How The Drifter Modernised Adventure Games | Dave Lloyd

SPEAKER_00 0:04

After six years, launching was just so terrifying that it was like I just didn't want to stick my head in the sand mainly. How I found it challenging uh at launch when it when it was all like perfect, like all really positive and that's you know selling really well. And I was just like, oh, I feel like sick. This is weird. To to even like, even when things were kind of uh yeah, really glowing. I'm like, it's sort of skip that stuff to find the find the thing they didn't like, you know. It's so hard not to do that.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Hi there, my name is Steven Lick, and welcome to the examined game. Today we are talking with Dave Lloyd, the designer, developer, writer behind the drifter. The drifter is such a brilliant modern day adventure game, kind of utilizing everything that works bad adventure games and modernizing what might start to feel a little bit sluggish, um, and also introducing this genre to brand new audiences as well. It was interesting to hear about the trepidation and fear that came up when the game was actually like hugely successful, and it gives you a glimpse of what it's like to kind of put your work out there into the world. And then we really dig into this idea of the sort of death of the right click, which is obviously a very, you know, well-known part of adventure games, and how the genre is streamlining itself, making itself more accessible without losing all that depth of uh writing and storytelling and character that makes the genre what it is. Please do subscribe, stick around, enjoy the episode. Thank you very much. Am I right in thinking that you've got a little bit going on this week with uh the drifter?

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Yeah, yeah, just launched on Switch. So that was fun. Yeah, it came out after about I think almost six months working on it uh to get that happening. So yeah. Amazing, exciting.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

It's it's it I I mean, obviously it sort of strikes me as the sort of game that's gonna it fits the Switch, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:47

There's not like Yeah, like I'd sort of developed to with that in mind right from the start. I wanted to sort of have a point and click that felt pretty at home on consoles as well. Um so I kind of had a control scheme that I came up with pretty early on, and I'd had it kind of running on on Switch 1 for ages uh throughout development. But yeah, it was it's good to get it out on both finally.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

Yes, yeah, and that's something I want to spend well, maybe not loads, but I'm very, very interested to talk about that control control scheme sort of down the line. But um I'm always just interested to hear what folks are kind of playing present tense, if anything. I know sometimes when you're sort of deep in making stuff, that's the last thing you want to do, or maybe you're sort of yeah, that that's that's your kind of um wind down process.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

I don't know. Yeah, and I'm I still play a lot of stuff. Mostly, I mean almost all just sort of indie stuff and smaller kind of games, shorter games. I love sort of diving into um to like the next vest that just finished, um playing like just a bunch of different demos and seeing what people have been making. I really liked one uh called uh Offbeat, which was it's kind of like a I don't know if you've played unpacking, but it's kind of got that style to it where you're sort of unpacking boxes and it's got that pixel art kind of style. But you kind of unpack this synthesizer, oh sorry, this uh sequencer, and then you plug in this little toy piano that you have, and then you start basically doing little jobs where you just make a little song and then you can buy a like little monkey that has little symbols, and you can like add that to your sequence of tracks. And um, that was really that was really cool. Yeah, so I'm looking forward to that.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

That's one of those that's sort of one of those games when you hear the description of it, you kind of ask yourself, why doesn't it why yeah, it feels like that game should have existed already. Yeah, exactly. It's it's it's hard to imagine that it could have.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

It's just it's really nicely made, and I think I really like how uh how it kind of is kind of just the same as if you're just buying a bunch of synthesizer equipment and plugging it all together, but just sort of makes it this really cute, nice, like chill game. Yeah, it's cool.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Yeah, without the nightmare cable management that comes with the the the very real reality of of massive expensive management of buying synths.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

Yeah. Other half of power of uh Barney has uh he's got into synth stuff. Uh I think probably started during COVID, just started buying buying synths and and setting up a big sort of he's got a big uh desk covered in synths equipment and just like spends all his spare money on that stuff now. It gets away from the PC because he's like keeping it away from like uh like away from his like workstation kind of thing. But he's really likes that.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

But sounds like the sort of modern equivalent of a uh train set. Yeah, exactly. This giant this giant board, big wooden board, just with like every single uh modifier you can think of. I'd love to sort of just go way, way, way back to like earliest sort of um interactions with with video games, and um there's obviously a a line to be drawn between like whatever inspiration or joy you were getting out of games back then to what the decision that you've made to base your life's work around them. So I just love to hear what what those games were and how you came to find them.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

Yeah, yeah. Um yeah, I mean like sort of going really way back, it was like DOS PC stuff. So like we got a we didn't really have consoles growing up, but we had a family computer, uh, and that was kind of uh yeah, I just loved to play anything I could find, get my hands on uh on that. And a lot of the the games that were that sort of felt like the big blockbusters to me were adventure games, you know, like Sierra games and LucasArts ones, uh just because partly I think I really resonated with anything that had a good story or or where story was the focus. Um that's that's the stuff that kind of kept me wanting to play. Um yeah, so I was drawn to those. Uh and like the early ones I think I remember playing were like Space Quest one, which I played on like a black and white monitor. Um, and I I was I think it was like seven or something, and I didn't I didn't know how to uh like escape the first area.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

That was that was my question. I'm always I always like to get age context to understand like what level of comprehension like someone says when playing.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

I was way too early, really. Like I I couldn't beat, like I never tried to beat them. I just want I just I didn't know if I really considered them having an ending. It was just um I it was just a world I was like wandering around in, I guess, uh which is very different to how I guess the modern way you think about a point and click, which is just like it's a story, it's got to start in the middle end. Um but yeah, so that that was my earliest sort of earliest memory, and I think growing up I kind of still always went back to to older games, uh older DOS games especially. Um even yeah, not necessarily just point and click adventures, but um, but I really always always liked those. So there was sort of in my kind of 20s, uh, when I was at uni and stuff and didn't have much money. Um so I was there, I'd only buy a couple of big games a year, but um, but like yeah, I'd still like go and and look at abandonware sites and find really old janky games and and sort of dig into them. And I think I underdogs a lot of them that you had over. Yeah, home of the underdogs 100%. Yeah, I loved that. I was there all the time, yeah. Um yeah, yeah. So I really I think that helped in terms of becoming more of a game designer later, uh, just because there's so many kind of uh poorly executed in in today's standard, but like weird ideas that that were happening back then where they hadn't solved all the genres, they hadn't worked out like how to do cameras and in a 3D game and um and that it's a bad idea to stick this genre together with this genre. Um and so playing a lot of those games I think gave me a good um kind of good background in sort of uh of of like what doesn't work as well as what can what what kind of what modern things we see in every game that don't actually don't necessarily need to be there for a game to function. Um because I think yeah, when you just play the games from play games from the last 10 years or something, you kind of have a sort of a bit of a narrower uh view of of gaming and and of what games can be. Uh just because there's so many things that got solved uh along the decades. Uh but in getting solved at sort of some of the corners, the rough corners kind of get get sanded off a bit. Uh but the some sometimes those that like those little rough edges are kind of where there's some pretty cool stuff uh that you sort of lose along the way too.

SPEAKER_02 8:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

Yeah, it's a sort of I mean it's something I talk about a lot on this this podcast, and it feels like an eternal uh maybe not battle is the the the word, but yeah, that the the cost benefit of rough edges, basically.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

Yeah, something I'm definitely attracted to when I'm playing games as well. If uh yeah, even if a game is a bit clunky feeling, if like if it's doing something that I haven't seen for a while, that's that's a lot more exciting to me than if it's like really, really smooth and and sort of effortless to play, but doesn't really kind of surprise me in any way, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

I mean, I think again, I was playing um I'd not played it before, but I was playing like the Robin Hood Sierra game. Uh yeah, yeah. And and it just reminded me, yeah, like these those Sierra games where you'd have these kind of endless like woodlands or whatever, and you're supposed to somehow differentiate between every single scene to kind of navigate yourself around this world.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

Um I want to make notes about everything as people say, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's just important.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

And I absolutely love love playing it. Um I'm just I need to do one other thing. I just need to shut every window in this office now because all the birds have suddenly woken up. The reason that this is a little bit janky is because um uh this is my first time shooting in here, um which again bears with the um the hot weather, my usual studio isn't um available. Um so I'm out here trying to stay cool, and that's at 7am, so it's particularly hot here right now. Do you think I'm going back to to um Home of the Underdog? Was it Home of the Underdog? Home of the Underdogs, yeah. I haven't I haven't said that though those words in a long, long time, and it brings back a lot of nostalgia for my summers, which will give you really good insight as to the sort of kid I was and what I was doing, just like downloading like endless uh games from there, which obviously back in the day would have taken quite a while just to get a few megabytes downloaded. But could you I'd just love to hear in your own words like what that what that website was and what it sort of meant to you as a sort of a discovery portal for for games for our listeners and viewers who who wouldn't may not be familiar with that particular treasure of the internet.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

Yeah, it was I I I I should know, but I don't actually know who curated it. But it was a really well-curated collection of games that had that when it's sort of mostly no longer for sale, like you couldn't get them sort of legally anymore, which is sort of how they defined abandoned wear. And it's technically it's not it's not really um they they couldn't really legally host the files and and let people download them, but no one was going to stop them because the they're kind of they were kind of almost lost media uh otherwise. Um, and so yeah, yeah. So the e each each game they put up there, they had all these categories and they'd sort of tag it and have a little review of it. And the reviews were really passionate uh a lot of the time. And the reviews would really celebrate the kind of interesting quirks that a game would have, even if the execution was pretty poor. They'd say this was the first game to try this and this, and it was like, yeah. So just reading that stuff was was really exciting. Um there'd be a tiny little screenshot so you could kind of vaguely see that what the game might look like. Um, and and some of them when when there was uh when the game did become available somehow, they'd just link to that. But otherwise, yeah, they they let you download it. Um and I think my my kind of journey with that with that website in particular started with like the I guess the the big well-known games, uh, at least the ones I'd heard of 10 years ago when you could buy them. Um, and then slowly kind of going from that and digging deeper into different genres. They had they had uh a lot of a lot of subgenres like alternate history, which like I'd sort of discover um oh there's all these interesting alternate history kind of takes uh in this uh lots of games about that. Um and yeah, just doing deep dives into like going usually going backwards slowly through history uh and then finding random gems that were that were really interesting and fun. Um and yeah, a lot of sort of more obscure adventure games as well. So I played a lot of a lot of those. And then I think towards that the end of that site, there was there was starting to have um a bit of uh kind of freeware, which was kind of the equivalent equivalent of indie now, uh, where you had sort of sort of people uh people doing what we're doing now, which we can you know make a living from, but back then that wasn't really a possibility, so it was um but it was people just making little games that were um uh quite cool and and innovative for that time uh that you could kind of discover that way as well. So it was it was a really cool website.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

And so what was going on for you at that time or and and and through those sort of younger years, like where were you um based out of? And I guess you were sort of just a school and and living your life?

SPEAKER_00 13:10

Um that would have been just probably after I finished uni, so like I sorry, finished um high school, so like you know, 2001, uh like very, very like early 2000s, and yeah, living in Melbourne, Australia, um and uh studying and I kind of did a bit of IT work, but I just I didn't really want to. So I I had very very minimal hours working and living at home, so I I did I kind of I basically just didn't have much money to to spend on stuff like that, uh to games and like console or anything at that time, and I wasn't I wasn't that motivated to either. Um so it sort of suited me, just used doing PC stuff. Um, and that's actually the where I kind of got my start in game development more as well, because I um in looking probably looking from at home of the underdogs, finding these freeware games, there was people who were making um making games with this tool called Adventure Game Studio at that time. I think this is about 2002 uh to 2004. Um yeah, and so I was I was doing an engineering degree, but it was kind of a broad, broader engineering degree, like electronics and like telephone systems and things like that that were really boring. Um a little bit of programming, which I really liked. Um, but yeah, so discovered this this like all these games people were making with Adventure Game Studio, and then downloaded the editor myself and started making stuff. Um put in like took some digital photos of my backyard and like stuck that in uh Adventure Game Studio and like realized I could like get a character walking around in this room and like saying dumb stuff. Um, and so that was kind of where I got hooked on on making games myself. Um yeah, uh, which uh then I I sort of did yeah, with Adventure Game Studio, just point and clicks, all really silly things. I didn't really try and make anything serious, um, but but I kind of started trying to learn how to draw and doing bits of um uh bits of like music and um doing some recording some voices of my friends and uh and yeah, I really liked how I got to do a bit of everything at that time, and I guess I'm doing that now again as well. I got to do bits of art and sound and music and writing and um uh design and puzzles, and so there's there's a lot, all the little different parts, it's kind of like directing uh and starring in your own play kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 15:29

Um that's a great way of putting it, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

Yeah, yeah, that's what I so going back to point and clicks much, much later, um that that was what drew me drew me back to them as well, just like that feeling that I can kind of just create this kind of using familiar mechanics, but uh kind of create a story and and stuff that way and create a bunch of characters and have them walking around saying stuff.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

And so then yeah, I'm interested in that period from from AGS until you said coming back to point and clicks, like what was that that journey into game development and the sort of games that you gravitated towards making? And I'm also interested about often like and sometimes this question people don't actually necessarily know the answer, but like what was what is the sort of the the impetus behind uh each game, or are you very interested in like the mechanics or sort of social side of things, or like what is often driving you to pick up and run with a project? And I'm I guess I'm asking that in relation to your earlier work, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

Um yeah, I'll for the the second part, I guess like right from the start, it was uh I think the thing that drew me to it uh was just the joy of of make of creating something and then getting to show it to people. Um that's I think the thing that uh was has always been my motivation. And so it's kind of making stuff with with with um the fact that other people will play it in mind the whole time. Um and and like, oh, I think people will really like this, uh that kind of uh that kind of thing. And so early on that was the there was like a really nice community around uh Adventure Game Studio, like uh old internet forums there, um, that everyone would be you know chatting and sharing stuff on, and they'd have like a little art section with like a critics lounge where you could post your your little drawings and people would maybe critique them or give you feedback, but also like just say what, say, oh hey, good, that's really cool. I really like this thing you did. Uh and that was that was really uh I I don't know, I felt I found that really enjoyable um to be a part of that community. Uh and yeah, so I I um did yeah, we made a few games there, and then I switched my uh course to be uh doing to computer science, so I was just doing um straight um straight programming kind of stuff. Um my uni course that is, sorry. Um and uh I tried to get into a video game course, which was a very new thing back then, but uh I think they weren't they were like uh you don't you shouldn't waste your like all this engineer engineering degree you've already got. So you should do this like uh like proper bachelor course instead or whatever. So um that ended up working well because I got a a job after I graduated in um in-games in Melbourne at this time at this company, which was uh making uh back then in Australia, it was all um movie license tie-ins that like there'd be people in this in America like who would who would say, Hey, who in Australia you make games cheap? Who can do this game the cheapest? And out the companies here would be like, I'll do it, we can do it with even more junior people. And so I was hired and just chucked in this sort of pool of people who didn't know what they were doing um to make a game very quickly uh for um that would have been um PlayStation 2, Wii and Xbox 360, the first one I think we made. Um yeah, and so but the games were weren't can I the quality game was or the games were just one called uh Looney Tunes Act Me Arsenal, uh, and then we did this one based on the movie The Jumper. Oh no, just Jumper, yeah, uh, which was a really bad movie. The movie got like one-star reviews, and the game also got one star reviews.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

So they met they were on par with each other. You you you you you hit the the standard of quality as as the movie did.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

Um yeah, so but it was a bit of a trial by fire, and the that company uh that I started at is also where I met uh Barney, who I ended up doing uh starting Powerhoof with, uh Adrian, who's um the voice actor, so he was three he's a 3D artist still. Um but uh he yeah, he we sort of met there. Um and yeah, he's uh sort of all the voice acting stuff now. Um uh a bunch of other people that I've done heaps of game jams with and still collaborate with. So the the 20-ish year old people there, mid-20s, kind of uh that all got hired there. We've kind of all kind of stuck together and still still kind of in touch. And um, that was that's a that's been a fun part of kind of our journey, I guess. Um yeah, so that was uh yeah, that I was there for a few years, and then that studio closed down when there was this the global financial crisis, and suddenly like none of these companies wanted to pay Australia to do things anymore because it the wasn't cheaper anymore because of the exchange rates or something. Uh, and so a lot of those companies closed down. Uh, but then out of that came uh the the sort of more indie kind of stuff. Um so uh we I got a job um at a company doing very kind of early iPhone stuff. So um they made some pretty cool games like one called uh Flight Control and Real Racing. Uh company called FireMint. Um but yeah, they were doing it. It was that time of with iPhone where it was very new and like you could just make a tiny little um game that uh where you use the touch screen and it was really uh innovative, I guess, and you just be really experimental and and you can make a bunch of money just by selling that for a dollar. Um and that was a really cool time. Uh but then yeah, our company got bought out by EA, and then they just wanted to turn everything to microtransactions, and it wasn't fun anymore. Um, but yeah, but uh my again, the other half, other founder of Powerhoof, Barney, he he's his company he was working at also got bought out by EA, and the our two companies got merged together, so we kind of were working again together um in the same place and kind of decided to quit about the same time. Uh and that's when we started Powerhoof in 2013. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

It's it's funny, it's not it's not it's not a dissimilar lineage to Incole Studios who've done like um 80 Days and uh TR49, the two founders finding finding each other within the industry and then making a decision to go go at it alone. Yeah. Um it's interesting. So then, yeah, so you talk about the the the mobile device stuff, which again absolutely ingle. That that's that's their shape, and like you were saying about with with um the drifter making something that can can exist on consoles and and not just be um um settle made first. for for PC. Um do you feel like the I I don't want to try and fill in gaps where they don't exist, but like that that experience of like doing the mobile device stuff and things like that sort of gave you a a a good sort of understanding on the way that that you can get people to sort of like engage and interact with a game say with adventure games outside of just literally point and click or is it just not I think it definitely I learned stuff both the companies I worked I learned a lot really fast um about how what what game can what games can be and how much needs to yeah go into go into sort of the decisions that that go into one.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

They were both very different companies one making things very quickly and the other one sort of um not not much yeah the other one sort of started with these really small projects that were very kind of more like indie style but then moved to something where they're quite bloated as well. So um seeing basically what works and what what doesn't and what things like are we we like and enjoy uh and what things we don't. So that kind of definitely influenced the sort of way we work as as Powerhoof and what how we've sort of uh grown in the 10 years we've been going. But um yeah the the mobile stuff in particular I was I was like doing stuff where we were like looking at psychology blogs and sort of seeing how that all that kind of like all these sort of techniques people are using for um in that purchases and microtransactions and stuff like what what how those things are work and why they work and things like that and but but it was it wasn't fun it was like it was sort of like make the game worse so that uh and make people enjoy it less but they'll be addicted and keep buying stuff and it's like this isn't what we want to do. No one there really like there was there was marketing people who got hired that and they would call the shots on like what you do and and the decision they made was just like this just makes the game worse. It doesn't make it more fun doesn't make it better it just makes like it engage some people in some annoying addictive level that uh where they somehow that keeps some percentage of people paying or something. So yeah I I really didn't didn't enjoy that part of of mobile uh stuff um and it's kind of that's unfortunately kind of persisted in that if you want to compete in on an iPhone games it's very hard to do it by just making a game which is really good and hoping people discover it because it's good.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

So that's kind of you still have to make something that that sort of is good um but you've also got to do all the crazy weird strategies to like get people to uh review your game and um give it five stars and and then show them ads at all the right times and all this other stuff that yeah so we we haven't done we haven't gone back to mobile at all uh since we left um and I'm sort of I I don't miss that really no I get it's interesting hearing that because it makes I obviously there's so much work that goes into just distributing a game on it on any platform but the fact that there are platforms out there where like if you if you start by making something really good then you've you can and then work out the the the work that needs to be done about getting in front of the right people then you can reach people with really good games that you just pay for once and there's no microtransactions.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

Yeah yeah great story and all this stuff it's the best thing ever that that we sort of found out that that we can do that for um when we started and like people watch yeah well when we first started we didn't even think we'd be able to get on Steam that was just before green light happened so our Steam Greenlight so we really didn't know if we'd be able to do anything. We were just like I guess we can try selling games on our own website and see if anyone buys them so yeah when when we kind of we had success and like well people like we made a little like trailer of from uh our our first game crawl quite early on and and got it got on like rock paper rock paper shotgun and that was like oh wow people we we actually made something that like press want to write about this is crazy um yeah so that was that was pretty exciting at that time that's the dream rock paper shotgun it was and I guess then I'm just interested before we get into the the drifter which is only only because I've got so many questions about it but you what what were the early stage decisions of that company about the sort of games that you wanted to make were you sort of thinking about like well this I would find this entertaining so I want to make it or were you looking at it or like how are you making decisions? Yeah no it was it was pretty much the I would find it entertaining like the the first game we made crawl was like local multiplayer um because we were we'd all we all sort of played games stuff with just early 30s I guess or you know 2930 the around that age and we'd get together at a friend's house and and want to play and play games together but we'd we'd have to go back to uh like GameCube or something unless I want to bring an old console because there wasn't much coming out uh on like I guess yeah on those consoles at the time even racing games you'd have to sort of have two Xbox um uh got what is it the gold whatever um the the have to have two Xboxes and like put them on separate TVs and then do it online because the the games the racing games wouldn't have a split screen anymore things like that so that so we kind of did a a game jam early on that was like uh multiplayer uh local multiplayer game jam thing uh like I guess we didn't even call it a game jam then it was just like hey we should all just make some really terrible games and then bring them around to to my place and we'll have a party and just play them all um and so we did that and that's kind of that kicked off the first few games but then at the same time it was like no one you can't buy any local multiplayer games at that time so like we didn't really it didn't feel like it was that smart an idea to try and sell them either because surely people would be selling them if there was a thing you could could actually sell.

SPEAKER_01 27:46

But luckily by the time we kind of yeah I guess in the in the year it took us while we were first working on it um Tower 4 came out and um yes of course yeah and a few a few other games like that yeah so they were kind of showed that there was a market for that and like oh no it wasn't just us that wanted that stuff it was it was everyone um but yeah still we were we were jumping into something which we didn't really see think there was a market for necessarily it was just like ah that's that's something we lack and we'd like to see more of that's so interesting I mean I feel like that genre there's there is more of it I don't know that I've seen it kind of like go crazy in terms of um which which which I mean I I feel like we're seeing now a lot more um like co-op couch co-op sort of games um or certainly because of the set success of the likes of it takes two and split fiction there's probably gonna be a million more of those types of games coming out but I think it's interesting so and I feel like you you've done this with a drifter as well you obviously had an instinct for something that there's no proof that this is gonna uh work but you you did create something that there was an appetite for yeah I think I mean it's a lot easier to do that when there's just yeah it's a kind of two person studio and you don't have the giant like burn rate of a 10 person team or something um and we can find a little niche and like that's plenty for us.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

So uh doing a point click was the same kind of decision because it's they're not that's not a genre that uh is easy to to do to make much money in uh it's definitely not something that publishers go for um but I won once we when we started Power Horfer straight away I was like I want to do it more point click stuff because I enjoy that stuff still um but it was a kind of a slow burner thing for a long time uh that that only ramped up when we sort of when I started doing um the drifter. Yeah but it was definitely a a thing that I was very aware of right from the start that okay this is a hard sell in terms of um making money from it especially if it takes like you know if it takes three years and then it ended up taking six years but and so then I'm curious about what the earliest iterations of the drifter was like did you have an idea about the control scheme at that point and yeah like what what was the absolute earliest elements of that game I suppose I'm interested in the ones that that have basically stuck out throughout that you're like either gate this is what this is going to be and it's still there and then I'm assuming there's other elements that perhaps evolved or changed or got yeah I'm a similar to similar to crawl that started with uh like game jam so in in this case we it was uh we we'd sort of just shipped crawl and there was this adventure game jam uh called venture jam coming up and I was like oh I want to do this uh make make a little adventure game because I haven't done that for ages um and but Barney is not as into the uh point of click stuff I think he played some as a kid but he he had never sort of been involved in making one or anything like that like I was um but yeah he he loves like horror thriller stuff so I was like oh I'll I'll I'll try and do a horror story kind of thing because he'll love to draw out for that um and I also roped in Adrian who ended up doing the voice of of Carter and a whole bunch of others in the drifter um uh to do yeah to do voices uh and then uh yeah so we made a game in it was only a week actually just over a week uh called Peridium which was if you if you play it you'll see like a lot of the DNA that's in the drifter because it's sort of the narration is is very similar like first person immediate kind of um present tense um style and it's sort of narrating everything you have all the fade to black and the sort of voiceover narrating stuff uh and it's very sort of um a lot of the kind of I kind of called them flow sections where you have like if there's like one thing you can click on to progress and then there's the next thing you click on to progress and it's sort of tries to be kind of quite fast paced. And it was all it was kind of just what we managed to do in the time but um uh it it resonated really well and what I saw people like let's play as playing it and they were like getting really freaked out when they were trying to you know trying to click on the right thing at the right time and I was like wow this is a point and click and it's actually getting people to feel nervous or whatever intense that's that's really cool. And I really liked how um there was people in in uh in the comments of like the let's play uh coming up with fan theories for for what was going on in the story and I was like I wrote this story in like one day and I was just like mashing the cable as fast as I could um but it was the first time I'd done a a serious story serious like all the adventure games I used to do were like really silly like kind of jokey things. And so I was like wow okay this is like like magic I can kind of create this world out of nothing and people sort of really get invested in it. So that was the uh that was the point where I'm like okay cool I'd I want to do a game in this style um as the next sort of big game uh we did another game in between those uh between that but um yeah so then uh I kind of had a lot of the building blocks there um but to do when I was thinking about um thinking about turning it into uh like a bigger game uh that's that I'd spend multiple years working on uh I I didn't so I still didn't really like the idea that it's like a niche kind of point and click PC um PC only thing. And the idea yes yeah so I kind of wanted to feel like you could play it on controller um and it would feel natural and not just feel like a um oh I wish I was sitting in front of a computer to play this kind of thing. So I didn't want to be controlling a cursor around the screen or even seeing a cursor. And so yeah I kind of had to think about what it is that I like about moving a mouse around a screen when I'm playing a point and click that makes that makes that work. And that led to kind of yeah sort of the realization that what what I'm doing when I'm moving the the mouse around the screen is kind of mimicking what the character in the in the in the game is doing kind of looking around the scene and just thinking about what the next move will be. So you kind of you move your mouse over a window and the character sort of thinking about oh maybe I could do something about this window and then you click on it to sort of interact or or use an object on it. And so yeah from that kind of the idea of having a radio menu that's sort of around the character's feet um that that kind of came up because it's that from the character's perspective but they're still able to interact across the room and not just when they walk right up to something and press A. Yes. Yeah so yeah just experimented with it and I was really lucky that it actually seemed to work and people picked it up and could sort of it made sense I just felt right I think um yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:36

But so yeah I mean because I'm such a point and click addict and I don't mean the genre I mean literally like there's so many great games in the adventure game sort of genre that I've I've not played yet because whenever I want to play an adventure game I want to point and I want to click I want to be dragging my curse all around I want to be right clicking on everything and I'm and I know I'm they are games I will get around to but like I know I'm locking myself out of potentially like great stories and different mechanics to things like this but what what I loved about the drifter was it it did it sort of it it absolutely did convert what was what I adore about dragging that cursor which is also like an extremely like antiquated and clunky slow way of like engaging with a game and I was thinking about like Grim Fandango and I remember like the original one it was like tank control. Yeah like a freaking point and click Lucas point and click game but it did work because you would I mean back then everything was tank control so it's funny exactly those 3D games you would like as you got closer to points of interest Manny would just turn his head to and I absolutely loved that as as an approach because it it it incentivized me to just kind of like slowly I think he could run I believe but like just slowly sort of maneuver my way around that that game and then I was thinking about the drifters like oh you sort of like took the twin stick if I shoot not not literally but you just the idea of of of of that as a as an approach and what what am I getting at? I something I was talking with Francisco Gonzalez from like uh Rosewater and um all those other beautiful games about was this sort of like the death of the right click. Yeah yeah and he was saying in he sort of realized because he he's taken that out of Rosewater where like often the the right click is the examine option right and you would often get hints about perhaps what you should be doing in that space because of it but but so many people weren't doing that that they're potentially missing out not just on ways to progress but just interesting insights and obviously with the drifter you've you've removed that because the the examine element of the game it's it appears in the radial doesn't it but it's like non in it's non-interactive items but if you go over it you get like a an observation or a description is that right yeah yeah um yeah yeah I guess yeah I went through the same it was kind of the same discovery discovery kind of thing that uh that Francisco went through um for me it was doing yeah just series of game jams so that the first one I mentioned earlier had the the two click the right click to look which I loved like that that's been my favorite point and click interface because for me starting with like typing things into a parser the first thing I do in a new room is look at everything to work out okay what's what's going on here what are the interactable things what are the points of interest that the the designer wants me to look at or that that my uh attention be drawn to um and yeah and so that always felt natural to me but then again watching let's plays and people um playing um my the first game jam called Peridium um they yeah no one right clicked like and all these big YouTubers and they don't right click once and you're like oh man and I even had on the cursor there was a tutorial that on the cursor it showed just under the cursor left click to interact and as soon as you left click that disappears and it says right click to look at and then that keeps flashing and people just play through the whole thing with that right click to interact flashing and never click right click.

SPEAKER_00 38:17

It's like so interesting. It's really so yeah it was it was just um even I think developers that love the right click it's just you you make a game lot with that and then you realize that okay that half your audience doesn't use it and they're missing the way you sort of want the game to be played. Yeah so I liked uh from yeah then the next game I tried took remove the right click and had just a sort of context-based left click um and uh an issue with that was um there's some things when you click it it would sort of describe them like you're looking at them and others wouldn't um and the solution for that was to add it you can make the icon change to like an eye or a magnifying glass when you when it would be a lookout interaction and then you know an action like a finger if it's an interact or a or a chat box if it's going to talk to someone which is kind of obvious but it it still took a little iteration to get there. And then yeah the other one was uh I saw in a in a game called Unavowed by uh uh Dave Gilbert Watch it I games um where you mouse over things uh and it would some things you'd it'd it have a full text description when you mouse over it uh without clicking but some things wouldn't be clickable like it would the the icon would change to being grayed out basically and so that that seemed to kind of fill in all the gaps where you can still have lots of interesting hotspots around uh and describe them to the to the character or describe them to the player and have the character kind of give their thoughts on things um but it's kind of a more uh streamlined version of that so you sort of move your mouse or your you know if you're using the twin stick thing you know move your your right stick around and you can sort of examine you can sort of get the look at the uh text uh and the flavor there uh and the little hints and stuff um without yeah without the kind of more clunky thing of um having to look at everything or having to use the single click but every the the first click you do is always look at and then it changes to interact and you know things like that that some people try. So I'm pretty happy with how that works. Yeah how that worked in the end. But it was yeah definitely something that's just sort of evolved over time and playing other games and and sort of trying things myself.

SPEAKER_01 40:30

And do you think I guess I'm interested in with with adventure games it's such that ballads like keep everything exactly as it ever was for the last however many decades versus like progressing the genre and and and helping bring new people like into it. Like whenever I play an adventure game I always sort of think well I'm playing I'm playing it because I love adventure games um but it it's only just now crossed my mind obviously like say for the drift time I guess is that you would have been introducing audiences to this game who've potentially never never played a point and click in their life know nothing maybe not know nothing but like are not right click enthusiasts or knowing to press the period button to skip dialogue or played Monkey Island for the umpteenth you know time. I guess I'm interested in what is what that new audience sort of looks like for for the drift and how that's yeah introducing them to this genre.

SPEAKER_00 41:26

Yeah there's definitely that new audience that there's also an audience of people who just like think they don't like point and clicks uh or like they didn't they they tried a few and like they might have tried monkey island that went and they got the remakes or things like that and they were just like ah not for me because they're maybe the grown consoles and stuff. So there's a big audience that I mean yeah the point and clicks are kind of the uncool genre I think in in terms of um uh indie the indie games you know they're they're sort of the they get a lot of shade I think but um trying to weird yeah trying to penetrate uh get escape that thing that kind of stigma I guess is is a challenge but at the same time I didn't want it to not be kind of a traditional point and click um I want it to be like yeah you can't say it's not a point and click adventure um because that's what I love as well. And I do yeah you see people you see people sort of uh who like who sort of are making a point and click but then they sort of try and say yeah but it's not going to be like those old ones and then they kind of take away too much and it becomes something that's maybe too streamlined. Things sort of puzzles solve themselves a bit too much um uh or yeah it's kind of loses what's what I think is fun about point and click so I wanted to keep all the things like having lots of inventory items and like using them on each other and and that sort of traditional style of puzzles. But just try and be as kind of slick with the interface as I could um and try and yeah where wherever I could kind of make it feel a bit more modern or um yeah with the the user experience stuff like do that but yeah it's there's a balancing act and with puzzle design I think that's a big part as well like my I I never wanted to try to be tricking people with puzzles. I just sort of wanted that for me the puzzles are all about giving the player an objective so they know what they're trying to do um and and enough sort of padding for the for the story stuff to come out uh and make them feel like they're engaged um and have sort of agency in the st in the in the game as well. But that's not like I'm not trying to stump them but then yes that's really hard that's really hard to balance because they're people who've never sort of had to kind of use their uh to make those little connections uh when in a game if you're used to playing kind of triple A console stuff um the game you don't have to listen to what someone says because you know there'll just be an objective marker and all you have to do is walk up to that and press the button. And so even when you get like um a crowbar and there's a a locked door right in front of you the the the idea that like what I have to decide I have to work out for myself That I should use this crowbar on the locked door. That's that's like a it's a it is there's a cognitive thing. You have to like make that connection yourself. I'm not gonna do that for you. So I'll say that there's a crowbar and there's a locked door and the lock looks weak on it or whatever. But um, but yeah, I don't want to say I should use the crowbar on the door because that's very too fast. But but then it's definitely uh it's definitely something where there's always gonna be places that someone gets people get stuck and have to look it up or you know that sort of thing. So um yeah, it's a it's a hard balancing act.

SPEAKER_01 44:29

And then obviously the game came out, and it's like at least from my perception as a player, it's like it wasn't just that it did well or that people liked it, like people were kind of like blown away by it. Again, going to places like Rock, Paper, Shotgun, which is a as is an example publication that is quite difficult to get people to get them to write so glowingly about a game, and to see people like blown, like literally sort of like blown away by this. Like, what was that like for you?

SPEAKER_00 45:04

Yeah, it was mainly after six years launching was just so terrifying that it was like I just didn't want to stick my head in the sand mainly, but obviously it's good. Um yeah, so it's like it's just I was terrified. I've I really was terrified uh to to even like even when things were kind of uh yeah, really glowing. I'm like, it's sort of skip that stuff, find the find the thing they didn't like, you know. It's so hard not to do that. Um I don't I don't want to I don't want to therapy.

SPEAKER_01 45:32

I'm just curious what the I'm I'm curious what the source of the terror is. Is it the idea is it that sort of like tall poppy thing, like the fear of sort of being cut down or like someone being angry or exposing yourself?

SPEAKER_00 45:47

It's a bit it's a bit like like public speaking or something, which I hate, like that feeling, uh everyone's looking at yeah, everyone's looking at me right now, that kind of thing, I guess, or or like yeah, it's just like oh knowing uh like going going to bed when I launched and and then sort of being like, okay, everyone's gonna be talking about my game. It's like everyone's gonna be talking about me while something and like lots of people, thousands of people, and that's like it's just it was just a bit um, it's not a conscious thing, it's just like a weird, not not yeah, it was weird. So it didn't feel like a yeah, like when I released a little game jam, it's like, ah yeah, cool, I did it. Oh cool, someone's playing it, that's awesome. Or is this was like, oh god, what this is terrifying. Um, yeah, I think because there was you know there was a lot of build-up and there was um yeah, people excited for it and stuff. And um yeah, I don't know. It was it was just uh it was a weird, a weird experience. Um, and so the the sort of enjoyment of that comes comes later when I once I've relaxed a bit and like, okay, I think I can read reviews now.

SPEAKER_01 46:50

Did it get more terrifying the more sort of successful it it sort of became? Was there a sort of um a lot of of angst? As it sort of started to because at some point when a game like that gets picked picks up, it kind of runs away from you, right? Like you're not really doing marketing anymore because it's just I mean you you are to a degree, but yeah, you've sort of done the hard stuff.

SPEAKER_00 47:11

You've done the hard stuff by that point, yeah. You've kind of laid all the foundations and like sent people keys and all that stuff, and then you get you know you get more people sort of sorry, uh you get more people uh asking, yeah, yeah, wanting to have a chat like this or something, uh, but then that's kind of uh that's not it doesn't feel like marketing, that's just like sort of follow-up stuff, I guess. Which has been that's been a lot more of of that than I expected, and can compared to our previous games as well, which which Kroll did really well as well. But um the drifter in particular, um I mean if the things like awards and stuff are uh things like that, which we we got a few for for Kroll, but nothing like this, and it's been like amazing. Um, and yeah, like yeah, having coming on podcasts and chatting to people and stuff, um all those all those things have it's been sort of surprising how how much uh like how much of that stuff there there's been. Uh and it kind of uh yeah, it's like almost a year on it, I think. And and sort of uh doing stuff like this is like I wasn't I wasn't expecting that. I was like, oh yeah, I'll ship it, and then like a week later, oh yeah, I can start doing the next game. It's like um I mean, especially with the drift uh with uh the switch stuff. Um yeah, I'm really only getting getting to that pretty like with in the next few weeks or something. I'm start sort of starting to go, okay, cool. I've actually got a bit of time now. Um yeah, I know it was it's a bit it was weird. It was um it was definitely way beyond expectations, like the launch um and the reception uh was all awesome. It's just like after with a six-year build-up, it's really it's just uh it's not it's a weird mental state to be in, I think. Uh so it did throw through me through a loop. Uh um yeah, it's weird.

SPEAKER_01 48:50

I I spoke with Alex Beachum from uh Outer Wilds about yeah. I mean you want to talk about games that you like to kind of like get this like huge, extremely like passionate reach um and response. But this uh and because in you you're making games sort of in isolation, right? Like you're in your bubble, yeah, so you work on this thing for six years, and the game the game means something completely different to you as to what it's gonna mean for the the player, but like we're both here having a conversation about the same game, right? But I'm coming at it very much. I mean, I mean, sure, I'm interviewing you like for a podcast, but I'm coming at it as a as a player, right? And there's always gonna be that sort of disconnect, which is I don't know, I think it's just interesting.

SPEAKER_00 49:38

Definitely, like it kind of gets it's once it's released, it's no longer yours. It's like it's out there and it's bigger than you kind of and it's uh it's it's a weird, it's a weird thing to think about. Like um, because yeah, when you're when you're making it, you're so in the nitty-gritty, and every little thing you're doing is like, okay, what's what a what a player's reaction is going to be to this little bit here. This is my intention, this is what I want them to be feeling and thinking. But then everyone's different, you know. It's uh it's yeah, it's interesting. And that's the same with films, yeah, yeah, it would be like that'd be really hard. If as a filmmaker, walk going into a cinema and what and being in a crowd of people watching your movie would be like that'd be hell, I reckon. What's funny is I would love it.

SPEAKER_01 50:22

I think it's yeah, it's it's it's I've talked about before, maybe with Alex, like and maybe I don't know if it's it maybe it's the same as like say if you're watching someone streaming, like playing it, but it's like every when it's a theatre, my experience has been like the audience ends up with this kind of collective response to the film, so like depending on the size of the audience or depending on the like the room or the quality of the sound, whatever, like you could have one screening where like you're getting like very visceral responses from the audience, yeah, and they're like you know, laughing where you want them to laugh, or they're I'm talking about documentary specifically because that's my background, they're they're sort of gasping where you you want them to gasp, they're laughing at places you didn't think that they would, all of that stuff, and then you can go you can have another screening the exact same day in a different theatre or different number of people, and it's sort of like a mausoleum, yeah, and yeah, there's no response. And actually, my one observation was those fancy cinemas where you've got the big armchairs and you can kind of sit back, those were usually the sort of deadest more dampened responses. It it wasn't a sort of a collective feeling, and I think it's probably because you're you're feeling a little more insul in isolation, even if you're anyway, all that to say. I know what you mean, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:44

We've got this this cinema near us that plays uh yeah, does like like old films, I'm really uncomfortable, old ancient seats, uh, and like it's so fun going and seeing like uh a really old black and white film and just having everyone laughing and and like reacting, it's like it's very different. Yeah, um but no, no, I think I know what you mean. I think for for the um yeah, it's it was like the stakes for the drifter. Like it took me a long time before I could watch a let's play, but now I can watch it and then it's like really enjoyable. But I'll watch you know someone streaming it and that kind of thing. Whereas yeah, when when I do a little game jam, the stakes are kind of lower, and like because I I like made this made this joke like really quickly, like at 4 a.m. at the end of the game jam, and then I see someone react to it, and it's like, ah, that's awesome. So it's a it's a yeah, a different feeling, yeah. Um, but yeah, like that's yeah, it I was it really surprised me how um how like how I found that challenging uh at launch when it when it was all like perfect, like all really positive and that's you know selling really well. And I was just like, Oh, I feel like sick. This is weird. That's really strange.

SPEAKER_01 52:49

No, I I I know uh exactly what that it is funny, isn't it? Because it's sort of yeah, I don't know. I can't even begin to say you respond that way. There's also a slight kind of like you said, you something that you I I always sort of think on release of something I'm gonna feel this like this big sense of I don't know, something but it can be a little underwhelming because there's there's no there's no amount of launchness that's ever gonna really uh satisfy what was like you said, like the same with documentary, like a six-year, and it doesn't need to, but it's it's often quite um uh I I can't think of the word, but it's it's more banal than one might be. Yeah, oh man, it was you think it should be.

SPEAKER_00 53:36

So when I launched it, it was 3 a.m. And I was just like, oh I'll stay here and I'll sleep on the couch, and so I don't wake up my wife like going back to bed. And so it was just like sitting here waiting to for 3 a.m. because that's when the US is awake, so it's the right time to launch and do all the social the the press like in Vargos all drop and all that stuff. Um, and I have to manually press the launch button, and then you manually do a few other little uh little things like um, but um yeah, it was just like uh I clicked it, and it's like I like in retrospect, I should have like done I don't know, I should have streamed it or something like that and got a community like or people on our Discord just chatting, and and so it was a bit there was a bit of energy in the room because it was just me sitting here in the dark in my pajamas, like all right, it's out, I'm going to bed.

SPEAKER_01 54:25

I've definitely that's I was remember when we were like submitting the project files to like Netflix or something, and it was like I'm sort of like uh up at 1 a.m. like fixing the transcript file in like text editor for like Netflix, and I sort of thinking this feels like not wrong, but just like totally the opposite of what I envisioned. It's surreal, it's a weird, it's really weird. Yeah, it's surprising how much time we spend doing very big monumental things in our pajamas, it's something absolutely, yeah. Um, and I was just thinking going back to what we talked about right at the beginning, say with Space Quest, and like I love the idea of some kid playing the drifter and potentially being completely incapable of getting past even the first opening thing because because of not being able to like work out the sort of again again, it's it's it's simple enough, but say if you if you're not that yet there with that literacy, but but uh because of the the the visual look of it and everything about it, I think maybe what we were talking about why we could enjoy just being in those spaces for me it was like King's Quest V, I can't remember which one, but like it's almost like you're just like flicking through a lovely sort of picture book, right? And you were what you're saying about the the objective and outcomes and story are almost like totally irrelevant, and yeah, I just I like the idea of some kid just being stuck in the drifter but not really minding because they can wander into the tunnel and out into the sky.

SPEAKER_00 55:57

Just listen to all the swearing and be like, this is rad.

SPEAKER_01 56:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's good, it's good for swearing. And actually, just finally, I'm just interested to hear a little bit about because obviously so much of like what like to me, why the game is is is is the game. It's like you've you've come up with this brilliant mechanic that helps me like get engaged with the story, but it's the story, it's the characters, it's it's buying into that that really sort of makes this game what it is. And um, I'm interested in what that development process was like from again early point through to nailing it basically.

SPEAKER_00 56:33

Yeah, that was it was um like development was there was no big like roadblocks or or challenges that really jumped up that we weren't that were the surprising. It just every little part took a long time, and and so the the first like three years really was me building out the game just with really rough, sort of sketchy art. But a lot of that was um yeah, just staring into space, trying to work out how all these little parts should fit together to get the plot from the this beat to the next one, and get the character there, and make some sort of make the puzzles make flow the have a puzzle flow which makes the character get from this point to this net next point where I've got an idea of what might happen, um, and just all the little specifics. Uh that was uh yeah, it was a slow sort of process, I guess, like trying to work that stuff out. Um and yeah, but it was I kind of tried to approach it uh I was I was learning about a lot about writing, um, and I was trying to approach it like uh Stephen King, how he talks about when he writes a book, does a draft and doesn't show anyone. Uh and in doing that first draft, that's when that's how he works out what this story's even about. And so I kind of took that approach of like, like I've got some ideas for what's gonna happen in the end, these to set piece kind of things that happen, um, these little beats that I want to hit. But then the idea that uh yeah, but I I really didn't know how I was gonna get there. Um, I didn't know um how the character would evolve, what you had ideas for what I thought the themes kind of would would be, and and that stuff like that. But that was really wasn't until like I got to the to the end uh that I sort of had really properly worked that stuff out and I kind of knew the characters a lot better, and then I could go through again knowing okay, the character Mick, the main character, he wouldn't say that, like I'll should change that, or like this isn't something he'd do. Um uh and and then reinforce the thing, the themes, which I sort of realized were kind of an undercurrent there the whole time, um, that I sort of didn't really couldn't really see until it was done, until the whole thing sort of uh the whole story was told because it's it's like just so there's so many parts to keep keep in your head all at the same time. So I just sort of had to get it down. Um yeah, so that kind of it sort of did that iteration, sort of one pass through, and then I sort of chapter by chapter uh went through and sort of re replayed and and sort of uh refined stuff um with the story and you know, some puzzle stuff and flow stuff as well, and sort of tested those chapters one by one, and then uh and sort of started getting the art stuff happening on them one by one as well. And so it was kind of three years of um of me kind of just doing that kind of stuff, and then three years of sort of production uh art and sound and um sort of polish and and all that stuff uh getting a little better. But um yeah, so it was a much, much longer project than I expected it to be, but not because there was any kind of big mistake we made and we had to rescrap everything and start again. It was just like everything just everything just took that took time.

unknown 59:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:40

So I was that was a hard part of development as well. Like from the third year onward, I was just like, How is this taking so long? I can't believe it. Surely next year it'll be out. Okay, that was that was uh that was hard, which I think that that also led into it. Um to the when it when it finally shipped being a LEC exhausted, you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:00

But that relief of it, and I guess I'm interested just just on that note, how much um pacing could because again it's it's it's a game that has like very tense moments and then there's slows down a little bit, and there's like these highs and lows. Were you was that something you were thinking about a lot, like the way that you were pacing the game and how much you could put a player through before it to like slow them down and where things were dragging versus where things felt like they were moving too quickly?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:27

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, that that's a I think a big part of what what I felt was important and um yeah, I like the idea of it being yeah, fast-paced kind of take on the on a point and click, but uh yeah, that the it was part partly it was very challenging to have that just keep going and keep going uh and be that fast out of the frying pan into the fire just a constantly, but also yeah, exhausting for the player. So having bits where like there's a lot of stuff happening, you don't know what's happening, and then a little bit of you know investigation, walking around exploring. Um that kind of seemed to fit really nicely. Um yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:05

And then finally, finally, and this is quite a big broad question, so it's okay if you have a a set answer for it. But again, we talk about point-and clicks, you know, adventure games, you know, this this genre that is evolving and iterating, and we're we're although the text parser is coming back, like the Crimson Diamond, things like that, and yeah, the verb trees and all this stuff, all these different ways that have been sort of refined down and and and made more efficient. But I just wonder if you like what your feeling is of like what what sits at the heart, the center of a really good adventure game that sort of has nothing to do with like the mechanic or the the way that people are interacting with it. Like, what is it about this genre that people keep on coming back to? And like you said, it's the sort of the slightly kind of like um not vilified, but it's it's it's it's that genre that sits slightly outside, but yeah, it hasn't it hasn't gone, it hasn't gone away either.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:00

Yeah, yeah. I mean, uh uh for me it's just it's another storytelling medium. It's like I still read novels and I watch films and yeah, play games, and then so there's so many different storytelling mediums, and it this is just another one. I think it like has its own place. Um, and so I think I'll always kind of uh make point and clicks, even when I'm doing other games as well, just because there's uh there's something kind of I really like about telling a story in that way. Um, and I think uh compared to other games, um I think partly it's that you can have such mundane kind of verbs, like not every verb is shoot a gun. It's like uh you might do that once or twice. Um, so you're not like it's not just all action things like you know jumping and shooting or whatever. It's like you can do some really sort of subtle inter interactions with something just because it's the designer has designed like this this interaction themselves, but as a bespoke thing, every time you click something, it's something the designer has created. Um, and that can be um very true to that character. So, like you know, Ben from full throttle, he'll kick down a door because that's his like nature he's got. Um, but like another character wouldn't do that. Um and so uh that's very different than most other games where you sort of you have a character and like this character shoots fireballs in this game, um, and they can do a double jump, and then that's that's kind of how they're expressing themselves in the game. So uh it makes it makes it easier to sort of um tell a story where the characters are like a big core part of it and and a lot more subtle uh uh and sort of fully fleshed out, um, because it's it's sort of hard to do that when your character's just shooting people all the time or whatever. So yeah, I think that's yeah, I don't know. That's the I really I do like whenever I do a game jam and uh uh make another point and click kind of thing in a in a couple of weeks because we've done a bunch of them. The the thing that always is always really crazy to me is like how from nothing I just have these characters that by the end of it I'm like kind of in I really love them. Like there's like five characters that are just came out of nothing and now like I've got these new buddies. I can kind of I can kind of in my head I can picture what they'd say or what they do um just through through that kind of act of creating this little story. It's like um yeah, it's kind of cool. I don't know.