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Episode 14: Benjamin Davis (A Monster's Expedition, Cosmic Express, A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build, The Electrifying Incident)
261 Plays2 months ago
In this episode, hosts Alan and Syrenne are joined by Benjamin Davis, the lead programmer on Draknek's games like A Monster's Expedition, Cosmic Express, A Good Snowman is Hard to Build, and the recently announced The Electrifying Incident. Topics include how Alan and Ben met, what it's like to work with Alan on these games, and details on the newly announced game. Come for the details about the new game, stay because Syrenne slowly deteriorates throughout the episode. It's a fun one.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
Meet the Hosts and Guest
00:00:21
Speaker
Welcome to the Drakknek 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 Drakknek and Friends, and I'm joined as always by Alan Hazelden, the head of Drakknek at Drakknek and Friends.
00:00:36
Speaker
Hey there. Today we're joined by Benjamin Davis, who you may know from his work on multiple Draknet games, including the recently announced The Electrifying Incident. How are you doing today?
00:00:47
Speaker
Fine, thanks, Saran. Can
Benjamin Davis's Game Development Journey
00:00:50
Speaker
you sort of introduce yourself with your pronouns and some of the games you've worked on? I'm Benjamin Davis, or Ben, he, him.
00:00:59
Speaker
I've worked with Alan and Dracnek. um I started with a Good Snowman is Hard to Build, and then Cosmic Express, and A Monster's Expedition.
00:01:10
Speaker
And an electrifying incident. Yes, an electrifying incident. Before that, I made a woeful game called Sushi Snake that no one's ever heard of. But we don't talk about that.
00:01:24
Speaker
ah So how did the two of you meet? Do you want to... I mean, I barely remember. we're We're going back like over 10 years. um Like, did we meet through the Coventry-Birmium game dev scene with it?
00:01:42
Speaker
Yeah, Midlands Indies you were running, right? Yeah, I mean, i I barely remember running it. But yeah, so i at some point in time, I was running this local game dev event where people would just turn up to a pub and um chat about games and the games they're making.
00:01:57
Speaker
um so yeah, you think I was running that and you turned up? Yeah, and then we decided to do some co-working in this little cafe in town, right?
00:02:07
Speaker
Cahaba Cafe. Yeah, because there wasn't a lot of game developers. like like It was a local meetup for people in the the like that city and then a few neighboring cities. But like people actually living nearby was basically just us and some people at the university.
00:02:22
Speaker
um Yeah, everyone kind of lives in Birmingham or Leamington, right? It seemed like. Yeah. And we were we were living in boring Coventry,
00:02:33
Speaker
a city which got bombed in the Second World War and never really recovered. Sorry to any Coventry fans in the audience. It has like pockets of nice medieval stuff and then it's surrounded by concrete.
00:02:48
Speaker
That's how I always think of it. But yeah, we we started co-working. And ah yeah were we co-working while I was making Sokobond? Is that right? I think so. I was i was finishing Snake and you were making Sokobond.
00:03:05
Speaker
And i think they finished up around the same time and we decided to work on little Christmas game. Yeah, just a small two-week project. will well We'll make it nice and cute and small and we'll ship it by Christmas. And yeah, that game you took, what, 15 months? Yeah.
00:03:23
Speaker
Yeah. The idea was that you would just make a little flash game, right? Cause flash was still a thing then kind of. So I remember it. I would do the drawing and the programming and you would do a design.
00:03:38
Speaker
Um, Yeah, i remember i do I do remember pulling this trick on you, actually, like because it was just after I chipped Sokobond and i I was very burnt out on programming. um yeah And so I was like, oh, yeah, it would be very cool to make a small game together. But yeah, like and you're you're great at art, so yeah, you can do the art. But I'm i'm kind of burnt out on programming. So you you could do the programming too, right?
00:04:02
Speaker
And you're just like, yeah, yeah, that thats so and sounds reasonable. That's a reasonable division of labor. Yeah. it's only a puzzle game right how complex can
Influence of Puzzle Games and Flash Games
00:04:11
Speaker
be alan uh no i wasn't i wasn't quite thinking of it in that like uh that way at the time uh but's a
00:04:22
Speaker
I think neither of us were treating it as a big project, right? Right, yeah. It was just like very low stakes. This would have been before Sockobond shipped on Steam, potentially. so um right yeah.
00:04:40
Speaker
like soccer bonds wasn't making any money snake wasn't making any money we were just like we were both in a position where we'd made enough savings from a previous job that we could just like kind of work on games and like okay yeah we're like certainly i was in the mindset of i'm making games i'm going to run out of money but i'm having fun making games until i run out of money is that where you were too Yeah, well, i had a very supportive partner who I'm still thankful for.
00:05:09
Speaker
But... so Yeah, a similar position. i was I was making this little indie game that I had ah posted on TickSource forums. And I think a journalist, a game journalist had written about it. You know, they just, they they look at the forums, write about stuff. And I took this as a sign that I needed to quit my my day job.
00:05:34
Speaker
but so Wow, ambitious. Yeah. Yeah. And I was, i was in a fortunate position where, you know, I was young enough and I had a support system, so, and no dependence, which was, you know, so I just went for it and had no idea what I was doing and I made a game, but obviously didn't really promote it. Um,
00:05:57
Speaker
I mean, anyone who knew what they were doing just wouldn't do it in the first place. so Yeah, true. Now that I know what I'm doing.
00:06:07
Speaker
yeah Now we know what we're doing. We don't know how to do anything else. Yeah. Trapped. Unemployable. i wouldn't call it unemployable.
00:06:19
Speaker
yeah i think you just specialize your talents in a certain way. So what got you into tinkering with game dev in the first place then? ah For me, I was had a friend in primary school, which is what us Brits call โ don't know what school you call it over in America.
00:06:38
Speaker
Okay, yeah. I was probably nine or ten. um He came from a family with lots of big brothers, and they were kind of very computer literate at the time.
00:06:50
Speaker
He introduced me to this a program called ZZT, which was like a simple ASCII game development thing. It was very restrictive, really. But I mean, some people have made really impressive things in it. Yeah, it was like Game Maker, but like 20 years earlier or something.
00:07:11
Speaker
Yeah, I think it was it was named ZZT, so they would appear at the end of mail-order catalogues. that the So there was that, and the follow-up Megazooks, which I worked in more throughout my sort of early teen years.
00:07:26
Speaker
I never really produced anything of note, obviously. I remember having this floppy disk with it on that we'd take to the computer club at school, and that's how cool we were. Yeah.
00:07:38
Speaker
ah Other people were looking at Buffy the Vampire Slayer websites and I i was bringing in a copy of ZZT on a floppy disk. But yeah, i sort of that's where I started. And I think throughout my so of mid to late teens, I was in denial.
00:07:58
Speaker
I was still playing games, but I'd got into playing guitar and I was in a band and I thought it was cool. And then kind of led to me kind of denying my destiny as a game to developer, I think.
00:08:10
Speaker
I was always going back into the basement, but i i didn't want to. I thought I'd be trapped, you know, as an unsociable game developer.
00:08:20
Speaker
No, I mean, i think when i'm when I'm working, I'm meeting interesting people. It's a fun social environment. Even though we're but remote, you know, it's, yeah, we work with great people, I think.
00:08:35
Speaker
And Alan, yeah. it's Great people and then Alan. Alan is nothing if not a magnet for great people. Yeah. Yeah, it's like magnets. Opposites attract.
00:08:50
Speaker
Yeah. The joke is better when you explain it. Like all great jokes. Better explained. So what got you interested in puzzle games at the start? Like other than Alan, because Alan has this infectious enthusiasm for this type of game. But like, what interested you in this space?
00:09:10
Speaker
I kind of just fell into it. I think I had a job for two years, an actual employment where I was making Flash games. ah So the younger listeners, Flash games.
00:09:23
Speaker
Oh God, you are going to have to explain that.
00:09:28
Speaker
Flash was plugin for web browsers. Yeah, it's like browser games, but they were easier to make, but ran worse. Yeah, kind of. So it was largely sort of the TV channels would make tie-in games to their children's properties. So I worked on a couple of Peppa Pig games and ah that kind of thing.
00:09:50
Speaker
And I had a, like one of the other programmers, it was a very small company, like less than 20 people its peak. But the but kind of lead programmer there, he was into you know Flash games as as the scene, as it was then. And he would be like working on little things during his lunchtime. So I was sort of impressionable and did the same kind of thing.
00:10:13
Speaker
ah And I just ah was looking at jam game prompts, I think, and I can't remember why, but I got inspired to have different things overlapping that were red, green, and blue. So that kind of idea of the light spectrum being split up.
00:10:31
Speaker
And this this became a game called Eat Your Dinner, which eventually became Sushi Snake. And it just... By accident, it was just became a puzzle game. Hell yeah.
00:10:45
Speaker
hell yeah I don't think I'd really played many puzzle games other than like mini games. And I certainly wasn't thinking about puzzle games as a big design space or, you know, this whole community that's that's there now. I don't know if it was there then or and I wasn't exposed to it or, you know.
00:11:05
Speaker
Yeah, no, i don't I don't think there was so much of a community around puzzle games specifically.
Creative Process and Game Development Insights
00:11:10
Speaker
um But I think that what like Flash games had a lot of puzzle games. Yeah.
00:11:17
Speaker
So I feel like there was maybe less... um and like like There's a supportive game dev community um and there was a supportive Flash game community.
00:11:27
Speaker
And yeah, it was less ah about specific genres of games and just more people making interesting stuff. Yeah. I mean, and and Flash in general is a lot of people riffing off of other people's ideas.
00:11:40
Speaker
Like, that was the scene at the time. So, that makes sense. So, Alan cons you into Sokoban. Or sorry, not Sokoban. Snowman after Sokoban.
00:11:53
Speaker
He's burnt out of Sokoban. Weirdly divides the labor. You make Snowman. How does he convince you for Cosmic? I can't remember how that happened. I think Alan already had this... ah that There was an existing puzzle script train game, I remember.
00:12:12
Speaker
think you reused the graphics from. And you made this game called... Well, you were inspired by it, let's say. Yeah, no, I was very inspired. So, yeah. So, Candle or Ragzutran made this game...
00:12:26
Speaker
I forget what the name of it was, um but it was just like this pleasant, um you're a smiley face, you get to get on and off this train and like switch to the tracks and drive it around. so And I took part in Train Jam, think back in 2014, think. yeah. Yeah.
00:12:45
Speaker
fourteen i think ba yeah I think it was it but it was possibly the year that I got on the train GDC for Train Jam.
00:12:56
Speaker
And then arriving in San Francisco, we basically clicked release on A Good Snowman's Hard to Build, like as like the day after ah got in or the day before I left. It was its like some kind of really bad. Maybe it was the day before I left.
00:13:11
Speaker
And so clicked release. And then I got on this train for 36 hours with really spotty Wi-Fi. as reviews are coming in. Great decisions all around, Alan. ah I mean, it was fine. Like, I think it was like ah a nice way to like draw a line under the game's release.
00:13:27
Speaker
Well, actually, that timing doesn't necessarily make sense because I don't... I feel like there was actually a gap of like a couple of years ah between making that prototype on Train Jam and starting Cosmic Express.
00:13:40
Speaker
Now, I don't remember how much of a gap there was between shipping a good snowman and starting Cosmic Express, but I don't think it was more than a year. No, it was... Well...
00:13:52
Speaker
i Yeah, I am remembering after Cosmic Express, which was a very short period. Yeah, Cosmic Express comes out March 2017.
00:14:05
Speaker
Yes. It was like an eight-month development time or so that you like to say, Alan? Yeah, nine months start to finish, which was wild. Nine months, so that means that you would have started it mid-2016.
00:14:18
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm going to... Figure out when I made Train Braining. I mean, Snowman launched in February 2015. Yeah, so maybe that adds up.
00:14:33
Speaker
So there was a year gap between the two. You took your gap year. at the start of A Good Snowman, Alan, you were living in Coventry. Yeah. Right. And during the development cycle, you became nomadic, right?
00:14:48
Speaker
Yeah. I think. ah Yeah. Because during the development of A Good Snowman, we yeah, we just have these these calls where I would be on like a different time zone to when I was talking to you last. And it was mostly fine, actually, um from my memory.
00:15:03
Speaker
But yeah, I was traveling around a lot. from perspective, it was fine.
00:15:08
Speaker
I remember spending just months on little animations for the monster. and Yeah, a good snowman, we spent a lot of time just like going way more into like tiny details that didn't really matter.
00:15:24
Speaker
They matter. They matter to my spouse. They're nice, but like, I don't know. They didn't, they didn't need to add like nine months to the development time. um And then we squeezed the secret of a Good Snowman into like the last two weeks. Yes. I remember. sorry. What the fuck?
00:15:40
Speaker
hu It was great. What the fuck? There was a convention, a game development meetup thing in Ghent, was it? In Belgium?
00:15:51
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds right. I think I remember meeting up with you. How was the first time hearing of this? We'd been talking about a secret layer, like basically throughout development. And like, we'd been talking about it, we'd been thinking about it, but like, we'd never prioritized actually making it happen.
00:16:07
Speaker
And then um there was there's that conference in Ghent, which I'd completely forgotten about. And I think yeah prior to that, um I'd gone to some kind of conference in the US and bumped into some people and be chatting about the secrets with them.
00:16:24
Speaker
And so, yeah I think we met up and was like, oh yeah, I was chatting to these people about these ideas and I'm now really excited about them. And yeah, we just, we just like, it came together. Like we saw how the pieces could fit together to add this component of the game in um without too much extra work.
00:16:44
Speaker
um And yeah, we just we just made it happen. yeah Easy as that. Yeah, you know, just adding half the game in two weeks. Easy as that.
00:16:57
Speaker
okay ah Originally, the idea was that, a spoiler for a good snowman, once you finish the game, there's a way of going back through the starting gate and you end up in a reorganized layout of the game.
00:17:13
Speaker
But the original plan, I think, was to just reorganize the main game so that it worked with this layer on top of it, right? Yeah, so the idea was that, like, oh, when you when you sit on the bench, like, you can fall asleep, and then you're in the mirror world of the dream world, which is spooky vibes, and then you've got the... wait Where there are snowmen in the real world, there's, like, these snowballs in the dream world.
00:17:37
Speaker
And so the original idea was that, yeah, every level is meticulously laid out in the main game such that the dream snowballs left behind can make dream snowman.
00:17:48
Speaker
And then, yeah, we started making this and we're like, oh, this is like not doable in two weeks, but we could have this alternate world, which is like, yeah, going back through the entrance gates.
00:17:58
Speaker
which we can just design the puzzles around that. And we don't need to care about the ah pacing or like which levels are placed next to which were levels because you've already completed the levels. Yeah. good This is... How are you managing to exhaust a producer a decade later but
Team Dynamics and Project Challenges
00:18:20
Speaker
with your decisions?
00:18:22
Speaker
I pride myself on my ability to to exhaust you retroactively. I mean, you were exhausting at the time, you exhausting in the future, and so it only makes sense that you were exhausting in the past.
00:18:37
Speaker
um And yeah, like I have actually very mixed feelings about how the secrets turned out in A Good Snowman. like I think they're conceptually very cool, and I think the actual puzzles are very cool. And I think that the hand-holding of how you get to them is god-awful and is a very weak part of that game.
00:18:54
Speaker
um I kind of wish that I could snip the ending of the game and the start of the secret content and squish them closer together somehow. So what you're saying is that you want to remake that game?
00:19:07
Speaker
No. ah Good. That was a test and you passed. just Just a 2.0 update. just to Just a little 2.0 update, Saran. We already did a 2.0 update.
00:19:20
Speaker
Did you forget about the 2.0 update? For Snowman? Yes. Apparently, yes.
00:19:30
Speaker
It was part of rolling in the improvements to the Switch version back onto PC. up I'm not sure there was anything for Snowman. Sure was. Anyways, I'm tired. Moving on.
00:19:45
Speaker
You asked about Cosmic Express. Yes. It's going bit freeform, isn't it? No, go for it. My memory of that is that it largely happened via email.
00:19:57
Speaker
I'm what? So and maybe sorry why
00:20:04
Speaker
so we We were working with Chu as an artist for the first time. i think we just met her at Amaze. Yeah. Did we do we meet her at Amaze and we're like, you seem cool.
00:20:16
Speaker
i Want to make a game together? And then we figured out what the game would be. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. Or am I just like conflating that with then ah later meeting her? No, here's here's what it is.
00:20:30
Speaker
um Hey, Ben, you remember Puzzle Dwarf in Giant Land? Oh, yes.
00:20:39
Speaker
Yeah, your great naming sense.
00:20:44
Speaker
ah So yeah, so after Snowman, um we parted ways. I honestly don't remember what I was doing for that year or so but I think you made various prototypes in Puzzle Script.
00:20:55
Speaker
yeah And a couple of them were these games where you're like a person walking around in a and a level and you've got this weapon. So you had one where it was a spear and you could like impale crates and then move them around so while they're impaled and one where there was a crossbow and you could shoot the blocks and then this arrow would be sticking out and then you could use that as a like a lever to move this block and yeah oh you mean bonfire peeks i I mean, very different, but yeah, kind of. um And you'd you'd made a couple of these games and we were chatting about like, oh, what if you were in this like interconnected world where um your you've got you've got one weapon at a time and you're using that weapon to solve puzzles and then you get to a point and like, oh, I can swap out my weapon for a different one. And then you're going through a different section of the world
00:21:47
Speaker
with a different weapon and maybe there would be rooms which had one solution with one weapon and a different solution with another weapon. um And so, yeah, like like you'd you'd made those games and then I was riffing off them. like Oh, I see how you could make these into a bigger project.
00:22:06
Speaker
Just make every level solvable with a selection of weapons. yeah And yeah, i I was calling that idea Puzzle Dwarf in Giantland, which you never got on board with. You hated that name.
00:22:19
Speaker
Congrats. You figured out that that was a terrible name, Ben. Just more confused by it than hating it. It's better than Weapons and Crates. Yeah, it is better. like I mean, I guess my naming sense is descriptive, at least.
00:22:34
Speaker
ah be Puzzle Dwarf. Puzzledorf. Puzzledorf in Gileland. It's vibes. No, because the ah here's the here's to thing more than vibes is memorability and searchability.
00:22:52
Speaker
I don't know any games called Puzzle Dwarf in Giantland. I didn't say the ability to so to not repeat a name. i didn't say uniqueness.
00:23:04
Speaker
But yeah, without marketing we were talking we were talking about maybe this would be a game that we'd make together. um think we we had some like reference art of like, oh, here's the vibes of the world that we want it to have.
00:23:18
Speaker
And you you had learnt your lesson from a good snowman. You're like, well, yeah, this is great. We'd love to work together again. ah but you didn't want to do both the art and the programming again, which are very reasonable.
00:23:30
Speaker
So we were looking for an art collaborator. And i think I'd met a bunch of the Klondike folks at GDC, um including Chu. I don't remember if you'd Chu.
00:23:43
Speaker
her at the time. Yeah, I'm not sure. But i think I think you did meet each other before um before we settled on the Cosmic Express idea. um But yeah, we were just chatting. We we we thought that we'd be a ah good team, the three of us.
00:24:03
Speaker
um And initially the idea was we'd work on this Zelda-y, Metroidvania-y weapon puzzle game. And then I think we sat on it for a bit and thought on it for a bit. i'm like, this is bit much, right?
00:24:20
Speaker
so this This is a complicated game. this is like This is very easy to make a bad version of this or a version of this that has just got massive scope creep. Yeah.
00:24:30
Speaker
So then we just you'd you'd made this train braining, right? Yeah. I guess we just kind of think of a theme for it. So I suggested like a spacey alien theme and to just produce these great artwork. and Just kind of threw it together, didn't we?
00:24:48
Speaker
Yeah, because I i don't remember if we if I'd even discussed the idea of train braining or if you just like played it and really liked it and got got back to it but yeah like you you suggested the the space theme on that idea and then she created these lovely mock-ups um and like it was immediately like oh yeah yeah this is great let's do this yeah
00:25:17
Speaker
It was the first time i was touching Unity as well, I remember. I think you'd done this jam game with, I want to say, Andrew Scholdis, I think.
00:25:29
Speaker
Yeah. and So I think... on the yeah on the On that 2015 Train Jam, I did Train Braining. And on the 2016 Train Jam, I did game with Andrew Shuldis, which was a cute puzzle game in Unity.
00:25:48
Speaker
Yeah, so you kind of just sent me the project for that, and I i use that to learn everything I know about Unity.
00:25:58
Speaker
Which you needed, yeah, for this and for future games. Yeah, I mean, it was before we were working in OpenFL for Snowman, right? Which was very familiar as a Flash developer, but it wasn't really a game engine.
00:26:17
Speaker
um So seeing Unity and all these like nice features it had was a bit of a shock to me. But it, yeah, worked out.
00:26:29
Speaker
ah And so what was your experience working through Cosmic Express? Because that's a game that
Designing Open World Puzzle Games
00:26:40
Speaker
has a relatively short development cycle, has a lot more secrets than Snowman.
00:26:47
Speaker
Please tell me Alan didn't ask you to add monuments right at the end of development again. And, oh god, oh no. I don't remember.
00:26:58
Speaker
That's bad laughter. um Yeah, talk to about that. Those were very simple, to be honest. I think we probably did throw them in, but I think I disagree that there's more secrets in Cosmic Express than there is in Snowman. There might be more like in terms of playtime, but in terms of like the complexity of them, like the secrets in Cosmic Express, to me, feel very slight.
00:27:28
Speaker
Yeah. I think Snowman has the coolest secrets, right? but right The whole meta puzzle. i With Cosmic Express, it's just like, oh, you've got to resolve this puzzle.
00:27:43
Speaker
Yeah. mean, Yeah. but Yeah, i I do suspect that we threw those in fairly last minute. um During development, um we had analytics on the puzzles.
00:27:53
Speaker
So I could just see for each level, here's all the possible different solutions people have found to it. um So I used those analytics to find levels which had interesting alternate solutions.
00:28:09
Speaker
um And then, yeah, we just we just added code for specific bonus solutions for specific puzzles. um Totally forgot about that. but This is kind of one of the benefits you have is a ah big community of people that you can just throw to playtest, right?
00:28:29
Speaker
Throughout every game we've done, it's been a big boon, I think. Oh, yeah. I mean, playtesting a lot, I think, has been my my secret recipe for making good games.
00:28:40
Speaker
um and Oh, for sure.
00:28:44
Speaker
Like, actually, since the pandemic, since I stopped traveling, um I'm still, like, like there's still a solid online community, but I'm doing less in-person playtesting, which I think is, like, a very different vibe.
00:28:57
Speaker
Yeah. Like you say, the the analytics were there. They were useful, but they weren't You can't tell how much someone's enjoying the game, right? Oh, no.
00:29:08
Speaker
and I think there is something like really nice as as a developer to just sit behind someone and watch them enjoy your game, right? And laugh at them when they fail to solve puzzles.
00:29:22
Speaker
Yeah. That's what you like, isn't it? but Sometimes. Only sometimes. I think my favorite exhibit we've done, cannot remember the name of the show, but we'd asked them, they basically sent around this email to everyone saying, you know, is there anything we need to exhibit? there any special things to prepare?
00:29:47
Speaker
And, bit cheekily, I'd sent back saying, oh, yeah, we want a big TV and a bench to sit on. And then they provided this. you know It wasn't a bed. It was like a couch and TV, and we had snowman displaying there.
00:30:02
Speaker
It was really nice to watch sort of small groups of people sit around and solve it together.
00:30:10
Speaker
still carry that with me today. Sounds like a good experience. Yeah, I never... I never do much play testing. i mean, I generally leave it to Alan, but the moments where I have, and it's been a good experience, you know, you take those with you very often. You just feel like you're sitting alone, plugging away.
00:30:29
Speaker
And then coming off of cosmic, ah what was your perspective? this This is, this how i'm going to get into monsters. but Ben, what was your perspective on the scope creep that happened with that game?
00:30:43
Speaker
Well,
00:30:46
Speaker
So what i remember about the start of Monster, I think it was something like a month after we'd released Cosmic Express.
00:30:59
Speaker
We were at Amaze in Berlin. I said to Alan, you know, like I want to get back working again, and Alan was keen. And we basically launched straight into the next game. And we had we met up with a few few people at Amaze and had this just like discussions about how we want to...
00:31:21
Speaker
make a bit of a bigger game and have a bit of a story to it. So it's not just just puzzles, right? So Cosmic Express very much is just a pure puzzle game, which works great, I think, for that game.
00:31:34
Speaker
Snowman had maybe some implied story, but not really. So we wanted to be a bit more adventurous and make this like magnum opus game, I think. It was always the intention. The scope creep was there from the start. Yes.
00:31:50
Speaker
So we'd set ourselves up for failure and in terms of small scope, at least. And I think we just didn't know what we wanted was the big issue.
00:32:01
Speaker
Yeah, well, like we knew scale and grandiosity of what we wanted to make, but we didn't know how to do that well, or like how to do that at all, or how to get there.
00:32:13
Speaker
Yeah. Going back a bit, we had this ah puzzle script prototype that I'd made, right? And then you'd kind of run with it and made some adjustments and lots more levels.
00:32:28
Speaker
And you were pretty keen that it was going to be a big game, potentially. There was a lot of ah nuance to explore within the puzzle mechanics. Yeah. I'd just kind of thrown this thing together and then you'd give me hints on how to to make it an actual puzzle game that works. And...
00:32:45
Speaker
but Yeah, I mean, we'd been talking about making something. um yeah we We talked about, like, oh, here are some puzzle good games that we've made in the past and, like, what works about them. And we identified, like, oh, here's a couple of games that are set on islands.
00:33:01
Speaker
yeah And it's, like, a nice setting for, like, this open world game where you can, like, solve puzzles and get to other puzzles. um So I think pretty early on we decided we wanted to make something set on a series of islands. Yeah.
00:33:16
Speaker
I think I had this idea of an exploration puzzle game is what I was calling it. And it became an open world puzzle game. oh
00:33:28
Speaker
Yeah. And we we actually got together with ah an artist and we were talking about submitting to Stugan. um yeah Yeah. So like that was that was kind of the incentive for the for starting like ideating on this game.
00:33:46
Speaker
like a month after shipping Cosmic Express was we needed to have a team together to put together a video pitch for Stugan. And we didn't get into Stugan, but at that point we were like talking and like, yeah, okay, I mean, let's like let's make something.
00:34:00
Speaker
um And yeah, like the the turnaround after shipping Cosmic Express was like, yeah, like a month's downtime and then like two months prototyping and concepting and then I think we hit on we shipped cosmic express in March and you started the unity version of this game in June so like less than three months after shipping cosmic I remember wanting more of a break but there was that reason of submitting to Stugen
00:34:35
Speaker
yeah I wonder what would have happened if we'd got in Yeah. I think I wasn't totally convinced about going, but could I think it would have been a cool thing. I think like the i think we we pitched, I think possibly we have pitched Puzzle Dwarf again. um Right.
00:34:58
Speaker
ah But I don't think, like it's not like we would have gone to Stukin and then gone, oh, well, I guess we've got to make this game. No. I think, yeah, like, the game we made could have ended up being quite different because i think prototyping and starting out making a game during like a 10 week like getaway where you're in person it's like not the way we've ever started making a game um so yeah i think i think we could have got a lot done ah something like student i think we would still have fallen into similar traps later on though
00:35:32
Speaker
I think we would have had fun. oh yeah. That's the main thing, right? You just... Yeah, that's why everyone makes games, is to have fun. Yeah. Games are fun.
00:35:44
Speaker
Therefore, game development is fun.
00:35:48
Speaker
Definitely. Definitely completely
Burnout and Collaboration Strategies
00:35:50
Speaker
fun, not stressful. Perfect. You're there to absorb the stress, right, Soren? Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's what happens.
00:36:00
Speaker
Okay. This is wow for for listeners what who are not familiar Ben is describing at me as sort of the classic meme of the veteran over the sleeping child taking all of the knives and grenades, when in actuality, the child is holding them as a human shield and throwing me into it because Alan will just say things to stress me out sometimes.
00:36:34
Speaker
And then I'll ask him, what the fuck? And she'll say, don't know, I was thinking about this. What do you think? Hey, Saren, I don't say it because I want to stress you out.
00:36:45
Speaker
Not always. Sometimes you explicitly do. I get one troll a month. I'm such an enabler as well, aren't I? I'm just far too laid back, so I just run with whatever.
00:36:57
Speaker
i mean i think I think both of us have this deep desire of like, oh, I can see a way that we can make this game better. And I can calculate, it would add like roughly this amount of extra time to the project.
00:37:11
Speaker
And it would make the project this amount better. Like, run the math. Like, yeah, that's a good trade-off. um and like But I'm also trying to balance, like, it's not just about the...
00:37:25
Speaker
ah input versus output, because there's also like the stress input. There's other extenuating factors. There's your bandwidth.
00:37:36
Speaker
Bandwidth is to losers. I am the only person at Drackneck and Friends. That's not true, Mari also sometimes. But in terms of the game development side, I am constantly trying to monitor Does Alan have too much on his plate?
00:37:52
Speaker
Because Alan won't do that himself. He'll just get burnt out. He'll just push himself and get excited by things and then burn out. And the reason that you haven't gotten newly burned out on something in years is because I'm trying to fight you.
00:38:11
Speaker
Anyways. I think the difference between us though, Alan, is that the things I spend months working on ah things that nobody notices.
00:38:23
Speaker
It's like all the little animations in Snowman or in a monster's expedition. I spent ages on all these different log interaction animations. that Oh no. Those log interactions. Like they're not, they're not flashy, but like that game does not hold together without the months of painstaking work you put into making every possible combination of logs interacting with other logs behaving correctly. Yeah.
00:38:53
Speaker
Yes, that that is because that's a because when you're playing Lost's Expedition, you need to have trust that the game trusts you and the game has thought about it because if it ever feels like the game hasn't thought about it, then you stop trusting the game as much like that. That actually is. I agree with Alan. That is actually like a crucial thing beyond the level of polish.
00:39:18
Speaker
But I bet if you ask a hundred people what their favorite thing about it is, no one will mention the log. They're all i we're going to mention the raft tutorial and then they're going to mention their favorite exhibit, right?
00:39:31
Speaker
Yeah. And if, and if the, and like the 5% of players that have found a friend are going to mention the friends. um I actually think um I've seen the um smooth animations and like a Bertie to input as quickly or slowly as you want.
00:39:51
Speaker
I've seen that referenced a fair amount with Monster's Expedition being like a, like, like, oh, you want to do um arbitrary player inputs interrupting animations? Hey, Monster's Expedition is your go-to reference for how to do that well.
00:40:05
Speaker
That's true. And that was, that was all Ben. I think you pushed for that though. right I mean, sure, but you were the one doing the work. All right, I'll take it. um Also, wow. Okay, I take that back. On Steam, we are at 27% of players have made a friend.
00:40:24
Speaker
Nice. That is way higher than I expected. i mean, there is 160 them. It's got to be the higher higher than the average Steam player, right? that's That's the thing, though, right? is like it's There's a lot of them, but it's not actually that easy to get most, like, it's like only like 10 or 15 that I would genuinely call easy, and they're and like they're scattered around the world. Can I explain my joke that I just slipped by?
00:40:53
Speaker
Oh, please.
00:40:56
Speaker
27% of ah Monsters Expedition players have made a friend. It's higher than the average Steam player.
00:41:04
Speaker
Yes. So many Steam players have no friends. 5.3% have... of players have seen the end credits,
00:41:19
Speaker
ah which is lower than i expected 5% have seen all of the exhibits and 3% have 100% of the game.
00:41:29
Speaker
It's weird. It's weird with that game to think about like, because everyone's different play experience can be so significant. Like someone could put 15 hours into that game, never see the end and then be satisfied.
00:41:46
Speaker
but also crucially have had a completely different experience than someone else. Open world games, man, they're weird. think this was a thing Alan was very consciously thinking about was letting people have choice, letting people not get stuck and letting them end when they've had enough, I think was.
00:42:10
Speaker
Yeah, I wanted it to always be very easy for your forwards momentum to carry you through the game. um for you to just be on an island and you tell it take the path of least resistance and you make progress further through the game.
00:42:24
Speaker
But obviously a lot of people are their own worst enemy, aren't they? And they they will bang their head against. Here's path A, here's path B. I'm going to go along path A until I figure out if that's the main path and then I'm going to go back to path B.
00:42:37
Speaker
ah Our podcast editor, who is finally going to get an on-episode call-out, not just a credit, ah she is exactly that person.
00:42:48
Speaker
I watched her try, and because the first thing is that loop, like, the the very first branching path, either one will get you to the correct destination. It's still funneling you to the tutorial, but one is slightly easier and one is slightly harder.
00:43:04
Speaker
And she did the slightly harder one first, just stared at it for a long time, finally got through it, and then went to the easy one and then said, boo.
00:43:17
Speaker
Well, you know... Alan didn't do it very well then, clearly. Yeah. I mean, like I kind of... Like, something I said about this game that my goal was to have it be the perfect difficulty curve for everyone.
00:43:34
Speaker
And I did fail because it's only the perfect difficulty curve for, like, 95% players. oh no
00:43:43
Speaker
Yeah, oh no you're not- you you didn't build in ah fucking a i to monitor if the player needs an on-this-fly difficulty rebalance.
00:43:58
Speaker
Oh no the horror. It's fine, we'll do that in the next game. No, we will not use AI! No, we will not use AI, Alan, not even as a joke. no no Not
Exploring New Projects and Tools
00:44:10
Speaker
bad AI, good AI.
00:44:12
Speaker
Good AI. Not even as a joke, remember that there are people listening to this that don't know you.
00:44:21
Speaker
right um Oh, it's fine. Bad AI couldn't even do what we're talking about. we just We just put it in a pitch deck and investors would believe it could work, even though it can't work.
00:44:33
Speaker
ah Yes, listeners, this is what my daily workday is like. oh
00:44:42
Speaker
So, electrifying incident. ah We ship from Auschwitz Expedition, and Drac Neck, Alan and i continue on for years working on publishing initiatives and ports. You became a game publisher.
00:45:04
Speaker
Yeah. Ports of your older games. um I distinctly remember asking you if you wanted to get involved with adding controller support for Cosmic Express and moving it from Unity 5 to Unity 2020 and you said fucking no.
00:45:21
Speaker
um Very sensible. That's how I speak. Yeah. Yeah. So exactly. No, I think you said, no, I'd rather not or something like that. But in my head, that's just right as that big polite Brit to blunt American just read as fucking no.
00:45:38
Speaker
um honest I am very rude on a day to day basis. I'm just on my best behavior. Oh, yeah. So then Alan finally last year, 2023, for the people who are listening to this when it comes out, aka everyone except for us three. 2023, Alan sort of starts recovering from some of his game dev burnout, his puzzle design burnout, and is inspired to start working on some things.
00:46:10
Speaker
We start working on some Prototyzer projects that we're not going to talk about here today, because one of them might actually be coming out in the relatively near future, but is almost assuredly still unannounced.
00:46:24
Speaker
But then, as part of that, we decided to make an electrifying incident as an engine exploration in Godot.
00:46:35
Speaker
Do you want to talk about that and your experiences working on that? Like... i this is This is where I'm going to fail as like an interviewer because I know what your thoughts on Godot are based on this. and like we've We've talked about how it went in a post-mortem, but like what are your thoughts about working on these on puzzle games with Alan again?
00:46:58
Speaker
So it's it's been quite a long time since I've done professional game development. I say professional, but I don't know how professional you can call me. But yeah, like Alan, I was pretty burnt out after a Monster's Expedition.
00:47:14
Speaker
And just kind of life happened. ah But yeah, eventually you just need to get back on the horse, don't you? you know, was... so easy once once we had the team assembled and ah had the game engine open it just kind of came back and it was uh you had a really nice team there working on it it was inexplicably huge team for some reason which i guess
00:47:47
Speaker
Just taking back in my history, it's like we always start small and now it's just like we know exactly what we need. So yeah everyone's there from the start, right? We we spent... So for... i This might very well be people's first time hearing about the dev process for this. So I guess we can go into it.
00:48:07
Speaker
um Yeah, this started as a way, as an kind of an internal evaluation process for Godot, the game engine. Yep. and we didn't want to spend more than six weeks on this we knew that going in but this was going to be a six-week project between when we're recording this episode and when this episode goes live we're expecting to do a little bit more polish on it but for the most part um Six weeks.
00:48:38
Speaker
And so really kind of what happened was we just identified what are the roles that we're going to need for this? Like if we're going to make a basically a shippable project within six weeks...
00:48:52
Speaker
What are the disciplines? Who's needed on what team? It probably benefits us to have so people with Godot experience directly, as well as people like Ben, who are going to be learning Godot through this.
00:49:03
Speaker
And we went from there. So yeah, we had a much bigger team than one would expect for a a very small game, but it meant that the whole thing got knocked out in six weeks.
00:49:16
Speaker
Sounds very sensible when you lay out like that. Yeah. I try, I thought really, like, this was my pitch to Alan for like the six week scale of everything. Like I tried to think really, like everything really carefully through.
00:49:31
Speaker
Yeah. And then we did ah the post-mortem questionnaire and i don't think I was at all helpful.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:49:40
Speaker
but I wouldn't say at all helpful. what it What it did do for me was give me confidence again, I think, which was great.
00:49:48
Speaker
Right, yeah, because you've been like noodling on small projects a little bit, but you hadn't like sat down and gone like, oh, I'm going to make a game to like a polished level for since Monster's Edition.
00:50:01
Speaker
I mean, I released my my little puzzle script game. I know. I I love Hermit's, what was it? Hermit Crab. Hermit's New Home.
00:50:13
Speaker
Hermit's New Home. Yeah. um Like, it's a great, great puzzle script game, but, like, it doesn't have, like, it's a puzzle script game. Like, it it's not a polished three d experience. True.
00:50:25
Speaker
Yeah. Turns out we all still know what we're doing. Yeah. Shocker. And yeah, like we haven't, we haven't yet mentioned, but yeah, this is a, um, a remake of a existing public game that I made like a decade earlier.
00:50:39
Speaker
um and like having that as a template for what we're making, um, was like the only way it was viable in a six week timeline, like any, any, any new projects, if we'd been trying to make it six weeks, um,
00:50:52
Speaker
um would have got bogged down in scope creep, would have got bogged down in like edge cases, would have got bogged down in like, oh, we need to explore this thing. We need explore that Yes, this opened on day one with a recording of all of the puzzles and their solutions and ah me sitting in at all hands with Alan there and declaring there will be no new content added, there will be no scope to creep.
00:51:19
Speaker
this is a remake. We're doing this. I mean, really more of a remaster, wouldn't you say, Sir Anne? No. that's not what That's not what that is.
00:51:31
Speaker
We're definitely not currently embarking on a six-week project where we don't know the scope. ah but No, and the the project that we're currently embarking on, which we're not currently talking about, that's just a ah different kind of fact-finding exercise.
00:51:47
Speaker
It is. No, the, um, to be clear, a remaster is like if we put out a Monster's Expedition at a higher resolution and a higher frame rate and like some, like we added ray tracing or some shit, that's a remaster. It'd be the same code.
00:52:06
Speaker
This is not a remaster. A resolution texture pack. Yeah, this is not a... but Oh, God. Like, the those fan-made, like, what if Mario was realistic in UE5? I'm just imagining the monster in that now. Oh, God.
00:52:22
Speaker
I'm going to have to tell Adam about that nightmare. All right. ah We're probably getting to about the wrap-up point. Is there anything else that you wanted to chat about, Ben? No, I'm not much of a chatter, to be honest.
00:52:34
Speaker
I don't know. You've been chatting a lot, and it's been very enjoyable. LAUGHTER No, I should probably get back to work. Yeah. It's 5pm, Ben. Like... You can yeah call it a Hang on.
00:52:49
Speaker
Alan is on... This is Okay. Okay. For reference... the about to call me out for my working ass? For reference. Ben, Alan is completely right.
00:53:02
Speaker
Alan, what the fuck? We have... The two of us have a call together in three hours. Look, I'm the owner of Dracneck. I'm obligated to work weird ads when necessary. No, you're not.
00:53:15
Speaker
Obligated is strong, but yeah i choose i I can choose to work late ads when I like. And anyway, I don't start working until noon most days. yeah Yeah, well, I started of work today at 9am, two minutes after I woke up. So let's wrap up. Thank you so much for joining us, Ben.
00:53:34
Speaker
Yeah, thank you. It's pleasure. ah Yeah, it's a lot of fun. um And thank you for listening to the Drack Naked Friends official podcast. Our music is by Priscilla Snow, who you can find at ghoulnoise.bandcamp.com.
00:53:48
Speaker
Our podcast artwork is by Adam DeGrandis. Our podcast is edited by Melanie Zawadniak. Please rate and review us on your podcast service of choice, and be sure to tune in next episode for more interesting conversations.
00:54:06
Speaker
you