Fredrik Präntare: How He Sold Millions Of Copies, Solo Dev vs. Team, 3 Years On 1 Game | Ep. #048

I had an honest chat with the indie legend Frederick Printer about how he sold hundreds of thousands of copies of his indie game Corekeeper, all while starting gamedev knowing nothing about the craft. If you want to build a game studio and you want to make your own indie games full-time, this conversation is especially for you. We discuss how he went from a small team of just two game devs to building a large team of 40 passionate developers. We discuss why he prefers working with a team over being solo. how staying confident despite the high highs and low lows of gamedev is especially important for you. We discuss whether you should go to gamedev school and how to pay for a project before it's finished. And finally, he shows me how Core Keeper actually works, especially its impressive custom lighting system. And by the way, look, this project Coreke Keeper is insanely complex. And I'm sure the projects that you're creating feel complex as well. And I can't think of a better way to help simplify this than Bezi. They have just launched the beta of their new feature,

agent mode, which lets you create and modify code directly in your project at your approval. You can now update and iterate everything from within the Bezi app, and it makes it very easy to pinpoint and validate all the suggested changes in the context of the code. Bezi also keeps track of all the changes you make, so it's easy to revert at any time. Bezy can be considered your development assistant as it has a full context of your entire project and is great for answering questions, writing code, or giving you a deep understanding of your projects, which especially can be helpful when onboarding new people. Bezi automatically searches all your assets, scripts, scene graph, Unity Docs, and the web to give you the most accurate assistance tailored specifically to your project. The best thing is that it's completely free to try. So, if you haven't already done so, I definitely recommend you check them out by simply clicking the link in the description. I've had a lot of guests on and I think that Coreke Keeper is one of the one of

the more successful games that has been on this podcast. Um, what what did that feel like when that game blew up? Oh, that was so surreal. I I feel like it changed my perception on my own life in so many different ways. Like of course it changes it in the sense that okay now you know you can kind of make games for a living for sure you know it's it's without a doubt a thing you can proceed with I didn't know that before that I was doing some stuff at the university I was working at another company a little bit as well so you know it's very special industry in that sense you're kind of hustling right and core keeper that kind of shifted that part for me I also went from being let's say a pure developer like you know programming and doing a lot of implementation work and stuff like that to now being way more focused on the like bigger picture of the company and the kind of making sure the progress are moving in the right direction because that became even more important right when you have so many

players that are expecting things from you doing things right becomes even more important like I felt like it was okay to fail in a sense before but now it's like holy [ __ ] you know you need to really do things the right way and and treat your community well and and uh and also your your team members and employees, right? I have employees now. So, it's How many employees do you have right now? We're about 40 people like working in the world. That's too many. I'm being sarcastic. It's It's I had a team of five last year. Now it's just me. And I'm curious, you know, you you went from, you know, Radical Rabbit Stew, which Radical Rabbit Stew looks awesome, right? But from the outside, it doesn't seem like it performed nearly as well as Coreke Keeper, right? So you went from you went from this tiny twoperson team making radical rabbit

stew and then all of a sudden core keeper blows up and then you build this massive team of 50 people and now you're working on it's it's Kiora is that how you say it or Kiora is how we pronounce it internally but you know you can pronounce it any way you want to so so you you just you basically scale up into this massive indie studio of 50 people. I mean, it's it's almost like it's not an indie studio in a way. You know what I mean? I know what you mean. Yeah. We feel very indie still. You know, we're talking like everybody's working so closely together. We're still, you know, working from home. Everybody's working from their home offices basically. Uh we have a small little office in Lyn Shopping, but you know, it's like three four people who are there and the rest are working from home like me. Uh so was that was that a hard transition for you to make? Because I know for me when I was when I went when I went to a fivep person team Yeah. I almost I almost grieved the the death of the granular creative process, right?

I my fingers are no longer touching things, right? Yeah. I'm not really I'm not touching the code. I'm not touching the artwork anymore. And then suddenly you're in a management position and you're a creative director as well, but like there is management there as well. And I'm curious, was that hard for you? Actually, not. I I feel like I've been making games by myself and in like small constellations for so long. Like I started modding games when I was very young, right? I I started making different game projects when I was before 10 years old, right? So, so I've been making games for a very very long time and it eventually got to a point around like Coreke Keeper, I would say, where it felt like, okay, now now we released Radical Rabbits 2 to Nintendo Switch, Xbox, PlayStation, PC. And what became more interesting for me was to to to build something that really, you know, sustains for a lifetime in a sense, right? And also building these

worlds that, you know, Cura and Coreke keeper um became way more important than say programming or drawing something or or like for I made the music myself in the beginning. I I don't do that anymore. Like I but that was super fun, but I don't feel like I need to do that anymore. I've done it so so many times already. Uh and uh it's just way more interesting to kind of see how these very cool projects can attract so many players and you know add value to their lives. I I look back at games like, you know, Donkey Kong Country, Balderskate 1 and two, like these games had such an immense impact on myself and my life in very very positive ways. I will say uh that I I feel that's so much more important for me today to to be able to create those kinds of experiences right for people and like if some kids or teenagers or or people can you know experience even a small portion of what I experience in those kind of games due to what I create together with my team

like that's uh for me that that makes me very happy and and you know feel very fortunate. Yeah. Would you would you struggle if somebody if if somebody snapped their fingers and suddenly you were solo or you were working completely alone? Would it be hard for you to go back to that that sort of mentality of doing everything? Yeah, that's a very good Yeah, I think so. Yeah, that's a very good question. But I think so. I think the types of games I want to make are extremely hard to make by yourself. Like extremely extremely hard to make by yourself because they constitute large simulated worlds. you know, there are networking problems you have to solve by making a lot of people being able to play together. Um, you know, the the community aspects, there's the different systems that interact with each other. Like in Corker, we have, you know, cooking, we have automation, railways, we have all sorts of cool things. Um, and and what really makes me interested in those is how to make them interact in interesting ways, right? and and that's

like if I were to make Core Keeper by myself, that would take 20 years, right? It would wouldn't be feasible. Um it's it's just uh too big of a a beast. And the same thing with Cura. Uh it's it's that type of project, right? That that needs a dedicated team. You know, I I find it fascinating talking to developers on this podcast because you get some developers who are they are so adamant about being staying very very small that and and I'm kind of in that mentality right now is I'm just like I want to keep this thing so small. And then I talk to developers like you who who love to scale and they they enjoy scaling to a larger team. Do you think that the cost of a game is is shrunk or increased by scaling the team? It's it's a hard question to ask. What I mean is time I know exactly what you mean. Yeah.

So basically like if I were to assume that we made core keeper, we'd say two people instead like would the time that those two people used to make that whole thing take longer or not? Right? I think it would be impossible to reach the quality level we are at. Right? People are so specialized right now on the various things that they're working on. Like for example, Jonathan Gear who's making the music, right? Even though I can make music and I'm I love making music, there's there's no way I can make as fitting and good music as he can, right? It's just at another level. And and the same applies to whichever part of the team you look at, right? Every person on the team is so specialized uh at this point, I guess, except myself. I'm I'm the least specialized person on the team, right? Um but but that, you know, makes it very very hard to to do it in a like a solo product way, right? And I will also say this about scaling. I I I don't enjoy scaling for the sake of scaling. I just enjoy

being able to make these projects that I think are pushing the boundaries of what other games have done in the kind of adventure sandbox gener right so for example in Cura every pixel can be terraformed and that's done in multiplayer and it's a huge procedurally generated world I have never seen another game do that and I don't think that's a project you can do by yourself um very easily it's it's very very tricky and technically it's a big challenge and then you kind of want it to look amazing as well and feel amazing and and sound amazing and just doing one of these things in in Cura like like the technical side of things would be uh extremely difficult and challenging by yourself right it would take years I think but I I'm not planning to scale much more at this point with the company I think we're in a very good size to pull off the projects and the the goals that we have with with our games do you do you feel a lot of pressure um in in

particular keeping everybody happy on the team. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's one of the the more challenging parts of of like leading a company. Uh yeah, because that's another part of it. You know, you need to make we are humans who are making these games and and for us to be able to create value and perform and and and so on, you know, you need to feel good as well and you need to have a a sustainable life and that's very tricky and especially so when we have like a remote first approach to making games like sometimes it can be very hard for me to know how people are feeling if they work, you know, in a different time zone. Maybe there's like a small overlap in when you work and it makes it trickier. We're try we're trying our best. I think we're doing very good. It seems to me that the people is doing people are doing great in in the team, but it's something I'm very conscious about, you know, that that we need to keep keep track of. And what are some um things that you you feel like you have to do to keep your team happy? Um so,

for example, like for me, certain certain people on my team, I had to be really like encouraging and and remind them that they're doing a good job. And so it was this constant like cheering the team on. Um whereas other people on the team that it wasn't that I needed to cheer them on, it was actually that I needed to not cheer them on. Because the way one person was motivated was to actually give them a little bit of distance. And like cuz if I cheered too much then they're like, "Okay, I'm good." You know, I don't need to be creative here. Um so it's kind of for me it was kind of like I needed to know everybody's how their personality ticked. Yeah. You know, Do you know what I mean? So, what are some things that you you feel like you had to do to keep have to do currently to keep your team happy? So, there's I think there's so many things like if we look at what you just brought up here, different personalities. I think you're right on that. You know, you kind of need to understand the personalities of different people. Like what are their strengths and weaknesses? Like everybody

has has those both of them, right? So, like what are the personality traits? like how extroverted is a person versus introverted like some some people that are extroverted are very non-social as well like they need ex like social connection all the like very frequently but they are not very you know talkative so you kind of need to spot those people as well and and you need to be able to create a a platform for them to enjoy working as well um I'm very introverted I'm I would say I'm extremely introverted in the sense that I I can you know work in yeah I can work in solitude for for like months and feel very good about Right. I don't I don't need social a lot of social connection. Uh but I I I have also realized I appear to people as being very social, right? I like when I So so there's kind of like that uh distinguishing factor. But that means for me I think like one weakness like if I look at myself as a leader is to to listen in to those people who are extroverted and and understand what they need. Right? So for example we have we

have meetups in the company like a summer meetup. We we everybody in the company flew in from all over the world to Sweden uh just two weeks ago. Uh and we met in Stockholm and you know we had a very social gathering. We went to restaurants. We went on a boat in the Swedish archipel. Oh dude, this is making me nervous. I'm like get breaking out in smoke. That's that's exactly how I feel about it. But some like most people enjoy this so much and it's so important for them like this physical interaction like meeting and seeing each other's faces. So, so I need to be aware of that like like these this this is very very important for other people. I'm like maybe we can, you know, skip it. Maybe we can do it digitally, right? No. Yeah. Uh so there is always that that thing you need to be aware of. You're incredibly successful now and a lot of people look up to you and I think that that corekeeper and and I I just know Cure is going to do amazing. Um it just looks incredible. Thanks. you have these these I don't know what to call them. They're they're they're like scaffolding for

well I'll speak how about I speak for me because I don't want to judge you but like for me like if I make a great game or if I succeed in something it's this nice uh ego scaffolding where I can be like okay okay Thomas Thomas is living a good life and Thomas is doing everything right and he's happy with who he is. When I was growing up, I didn't have that. And I'm not I'm not saying this is good or bad to like I don't think my ego should be supported by products that I build, but it it does feel nice to have things that like being creative and and doing well at it. It feels good, right? When I was growing up, I didn't have that. So, I didn't really know who I was, you know, growing up through school and through college. And once I finally had games that were supporting me and I started making money, it was this huge relief of like, okay, I was misunderstood growing up, but now I know why because I'm really good at this one thing. Yeah. What about you? Do you feel something like that growing up? Did you

feel different or did you feel like I don't know? Yeah. Yeah, very much so. I grew up in a very small town in northern Sweden and there were very few people who were interested in games when I was a kid. Right. I I was one out of very few other people who were very much interested in sports and and and actually today I enjoy sports way more than I did back then. Really? Yeah. But uh but back then, you know, I was like a bit bit of a weird kid because I just wanted to be by the computer, play games, make stuff like I remember using the like scenario editor in Heroes 3 for like hundreds of hours, right? Stuff like that. What editor was that? Say that again. Heroes 3. I might magic. Yeah. Um and Heroes 3. Yeah, Heroes 3. It's it's a it's a one of the best the game I I thought you were talking about the engine. No, so you would just play this game. Gotcha. I played No, this had a great scenario editor so you could sit down and make for it. Yeah. And and and you can make them so beautiful as well because you know there was these props and trees and stuff that Dude, I've never You know what's so funny is How

old are you, by the way? Um how old am I? 34. 30. Okay. So we're the same age. Yeah, we're both I'm 34 as well. And you know I played Age of Empires 2 growing up. Age of Empires 1, uh, Warcraft, Starcraft. I never have I have never seen this game. And I, which probably is very embarrassing to say. I've never seen this game. It's beautiful. Wow. It It's so Oh, man. This these retro graphics look so good. Yeah. Um, I just had Jeff Fogle. I don't know if you know who Jeff Fogle is, but he makes he still makes games that look like this. And he does it it with the same way he did it in the 90s, he does it right now. Yeah. Um, which there's just such a purity there. He's been doing game development for 30 years. But anyway, it looks like this and this is just gorgeous. So, anyway, back to what you were saying. Oh, yeah. So, what we were talking about? Yeah. About the the childhood, right? And when you were playing Heroes 3. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so it was very hard for me to find other people who were

also interested in games until I was maybe like 12 and 13. So I remember being like picked on for you know liking games and stuff like that for many many years. Uh but then Counter Strike kind of became started becoming popular and I was very good at Counter Strike when I was young. I was I started playing what when like 1.0 released very very early. So So that's when I I kind of realized okay I'm pretty good at this with with games, right? I played a lot of games. It's quite easy for me to get good at them quite quick. uh and I can kind of build a little bit of a social circle around around that, right? So that kind of became my safe haven. Um I skipped school a lot like I had maybe 50% attendance through high school and um and before that as well. Uh I didn't enjoy school at all. So I did not have very good self-confidence and I did not understand where I was going. I was even going to be able to make games for a living, right? It's I didn't even

understand if that was a possibility, especially coming from like a small little town in northern Sweden. You know, you had no other people who were making games there. But then when I got to university, I started meeting a lot of like-minded people, like people who wanted to make games and and were good at making cool stuff that were related to games. Mhm. Um and and I think over the years there that kind of changed my perspective a lot and gave me a lot of confidence. But of course, especially with with core keeper releasing it, it shifted even more towards okay, you know, we we can do this. Um, I find it fascinating to think that, you know, can you imagine going back to your old self and saying, "Hey, you're going to lead a team of 50 people and you're going to be making these games that have what you're how many reviews do you have? Can I ask how many how many copies of Core People you've you've you've sold?" It's about four million now. So, I think we're closing in on like 4.5 or something. That's crazy, dude. That is so cool.

Yeah, dude. Imagine talking to yourself in high school and saying, "Hey, you're going to sell millions of copies of this thing and you're going to have a team of 50 people." Yeah. Yeah. I would never believe it. It's It's just absurd. Like the number is absurd. It's It's very hard to It's crazy. What's what's the biggest challenge you think what what kind of personal challenges did you have like with your personality going from basically this this high schooler that had no confidence that got made fun of making games to getting way up here? Like how did you get there emotionally to be able to lead this team? Did it just happen and it just was natural or was it were there painful rungs that you had to climb that you were like man I I'm not I'm not able to get to 10 people or I'm I really struggle talking to people or leading a team. There's so many small steps towards it. Like I remember constellations in which I was making games and it just completely failed for one reason or another. You know it's like you have different

expectations on each other or somebody loses interest and you kind of blame yourself like ah I didn't manage to get that person to think it was cool. So you know kind of the team uh ended up you know dissolving like there's so many situations like that that I can think of. So like after doing that for a very long time and you kind of successfully build parktorm I think that's kind of when you realize that you have gained some skills and knowledge from all of those failures. You know it's it's very cliche in in one way but I think it's it's really true. So you kind of need to to fail to succeed in a sense, right? Did you did you build those teams and were you always the leader or did you just fit into the into a group of of and there was other a different leader? There have been different leaders in different constellations. I when you say constellation, what do you mean? I'm so sorry. What do you mean by constellation? So basically a few people making a project for some reason, right? So it could be like for example in high

school you know one person has an idea talks it with someone else they start working on it in their spare time that's kind of like a constellation of two right but you could have like five people coming from different universities or different countries or or you know for example Julian I I found him on deviant art so so you know I many constellations like that of different peoples with different backgrounds. Oh beautiful art. Okay so he did the cover art. Gotcha. And yeah, he did cover. Did you do the pixel art as well? He did a lot of the pixel art uh in especially in the beginning like for example for radical radical rais he made basically all of the pixel art. Um I made some there were some other people also did some but but he did like 95% of the pixel art on radical rabbits got and then on corker we had a few more artists but he did u basically all art direction right so he directed all the artists that worked on the project. Can you can you give me some advice on how to find a team? Is everybody just in Sweden and you just hang out with people in Sweden or what? You know, how are you finding

these people? With Julian, he's he's in Berlin. He I had I didn't meet him physically for six years or something like that. Um you know, when I formed a company with him, I had never met him in real life. So, it's uh that's so funny. Well, the the whole dude, I I've been making this game called Twisted Tower for three years. Yeah. And it's like it's like Bioshock. Super cool. By the way, I know I look into it. Yeah. It's wonderful. if if only I could make the world fully destructible, I might be as successful as you with that game. But, uh, it's very linear, so it's like an early 2000s shooter. But anyway, you know, I work I've been working on that game for three years. And for the for the first three, I'm solo now, but for the first three, Felipe, my artist, he he he and I never met in person ever. You know, he was in Canada, and so we became really close friends on Discord, you know what I mean? just working working on a game through Discord and GitHub, you know, that's the exact same thing as me and Julian started. Yeah, it's exact same. So, what about all these other team members? How are you finding them? So, my first two employees

except Julian, they were my two best friends from university, like two programmers, and we did like all the courses together. And in every course we did at university, we kind of tried to make a spin on it into game development. like for example linear algebra that became like 3D graphics in a game or if there was like a course about let's say uh hardware we made like a GPU that you could play Bomberman on like stuff like that right so it was very super fun to work with them on all these different uh projects at university so uh basically I reached out to them hey I need your help to to finish this game Radical Rabbit Stew you know it's going way too slow and I'm doing it myself can you come in and help me wrap it up and And so they joined the company. So that's how I met them. And then like a lot of the recruitments and people joining after that were like friends that I've been doing projects with before or people I met at university. And in the most

recent year, a lot of them have been like super talented people we found online or on like Twitter or wherever, you know. It's like people I've been stalking for a long time basically. Sure. You know. Yeah. Great pixel artists for example that I've known. Something I've discovered doing this podcast. I think you're like the 46th episode. So 46 different developers. I have found that Europeans tend to favor these very constructive communal teams where in a way there's not a hierarchy. I know that you're the leader, but they're much more uh flat organizations. And number two, whereas Americans like me, I'm like I'm I want to be in charge, you know? And and so what I but but in particular what I found is that the highly successful game developers that do really really well tend to be university grads that have a team of people that started at university and they're always

European. What do you think about game school? I didn't go to game school. I didn't I didn't learn game design in school. I learned graphic like printing. It was like graphic design but in a printing context. Do you recommend people listening right now go to game school? That's a good question because I I don't have experience in game school either. Like I I studied I studied engineering and computer science. Um well computer science is kind of I guess I guess it's a it's a it's a derivative of game right. That's true. But but like for example in my I did a PhD as well and in my PhD I was focused on something called multi-agent systems and algorithmic game theory. So it's it's quite quite far away I would say from game development. Um in in in a sense almost every person I've recruited to the company has an engineering like programming background or is an artist like there are no like pure designers or anything like that in

the company. Okay. Um and that has been working very well for for Pugtorm. I think it's it's uh it seems to be very stable in many ways. So I I don't have an experience with recruiting like game designers from like game schools. So it's it's a bit of hard one for me to to make a judgment on I would say. Um is it wrong for me to say that Swedes are very good at programming? I think we are. Is that a generalization I'm allowed to say? Yeah, I think I think that that's probably correct. There's a lot of good there's a lot of good engineers and programmers here. Yeah, that's for sure. Now, let's talk about the marketing side and the publishing side. Um, in my mind, I'm thinking Frederick could self-publish, you know, he could he could self-publish. He could he doesn't need a publisher. Yet, you've always worked with Fireshine, right? Yeah. And and we're working with

Chucklefish, so we have Oh, okay. So, Chucklefish is your new publisher. Sweet. Okay. Yeah, they're working on with us on Cura and then Fireshine on on both Core Keeper and Radical Rabbits, too. So, Core Keeper still you're still doing stuff with Core Keeper? Yeah. Yeah, we have long-term plans for that. We're doing a lot of like major updates and big content uh ads. That's also, you know, why we have uh a bit of a larger team now is that so we can sustain, you know, both core keeper and our future projects at the same time. Okay. Okay, so the first real question here when it comes to publishers, cuz people listening right now, dude, they they want to build a team, but they're like, "How am I going to pay for a team?" So, this is related to publishers because publishers typically fund a project, right? Um, that's kind of like typically the primary reason someone initially gets a publisher. And then hopefully towards the future on your when you've when you've got you've got money in the bank and you're very successful, you

work with a publisher because they know how to market the project and they know how to sell it. Um that's typically the best reason to get a publisher I think. So my first real question is how did you initially h how did you initially pay for that team? Even five people is that's a tough thing to do to pay a team. So, did you initially do partnerships where you just split the royalty and nobody got paid? So, initially, uh, well, okay, let's go back in time on to Radic Rabbit. I think that's the that's kind of what I want to start with here. Yeah. So, basically, Radic Grab uh most of the development was funded by a publisher. Uh, but I decided to not take a salary for myself, for example, but the other devs got a salary. So, so I skipped a salary entirely for myself. uh so that we could have more money in the bank for future projects and then I got uh a small salary from the university that I could work with. So I kind of was doing two things simultaneously, right?

Yeah, that's Europe for you, man. I hear all the time in America. It's like what a university is going to pay for this thing? How? Yeah, they didn't pay for the project, but as I was doing a PhD, uh PhDs in Sweden get a bit of a salary, right? So that is so I dude I went to Slovakia uh and I heard the same thing that the Slovaks are like yeah I don't have to have a job I just go to school and I'm like in America you go wildly in debt to go to school. Yeah. Yeah. Or you work your butt off and pay for school. It's very different than Sweden. We get paid we get paid for going to school. Um like we get stipens and all sort of things. So, so you kind of go plus if you live uh you know fairly frugal which I did I I didn't spend on anything right. So, so I I was saving a lot of money during my whole university studies. I was saving while I was making radical rabbit even though I didn't take a salary you know so it's so you didn't take a salary but you did have money to pay to to to eat right yeah to eat I was living in like a

student dorm for most of the time so it was very very very cheap um you know you were sharing the same corridor with seven other people basically but you did not split the revenue with anybody except for fireshine yeah yeah that's true got it got it yeah okay so it was your company and then fireshine who who had royalties. Yeah. And if you don't want to answer any of this, you don't have to, but um royalties in terms of royalty splits, you've got Fire Shine and then you've got your studio and then you you come to an agreement, you split the revenue, split the pie. Yeah. But the team is getting paid through Fireshine effectively. That's right. They they fund the development of the the the project. So, uh I I can use that funding to to pay the salaries of the the people working on the project. Um, so that's kind of how it works and and same with with Coreke Keeper. Um, was kind of the same process there, but we had a bit of a larger budget. We had a very good relationship with Fan at this point. You know, we had been even though

the game didn't um sell well commercially, it was very well received. We hit all kind of Radical Rabbits, you know, yeah, that didn't sell super well, but but we had a great collaboration with Farang when we made it like, you know, we were very aligned on all the milestones and all the beats. So, it was a very like a breeze making the game in a sense. You know, I I I kind of want to say something offensive here, so please forgive. I'm not trying to I I don't know how the best way to ask this. Yeah. Go ahead. How How did typically when a publisher signs an indie and the game doesn't really perform, why would they sign another project with you? Radical Rabbits, it didn't like it didn't blow up. At least on Steam, it didn't blow up. Yeah. But I think it's very clear why it didn't blow up. Like I I was not expecting it to sell well, to be honest. uh it was not meant as a commercial project when we started it. It was a hobby project. Uh and we won some you know local game competitions with it and and publishers started contacting us and saying hey like you know we can help you

get this game to Nintendo Switch and Xbox and play and that was a dream for me. I I never released on this platform. So for me that was like yeah I want to I want to do this like it doesn't matter what I have to do I'm I'm going to get this game to the Switch to the PlayStation to Xbox. like that was a like a mission for me almost. I also think it was clear from fire shine's perspective that you know when they saw uh the result of radical grabs you know that pugtorm has had done you know everything that we had promised to do plus more you know it was it was a great success in that way it was a very low budget project as well uh and now we wanted to move to something that's more commercially viable which in a sense was corekeeper right so I think they could kind of see the rational behind that and how that could turn out very well I I think that's why but I mean you would have to ask them of course but but I think also partly because we had such a great relationship and uh it had been such a breeze for for both of us working together. I think that um even even even me sometimes I forget the value of the value that a publisher sees in a

developer that they can trust. You know, half of I think half of a publisher's problem is that they don't know who to trust when it comes to developers. Yeah. And it sounds like what you're saying is they just knew you very well and they trusted you that you could finish a project and that they weren't going to have problems with you when it came to like milestones that their money that they were giving you was actually being spent on the game. Yeah. Right. When it comes to Radical Rabbit, you got a retro game here that would have probably done incredibly well in 1997. Yeah. Right. Because I'm assuming it's very linear and that it's just it's just a a fun adventure game. Is that correct? Yeah, that's true. It's a very linear game. It's very correct. Would you ever do that again? Would you ever knowing knowing that that's hard to sell, would you do it again? I would uh probably do it um if I think it was sufficiently exciting like adding something to the let's say linear puzzle games genre in a sense, right? Mhm. But

right now, I'm just so excited about these like sandbox adventures that you know that world that is simulated that I just want to put all my focus on that genre, right? So, yeah. So, so in that sense, probably no, not now, but maybe in the future, who knows? If you added a if, if Radical Rabbit, let's let's pretend for a second here. If Radical Rabbit had sandbox elements, what do you think would have happened to it? I think it's still like very niche. It's like slapstick humor. It's like a non It's a character that's very hard to project yourself onto. Uh the game has very few similarities to other games. So it's very hard for people to kind of pitch it to each other. Uh you know, it lacks all of the characteristics that I think made Core Keeper successful. So I think just doing that shift with Radical Rabbit, it would still have been a commercial failure. I I'm pretty pretty confident. I'm very I'm very proud of Radical Rabbit. like it's a fantastic game.

Yeah, it's a great game actually. It's I'm very it's it's uh I'm very proud of it in many ways. Um but it is not a game that has any commercial, let's say, um intelligence behind it, let's say. Yeah. Let's let's do a little experiment here. Yeah. Let's figure out together. This is going to be really helpful for people listening because I can't tell you how many times I've played people's games from my audience because I'll do like live streams and I'll play their games. They have the same sort of problem that Radical Rabbit has, which is it looks like a great game. It It's good, but it's not it doesn't work in the modern era. Yeah. It doesn't solve the problem that let's say younger generations want solved which is they want a replayable game where they can like you said project themselves into the world. So let's do something here. Let's let's do

this. If we let's pretend we want to make Radical Rabbit a game that sells 4 million or four $4 million gross revenue. What do we need to do to make it happen for Radical Rabbit? What are some things that you do as a designer and as a creative director? What would you do to make it happen? This is I know it might not even be possible, but this is helpful for people listening because they're thinking, "Okay, I've got a game like Radical Rabbit." Yeah. Yeah. What do I need to do to make this actually sell? Well, how big adjustments am I, you know, able to make? Because I think it really depends on like what keep the name Radical Rabbit. It's Radical Rabbit Stew, by the way. Right. Yeah. I rabbits, too. That's Let's keep the name or at least the idea of a rabbit. Yeah. What would you do? What would you do? Let's Let's try and figure this out. Oh, that's a that's a great question. That's a really fun exercise. H

Yeah, I think it really depends on what you want to do. like do you want to go you just want to focus on let's say building a company and earning a lot of cash or do you want to you know push the boundaries of the the kind of adventure sandbox space while making these $4 million like there's so many questions there the the goal is I okay I am I am God and I come in and I say hey you you must make this game re you must remake Radical Rabbit and you must make $4 million Yeah. If you don't do it, Jesus Christ. Uh you go to prison for the rest of your life. What do you need to do to make it happen? It's all about revenue. How do we make it profitable? Yeah. Wow. I would pivot towards something that's more social, like for example, you know, co-op or, you know, uh something along the lines of maybe Super Mario Odyssey where you have like sandbox worlds puzzles that you can play in together. Mhm. I think that's something that has some potential, but at the same time, I think you would need

to shift the IP completely. I think that's like one of the main issues with Radical Rabbits Stew. Like you would need to to borrow the Super Mario IP and do like Radical Rabbits, Super Mario or whatever. What do you mean by that? Yeah. So, Radical Rabbit as an IP is extremely hard to build like a community and people to like it around like uh and I think the reason for that is what I just mentioned about the predictability. Like it's very hard for you to project yourself onto the main character. It's very hard for you to kind of project yourself into this world. It's just too too whimsical and strange. Oh, I see. Right. Can you explain what you mean specifically by projecting yourself onto this world? What does that mean? Because I look, you know, Banjo Kazouie, I as a I could have projected in the '9s, I was able to project myself onto that character, but in 2025, can people project themselves onto a bear and a bird? Yeah. Yeah. It's it's just harder,

you know? I think it's doable. It's just harder. And today there's just so much competition. So, like if if Banu Kasui came today, I think it would have had a much harder time. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Get through the the noise, you know? I think unless unless you got nostalgia players, let's say you've got a million people who have that nostalgia, they're going to go play ukulele and they're going to feel that that nostalgia. Yeah. But is it so is it a character problem? Is it the fact that it's a rabbit? Is that the problem? It it's an holistic analysis. Like for example, something that helps a lot with uh player production is like if you can customize your character or if you can change it. Like for example, the more niche your character is that you are have to play as or like how the more defined it is in a sense, the harder it will be for a majority of the people to be able to project themselves onto that character and sympathize with it, right? That's just like how human psychology works. It's very very difficult. So like one way to get around that is to allow the player to customize themselves in any way in which they want to, right? So that's like a a core, no pun intended,

like facet of like how we did it in Coreke Keeper, right? You can play as any character. You don't have to play as this weird blue character we have in Rabbits, but you can, you know, you can have, for example, if I was playing maybe I have brown hair or, you know, type of eyes that I have or whatever. And that helps. Um, but there's so many other aspects to it like the world itself as well. like if it's too strange, um it just just adds another obstacle for the game director to make the player be able to feel that this is a realistic world that could have existed. You know that yeah, for example, Star Wars does this in a great way. It's a it's a strange world, but it also feels very uh realistic and something you can really feel that could exist out there in another planet, in another world, in another dimension, right? It's very similar in many ways. It feels western. I don't know if you know what I mean by that, but it feels western. Yeah. The politics of it, the the good and evil. Yeah. You know, it's very American. Uh Western is the best way I can describe

it. So, but then again, you know, Star Wars resonates with the entire world. Uh so, it's it George Lucas did a great job creating a world that felt like a sandbox where it's like I mean, I think this is why Disney bought it. I don't think they did a good job with it, but the reason they bought it is because it's like, "Hey, we have a nice canvas where people can put themselves." Um, that's that's that's so interesting. You know, I it it's hard for me to hear that because the only type of games that I can make are the ones that are very niche, a very precise and distinct world like, and that's why my games don't they don't they don't do, you know, 100,000 copies, you know, they they're very niche. Um, my current game is very bioshocky. It's based in this very dark, decrepit world, very Disney world like world. Yeah. Yeah. And the character is an insecure young man who isn't he's not like a hero. Um, a typical hero. And I know that and I knew that going in. I knew going in that it's like there's going to

be a there's going to be a small portion of the world who will understand this character and maybe identify with this character. My worry with what you're saying is that's a risky decision to make everything. It feels like it might water down a vision. Yeah. I know exactly what you mean. Yeah. And I think it's that's what uh uh you the main responsibility of the game director, the main developer of a game is to kind of make sure that it doesn't get watered down like you're that you really take out some uh key turns in in the game and really push some boundaries, right? to make it really exciting and new and fresh because absolutely but but I think there's like this pattern or these tricks you can use like all the things you mentioned for example that it's has this bioshockesque vibe to it I think that's one of those ways in which people are going to relate to it they're going to see it's like Bioshock but it's like this so it makes it very easy for people to pitch the game to themselves and to other people so that you get like an organic growth factor there uh so you kind of have the same thing with with Corkip where you know people might say it's like Terraria

but it's top down 2D or it's like Zelda but it's like a sandbox like these these help a lot with it. Uh but something I think that that I I don't know if your game does this but I could imagine it could work is you know this isekai design patterns of narrative. So for example Star Wars does it in a very subtle way. Harry Potter does it, Lord of the Rings does it. Corekeeper does it, Undertale does it, Zelda does it. Like all of these very successful IP does it. Uh, and I think that's tied to this projectability of the player of the of the player onto the main character. Uh, because the main character in all of those uh, IPs that I mentioned in the games is as new to the world as the player is. Ah, so you're on the same journey together with the main character as you know you as the player. Uh, and that's was a very very very strong narrative design pattern that I I'm very very excited about. So specifically what you're saying is that Harry Potter is discovering the world with you with the

audience. Yeah. Froto is discovering the world with the audience. Um true with Bioshock as well. Yeah. Bioshock is very much so. Yeah. And you're saying Radical Rabbit. It's like he understands the world. Yeah. He understands the world too much. So it's it just makes it a bit harder to project yourself onto it. And and of course like there's no there's no hard rules on this. like you you can let's skip that part but then maybe you need some of the other things that make it so that you can empathize with the main character or sympathize with him and and basically like all the Studio Ghibli movies they are like this there's like pretty much no Ghibli movie that has this kind of pattern and and for example the most Swedish Swedish author her name is Aulingian like all her books exact same pattern it's like so you don't have to do it but it's an extremely strong narrative base Story Valley does it as well. Um Minecraft does it. It's like Yeah, you're right. You're right. So, one of the strongest um one of the best tricks to to creating

a a great game is to essentially it it's almost like you think about your protagonist as the player, right? Do you kind of know what I'm saying? when you're making the game, you go, it's not the protagonist, it's the player. In one sense, but I think it's more about making the player implicitly project themselves into the main character. So, you don't need to be the main character. The main character can be completely different to who you are. Like, for example, um I don't know like let's say Ry in Star Wars, like I do project myself onto her when I watch the movie because it has this isai element and you know, it's a kind of generic type of character. you know, it's she's very different to me in many ways, but but it still has sufficiently many predictable like surface areas that I'm able to do it very straightforwardly and in a very natural fashion. So, you say is aai element and I want to make I just got AI to tell me what that is because I don't know what that is. Yeah. Uh AI says

Google's AI says it's a character being transported or reborn into a different fantastical world. Yeah. Um one of my favorite movies is Hook. Have you seen Hook? No, I haven't. I haven't even heard of it. Okay, so this is a it's it's a brilliant film. It does the isekai element really really well. The thing about Hook was the hook of Hook was what if Peter Pan uh grew up and he goes back to Neverland. Now the problem with that is that removes the element because it's like well he knows everything about it. You know he and and in fact even in even in the original Peter Pan Peter Pan understands the world but Wendy does not. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And so she's she's the person we're projecting ourselves onto with Hook. Spielberg was like how do I get the isekai element on Peter Pan? And so what he did with that was he said, "Well, he forgets." Ah, yeah. And he forgets Neverland, and when he goes

back, it's all new to him, and he's an old man. Which is a brilliant It's a brilliant hook. But I totally understand what you're saying about this isizakai element. Man, this is so helpful, by the way. Uh cuz I was I I did play testing with Twisted Tower last year, and people listening right now who listen to the podcast are probably really annoyed with me right now because I talk about this all the time. But when I did play testing, the creator of Cultic, his name is Jason Smith, he played the game and he was like, "Dude, does the player understand or does the does the protagonist know this world or does he not?" Yeah. And that created this huge rift. This huge rift where he was like, "I don't sympathize with car with the character because I don't know what he's thinking." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And Gordon Freeman, for example, I don't know if Gordon Freeman in Halflife has the isekai element because you know this place. You're the scientist and you know you understand this place. So what what what Jason Smith said was he was like, Thomas, it seems like you're trying to give this silent protagonist that Gordon

Freeman vibe, but it's not working for you. And so what he said was instead of trying to make the silent protagonist like Gordon Freeman, the hack is just have the player for like one time have the protagonist say, "Where am I? What the hell is this place?" Or, "What's going on?" Yeah. And so all it all the game needed at the beginning in the first three minutes of the game was the player saying to himself, "Yeah, what is this place?" And that all of a sudden helps everything so much. Yeah, I mean that's that's beautiful. So, I wonder if with Radical Rabbit, back to the original question of making this game better, I wonder if at the very beginning, Radical Rabbit is transported to a a the land of teddy bears, you know, and and he doesn't know that world. So, that could help. How can people listening right now know before they finish their game that it can't be salvaged? I'm asking you tough questions. I know, but these are things

that developers need to know. They need to know. I need to know at the beginning of a project like don't move forward with this thing. If you want to make be really honest with yourself like really really honest about the how the design decisions affect uh the potential for like player growth. You need to understand psychology why people share a game with their friends because like a game like Coreke Keeper the the reason so many players have played it is because of our players sharing the game with other players. Like that's the main key driver for its commercial success and that is why the community is growing, you know, because people enjoy playing the game. They get a lot of value. They it it's it's very valuable to them and and they want to share it with other people and it's very easy for them to share it with other people. So, you know, it's that that's built into the whole art direction, to the game design, to to everything, right? In a sense. Um sharability. Sharability maybe is a word for it. Um projectability is another one. Like I mentioned, it makes it very easy for you to kind of get into it and um pre what uh preeactability for

the player to the character. Okay. I think these are like aspects you need to be honest about as a developer. Like which of these vectors do you want to go down because they will have effects on you and your creative endeavor and your artistic goals and what you want to do with your life, right? It's it's very tough questions you need to ask yourself like what you want to do and and why you want to do it. Yeah, you mentioned earlier that you uh you had a solid vision. You had to formulate a solid vision with Coreke Keeper with your team before you even decided to to work with a publisher and to move forward with the project. I I struggle with this because for me personally, I can't I I have trouble knowing what the vision of my game is until I've made it. I It's like I It's imagine building a house and you don't even know what the blueprints are until you've made it. Yeah. Yeah. And which means you you have to tear down the house 20 times before you finally know what you're doing. Um can you talk

a little bit about that um with Core Keeper? Did you did you have the design in place before you built the project? So the way we worked with Core Keeper was that we had a very clear like vision like the game direction was very much in place like these are the things that we are going to have in the game and this is kind of how it's going to work. But the way we work with games is we work very iteratively on the details. So we have no like big game design document where everything is outlined in precision. We have no um like particular documents that outline any of the like smaller details but but only like the major bigger points. Uh and then we kind of work from there. Um so in that sense it's very much like what you described like for example we had design decisions in Corki but that we scrapped quite early uh because they didn't just work out right. Yeah. For example, one of them was that enemies outside in the world were going to attack the player's base close to the core, right? So, you're going to protect the core in a sense. And that's of course for those who have played Dungeon Keeper 2, very much inspired by kind of the the heart in Dungeon Keeper 2 where you kind of

defend it against enemies that come from outside or if uh but that didn't work out because a lot of the fun in the game came from like this casual exploring and adventuring and and doing it very calmly with friends and also building your base. You didn't want it to be ruined because you were decorating it and making it very cozy, right? Uh so there was like a a mismatch between those two kind of directions right so we scrapped that very early on uh and there are other things like that that we kind of tried out and uh didn't work out but uh I see them more as details like most of the big bigger design decisions were already in place like for example you had the core you were going to start there you had the whole isekai approach to the narrative that you have in core keeper u we had the intro slides clear you know everything was like designed around how the boss progression was going to work and and how they were going to slot into this statues between the close to the court. So, a lot of that was there early on. Um, man. Dude. Okay. So, let's shift gears here and and

let's jump into the if you want to jump into the project and um so you mentioned you want you want to just jump into the game itself and sort of show and describe how it's created, right? I think that would be great. Yeah, I think that's better. It's probably more interesting to think about the bigger picture stuff than the Yeah, sure. I think that's Let's do it, man. Yeah. Starting. Let's see. I think this is the the first interesting part of the game is like, you know, you can create your character and we have uh a lot of different options you can go with. Um and and the reason here is also, you know, you want the player to be able to project themselves onto the character. That's right. That's right. And it's a very it's like you said earlier, it's a hack. It's a hack. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. it and it it really helps as well with multiplayer games because in multiplayer games I think there is always a bit of a challenge um to kind of make sense all of the different characters have the same importance to the world and the story without making them be characters who have set

backgrounds already, right? Uhhuh. Um and it's you know you helps with that because all of them can have the same background and all of them are thrown into this world together with a same kind of understanding of it. Right. Mhm. Um so here for example in the intro slides it was very important to give a vibe of the game of course but also to make sure it introduces the player to this conception or idea of that you are as new to this world as the main character is. Right. I love that. That is so helpful. Yeah. Um and there's a mystery right from the get-go. So that's also something that I think um is something you might miss in in in Core Keeper is when you start a game, the first thing you're introduced to is there's a mystery that you as a player needs to solve. You can skip solving it if you want to. You can do whatever. You don't you don't have to care about it. But it's always there in the background as like a main quest, right? It's like always there. It's like it's a throughine.

And this is true with David Lynch films. I don't know if you've ever seen any of his films. Oh yeah, absolutely. There's there's always a mysterious emotional throughine that all of the abstraction is built on top of. Yes. So if it's only abstraction, it doesn't work. Um you need that mystery. That's ex exact same here. And I I don't know if you saw the question mark on the on the main character. And that's basically boiling down exactly what you mentioned before with your character in your game to like what is the minimal voice line or like we can do for the player to say, "Hey, I have no clue where I am." Right. So, a question mark works all languages. We don't have to care about localization. That's right. And then it's like the the smallest amount of bits we can use to convey that information to the player. That's brilliant. Uh and then, you know, you just start playing. And already here you can see there's like a little bit of vague light that you can um look around and see what the game is about. But but here we're also trying to make it as minimal as possible to what you can see in the starting screen. Like so for

example you can see the core which is the main mystery. You just saw it in the slides. You've been introduced to it and then you know okay what is this for? Looks like it needs energy. Wow. That's your main quest in a sense right? Y um and then there's a bunch of roots nearby. So what is the point here? Well, it's to, you know, teach the player that you need to start hitting with your fist to be able to progress into the game. So, you start doing that. Oh, wow. That works. Cool. And then you see stuff popping up into your inventory and and you know, kind of introduced to that, oh, there's an inventory and there's an action bar and all of that, but even more importantly, it introduces to the fact that, you know, you can hit stuff, right? So, maybe you start hitting the walls and you start, oh, they crack more the more I hit them. And then bam, you know, you're kind of left with that impression that, okay, I can destroy everything. I can hit stuff. Wow. Okay. Interesting. Uh and I see something down here. Maybe I can, you know, start hitting stuff to get down there. Um that Oh, it takes so long to to to mine around. So, let's see what I have in my backpack, right? So, you kind of bring that up and you start see some tools.

And that kind of brings you into uh how the crafting system works like immediately and and like all the basic ideas of the whole game loop are introduced here. Yeah. Hey, is this lighting? So you mentioned this is indirect lighting, right? Yeah, this is global ination. It's uh global elimination. So is it it's um is it Unity's is it something that Unity had? No. No. Or you built it? We built it. It's extremely customized pipeline. Like Oh, I think at this point I don't even know if it's like Unity anymore. It's like so much customized stuff on top of it. Oh, that's so cool. So you can kind of see the like if I go here, you can see the light seeping through there, right? Uh, so you can kind of see it going through the whole room here in a very beautiful realistic fashion. So you're not even using Unity lighting at all. No. Uh, we're not using it at all. Um, we're using something called Radiance Cascades. Uh, I think I don't know how many released games use this. I think it's probably I know Path of Exile 2 is the first game that used it and they did like a very beautiful presentation how

that algorithm works. Uh, so we implemented it in Coreke Keeper right after that presentation. Uh, and it's extremely efficient and and makes for such beautiful lighting. So, you know, we even have global nation on Switch. I don't know how many games has that on the Switch. I can't imagine how you got that running, but um you know, that's like trying to get real-time lighting running on a toaster. Yeah. So, you can see like all of them have like cast shadows and all that cool stuff. And I totally understand what you're saying though. Earlier you said it's it was more than just a visual goal. It was a mechanical goal. The lighting it's part of the game design. Exactly. Um, I'm going to show you this as well because like if you start here, you don't see these statues, right? But one of the first thing you craft in the game is a torch. And immediately as you craft the torch, you see like a hint of it and it becomes like revealed to you as a player. So then you have the next uh part of the main quest, right? First you saw here you need energy and wait, what is this, you know, on the floor and it's tied to a statue. Okay, maybe I need to put something in this crystal slot. So it's like very tied together in the game

design, right? Yep. Yep. Um, so that's kind of what kicks off the whole experience in in Core Keeper. Okay, so this was made in Unity. Um, where was the art made? U, so all sorts of tools. Um, for example, Julian uses Photoshop for his pixel art, but uh, some of our pixel art use a sprite. Uh, and then we have bosses that are fully 3D as well in the game. Um, and they use uh, completely different tools, right? Because you need to make the 3D meshes and you need to animate them and so on and so forth. Um, so that's also something that's cool with this game. It's actually rendered in 3D and then it's projected onto 2D pixel art. Uh, so like all of these walls are actually rendered as 3D meshes. Um, okay, that makes so much more sense now. Now that cuz I was so confused how you're going to do this lighting in a 2D world. Um, but that makes complete sense now. So would you if you uh is it possible to not not in the build, but like in Unity, can you see it in 3D? Like can you rotate the camera? in there's like I there's a bunch of gifts and screenshots

floating around the internet where we have black posted how it looks in Unity and my editor put it on the screen right now. Yes, please do that. And um uh yeah and and it works fairly well but uh of course it's a completely different experience and then it removes some of the kind of uh limited focal view that you have in the game right now. So it's it becomes a different experience. You know how it sometimes it feels like a really dark game is difficult to look good in the marketing material because like 70% of the screen is black. Yeah. And I I talked to the developer of Choo Choo Charles about this. Did you guys struggle with that? Not really. I can I can answer that question. I understand what you mean. Yeah. Uh I think the opposite is true because it the darkness really helps frame a lot of the screenshots and and put the focus on what we want to convey with the screenshots. like if there's a boss, you know, you can basically design the lighting in that screenshot to emphasize whatever it is that you want to emphasize. Um, and I also think it makes

the game look very different to a lot of other games in the genre. Like for example, Minecraft is largely, you know, above ground and you can kind of see the lighting and it's very lit. Um, whereas here it has a very characteristic vibe to it. Um, because of the lighting. Um and and as I mentioned a lot of other games can't do the like this uh global animation that we have or it's they can do it but it's it's fairly tricky to optimize for. Would you say that the same is the same principle of you know using darkness to emphasize the game. Is that true with Kiora as well? Yeah absolutely. C also has an above ground element to it. Um but that's something we're pushing a lot right now and actually during production is on the art direction too. Okay. we need to allow the kind of custom scenes and the precedent to to breathe in the sense that if there's just stuff everywhere on the screen at the same time as the player you are going to get exhausted fairly quickly. Mhm. Uh so you kind of just want to have like let's see here you know you have this main room in the center and then you have some hints in the corners of others things to explore.

Um so that really helps but if they're too far apart you know then you get into the problem that you know it's a fair amount of digging that you need to do as the player to get there. Absolutely. And so this is all procedurally generated, right? Yeah, it's procedurally generated. I can show you. Is it in chunks? Is it in set pieces or is it every tile is procedurally generated? So every every tile is procedure generated, but there are custom scenes and different systems that allow us to manually tweak certain scenes, right? So it's not completely uh procedure in that sense but you know all of these rivers are procedurally generated and the and the and the you know ores and all the different green areas and so on and so forth. Um so I think this is also something that's very interesting with core keeper and it's basically built around this central focal point and and you kind of dig outwards to progress. So it it's a very natural way of progressing into a game. Yep. Wow, the world is huge. Of course, it's, you know, go. Wow, this is so impressive. I just I am so impressed by

this. Um, so what do you think? Unless you wanted to focus on something else. I have another question. Go ahead. I'm just going to walk around there and show you there. This to me is overwhelmingly positive. What is keeping you from those four percentage points to get to 95% on Steam? Oh, I know it's a painful question. Yeah, it's a very painful question because um Coreke keeper is surprisingly popular in Asia. Um and the Asian players are much harsher on Corekeeper than the Western players. So if you just look at the English speaking players, we are above 95%. Yeah. Yeah. But if you if you also you know take in the the other regions it's it's a much tougher game. Um so more than 50% of our players are in Asia. Why is it popular in Asia? It's a very good question and something we have been you know thinking a lot about and I

wouldn't say there is like a straightforward answer to it but it's more for example the relatability like a lot of the Japanese players can really sense this Super Nintendo era. So they have nostalgic feel for it. Mhm. Um, and at the same time, a lot of these markets are growing right now on the PC, whereas with other sandbox games, when they were released, the PC market was much uh smaller, and the PC market is the main kind of market for these types of games, right? So, that also helps. The timing was very good in a sense. Yeah. Um, I think those are some of the main main points, but um then we've also been very good at like handling those communities. like I I I care very much for the Japanese and Korean and Chinese communities and all other Asian communities of course, but those are the three largest ones by like a far a big margin, right? Um so I tweet in Japanese for example and and and things like that because I really want them to feel like they are part of the development as well. We listen to them too, not only the the western market

like this is a game for for everyone in the world, not not only Western players. Um so okay, how is the culling working? um pretty straightforward. Yeah, just near the screen that you kind of see. Then there is some stuff that is simulated even if you're not there. Um and some stuff have some pretty nice like uh let's say performance hacks for us to be able to not simulate it at all, but only update it when the player is near. So, it's like a very hybrid approach, but there's no like advanced uh algorithm to it, let's say. It's it's more a lot of different smart things. So, can we open up the map really quick? I have a question. Um, let's zoom out really far. Okay, so that far bottom left hand corner of the blue is is anything down there rendered at all right now? No, nothing. Um, is there is the container down there? Is there a game object down there that has an ID or is it all stored

in some kind of array of information? Uh, so it loads in as you kind of go there. Um, I'm not entirely sure exactly how we do with the memory shuffling right now, like when we unload and load in things. Um, okay. It's changed dramatically over the course of the years. So when I did programming like way back, we did things way different to what we did for example after we released it to consoles. Like the consoles needed a lot of optimizations that we didn't have on the PC that benefited the PC because you know we brought those optimizations back into the game. Mhm. Uh so it's it's really changed over the years, but there's there's mostly like a bunch of small different things in which we handle that. Yeah. Are you satisfied with the engine that you've built here? I mean I say engine because it's effectively like a new engine like you said. Are you satisfied with it? Are you gonna reu did you reuse it for Ciora or is it a mess? We're extremely proud of it. Uh it's I think one of the like biggest assets of

Pugstrom is the kind of framework, the knowhow, the team also understanding how to use it in a very uh effective way. uh allows us to be you know a fairly small team compared to like big teams but able to basically perform extremely high when it comes to like for example how many updates we push out or things like that right so so you are reusing it per Kiora yeah Kora is using same lighting algorith for example the same rendering so we get that like straight into the game the same sort of t loading of tiles and and yeah yeah but the destructibility of the environments here is different than Kiora complet that's one of the big things with cure is like completely rewritten how uh the terraforming work and the destructibles work and the physics work and so on and so forth so it's completely different project in that aspect but we borrow like I said for example the rendering completely we're using a lot of the same stuff that we have in in core keeper already wow gotcha dude Frederick thanks so much for

showing this this is so cool and and thanks for sharing your thoughts man on on how all this works It's It's just so impressive. Um a little bit jealous over here. Thank you, man. I really appreciate it. Yeah, dude. Well, thanks for your time. This was so good. This is going to be a great episode. Um hey, is there anything you want me to leave in the description of this podcast? A link to Kora or your socials or anything like that? Oh, you can. Yeah, you can link to my socials on on like X and Blue Sky perhaps. I think that would be good. Otherwise, you know, uh I think people can probably find the games themselves if they're interested, you know. So, that's awesome. Yeah. Big thanks. You know, it was super fun. Yeah, dude. Let me know if you want to do it again sometime. I would love to. And maybe maybe we can uh I think Julian mentioned he wants to hop on and do it a the three of us. I think he mentioned that. Yeah. Yeah, that would be a lot of fun. I definitely one of my hesitations there is I just I would feel completely um this big next to you two.

You guys are really really smart. Um cool man. Well, thanks for your time. Um and good luck on Cura. It's looking amazing. Also, don't forget to check out Bezi and their brand new feature agent mode. It makes it very easy to create and modify code directly in your projects at your approval and provides tailor suggestions specifically to your project. It's completely free to get started and you can do so by simply clicking the link in the description.