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Episode 42: Luis Díaz Peralta "Ludipe" (Sushi For Robots, Thinky Dailies)
221 Plays12 days ago
In this episode, Alan is joined by Luis, the developer of Sushi for Robots and the new "Thinky Dailies." Topics discussed include the Thinky Dailies, his weird and lucky career, and the Draknek New Voices Puzzle Grant.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:21
Speaker
Welcome to the Dragnecker Friends official podcast where we peel back the curtain on puzzle games and the people who make them. I'm Alan, the head Dragnecker, Dragnecker and Friends, and today we're joined by Luiz Día Peralta, also known as Ludipe, who you may know from their work on Seashief Robots or the just released Thinky Dailies. How are you doing today?
What is Thinky Dailies?
00:00:43
Speaker
Hey, Alan. Hey to everybody listening. Yeah, doing good. It's um weird, but exciting to be talking about Thinky Dailies after working on it in secret for a while. So yeah, do you want to talk a bit about what Thinky Dailies is?
00:00:58
Speaker
So Thinky Dailies is, and and I guess you can sort of like get this from the name, but ah it's a daily game. You know, the usual web base and it's hosted on Thinky Games, the portal that has been covering all sorts of Thinky Games.
00:01:12
Speaker
And um we just released it. It's ah it what we call the preview pass where like ah you need to the website and solve the riddle to get in. And basically, um if you're familiar with Wardle and all these games that have one mechanic and you enter the website every day there's a different challenge,
00:01:33
Speaker
We took that structure and did something a bit weirder with it, which is like instead of a new level of something every day, of using the same mechanics, it's like it's some new rules, new puzzles. It's always like a logic puzzle, so like things in that space, but ah one day you are like doing some variation of Sudoku, another day you are drawing lines, another day you are drawing a shading puzzle, and it all comes together with a story that goes along as to complete its puzzle. And yeah, that's Stinky Dailies.
Development Journey of Thinky Dailies
00:02:05
Speaker
How did you get involved in the project? So, um I guess it's unusual, but them um so I was working um two years ago, around two years ago, i was working at them Astra Games, managing the Astra Fellowship, and um at some point, like, Astra moved in a different direction, they weren't doing the fellowship anymore, and Kinein Initiatives, the the entity, the non-profit that funds, like, Astra Games, like, um told me, like, hey, you know, now that you're not doing this for Astra anymore, like, do you want to pitch, like, any ideas? And it was, like,
00:02:43
Speaker
written was real like There wasn't any framing beyond that. It was like um just pitch ideas, which is something I've never struggled with. So I just made documentary with like and a bunch of different ideas that I found interesting. and I thought that ah would be a good fit for them, going in all sorts of directions.
00:03:03
Speaker
And one of those ideas was something about like hosting like ah games somehow, web games, on Thinky Games. um So they they asked me to, you know like oh, this is promising. We don't like the person you're pitching, but keep explaining this.
00:03:21
Speaker
And I kept like working on the idea until I got to a very basic version of Thinky Dailies. I mean, it had all the components already, like the rules change every day, um the narrative, and there was some idea of how to actually build it and and all that.
00:03:40
Speaker
um So at that point, Joe Mansfield from Thinky Games, who I worked with me in the past, and we know each other, ah He was part of the conversation and everybody was like, oh, yeah, this is cool.
00:03:53
Speaker
Let's try this. you know and a I think that um the whole pitch of um web games are being interesting and it's a cool space and it's drawing a lot of of attention. Also, everybody's doing web games today, even LinkedIn has a bunch of you know daily games and all this. So um it's a space where we should try something, but also we should be weird, not just do whatever... whatever everybody is doing.
00:04:19
Speaker
um So again, um that got the green light and I joined the Thinky Games team to start managing the project and hiring people and working on this.
00:04:30
Speaker
And yeah, how long ago was it that you got the green light and you started working on this? So it was some almost two years ago for the first, like almost... um half a year or so.
00:04:44
Speaker
It was only like a few hours. It was more like, um I guess, research or like ah trying to expand an idea. Also, um talking to some people because even though like um we haven't been publicly been talking about Thinky dailies, this is like something that, you know, it was, um we were always like talking internally or like our two to peers or like people we knew about the project and trying to get their feedback.
00:05:07
Speaker
So on that, on those first few months, I was like, I'm, ah trying to get the details right, and also just having calls with people that were in the similar space and just taking them the idea and asking, like, hey, does this sound, like, crazy? i Like, ah from from the experience, like, ah what are some v blocks of challenges, like, we are going to run into? Also talking to to to potential people because, um I mean, this daily game requires, like, somebody to beat the whole, like,
00:05:39
Speaker
infrastructure, the software, and also we needed like puzzle designers. And also like, um, we, we knew that ah we wanted the daily puzzles to feature some art. Uh, but, uh, we also have questions about like the way we wanted to approach that.
00:05:53
Speaker
So I was talking to a lot of people, um, seeing out what sounded like a good idea, getting feedback, also trying to, you know, like, uh, gather fees to, to make a budget.
00:06:04
Speaker
And, um, it's a thing that, uh, but Yeah, the project entered production after seven, eight months, something like that. And I'm i'm curious, are there any interesting ways of it like what you've ended up with differs from what you were originally pitching?
00:06:24
Speaker
mean, even today, we have so many questions that we'll probably, we'll surely take this with the feedback people give us. But yeah, we have...
00:06:36
Speaker
We have so many questions, like for example, once you start, like even the basic premise, like, ah you know, each day you have like a different set of mechanics and then just start getting like um some very straightforward questions like, hmm, but would it be cool if um there was, you know, we repeated some puzzles, so there was some sort of progression and there's the they initial a question of, is this like, I guess, the creative premise or do we still like this?
00:07:01
Speaker
And then we started like, you know, like, ah okay about that And we had like somebody, I don't know, like, how if I would call this like a cheap prototype, but you know i would go into a spreadsheet and try to make like a fake calendar and put like sort of like Like, hey, you know, this is what, like, a whole month of puzzles could look like. And we were like, oh, yeah, like, we like some repetition, but, you know, it can be, like, one day after another because if you did a, don't know, Nurikare on Tuesday and you know that you're going to get, like, a new Nurikare on Wednesday, that sort of defeats the idea of the surprise. So we know we want to repeat some, but, you know, how? Do we, like, Tuesdays we do this? Or is it, like, and it was, like, a...
00:07:45
Speaker
slow process of, oh, yeah, we want to feature like some genres in the same month or the same couple of of months, but don't make it predictable. I still have some sense of progression.
00:07:57
Speaker
I'm getting like harder passages within ah a specific genre. And um it sounds like very basic, but don't know. It feels like whenever you are trying to do something...
00:08:10
Speaker
I guess, a bit more different from your main references. You end up questioning pretty much everything and no question really like i seems to have like got like a trivial like answer. like Even, you know, daily games have ah um have this thing about sharing how well you did it. You do Wordle and you share this emoji grid that has the green and the yellow and the gray squares and tell everybody how many tries it took you to to to get your word right and all that.
00:08:44
Speaker
And many, many different like ah daily games have sort of inherited that in one way or another. feels like it's part of the experience, right? Like sharing it on social media, sharing it your friends.
00:08:56
Speaker
And for example, with Thinky Daily, we spend a lot of time like trying to think if there was something that came natural. It's tricky, right? Because we have different mechanics, different grid sizes. Sometimes we don't even have a grid.
00:09:13
Speaker
And we don't really have like a universal solution format that you can share to show to others how well you did it. ah So in the end, we went with something more classic, like, hey, we are going to share an image of the drawings we have for the narrative, or we are going to share like an image of the puzzle, a mix of those. But we did spend, for example, like a really long time trying to come up with something more akin to, again, what Wardle was doing. But yeah, lots of let's all back and forth to a research and discussions.
Luiz's Path into Game Development
00:09:45
Speaker
Yeah. um Going back ah like much much further than Thanky Daily's, what got you into game development originally? um i never thought, um i mean, growing up, I never thought I would end up making games. like um I always played games. um I remember like um being a teenager and downloading things like RPG Maker and i doing some things, but um i would like i I don't love like the programming part of it.
00:10:16
Speaker
And I didn't have a more artistic, in terms of visual arts inclination. That's a discipline that I could have worked on more, but I didn't at the time. And that didn't appeal to me, like spending a lot of time practicing my own skills. And you know when you're a teenager, like um I guess you you see like game development teams, you are like 14, 15 years and you're like, oh, it's for Amazon artists. And I don't seem to fit in one of those boxes so I don't know maybe I don't make games or like obviously you heard about like some game designer that was in an interview but ah you know back then I thought it sounded like more of an ideas guy which
00:10:58
Speaker
I never also, I didn't see myself as a game designer either. i'm In university, much later, um I don't recall like how I remember, I was ah playing things like Feth and Super Meat Boy and these indie games that were like, ah it was the first time I was discovering like these smaller games and I was like, oh, this is cool. And I remember browsing the internet and seeing somebody talk about Lund there um the game jam and um
00:11:29
Speaker
I looked it up, and I entered up the page and it's like, oh, the next Lundar is starting in four or five days. And I still had no idea how to actually build something. um I wasn't aware of the many accessible tools such as, you know, like Twine, PuzzleScript, I just like was was unaware of the whole scene.
00:11:52
Speaker
um And at university back then I was studying maths, and but I just like... I just learned how to write some basic Python scripts back then. So I was ano probably Googling something like ah game engines. In the past, I used RPG makers. I was like, I'm guessing there are like some new tools in this space that I could use.
00:12:14
Speaker
And... um I stumbled upon Construct and um I downloaded it and I followed a quick tutorial that took 10 minutes on how to do a basic 2D platforming game.
00:12:27
Speaker
was like, okay, I was ready to join Lundae. And but yeah, joined the jam, made a platforming game because I knew I could do that thanks to the tutorial. um And basically I didn't...
00:12:43
Speaker
then I didn't know I wanted to make games. I just enjoyed the jam and I kept making, doing more jams. And then I started like reading more about everything and understanding like ah what game design actually involves. And I love the whole like challenge of, you know, making your thesis on like of out of all the things you could do in this level or with this mechanic or with this interface.
00:13:11
Speaker
trying to narrow it down, iterate and all that. um I started getting more and more interested and yeah, i I slowly got into like, um I always took a small steps. um I was making my my small, young games and I was like, is this now like something I could do for icon a career or a long time or like, don't know.
00:13:35
Speaker
to test myself, i e I tried to make like a longer game, like something that was um longer that weekend. And I started making this this small game and i remember this this small game and I remember going to to ah pixels to the TikTok forums. Everybody was in the TikTok forums back then.
00:13:54
Speaker
don't know how active they are like nowadays. And um I remember waiting a pause. um I wanted to make a game and I am very like i was doing the the design code, if we can call that in Constru, it's visual programming.
00:14:10
Speaker
And the production, I was like, hey, I want to make a game and I want to finish this. I don't know if it will be a good game. just want to finish something. And all I can say is that I'm very stubborn when I say I'm going to try to finish something. And I mentioned, I remember saying that I thought that making decent game was going to be terribly hard.
00:14:35
Speaker
So I didn't want to make a commercial game. I wanted to make something for free because I felt that, again, trying to make something that that wasn't horrible was already big of a challenge. So um what was this project that you had in your mind?
00:14:48
Speaker
Yeah, um it's called Misinteresslation. I eventually released on Steam. I worked with three more people from all over the world. And it was back in the day when...
00:15:00
Speaker
free to play games, not free to play games, completely free games on Steam weren't a thing. I remember getting a message from the Steam curation team, like, hey, you made a mistake. You set your game to free. And I'm like, no, no, it's correct. And they were like, but you forgot to add in-game purchases and all that. And I'm like, oh no, I didn't. That's question. They were like, okay, this is weird, but whatever. And you know, back then, free games on Steam weren't as common. And this was released in 2015. Correct.
00:15:35
Speaker
Was this green light? Was this post green light? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. totally forgot i about that. But yeah, you went through green light. Right. So yeah, you had to yeah you had to like submit it and like there was these these voting systems. And so if it got voted to the top, then Valve would accept the next batch of like highest rated games that were submitted to Greenlight and those could get onto Steam proper. um So yeah, it ah Steam was a very different place.
00:16:08
Speaker
Yeah, I had to have forgotten about Greenlight. That like a whole thing back then. um and so yeah like they they were like hey you've made a mistake you're like no this is meant to be free um and yeah did you did you end up getting decent sized um like like did did did people play it and give you feedback and like did you get from it what you were hoping to Yeah, I mean, like, um'm you know, like, when I look back, like, there obviously, like ah like, a million things that I i don't like about the project, but I could do it in much different way by now.
00:16:46
Speaker
But yeah, like, um back then, it was like, um it allowed me to test myself, to do something longer, to finish it. over 400,000 people played it back then, I still like stumbled upon people that were like, oh yeah, you mean Tida, oh wow, I played it back then, go there.
00:17:00
Speaker
ah So yeah, even though, you know, I don't love everything that game, it was like, I'm very happy I i made that at that moment. That was the next part.
Misinteresslation and Balancing Life
00:17:10
Speaker
When you say longer game, like, what what are we talking?
00:17:14
Speaker
um So, even though it's, ah I mean, I spent less than a year, like ah almost a year like working on it, so... um Back then also, like i was I was still studying maths. I was also like ah ah to live for free in Madrid, the city I moved to, to study at the university. I was also like working in in my student residence to be able to live for free in Madrid. I was also working as a chess teacher in private schools to to get some money. And you know I started making um making this game and and I got lucky. like ah
00:17:48
Speaker
Right from the start, some events displayed the game, and I even got like some money from my work that allowed me to travel a bit. And then at some point, I was you know like ah impact of trying to be part of the local community, understanding that what the game industry was about, and working on this game, and working on as a chess teacher, and working on the student residence, and going to class, and everything. And at one moment, my my body was like, ah, this not happening.
00:18:16
Speaker
And so, yeah, but after like I published the game, I took the doing the thing that you shouldn't do, which is like, ah hey, let's start a studio and dive in here and see where it takes us.
00:18:32
Speaker
And so you you did, that that was for what you did after? yeah yeah. I started that thing with like um with some people I have met like ah in local game jams and we're all in that same space of, we have done a few things. ah We like this, we have ideas for like a longer project. um You know, bob we don't know much about anything, but let's try to get together and try to make um a commercial game and and see what happens. I guess this is supposed to be the next step, even though, you know, right now I would recommend myself myself to maybe go and try to work with a more experienced team, learn from them before you go and do this trip.
00:19:14
Speaker
ah Yeah, so what what did you start trying to make with that team? um So we took like, um um we had made like a game for game called The Night Henry Allen Die, which was like a um this small game where you are like attending like a friend's funeral and you're trying to puzzle together, like i piece together the the story and what happened, even though um they came like the didn't have a conclusion. You're going around, talking to people, finding out new conversation topics, talking to more people, but the game just ended when you chose to leave the funeral. So... um
00:19:52
Speaker
We went on and decided to make a commercial version out of that. um Needless to say, that the journey was like um crazy because um so many things happened in between. like ah We wanted to do a Kickstarter early on to get some funding for the project.
00:20:11
Speaker
We did them get like 20,000 euros on Kickstarter. By the way, we were on like some headlines on Kotaku and some international press because there was a glitch on our Kickstarter campaign that when it finished, like a...
00:20:26
Speaker
Kickstarter wasn't able to like get the payments from about 95% of our backers. And our backers were emailing us and telling us, like, um my bank is charging me like ah invoices of zero euros every few minutes. And Kickstarter was like, oh, yeah try to ask them to re-enter all the information. if If you don't fix this, like ah I guess you'll lose the money. But it got on the press, and suddenly everything got magically fixed.
00:20:56
Speaker
um We also, like um I guess, like ah um we were working with a small publisher back then and this ah everything seems like a long story, but ah there was also like on some international news because um our publisher, like we started having like some legal issues with them. were like ah we wanted to like We saw that they weren't like ah doing what we expected from them.
00:21:19
Speaker
We have this ah clause on the contract to hey, you know, we're going to pay you this and then we're going to walk away. But then they wanted to get into trials. But then they started having legal issues with all their teams. And they, in the end, they disappeared. They went to another, like, continent. don't know if it was... um I forgot it was so long ago. I don't know it was Peru or Colombia. They disappeared. Nobody heard from them ever since. from Nobody from that publisher.
00:21:50
Speaker
And we all like a little of the teams finally were free. And we managed to get like ah like a big investment from Kooloom Knights. And we made this... huge game that we shouldn't have been making as a first prize. It was like an open world narrative game with over 200,000 words where like ah things are always happening even if you're not there to witness them. And somehow we released that on PC and all the consoles, even in Stadia. So it was quite a journey.
00:22:18
Speaker
Cool. And what was that game called?
A Place for the Unwilling and Freelancing
00:22:20
Speaker
um' A Place for the Anguilling. And basically, um after finishing that, like you know we felt like ah lucky because, hey, now we have like a big portfolio piece out there for everybody. And with the funding, you know like ah we had more savings when we started the studios. That was nice. But also, you know like it wasn't like um enough to fund a whole project and... ah We didn't feel like um know risking everything and trying to do something crazy and wild from there. So we just like, car ah you know, went in the wrong direction. um
00:22:56
Speaker
I found myself thinking like, what does one making, like I i did the indie thing. don't feel like. trying to make in the games to pay all my bills. So and i guess that what I do now is go to a AAAS2, I'm not sure.
00:23:14
Speaker
Yeah, like that was i was like my extra reason. I was still like, ah you know, I was- I mean, this this whole story is is very like, oh yeah, this is this like is how you did things a decade ago. And like thinking about doing it now, it's like, oh, the the world has changed.
00:23:30
Speaker
exactly And, you know, I was lucky. I love, like, going to conferences and to local meetups. But, you know, everybody I talked to was, like, either, like, a working on their indie game or, like, working on Apple A Studios or just, like,
00:23:42
Speaker
So I guess this is like the two things you do. And then somebody I knew from events and everything, and he was like a making a VR game, a small thing.
00:23:54
Speaker
And he called me and he was like, hey, do you want to freelance for a couple of months and make some mechanics for this? I was like, sure. And when that finished, like a couple more people called me for things for like, hey, do you want to freelance on this? I was like, sure.
00:24:12
Speaker
I realized like years have passed. I was like happy. Like that allowed me to have like a healthy work-life balance, which I value a lot. And I like the projects and like the flexibility. I was like, oh, I guess this is something I could do, but I didn't realize it.
00:24:28
Speaker
Amazing. And yeah, so missing translation and was puzzly.
Interest in Puzzle Games and Blip Bloop
00:24:32
Speaker
um Places of the Unwilling wasn't really. um Yeah, but is it in this phase when you ah were doing lots of freelancing that you he started doing more puzzle stuff?
00:24:48
Speaker
Yeah, i mean, I was like, um obviously like at that point I was i was doing everything. Like ah whenever I want to tell people like my Some of my crisis, like ah freelancing, green design geeks, involve gamifying the largest social network in the world for big farmers.
00:25:06
Speaker
it um ah Excuse me, learning so much lore about you on this call. um yeah please Please elaborate on the largest... For for for those in the audience who who aren't familiar with the largest social network for pig farmers, just give us a bit of background on that. i wasn't aware of myself either. like ah so I was like you asking so many questions like um and I don't remember like um the exact traffic. I remember going to website and seeing the stats and I was like, oh, wow, this is like...
00:25:36
Speaker
way bigger than I anticipated. And I was asking people like, but you know, like who is, who is making this? And they're like, oh no, like the the biggest shop in the world that sends like that equipment for these farms, like um manage this social network you'll have all these ads and go to a shop and buy these things. so sense for them and then i started seeing like the content the on the social network i was so confused because most of the posts were like uh like somebody posting screens like pictures from like their like son's birthday um i thought you were gonna be talking about like farming or something like that I just did like, um i had like some very random things like that. i also had like some likeke like, I don't know, like ah random but like um cool gigs that I enjoyed a lot. Like I had the chance to work with Passio Animation is Studios, which is this animation studio that has made like amazing things. I think, don't know.
00:26:34
Speaker
want to make a mistake about it and they have dance that have been nominated for Biosca I think oh no don't quote me on that uh but yeah like they they do like amazing things and they got like um some some funding just to experiment like working on a game just for fun and um I got like I got paired with like one of their um uh creative directors which was like a very cool person and and we have like a on the disc goals and then I go design a game and work with the team. So I just did like a lot of like random stuff around, like a lot.
00:27:06
Speaker
And um I like ah most of this were like super rated to puzzle games at first, but that was something I was like doing on my free time. And one of the things that I really liked about freelancing is that I was able to work like just three, four days a week, you know, still like a,
00:27:25
Speaker
dan a de income and that would give me like ah time and energy you know to um to work on smaller games. And also felt that, hey, I'm getting paid to practice my skills, um and then i but it still leaves me with energy to go and do my projects.
00:27:41
Speaker
I was trying to figure out like um o the kind of games that I enjoyed making. like I knew that um I wasn't super like a huge fan of like umm making games with combat. It was just like, you know, I play all sorts of games. Some of the games I play have combat.
00:27:58
Speaker
I was just like, ah, I think we have lot of this. I'm interested in doing something else. I thought that, don't know, I tried a bit with narrative games, I tried with other things. I was like, and then I got to, you know, more puzzly games. I'm like, oh, actually, you know what? Like, um this has this discuss all the things that I was kind of looking for, um like that sense of progression that, I don't know, the players like discovering something and mastering this.
00:28:25
Speaker
um But, you know, it doesn't have like all the things that either like I didn't like I wanted to work on or I, I feel I was like really good at and um when I actually like I think that the project that helped me discover all this was um Bleep Loop which was a project I actually like started like um making like during A Place for vanguing doing the uh during that huge narrative game I I wanted to design some puzzles and I started this project that it was literally like ah something I worked on like uh
00:28:58
Speaker
don't know, three, four hours every one or two weeks. um And it was like cooperative, I mean, you can play alone, but it's ah more fun if you play with another person. It's a puzzle game which has the usual sliding mechanic, a but can on games were due pull so tellla you that, where you press a direction and your character moves in that direction and then until they collide with something.
00:29:21
Speaker
And Blip, Blip is like that, but um you control two characters, so it's about like a, getting one somewhere so the other can bump into them and they can reach like a specific position. And that was, like I guess, the the the second like ah partly game after a misintrification that I made. And um when I finished Bleep Bloop, I was more sure about, oh, yeah, I like this. I want to keep making stuff like this and exploring this space.
00:29:49
Speaker
Yeah. And um like Bleep Bloop, how how quick a project was that? Super, super fun. I mean, I don't recall how much, like ah when I started that when I finished it, but like as as I said, like it was like a working felt very...
00:30:06
Speaker
very ba little hours on you like ah felt like very painless. I worked on it on two Sunday afternoons and after that I was already showing at some events and people were having fun with it and um I wasn't sure like um what to do with it. like I didn't feel like I could grab the interest of um ah car a bigger partner to help me release it. I also had other things and I didn't feel I had the energy to go through like a proper, like a, you know, a policy network. Also, um I was, like I never considered myself a programmer. I have experience with visual programming tools and with logic, but back then I was still like getting the hand of all these and I was struggling with some technical things that, ah I mean, there were small frictions, but they were annoying me.
00:30:59
Speaker
And this local publisher that I knew and we had worked on things in the past, like, approached me and was like, hey, you know, I want to publish your game. And I was, like, very honest with them because I knew them. was like, I don't think, you know, this is going to be wild or whatever and you don't have, like, a track record of, like, publishing success. But... um Tell you what, it's been a bit painful for me to actually finish the programming part of this. And I also don't have, I'm not going to be able to do a proper release or anything.
00:31:33
Speaker
um I want you to hire the some friends, the developers of a game called Pile of Circles. They are like amazing developers. They used to make games for Lego. I love them. i was like, hey, I want you to give me money so they can remake the whole game in another engine and they can make the port and everything and then we release the consoles and, you know, everything.
00:31:53
Speaker
That way I'll be happy. I won't have to do these technical challenges that are like, yeah, tiring me too much. Interesting. So you made the whole game, then hired this other team to just remake it all in a less hacky way.
00:32:11
Speaker
Yeah, and that's something that's happened again, like, recently. But yeah, talked to them, I remember, like, I prepared this GDD, like, I explained everything. And again, they're, like, amazing developers, and and we know each other really well. And we're on a call, and he was like, yeah, I don't care about your GDD. I'm just reversing GDD everything. He would call me, and he would ask me, like, hey, is this an amazing, like, too slow and sluggish because you like it to be, like, a slow and bad, or just because you can't code a better version? Like, I'll be later. Please, like, make it work. Yeah. And obviously, like that was that was necessary to to port it but like ah
00:32:47
Speaker
what Like, if you're playing on PC, what would would people notice the difference between that first version that you made and the like released version? Oh, like the console version is the same. like I mean, that no the... Oh, yeah, sorry. I mean, like, if if people were able to play your prototype, that then they reverse engineered, like, are the differences, like, subtle? or like Or is it like, oh, yeah, if if feel this has really bad game feel? Or like...
00:33:15
Speaker
Subtle. More more like um there are like things that if you pushed a bit too far, like ah you could get more easily to box or to things that seem unpolished. But the they feel itself, except for like something that they accelerated to because I couldn't go proper polishes and all that, um it except for that, like it was all like pretty one-to-one copy and they did an amazing job just like making that in. think it took them Month or something. Yeah, I think it was a month to to remake the whole game.
00:33:47
Speaker
Yeah, because it's it's not a ah big game. um I'm curious, like when you were designing it, how did you choose what mechanics to add to that ice sliding gameplay?
00:34:00
Speaker
Was it just a case of like you ah you you added for four mechanics and you were like, yep, this is fine? Or was there a lot of iteration there? So I have this thing where like I try, for some reason, I try to make life harder for myself.
00:34:14
Speaker
Like I take something that people say like, oh this is good. This is what you're supposed to make. I'm like, yeah, I'm not trying to do the opposite just for time and see what happens. And at the ah at the moment, I think that Game Maker Stokey was already like a huge thing, I think, back then. like ah But, you know, there was this basic they basic thing about...
00:34:32
Speaker
proper game design and proper level design where it's like, hey, you introduce element A, you introduce element B, and then you combine them to discover new deaths. And I totally understand why that works and that why that's cool and why 90% of the games do that. I was like, okay, I want to do a game that goes in the opposite direction.
00:34:53
Speaker
um I don't want to combine mechanics. I want to make words that have a different, i like one mechanic and and that's it. And then you move and you have a different one. And I knew that, them I mean, I explained the basic mechanism of lip loop. It's all about movement and you are restricted because you don't get to go in a different direction until you hit a wall.
00:35:13
Speaker
So I was like, okay, so each new mechanic has to break this premise in a harder way. So the the second world, like you have these things that ah allow you to stop at some point in the in the air, in the mirror movement.
00:35:28
Speaker
Third world, you are like a half that, but it's like you can enable and disable like huge chunks of wall. And this keeps escalating until in the in the last world, you are basically like a Also on top of the characters moving like some large pieces of the stage and kind of changing the whole space.
00:35:48
Speaker
And yeah, there was situation, a lot of situation in, you know, like a very fast, like, hey, you know, ah what mechanic comes in the second world, what comes in the third world, what comes in the fourth world. But I was very stubborn with my whole premise of,
00:36:01
Speaker
um mechanics are gonna stay separated and each new mechanic is gonna break the basic premise of the game in a harder way and that's something I don't think I even like change my mind around And then was Bleep Bloop the project that put you on Astra's radar for the Fellowship?
00:36:22
Speaker
No, actually not. I was like still making a bunch of small games. I've never stopped making small
Involvement with Astra Fellowship
00:36:30
Speaker
games. That's something like for game jams. That's something I absolutely adore, and I still do.
00:36:35
Speaker
of them and the game that put me in a stress radar would be sushi for robots which I made for a loom daddy and it was some I wanted to try to take like automation games where you know you have plenty of options to like um make an optimal setup and see if I could like a make them um very minimal like a know, optimism being were like, hey, you need to place an item somewhere. So this whole setup that you already have on the screen um moves faster. In this case, um it's all about like getting sushi to the clients who happen to to be robots. And I published that and um the figure out from the young person was good. i Lots of people, as it usually happens, saying saying like, oh yeah, you have turned this into a commercial game. And me being like, I mean, I do see how
00:37:26
Speaker
it I have some ideas for spamming it, but turning this into a commercial game, it's a lot of time and energy. And I, I was pretty much sure that, uh, even though thought this game had like some good feedback on the jam, it wasn't going to do well commercially.
00:37:43
Speaker
Um, and I wanted to, you know, um, when I'm not like, uh, when I'm not like doing work for hire, when I'm doing prints for fun, I try to value a lot, like, um,
00:37:54
Speaker
what do I feel like doing? What's gonna, you know, like i fill me with energy. I don't want this to become like an obligation or a slog or whatever. um So even though I was, you know, ah I excited about some of the potential things I could do with that idea. I was really sure about like getting myself ah into a long development. so And so just one day I got like a Twitter DM from Eileen Hollinger. from i Now I know her and I,
00:38:24
Speaker
I think she's amazing and she has loved me so much. ah But back then I had zero contests on her and she just sent me like a DM, like, hey, you know I found three for robots and I stumbled across some other games on each.
00:38:39
Speaker
And this is cool. And I'm working with a non-profit on maybe in like ah giving money for free to developers to make their games. Could you be interested in this? and um was a bit weird.
00:38:51
Speaker
Like, you know, like, many days, like, people come to your DMs often to give you money. I mean, it happens, but, you know, they are not this way legit. They are mostly a scam. But I was, you know, my, my, my I guess, what I always do in this situation is like, as long as you're not asking me for my credit card or my password or anything short, like, let's go along with this.
00:39:13
Speaker
And she was like, okay, cool, I'm gonna need this to get you in the process. And I start talking about this. And, you know, like, I, trying to explain this to your family, like, hey, so what are you up to? Like, oh yeah, this person I didn't know from the other part of the world said like they might be giving me like a money too to you know to to work on my games, but so you give them money back if they do well. No, no, Yeah, my my friends made a lot jokes about that. That first batch was, was it six of you?
00:39:46
Speaker
um yeah Yeah, I think it was six so far. It was like a still like fairly low-key. So that that first batch of the Astra fellowship, um we were given the funds and told to work on what we wanted. I had some check-ins with Eileen, but there were some parts that were added later on, like having like a Discord and a community and activities or having a mentor that wasn't... um in place back then it was being implemented at the end of my year and that was actually why I got like a second year right away everybody got like a second year like the whole premise was like hey we wanted to more we can't just prime in the fans we want to more actively support you that didn't happen this year because we were trying to figure out what we were doing uh so we want you to be you know part of
00:40:40
Speaker
this new year so we can give you like ah what we hoped to give you from the from the very start. And I think ah maybe Fushi for Robots ended up taking a bit longer than you were expecting. um Were you also doing other stuff at the same time?
00:40:57
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was um i was ah doing like still like making lots of small games. i was also like I've always like also like enjoyed like um running events of all sorts, like from small local things to the crazier things. I was also like a um organizing some big events in in that time. like For example, we did this thing called Bitsoma where we took 40 developers to a tiny village with only 10 inhabitants in the middle of the Spanish countryside and stayed there for a week.
00:41:26
Speaker
And we got lucky, nobody got hard. People seemed happy and had fun. And we did that the next year as well. and And I was, again, like ah doing some I'm like, yeah, geeks, I guess, like, Karina, the entity funding astra the Astra Fellowship, like, also, like, offered us some um extra opportunities to collaborate with other people. So I was doing a bit of everything. And don't know, I guess that um that matched my personality. Like, I like not having to...
00:41:58
Speaker
um not feeling forced because, again, I was free to choose what to with my time, but I like not feeling forced to having to work on the game every day. Like maybe if I felt a bit stuck, I could go work on an event or something for three four days um and then come back. And that also allowed me, with the freelancers I was working with, you know, like ah that allowed for like a calmer pace because I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, I missed these assets in...
00:42:24
Speaker
in a couple of months and this is fine, this is black space, I don't have a street deadline or anything. ah But yeah, it definitely like took like more time than I was expecting it to. It also like turned me to... like if they The image had are the yeah maybe of I had of the game at first um also grew a bit in terms of polish, in terms of content that was doing. and Yeah, I'm happy. I took a bit of extra time. Also, obviously, like ah it would be a much different story if I didn't get another year of fellowship, you know, of the grand money. Everything is much easier when somebody is just handing you money and telling you to do whatever you want.
00:43:09
Speaker
I wish it was always like that. Yeah, I mean, I i knew this story, ah but like listening to you to tell it, I'm like, God, is this going to be like a ah really like ah kind of like an episode where people listen like, what? Fuck you. That's that's not allowed. Yeah.
00:43:32
Speaker
It's yeah, like I was, um, three four roads came on the steam, then and came on mobile phones and more recently came out on consoles. And, uh, um, I was, um, don't know, I was invited to, to, to, to do like a presentation of the game the Nintendo offices in Madrid. And I was the whole point of the, pre game i was like, Hey, you know, this obviously took like a work and care from lot of people, um not only me, but also like, um, a lot of luck because like,
00:44:01
Speaker
um Sure, like i had to and the whole team had to work on this game so you can play it right now, but without that random lack of somebody finally finding my game and i'm thinking they could give me some money to work that, without that but that lucky bit, the commercial version wouldn't exist either today.
00:44:22
Speaker
Yeah, I saw i saw a photo of that press conference you you did for the Switch release of SushiFrobots. And yeah, like, it it looks very, like, it's like, whoa, that looks like a real press conference, like, with with real people. What's what's going on?
00:44:37
Speaker
is that Is that a normal thing for, like, Switch releases in in Spain to get that? Um, they, like, um, so the thing is that they they they they're, like, super friendly people. They are always happy, like, whenever you're releasing, like, you know, Switch, like, uh,
00:44:52
Speaker
they are like happy to set it up for you. like Maybe you're already on Thursday, and maybe a new Pokémon is coming out on Thursday, and it can't do that day. But they're always happy to... And even when they are like... ah that's That's just like um you know what the the staff at Nintendo Spain is trying to do. and Sometimes they get this direction, hey, you have to do these commercials for TV or whatever, and we want you to get like some influencers, some YouTubers or whatever, to talk about the Super Mario Maker. um And they're also like, okay, we'll do that, but what...
00:45:22
Speaker
You know, if on top of that we do, like, a couple of bits where we actually bring, like, a Spanish game developers from the industry to maybe design some levels on Mario Maker, and that's something that they the they want to push, and I'm super grateful. Again, they're always happy to to help, like, national teams.
00:45:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it feels like we've gone a real tour of your...
00:45:51
Speaker
Very unique career.
00:45:54
Speaker
jump on everything that seems fun and interesting and even though, while it sounds like weird and experimental, you know, maybe I figured out that's not my thing and you know, I don't repeat that, but I don't know, I have to say that whenever like somebody mentioned like, oh, let's do this that you haven't ever done before, I'm like, okay, that sounds fun. At least for the first time, you know, we'll see afterwards.
00:46:19
Speaker
Is there anything you you haven't done that you're like, oh, this is is something I want to like put some energy into going in this direction? after too many things. so yeah you're just You'll just put energy out into the world and see what happens to you.
00:46:36
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. like at them then I'm not the kind of person that has like one thing in mind. i like I need to do this. you know This is specifically. I'm more like, hey, I have like a bunch of things I want to explore.
00:46:48
Speaker
um Maybe I have the chance to explore one of these. Maybe I'll have the chance to explore something else that I haven't thought of that I still find. think it's cool. Like for example, on you know, before like we mentioned that um I was part of the of the Astra fellowship. At the end of my two years of the Astra fellowship, um Eileen like ah suggested me as ah the person to head the fellowship and manage it.
00:47:12
Speaker
And then I discovered that I was also like a, really entering that space of trying to think how to support people. And um and the same way that, ha know I guess, I enjoy, like ah I don't mind iterating or putting out of energy into thinking about team design.
00:47:31
Speaker
I also enjoy like putting out of like ah time thinking about how to support others. um um I mean, I'm also doing a bit of work with New Voices and also working with a public incubator.
00:47:43
Speaker
and in Madrid. I've been doing that for the last couple of years. I also work as a university teacher and that's a different space from making games itself but I found that, hey, that's something I never really considered thought about but that's something I enjoy and I like to keep working in that direction as well in the in the future. I also want to work a bit more with physical games. I do a bit of file control stuff. I want to do a bit more board games and actually I'm kind of go typing and doing something in that direction right now.
00:48:15
Speaker
ah But yeah, um I'm just happy to go along and you know maybe explore some of things I have in mind, maybe go in a different direction. I don't really like to stress myself about
Supporting Game Developers
00:48:27
Speaker
that.
00:48:27
Speaker
Before we wrap up, is there anything you want to ask me or pick my brain about? Yeah, like so for example, um you know in this direction that we mentioned about supporting others, obviously like you have given this some thought because, hey, you know new voices and the program has been running for three years. all that I guess that um my question would be, do you think there's something meaningful in terms of supporting game developers that, you know,
00:49:01
Speaker
It's harder for you based on your position and your resources, but other entities, other actors in the game industry, you know, could have like a very easy, like, it'd be easy for them to actually do that thing and um help plenty of game developers.
00:49:17
Speaker
I mean, just ah give out a much of money, right? i yeah mean because Like, like, Draknek. runs the New Voices program. um We've done this a few times now, like very inspired by the Astro Fellowship, which i I guess didn't mention, but I was from the second year onwards, I was one of the mentors for the Astro Fellowship. And that's how I originally really got to know you.
00:49:41
Speaker
um And I just saw like just the value of like, oh yeah, just... I mean, like, yeah, the value of like essentially DMing random people and saying, hey, can I give you some money? We're not, like, it's not it's not the process for the New Voices Grants, but ah it's like, it's kind of the vibe we want, I guess, maybe.
00:50:02
Speaker
um And for the people selected, it's so impactful. And if if we can run this at like the tiny size we are um with basically no resources um other than the small amount of sponsorship money that we get in, if we can dedicate the time and energy and to make it happen...
00:50:27
Speaker
and go, yeah, this is it's going to be a bit of work, but like it's not going to be so much work that we can't get other stuff done. ah think so many other companies could do something like that. ah if they're able to prioritize something other than just dollar, dollar, dollar go up.
00:50:48
Speaker
So, yeah, i think I think there's a lot of scope for, for like, i mean, yeah, but the the big AAA companies with all the money, like, will never care enough about giving back to, like, set something up. But, like, I think there's a a lot of companies at drag-necks scale or slightly bigger or slightly smaller that,
00:51:10
Speaker
could find the spare bandwidth to reinvest in like supporting other developers um in a way that will be work, but like wouldn't be ah too disruptive.
00:51:23
Speaker
That's the thing, right? Like ah like you said, like everybody likes their numbers going up, up, up. I'm always thinking, well, something that that will be easier to... you know to tell them and and and, you know, like they will have like as much as a fix, like, oh, it's like, oh, no, it's, yeah, it's time of giving free money, it's just like, because, you know, like, it's gonna happen in some way and hopefully that actually tricks them into giving money away for free.
00:51:49
Speaker
And I think the thing i found is that once you start doing something like this, it's so much easier to just keep going with it. um Like we started the New Voices Grant at a place ah where Dragneck was like,
00:52:05
Speaker
doing pretty well. We had like a decent amount of cash on hand and we had like the the band reps. and like Now we're busier than we've ever been before.
00:52:17
Speaker
but like so we're like We wouldn't have been able to spin up the New Voices grants in 2025, but but And we've learned how to do it. So like the effort involved in doing it again is like not massive.
00:52:35
Speaker
And um like we're we're feeling the money pinch more than we were um back when we started it. But um we're just able to shift more that forward.
00:52:49
Speaker
or like ah a lower percentage of the money is coming from Jackneck a high percentage is coming from sponsors um but uh we can we can still justify it even though um like if we were if were yeah if we're spinning up something new that's like oh god there's there's so many other things we need to be doing is this is this a priority so I think figuring out the point at which you're in a position where like you can take a breather and go, like no this is this is a moment to do something good, to to reinvest energy externally.
00:53:27
Speaker
um And like I think so many companies right now are just in panic mode of like, oh God, everything's unsustainable. So it's... ah Do you think you think that even if we are at that point of the...
00:53:42
Speaker
running the industry that if you went on and, you know, like, spoke a bit more like, don't through articles or videos or whatever, like, hey, you know, like, here's what we're doing with the new voices in terms of, like, here's how we run it and here's what we do. And, you know, it's nothing crazy. It's like everything is out of, like, I guess, production world. Like, hey, how do you, like, announce this? How do you, like, handle, like, all the submissions? How do you support people? Like, I don't think, like, I don't think, like,
00:54:10
Speaker
anybody listening to it, I could be like, oh, this is like, I didn't i didn't think it was possible and this is the key. I don't think that would be their reaction. But do you think that having that sort of material, people will be like more like, oh yeah, actually, you know what? Like I i could run that or like I could pitch that to my company or something that. Yeah, maybe. Or like even less effort than writing about it. I think just... ah knowing that my door is open. Like i've I've talked to several people now about like, yeah, this is this is what we've done. This is how we do it. This is like a simple template for if you wanted to do something like this. um I've spoken to a few people now, um some of whom have have done it, some of whom it's just like thinking about it. um But yeah, always very happy to, if if you are someone who's interested in setting up something like this, then please send me an email.
00:55:02
Speaker
Hopefully we start seeing like more and more these initiatives in the future. That'd be so cool. um ah Great. Well, anything else you wanted to chat about? um ah Nothing comes to mind. Again, I think like ah my website will be linked somewhere. I have links to lots of stuff there. um If you think and the things I mentioned here are interesting, you'll find more games.
00:55:31
Speaker
and really does stuff on my website. And um to take ah of a few minutes to to look into Thinky Daily's, it's weird that, it's unique, I guess, that we got like a to put out of amazing people from the designers, programmers, artists to work on these. And it came from a, hey, you know, we just want um you to make something cool and try to encourage people to play and interesting puzzle games. like ah this is not like There are no ads, there are no subscriptions. It's just like a fan theme. We thought um it was interesting and we put care and time into that. And maybe it's with you, maybe it doesn't.
00:56:13
Speaker
Do check it out and um figure it out for yourself.
00:56:17
Speaker
Awesome. Thank you so much for your time. And thank you for listening to the Dragnet Confirm's official podcast. Our music is by Priscilla Snow, who you can find at ghoulnoisemusic.com.
00:56:30
Speaker
Our podcast artwork is by Adam DeGrandis. Our podcast is edited by Melanie Zawodniak. Please rate and review us on your podcast service of choice. And be sure to tune in next episode for more interesting conversations.
00:56:49
Speaker
you