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Episode 27: Zachary Johnson (Stage Fright)
212 Plays14 days ago
In this episode, hosts Alan and Syrenne are joined by Zachary Johnson, a developer behind games like Joggernauts and Stage Fright. Zach is also the inspiration for Draknek's next game, Spooky Express - a fact he did not know when the recording started. Topics include an overview of Zach's career, stories from Train Jam, and Zach's hopes for Spooky Express.
The Spooky Express demo is live now, so go ahead and give it a try after listening to this episode!
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:21
Speaker
Welcome to the Drakkneck and Friends official podcast, where we peel back the curtain on puzzle games and the people who make them. I'm Seren, the producer Drakkneck and Friends, and I'm joined as always by Alan Hazelden, the head Drakkneck at Drakkneck and Friends.
00:00:35
Speaker
Hey there. Today, we're joined by Zachary Johnson, who you may know from his work on games like Joggernauts and the upcoming Stage Fright. How are you doing today? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me.
00:00:48
Speaker
Awesome. Can you tell our audience a bit about yourself for people who don't know who you are?
Zachary's Game Projects Overview
00:00:53
Speaker
Yeah. So ah I go by Zactronaut online to help differentiate myself from other Zacks and other Zach Johnsons. There's ah few of us now, I feel like.
00:01:04
Speaker
I was the director, level designer, and programmer for Joggernauts, which is by Space Mace. There's three of us that were primary people at Space Mace. That's a cooperative, puzzly, auto-runner.
00:01:17
Speaker
Other games I worked on people might have played would be a Totally Reliable Delivery Service, which did online multiplayer stuff for that, and also did some, like, race course design and coding for the racing minigame.
00:01:29
Speaker
And i've done some artsy stuff like Nest Spectre, which was the massively multi-haunted NES, and the Donutron arcade cabinet. I think technically the first kind of commercial game thing I ever worked on was I was the programmer for Cartoon Network's BMO app for iOS like a decade ago.
00:01:48
Speaker
Oh, wow. Yeah, I did not know that. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, now I'm working with Ghost Town Games, the folks who brought us Overcooked on Stage Fright that was just recently announced and primarily doing online multiplayer code for that.
Teasing Stage Fright and its Mechanics
00:02:05
Speaker
Awesome. Can you tell us a bit about Stage Fright? Yeah, I mean, I can't tell you a ton without hired goons showing up at my door. Yeah, what what you're allowed to say. Yeah, yeah. So...
00:02:18
Speaker
It's like a really endearing story with awesome puzzles. And for me, like, was really exciting to see their sizzle reel when I was interviewing because of the spooky factor.
00:02:31
Speaker
You know, like, it's, you can kind of see from the screenshots on Steam, like, the game's got a spooky vibe, and I am crazy about that sort of thing. So I got this big, dumb smile on my face, and I'm like,
00:02:42
Speaker
Yes, I want to work on this. This is so cool. I love the story. it's It's for two people. It's ah it's a co-op game that you always play with a friend. you know and It's got really cool puzzle rooms to solve.
00:02:55
Speaker
I'm excited about it. Awesome. Well, the spooky stuff is actually part of why we brought you here. Cool. So you probably don't know or remember this, but, and this is important, everyone, we're recording this on April 24th, 2025.
00:03:13
Speaker
On September 8th, 2017, you tweeted on the site formerly known as Twitter, quote, I would buy Cosmic Express again at twice the price if it was about dropping off monsters at tombstones.
00:03:27
Speaker
And let me tell you, we are now less than two weeks away from announcing Spooky Express. I am going to put my money where my mouth is. Put it on itch. I'll pay double.
00:03:41
Speaker
i You know, it's funny because like I wanted to talk about this because i saw in the newsletter the tombstones and teamstown and i'm like I'm like, oh no, take my money. This this is going to be problem. This is exactly what you think it is. this is You're hearing it here before the official announcement. We wanted to get you on the podcast to record it.
Influence of Themes on Game Mechanics
00:04:02
Speaker
So that we could put this out. I am stoked. I like, and I was going to like kind of tease you guys. I was going to be like, and I saw that screenshot. Can you just go ahead and leak everything to me now? And that's what's happening. That's this is the best.
00:04:16
Speaker
That's the thing. and Did you remember that tweet? um You know, reading it back to me, it is like, yeah, okay. But I wouldn't have told you I ever said that if you hadn't read back to me.
00:04:28
Speaker
ah Yeah, no, you are probably like the reason why this game exists. Like that post like stuck in my brain for eight years.
00:04:39
Speaker
That's amazing. I love that. You know, it's funny because like one of the things I've also tweeted and I say a lot is like, I wish I could haunt other people's games. and like I want the job of just like the game's basically done. Hire me on and like I'll just, you know, haunt a small section of it.
00:04:58
Speaker
And I would love to do that for people. And like I haunted your mind kind of this time. Like kind of see it. And you planted that feed. I'm stoked. That's awesome. what What else can you say about the game?
Inspiration from Train Jam
00:05:12
Speaker
Yes. By the time this goes out, it's announced. So ah Alan, why don't you kind of give the sales pitch? Yeah, so Spooky Express is spooky successor to Cosmic Express where you're planning the train route for the world's spookiest theme park.
00:05:28
Speaker
You are picking up zombies and taking them to graves. You're picking up vampires and taking them to coffins. and you're also picking up hapless humans who are terrified by the monsters surrounding them and like if a vampire wants to get on the train and there's somewhere for the human to get off like that human is getting off they like they're getting scared off and yeah there's a lot of humans interacting with the monsters uh mechanics that we're playing with that's fantastic yeah what's the classic uh puzzle with
00:06:00
Speaker
was it like Oh, yeah, the the fox, the hen, and the grain. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's not it's not quite that, but there's some of that. Very cool. Yeah, i you know I just like one of the questions that I would have put at the end of the podcast, but I feel like they're right there right now, is like the theming of a game. And like, I feel like your puzzles are so what's the way to say it like you're very puzzled forward right like it's very clear your games are about mechanics and about the puzzles.
00:06:31
Speaker
I wonder, do you ever get tripped up where you like fall in love with a aesthetic or a story before you kind of fully baked the puzzle and that ends leading you astray? Does that like happen to you or are you always kind of mechanics first?
00:06:45
Speaker
ah No, actually, to a surprising degree, the way I tend to design games is very theme and setting first. Wow, i would never guess that.
00:06:56
Speaker
Like you you take the theme and like that will give me something concrete to base the mechanics around. But I think I come up with more interesting gameplay mechanics by going that way around.
00:07:10
Speaker
i think if you to just come up with an abstract puzzle system and try to theme it, a lot of the time that can kind of be a bit weak, a bit like, yeah, well, this this doesn't really click. it like It's hard to make it cohesive if you're going that way, I think.
00:07:25
Speaker
ah It can be done. um like i think there's a game called Jetstream, which is like kind of just a sliding block game where you're like leaving trails behind and you can't cross your path.
00:07:36
Speaker
But ah that game, like it's themed with like, oh, you're an airplane and you're leaving this ah jet trail behind you and then you're bumping into clouds. And like, i think that game does a really good job of like taking a very abstract game and then have finding the perfect theme for it. But I think it's really hard.
00:07:52
Speaker
And even Cosmic Express, ah like we
Creative Sparks from Train Jam Experience
00:07:56
Speaker
didn't start with the aliens, but the aliens are kind of not really the important part. Like we still like started with a ah prototype that I made on train jam, which maybe we'll, we'll get into, but um like that is just like, okay, you're, you've got a train route and you're picking up passengers and dropping them off.
00:08:12
Speaker
um But then when we put that in space, Then i think like it's only after that point that we're like, okay, well, what are some different types types of alien that we could have? And I like, oh what if we had ah really slimy alien that gunks up the train and nobody other than slime aliens wants to get into that train?
00:08:30
Speaker
Like that's a mechanic that happened because of the theme rather than, it'd be really cool. Like if you if you just say it out loud, it sounds like a kind of like...
00:08:41
Speaker
like That's not a fun mechanic. Like, oh, you're going to have this thing where like if an alien if if a passenger gets into this thing, nobody else can use that type of car. That's just going to feel bad. But if you frame it in terms of, like oh, but it says this is the type of alien and this is why it makes sense, then going in that direction makes a mechanic work.
00:09:01
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, who wants to get into a slimy orange or slimy green car? Yeah. And so, yeah, I think I work best when i like, the the theme and the mechanics will will interact with each other and one will spawn ideas and then you go back and like, oh, we've we've we've got this mechanic.
00:09:19
Speaker
How would that impact the theme or the setting? But, like, yeah, i think I think starting with the theme helps everything feel very cohesive. Yeah. I've always kind of been curious about that. I think we've ever actually talked about that buggy process, so I appreciate that.
00:09:33
Speaker
Yeah. So was inspired by Train Jam. Oh, yeah. I mean, so Cosmic Express was inspired by a game I made called Train Braining. And Train Braining was made on the, i think, 2015 Train Jam. I'm trying to think what year I went. I went on the last year...
00:09:52
Speaker
that normal regular commuters were on the train. It wasn't a full, but private train. Yeah, I don't remember that. Maybe that was 2016. you remember? Because, you like, did we meet on Train Jam or did we meet each other again on Train Jam?
00:10:07
Speaker
I don't remember. i don't know if we first met on Train Jam. I mean, I used to go to like literally every single video game event and I think we crossed paths through maybe Jerry.
00:10:21
Speaker
Sure. Choose John Jerry if people are wondering what talking about. Yeah. It could have been an Indy kid. It could have been a GPC. I don't really remember. um Yeah, I wasn't sure if you were you're on the Train Jam where I was making Train Braining.
00:10:36
Speaker
Um, but if so, you don't remember it. It was, I don't remember train braining. guess train jam is like a
American Train Infrastructure and Train Jam
00:10:44
Speaker
blur. I got motion sick from the trying to code, like look at a screen with the gentle sway of the train. And I ended up doing like pixel art instead of coding. Cause that didn't make me sick.
00:10:56
Speaker
And, um, Jerry and I were working on like a velvet rope puzzle. with like a disgruntled line of a few of people and having to manage the like velvet rope maze and didn't get very far because of too much socializing and and too much motion sickness.
00:11:16
Speaker
But I s slept like a baby so that was nice. What motivated you to ah join and Train Jam in the first place? I saw a bunch of people having fun on it and I was going to go to GDC anyway.
00:11:29
Speaker
Um, and then I think increasingly after like a couple years of years ago, did you see stuff more and more like friends were doing the train track anyway. And so it seemed like a fun thing to do. Um, that ride, the California Zephyr ride is gorgeous. Like, I don't, I, I don't know how you've like finished something on that and don't get distracted looking out the window the entire time. That was my other problem.
00:11:53
Speaker
I guess for people who aren't aware, we should talk about what Train Jam is. So um in in the before times, the weekend prior to GDC, a bunch of game developers would get on a train in Chicago and ride it for 52 hours all the way to San Francisco across two thirds of the United States and make games on it.
00:12:17
Speaker
52 hours in the best case scenario. I'm pretty sure we got stuck somewhere for five hours. Yeah, there was one time where it was delayed for, and and I don't know, 10 to 12 hours. Yeah, that's fine. That's all part of the excitement. Right, it's part of the experience for sure. yeah And if everyone loves being told, hey, you've got 10 more hours of work. Right? That was the kind of bonus that's like, wait, you get more time to finish up, which in any jam, you're like, well, I guess I can i guess i could put like a real start menu on this.
00:12:46
Speaker
and not just move into the game. I remember the one that I was on in like the very, very last car, like all the way in the back. You could like look backwards on tracks.
00:12:58
Speaker
What is it? Is it Andrew's shoulder? know Yeah. Tunic of Secret Legend. He was working on that in the way, way, way back of the train.
00:13:10
Speaker
and I was playing part of the game. Yeah, I mean, it was really an environment with so many cool people and you could just wander down this train and bump into um and like like, yeah, hear about what they're working on either for for the jam or like in general. um Yeah, lots of really, really cool people I've met in that context.
00:13:31
Speaker
Yeah, I think in particular for American listeners to this podcast, I bet there's a lot of them that have not done a long distance train ride because would they? Oh, and there's the infrastructure is just not there for most people.
00:13:46
Speaker
me and Can you imagine if we had high-speed rail everywhere? i mean, we have a little bit of a geographical problem with just how far away California is from you know Chicago. But, man, that would be awesome to have oil trains like Japan.
00:13:59
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, even here in Wisconsin, the problem, not not to get too into it, but like... we had money set aside and everyone voted to say, yes, we want this with inter, like interstate between the biggest cities.
00:14:13
Speaker
And then, ah the, then a new, another election happened. And then another person went in charge and he said, nah, I want all that money for another project. Yeah. tragedy So it's just so hard to get to happen here with having 50 individual States.
00:14:30
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
Choosing Game Ideas and Production Challenges
00:14:32
Speaker
and there's so many things like I learned about that world doing, train jam, like how there's like a dining car and you've, someone comes by and is like, know, what time do you want to come eat? It like very old fashioned and cute. And they have a observation train car that are like, have a huge glass canopy. So you can really see what's going on. Yeah.
00:14:53
Speaker
I mean, I think if you haven't done it, you don't realize kind of what train car is like. Did you work any, uh, Were there any train like thingies? That's a terrible way to put it. Were there like train specific cultural things that ended up in your train video games where that you hadn't really thought of, but then you're on the train and you're and you're like working a dining car aspect or a train stops and the whistle blows and stuff like that i i feel like the train games that we have made have been a sufficiently abstract as to be uh not really uh inspired right by reality in that way um but like i'm i'm pretty sure i wouldn't have made that original train braining game if it hadn't been for training
00:15:36
Speaker
jam and if it hadn't been for train braining i wouldn't made cosmic express if i hadn't made cosmic express then sockwond express wouldn't have happened then spooky express wouldn't have happened so so now that you're giving me all this power what you're telling me is that i can effectively reskin any of your catalog games with a social media post uh i mean you're one for one so far
00:16:03
Speaker
right i'm gonna I'm going to say i'm going to say a phrase and Melanie, I'd like you to bleep it, please. i posted this in a ah Slack a couple of months ago.
00:16:16
Speaker
o That's not going to be our next game, but what if it was? if it were It's so dangerous hearing these ideas come up. Yeah. Because every single time it's like, Alan, we have a whole document of potential next games. You keep adding more to it without reducing the games on the list.
00:16:34
Speaker
That was my other like end of the show question is how do you decide? You know, like I imagine you don't just have one idea and that's it. You're like, well, I guess I only have this one idea.
00:16:46
Speaker
like, what is your, I find this fascinating with all people who create things. It's like, what is your process for choosing between everything that pops in your head on on what you're going to keep moving forward with?
Narrowing Game Ideas and Scope Management
00:16:59
Speaker
What's the later? I mean, definitely calling it a process it would be a not representative of reality. There's a process. I mean, for Spooky Express, when Alan says that this has been in his head, he has not been joking.
00:17:13
Speaker
ah Over the last three years or so, since 2022, a discussion of Spooky Express has come up and like... We've debated going into pre-production on it like three times before we did.
00:17:29
Speaker
And honestly, we had – and we can talk about this openly now. um We had decided on Spooky Express before we started development on um the electrifying incident.
00:17:41
Speaker
The Electrifying Incident was originally conceived of as a six-week Godot learning experiment of remaking a past puzzle script game so that we could determine if we wanted to commit to Godot for Spooky Express or if Spooky Express was going to be made back in Unity.
00:18:00
Speaker
We didn't want to use Unity again for, let's say, Unity-related reasons. yeah ah i think I think I remember this slightly differently in that we...
00:18:11
Speaker
We knew we wanted to switch away from Unity. And so we knew that if we were going to switch to Godot, it wouldn't really matter for which game we'd we'd want to make something really, really small, regardless of which Godot project we'd want to make after that.
00:18:26
Speaker
um So I think that we decided to make Electro-Hang Incident. And then after we'd wrapped it, we were like yep, we still like Godot.
00:18:36
Speaker
What game should we make in Godot? that's that That's not quite it. It was it was more that you hadn't been you hadn't fully convinced, but it was easier to convince you of moving to Godot.
00:18:49
Speaker
But yes, and then the other thing is that there's a vision of all of the potential games that were like, we... We kind of had three major ideas of like the next non 30 minute long Dracnic internally developed game.
00:19:07
Speaker
And we had been talking about them. But the the thing that kept coming up. And so if there's part if there's something to the process, I would say it's this.
00:19:20
Speaker
It's we were envisioning what the ideal scope that each game would want would be. And of of all of them, definitely Spooky Express lended itself to a shorter development turnaround than the other two.
00:19:40
Speaker
And that was very enticing to Alan. Yeah, I think the biggest reason we went with Spooky Express was because we knew that like it had the least potential for scope creep.
00:19:52
Speaker
Sure. but But that was before you spoke to me on this podcast. Yeah, no, please. In the next 20 minutes, adding nothing but scope and delaying the release of the game. Alan is so susceptible to scope creep genuinely, and we have a of release timing in mind already, so like be careful what you suggest.
00:20:15
Speaker
um No, i I am susceptible to it sometimes, but like I think for this game, I'm actually thinking about it very pragmatically.
00:20:25
Speaker
Thank you for saying that on the record. Now I have an audio clip I can deploy. For this game, for this game specifically, anything else... You exact same thing about electrifying incident.
00:20:37
Speaker
And I stand by the decisions I made on that game. Yeah, that's the thing. You're going to stand by your decisions all across all of these. I'm just happy that this time it's on the record.
00:20:51
Speaker
But no, like I would genuinely love to hear you pitch me on scope creep ideas. Nothing would make me happier. Yeah. So you have vampires and zombies.
Spooky Express Ideas and Mechanics
00:21:02
Speaker
We establish that, right?
00:21:03
Speaker
Do you have skeletons or ghosts? We should be cautious about what we reveal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, i think um I think you should pitch us what your ideas for Skeletons and Ghosts would be.
00:21:18
Speaker
And maybe I'll have to go no comment or I'll probably just go no comment by default, you know? You can have some like good, do you like Easter eggs? you like non-game, non-progress related things in your games? like Or do you try and have everything mechanically tied in?
00:21:37
Speaker
i i like me an Easter egg that then also unlocks something gameplay relevant. Right, right. I'm just thinking, you know, if the train, like, runs into and pushes a tombstone, then you get, like, the ghosts coming out, you know, like Zelda kind of vibes, kind of thing.
00:21:56
Speaker
So that could be something there. mean, zombies could further rot and turn into skeletons, but that's getting pretty gross. Do have, like, a a zombie to skeleton pipeline.
00:22:08
Speaker
You could have crows. Do you need a flying type creature? I mean, it's the we we've we've discussed some flying type creatures and we decided it's a a little bit weird when, ah like, why do they need the train? Because they're little business crows and they got their little hats and their little suitcases. they you know I mean, that sounds delightful, but not especially spooky. Yeah.
00:22:33
Speaker
Hey, you you've never met a business crow, clearly. Yeah, very spooky. They're spooky because they're a crow. They just happen to also be little business crows. And then at that point, you just put a suit and tie on a vampire, you put a suit and tie on a zombie.
00:22:49
Speaker
Everyone's got a job to get to, you know and they're waiting for the train. and Why does a zombie ride the train? I mean, I guess there could be a victims, delicious brains, right, on the train.
00:23:01
Speaker
Alright, is there to lightning? Do you good ambiance? I want fog, I want lightning. I think we we have good ambiance. We don't currently have any lightning, but that's that's definitely... you we could We could have a ah forest at night with lightning, potentially.
00:23:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's going to be lightning. Can you drive your train into a mausoleum and then you like go underground and you pop back out of a different mausoleum? that the polar kind of vibe? ah we We considered because we've kind of got that mechanic in Cosmic Express with the wormholes, and it's a divisive one. a lot of people don't like what that mechanic does to their brain,
00:23:47
Speaker
which I think is is fair. i just curse you by name when I'm playing the games, and I get to a hard puzzle. Oh, and that's what I'm going for. alan And we've we've we've talked a little bit about this on a previous podcast, but we are aiming for this game to be ah ah bit less difficult than Cosmic Express, a bit more approachable.
00:24:07
Speaker
Yeah, would not complain about that. I mean, like it because I like challenges. i like the 100% stuff, and I'm driving that. It's like, you know, puzzles. But I also like the kind of... I do have, as like, a sweet spot for the just...
00:24:23
Speaker
busywork puzzles where they're like enjoyable, but they're not real. I don't have to use like so many short-term memory slots to solve it that I start to get frustrated, you know? ah And yeah, that's um cognitive load is something that we've been discussing more in the last few years as we think about different mechanics and stuff.
Designing for Multiple Input Methods
00:24:43
Speaker
Yeah. I also really like just a secondary thing to Jenga. You know, like I really liked in like Lara Croft Go how there's just like a ah in po Maybe need a hidden spooky item.
00:25:00
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I thought about that kind of stuff. it's It's hard when you want to do a game that will work both on mouse and touchscreen and controller. Like when you're doing controller inputs, it's not really that good to have like, hey, there's stuff hidden in the background. it's Yeah, a different vibe on a gamepad.
00:25:20
Speaker
But right yeah, like background props, like they do they do love to be prodded. We haven't made them prodible yet, but by the time the game ships, if we haven't made the background props prodible, you have my permission to send me an angry email.
00:25:34
Speaker
Hear me out, Alan. ah if we want If we want the funniest bad way to do this, ah PlayStation has the touchpad on the controller. and This is not me talking about any platforms we're doing, but like, and Switch has a touchscreen if you undock it.
00:25:49
Speaker
i don't think Xbox, Xbox doesn't have anything, but like, of of like controller types, Can't you put a mouse into an aircraft? You can. They did that for Hypnospace Outlaw for some reason.
00:26:01
Speaker
You could use a mouse and keyboard on the console versions of that. I'm just thinking of like, what's what's the weirdest, clumsiest way you could do it on controller? If you do the L3 thumb click, it pops up a cursor.
00:26:17
Speaker
Sure. No. that's what That is worse than anything I had come up with. But then they can be like a 7th guest style animated skeletonized hand person, you know?
00:26:30
Speaker
God, we really... we Yeah, sure. let's Let's just make this a different game. Let's just make this like a multimedia DVD bonus feature game at that point.
00:26:41
Speaker
I like this pitch, actually. And in fact, the year that I did Train Jam, there were a bunch of people who just would not drop the joke of doing like really bad FMV games.
00:26:52
Speaker
And so you've got a real opportunity for a gag here where you solve like one puzzle to get the train into like a haunted house. And then it's like an FMV haunted house game. to wholeness I mean, people love games, which appear to be one thing on the surface and then it's something a bit different.
00:27:09
Speaker
Yeah. And you've already got their money by that point. So yeah, Steve, we just got to make sure that we're count. We have an hour count going up so that it only happens at the two hour and one second mark. Two hours of driving a train to a destination that once you reach the game completely changes.
00:27:24
Speaker
Gosh. i See, I love me an FMV game. I think that my take is i'm i think I'm done with FMV games that are trying to be bad.
00:27:36
Speaker
i i just like FMV games that have heart and lean all the way in to we don't care that we're overacting. where we We feel like this the genre needs overacting, but like we're we're doing cheesy because we have heart, not because we're a parody.
00:27:55
Speaker
Wait, what about candy? Sorry, that's an HD brain. But is there it is it like Halloween scary? Or like, that is there trick-or-treaters in this game? but train um Yeah, it's it's a Halloween.
00:28:08
Speaker
was going to say, it the vibes are Halloween scary. It's not like... It's not horror. Yeah, it's not horror at all. So you could have there be candy delivery as a thing that the train gets... Like a kid could get out with an empty bucket...
00:28:24
Speaker
have to get the tracks of candy, you know, et cetera. We got a potential mechanic that's not far off that. All right, all right. And then there's razor blades in the chocolate.
00:28:35
Speaker
Wait, no. No, no. Suddenly works slightly we're jumping the age rating way up. Fun blades. Look, we got um we we got Bonfire Peaks rated 16 plus in Europe for um months before a human looked at it and said, why is this 16 plus and dropped it all the way down to seven?
Impact of Game Elements on Age Ratings
00:28:59
Speaker
Did you ever figure out what it was? Oh, I know exactly what it was. So ah the fail state of that game. So youre you play a humanoid character in voxel art style. And there's a fail state where you get hit with an arrow and three droplets of blood come out.
00:29:14
Speaker
okay But crucially, it's due to player action. crazy And in theory, you could, if you wanted to be an age-raiding asshole, you could get yourself killed, hit the undo button, and keep looping it over and over and over. That was rated in America and 16-plus Europe.
00:29:37
Speaker
ah that was yeah that was rated t in america And sixteen plus in europe and i believe it is seven plus in europe now but it' is still t here crazy what ah What a bizarre everything.
00:29:54
Speaker
Video games, am I right? Yeah, you're right. So, yeah, talk to me about Juggernauts and like what inspired that.
Development History of Joggernauts
00:30:04
Speaker
Yeah, I've done other Ludum Dare, however we're still saying that now, like puzzle games. done lot of small puzzle games, but I haven't done any like big polished puzzle games really.
00:30:19
Speaker
But, like, Juggernaut, like, just kind of crosses that line and ends up being, like, a weird puzzle game. is basically like a puzzle auto-runner. And you have to always cooperate when you play it. And, like, I think the cooperation thing is what the led to the mechanics. I just had this idea where I was like, I want to make a couch co-op game, but it's, like, actually cooperative.
00:30:44
Speaker
can't compete no one person can carry the team. Like everyone has an equal part to play and they have to play it. And then I was playing the original BitTrip Runner with a friend of mine.
00:30:56
Speaker
I've always liked that game. And we were like passing the controller because it's single player. And it was just like, what if we were both doing Vitterburner in the same course at the same time. And it's like, how would you do that?
00:31:08
Speaker
You know, but wait a minute, like whoever's in the front would have all the cool stuff to do. And the person following them would kind of feel like they're getting left behind. And then, well, wait a minute, one if you can switch positions? And then that was the prototype for Joggernauts. It was very, very mechanics first driven.
00:31:26
Speaker
had no idea what the theme was going to be. i was just interested in like the forcing cooperative exploring what you could do if you're like, had the ability to switch positions in an auto runner.
00:31:39
Speaker
And then when I was showing that prototype in the local community in Minneapolis, it just got a reaction that I'd never seen really anything else I'd ever showed anybody. And people were, it just had that like one more time, like addictiveness to it.
00:31:54
Speaker
And then an artist in the local community here, Tommy Saunders, was like, hey, you got a theme or an artist for this thing? And I was like, no, I do not, Tommy. And Robert Frost, who did our Sound of Music, had done game jams with Tommy before. And that's kind of how we all met each other, how it turned from prototype and a jogging out.
00:32:16
Speaker
And how how long was it like from from that Ludendare version to releasing it? Because i feel like a lot of the time um these like jam projects scaled up to a commercial game.
00:32:30
Speaker
That can be a very like painful experience even as it's fun. So yeah, like. Yeah, it was it was definitely an adventure. I mean, it probably took. four years to release, I want to say. And, you know, none of us were full-time in video games for the first, like, two half years of that.
00:32:53
Speaker
And then I went... like full time on jargonauts first for about six months because it really needed it. We needed to get to a place where we could finish it, which meant getting to a place where we could you know make some deals or find a publisher find some dev money to get all the full time.
00:33:12
Speaker
And then we did, we landed a deal and we all went full time. And then it was, you know, from the time that we had like actual signed contract, it was out in little bit less than a year. But yeah, I mean like four years, which is still a really long time to be working on um something.
00:33:28
Speaker
It was like a, it was actually a JavaScript prototype from that game jam version. Um, and it stayed in JavaScript for a very long time. Um, until we like kind of established a visual direction and started to think about it as a commercial product.
00:33:48
Speaker
And then it was like, okay, this needs to be no unity. Um, so that Tommy has a place where he has an editor and that he can put in all the visual stuff he wants to put in and he'll have an easier time support with ports and stuff like that.
00:34:02
Speaker
And then that shipped also on Switch? Yeah. Yeah. We had three like friends of ours did some little programming tasks towards the end of the project to get us past the finish line.
00:34:16
Speaker
And then for the like steam release, and then I ended up doing the switch port solo by myself, which wasn't too bad. I enjoyed it. It wasn't, it wasn't the worst thing in the world. I remember that like very first time I kicked off a build that didn't error out. Right. I kicked off a build that was actually doing it slow. you need to build thing with like the build and run on the dev kit.
00:34:43
Speaker
And I left the room. because I had idea how long it was going to take to finish, and it did take a long time. And then I started hearing Rob's music playing off the switch from the other room, and was like, holy shit, it works.
00:34:56
Speaker
I was like, it is running, I hear the theme song. I definitely remember that moment. Yeah, no, that's, I, it's so funny, because i was,
00:35:10
Speaker
Before I knew you and met you, i i was interested and excited in the game and just seeing like trailers and marketing material and then happened to ah go to Glitch the weekend that you launched the game or the weekend before you launched the game, I think.
00:35:29
Speaker
Yeah, you found a game-breaking bug that no one found. Not even Nintendo found it. They found all sorts of stuff. I sure did. ah This is... this this So this is very funny. yeah I went there because... um you know I live in Wisconsin, which it was a three and a half hour drive.
00:35:48
Speaker
um I went with someone who was, who was i don't know if she still is at ah at the time on the board of Glitch named Allison, who's a friend of mine who's also local here in Madison, Wisconsin.
00:35:59
Speaker
ah We both what took the drive together, went there. I ended up on a talk with you about our production methodology. And that was fun because it was both of us getting asked questions and both of us just kind of looking at each other and being like, we make it work.
00:36:15
Speaker
um that was that i I had imposter syndrome going into that, and then i was like, okay. i i mean i'm I'm in good company of like, I don't know how to produce someone else's game with only one sentence question.
00:36:30
Speaker
um but' like I don't know how good my advice is going to be. But yeah, I was on the floor the night before, and you were showing it off. And ah yeah, I...
00:36:41
Speaker
played it for a level and then i couldn't get to the next level and i was like what the heck and eventually managed to repro the bug yeah i was like right there on the spot yeah i was like i hope that this isn't uh like that there's time to patch and you and tory just kind of looked at each other were like this is the launch build yeah no this this is this is shipping imminently yeah it was like it wasn't really a bug on the like mainline happy path that most people would do it was like slightly obscure but i was still surprised that nintendo hadn't caught it yeah it was uh i had been using the the second player controller and it was something like if after completing a level the second player controller is the first level ah the the first uh controller to try and move on the world map the world map locks up and no player can access any levels ever again
00:37:31
Speaker
yeah Oh, that's so much worse and more triggerable easily than I was expecting. Yeah. And I was i was so shook by this. And literally, ah Alice has walked over it is like, Saren, what did you do?
00:37:47
Speaker
I'm like, I think Saren, breaker of builds was here. Like, i sometimes I just pick up a build. This happens on, like, retail games, too, all the time. ah Like my I haven't been able to I got so bummed out with Elden Ring because I was so excited for that game. um I really like Souls games.
00:38:07
Speaker
And three hours in. I managed to somehow under buffer my experience. So it wrapped all the way back around and all of my stats became so like basically I'm assuming hex F F F F. f f And I became immortal and killed everything in one hand. i was like, well, that sucks all the fun out of it. But I'm also like a few hours in and I don't want to kind of restart this right away.
00:38:32
Speaker
And then I just i don't think I ever went back to it, really. And so, i yeah, I am just breaker of bills. That is that that is who i am. natural ah But yeah, no that was ah that was my for that was my first time meeting you was at accidentally destroying your build and then the very next day ah be giving Q&A style talk with you where I was trying to explain how ah how we got Manifold Garden to actually ship.
00:39:07
Speaker
incredible
00:39:11
Speaker
yeah i mean i just I think I remember you introducing yourself and being like, yeah, you know a QA, producer, and then immediately break the game and repro it. I'm like, yeah, QA for sure.
00:39:22
Speaker
Yeah, I've done a lot of that. um and then yeah As soon as I found out, I was like, well, I'm not ah just going to say found a massive bug in your game and walk away and leave you scared. It's like, no, I have i have time.
00:39:37
Speaker
umll ily I'll figure this one out. Oh, bonkers.
Preference for Cooperative Games
00:39:42
Speaker
Yeah. So between a lot of the different stuff that you've worked on, I mean, an obvious common theme is multiplayer, cooperative multiplayer.
00:39:53
Speaker
Yeah. ah Sometimes semi-competitive cooperative, but usually cooperative multiplayer. ah Where does that kind of stem from? That's a great question. I don't know if I've ever, like,
00:40:07
Speaker
I would agree with you that there's been a strong more co-op, co-lab aspect and less deathmatch or race or any of the more pure competitive gameplay modes.
00:40:23
Speaker
I mean, there's definitely... a part of me that kind of got like stale with all of the deathmatch trend in the couch co-op space which was like kind of starting like the there was a big moment for couch co-op that was kind of like winding down or just past peak in like you know 2015 or whatever that was when were starting jog nuts but there were so many uh, death match games and it felt doing another death match game, no matter what the theming or the hook with the mechanic would just get lost.
00:41:00
Speaker
And so there was kind of a practical sense of, I want to do something different. That's the best way I can explain how it happened with Darganauts with some the other stuff. It it may just be dumb luck that like i ended up on totally reliable, you know, in stage five, which isn't, isn't competitive either.
00:41:16
Speaker
Um, I mean, I did do like I did a massively multiplayer browser joust that was competitive. That was like pure death match. You're riding narwhals.
00:41:28
Speaker
You're like a knight on the back foot of a narwhal. That was like, you know, as many players as the network can handle joust. oh So I'm kind of like opposed and I'm like, I have like crazy lose my mind bloodlust for samurai gun.
00:41:43
Speaker
Like just, you know, Brilliant game. So violent, so competitive. Brilliant. So I'm not like opposed to the genre. It just didn't feel like I had anything to add to it, I think.
00:41:55
Speaker
For a while. That makes sense. Alan, when are we going to do the co-op puzzle game? uh i mean ah i gave this a shout out in the last uh think he said thursday which when this podcast goes out might be the penultimate uh think he said thursday um no not penultimate well i was gonna say not second we're not right we're not winding it down that's the first i've ever heard of it um in In the April Thinky Third Thursday, um i talked about a game called Double Trip, which is basically you take the Monsters Expedition log rolling mechanics and you just add a second player. Oh, and actually this this game will be out by the time this podcast releases.
00:42:44
Speaker
So yeah, you you you basically have two player characters. You can switch between them and you are pushing logs around and rolling... some of the logs into obstacles or rolling the logs into the other player and then you switch that player and so it's um like it's basically just like a soccer band game but with two player characters you can switch between um but the level design in that was really really strong um so yeah like that's that's certainly a template for like hey you could you could just take monster expedition add a second player character
00:43:16
Speaker
ah If you just added that to monster Expedition, it would completely break the entire game. But if you designed the puzzles for it, ah that's that's a solid game right there.
00:43:27
Speaker
I mean, i think it it would break everything. I think it would be tremendously funny, though. Oh, yeah. If you had, like like, on the Switch, like, if two people were able to connect ah local wireless so that they have their own screens, but they're in the same world.
00:43:48
Speaker
and also with the monster expedition mechanics like this wasn't in the double trip demo i don't know what's in the full game but like uh if you had monster expedition you've got the raft you've got one character on the raft like you can push that raft in any direction you want like that just totally breaks all yeah that's that's why open that's why i'm saying like that that would that would need to be just like a um just like an open exploration. like the the puzzles are still there, but like the puzzles are clearly no longer the focus. That just becomes a mess around in this playground type experience.
00:44:25
Speaker
But I think it would be very funny. But yeah, but with with more focused puzzle, like mechanic design that doesn't let you break everything to that degree, um like a lot of soccer band block pushing games are actually surprisingly dependent on which parts of the level can you walk through from a to B and which can you not?
00:44:46
Speaker
It's like vanilla soccer band. A lot of it is like, oh, well I want to push this crate in this way, but if I do that, then I won't be able to then get to the other side of it. um And so, yeah, like just having a second player character so you can like walk one of them into a slot and then push the crate in and then the other character pushes it out.
00:45:06
Speaker
I think you could make some really, really good co-op puzzle games that weren't like broken and open in in that way that a game like Monster Expedition would be if you just threw in a second player character.
00:45:17
Speaker
And we're probably never going to do it because it doesn't play to my strengths.
00:45:23
Speaker
But it would be funny.
Post-COVID Industry Changes and Parenthood
00:45:26
Speaker
Anyways, as we wind down, I know we've had a lot of back and forth, but Zach, do you have any questions for us that you haven't already asked?
00:45:35
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, the one I was excited about was the grilling you about the new game and, asking about process and we, we did on those pretty well. I mean, uh, not a question, but a comment, like having been a listener of podcasts, it's just been fun to, you know, hear that people have the experience of how different the games industry has been since COVID. It's been, it's been fun that you've had like a bunch of new parents or soon to be parents, uh,
00:46:05
Speaker
Because had like an 11-month-old girl. So like I became a parent post-COVID and it's been fun on the podcast to hear from people living their lives and having those experiences too.
00:46:20
Speaker
Yeah, it's a funny enough, it's like it's a big industry, but it's a tiny, tiny industry. Of like, there's a lot of, you you hear a lot of similar stories. And one thing that I especially liked about doing the podcast is even if like we, like Melanie has teased me before about how often we get into the conversation about inter-genre of retention, about puzzle games, about convincing players who play one that they want to go play another.
00:46:52
Speaker
But like, we it It comes at a different angle every single time because like everyone's perspective is different enough, skewed enough, everyone's experience is different enough, and yeah...
00:47:07
Speaker
I love it. i This is ah the 28th episode we've recorded and I'm not tired of it. And I don't, you know, eventually we'll slow down and go into probably bi-weekly podcast episodes. But I'm just happy about where things are at.
Social Media's Impact on Creativity
00:47:25
Speaker
Do you have a screenshot or direct link to my inspirational tweet so that i can like put it on Blue before the game comes out? Yep. And then be like, Look how smart I am but after the fact. Yeah. let me ah Let me DM it to you on Blue Sky right now.
00:47:44
Speaker
Nice. Yes, we we pulled that so we could get the exact timestamp. I can look wise all over again. And yeah, like that has literally been in a... like That link has been in a document of possible game ideas for at least five years. Probably probably much longer.
00:48:05
Speaker
There's like a ravenous fan base. I mean, I guess I could be proved wrong. I hope not. But I think there's a ravenous fan base for like spooky stuff. And have he hoping have you thought about like the other supposed or perceived ravenous fan bases like cats, right? Dogs, frogs, like in just going with one of those. f Frogs, you say?
00:48:27
Speaker
Yeah. Frogs, yes. um Actually, this is this is like, so yeah, I mean, i made a I made a jam game like a couple of years ago ah with Patrick Traynor called ah Frog Wizard Gem Quest.
00:48:40
Speaker
Nice. ah And that that's one of the games that we were considering ah expanding. Yeah, supposedly the the frog fans will buy anything with frog in it.
00:48:51
Speaker
Apparently they're very loyal.
00:48:56
Speaker
That's the rumor. But we had to fuck up and go with like a cute black monster goblin thing.
00:49:05
Speaker
Is that your first F-bomb on the podcast? Maybe. ah think it is. Usually I'm the one that swears. I sweared on the podcast. I'm bad influence. It's fine. I already, i um, this is behind the scenes. i have an inventory spreadsheet of all of the episodes that we have, and i have a column that I um write down any quick notes that I'll need to remember because if someone swears on an episode, we don't bleep it. We just mark that episode as explicit because most of the episodes are not. And as soon as you swore, I just went explicit.
00:49:42
Speaker
um But yeah, no, happy, happy about
Conclusion and Contact Information
00:49:46
Speaker
this. um Yeah. This, this episode ah might come out a little bit later than It's been recorded just because we have a lot of May episodes to release, mostly to promote ah Spooky Express by talking to the development team. But we're very, ah very excited for this one to get out. And it was very important that we record it before you saw the announcement on your own.
00:50:10
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Thanks, Brub. for bringing me into the fall this this has been fun a little Super surprise for my week. Yeah. go And thank you. Yeah. Thank you again for jumping on. ah You already kind of mentioned at the top, but ah where can people find you online and do you have anything you want to plug?
00:50:27
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. um Usually my handle is Zachstronaut online. Prefer you find me on Blue Sky to the other places. And yeah, definitely want to plug wishlists really do help. I know people say it all the time. it's true.
00:50:43
Speaker
Love for your wishlist. Stage fright. If you loved Overcooked, hopefully you're excited for another game by the same people. If Overcooked was very stressful and rage-inducing for you, the good news is this is not that kind of game. So give it shot.
00:51:00
Speaker
Awesome. Well, thank you so much again. it's been a pleasure to catch up with you. And thank you for listening to the Drack Naked Friends official podcast. Our music is by Priscilla Snow, who you can find at ghoulnoise.bandcamp.com.
00:51:14
Speaker
Our podcast artwork is by Adam DeGrandis. Our podcast is edited by Melanie Zawadniak. Please rate and review us on your podcast service of choice, and be sure to tune in next episode for more interesting conversations.
00:51:33
Speaker
you