The Studio Making Soulslikes For Everyone | Sean Valesco (Mina The Hollower, Hollow Knight)

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We want to make it as easy as possible for players to enjoy the game. We want to expand on the cheats that are available to players that have different skill levels or and I understand but don't agree with the idea that the modifiers are uh you know it's it's like gatekeeping and the fat and like being able to stand there and be like, this is our like exclusive club. I guess like you said, it's like snob, it's snobbery, right? Of like, well, that's only players that have this skill level should be able to enjoy the game.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Hi there, my name is Stephen Lake, and welcome to the Examine Game. Today I am talking with Sean Velesco from Yacht Club Games. He is the talent behind Shovel Knight and most recently, Mina the Hollower. Mina the Hollower was my first venture into what I would call a starslight game. Some of you might disagree. I'm sure you can tell me in the comments if that's the case, and we have a nice, wholesome debate about that. I wanted to talk with Sean about this game because I know they really went out on a loan with it. And there was no guarantee that it was going to be the success, the huge success that it's become. But I wanted to tell him, like, hey, you're the reason that I actually pushed myself to try what I consider to be a really, really, really difficult game. And the reason was they had these modifiers in it that I knew I could make the game easier if I needed to. And guess what? I never used them. It's a beautiful game. And at the end of this video, we do this brilliant walkthrough where he talks me through the game. We go to the main town in the game and he tells me some of the secrets, the way it was put together. It's a beautiful way of finding out about just how much heart and soul goes into these video games. This is such a great conversation when it comes to the ambition and creativity that exists within the indie game studio scene. I hope you enjoy it. Please subscribe. Thank you very much. Huge fan of uh Mina the Hollower. It's the first game of yours that from from your club that I've I've gotten to experience. It's absolutely blew me away. I want to talk a lot about why that is. Um, I usually just I'm just interested in what people are playing. That's usually my kind of kickoff question. Sometimes the answer is like nothing. I can't touch a video game right now because for whatever reason. But yeah, I don't know if there's anything that you're sort of loading up um on Steam or console.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Yeah, good question. Uh I've been playing a lot of fighting games lately. Uh I just went to Evo in Las Vegas, the fighting game tournament, and I didn't compete, but I did go to to you know watch the spectacle and and play games and everything. And uh yeah, so I've been playing Street Fighter 6, Guilty Gear, Strive, uh Avatar Legends just came out. There's the new tok tokon uh the Marvel fighting game that is just coming out. Uh they're all happening. And on Wednesdays, my pals come over and we all you know compete playing these games, although, you know, to varying levels of of goodness. And uh let's see what else. I just played Splatoon Raiders, um, I was playing Slay the Spire on my Steam Deck.

SPEAKER_02 2:53

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

Uh I was re during Mina, I played a lot of Arc Raiders, that game that uh that came out writ not too long ago. Like that that game was amazing, the the way that just like the social dynamics that are created from playing a big weird multiplayer game like that. Um so a large I don't know, I like I like playing tons of stuff, but really every I'm sure I'm forgetting a hundred things as well. And usually when a new game comes out, you know, we'll we'll boot it up and give it a try. And we all you know, we're always playing the new thing and seeing what's happening and trying to you know look at what the what the zeitgeist is.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

I love hearing that that's such a spread. I haven't um I haven't had much of of fighting games from from developers, honestly. I think you're the first.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

Um it's a great time for like fighting games are having a real like renaissance right now. Like Street Fighter is huge. Uh and yeah, guilty gear is like so cool. Uh man, these games, yeah, so fun. And also as a game developer, you're like I don't have the mental bandwidth sometimes to be involved in some 20-hour long story game experience. Or, you know, a a fighting game is something where I can pick up where I left off, play it for play it for five hours and mainline it, or like 10 minutes and play only a few matches online, and then I I can go back to what I was doing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

You're uh you're yeah, uh fighting games is like that's the you know, and I play a lot of genres. It's it's one of those genres like I put down at like the age of twelve after I'd like busted a controller, and I just never never picked it up since right. And it's funny because it's like when you're when you're outside of keeping up with a genre, you don't understand the nuance of how it's as it must be, like evolving and changing, and although the core principle is still the same, but like so much of must uh have happened over this time, you know.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Yeah, yeah. I mean I was I think we were all lapsed fighting game players, right? And and at least people of a certain people of a certain age, because the 90s were was huge for fighting games, and then they all kind of died out, and then they there was a resurgence, I guess, with Street Fighter 4, right? The 3D, like the first like 3D Street Fighter, and that was like a big, or I mean not the first 3D Street Fighter, but the first the first main named 3D Street Fighter. And that was like such a huge uh that was such a huge game, and then like Mortal Kombat came back, and then like just now Guilty Gear has gotten bigger and right, it's just become like a it's like a snowball effect, and like Tekken came back, they're it they announce a new virtual fighter now, it's like hey, let's go.

SPEAKER_01 5:27

Well and on top of that, they're they're also like, hey, let's do a re let's have a redo on the movies as well and see if we can make like really good. I I guess it's the street button. How many quotes?

SPEAKER_00 5:36

How many how many quotes we put good in? But yeah. Definitely we were the 90s. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, they're they are comparable. They're c I would say they're comparable in quality. I remember I remember being excited. Yes, the Mortal Kombat. I would say the Mortal Kombat movie from 1994 and the Mortal Kombat movie that came out whatever a couple of years ago are like the same exactly.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

They haven't like they haven't like broken the back of it like with the other other things, yeah. That's good.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

I mean, that's good, it's classic.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

I mean, you might not you might not want to share this, it might be too much information, but I'm always curious what might be at the top of someone's Steam most played as well.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

Um my most played? Yeah. I don't even know how to look at that.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

I mean if you're willing to look, I can walk you through it. Walk me through it.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

But there's David said that you did this with Edmund McMillan and that you were gonna do it with me too, so I'm ready.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

Well, Edmund McMillan's top play game is Mujenix, so uh Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

Yeah. Number one, more Street Fighter 6. 1590 hours. But we also, you know, we we were playing that at we were also playing that at uh you know at game night. Or I like I probably left it on as well. Next after that is Mortal Kombat 11 with 800 hours, about half of what the previous one was. Then Enter the Gungeon, 300 hours, Arc Raiders, Marvel Rivals, Mina the Hollower, UFO 50, UFO 50, that's gotta be because it was left on overnight. We haven't I haven't played 160 hours. How many hours is that?

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

160 hours, 150 hours of Elden Ring, 140 hours, Balatro, Infernax, Spelunky, Guilty Gear Strive, Marathon. Wow, Marathon's really up there. 90 hours of Marathon, Guilty Gear, Night Rain, Subnautica, Helldivers 2. I'm skipping some. Now we're getting down. 60 hours of Don't Starve. 60 hours of Cuphead. A lot of cup. That's a lot of cuphead.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

Yeah, good game, good list, good list Infinifactory. 52 hours if you ever if you haven't played Infinifactory, that's a fun one too.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

I mean, there's so much that we could talk about, but I do feel like I need to narrow in a little bit. And I I think I just I I want to dive into Mean of the Hollower, and there's there's the game itself, but then there's also the making of it, right? Which was its own saga.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

Uh yeah, I mean, after making five different Shovel Knight games, uh we didn't want to do another side scrolling platformer or another Shovel Knight game. And we we also were working on two Shovel Knight side games, uh Pocket Dungeon and Shovel Knight Dig, which were uh games that we were co-developing with other developers to spread the Shovel Knight love even further, right? But we wanted to do something different. We wanted to to uh yeah, to spread our wings in terms of everything, in terms of gameplay and visuals and genre and IP and everything. Make a new a new thing, a new thing. And we were also working on two projects at once, and so Mina was this top-down 2D project that we were gonna make, and then we were doing another project that's not announced yet. Um, that's a 3D project. And so the 2D project where we knew that we wanted to make it like a top-down game, like uh something that was gonna be like Zelda E, that had a little bit more of an RPG-ness, or like had like if Shovel Knight was a very like platform action game, then this game would help help us stretch in terms of making it like a little bit more RPG-ish. But we still wanted it to have action elements and to have the same DNA as a Shovel Knight game. And we also wanted to do something that we were comfortable with with the visuals, but that would stretch it, like we were saying. So making it a Game Boy Color game as opposed to an NES game allowed us to have a different visual that had a different um that had like a different resolution and came with a whole set of other challenges and like a different set of nostalgia and a different everything. So it's like by making that shift, we got to have a fresh perspective on it. By making the visuals different, we got to have a fresh perspective on it. Having a totally new character, something that was spooky and creepy, that was and also like fun. It's like heartwarming and spooky at the same time. Chilled family-friendly horror, we s we called it, right? Uh, because after doing Spectre of Torment, which was uh the Shovel Knight sequel starring Spectre Knight, that game was it was neat to have like a bad guy in a villainous world and all these like creepy, grim dark creatures, and uh so we thought we yeah, well, we'll have something that's a little bit like spooky, and we started to get inspired by gothic gothic storytelling and like Victorian gothic literature, uh, as a as the basis for this, as opposed to like Castlevania, which is also inspired by those things, and also like universal movie horror monsters and all that. We tried to kind of go to the source of Gothic horror and craft a story that was fitting in that world, uh, something with like technology combining with uh like technology that's gone too far or or like pushing pushing science too far, like a lot of the stories of that time. It's like you know, like Frankenstein, like bringing someone back to life. Uh it's it's like that that dichotomy. And also a lot of parallels to things that were happening in the real world, right? Like the the vast disparity of the rich and the poor, and like you know, we're kind of like going through a new gilded age now, and where there's you know, there's the rich barren, and then the then all of the the beggars in the streets, and this juxtaposition is something that we felt like it was ripe for uh it was it was ripe for our creative input because we were kind of like going through it. So all these ideas kind of came together, but really the biggest thing was uh Alec Faulkner, who is a designer of the original designer of Mina the Hollower, basically brought this demo in uh after King of Cards was done and said, Hey, here's this cool demo that I've been working on that's has this mouse that can jump and whip and burrow. And you know, I think this should be our this is like what our top-down 2D game should be. Because we were working on this technology for a top-down 2D game, but he kind of just like brought this in, and it already had like a jumping mouse with a Castlevania whip and like a burrow. And so it was like, you know, I it was you I think we have video or or uh, you know, there's you could see the original demo and what it looked like, and it's like you could see all the inspirations and everything was already like very clearly there. So I want to credit Alec with creating the whole shebang, basically, um, or at least the seed of the idea that we like grew into the full game with all of these themes and everything. We didn't we put a lot of work into designing how the Mina character was going to look and like what she was going to be like after the demo came to be. Um so yeah, the idea was was that she had built these generators and that she was some kind of prodigy that she's a hollower and she can she can attack Anne Burrow and she's a genius and she's all the you know, she's all this stuff. So the idea of her personality, I think, just came naturally from all these things. It's like, oh, if she was if she was selected to do this project of to build these towers, or if she I mean, she must have some level of confidence or arrogance or knowing that she's right, or I mean, obviously she's gotta be she has to be like strong-willed and capable and smart and not take guff from anyone. And but she's also gonna be like a little bit like naive and she's like caught up in the system and she doesn't realize, you know, all the more mechanisms that are happening around her, but she's still like, you know, she's like trying to do the right thing, but she doesn't have a full picture, or even if she does, maybe she doesn't want to uh r uh admit it, you know. Which is when you're in the power when you're in a position of power, you're a blue-blooded mouse that that is the the you know the winner of the generation. I guess that's how you gotta act in order to protect your ego. But yeah, I mean all that stuff kind of came on a little bit later, right? It wasn't it was uh the the story all developed, but we knew that she was going to be a somewhat a somewhat haughty mouse, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:58

So you get the demo and you decide this move forward and it sort of times what you and then obviously into the story development, and then you know, uh I guess it's about the the the way that you decide to go about sort of funding and getting this this this thing made and what you feel the the the timeline is.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

Uh yeah, I mean we had we wanted Mina to be a game that was similar in scope or maybe a little bit bigger than Shovel Knight, which is a game that we put together in like 18 months. So we thought, oh yeah, this will be a game that takes two years to make, and we'll do we're gonna do a Kickstarter for it because the Kickstarter was a big thing for Shovel Knight. It really helped bring attention to the game and it grew a community immediately, put money in our pockets, sold 15,000 copies right off the bat, and we thought, okay, this is gonna be a great thing. It's it's just a really good thing to do with a game, especially as a small studio that doesn't have like an advertising budget. Like the Kickstarter is a big part of our is a big part of our marketing. Um, and so we thought, yeah, let's go, let's do a Kickstarter. Um, and we paired up with G4, who had just uh who had become a new, they were they were had just relaunched. And uh yeah, we were poised. We said, okay, yeah, this will be this is great. We're gonna use this cool concept. We we developed it. I guess I'm skipping the part where after the concept was introduced by by Alec, and we we grinded on the project for a while to make sure that we had a nice chunk of content in order to launch this Kickstarter in the first place, right? The demo was relatively I forget how far along it was, but I feel like we had a relatively complete demo, like a PAX demo of the crypt level that we brought to a convention, which is something that we would also do in order to help uh help our development process. You bring the game to a show, and then all of a sudden it's shit gets real. You know, you have to actually your players have to be able to understand it, there can't be bugs, it all has to be real. Um, so yeah, I mean we had a demo that was ready, the concept of the game was all good to go, we were poised to be good to put the game out, and we launched and we were ready to launch a Kickstarter. And so we launched it, uh launched it on G4, and that was a big that was a big thing. It was a big hit. The game sold over the course of that one month period. We did, I think, one $1.5 million in sales, which was like I think 30,000 copies of the game or something like that, which is like a lot of different things.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

Did you just want to tell us what that was relative to how much what your original target was?

SPEAKER_00 16:31

Well, I forget what I I don't remember what we put for our original target, but you always put the target. I mean, on Kickstarter generally, you put the target low in order because you just wanted to fund. And I mean the Kickstarter would never fund the whole project budget anyway, right? Like I was saying, it's like more of a marketing thing for us. Um no, no, we I we set it to be $315,000, which was the amount that the Shovel Knight Kickstarter did back in the day. So that was kind of like a oh yeah, that'll be our thing. But yeah, we did one, we did 1.5, which was I mean, as the game dragged on for six years, we ended, I mean, we ended up burning through all of that money. Um, definitely. Uh yeah, and then after that, do you want me to keep going through the timeline of how this moment went?

SPEAKER_01 17:15

Uh yeah, if if if if if if it's in yeah, I would love to hear up.

SPEAKER_00 17:19

Sure. Yeah. I mean, after that, basically we said, okay, let's kick it off. We were gonna start we were gonna hire up because we're working on these two projects at once. We've got more people on here, all right. Let's go. And then uh right right as we were launching the or right as we were splitting up, that's when COVID happened in 2020. And so we couldn't be in the office together, and we couldn't really get we were we had to I mean the whole world exploded, half of half of the staff, you know, had extenuating circumstances, some people had to leave, we all had to learn how to work from home. It really like messed everything up, right? As as you know, we all we all had to deal with that. And it also messed up our ideas for team cohesion, or I mean that was one of the contributing factors. But we ended up having these two teams, or we ended up trying to make two teams, but the two teams never really like gelled into being two teams like how we needed them to be. And so we were working on these two games for a long time, and Mina, we were spending you know uh years on it, and we had a whole ton of content. There was a lot of tumult on the project. Um people came and went, and we our the reason that we made yaw club games in the first place was because we we used to work at Way Forward, or a lot of us used to work at Way Forward, which is a licensed game house that or they I mean they make original games too, like Shantae and Mighty Mighty Switch Force and all that. I worked there and that's like where I cut my teeth making licensed games. Um but and but they would like split the teams up all the time, and they would and like I didn't want to make a licensed game that we had to have done in a certain amount of time. We wanted to like we wanted to be able to stay together, and what did we do? We like split ourselves up. That was dumb. But you know, we we should have we like did the exact thing. We did the exact like wrong thing. We thought that we would be able, but we anyway. Um after being in development for a long time, after spreading ourselves too thin, we uh we realized we're gonna we really, really need to get this game done, you know, in order for this success of the game and for the company, we need to get this game done, it needs to come out. So everybody, we're all off of this other project and we're all dogpiling back on Mina. We need to reset this thing. It was all spaghetti and wires everywhere, and we kind of did a reset on it and straightened it all out, decided what had to what stayed and what went. I mean, really, the game, the game that we put out is very, very exact to the scope that we writ that we wrote down originally. Just the problem was I I think I mean there's a lot of problems, but one of the problems was we had all these line items. It's like fishing, fishing mini game or whatever. It's like that's one line item, but it's like, you know, what does that mean? That could be like a year of work, and you have no you have no idea. Uh and so I think that kind of thing was like not really scoped appropriately. We had all of this Kickstarter stuff, we had all of these plans because Mina was going to be the coolest, most funnest, most flexible game where you could go anywhere and do anything, and there's 60 trinkets and five weapons with two upgrades and 26 bosses, and you can go in any direction, and it's all and it all works, guys. You know, easier said than done. But you but you did it. Well, after yes, so after all that's the crazy thing. It's like I mean Yes, yes, it is, and once we s it what seemed like a mess, we really started cooking on it, and then it was really and then it got really fun, right? Not just the game, but like the production, even though we were so tired of and some people were run ragged after being on this for six years. We could see how good it was getting and how fun the game was, and how it's like all of these promises that we made to all these promises that we made on paper, we were actually fulfilling them, and like it was actually gonna be good. And then, you know, that was cool. And it's still cool. I still uh yeah, and I still feel energized about Mina and about that about that process. It was really neat.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

That was a that was a brilliant uh digest of like a very turbulent um few years. I yeah, definitely. I'm interested in that to talk a little bit more about that. So you're you know, I'm guessing there were times um morale would have been low. Um yeah, definitely but but something like like it is it it is nuts that you said you sort of fulfilled your promise. I I I talked with um Stephen Kick at nightdive about making System Shock, you know, remake. Yeah, and he's kind of like it's just one of the worst experiences and best at the same time. Because it it's also another experience of a game coming out. They're fulfilled and surpassed expectations, right? So anyway, I I guess my question is uh when you're when it starts to get fun again, are you yeah, are you basically you and the team getting fueled by the fact that you actually see the potential in the game and you think okay, that there's there really is something here we need to double down now. And then and then you what? You just find that because you you explained it quite simply, but as we all know, this path is not the most common one. In fact, it's extremely rare that a game gets to sort of come out and and fulfill the expectations and the promises um of the players.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

I mean, well, we're we're lucky to be in that position, right? We're because we don't have a publisher breathing down our neck like many people did. The only all that our only constraint was running out of resources, running out of money. But we but no one can tell us what to do or it or to stop us from making the game the best thing it can be. And like that's not something that everybody can do, right? We had the great luxury to be able to even emphasize those things. So um, yeah, that was uh so yeah, we're lucky to even be able to do that. It's a gift to even be able to develop the game to this level of polish. Like very few companies are allowed to do that. And uh as far as how did we stay motivated and how it how was it fun, uh, I mean, it yeah, it's hard sometimes, you know. I I want to say it's like making games is like a kind of it's it's a kind of madness, and you're all working on it together, and it's it's and it does this crazy fervor of working on it sometimes. And when you're all like uh when you're all when you're all jamming together and it's all working and the game is coming together, it becomes it's like has a very like addictive quality. When you're like building something together and it's turning out well, it's like you know, that's the most fun game of all. You know, you said you're playing Factorio. That's like what I'm doing every day in the game in real life. I'm like connecting this, I'm connecting this system to this system or this person to this person and like sorting it all out. And then, you know, I get to sit back and sip my coffee cup and be like, yeah, that's right. It's like all it's working. The empire is like working. Uh so for me, that's like where I get joy out of it. Or that's for for me, it's like the joy of watching the game work, like the mechanations of the game. Other people, another big component for me also, but other people are very motivated by having playtesters play it, right? And they're like, oh my gosh, the game, I love the story or the characters, with getting confirmation from others about like, oh, the game's fun, or it really worked. That's of course very gratifying when you're play when you get play testers from PAX or at the end of the game when we got to give our beta test out to friends and family, right? Every weekend, or every every time I go up to my sister's house with my sister and my nephew and my brother-in-law and my mom, and it's like, how's Mina going? Let's look, you know, let's look at the game. The the you know, this and that. They know the demo. We're all it's like everyone is involved in it.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

So that's lovely that the family's still asking. My experience in my projects is like two months in. It's not they don't want to talk about it, but it's not a lot to say, and then it's like three years later. Oh, you can go around tomorrow.

SPEAKER_00 25:26

Yeah, right, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I use them as I use them as guinea pigs, right? So I have them I have them play it as well. And uh yeah, I mean, so I especially towards the end of the project, I think that's a motivating factor. It's like having all your having the people you know and love being able to play the game and give feedback on it as well.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

Did you say you get your mum to play it? Is that right?

SPEAKER_00 25:46

Did I mean Yeah, well, she'll watch. She's not by you know she plays she plays Mario Kart, though. She's she's okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:52

Oh, you that that's that's good. That's good.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

So I think my my I think my stepdaughter would love it if uh her mum, my wife, would start playing Mario Kart.

SPEAKER_00 26:04

Um Yeah, they yeah, I was playing Mario Kart with and I bought the DLC tracks and when she wasn't there, and she walked in the door and she looked over and she's like, What's what's this? What are these? What's this? Like she immediately knew that they were like she she's like, Oh, I've never seen these tracks before. That's like what you were still playing Mario? Right, like I got I bought she's like, What's this track? And I was like, What? How do you know this is like a different heck? I just like she's been playing Mario Kart with my nephew. I was like, man, what the heck, right? How come you never play Mario Kart with me, you mom?

SPEAKER_01 26:37

Right? Right, but now we'd like to come through. Yeah, my stepson sent me this like meme of like a question like, would you rather go to prison for three years or you go to prison until your mum completes Dark Souls like two or something? You got a pick.

SPEAKER_00 26:54

No, I'd be I'd be there'd be a life sentence, I'd be done for it.

SPEAKER_01 27:00

Um okay, so yeah, so that that's that's nice. You're finding um yeah, validation and and and and being energized by the the the process. And then I guess I'm interested when you know, and I again I talked with with Edmund about this of say banning Visek and mugenics, he's very much like if he's pleasing himself, he has a really good idea that he's gonna be pleasing others. And I guess once you've shipped a game and it's done very well, you sort of have some validation of that. I guess I'm just wondering is that the general ethos for when you're making something? Like, okay, we just we know if we're entertained, we know if we're loving this thing, that it's got a because I I guess and I'm asking that question. We can look at this in hindsight now, right? Like the game came out and it was brilliant, and not only that, but it like blew up and it was so well reviewed and so well received. Um, but obviously you didn't know that that was gonna happen at at the time, right? So Yeah, yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_00 27:56

Um yeah, I mean you never know, you never know how it's gonna be received. Uh that's for sure. I guess we just tried to make the yeah, like you were saying, we tried to make a game that we thought we would like. And when you're so close to the game, you have to be really careful because you get so acclimated to it that it be feels into everything feels intuitive, the game becomes easy, everything feels obvious, and but then when someone comes in and they don't understand it, you're like, What do you mean you don't get it? That's you know, that's like it's it's so intuitive, it just makes sense. But it's like you don't, you know, the the the common sense that you've developed is the sense that you've developed over those six years when you're like making the game. Um so yeah, one must always be cognizant of that. As a designer, I feel like it's that's especially my job is to feel like it's the um like to be the it's like the first time, every time for me as the player. Like I'll try to break the game in every which way or play it the dumbest way possible, or you know, the wrongest way possible, right? By and I'll do this in regular like in real games, I'll do this too. It's just like I'll put all my stats just into one thing only, and I'll just never put it into another stat. Or I'll just like sell all my equip as soon as I get my equipment, I'll just sell it. Yeah, sell it, just sell it. It's like, oh I don't know, I don't have anything. Well now what? Now what? Now what? And that's I mean that's what happened in Mina, right? And that did and that did happen, and so we have to be testing all those things all the time. Um I that but some things are blind spots and you just never know. And in order to do that, you gotta play test it and give it to give it to outside people that have not seen it before. I'm everyone's intuition is different. And if one person on the team thinks something weird happened, then I'm sure that's some percentage of all players that also would think that's weird or that aren't gonna understand it. So yeah, I mean we just have to use ourselves. Uh and as long as everyone on the team thinks that it is. I guess I'm talking more about playing it from an intuitive standpoint as opposed to like making something that's awesome and cool and fun, in order to make in order to make that kind of thing that's thematically cool. I think we all decide what we want it to be in the beginning, and then we concept it out and we are constantly posting it in the chat and looking at it and making sure that it's hitting the target and then reevaluating it. So I think we're like, oh yeah, is this still hitting what we want? Is this still hitting what we want? Good, good, good. But we got to keep thinking about that beacon. There's always a beacon that you're headed towards, a beacon that you wrote down that's on that's in the GDD that everyone we're we're trying not to iterate on our thoughts that we're having. We're trying to like make something that's this perfect version of what we already agreed on, that everyone already agreed on, that's like over there. Here's what we're gonna here's what we're making. It's like this thing. Remember, remember, and then everything you make, you can compare it against that. And it's like, are we making that? Are we making it that game where you could go anywhere and do anything? Does this help contribute to that, or does this go against that? If it goes against it, then like we shouldn't be doing this. We can't have something where we can't have something where it blocks your way with some with an item locked gate, because if we're doing that, then we're taking away your freedom to go anywhere and to any of the levels at all at once, which we said in the beginning that we look, what that was one of the light items that we wrote down here. So, yeah, I mean it's I guess it's uh making sure that we're adhering to the plan, constantly evaluating it all the time, and then playing it and making sure it's intuitive. And if it's intuitive for us, testing it out with everyone else and making sure it's also intuitive for them. And then once everyone all agrees that it's great, then we're done, then we can be done.

SPEAKER_01 31:25

Then we're done. Again, a really nice digest of what is a very, very long-winded and and and and exhausting process, you know. I thought that was pretty long. That was a pretty long exponential. Well, considering the information packed into it. And then I suppose it's yeah, that the the the game goes out there in the world, and then you sort of get to start seeing like because again, you can do all the playtesting in the world, right? But you don't really know how the response is going to be. And I I always find it really interesting to compare, you know, like Steam reviews with you know, um, industry reviews and journalism around it and things like that. And the the for me, what I was reading about Mina, it felt like it was crossing it was doing well in in all areas. Like sometimes something will blow up on Steam and the user reviews are great, but it's like tanking over here with these journalists. But um it seems like people got it like across the board. And it the the thing that I felt like I was picking up on was that you were giving people something that they were hungry for and uh they didn't even necessarily know that they were, right? Because I'm sure like people had seen the the trailers or whatever and had a good idea of what the film the game would was gonna sort of look like and and play like, but I I feel like it sort of um maybe not surprised people, but they they they got something that they just really sunk their teeth into, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:48

Yeah, yeah, I agree. Um yeah, I think that when you give players the flexibility to have fun in an environment like that, they really, really take it. We love trusting the player and letting them learn through playing the game, and let that also means that sometimes they're confused and sometimes they're lost, and that's like the trade-off when you are when you don't have a lot of hand holding. Um sometimes you push against the wrong way and it seems annoying, or you are you like think that you're doing something wrong, but eventually you like figure it out, and I feel like as a player, that is what I would rather that's the challenge that I would be overcoming. That's like what I want. I don't want like when you have an arrow that points in the direction that I need to go and a little mini-map icon there all the time, then like if there was any kind of joy of navigation in the game that is completely obliterated. Well, you just fucked up your whole game, you ruined it, you know, that ruined it. Um so yeah, I we have strong feelings about a lot of the game, about a lot of the mechanics that in games that like make things easier or make things uh like fast travel, for instance. Like it once you can fast travel anywhere in a game, then the your spatial ideas of where you are really start to become more confused. And I know it's convenient, but like in Breath of the Wild, when I can just warp around everywhere, now there's no difference between something that's far or something that's near. Now there's no difference between anything, and it's just flattened again, right? In Mina, if you want to cross from somewhere until you start to unlock the shortcuts, like of which there are many, but you have to like you have to unlock them and you have to learn about the environment. You have to think about it and you have to you have to experience it. And then once you have learned it, once you've really learned it, then you can get then you get the fast travel and you can start to go around everything. I mean, it's the same thing in Dark Souls, right? Like in Dark Souls, you can't warp through the bonfires until halfway through the game, until you need to do the Lord vessel and you talk to what's his face, the big fish man. And then you can warp between the bonfires. And uh Right. So you don't want to be you don't want to be doing stuff like that. You uh we the players appreciate it. Players appreciate flexibility, they appreciate being challenged, they appre or at least the ones the the the the imaginary players in our heads that we're making it for. I'd be because the once again, like we're saying, that's like who we are, is we don't wanna we don't want a tutorial, I don't want to be handheld, I want to skip every single cutscene, I don't want to I don't want to do anything that I don't want to be made to do. And everybody, I would say all of us on the team are very sensitive to that stuff also. So it's like we don't like having our time wasted. Um we we what we don't like feeling like condescended to um and we don't like having our hands held in terms of the game. So if that stuff is in the game, once again we're like very like sensitive to it. Uh yeah, and and maybe that's something that doesn't annoy other players or they don't understand it, but then when you play it, yeah, like you're saying, it's like so refreshing. You're like, oh what? I could just like do any oh I could like pick up this umbrella and I could cross this pit that I didn't even realize that was like a thing that I oh, and like now I don't have it, and like now I can't even do it anymore. Like everything's so like what? And you just like I don't know, it makes your brain it tickles your brain, and that's isn't that what a game is for.

SPEAKER_01 36:15

I think you just perfectly described exactly what I got out of Mina from the Souls like genre. What are you pulling from and what was the decision making around implementing that, and how much did you want to implement whilst keeping it as a kind of Zelda-like and uh blending those those genres?

SPEAKER_00 36:30

Sure, yeah. I mean I think the game really has more in common structure-wise with a souls-like than it does with a Zelda game, right? Like the uh the fact that everything's really not gated with items and the way that things are gated with difficult the difficulty of the enemies and how it's very combat-focused, the leveling up, it which is like it's Zelda 2 leveling up, but it also is like very souls-ish, where you need to like be up to a certain level in order to step to an enemy, but you can push forward in other areas if you want to. All that stuff was very well, and also the structure of you're going out on these spokes and you go in through an area and there'll be a rope that you can drop down and make these loops, the the and the shortcuts and the loops. I mean, those structures are in Zelda games as well, but uh they were just exemplified so perfectly in the Soulsborn games that I think it's uh I mean it's hard for me not to even think of them as already being like the same thing. Like a a z a Soulsborn is like a is like a link to the past in so many ways, just like a top-down version of it. Yeah. So yeah, I mean it was very I'd say it was very deliberate, and we I mean you drop your you drop your sparks, yeah. The you know, that's like this whole like uh the experimenting with extra lives and like losing your losing your items is something that we had in the original Shovel Knight. Like when you die, you drop your bags, and then if you don't collect them up again, then you can lose them permanently, etc. etc. Like playing with all this stuff and doing kind of souls-y stuff, uh yeah, was always we love doing that. And it was uh we wanted to be careful to also to not make it like too close. So many games have that souls born structure and feel now that it it's becoming a little bit um I don't know, yeah, it's like a s it's so stereotypical to make that kind of stuff. Now we wanted to be we also wanted to make sure that we didn't have things like a dodge roll or like a parry mechanic, the thing or like lock or like a lock-on, like like a lock-on system. Um, you know, we we it we we innovated in some areas and other areas are a little bit more classic, I guess. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:36

And so for me, again, no, like no, I was I was just looking at so much around the game, and then when it came out, my heart was a little bit broken as I started to see like people talk about how difficult it was, and I hadn't came to understand or read about the modifiers. And you know, that's like the same reason why I was like locked out of Elden Ring, right? Like I just didn't have the temperament. We talked about this, me as a 12-year-old technology, you know, like and I I never lost that that attention for like being able to like I don't know, have a high heart rate and not just like fall in a puddle on the floor. But um but then and I'll try not to take too long explaining this, but just to just say much I adored the game once I realized the modifiers were available to me, and I thought, oh my god, I can like experience this game and explore this beautiful world, and then to start the game and know that they're there and get through the first levels or whatever, and and then really start getting my ass kicked, and then just having that desire to push forward a little bit longer before I start messing with those modifiers, then go a little bit longer and a little bit longer, and before I know it, I'm starting to build up a patience and a tolerance to like go back to a boss again and again and again. And it's like, okay, I'm gonna farm this and go again and again and again and again and again. I mean, I can't even exaggerate how many times I try. Sure. And before I know it, I'm like, oh my god, I'm like playing, you know, a kind of game that I thought I would never get to enjoy. And then something that's really lovely about making the video, which was that I did, which was basically that, um, explaining like I'm someone who's never gonna play games like this, and then I not only did I play it, but I didn't even have to turn the modifiers on because I got good, you know. And the the comments, the comments were so wholesome for what is effectively a debate around souls likes or whatever, which is rare. Um, and people were kind of really encouraging me, like, just whatever you did there, just go and take that and and try it on Dark Souls or try on Elden Ring, like you can totally do that same approach, just go slow and steady. And I haven't picked those up yet, but I feel like um it's opened up a world to me of like what I perceive as challenging games, and it's the first time in a long time where I really got a lot of satisfaction, I felt satisfied with my my progress, no matter how brutal it, and it did feel brutal, brutal at times, fairly fairly brutal. But um, and I'm sure my experience that that's the same as as many, but I just wanted to share that with you. Like, that was how I got to engage with your game.

SPEAKER_00 41:06

That's really cool. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. The the people going and playing, like the fact that you went and played or that you're excited to play a Dark Souls or like to get into Soulsborns now is something that I think is one of the coolest praises that we've that we hear as developers, especially as Yacht Club, because we want to bring people to games. We want to make people love the the the whole medium of video games and like love the video games as play and help draw people to other games and classic games. So the fact that you're like when people played Shovel Knight, people played Shovel Knight and they're like, Oh yeah, I didn't realize there's this game called Mega Man that it's like you know, this game's like based on this Mega Man game. I gotta like go back and play Mega Man, I'm gonna like try that. Or yeah, some people are like, I never played the Oracle games, but after playing Nina, when I played Oracle, Legend of Zelda, Oracle of Ages, and Oracle of Seasons, and whoa, they're so cool. Yeah, or you being like, I now I feel like it's this is opening a door to playing difficult games. That's like, I mean, that's awesome. That's like what we're uh yeah, I feel like that's what we're here to do. That's just yeah, we that's what we says, that's what it says on the tin, is we wanna we we wanna make games that make you love games. So that's great.

SPEAKER_01 42:23

Well you did it, you did a bait and switch. I was like, I'm gonna play a Zelda-like. It's like, oh, this is really really difficult.

SPEAKER_00 42:29

Yeah, we're yeah, we're gonna subvert your expectations a little bit, right? That's hope that's how it should always be at Yacht Club, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 42:36

Um absolutely. And so um, I guess I I I always ask this question, but I I the the answer is often well, I get guess it might be, but like in terms of future facing plans, is there anything that you can talk about?

SPEAKER_00 42:54

Uh I mean from now on, I think we're gonna be doing one project at once. So we're gonna try and be focusing on one project. Uh we are not gonna be following up Mina with like a DLC or like a sequel right away. Um we have a if I don't know if you've seen the randomizer and all that, but there's an item randomizer in Mina where all the items get randomized. We're also adding a warp randomizer and a bunch of controls and like speedrun type stuff. So it's just like different ways to like remix the game and things that we didn't exactly have time for uh for the initial release, things that if you just that help you play the game over and over again in a variety of different ways. Customizable randomizer stuff, and a couple of quality of life features, um thing a couple of things people ask for, but nothing big is gonna become a Demina, you know, quality of life updates and then I'm then yeah, right now what are we doing? We're making Steam cards and Steam profile pictures for those games that we didn't get around to when we were working on Mina. So like Pocket Dungeon. Trading cards are coming soon. And for dig trading cards, Cyber Shadow trading cards, uh, and profile, Steam profile, pictures, backgrounds, everything. It's all we updated the soundtracks on on now the Pocket Dungeon and Dig complete soundtracks are available on CD baby or whatever the hell. So now that's all the complete soundtracks are there. This is what I've been doing. This is it's like uh administrative, all the trailers are updated to the latest versions of the trailers on all of the websites. So if you go to like Nintendo and go to Shovel Knight Dig, the latest Shovel Knight Dig trailer will be there. As a small company, yeah. I mean, it does it's just like you know, it's all things that we said that we are like, oh yeah, we'll get around to this. Um and we yeah, it's as a small company, this is what we have we have to share all doing this kind of stuff sometimes. Uh but next, what are we actually doing as far as making the next game? Um we I think we said we're working on a 3D game. That's probably our next, that's our next thing. And uh hopefully we'll be able to make some announcements soon. But yeah, I'm already like in the thick of it. I'm working already working on uh dumping dumping RAM on Mina. And then it's like soon, you know, every single day I was thinking about Mina, and like I could tell you where every single item was and every single one of dialogue, etc. etc. And like how if anything was wrong, I'd be able to tell you. Now, as time passes, the game came out a couple months ago, it's like slowly starting to dissipate. Okay, that's interesting. Yeah, it'll like get filled in with another game, right? That's like that's why I can't play you know, like Expedition 33 right now. It's there's too much like Mina, it's like, you know, my brain is full. I can't like I can't be like doing some other some other thing. So yeah, we're gonna be offloading Mina and bringing the new game in, and so that'll be a fun, uh, fun change of pace.

SPEAKER_01 45:50

I can't well, I'm looking forward to uh to to hearing what that update is. Actually, just something because I this is this is a really important question for me, just to ask about the modifiers and at what point you made the decision that you would be implementing them. And obviously it's was there a question there? Because you know, so many games uh nowadays can do extraordinarily well by just like saying this is the difficulty. Go have fun. Um and and yeah, what was the the thought process there?

SPEAKER_00 46:19

I mean, we on Shovel Knight we already had cheat codes. There were 200 different cheat codes and would enter them in the profile select screen. And it was cheat codes the way that you would enter them for games back on the NES days. That's where this all came from. Or like dip switches and arcades where you could like switch your number of lives to speed to turbo speed, uh, or like Game Genie, which was like, you know, came out when I was a kid, and Game Genie, like you would slip it onto your NES cartridge and stick the whole thing in there, and it put this front end on where you would enter a 24-digit code and it would create a variety of wacky effects. Effects that developers never even intended. Effects like having the character jump way outside of the screen, or or things that were actually useful, like infinite lives, or you know, just random nonsense that make make a character face the other way when they're going when they're turning. Um changing the game in fun and weird ways is a fun thing to do with cheats. Big head mode, paintball mode, all that goldeneye N64 stuff. It's just it's cheats are fun. And that's and so with Shovel Knight, we had all these cheats, but for Mina, we thought we want to have cheats that are accessible to everyone all the time. And not only that, but we want to expand on the cheats that are available to players that have different skill levels or that want to modify the experience in some other way. And that's definitely a lot of that was definitely like I remember playing Last of Us 2. And in Last of Us 2, there's like all this stuff that you gotta take out of drawers. I found it to be very tedious, but there is a there is a option literally in the accessibility that's like auto-loot drawers. I was like, what? And I turned it on, and when you do it, then the character just automatic as you're walking through automatically goes through and like no idea about this. Grabs the stuff and puts it in her pockets. And I was like, you know what? I just saved myself pressing square, you know, 200 times in this game, and it just made like that. It was a tiny tweak, but it made the game like so much better for me. And it didn't, it wasn't even a difficulty thing, it was just like a preference thing. And watching, once again, watching my nephew who's who was four years old at the time when we were kicking all this stuff off, it's like he can't play Mina, it's too freaking hard. It's like you can't j just like uh, but he could do a lot of stuff. Just some things were too hard. And so you could if we there were just little tweaks like being able to walk on the pits, which is something that you could do in Shovel Knight also. It reminds me of playing like Contra. I remember playing Contra 3, the Alien Wars on easy mode with seven lives when I was like eight years old. And just like you were saying, like with the modifiers, it's like which ones am I gonna turn on? Now, of course, as an adult, I worked on I worked on Contra 4, right? I I could I got my Contra stripes, but like as a kid, it's fun to be able to have accessibility to those games uh and to be able to see it. And I yeah, there is another side to this because this is the modifiers are somewhat controversial. People said, Well, you're robbing players of the ability to overcome the challenge on their own merit by having these modifiers in here. And like, you know, the player shouldn't like they if they come back to it later when they are good, then it'll be so much more rewarding. And you know, I guess I could see that side of it too, but you're uh either way, you're making a lot of assumptions. I guess overall, I feel like the player should be able to play the game however the heck they want, enjoy it however they want. And we wanted to put this cool menu of all these things in here that had all this flexibility that lets you do anything, like make the game easier or harder or weirder, or just like less annoying to you if there are certain things that annoy you. Like if you hate souls, if you hate those souls mechanics of losing your bones, you're like, I don't like that. Well, you know what? You can just turn it off. So, yeah, more power to you, power to the player. That's my that's my soapbox.

SPEAKER_01 50:06

That was the that was the modifier that I came this close to, and it would have been fine if I'd have done it, because that's it. That's that's the thing that locks me out of those games. It's like I cannot stand uh backtracking, you know. It's not backtracking, but you know what I mean. I cannot. And now I and now I can. Right. You know, hey, well, you know, you know, either way, either way, that's that's great. I'm just happy you're yeah, I'm happy you enjoyed it. Well, the modifier for me was the fact there was a modifier, like it was the modifiers that made me feel lighter uh for playing because I knew that I could change it at any time. Um and I've and I've I've I've yet to, you know, and I'm up to the um you know, like the fourth zone in the mines or whatever, you know, and um Okay, cool. Oh man, you gotta finish it. I can't wait to see. Yeah, yeah. Oh man, I just like um I'm I'm still going. Um and I guess just on that, do you you know, because yeah, do you um I wonder why do you think people get so impassioned about it? You you you know, this idea of of I guess I'm trying because I don't get it, you know, about like you know how not having the ability to to make something more accessible to you could possibly ruin a game or ruin one's experience on people like that. But but I I do what I do try to understand that maybe there's a non-snobbish place that people are coming from, but because it's something that people get very impassioned about, or maybe it just doesn't matter really.

SPEAKER_00 51:31

Yeah, I mean I don't know. It's it's uh I guess it all it just it matters as much as you want it to. It's like if you if you solved if you if it if you made it easier for yourself and then you say I finished it, then the your you saying I finished it is different than someone else saying I finished it because you guys finished different things, right? But like it was already different because you were different people when you started. There's no real there's no like real comparison, uh and I understand, but don't agree with the idea that the modifiers are uh you know it's it's like gatekeeping, right? You're like, oh I this is this level of difficulty is something that is made and and specified only for people of my ilk, and if you aren't if you are not as good as that, then you are like not welcome. And the fact and like being able to stand there and be like, this is our like exclusive club, I guess like you said, it's like snob, it's snobbery, right? Of like, well, that's only players that have this skill level should be able to enjoy the game. Only players that, etc., etc. should be able to enjoy the game. No matter what you say there, I think that's like BS, right? You should be able to enjoy it. Or I mean, you know, there's we want to make it as easy as possible for players to enjoy the game because we know we know it's difficult and we know it's hard to it's hard sometimes, and it can be confusing and it's not fun to lose, and you have to it's you put you gotta put more effort into it than than watching something on TV. You know, it's like you've got to put effort into play Mina. We're asking something of you. You but you're buying a big stressful problem in a box when you get that game, you know. It's like there's a lot. Um but but yeah, our promise to do it.

unknown 53:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:25

But yeah, but it'll be enjoyable though, you know, hopefully.

SPEAKER_01 53:30

And actually, just on that, because again, I think about the comments I got on that video, and like I said, there's a lot of them were wholesome. And actually, there was a few, you know, the people said, Oh no, just you know, like I what what I got from it was I found a non-toxic way of people saying get good. Like they were like, no, get good, it's really satisfying, you know. And it's like that doesn't mean that I need to do it, but I came to understand that there were people there that had such incredible experiences by like pushing themselves through Dark Souls or games like that, um, and that they kind of were enthusiastically wanted others to experience that. And just like I can, you know, if I find out that like someone hasn't like watched the original Star Wars trilogy or something, I can get a little bit intense about it. Right. You know, um but your best thing to do is like call off and just say, well, you know, it's pretty good. So you know Right. You don't yeah, you don't want to smother with your furvo. Um well I don't know. I mean, I I don't know if you how you're doing for time. Um I'd love to have a little look around the game with you, but if you're if you're all out of time, then then um yeah, we could look for a little bit. Um so I can try and get it up on my end, because again, because I'm not familiar actually with exactly what the modifiers are, but if you're saying um and then I was like, oh my gosh, because I was literally like right in the middle of like what felt like a really hard part. I was like, there's no way I'm gonna let myself lose my bones. Um Right.

SPEAKER_00 54:54

Here, okay, let me see. Maybe I can maybe I can start.

SPEAKER_01 54:58

I mean, let me look it up on my end as well and we'll see.

SPEAKER_00 55:01

I could probably I probably I don't know if I have a 100% unlock or something, but I might hold on, it might get loud for a minute. Not too bad.

SPEAKER_01 55:14

Oh, and thank you as well. And it's i I I've been playing on my Steam Deck, but I had no idea that you released it on Mac as well. Indeed, yeah. Incredible platforms absolutely incredible. Um I don't want to get my podcast cancelled, but I'm a bit of a Mac gamer. I've got my Steam Deck and my Mac. But um that's another thing of like, oh, we like a game games like this often aren't aren't accessible to me. Um Right. Right, yeah. We got you.

SPEAKER_00 55:46

So you know, that's why we're old school game company. No, nobody could tell us no. That's a waste of time. No one plays on the Mac anymore.

SPEAKER_01 55:54

Firstly, like I just fell in love with this place, like it it really feels like a living, breathing town.

SPEAKER_00 56:01

Uh well, I think it was a combination of everything from the schematics to the gameplay to the way it all unlocks. I guess those are like the three main components. Like Ozics is built of this main area, which uh it's the whole idea is that there's like the main city center, and then there's like the poor area where they're beggars and hanging clothes, and it's a little bit more rundown. And then like over on the other side.

SPEAKER_01 56:31

That guy, that oh my god, that might have been the scariest.

SPEAKER_00 56:36

Get robbed by Freid. Yeah, and then here on the high street, everything is like more fancy. You know, here the police are like, Well, how could we help you? Osys is finest are here to help. And then on the other side, they're like, get out of here, know your place. So it's like uh, you know, there's a there's a big discrepancy. Um, and we wanted to make sure to have all of these shops available. This Osics was going to be the one central hub of this game, right? There's this there's one it's it's the biggest, really the only city in the whole game. And so most of the stuff that you wanted to get needs to be located here. We figured it would be like a hub that you would go back to many times that you would crisscross back and forth as you as the game unfurls. So as you're doing it, then we uh every time that you pass back through and you like finish a generator, something else unlocks. There are a lot of mysteries and secrets. Like this, it's not here right now, but I'm trying to debug to recreate everything, but I can't because it's the real game. There was a blockage here, so you like can't come up here through the trinket shop at first. You have to go all the way around, right? And so you can see it. There's a lot of things that you could see, but until you actually accomplish them by going outside of the game, then you can't access it. So it's like you would need to go all the way out here and then take five more screens of nonsense where you got to be, you know, level five. Same thing. This is all blocked off until you blow it up until later. This area is blocked off from one side, and that there's a very simple puzzle where you just have to look around and then notice, oh yeah, here you have to come down and look at this. I guess we're trying to invite inquiry uh it with every single one of these little sections. And I mean, we designed it the same way we designed out everything, which is to make a big list of everything that we wanted to have in the game and decide what what shops there were going to be and what was gonna be sold there, uh, what characters that we wanted to include and which ones were necessary, and then we plonked them all down and you know, arranged them all around like things on a uh just like pieces on a chessboard. Um and the balancing, I would say, like came a lot later, like how much everything costs and how the prices rose, uh, all of that was a much later pass, like how much the keys cost, how everything increases in price as you do bit over bit. Uh that that economy pass happened a lot later. We basically thematically also wanted to make sure that we covered all our bases in terms of the areas, so there's someone or something at least from all of the main like six areas that you go and travel to, so you can learn a little bit about them and get hinted in the right direction. Uh yeah, and then of course in Ossicks you need to have well, Clumpy, he was a character just from the uh he's just a for fun thing, but there's this newsie that tells you what to do. Oh yeah, look, the Queensbury has been reignited, but look, you gotta go to Windy Generator. Let's look. This newspaper was invented as a thing to try and help you decide where to go. Like 10,000 bones for a new train. Oh, okay, cold train peak. You can get some little thematic uh some little thematic hints. And uh yeah, basically the way it unfurls over the course of the game is uh uh tower by tower, bit by bit in terms of if you have an item or something that can get you somewhere. Like for instance, you need a key to get down here and hang out with Furl and this nose lady, but if you don't have a key, you can't do that. So you're naturally locked because it's not possible for you to get you know ten keys immediately. You can only get one or two, and it's like whatever is one key deep into OSICS, we know is not going to be that big of a deal, and it's okay for you to have it. Some things, they're only available after the second tier of worlds is beaten. So, like some of the shop items only become available after you have gotten uh after you've defeated some of the towers. This thing, you need two sparks to get in here, or else you can't even go in the shop. So you're naturally gated by having to get more sparks. We try to gate you in other ways also, so that way it's like not all here at once. That was one big thing about making OSICs, is like, well, this is this giant area that has a thousand people to talk to. It could just be like exhausting. So we had to make sure to lock off parts of it too. Um how else did we approach it? I mean, we knew we wanted to start you here and look at this fountain and see which ones are lit up, so you kind of knew where to go. You're like, oh, I need to go left, I need to go up.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:02

Um I literally never even made the connection that the bulbs are forming in.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:07

Yeah, they're all like in different directions, right? Makes total sense. They all have like a different color. Uh and yeah, I mean, most of these passers-by all say something relevant about the bigger.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:18

I love the dialogue with the the characters, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:21

That's cool. I'm glad you enjoy it. I mean, yeah, most of them just say something. I mean, some of them just say throw away stuff that's nonsense, and some of them say uh things that are more relevant to the game. And then yeah, I mean, we wanted to have these beggars, we wanted to have like a underneath the train station where it's a little bit more like CD. Uh and also this area is not available from the get-go, so it's like you can kind of look up here, but you can't get here. That was a big part of this. With this tiny little screen, you can't see a lot. So, where where are you inviting people to look and where are you trying to keep a mental map of where you're looking next? That's that was an important part of this. So, yeah, once you're gonna go. Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:10

Which was exciting because I knew it was is it was it was gonna be there at some point, you know. Um I think what I loved about the city was was just that you know, again, those those locked areas where like some time, okay, there's a key there or there's a jump that I can make, and then other things where you know, early game, you're like, I I have no intuition to understand how on earth I'm ever gonna be able to get to this thing. Um, and to have the willingness to sort of be able to sit with the the the unknown of um until eventually you can.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:40

Yeah, yeah, and that uh once again it all happened from writing it down, basically writing it down, where like we we had a big list of here are a bunch of different quest things that we want to happen, and here are the fun that we have to have this many different fun things that happened in this much of an area. The density of the density of quests was uh something that was very planned out.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:07

Well, you I I I often I I did a video about I think about uh Wonderboy, what is it, Wonderboy Monster World or Monster Island? It was a Sega Genesis game, you know, that I played when I was a little kid, and you know, I was so addicted to the safety, the safe spaces. Ah that's how you do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:28

Oh yeah, sorry, I'm I'm spoiler alerting you.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:31

Well that I I feel that that that's a perfect example of it. I'm like, I have no idea, but like that the surely there's nothing I can unlock here to um you know change this. Oh nice. Right. Um what was I saying? Yeah, so the the the feeling of safety, right? Especially in a game like this where you can come out from a zone feeling absolutely exhausted. Um is that something you sort of think about a lot and the moments of of respite that you're you're willing to give a player? Because I was so excited to come back to the town every time, and because of the way the economy works, it always felt very satisfying to be able to buy things and um it just it just lowered my heart rate, and I was just having a blast.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:10

Uh yeah, I mean definitely. That's the I'll drive I'll write over here. Like this all everything was very deliberately made. Like the town is where you can chill, and then on the outskirts of all these areas, it gets a little bit more difficult, but it's not you're not in a straight up level, right? Like, you know, there this is overworlds, these are the overworlds we called them. And so the gameplay is lighter, there's not a lot of like gaps. Uh well, over here there are. This is there's more of a challenge over to the right, but as you're traveling, it's not too difficult. And there are keys, there are more more different secrets that are pulling you off into different directions. You can see that there's something over there, but this is not your main path of progression. You gotta be like moving over to the right. As you start to progress further toward the crypt proper, you can see that there's more pits, the enemies are more difficult, it becomes more like a real gameplay, uh, like a gameplay space. But not quite not quite too bad. This whole puzzle with noise. Yeah, that's definitely yeah, whatever. Um, and then that gets this, of course, is just one, this is like a connecting area just to get you from one area to the other. A slight moment of respite, but then we go into the level proper. And once you're in the level proper, things do tend to get more difficult. All of that is planned out, yes. And uh yeah, we're also thinking about things like oh here, like here's a secret, and you can come over here uh and see like these are called area peaks.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:36

Oh, I don't have that, John.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:41

It's just one of these side. Get out of here. And so if you come over here you're like in the sandfalls, you're like, sandfalls, bone junction, what's that all about? And you can come over here. Oh, well, actually in my game it's all connected up. But this is one of the areas. I don't know if you've been over here yet, but it's this is like a big beach area and you Usually it was locked off. It would be locked off like right here. Or you'd be able to get like this far, but you wouldn't be able to exit this room. So you're like, okay, cool, great. And then you gotta go back. So these little area peaks between the levels are something that we thought about also. Like you want to be able to see one level connected to another level, but only in one spot. So every level is connected to another level in one spot like this. And you have to and how do you do it? By having some clever thing. Like in this one, you have to use this thing to go by. Or there, I mean, there are multiple ways to do it, but that's how you're going to be able to do it.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:32

Yeah, I think I used the spike boots or something. I can't remember.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:34

Oh, yeah, right. Yeah, you can just walk across. Yeah, that's easy. That's easy peasy. Um you can I think there's also a way you can like turn invisible. I don't know. Maybe that's just linked to the past. Um check it out. Look, there's a modifier here where you could just warp home. We go right back. Uh some things were invented later. Like, for instance, like I was selling all of my pawn shop, yeah. Yeah, or or I had I bought all the wrong things, like I was wont to do, and I had no money. What what are we gonna do? What I don't want to go grind. Uh or there's what's the plan? Uh that's one of the reasons that we invented the pawn shop. All of these extra items that you're picking up, you may there may be a trinket that you never even want or care about. You're like, what increases my maximum jewels? I didn't even use side arms, I don't care. So that treasure is worthless to you. Yeah, right. So so we used this guy as well, we're like, people are gonna love this because then they'll just be able to get money for the things they don't need. And what you know, what I failed to realize is that players will never they never use a pawn shop, they hate it. They're like even the things. I'll never get rid. I'll never I'll never get rid of my precious things. Yeah, so it's like, well, you know, what do you want me to do? That was fun though. I we thought that this was a really good invention, and it is, it's so fun. You can even do, you know, you can sell like your uh like I could sell all of my vials. Like literally, now I have even the vials I started with, I have none now. So it's like, you know, I don't know why I would do that. But I couldn't. Yeah. Um yeah, and I mean everything else, like all these characters, each one of them, oh no, I could never consort with one who toils in the soil, you're beneath me. Try, you know, to with the class, the class disparity is rife. Here in the Keir Institute, we have these two policy wonks, you know, that are based on Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes, the famous economist that shaped the world of the 20th century. Unused cares are idle capital. We must stimulate demand. Spending is the multiplier. Anyway, you know, it's a little little economics humor.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:59

Were there um townships that you had in mind from games when you were like um, you know, the un and that that just stuck with you from your childhood or adulthood in gaming?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:10

Uh good question. I'd say, I mean, we looked at all the we looked at all the classic Zelda games, but there aren't that many like town towns, right? There's there's uh Hyrule Castle Town in Minish Cap, and there's Link to the Past, which has like a regular village, but that's kind of it. Um they're the 3D games, but they're not that close. We looked a lot at Final Fantasy VI, which has a lot of castles and towns that are very and some of them are very like uh sprawling and structure y, like they're actually dungeons, like Zozo is a dungeon, and like uh like even Narshe in the original is is has a lot of like twists and turns and levels where you go up above and below things, which is in here as well. Um and yeah, I mean we there it's it's strange because it seems like there would be a lot of towns like this, but there actually weren't that many that we could basically.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:06

Yeah, you know, obviously like it was more comparable to like like 17 like sprawling RPGs, but um yeah you're right, those places will and maybe that's why I loved it, because it's like the village in Wonderboy or whatever in zone. It's like oh it's once you've done the sword shop and the store, you're kind of you're done. But you want to stay in that sense of safety for I mean a kid, a kid could just live in this town, right? Yeah, enjoy this game.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:33

Yeah, yeah, they just love hanging out here. Yeah, and it is, I mean, it is fun to it's a it's the toy-ish part of the game, also where you can learn more of the mechanics and get familiar with stuff, right? Like the Strategy Institute, which I didn't point out, is you just go over there and everyone talks about jumping and burrowing, and oh, sometimes you gotta use side arms to do stuff. Uh just little ways to help you. Oh, you know, I feel Sea of Stars has also come out when when we were working on this. I mean, I'm not sure that that was more like it was just concurrent, but those guys are our buddies over at Sabotage, that game's cool. Uh yeah, I mean, it's really I'd say uh it was really a combination of everything. I'm sure I'm missing some stuff as well. And when you look at Zelda games, like when you look at like Oracle of Seasons, Oracle of Ages, Lynx Awakening, those games also have like towns, although they're not exactly in the same ilk as this. Uh but yeah, it was I'd say it's not really anything just like this.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:29

No. Um, but it does, and it it taps I there was another game that did this to me recently, but this one absolutely did, which like it made me feel like a kid playing a game again. And it's not just because of the the the style or whatever, but it it it is, it's that like um you know, maybe I've gotten a little too used to being spoon-fed things. Um these two. This this is a great um this is a great idea for a fight.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:56

This is a director for a day thing from the Kickstarter. So if if you back to the certain levels, then you got to be director for a day and like work with us to make an idea. Uh and so this was like a this was like someone and who had their kids that they wanted to be in the game that are like hunters going this is like some game that they or it was based on something, some make-believe thing that they have that's like a family like in-joke about the Dugan and how they're like it's like a jackalope and they're hunting for it. And so we did a version here.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:30

Well, I love because I don't think I've you know that idea of like completely like foolhardy, friendly fire, you know, is is is so so fun as like as like oh that's the you know, um, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:43

You don't want to work you don't want to hurt the kids, right? That's I guess that's where it came from. It's like you want to s you want to have a battle with your kids in it, but like we don't want to be like we don't want to be like hitting them with a web. Like what how's this gonna work? It's like, oh yeah, but they're like helping each other, but they're like not helping.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:59

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:00

It's weird that they say skeptics. But how old are these kids?

unknown 1:13:05

Father.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:06

So fun seeing, because I I haven't gotten to I've done the first one with them, but I don't think I've come across them for the second time.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:11

Oh, I'm spoiler alerting you again.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:13

No, it's okay. Sorry. Oh, I do have that though. Maybe that was I don't know. But um And I guess I mean maybe the I maybe this is hard to cut to answer, but I just wonder if there's any one part of this, either evil six or anywhere in the game that is just your absolute favourite thing, and it might be for a very inane reason.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:34

But oh, what do I really like? I I don't know, it's hard to say. I run I've run over the games I've run over the game so many times. Uh what do I what do I like? I like getting the parasol. I like the I like the parasol. I guess I'm irrationally into the parasol, especially the one that's right here. Because look, right right in the beginning of the game you can get this. And you can, you know, you can time this as well. This is so look, this is the best thing. You get this parasol in the beginning, even when everything's on fire in the beginning of the game, you know, you could still walk down here. And you could get hit by the fire, but you could be here. And then you can come over here and you can get this parasol, even in the beginning. Even when the orphanage is opening, you could still have the parasol. And then once you got the parasol, you could do anything, you know? You could use it to get you can use it to get places. Or going places. Uh oh.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:36

Does it remind me of the one in Lemmings from way back?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:39

Oh yeah, love Lemmings. Okay. You can do this.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:44

Um that's a great example. Yeah. I mean that's just like you can get over this next one.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:53

Yeah. Yeah. Easy, easy. See, and this is the this is like the path to the trinket shop. Yeah. So yeah, like if you can if you can just like Dark Souls, if you could just sort of like ram your way through, oh, the extra checkpoints are turned on. This is another thing that people really, I think, enjoy. You can put extra checkpoints on here. It's easier to get around.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:14

I was like playing on the train when I got to the trinket shop, and there were these like two teenage girls that I could tell were laughing at me because it's a really silly fight, you know. That's the one when you're fighting the house, right? Um yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:26

You're right. You're fighting the uh in the wait, who are you fighting? You're fighting Willis, the shark man?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:32

No, but you know, when there's it's it's it's like it's it's to the to the west, I think, but it's like the house. It like has the arms come out and then the legs.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:41

Oh yeah, yeah, oh, oh, oh yeah, you're fighting. Oh, of course, yeah, yeah, the madhouse. Yeah. That's great. Maybe they were.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:48

Maybe I was being self-self uh up to the colour.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:50

They're like, they're like, that looks they're probably gonna go look it up. They're like, that looks dope.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:54

But it doesn't look like a kid's it suddenly looked like some weird nutty kids game. I was like wanting to the wild strange. You know, this is a very difficult game for grown-ups.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:06

That's what you should have said. Excuse me, this is actually a very difficult game for grown-ups that you probably you've got to try it.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:15

I was like playing Monkey Island, and my stepson was like, What if what rating is this game? I was like, this is a grown-ups game. Right. And then I'm looking at it and it's like it totally seems like it's for kids. Um, definitely. I mean, it's it's I I I just forget how much I love watching other people play, but I really appreciate you just walking me through it. I think it's so interesting um just getting to see, especially once someone's just like who's who's built this well being hands-on with it. Um, it certainly gives you a sort of added level of appreciation for all of the um minor details that have gone into making it feel like a living, breathing world, right? And I think that for me was like I was invested in this space, um, and it probably went a long way to me wanting to see out, you know, but persevere, right? Because I because I cared about what was going to happen to these people.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:05

That's cool. Yeah, I'm glad, you know, the thematics, the thematics are like the they're like the sugar that we're using to sweeten it to bring you in so you can so you do that gameplay that's like hard, you know. I'm glad it worked.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:19

No, it did. Well, yeah, thanks so much for your time on this. Honestly, I really oh, there we go. You got him. Okay, cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:24

Yeah, my pleasure. Here I'm gonna do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:26

This is literally exactly what I wanted to see, just just to run around to tour about. Um, you know, and I just like wish you the best of luck, and I just hope that you continue to get as much kind of like satisfaction of the rollout of this game as um us as players, players have. Um it's not often usually when I'm talking to people, it's for like games that have been around a little bit longer. So it's nice to just chat with someone that something that's like fresh out, and I just absolutely, absolutely adored.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:52

Yeah, well, thank you. Yeah, it was my pleasure. It was fun to talk about. I mean, yeah, we'll see. Yeah, it's all fresh right now, but it it'll soon it'll be gone, you know, like teams and rain. So it's glad it's good we could all capture it. Let's go capture it now.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:05

We'll we'll uh we'll end on the blade runner quote. We're not gonna be that