Transcript
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Speaker: Welcome to the Dracknack and Friends official podcast, where we peel back the curtain on puzzle games and the people who make them. I'm Seren from Dracknack and Friends, and I'm joined as always by Alan Hazelden, the head Dracknack at Dracknack and Friends.
Speaker: Hey. Today we're joined by Paul, who goes by Phleb. You may know from his work on games like 20 Small Mazes and Strange Jigsaws. How are you doing today?
Speaker: I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on the podcast. Of course, this you've been a guest on our list to talk to for a very long time. ah For people who are not familiar with you or your work, can you introduce yourself?
Speaker: Sure. um I've been making puzzle games for about 10 years, although I took a big break in the middle of that. ah My first game was Rib, which was this kind of weird logic puzzle game.
Speaker: And then I made 20 Small Mazes and Strange Jigsaws. there Rib is more of a logic puzzle game, but the later games are more puzzle-hunt inspired. And they use a lot of different mechanics in the same game, kind of doing one puzzle per mechanic.
Speaker: Awesome. And how did you get started into making video games? ah I mean, it's sometime in like the early 2010s, I was playing a lot of different games. There's Hex Cells was one by Matthew Brown and also A Good Snowman is Hard to Build by Alan.
Speaker: ah And those those games and others of that kind at the time really inspired me to start making games. and so Just decided to start out and try something. I wanted to make a logic puzzle game that kind of like revealed information as you went through it that you could always be doing a kind of an interesting logic puzzle step.
Speaker: And it sort of worked. I think that some later games have done it a little bit better, like the yeah Sudoku Vanias and Sudokoids. And also Bomb, I think, did that pretty interestingly as well.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, there's there's quite a lot of those like mind sweepery deductiony, like spatial deductiony puzzles. um But yeah, R.I.B. was definitely on the earlier side. I feel like there's been lots of work in that space in the last like three years or so. But that was what, 2016? Yes, 2016. Yeah.
Speaker: So yeah, I can definitely see the Hexel's inspiration. when are you going to make a good snowman like?
Speaker: We'll see. We'll see. i love that game so much. it It took me a while to beat because it was like the first puzzle game that I really... Like the first Sudoku game. Not Sudoku. The first Sokoban game that I got really into.
Speaker: And actually, i didn't notice like the nightmare world until much later. But i'd I'd love to make a Sokoban game someday. Especially like an introductory one. Maybe something where it's kind of... I said I had this idea for a game called like... I'm trying to learn Sokoban.
Speaker: where you Where you kind of like... kind of go through the history of the Sokoban games over the last 20 years and like kind of work out how you might start to approach the puzzles, because I think that's a big barrier for entry for people trying to get into the genre.
Speaker: You don't want to make 20 pushable blocks? I think most Sokoban games have a lot more than 20. was going to say, that would be like ah a design limitation to ah lock that in as the title and then start designing around it.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, a good snowman doesn't have a lot more than 20 snowmen. I think it's like 30, maybe 40? No, but you have multiple, many of them have multiple ah rolling up ah snowballs per frame. Yes, the number of snowballs is three times the number of snowmen.
Speaker: Are there more snowmen in A Good Snowman is Hard to Build or in A Monster's Expedition? Monsters. Oh, really? Way more in Monster's Expedition. Way more. For people who, yeah, I feel like this blows away anyone who's found one friend snowman in Monster's Expedition.
Speaker: i think the final number is 60. Yep, that's right. Which is unhinged if you know how many steps it takes to find one. Yeah, they're they're really out there in that game.
Speaker: It's fun. It's good time. Yeah, I mean, going back to your your your work more recently, 20 Small Mazes and Strange Jigsaws are both really wonderful, lovely things. I think so. they've got They've got such a playful vibe to them.
Speaker: where we're like what what What led you to come back to you making games after that break ah that was quite a while, you said? Yeah, um I guess what I didn't mention earlier on is that I used to do YouTube and when I started having kids, I got kind of burned out on trying to make games and do YouTube and also raise small children at the same time.
Speaker: So, I ended up taking a long break there and then just, you know, life moved on. couple years went by, I had some more kids and then eventually, I just got to the point where it's just like, oh it's time. It's time. So I started trying to learn Godot.
Speaker: At the time, I was working for this startup and it was starting to go out of business. So they decided to give us Mondays off. every week. And I was like, oh, that's perfect. I'll just use that Monday every week and like try to make a game.
Speaker: And that ended up being 20 small mazes. It took a long time because I was, you know, having to learn how to use a game engine for the first time while I was making it. But it it got done. What was your experience learning a game engine, having Godot be your first game engine?
Speaker: Well, yeah, I just got a course online. I think it was in like GD Quest. ah And so it was interesting because everything before that I had done just by... ah Like, RIP was all written in Objective-C for mobile.
Speaker: And then when it came out to PC, I had a friend help me convert it to like an electron.js. And I didn't really understand how that worked, which is why it hasn't been updated in so long. Sorry, everyone.
Speaker: But yeah, learning that, is it wasn't that bad. it was actually... The first time where I felt like, oh, I can actually make something with this. And part of the design of 20 Small Mazes was to create 20 different mechanics so I would get that experience of kind of coding everything separately.
Speaker: I'd get some good experience trying to make stuff. Originally, I had like five free games planned, but then 20 Small Mazes did pretty well. So I was like, I better make a sequel to that. What was the inspiration for 20 Small Mazes from like a game design perspective?
Speaker: Well, ah originally I wanted to make kind of like the ultimate introductory puzzle game. So, the idea was to take kind of puzzles from all these different forms of puzzles around puzzle hunts and mechanical puzzles, which is why that sliding puzzle is in there.
Speaker: um you There is a Soko Bon level in there as well, a very short one. And kind of like make it so that anybody who wanted to get into puzzles could have this like thing that they could sit down just experience a little taste of all these different puzzle forms.
Speaker: I don't think that necessarily came across to people who play the game, but that was the original design inspiration for it. Did you have 20 in your head as like, oh, this is the right number. I'm just going to aim for that. Or did you like start making it and then say like, okay, well, this is how many I've ended up with. Like, how did you figure out the scope of that game?
Speaker: The Godot project title betrays me because the Godot project title is called 100 Small Maces. So I actually, I sat down for 10 days and I wrote down 20 maze ideas.
Speaker: I don't know. 50 maze ideas for 10 days every day. So, I ended up with 500 ideas. And from that, I went down to 100 ideas that I thought would work.
Speaker: And then when I actually started making stuff, about 17 of those worked out. So, most of those were really terrible ideas that should never have seen the light of day. And then I had to like scramble to figure out three more puzzles to put into the game.
Speaker: Well, ah as someone who really enjoys 20 small mazes, I will tell you that while that gives me production heart palpitations to be trying to make 5x the content you ended up with, ah it did in the end result in 20 mazes that are very strong.
Speaker: Thank you. and I'm glad it worked out. Did you learn anything about like what the through line between the ones that worked was versus the ones that didn't?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, a lot of the stuff was just like, it was a fun idea in the abstract. Like, let's have a maze where like the dot splits into 100 pieces. And so you you kind of have like the momentum of all these different things getting to the end.
Speaker: But then you go to design that and you're like, wait, but how should I like actually design a maze for this? You could design a normal maze for that, but it's still just not that fun. So a lot of the stuff was just unworkable like that. This is kind of like fun to think about, but when you actually tried to make a an actual puzzle out of it, there was like nothing there. There was like nothing to figure out.
Speaker: So I eventually started a spreadsheet. where I had a column like, what is the thing you're figuring out in this maze? Just to make sure that I had something for each of these.
Speaker: And that that helped narrow it down quite a bit. There are some other ones too, where it's like outside knowledge. So, I wanted to make one that was like a phone tree, like ah a maze inside of a phone tree.
Speaker: But then you had to have a little bit of knowledge about like, how letters map to numbers. And there was like confusion about whether it could be like a T9 type typing. We have to type the key multiple times, like in the early days of cell phones versus like just hitting the key with the letter on it, stuff like that.
Speaker: Just stuff that just ended up being unworkable. Oh, I mean, that also kind of sounds a little bit like a localization nightmare. know i I really don't localize my games because they have yeah puzzle hunt stuff in them where the answers are English words or phrases.
Speaker: Yeah, no, i'm just I'm just thinking of like, oh my gosh. um Is there... how do I... how do I express how this how I feel like I should want to?
Speaker: What is your thought process behind marketing slash store copy? I am really bad at this.
Speaker: So my goal is to get it done as quickly as possible. Okay. So I was like, how should I make the ah the trailer for 20 more somehow even smaller mazes? I'll just put this the ah the game up there and I'll just say the title of the game. Like, I don't know. That's what the game is. It's got 20 more small mazes. like maybe Maybe saying less is more, but I think I don't do this very well.
Speaker: But i I basically just just kind of like put what I think is the minimum amount of information that anybody would need to to kind of like need to know about what the game is. I'm actually i actually worried that I give away too much.
Speaker: In the Some Puzzles trailer, I feel like I give away too much of what the game actually is. But evidently, that's not the case to people who are who are not me. ah and don't't Don't have a whole picture of what the game is. I was going to say, this this is the thing about marketing and advertising is 99.999% of viewers are not going to be able to piece together all of the context.
Speaker: They haven't read the blueprint. most Most people are not paying attention. Yes, they haven't they haven't played the game and then watched the trailer. Mm-hmm. So the trailers do end up being quite short, right? The trailer for Strange Jigsaws just says it's a game of Strange Jigsaws where you solve Strange Jigsaws. But I feel like that expresses something about what the game is.
Speaker: I don't think it's that bad. No, it does. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm saying it's ah very consistent across your games. And so I was wondering if this was like a ah intentional minimalism or not. It's more born out of it. This is something I don't like doing. So I try to get done as quickly as possible.
Speaker: So we talked about 20 small mazes. If we jump over Strange Jigsaws for a bit, we'll come back to it. 20 more mazes. Yeah. I'm excited. Somehow even smaller.
Speaker: They are smaller. so Somehow. How many of the 500 ideas got reborn into this collection of mazes? Oh my goodness. I was able to use reuse three of them. I'm so excited.
Speaker: that that's That is good that you were able to reuse them. But unfortunately you had to come up with a short list of a thousand more movies.
Speaker: No, I didn't have to do that this time. um i Making the last two games, I've learned a little bit. And so things some things definitely i had the idea for and tried to make and it didn't work.
Speaker: Sad. But... um A lot of a lot of there's a much higher yeah um success rate of of ideas that I had going into the game. Some of the stuff, it takes a long time. Like, yeah, one of the the ideas I had back when I started the game didn't work, but then i was able to reuse it last week.
Speaker: So it was exciting to like finally figure out what that was and how was going to go into the game. ah how many of the 20 mazes did you have like locked in and and like feel confident about when you announced the game?
Speaker: It was about half. um And then some of those have since been taken out of the game. And then some of those that I took out, I also put back in. Yeah, what's what's what's the number of puzzles that you can see in the trailer that are no longer in the game?
Speaker: I'd have to take a look at the trailer. I could bring it up here and take a look. But number of trailers, the number that you can see in the trailer that are no longer in the game. I can think of at least one.
Speaker: I need to update that trailer. i don't know. That sounds like work. And like we discussed, nobody's paying attention. um i I noticed um the other day that Monsters Expedition still has screenshots on the store page of like heavily in development locations. Like the... yeah the the the art start like the the Art is the same, and probably the levels are the same, but like lots of levels that like were in one biome, but then were somewhere else, or like were next to you some other puzzles, but then they got moved around. It's like totally unrepidant. I think the lighthouse is on the ah on the one of the screenshots, and like that's not the what a screenshot of the lighthouse looks like in the released game.
Speaker: It's fine. It's fine, and literally nobody has ever mentioned this. no It would be a surprise. Nobody had time to go back after that game finished. we were like The fact that that game came out and got bug patches within a few weeks was like unbelievable.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: ah Uh, do you want to feel that one, Alan, or have you successfully blocked all of it out of your brain still? just i don't I don't want to dig something up here. shipping is Shipping that game was just a lot. Um, but we were contractually obligated to support, like, I think we had like a two month period where like we were getting some level of funding to maintain it. So gala gotta, gotta, gotta ship those objectives. It was an obligation, uh,
Speaker: Almost all of the post-release support for that game ended up being a contractual obligation. um Not that I think I regret any individual any part of the work that was done, but it was like, a oh can we just... I think we were all feeling a little bit of, can we move on? Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: So yeah, after 20 small mazes, how'd you get from there to Jigsaws? I really liked the idea of a bunch of Jigsaw pieces falling from the sky and hitting the ground.
Speaker: And that that ended up in the game. that That did survive, although a lot of other stuff got cut as the anvil. And I was like, what if... What if I could do the same thing but take a lot more risks?
Speaker: So, yeah, the story of that is ah that whole game's development is is kind of interesting too because, like I said, I was working for the the startup at the time that was going on a business and then it did.
Speaker: So, I was like, okay, time to get another job ah and work on this game part-time and we'll just see when it comes out. And then my ah my wife was basically like, no, don't do that. We can support you making games for one year.
Speaker: So, as long as you can finish it in one year, you should try to make the game that you really want to make. And that that was Strange Jigsaws. ah And it really did end up being the game that I wanted to make.
Speaker: And so, you know, the day before release, I was really worried about it doing well, particularly because of things like the million piece puzzle inside the game, if you're familiar with that. But I was trying to tell my wife, you know, like, I don't think that this game is going to be like 20 small naces. I think that people are just kind of going to bounce off it.
Speaker: But it ended up working out. So I was able to to keep making games. And I finished in 13 months. So one month over the deadline. Hey, that's, you know, that's not.
Speaker: That's not bad. Yeah, I'm bad by game development standards. ah What lessons did you carry for mazes into jigsaws? ah Oh, man. I don't know if if any you if anybody played mazes at release, but it was it was unbelievably buggy.
Speaker: And a lot of that was just my inexperience with making these sort of things. And so ah there was a lot more testing. There was a lot more like catching things before release.
Speaker: I still have messed up on a ton of stuff. Memory management was a big one. I would have to rewrite the entire game to fix it. I tried to like make little patches here and there, but it it uses way too much memory because it just basically like loads everything in the game into memory at the start.
Speaker: Which is what I did for Mazes, which you can do because it's small. But you can't do that as well for Jigsaws because it's much bigger. And so it's really been a learning process over time, especially when when it comes to coding and making things reliable in that work.
Speaker: Alan, you've made so many games, I bet that you've learned a lot from making games over the years like that. Yeah, i mean, I don't do the programming for games anymore. So fortunately, I don't need to learn about memory management. That's other people's problem. um i I get to focus these days on like just coming up with interesting designs and ah finding ways to scope creep that make Soren mad. Yeah, yeah, that does happen.
Speaker: All the fun stuff.
Speaker: um
Speaker: I mean, we had to but this is i feel like every story I have on this podcast just goes back to the launch date of Monsters Expedition, plus or minus two months.
Speaker: But ah that game was unable to run on low-end iPhones i and iPads without ah burning up the user's hand.
Speaker: Oh no. Because the GPU was just maxing out on those things because I mean, we were supporting an iPhone six S in 2020 with a game built in, I think like unity 2019 and doing a lot of like 3d rendering. And so ah We ended up just straight up hiring a contractor whose full job it was during like the last month of development was to try and find any and all thermal gains.
Speaker: Huh. Did it work out? ah Yeah, I mean, it worked out in so much as some people ah didn't have their hands burned off. They just asked why their phone was especially warm. And we basically looked at that and said, you're welcome, instead of we're sorry. Yeah, that's that's good.
Speaker: like, yeah, yeah, no, I'm sorry. Your your phone is getting warm. You can play the game. So there's your Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Yeah, one of the silliest things we did is when you zoom out past a certain point on the map, ah or actually I think just always when you're on the map maybe, um you're just looking at, on low-end devices, you're just looking at a ah static image of the map.
Speaker: with some dynamic objects placed on top of it rather than actually rendering any of the islands? or Hey, that works. yeah Well, it it works to an extent. ah We kept getting asked by players to change that behavior because they would rather have ah like an inconsistent frame rate during that period, but it was actually missing key puzzle information.
Speaker: ah because of how we were handling it, we were not able to do that. So that was unfortunate. Brutal. I don't remember it missing too much in of the context. ah We improved it over time.
Speaker: Yeah, maybe we did. But at at launch, it was not showing where logs were if you had taken them off the island. Oh yeah, we definitely changed that.
Speaker: Yes. Yeah, no, that's a... So what was the ah player reception two Strange Jigsaws? Did you find that a large amount of the people that went for mazes stuck with you for jigsaws?
Speaker: There's certainly been a lot more players of 20 Small Mazes because it's free. and So i don't I don't really know, but people seem to really enjoy the game. Yeah. oo Talking live is not easy for me. I'm used to recording things just with a script.
Speaker: ah This is hard. You guys do this every week? No, no script for free banta. Yeah, yeah. that we we We do do this all the time.
Speaker: Wow. This is tough. You're doing great. Yeah, but you're doing just fine. I did get a chance to play Datori last night, the demo. I thought it was really good. and And like no bugs whatsoever. Like just just like performs perfectly on my machine.
Speaker: And man, there's so much there. It goes so deep. That's what we like to hear. Yeah, there's a lot of hidden stuff. Like I thought I had found the hidden stuff. And then then I found the hidden stuff. That is a game. That is a Drognec published game right there. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: So what brought you from making a game in 13 months, 12 months, ah to in it in an attempt, ah solidifying that you could make like continue to make games, ah what brought you to making three?
Speaker: but Well, so 20 more somehow even smaller mazes. That project's inception is because Strange Jigsaws did pretty well.
Speaker: And I play a lot of games. I see a lot of game creators. And a story I think you could tell about a lot of indies is they they make a game that does pretty well. And then they go and they make the bigger version of that that takes longer to make that sells for more money.
Speaker: And then they go and make the the bigger version of that after that that takes longer to make and costs more money and so on and so forth. And i and eventually, they they just kind of like burn out.
Speaker: So, my goal was to do the opposite of that. Make something that was a smaller game than Strange Jigsaws that took less time to make and that was free.
Speaker: So that that game is is pretty much done at this point. ah it It took a little bit to program and to make make the ideas right, but it's pretty much done. And then I was like, well, there's there kind of two directions I want to go from Strange Jigsaws.
Speaker: One that kind of like leans into the weirdness of it, which is some puzzles. And then one that's more like a little bit more of like a traditional puzzle game, which is Lock-In. um I wanted to make a game that had more than 50 puzzles.
Speaker: I'm really bad at making long games, so I wanted to try to make something a little bit longer. so is is one of those going to be a longer game then? Yeah, a lock-in is going to be a little bit longer. And so so to do that, I have to like actually stick to some mechanics on occasion.
Speaker: Because you can't, it's, I don't say you can't, but it's very difficult to make a ton of puzzles where every puzzle has a slightly different mechanic, that kind of puzzle hunt style. Right. So instead lock in, have like a smaller number of mechanics, but you're iterating on each of them a bit more.
Speaker: I'd say it's, it's more like it has like little areas and the areas kind of have a common theme. it It's also puzzle hunt inspired because I love those things. and That's really after logic puzzles, which is the first kind of puzzle form that I got into puzzle hunts for the next one after that.
Speaker: And I think that's the the biggest influence on why 20 small mazes and strange chick cells look the way they do is they're, they're basically puzzle hunts, but not about word puzzles. So how did you get to some puzzles?
Speaker: How did I get to some puzzles? ah What do you mean by that? I guess. So 20 more somehow even smaller mazes is the smaller, more contained version, i guess, contained, quote unquote, of 20 small mazes. Reverse scope creep version of 20 small mazes. Yes, exactly. Yes, yeah the reverse scope creep.
Speaker: A scope decrease. um ah we need it We need a word for that. What's like the antonym of creep? Stomp? A contraction?
Speaker: I don't know. Anyways, um Lock In is ah the is the bigger game. It's the retaining mechanics, um really diving into that. like where like Where does some puzzles – what creative itch is that scratching?
Speaker: Ah, I see. I understand the question now. um Yeah, I gave a talk at ThinkyCon about frames and games and art and stuff.
Speaker: And i think Strange Jigsaw's kind of steps in the direction from 20 Small Mazes into this kind of weird frame game space. And I want to take a giant leap into it, which is why the game takes place in all of these different windows, these different game windows on your desktop.
Speaker: ah that i I hope I can do something interesting with that. And that's that's really what excites me about it is kind of working with all of these different game windows while you can like still see your desktop.
Speaker: is, as I think, ah a pretty interesting space to work in from both a visual and a puzzle perspective. But because I cut so many things from my games all the time and things are always changing, I i i don't want to get too much into it. but But I think I'm going to do some interesting stuff there.
Speaker: At least I hope you'll find it interesting. Awesome. Do you have any questions for us? ah Yeah. what What is a Draknek?
Speaker: I mean, I guess a Dracnic is just a me. ah Ah, okay. It's just Alan's username. Yeah, i I think I may have told this story on the podcast before. It's a username I originally came up with to because I needed the username to create an account for Diablo 2.
Speaker: Oh, yeah? um And so it was meant to be this kind of ah a adventure-y vibe. It's like, a ah I think the etymology is like ah dragon slayer, cut off the neck of a dragon, dragon neck, drack neck.
Speaker: Oh, I see. But yeah, mostly it was just like, oh, i need I need something that will be a unique username that nobody else has has has used. And then he incorporated as it.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, then it just kind of stuck more than maybe is ideal. It's a real good, how much are you paying attention when you write an email to us ah identifier of how many people write dracnet or dragnek or something like that. Lots of dracnet.
Speaker: Wow, dracnet. Okay. Yeah, we should we should i we should get we should sit on the yeah URLs for the misspellings. I did have another question for you also, Alan. Well, before we do, I wanted to know what's a phleb?
Speaker: What's a phleb? It comes from my name. it It's kind of like what one of those like first letters and then couple letters of the last name. If you say it out loud, it kind of sounds like phleb.
Speaker: So that's how it ended up like that. Nice. Yeah, it's not it's not as exciting as Dreknek. it feels It feels like the right vibe for your game, though, I think. Thanks. So my burning question, Alan.
Speaker: When are we getting holding the baby to? i you know, i think I may have moved on from my art game phase.
Speaker: At the time of recording, ah the Thinky Puzzle Game Jam is starting tomorrow. Oh, there you go. You've put that into my head, so, you know, maybe maybe we'll get ah Holding the Baby 2 this week ah before this podcast is even released. but ah um I enjoy Holding the Baby I mean, you didn't you didn't play holding the baby though. you you You might be aware of holding the baby, but you like only only a handful of people got to play holding the baby. It's true I did not play with original materials, but I did make my own baby.
Speaker: ah that's i don't know I don't know if that is representative of my artistic intent with holding the baby. I'm sorry, Alan.
Speaker: i think I think it's very important that the baby be not actually an alive human baby for the yeah the for the message to come across. Oh, okay. um Yes, this was a... ah a thing i don't i don't know if it was for a jam or if it was let's say an unconference or something but it's for a molly jam molly oh yes the peter molly yeah yeah yeah account seems like it's inspired a lot of games
Speaker: but with a donut county and uh I did not know that that started as a Molly jam game. Not as a Molly jam game, but the, the Molly do Twitter account.
Speaker: Right. It tweeted something about a game about a hole in the ground. And then he, he went from there. Yeah, yeah that that all checks out. We are like five layers deep of institutional knowledge right now.
Speaker: right i mean people even know who Peter Molyneux is? Do people know who Molyneux is? Do people know who Molyneux is? We are so many layers. I'm sorry. You're fine. You're fine. It's just very funny to me.
Speaker: ah Yeah, we we we all know Peter Marlieu. He came to my university once to talk to to to inaugurate the ah the launch of XNA. Oh, wow.
Speaker: did he Did he make any promises about acorns? ah You know, i I wasn't really paying attention to... Okay, the most the most Peter Molyneux story I have is back when I was covering games um before I got into making them.
Speaker: They were demoing a this Kinect on Rails fable thing where you would be in a cart and I guess you would like cast magic or whatever. The Kinect didn't work, so it didn't really kind of matter what the game was. um But he was so mad that press kept calling the game on Rails ah because you could...
Speaker: do different things, I guess, that he um basically took a whiteboard into the meeting room and after every ah time someone finished playing it, he demanded that they sign their name on on the whiteboard that said, I agree that this game is not on Rails.
Speaker: And then he just like posted the whiteboard at the end, being like, see? Respected games writers agree this game is not on Rails. What a character. That's my Peter Molyneux story.
Speaker: What a weird man. And then he went into NFTs.
Speaker: He made the cube game, right? Yeah, he made he made the cube game you game. And then he made Goddess, which is still in access. Okay. It's not been updated in like a decade. i feel like I feel like the cube game was maybe the peak of his mockability. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everything he's done since then has just been a bit bit too unexciting. Not even worth talking about to to joke about it.
Speaker: Yeah, no. Um... Let me We're going to do this live. I'm going to look up what he's been up to. released the game recently. Like, last couple of months. Yeah. Oh, yeah. The Albion game. Right. Because for some reason...
Speaker: for some reason just keely brought him up to be like ah see masters of albion uh i i love that wikipedia uh has here's his uh gameography as uh 22 camps a curiosity what's inside the cube 2012 goddess 2014 goddess wars 2016 the trail frontier challenge 2017 uh legacy 2023 notes section nft game a legacy twenty twenty three notes section nftt game
Speaker: And then, ah yes, Masters of Albion, which led a lot of people in America to learn what an Albion is.
Speaker: I still don't know. I thought it was just like a fantasy world he had made up. Yeah, Albion is like ah fake England, right? Yes, it's it's like historical fictional England. Oh, OK. Like not in a trademark, like in a trademark freeway.
Speaker: Are you learning? Because I'm learning. ah Okay, i'm i'm on the I'm on the Steam page for this game. This game is, in fact, out in early access.
Speaker: Okay, we we cannot more burn more pods talking about Peter Molyneux. Look, I didn't... I've been playing holding the baby a lot. I have five kids.
Speaker: shuha Yeah, so how would you describe where your... game development career is right now oh yeah there's a lot of different ways to like approach that i i like making puzzle games i really want to make puzzle games and like other things too i want to get back to making youtube videos i want to get back to to making some physical stuff as well i don't i don't want to do too much in burnout i just want to get things out the door when they're supposed to So I don't know. I feel like none of my games are going to do as well as Strange Jigsaws.
Speaker: And so I'm kind of preparing myself mentally for that. Because there's never going to be like that surprise again. So and'm I'm just trying to keep making interesting stuff and and hope I can keep making games for as long as possible.
Speaker: it's It's really been a wonderful thing. it's I used to work as a electrical engineer. and did a lot of startup work, did a lot of like medical space work, but this has enabled me to be home with my five kids and to to homeschool them and to kind of be a part of their life where it was tough to do when I was going into the office every day.
Speaker: So they they actually, a lot of them hang out and in the little windowless room where I work in the basement and ah they just kind of like hang out with me all day as I'm making games. My daughter has taken up, my oldest daughter, who is the one who made that the maze in 20 Small Mazes, has taken up to crosswords recently. So she's always asking me about random things in the crossword puzzle.
Speaker: That's delightful. So there's a lot there, I know, but that's that's kind of, for for me, it's less about making games and more about being with my family. And then making games is the fun part that lets me do that.
Speaker: yeah <unk> She's getting old enough that she can start to to get the mazes in 20 small mazes, so she's been testing some of the puzzles in 20 more, somehow even smaller mazes, which is a lot of fun. That's nice.
Speaker: Alan, do you have any last questions? I mean, um I'm curious, you like you described 20 more, somehow even smaller mazes as wanting to go the opposite direction from 20 small mazes, as would be like the traditional development.
Speaker: How did that end up in reality? Do you think it was ah like, did you end up with something less ambitious than 20 Small Maces? Or is it actually mike did it end up being more ambitious than you intended to to be? And did you did you manage to succeed at making something less, less big?
Speaker: I did. i think the Maces are in fact smaller. No, no, no. but Because this and the mazes could be smaller and yet the overall product is like more ambitious. It's not about the th size. That's that's fair. um I guess it probably is a little bit more ambitious than 20 small mazes, but it was not as hard to make.
Speaker: because of the experience making the previous two games. So in that sense, it was an easier game to make, even if the puzzles are a little bit more complex. That's good. Yeah. Are you finding the same is true of some puzzles and lock-in?
Speaker: um
Speaker: Some puzzles is just so like, it's It's trying to do so many things. I don't know. it's that that that That one is is has all kinds of crazy programming and and stuff in it, which which is good. I mean, you want to you want to work on stuff that pushes you so that you can get better. you want to So that that's certainly, I'm having to learn a lot about the Win32 API right now, which is good for me.
Speaker: um Yeah, this is despite just not going to work on like Steam Deck. That's not good for anyone. ah Yeah. How are you going to get this on other operating systems? I don't know if it will.
Speaker: I see. But that's that's part of what I see as an advantage that I can take is I'm willing to not localize things and to make things only work on one operating system.
Speaker: So if there's anything like that, that, you know, doesn't quite work if you add a controller or or you can't localize it or doesn't only works on one operating system. like that That's an opportunity, even though you probably sell less copies.
Speaker: That's true. All right. Do you have any last questions for us? When is the Tori coming out? I got kind of hooked on it. Have we announced that, Alan? We have not. We're still figuring that out. But um but but yeah, he He Who Watches will definitely be before Dittery. That's good too. I've played that too.
Speaker: Yes. I will say stay tuned. ah And if folks have not ah listened to the podcast episode about Dittery, go listen to it.
Speaker: It's a good one. Are you saying that because I wasn't on it? No, no. Brutal.
Speaker: It's fine. I've been busy and traveling all year. So that's for for any listeners who are confused or worried as to why I'm not on every episode these days.
Speaker: It is broadly. ah Sometimes I'm just like in Japan or ah coming soon, ah the UK. Oh, we should record a podcast in person. should record upon I mean, we have, we have better things to do. Well, while you're hanging out in the UK, but you know, yes, yes. We can, we can record a small thing.
Speaker: Anyways, uh, all, all this to say, thank you very much for spending the time and hanging out with us, Paul. Thank you for having me on. Uh, where can people find you and your work?
Speaker: You can find me at FLEBPuzzles.com. I'm also on Blue Sky at FLEB Puzzles, I think is what it is. Great. Awesome.
Speaker: And thanks again. Thank you, Alan, as always. And thank you for listening to the Drackneck and Friends official podcast. Our music is by Priscilla Snow, who you can find at googlenoisemusic.com. Our podcast artwork is by Adam DeGrandis. Our podcast is edited by Melanie Zawadniak.
Speaker: Please write and review us on your podcast service of choice and be sure to tune in next episode for more interesting conversations.
Speaker: you
