joe, of course, did his playthrough, watching people play the game and seeing them go through their realizations in the same order that I i intended, i i realized i I'd done something right, at least.
00:09:54
Speaker
And it made me get a newfound respect for Let's Players as well, because it's one thing. I guess, playing a game on stream um where, say, you're like doing a boss fight and you fail over and over. It's like, okay, you you start cheering for this person to beat the boss fight. But if you're doing a puzzle game, you're you're kind of putting yourself on the line. It's very vulnerable because if you're failing at a puzzle game while streaming, in some ways, you could feel it's like,
00:10:21
Speaker
It's a failure of intelligence. It's not really, but I could see, I'm not sure if I could put myself through that really. Like I wouldn't know how I would deal with it, not being able to solve a puzzle on stream. So it's just an aside, but more power, more power to the puzzle stream is out there.
00:10:35
Speaker
Um, I'm getting a bit off topic here, but what I'm saying is I, am bye I, try to I, um, I've forgotten his surname, Alex. He did, uh, uh, Leafs Odyssey. Yes. Um,
00:10:47
Speaker
yes um he He streamed my game and i I was a big fan of his game. So I thought, oh, let's try and return the favor. I'll try and record myself playing his game. And I realized like 15 minutes into trying to record myself playing, it's just not something I can do. Like commentate while playing and and speak through my thought process. So anyone out there that can can do that, more power to them.
00:11:10
Speaker
But um yeah, that tangent aside, ah the I guess the original question was, um Like when did I know I was, was onto something decent or when did I know people would, uh, have a positive reaction to it? I think it was back even prior to the
Development Challenges and Game Localization
00:11:28
Speaker
let's plays. We did the, uh, play testing through the thinky discord.
00:11:34
Speaker
Um, yeah, I was going to ask about what, like, how did you, like, what did you learn from play testing? I learned a lot. I, um, One thing I did prior to putting out the playtesting requests is i built into the game some kind of metrics capturing in a sense that whenever a puzzle was beaten, I would store the inputs used to complete the puzzle.
00:12:00
Speaker
I would store things like the number of times the hints was used, how long into a puzzle a hint was used. And then I could run some analysis on that after the fact to find, hey, is there some cheese in this level? Like someone solve it in less moves than I had entered as the minimum possible.
00:12:19
Speaker
um And many, many times that helped me find and patch cheesy solutions to puzzles. But um also I could find like sticking points. Like if if someone was spending longer on a puzzle earlier in the game than I expected, then that was one I needed to look at and rework. Because I think the the first 10 or so puzzles in a puzzle game are probably the most important because beyond that, the player, I think, is probably already invested.
00:12:43
Speaker
But when you're still doing those those first few, you've really got to show the player what you're offering and try and respect their time as well. So i really, really wanted to smooth out those those first 10 levels in particular.
00:12:55
Speaker
So I think with playtesting of a puzzle game, You can only really have each player play a level once, um unlike another game where could just play over and over and see how it improves over time and as you get more feedback.
00:13:09
Speaker
Once a player has solved the level, they've they've solved So if you go back later, but their playtesting feedback is kind of meaningless because they've already done the puzzle. So I wanted to capture as much as I could from that first experience of playing.
00:13:23
Speaker
us i think the metrics capture is probably the most important thing I did. And before you were doing um more broader testing with people from the Thinky Public Games Discord, how like who who was testing the game initially?
00:13:41
Speaker
Prior to that, a couple of friends and family really, but no one really in in the puzzle space. like No fans of of the genre. So I guess the answer to that is is me.
00:13:54
Speaker
like ah i was making the game for myself so i was testing it from ah a technical level but from a puzzle standpoint there was no testing up until we opened it up on the on the thinky discord so that was probably the most nerve-wracking time for me if i'm honest because that's when it could have all fallen apart and based on the the feedback from that i had the confidence to both finish the game and and see it through to release which i'm not sure i could have done had i not done that play testing because Being a ah ah solo developer, it's well motivation is, of course, a ah big struggle, but you never really know if you're if you're onto something good or not.
00:14:34
Speaker
I had real, real doubts about the overworld part of the game. I was quite confident I had something good with the the puzzle aspect, but yeah it could have gone very south very quickly during playtesting. I'm glad it didn't.
00:14:49
Speaker
what was the game like in its earliest stages of development? Like what was the creative foundation? Like you said, it's inspired by Steven sausage roll and like you build on that, but like, what was an early build of this game? Like this actually will tie into my game engine choice or rather lack of game engine choice, but the, the earliest iteration of the game actually spawned out of, um,
00:15:18
Speaker
some solver testing I was doing. like I was working on various like Sokoban prototypes, um just grid based puzzles really. And I built a little framework in which I could test some of these games, not quite as involved as um puzzle script, but still it was just a a C++ OpenGL little project I had going where I could throw ideas in there.
00:15:43
Speaker
make basic levels and then run a solver algorithm against them to see is there a faster way to solve this puzzle than I'm i'm doing so, just to try and quickly find cheese and test mechanics really. Because the solver was aware of the game mechanics, it basically just pressed the four input directions the same as the player would and and kind of just brute force it. So in addition to solving levels, it helped test game mechanics themselves. um And I can't remember exactly how the the snake idea grew out of that, but it grew out of this custom solver, which meant there was no real point where I put that aside and then picked up, say, Unity and started making the game.
00:16:22
Speaker
It just became the game, which means Can of Wormholes is running in its own game engine, really, which for for a game like Can of Wormholes wouldn't be a a recommended move. If I was...
00:16:37
Speaker
um telling someone whether to roll their own engine or whether to pick up Unity or Unreal. I would definitely say the latter because engines take a lot of time. But it's also ah just something I love doing. i just I love that nitty-gritty code side of things. So I went down that path and it it grew out of there. But in some ways, you you shoot yourself in the foot because you don't get a lot of things for free like you do with a game engine, like um like text rendering and whatnot.
00:17:02
Speaker
but One of the weirdest things about... can of wormholes, it doesn't even have a text rendering engine. Like, all the text in the game, it was a stylistic choice at first, is just handwritten. um So I'll just write the same text, like, three times over the top of each other and cycle between those three frames to give it that weird visual look, which I thought went quite well with, like, the wormy theme of the game.
00:17:23
Speaker
But I didn't think ahead, and of course, when you go to localize a game... i was gonna say, yeah what was the localization like then? It was... It was me um working with ah well translators to get the translation, first of all, but then me just handwriting those translations.
00:17:40
Speaker
Oh, my God. So for people who are not familiar, ah this game is also in French, which, you know, you can you can write in French relatively easily. And then simplified Chinese. Yes. It's one of the the testers I was working with.
00:17:57
Speaker
spoke the language and did the translation for me, so I thought that'd be an interesting exercise, me going through that process. um Oh my gosh. I thought... It was actually therapeutic on and some level, but in no way a good use of my time.
00:18:12
Speaker
No. it's it's It's funny because, Alan, do you remember the process of getting Monsters Expeditions logo translated to Chinese? Uh, only very vaguely. i was, like, juggling so many things when we were doing that. Yeah, that was mostly a me task. But the the gist of a lot of that process was like, yeah, we we got the translations. Like you said, that was fine.
00:18:40
Speaker
Although we wanted to have the logo translated. And the logo has, like, elements of game in the logo. So we went back to the original designer and they were like...
00:18:52
Speaker
oh I'm gonna butcher this. Yes, is. No, it'll be fine. It'll be fine. Just trace the letters or something. And it was a few back and forth. And if it turned out okay.
00:19:06
Speaker
With the Monsters Expedition as well, you had the the humorous descriptions of a lot of the elements in the world. Oh, yes. And that all had to be translated as well without losing yeah i mean that humor or meaning. That, i I remember a lot of the localization. Yes. that i mean, that was like two-month-long process. Yeah.
00:19:24
Speaker
but While the game was still in active development. So we had to lock down the exhibit descriptions way before puzzle lock, before art lock, all that stuff. yeah um And yeah, that was ah Pip, who has already been on the podcast talking about this for listeners. In case you're curious, you can go back and listen to that episode. ah Yeah, that was just...
00:19:48
Speaker
her and I and the localization team and praying that the comedy was retained and it seems like it was ah from everyone that i've ever I've spoken to who's played the game in a non-English language although usually because it's a comedy game anyone who speaks English will know that the game is in English and so they're And I'm like, no, no, no, no. no no We got to localize. It's supposed to be a good localization. Let me know if you disagree. But like, other people are like, yeah, wow, this was this was really funny in my own language. That's weird.
00:20:19
Speaker
yeah That's why i avoided having a lot of text in the game. um yeah Honestly, great that you were thinking that far ahead. a lot of developers that I've worked with.
00:20:31
Speaker
get to the end, think they remember localization, and then think, oh, crap, like especially if they baked text into like textures. yeah Yeah. One of the developers on the projects we're currently publishing, all of the text in their game is textures.
00:20:50
Speaker
And we're like, well, this is there's not a lot of text here, so this is going to be fine. But also, well, this could be fun. Yeah, this is what that's called not thinking through about localization and not considering that you might eventually want to translate your game.
00:21:07
Speaker
um so I kept all my text in in separate textures so I could just swap those out, but still not the decision I'll be making again next time and haven't done for the next game.
00:21:21
Speaker
Yeah. um So speaking of not getting things for free in your engine. ah you know, the game also came out on the Nintendo switch.
00:21:36
Speaker
And that is definitely something for which, uh, And not not even just switch specifically, but like the the idea of porting it to a different device with like a different tech stack is something that a lot of modern engines really like advertise themselves as you won't have to deal with this.
00:21:58
Speaker
Yeah, kind of out of the books. Yes. So was that always like the plan for you to bring this to console? Or was that a like a pivot idea when you realized that you might have had something? like How did that come together? And what was the port like?
00:22:17
Speaker
Yeah, i when I was coming up towards the Steam release, and I realized I might have something here i did have in the back of my mind i do want to put it on the nintendo switch if if i can justify doing so for probably vanity if nothing else just because i've i've always had the switch i like the nintendo systems um and i thought it would just be cool to carry around my game and have it in a handheld form um as for the tech side of things of achieving that it wasn't as painful as you might think really since i wasn't using the the built-in engine really i just had to follow
00:22:50
Speaker
the the bare bones tutorials at first just to you had to like like actually read the documentation that nobody reads yeah we're trying to think like i don't um break any like nda stuff here but it's all very generic um yes just getting like a triangle on the screen um was probably the hardest part um as is any like custom 3d engine but the moment i got that i could really just plug in what i already had and and and attach it and it was really just a case of debugging maybe some shader errors or whatnot, but the gameplay really just worked straight out of the box. Once I got something on the screen, it was 90% done.
00:23:26
Speaker
yes okay And thankfully, since I did roll my own engine, there isn't a lot of overhead that doesn't need to be there, so I didn't run into any performance issues on Switch, which I know a lot of people have done. um So it smoothly runs at 60 frames a second, um so i'm I'm happy with that.
00:23:45
Speaker
Yes, coding it closer to the metal is all is definitely going to get you there, so that's that's definitely a benefit, but thinking about changing over the rendering engine to support another device, u but not a fan.
00:24:06
Speaker
It is open gel on on both systems, so ah there wasn't a great deal of work there, um thankfully. but And was the port pleasant after you got the first hurdles out of it, or was it like a nightmare?
00:24:25
Speaker
From a development standpoint, um yeah yeah, it was. ah It was pleasant. I doubted at first I could do it when I was first reading the docs and I was quite daunted. But once I started seeing what looked like the game on the screen, probably the the wrong color and um upside down at first, but still the game, ah from there on it was a good experience. i was like, okay, i can I can do this and I can i can see it through.
00:24:47
Speaker
um i don't have a ah business bone in my body so i didn't think about how it would actually perform and and and marketing and whatnot but i did view as i said the whole thing as a vanity project i just wanted it on the switch um i still see like the the steam version is probably the the canonical one um and the Steam version is is vastly outperforming the the yeah Switch one in terms of sales, which is probably no surprise.
00:25:15
Speaker
But um I think it was worth the effort in the end. Awesome. Yeah, i was I was going to ask if you feel like in financial terms, if it was worth the time it took to make the version.
Future Game Development Plans
00:25:29
Speaker
I'd say you almost like break even maybe for the um the time spent on the the Switch version, which is all I can really hope for. Yeah, I think that's totally, totally fine.
00:25:41
Speaker
Was there a thought of bringing it to other platforms or like mobile or was it just like you got the game out on Steam, you got the game out on Switch, you just need to move away from the game and go work on something else now?
00:25:55
Speaker
Yeah, it was very much that i I might might revisit the the mobile version. When I say revisit, I haven't actually done any work towards but I've thought about the concept of running on on mobile and I think it could work on there. but I was a bit burnt out on the project. I wanted to work on something else.
00:26:14
Speaker
I didn't want to subject someone else to my my horrible code base. So I thought if I was going to put it onto another platform, ah I would do it myself. But I wouldn't want to do a half-assed job of it, basically.
00:26:26
Speaker
i'd want to make it um true to the original. So I may revisit it one day for do maybe like an anniversary version or something if I do some significant DLC. But for now, it's just going to be PC and and Switch.
00:26:40
Speaker
Awesome. And how much have you said publicly about what you're working on now? ah Not a ah great deal. um what I'm working on now is because I'm obsessed with writing my own tech, I have been working on ah a game engine in the background for a while now, but the games I make in it, I want to make sure they're the type of games that require that custom custom tech and benefit from it.
00:27:08
Speaker
I have a plan for three games in this next engine, so I really want to have something I can reuse. The first of which is not a puzzle game. um The second of which will be a puzzle game. Not a direct follow-up to Can of Wormholes, but I do have another idea, and I haven't spoken about that one yet. and it's it's I don't think it's far along enough yet to to say anything about that one.
00:27:30
Speaker
But for the next game, it's a 3D platformer with some optional multiplayer elements. And I think, suffice to say, the game Paper, Scissors, Rock features in it quite heavily. And i want to try and take the design philosophy of kind of wormholes of doing a lot with a little and apply that to another genre.
00:27:47
Speaker
It does feel like a weird move to step away from puzzle games for the next game. But at heart, I'm a gamer. I've always played all types of games. And I think you've got to work on what you're feeling in the moment or you got to work on the project that you want to that you want to exist, basically. And I've had this idea in the back of my mind, which I've wanted to make for a while now.
00:28:07
Speaker
So I'm probably about halfway through that project. um And then I'll be pivoting back into the world of of puzzle games again. Sorry, that's probably quite vague, but I yeah haven't announced anything with this one yet.
00:28:19
Speaker
No, you're totally fine. And then you have an idea for a third game after the puzzle game? you've You've really got like your your own roadmap. Yes, I do. Here's the next decade of your life planned out. With the rate I produce games, it's probably a bit longer than that even. But yeah, and then it's a it goes back to another non-puzzle game, um a team-based multiplayer one.
00:28:43
Speaker
Multiplayer does feel risky because... um Because the state of the industry? Yes, but basically. And I feel more comfortable doing the single-player experience. So the first game has multiplayer elements, but will have a standalone single-player experience. So if you can't get five people online, you can still enjoy the game in isolation.
00:29:05
Speaker
Very intriguing. Yeah, just thinking about wormholes, I've just yeah i've just got on the switch here in front of me, by kind of going down memory lane almost. And I do remember this the whole overworld to this game.
00:29:16
Speaker
Obviously, you're this this can walking around with these like cursed legs. I had my doubts about this overworld for the longest time and I was so close to scrapping it at one point and just keeping it as the pure puzzle experience with like a menu tying the levels together. Because in some ways I was ah was really designing myself into a corner.
00:29:34
Speaker
A lot of these levels, because they had to physically exist in this world and within these like vessels that moved around this greater overworld. There was so many but tendons tying these different ideas together across different spaces and whatnot that really nothing could move.
00:29:50
Speaker
Like levels couldn't grow beyond a certain point because bump into the level next to it to the point where a level couldn't even be too big because you had to physically walk around it. I couldn't rearrange levels because you'd need the output from one level to feed into another level.
00:30:02
Speaker
Yet that later level might ideally want to go earlier because it teaches you an idea that has to be used elsewhere. So I was really designing myself into a corner there. And I'm glad I stuck with it, but I was so close to just scrapping that overworld idea because i almost lost that flexibility as well. Because if if if I thought one mechanic wasn't working, i couldn't remove that in isolation because it would break all these other dependencies. Yeah.
00:30:28
Speaker
um I mean, how how did you get started with the overworld? did you Did you have a sense of where what you're working towards and you just did it? Or i did you get there in steps?
00:30:40
Speaker
I got there in steps. they The puzzles themselves, that was completely fleshed out. in Even some of the meta elements of how it connected together. I wasn't quite sure how that would appear in the overworld, but that was fully fleshed out. But the idea of like ah ah physical can walking around with like ah worm legs, did not exist at all. You were walking around the overworld as this, um just the ring, like the the wormhole style ring that you throw into the levels. You were one of those characters walking around the world. it was just, from memory, it was the the ring itself with two legs, a pair of buck teeth, and like two eyes on little tendrils sticking at the top.
00:31:20
Speaker
um and you would interface directly with the level so that you could jump up onto the level and attach yourself to the end of one of the worms and you would then start controlling that worm from the end you're attached to.
00:31:32
Speaker
But I realized I was giving the player too much freedom, like it wasn't clear which end of the worm you should start from and i was losing too much control over the puzzle design. um It was really hard to lock down the idea of puzzles um if you could start from anywhere.
00:31:49
Speaker
But at the same time, there'll be certain levels where I did want to play to be able to start from multiple places in the level. So I couldn't have it predetermined exactly. So that's where the whole idea of those silos came in and the the wormhole kind of rolling along the floor and attaching to the end of a worm.
00:32:08
Speaker
But then i was like, okay, it's a bit weird if you, the player character, are going along this circuit, attaching to the worm, finishing the level, and then, okay, do I then teleport them back to where they were when you selected the level, or do they exit into the world where they were? And I quickly realized that the wormhole itself that you've interact with the level with can't be the player. It needs to be something they kind of throw or shoot at the levels and control remotely.
00:32:33
Speaker
was like, I need something that can just throw these rings out or attach them. And that it was about that point that the pun, that can of wormholes popped into my head because kind of everything in this game was a worm or a hole or a wormhole. So i' was like, let's just lean into this 100% and just go absurd with it because I had already lost any like semblance of reality for this game.
00:32:55
Speaker
i was like, let's just make this an actual tin can and let's go even deeper with the worm thing and stick worms onto that tin can and let it walk around.
Overworld Design and Player Interaction in Can of Wormholes
00:33:03
Speaker
And the moment I had it walking around and its legs going up on the um the levels or the walls as you walk past, i was like, okay, this is absurd, but kind of fun. And it ties back to what i was saying earlier, where once you finish playing a level and you just need that mental break, it's fun to just walk around and smash into thing or or things and bump into pots or whatever, or just even just spam throw the wormholes everywhere.
00:33:26
Speaker
It was important to me, like those wormholes would throw as fast as you could press the button on the controller, just because that's fun. And that's not something you really think about normally when you think a puzzle game is like tactile, fun stuff like that, but you need a mental break.
00:33:41
Speaker
So it kind of grew from there, um as absurd as it is. but um How did the hint system come about? Yeah, the hint system. That came from me wanting to solve the problem of a difficulty slider in puzzle games, I guess, because you can make a a level easier and you can make it harder, but you can't appeal to the player who wants it both easier and harder. So I thought at first i was like, can I add a difficulty slider that as you slide it up and down,
00:34:15
Speaker
elements in the level actually change. Like there'll be certain walls, for instance, which have like a threshold of difficulty that they would appear or disappear as you slid that slider up and down. It could kind of guide you more into the solution.
00:34:27
Speaker
But people get stuck in different places, I guess. You might find one level easy and another one hard, and yet someone else could find the opposite to be true. So it's like having an easier difficulty in a puzzle game, to me, is having more levels that you can optionally skip.
00:34:45
Speaker
So Then I thought, where do I put these levels? like I've already like locked myself into a corner design-wise with the layout of these ah vessels that you move around the map.
00:34:56
Speaker
So I thought, let's just have these be in this like liminal space you can just teleport to. And that was quite a relief as well. Finally, I had a place where I could throw levels and i have to care about how big or small they were. I could just freely design them and let them be.
00:35:09
Speaker
and Then the idea of course was let's have these simpler versions of the puzzles, completely optional, but um designed in such a way that it it it pushes you towards the core idea or the insight that you needed to solve the actual puzzle. I didn't want the words show hint or get hint because I knew myself as a player, I would never click that option.
00:35:31
Speaker
um I'm not one to use hints in games, but I thought if I was playing this game, this is a system I could engage with. So basically i was thinking, how do i get someone like me to use this system? like, well, let's call it something other than hints. Let's call it gain insight.
00:35:47
Speaker
And that ah ended up being probably the most popular part of the game, I think. So I'm happy I went down that path. Yeah, it's been super influential. um Yeah, lots of of games have come out since yours have taken that idea. and Yeah, I saw it in an architect's yeah adventure.
00:36:08
Speaker
ah And I didn't know it was in there when I was playing it first. That was a nice surprise to see. it feels like I've left a mark in some small way. Yeah, and I think both of our upcoming published games are going to have it too.
00:36:23
Speaker
Oh, wow. o Yeah, i wouldn't I wouldn't call it a small way. i would i would emphasize that the um
00:36:34
Speaker
creating a balanced hint system that people aren't unwilling to try is like one of the core difficulties in this space, and you kind of just solved it.
00:36:50
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I'm happy to hear that, because... and it ah ah At least it's a step towards where we'll end up, I guess. or i would say I don't think it's perfect, but um yeah, I'm glad ah it's it's another way of looking at the problem, at least reframing it from hints to to something else.
00:37:08
Speaker
it's It's really interesting to me that if you had just tried tackling these design problems in different order, like if you started thinking about, oh, this game needs to be approachable for people who might get stuck on puzzles before thinking about like, oh yeah, like this ah overworld, like like it needs it needs an overworld and these constraints on the overworld exist. You might've like ended up with something totally different.
00:37:37
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. Because if this hint system only came out of the constraints that the overworld was imposing on it. Yeah, that's ah a really excellent example of like how every video game is just like a cascading chain of like early decisions affecting later decisions.
00:37:56
Speaker
Yeah, and locking yourself in. i did think another path you could go down is having just a smorgasbord of levels basically and they're not mandatory so if you plate some smaller threshold of these levels you can make your way through to the end of the game and then the difficulty slider is just which puzzle do i pick basically if i struggle with this one then i do that one instead and as long as i can beat one of them then i'm through i try to do that to an extent and i'm not A lot of games have done this better than mine, where you can ah leave puzzles unsolved and still get to the end.
00:38:30
Speaker
In Can of Wormholes, one of the the things I would change if I did it again is ah loosen the requirements a bit and have some alternate requirements. paths in some of the later worlds, but there was a few bottlenecks where really had to solve one hard puzzle to get through. But that all said, when you've got a game that's about interaction discovery, you really need to play some levels. You can't make it too lenient until people can miss the crucial thing they needed to learn in this area.
00:38:54
Speaker
Yeah. It does make it very difficult. But um it's it's so weird for me to to hear that it's influenced other games, because I do massively have um imposter syndrome.
Personal Struggles and Community Support
00:39:07
Speaker
because i still my day job is software development in a non-gaming sense, and I do games a couple of days a week. I work on those. I've dedicated a few days a week to to do game development, but it is just a solo thing.
00:39:20
Speaker
I'm just here on my own in Perth, Western Australia, and it's ah I've never worked as part of a game studio or anything, so in some ways I do feel like an imposter, but I guess that's quite normal.
00:39:31
Speaker
Right. I mean, i I wanted to ask, like, do you do you have other game developers locally? Or like, do you do you have like a ah peer group that you you feel like, oh, yeah, like these these are people who I chat to who are also making games in a similar way to me?
00:39:47
Speaker
No, I have friends that are interested in it and have dabbled, but no one in the professional sense know that has has released anything. So it is kind of just me and my my lonesome here.
00:39:57
Speaker
um And in some ways, I do like that. I am a bit of a hermit at heart. And I like just plugging away on my own projects. But yeah, i don't have those those people to to bounce ideas off.
00:40:09
Speaker
Do you have any questions for us or things that you'd want to talk about specifically? One thing that comes to mind is the Thinky Games community and what you've ah started, Alan, is is it's good at getting ah new developers up and running, basically, and and trying to help new developers find their feet. And even myself, like having the Thinky Games community was...
00:40:31
Speaker
a massive benefit and helped me through and there's no way i could have released the game if it wasn't for that community i have to say so i guess my question would be like what can we as developers or even just listeners of the podcast do to help you with that that mission don't know just keep keep making cool games uh keep influencing each other um playing each other's games, um being inspired by each other, and one-upping each other. ah yeah Yeah, learning from each other.
00:41:09
Speaker
Yeah, make make the next gain insights that everyone wants to steal. ah i mean, on that note, like... were you When you started making the game, were you in the Thinky puzzle game community?
00:41:24
Speaker
Or did you find it after starting? I found it quite late into the piece. I ah wish i'd I'd found it earlier, to be honest, but I'm glad I found it when I did because...
00:41:35
Speaker
there was some really valuable feedback I got through testing, which was because of the Thinkie Games community. I'm not sure how I would have organized playtesting if it weren't for that community. So, yeah, I guess the answer to the question is is spreading word about that that community that you guys have cultivated. ah Other questions, I guess, like a lighter question. i was thinking if you could like create a puzzle within ah an existing game out there that is not your own,
00:42:01
Speaker
Which game would you like to do it for? Which game do you wish you had been involved with in and created a puzzle for? um Oh, good question. um i mean, i could almost say Barbara is You, except I do have a couple of puzzles in that game.
00:42:18
Speaker
but that i was going to say, this is going to be very different for Alan. But like, Barbara is You is like, definitely a game that I'm like, man, if...
00:42:32
Speaker
like like that's like so um like in ah in a parallel life like could i have made that game and i don't know maybe maybe not but it's like such a uh beautiful idea and yeah very deep that's an interesting thought like had bubbers you not existed and someone told you hey here's a cool idea you're let the rules for the game exist within the game world themselves as tiles, as words that you can push around with just that seed of an idea.
00:43:07
Speaker
yeah How far could you take it and what would you come up with? Also like that seed of an idea, you could make hundreds of different ideas and they would all be like so different to each other.
00:43:18
Speaker
yeah It's such a powerful thought. Like he must've known he was onto something the moment of that idea. It popped into his head because it is such a fertile idea. Yeah. And not to take away from the execution of the game as well, though. It's just like, it's such a great game as well.
00:43:33
Speaker
So I think that is what I would love to design for actually. and just explore that space. Yeah. Soren, did you have a ah game that you, you wish you could have worked on? Yeah. Well, I, I, I was thinking about that as soon as you asked, which is why I'm glad that Alan went first. Um, yeah,
00:43:53
Speaker
It's funny. There are a few that jump out to me One of them is Storyteller, o um which handles puzzles slightly differently than a lot of traditional games. But I really, really love how that game is like structured and the information that it gives you about the types of puzzles you're doing um honestly though and this is gonna this is gonna be the funniest possible answer um i think the answer is monsters expedition i think i think as i look back at the last six years
00:44:42
Speaker
because we're now about almost to the day, six years from me starting work with Alan. um I really think that I should have like spoken up and like tried to design one or two puzzles within that game just because that game turned out so cool and the rules are so straightforward.
00:45:06
Speaker
But... So it goes. And also there's just not enough puzzles in it. I was going to say, ah if there's one thing that I i hear from people who 100% that game, its it's just that there wasn't enough to do.
00:45:20
Speaker
ah um i I was actually kind of expecting Alan to say Bonfire Peaks, which is why he developed half the game. Oh, no. Yeah, I mean, like... but like yeah Yeah, so, and yeah, I kind of answered a different question. I answered the game I wished I'd designed, whereas the the game that I'd want to design puzzles for is actually a very different question.
00:45:42
Speaker
Yeah. And, yeah, Bonfire Peaks, like, I can't say Bonfire Peaks because I did make of Yeah, because you've got levels on that, know yeah. Like 50% of them, to be clear.
00:45:52
Speaker
That game was really rewarding to make puzzles for. i I think I had more fun making puzzles for Bonfire Peaks than for any of my other games, which were my games.
00:46:03
Speaker
And part of that is probably that um like playing in somebody else's toolbox is like um like there's less pressure or something. But I think also part of it was the fact that that was...
00:46:16
Speaker
It was a more 3D game and more 3D puzzles than any of my games. And that style of puzzle is just really satisfying to design.
Insights on Game Design and Work-Life Balance
00:46:28
Speaker
Yeah, a 3D game with a fixed camera as well, which was impressive. Well, essentially fixed camera. So that makes it hard to design for as well, I guess. um Wormholes, I guess, is secretly a 3D game.
00:46:41
Speaker
Sure, yes. um So maybe the answer is the games that we're currently publishing that I've not done any level design on for. Maybe the answer is I will i will dig into both of them and go like, ah, yes, let me let me go Puzzle Sicko on these levels.
00:46:58
Speaker
um Trying to think if there's anything... else um it would be fun to guest design puzzles for another game like so just take that pressure off having to worry about the systems themselves and just experiment within that world right i kind of did some guest design on spook express like lucas did most of like almost all of the puzzle design for that but i did have a lot of fun like just jumping in occasionally and going like okay, here's here's an idea, like here's a level, or here's different version of an idea that's already here.
00:47:35
Speaker
um It was, yeah, like very very low commitment, just like here and there, rather than I have to make everything. Ren, you mentioned um making potentially making levels for a monster's expedition.
00:47:47
Speaker
Alan, is that kind of like wormholes in the sense where you couldn't really just throw a new level in there or move one around without just breaking all the interconnected bits it feels like yes i mean so we had we had parts of the levels and like once you had like levels that had like been glued together in a certain way it was basically the case that if you needed to make any change you'd need to like separate them out and start from scratch Yep.
00:48:17
Speaker
But we we did keep adding levels pretty late because one thing you can do in that game is you can just add a new archipelago basically yeah anywhere.
00:48:29
Speaker
um and there's a lot of flexibility with how the different archipelagos or like the different islands, chains. Archipelagos is right.
00:48:41
Speaker
Yeah, was just thinking, but the whole game is an archipelago. Within that, there's some archipelagos. You can have archipelagos in archipelagos. Yeah. um So, yeah, like there's a lot of flexibility with how those small archipelagos are placed relative to the big picture.
00:48:57
Speaker
um So, yeah, we could go like, okay, well, we've got this cool puzzle. We haven't had found a com home for it yet. Yeah. what are some other puzzles that could like go near it and like, let's make it a little mini area and then, okay, where can that go? And like, there's lots of places where you can put stuff that's not on the critical path and you can just kind of branch off anywhere and then go like, okay, well here's it a little optional area. And then maybe it joins back up to the main path or maybe it's just like it's self-contained thing. um But those parts are,
00:49:31
Speaker
Like, you still had to design them, like, as a whole, and then go, like, okay, well, this these these islands don't break each other, and maybe there's an interesting meta puzzle here.
00:49:42
Speaker
um And then once they're a unit, then it's like, oh, I hope nothing breaks here. and to To be clear, ah when I joined in March of 2020, lot of the world was like not all of the world had been connected. So there would have been time for me to jump in get a puzzle or two in and then have that be part of the final structure. Now that would be like if if. if There there is outside of the labor constraints, it it's not especially, would would not be especially easy to patch in one to two additional puzzles into that game.
00:50:31
Speaker
understood that's That said, we did do one post-release patch that just added a bunch of violence. So yeah, like adding just one puzzle would be hard.
00:50:43
Speaker
But if we added like 50 puzzles, that would also be hard. But in some ways it would be more doable because like it would justify the effort. Yeah, I mean, we could we could charge this time if we did it again. the problem is we can't charge because we we're adding them to the same world. Like, i can't have some people on one version of the game. Oh, so to but to be clear, if it's fully interconnected, you can't charge.
00:51:11
Speaker
ah we could We could have, like, a a new, totally new area. Yeah, you could have, you could have and like, you could expand the map horizontally by, like, six island width and go from there.
00:51:26
Speaker
but But you can't change what you've already got. because There'll player out there who saved the game. I reckon we could add more puzzles without expanding the bounds.
00:51:38
Speaker
the way we did that first time with the first content update. I reckon we could do that one more time and it would be a nightmare, but we could do it. We're not going to, to be clear, we this is this is not something we're doing. No, this is this is not even... this is too The only reason i'm saying I'm saying these thoughts out loud as as someone who produced that game is because I know...
00:52:01
Speaker
that Alan won't be able to take this idea and run with it. And he also doesn't want to. But to be clear, he couldn't. oh i I could. You're fortunate I don't want to, because like if I got in my head that this was a thing I wanted to do... Alright, well good luck pushing to PlayStation.
00:52:18
Speaker
Yeah, we'd figure it out. um Anyways... i there Is there anything else that we'd want to chat about? Or it about time to wrap up? It's midnight for Alan.
00:52:31
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Should let you get some rest. i'm just I'm just getting started. We're talking about adding content to Monster Expedition and in what would be a hellish development program. I'm pumped. Yeah, this is this is ah real waking hours for Alan.
00:52:47
Speaker
ah This is when the real work gets done. No, goodness. we know Not these days. I've i've been a person who's been working at like 2am and I don't let myself do that anymore. You were you were truly working u s hours during Monsters Expedition core development. That was...
00:53:09
Speaker
that was That was a learning, or that was an adjustment period for me of seeing you online at like 5pm, 6pm my time and being like, Alan, go the heck to sleep.
00:53:23
Speaker
You'd be like, no. It's I could stop working, but I'm not going to go to sleep. Actually, I think i think Bonfire Peaks was a project that, like, really taught me that I need to be disciplined about yeah when I when i ah start working on stuff. Because, like, Monster's Expedition, I mean, like...
00:53:49
Speaker
I was coordinating with a lot of people in the US and non-development stuff would be happening and it would be good for me to be like, okay, well, this happened, I'll just send this message in Slack or whatever. With Bonfire Peaks, I was doing level design and I'd be doing that late at night. And that's a game where I'd just get in the and I'd be just...
00:54:12
Speaker
and i'd be like just making tweaks to a level and like improving it but like you it's this stage where you're like just enough sleep deprived to be working slowly but not sleep deprived enough to notice okay and to everyone listening who is thinking about getting into game development who is in game development who it respects alan's work please do not behave this way. He's talking about this as as he has learned since then. This is the cautionary tale. Yeah, please do not do this.
00:54:51
Speaker
I would just spend so long on like one or two Bonfire Peaks levels, and then I would get out of it like, oh, oh, oh, I've done it again.
00:55:03
Speaker
still very much in that world. no No, no, no, no, no. Please, please listen to your friendly neighborhood producer. you do You do your best work, not when you're necessarily in the zone, but when you're well rested.
00:55:19
Speaker
Please. i think it's the curse of being a solo dev, but ah I'll have weeks where I do nothing. And then I'll have weeks where I do nothing but work on the game and I'll be by doing like 14 hour days just a week straight.
00:55:35
Speaker
Everyone needs. okay new business idea. I'm just gonna sell a Google Calendar ah like sign up ah form, and ever anyone who pays me a monthly retainer can just get me twice a month to yell at them about going to sleep. Yeah, i could I'm getting better with it, but I would have definitely signed up for that that Google Calendar.
00:56:03
Speaker
Yes. just like Get 30 minutes with a producer ah twice a month, and those 30 minutes are going to be, and how long are you working?
00:56:16
Speaker
Oh, my goodness. I'm jumping all over the place, but ah it just
Marketing Strategy and Closing Remarks
00:56:21
Speaker
occurred to me. um I didn't speak about the marketing side of things at all. No, you didn't. Show them.
00:56:26
Speaker
um And that that just popped into my head when i was thinking about the solo dev thing. I mentioned earlier, I don't have ah a marketing bone in in my body. Or sorry, I don't have a business bone in my body, which means I don't have a marketing bone in my body.
00:56:38
Speaker
And as it was getting close to release, i was wondering how I could get this thing out there. think one move I made, which I think paid off, is reaching out to the Cracking the Cryptic guys, which I know you're all familiar with.
00:56:50
Speaker
um And I think they won the Thinkie Award, didn't they, actually? for ah Yes, they did. Community creator or something? Yeah. ah they beat They beat this very podcast. Oh, sorry.
00:57:03
Speaker
No, it's fine. It's a sore subject. No, not a sore subject. I'll tread carefully. I simply would have changed my screen name for one day to Thinky Influencer and then gone back to my old name. No, you're fine.
00:57:20
Speaker
But yeah, if like if I alt-tab right now, like what i was I was doing before I joined the call was um looking at today's puzzle on cracking the cryptic. So I'm a bit of ah a Sudoku addict. And I thought,
00:57:31
Speaker
why don't I make like a parody video of one of their Sudoku style puzzles and just submit it to them and and and see what happens. And then they liked it enough to feature it on their their channel, which got me a lot of eyeballs.
00:57:44
Speaker
um ended up doing a parody of one of their Sudoku solves where I made my own puzzle, pretended to solve it, but the puzzle itself had an alternate solution, which i as the solver of the video kind of,
00:58:01
Speaker
stumbled into and bumbled my way through so i was misinterpreting on purpose what all the rules meant but it happened to solve the puzzle in the correct way but if you were to solve the puzzle just from a normal um perspective of following the the rule set you could also get to the same solution so i thought that was a novel idea and they seem to have liked it they put it on their youtube channel i snuck a few references to my game in there at the end and I saw my wish list jump up when that happened.
00:58:30
Speaker
I say I don't have a marketing burn in my body, but I think I made at least one right move there. Marketing only acceptable if it's ah if you can trick yourself into believing it's puzzle design. yeah but I made a puzzle and solved a puzzle as part of the but the marketing move, so I guess that counts.
00:58:48
Speaker
was's probably in mind I mean, it's it's like, Alan, it's like this idea that has been floated a few times of, why don't you just make a bespoke version of game of the game for streamers that has different puzzles so that when a player buys it, they don't see the same puzzles. And the answer is just like, oh my god.
00:59:12
Speaker
remember the first time that was i that was recommended to or suggested to us, and I was like, get out of the room. it's It's funny you say that because on on my next game, not that I'm making custom content for streamers, but trying to lean into that whole angle of actually being able to activate some content that only shows when someone is streaming your game.
00:59:33
Speaker
So say you you're watching the game, you could activate something at like the back end and it would show some unique content that only they would see. don't want to go into too much detail because I'll be giving some stuff away, but been Thinking about that as kind of a meta marketing aspect for another game where the streamer themselves becomes part of the story of the game unknowingly.
00:59:56
Speaker
there's There's room to explore there. Awesome. all right. With that, we should probably wrap up the conversation. But thank you so much for jumping on and having a great conversation with us.
01:00:07
Speaker
Oh, it's a pleasure. never done anything like this before. I appreciate the invite. um I'm stoked they're still interested in the game after three years. said oh yeah. Thank you. Where can people find you online?
01:00:20
Speaker
ah Well, the game itself, Steam's the best place can of wormholes, if you search. And for me, Munted Finger on either Blue Sky or or or X. um When I announce a new game, that's where it will be.
01:00:35
Speaker
or Sunny Jum on the Thinky Discord pop in and say hi. Awesome. and Thank you again for joining us. Alan, thank you for staying super late.
01:00:47
Speaker
Yeah, worth it. And thank you for listening to the Dracneck and Friends official podcast. Our music is by Priscilla Snow, who you can find at ghoulnoisemusic.com. Our podcast artwork is by Adam DeGrandis. Our podcast is edited by Melanie Zawadniak.
01:01:03
Speaker
Please rate and review us on your podcast service of choice and be sure to tune in next episode for more interesting conversations.
01:01:16
Speaker
you