GDC Plays Ashwalkers with Herve Bonin and Matteo Gaulmier

good morning everyone welcome to the gdc twitch channel my name is brian francis and i am here today checking out a game called ash walkers with her bonnen and mateo gamiere uh you guys come from the studio nameless13 would you please introduce yourselves good morning hello so thank you very much for reaching earth so i'm eric i was one of the previous founder of dontnod and i am the general manager of nameless certain and hello i'm matthew gornier and i'm the creative director slash writer of ash workers nice ash walkers like i said it's the game we're checking out today uh if you paid attention to the menu a second ago you might notice it was called ash walker's survival story which you know as far as game titles go it's very accurate it's a story and you survive in it um that's been my impression so far um for folks not familiar with the channel

today we are looking at pre-recorded videos so if you want to yell at me about if we're you know if we wanted to vote on decisions that we could make sadly not happening today that's my fault i'm bad at video games and you know what it's hard to talk to smart game developers and play video games at the same time i didn't know if you knew that maybe you didn't know that um but let's get started uh as the intro rolls before us and we're gonna see the tutorial in just a second um uh uh matteo nerve um what the heck is this game where did it come from why is it here why is it so beautiful like i could i could kill um i could keep gassing you guys up more but what i really should do is let you introduce your game and explain sort of where it came from okay um the old adventure started four years ago it started as a student project in the school in toulouse the epa and it started as a project of the end of formation end of school and we

we had to produce a game during the year and this idea first as born in the school um we were with some friends and some classmates and we produced a first game during the year that was called sondra and we uh at the end of year ceremony we met one of the jury elvis bruno and rv liked our game and liked what we had to propose and from this point we talked with ray we had a long discussion about how we should we continue to produce this game after and finally we decided yes and in 2019 so two years ago we started nameless 13

and we started to produce directly from student to indie devs this game and we had two years to bring the best of us to to prove that this idea was nice and we had this game releasing a last week and you have a shortcut under your eyes yes perfectly said nothing to us nothing yeah that's it i can go on and [Music] well matteo i want to learn more about like the games making first but um heir of um you know as a co-founder of don't nod i wanna i gotta admit that's kind of a new pitch that's kind of a new thing i've heard about the studio you know like a dope nods and established studio um and not just in the world of um life is strange but you've got games like vampire real neat game i was playing it a lot uh pre pandemic or on on my nintendo switch when i watched there um uh what that's a really big i'm really like impressed

that um you know you you have one company that's you know it's there it's moving along it's you know you co-founded it and then you see a student game that makes you go okay yeah i'm done with the established company i want to go help a student game you know move to commercial success so like so what's your what what made you want to make that jump no that's not exactly that way that for example in fact it was the end of my adventure we don't know because uh it was nothing to do anymore in that company it was uh quite a few years ago and then after a little bit of rest and experimenting a new kind of game plays because at the end it's a huge machine and it was just managing people and so i was willing to do something by myself reprogram because i'm first a programmer and so i've tried some new prototype of my own and also i was looking for in the game because i think it's a great area of play and at that time i just came back to my own city in the countryside because i'm

from twos and there was a student school and so i was wanting to do a new indie game company and see this student project and said hey we have something to do together because i think you are doing a great job and there is narrative parts that are recognized and you are able to do something picture a story with some music and everything and i think we should do something together and that's just how it started and the meeting was very cool and so the student became my apartment nice uh mateo let's let's uh let's swing back to you for a second okay so ash walker's um to me that you know as an outside observer you know i look at this game i see a survival game um i get shades of oregon trail you know that classic like a party across a landscape party members can drop dead uh but until the goal is to keep them alive um in this game the challenges include moral challenges might be too far swinging to describe but you know but it's kind of like it's like how do we approach kind of a

social problem as well as you know physical survival problems um are some of the choices you make so what was kind of the underpinning architecture for taking this game from from you know let's go all the way back to like you know kind of those student days when you were like prototype and then you were like okay we can we can leave the prototype space and go into shipping something space so what was kind of the architecture of the design for this game from the start of uh since we left the school yeah kind of that transition from you know the start to like okay this is a game we can make this game i'm sorry that's not as clear but no no no problem i wanted to be sure um okay so the world idea behind the game was the choices and the what happened inside the game and we are a huge fan of tabletop role playing and fun fact the game was first prototyped as a double top pro playing almost as a boat game at first and uh on paper

on the table and this idea of interval rpg especially one question what do you do and how you approach this situation was something we liked and we wanted to take a bit of a i won't say a twist but a bit of an approach that was a bit more a bit less moral in terms of good or bad what you do is good or bad and a bit more like okay what do you do how do you approach a situation in in the text we see on screen you can see uh you approach a wolf and you have to decide how you approach the situation and we want we we would not want to do the judging side of of the game we we we we wanted to avoid just saying okay you have you have this situation do you take the

bad decision or the good decision and are you good and evil and we wanted to avoid this at maximum level and so this is what kept us since the beginning of the game and since the beginning of the project even at school it was okay you we won't judge we just put the situation and try to to give the players the maximum possibilities and option in front of the situation and this is this is why it's it drives everything from the game this idea of choice as we we even the text-based events that you can see on the screen the choice of going with the text instead of i don't know voiceover of something that is more standard in the industry like you can see in deltas or even i don't know we we wanted to have this place

for the mind to wander and to find okay you see a shape in your reason and but all you can imagine what it is you can even the silhouette you can see in the screen right now you don't know exactly who it is how does it works you can you only have the text and your own choice to discover that and we wanted to push this idea to the game yeah so yes we can build off the tabletop angle there that you mentioned real quick um when i play tabletop games i've noticed that and there's actually an interesting overlap here with the survival genre um my party members in a lot of tabletop games are most concerned with with dying um they if i'm playing you know if i'm playing an experience and i and it's something like this where like what i decide to do uh you know it's sort of like there's no skill you know like there's no there's no amount of skill i can bring to the table with my with my with a controller

or with combos or with knowing a a you know something more abstract like you know like think i'm frostpunk you know like i'm like oh like i have this much knowledge of my resources and frostpunk i could probably warm my way out of these bad situations if i play my cards right and as in a game like ash walkers run a tabletop game um kind of the the death of verse mentality something i found a lot because you know like you said like what do you do is a question that often goes do i feel like as a player i feel like uh um i hear a lot what i hear from my fellow players a lot is oh no if i do the wrong thing i'll die um and sort of um i'm kind of curious uh you know and death is right there on the table because you know one of the first things you learned playing in this game is if three of your four party members die game over and those little timers in the uh all those little bars in the bottom right hand corner of the screen are all different countdowns towards death so i'm kind of curious how as a designer you you and you you were able to

encourage players to uh fear death less and make interesting choices more um i think we kind of linked the choices to the survival condition and we were what we wanted to avoid is less than fear of death is more we wanted to avoid absolutely the optimization of your play okay and we do that choice because i know this is how i really win the game and this is this is what we wanted to avoid and the most the question you ask when you are in front of a choice of ash workers is most commonly okay how will i survive this encounter this how would i decide to face this okay i have i don't know i

have some wood i can light a fire to scare an animal but this food will be consumed for the next comp that i will make and maybe my character will flows to this so this is more about what you are able to sacrifice to to make your squad and the people live than uh what is a good or bad choice and or i don't know optimization or if that's in a friendly english [Music] this is about optimization but you are the squad so you you have to think about okay uh what i am ready to sacrifice to advance inside the game and this is most uh our choice like this and fear of death is always here and you have to think forward and and to prepare to what's coming out

that that's a good answer i liked the part about um i like the part about trying to avoid up there being an optimal choice i really like that part um i'm gonna have some more questions for mateo and irve in just a second um but i wanted to go to chat first because chat we've had some wonderful folks show up who wanted to say some things before before i start reading this off chat if you have questions for matteo and our an air vey you can ask about ash walkers you can ask about um running a company um whatever you want to know you know whether you're fans of games or or um or want to make games yourselves here at game developers conference especially on the twitch channel we're trying to get answers for you um knowledge learning excitement these are these are the vibes we want to give off um let's start off we got a lot of heart emojis in here um burning good enough wants to say that the uh amazing game in art directions so many paths perfectly balanced difficulty thanks to the team um uh mj adax says baguettes i don't really i hope it's a meme for

someone because it's gonna mean for me um ken sequoia wants to say that they're in love with this game oh wow like so much love for this game coming in um that's nice yeah uh this is this name we've heard a lot uh and uh vernon was on an early streamer of the game and uh i salute him you know your videos are great oh hey vern as a streamer as a as an amateur streamer over here thank you for dropping by our stream i appreciate it um uh everybody um i want to ask you you know what were some of the challenges you know kind of helping you know guide shepherd this team and this game from start to finish um you know what kind of new challenges came with this smaller game as opposed to the kind of games you worked on at don't nod yeah it was something very different because dotnet was a huge enterprise we have huge investment in the beginning and we start ready to

hire a core team with only senior and very experimented people and story is really not the same kind of company because i wanted to have something lighter and those also also one business hypothesis i was making myself i think there is a huge waste in student school there's a lot of very talented people that sometimes are are some i don't know as a junior but i think there is a huge waste of creativity and uh i wanted to check if some young student people were able to finish a game from beginning to start and uh the concept of archwalker is proving it so i'm very happy that my business hypothesis is valid yeah and and my goal is to make more indie games with this team and with something fresh and new and with a small team is very easy to uh i think from on my side there is less financial pressure than for huge big games it's very

different for the guys there is a huge pressure because it's a first game and so in a way this is it's their life they're putting on the game but i'm a little bit older and i've seen other things so for me it's far much easier so i have far much less pressure and i try just to help the guy to give them the best but i cannot give them all they wanted i'm sure if i give more to matteo on the financial aspect they could have done something more and bigger and greater but that was not the goal we were here to do an indie game and just push more further a student project into a real game it was an experience of its own i start a new company and so that the guys learn and be confident in themselves and i think it's something that i can do and that was my goal to to have them and i was also in love with this game when i first tried the prototype i found something great and remembering some books i was reading and remember

the first sentences with matteo was a reference of celeb um a great book in france and we have the the same narrative uh how can i say uh origin books i don't know i don't know in english interests would interest be the right word interest yeah the same universe yeah same kind of reading i'm also a tabletop gamer and influencer influence is actually the word yeah that's it that's it and so yeah it was not only a game it was a star trek to start with talented people so different level of success the game and also the company and make them progress so i'm very happy i'm going to pivot back to um uh mateo here because we're coming up on um one of my favorite parts from my experience with the game which is the hound the hounds um mansion that you encounter um yes so i want to comment on what's

going on on the screen right now specifically um this is me uh you know when i i've played a bunch of these games by now i sort of know like i know how to write you know in my in my view i'm like i feel like i know how to ride you know okay my party's tired people are hungry but i'm looking at the road ahead and i don't see anything obstacle-y coming up so i can you know maximize how long we go and then and feed and then keep going um as you can see port petra here is actually not maximized because she took some damage and amount of med kits but don't worry she'll be okay um uh so the how i did this because i saw that mansion and i went all right so something's happening there and i want those numbers up um to make it through that mansion and when i got in there um i was rewarded with an encounter that actually didn't like it was not entirely necessary for me to go through the steps that i'm going to hear mild spoiler but um uh and what i got was something actually that i thought was a little more interesting which was like instead of a boss fight

i got a encounter that i had to navigate using um i i what i liked about this the most was that i i kind of got to bring my own vibe for how i would manage this situation into the like i felt genuinely like the choices were wide enough that i could navigate it in my way as opposed to like i don't know something inspired by um uh cormac mccarthy's the road which is you know what a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction takes takes inspiration from um but i still have that tension you know we're coming up like okay like something's on the horizon like i'd better gear up you know like like that classic you know like shooter or third person platformer vibe of like there's a boss up ahead there's a room full of loot i better make sure like i'm good to go um uh what as a designer like how did you sort of navigate you know like players like what like that anticipation versus like what was actually waiting for them in the room because like player behavior is so much more used to you know like i need to come into these things as ready as possible versus uh once you get in there it's like oh no

that little rest moment actually didn't help me but it did you know i don't know but it wasn't a waste either like i guess like like that's my that was my experience and i'm kind of i want to throw that at you and go what do you think sorry there's a question in there somewhere yes um so uh intensity and tension this is what uh uh what you are talking about yes okay this round and the manner was a great uh a big challenge for us uh as it was the first game the first zone of the game and this was the end of it and we wanted to be memorable we wanted to be like okay this what did we wanted people to talk about okay what did you do with the horn how do you manage to go through it so we build up the tension since the beginning of the zone and we have you have in the outpost at the beginning you have a tag on the wall that say okay you have this this time with people from the

outside and it's pictures the wolf okay if if you go further we we put hints of what's coming on all along the zone and finally you came in this place in the front of the manor and you have this house that's sort of nowhere and you have this road that goes up and we wanted to to stress the player and to do exactly what you did and we wanted to okay you have something here you don't know what it is but it's it can be dangerous and we we push the player to go through it and to go inside the manner and once you prepared here it was very difficult right because we wanted to have all kinds of behavior just like just like in what we said before but we wanted

them to feel more uh heavier and more important like you and by that one solution we found was to reduce the number of choice and by um when the player getting is getting used to have four choices or three choices when you put him in a situation where he has no only two choices this starts it's real tension because you don't have much to do and this is what we want to tell by the system you you don't have much room to act now you you have to be prepared and this time you have to do one thing and this will be very important and as you said you have for example if we continue into the spoiler and you you as i seen in the video you decide to not draw your weapons in uh

in front of their hands and to talk with them if you are if you draw your weapons with the hand you will have to either you will have only two solutions ever fight or free and you could not go back come back to the jewel you have encountered after and this was very important for us because it was okay if you have someone that is that is uh that did not know the the group but don't know your intention show them your intentions and uh and we build up the attention like this we reduce the attention or by by reducing the number of joys and and you have you you've got a good path and even the drug could have ended wrongly and you have good made good choice and you arrived safely to your situation yeah i think cause you trusted them finally yeah i thought that encounter was really interesting because i it actually like

you we talked earlier about how you said optimus that you didn't want to make a game where it was optimizable and i went through that encounter and relied on my diplomat character in a fight and in you know tabletop game logic that's a terrible choice um you know you you put your talkers in the talkie problems and your fighters and the fighting problems and in this case you know like my like a mix of like oh my my quickest fighter is weakened yeah i have a brawler but i don't know if i want to kill this guy um and so i'm left with my diplomat and i'm like what if what if you just run around like uh you know i'm just like okay let's just try running through and and um and i also appreciate kind of um i also appreciate it like combat as ritual the combat is ritual part of it you know like a group of people who are like okay we have a combat ritual and you just need to best them and it's like well turns out best is a very broad definition um as opposed to you know like trial by honor the strongest or trial by combat the strongest one went like the ritual component you know the winner mattering more than the violence uh was just super neat

that's not a question that's just a chef's case um that was very very important for us to to to picture the people living from the outside and we wanted to have something very a bit different from what you see with the hold of of wires and even if they were wires we wanted to write something with a bit of a twist as you said the the best win and not the strongest and this was what we wanted to say with these people with this group of people and we from in all through the game we talk about different people and different behaviors and and this was very important to have something that was not totally cliche oh my god the avoiding of cliche is um what i saw the most in my time with this game when it comes to the the the game refers to as the savages but by the end i was like man that's just someone else's word for these guys um uh as opposed to what the and also

like it's always been in the real world that's always been just someone else's name uh for the for uh indigenous people um uh in chat uh we've got you know just more love for the game uh vernon's back with kudos for the soundtrack music and sound design which are totally immersive um and heck and robin heck and robin agrees oh it's norman hello uh uh herb i'm gonna swing back your way uh for kind of a studio operations like [ __ ] you know shepherding this team across the finish line challenge um uh in in in you know audio is actually a decent thing to touch on here in that um you know at a bigger company you have a bigger audio team and you have sort of um more ability to pump out like okay like we have all this voice acting we need to get done we can prioritize that um and on a smaller indie team like this even if you have a dedicated sound person um there are more challenges to still

you know like you know like produce and manage the content and get it across the finish line um what did you see as someone kind of the challenges of of like you know like creativity like you know you've got this team of of talented young students students turned professionals um uh their their vision is interesting but but it's your scope is also limited um scope management i guess is what we're what we're narrowing into here is a question so as a you know someone who's working these two different studio environments like what how did you sort of see scope management working on this project compared to other projects you've been on in fact it was quite easy because the prototype they have done a cdn project was already showing what they were able to do by their own so for the sun design the prototype was quite amazing so i was quite sure they were able to manage this part it was a project of its own with everything blend together there is already some

good visual there is already some good some design and already some original music so they already have the feeling of what they were doing the blenders of flower and so what i just have to verify that they were able to maintain their talent and keep the scope they are defining themselves and so if their promise are for real or they go far much beyond what they're able to do yeah and then have to just put in front of what we expect to do the investment needed so they arrive and also what is very difficult is to to a face in a way in them it was like in dartmouth to have a phrase in project is not so easy and the more there is time between the beginning and the end you have to be very confident and give some milestone to be able to check verify that we are in line with what you expect but also that the team is still about to do it and not losing faith in what they are

doing it is very difficult to transform the initial id into something real that player will have in end yeah and and i my just main focus is to kill the key to the good people whatever it was in don't know or uh with nameless searching and i think my talent is make people have more talent and so ads help them to to do it and for the music it's an indie game that we have a great new original composition with a young talented a student of itself some friend and knowledge of mateo and it's always like things like this for indie game company you can push limit with a small budget i can tell you that the music we have a lot of music in this game which are totally original and it's it's amazing soundtrack and i think it's also a public of its own really i don't know if you

you you're here it's all so much i think we have something to do to send them this music by itself with the gamer yeah yeah and it's a real fun to to see to see that we can do great things it's the same thing for the visual you have to to be crutch we have no no room for for error so we have to take a direction and uh and push it further yeah um every while i've got you on the horn here um uh there's kind of a businessy angle that i kind of noticed about this game that piqued my curiosity um uh pricing indie games on steam is a uh tough topic for every indie out there um i i know some indies who are very passionate about um like if it's less than 20 dollars um you know it's it's it's very difficult to make up uh you know the number of units sold to relative to cost for the game um and i know other indies who are like if i don't go on the cheaper side like it's difficult for me to compete with you

know like with something you know that's at the same value at twenty dollars you know like a frost punk or something i think frostpunk rock center clocks in it more expensive for i keep referencing frost i can speak i promise frostpunk um uh clock's in it more expensive than that but but it's it's a useful touch point for like you know survival for survival from it for my brain here um this game does clock in at under 20 dollars what was kind of the decision the decision driving that um it's also it's a way to be efficient so we choose uh very early to work with uh dear relator with it or publisher in a way so we are doing the game we own the ip and that they are doing and marketing is they also determine what is the right price for the game because it's very very difficult to imagine what is a proper price so

when you are confident in people and it's my way of working with matteo or all the people they see me the good price that's it i say okay that's it so i do my computation to see okay if we sell this kind of this area are we still leaving are we dead or not and instead of say okay we go and and we go real we are with this price i think it's a very fair price for the content yeah and and we also try to be player it is not we we are in front with game and so we just have to to remember what we are able to pay for a game yeah and i think as in the developer it's far much easier to think as a gamer than a huge big company with a hundred of people who are depending on the price and the huge marketing life is very easier for me and we still villager this was great and also i just want to tell just a few words also that in french we have a huge

uh subsidies from the french government yeah so which helped us a lot to do this game and so it's all store not uh it's up the company to be profitable for first game right yeah that makes sense yeah especially in countries where um uh the government's more involved in the arts uh i live in a country where well uh it helps fund the kennedy center uh beautiful theater i gotta say by the way i've seen it i saw i saw phantom of the opera there um uh but yeah that's that's interesting i actually wanna um you you mentioned yourselves you know thinking as indie developers you get to quote think as gamers um i've heard that a lot from some developers who are like um because especially here in in my part of the world like knowing you know the developers i know who work at larger companies there's so much like key passing back and forth especially among studios that i i know a lot of game developers who say i don't feel personally attached to the price of games anymore because i get so many for free through my

friends i get you know disc i i i work so much that i just essentially buy them when they go on discount um or i make one you know 60 purchase a year essentially versus um you know versus the average player who might want to um you know whether they play one multiplayer game over and over or want to check out a bunch of indie games or want to check out a bunch of aaa games like i i can see why um you know sort of thinking about yourself like yeah like there's like being in a position where you're not disconnected from the realities of pricing is important yeah um and also one one of the things i've made with this company because all the students are partners of the company so they're really involved on the profitability of the company and so it's linked also to the price the work they put in the game and or how much they are paid everything is something which is coming together so it's hard for them because they have a huge involvement of the game but also in the company and the profitability so it's a good exp a good experience but

it's difficult to be an associate and also someone working on a game so i think it's better for the people that teach props for the mental sanity sometimes it can be harder so i think will agree with me so i gave them the key as much as i can so that they can figure okay we are doing a game but there is limit in what we can do for a game because we expect some sales and so we cannot push more money and if we push more money we need to have a big huge marketing because we need to reach more people and you know it's something which is more and more difficult the more you give after you have to be clever it's not only money that makes good games there always some mono games were great with just one people so every game has its different story but in our story we want to to share everything whatever the prize marketing everything is clear yep um comment from ken sequoia in chat

uh saying it's your team's first game so you can be proud of yourself uh they'll be waiting to hear more from nameless13 also team nadir oh uh so um uh uh matteo um let's swing back to um we're going through kind of a choice situation now and i think we've talked a good amount about the game's choice um as a designer um how do you when you're when you're you know still figuring out uh the balance of a game of slow you know like like let's go to the bars which unfortunately aren't on screen right now you know you have to manage uh health uh hunger energy and rest and kind of a um you know like uh that sleep factor or warmth one with one fourth um you have to manage and then also hope you know you've got uh there's a hope meter that's kind of hiding behind the other meters back there in a different way um uh when you are in the sort of tooling prototyping stage you know before but

sort of before things are rendering on screen and before encounters are happening how are you simulating and and tweaking the values on those bars to to sort of get the optimal results and sort of what's your philosophy for like like seems like a lot of math is what i'm saying and i'm bad at math so i want to know how you hit that math um we are bad of mass too i'm bad someone in the stream no we we try to project what we want for the game and mostly it's the only way you can develop a game it's testing testing testing testing uh bringing new player testing the game and this is something that is very difficult especially like the whole all the statistics you showed up and even with in comparison to some bigger games with huge rpg mechanics

we have a smaller amount of values and of parameters this parameter can improve a lot on the game how many you lost by by step you take and etc so the whole philosophy and the balancing of the game was to ensure that there is a good this is this was more about balancing in the experience than in the fairness of the game i don't know if i'm clear um it was not about the rhythm of the game but about the difficulty of it we wanted to the player to have a part of his time not too concerned by the survival and more by working and exploring the world and making choices so we we balanced the value to okay you are

trying to survive and you are trying to to enjoy this harsh river but you are also living in a story and you have absolute choice to make yeah and we balance to have a bit more of this a bit more of the story and bit less of the difficulty and this was a very difficult thing to balance especially when you have played your game thousands of hours and now you know exactly exactly what you do to reach an ending as as a team and as a game program they not try to make he couldn't even see the after two years of production he we just played the game easily and and we don't felt like being able to balance the game ourselves anymore and we had a lot of playtesters but i think a lot a lot a lot uh qa team from the villagers which

helped us a lot and with them and the prefecture we could balance the game and tweaking the values tomorrow okay you need a bit more of this you did a bit less of that and this was the way we balanced the game with the player feedback with the all the experience and what we get from them and there was a lot in the systems uh even if we had a minimalist system from a survivor again but it was it was only thanks to the players we can we can balance this game yeah we don't have a magic formula uh behind it uh yeah not right now but if anyone had a magic formula uh i'd love to see the gdc talk on it hey uh yeah it's a thing dude um uh let um let's talk about we i'm

surprised you sort of got this far without talking about sort of the um uh the black and white aesthetic um the uh i uh i feel like you know this is one of those things this was there from the per that was there since the prototype you know it's it's a it's a defining look um uh you know we're sort of seeing an example here you know how an object on screen is made more hey i'm here come over to me i am resources um you know in the final product of this game what did you learn about um you know when you go for a black and white aesthetic on the one hand you gain some clarity because anything that that you know sticks out from the color scheme uh uh you know stands out and therefore players will navigate towards it will drift towards it and on the other hand um how do you navigate uh you know sometimes you want things to be more obscure sometimes you want um information you know you want a little bit of nuance in there you don't want things to be strikingly obvious um i was going to make in there somewhere i referenced where i realized

like wait why is this black and white thing like where is this also higher part of my brain and i realized it's that classic book we all read in middle school in the united states the giver um uh so uh i was like wait why is red such a standout black right the giver so um yeah so i'm just kind of that makes me kind of curious like as a as a team what were some of the challenges of working in this black and white grace uh kind of grayscale space that you have it was a huge challenge so it was it was a very cool idea um and we we dive into it in school and uh and it was okay we wanted to keep that it was very resonant with the theme of the ashes and the theme of the post-apocalyptic and the theme of violent despair it was reason it resonating with all of what we wanted to talk so we went for it the

hardest thing i think but was to the biggest challenge we had to face was the clarity of the game in all of this aspect um when you work with grayscale and especially with the one we have which has finalists not so much contrast you don't have pure black and pure white you are to balance the contrast all around the game or around the environment and especially this zone that you see on the screen the volcanic tundra was very difficult to work with because we had all these visualizations the black ground and at night night is was a nightmare at night at night you want to have this feeling of of it's nights it's dark and you will get lost but you don't want your player to get lost inside a level so you try to make things different and you work on the

on the lights the lighting of the sense was very difficult to put and to work with and the the main advantage we got from working with bat is as you said when we want to put something in evidence we use a color and that color was a red which was definitely working with what we were saying also with the blood with the balance with the danger and with the lava with the fire it was resonating also with what we wanted to say so as soon as you put something different in that environment it's it's seeing you can see it from everywhere so the red for example was a great way of telling the player okay you're in danger or you just killed someone or something and this was a way to say uh to bring the player attention and to bring him back to the game

and uh so it don't work first and he said oh then my character died no no your character was bleeding five minutes ago and you saw it so now it is dangerous we we had trouble working with but the all priority of the game and we are still taking improvement and feedback from it and we are working from the demo maybe we had a lot of feedback from the players and that was troubling with reading some white on gray on my gray text and we went and added the shadows all over of our interfaces and our ui and we added a lot of shading around that to make it stand better and and yeah working uh telling some things

with the player when you remove the colors to a designer i think that's a great challenge and that was difficult or however all games you know and ui designer find a great way to evoke yeah um i have a specific and maybe nitpicky question about the black and white um uh as a player i'm playing this game i see the black and white and what i've internalized you know and on one hand i get like all the red you know like the red on um uh um sin was sin's got some red on his body right now because he's got those little wounds he's off camera right now god dang it um uh i some part of me is like this some of this is literal and some of this is abstract you know like like you know some of this is video game and some of this is what the characters are literally seeing in this fictional world and then at one point in the dialogue uh there was a line that referred to the yellow kind of fog it might have been in this area and my brain like i swear like i swear to like i had like a whole thing i'm like yellow like what's yellow

so it's it's just one line it it um and maybe it's the problem you're just talking about i'm curious how you i mean you know you there was a lot of writing that went into this game too and to have something like that happen and how it hits with player expectations maybe i'm the only one who noticed it but it it broke my brain a little bit because i'm like wait i thought everything was black and white i thought this was a black and white earth um but yeah if i'm curious if you had any does that that i don't know what the question is there to be honest but i'm just like that's what that was my experience but did you i get your points i get your points but this was this was a bit of this was a true question in in design in design phase and it was about the perception who is looking at the game yeah right now who who is that camera who who tells the story and uh if you play the game you have a better idea of

who is talking yeah who is telling the story and so uh this this kind of okay connective distance i don't know if wait so look the phrase is literal look the phrase that we all lean on is little narrative distance but if you say you have to take a shot and pay um uh what's his name uh clint you have to play pay clinton hocking ten dollars if you say it so uh i don't know if it's in the budget for the show okay sorry okay um so this this was a bit of a varies we avoided at maximum to say uh over colors inside the game except for the even when we talk about vegetation we talk about how it's humid warm and uh and yeah something like that so we try to avoid that but sometimes we have to tell the stories and especially if that's the characters that are inside it that are telling it

yeah so the squad if if they are saying okay i think something that is green uh on the other side this is uh we stay a bit logical for us to have a character see the world as it is and ourselves see the world as we perceive it yeah so this was our link to the game i think that's a better answer yeah um i'm going to do we have 10 minutes left in the chat everyone which means we only have a certain amount of time left with our wonderful guests if you have questions for irve and mateo um uh we'd love to hear them uh we also you know if you just want to keep saying how much you love the game i don't object um and within this space of time while i give you all time to answer questions i'm gonna do a little bit of housekeeping um this is the gdc twitch channel with game developers conference as you can see right above my head um uh what we are all about is just about the art and business of making video games uh we stream games here on the twitch channel

and talk to developers who make them that's our paul ubra um if you want more of that please click the follow button but more importantly uh we have an excellent opportunity for you especially because you're watching this on twitch at home um uh gdc 2021 this year is going to be online it's going to be in july uh starting on july 19th uh if you want to register for gdc i have a button down below somewhere somewhere down there um yeah we're all pointing down um uh uh if you go click on that button you can register you can get a pass um i've already there's already a whole schedule of talks up that you can see um whether you're just coming with the expo pass there's some amazing talks if you decide to go in for something more specific to see more in-depth talks that it's just the schedule is packed everyone like i cannot stress enough i just went through the talks yesterday i was picking out some favorites and it's kill it's a killer session this year and i don't just say that because i work here but i i love watching gdc talks and they're great yeah if you need other if there's anything else you need from the gdc brand um we also have the gdc youtube channel

where you can watch more amazing talks including ones we just had from gdc showcase um and as always you can find uh me myself bryant i'm on twitter at rbrighton2012 and uh i you can also find my writing frequently on gamasutra uh the uh art the website about the art and business of making video games uh with that looks like questions from chad have not quite piled in but we're gonna go out on one final question for each of you here i i really like the story that we have here of a student game that went from class project to you know kind of thesis all the way to commercial success so first mateo then airvae if if you had another student in front of you working on a project of similar scope what is something you would want them to hear based on your experience on this um go feel free to make it as optimistic or as cynical as you like but you know you get you've got a student there's probably you know there's plenty oh wait uh ken sequoia is weirdly um ken sequoia

is actually kind of summing up the energy of the question which is how do you manage going directly from school to the professional world so we're gonna throw my question out the window because i don't care about my questions i'm useless um we're gonna we're gonna go with ken sequoia's question for each of you i'd like to know from each of you how do you manage going directly from school to the professional world mateo i've got you on screen first so i'm gonna come in okay first i'm i'm going for it um thank you kenza and uh so this was i i'm gonna be pessimistic can i you can be pessimistic pessimism is okay okay you you have to um you have to respect the luck and this is one of the rules of what we we are very lucky to have met in the airway through this jury and i i know i know this will be difficult to hear but i want to people who are working and

start starting in leaving school soon or are already left we are very lucky to have all these people that has accepted to trust us and to work with us and even if we you [Music] you can meet the group the good people and you can have them to help you to move to something more professional something more strong you have to respect the luck so you have to to work hard you have to to understand that maybe not everything we will work in the beginning of uh of your career and also of your experience with video game you have to be patient and you have to respect and seize opportunities when they show that this is what we did when we were school and this is what we we we thought okay maybe it's too much maybe it's too difficult maybe it's hard maybe

it was i'm not gonna lie it was hard it was difficult and it still is because we are facing now the public and this is something that's maybe difficult for some people and for me too and and it was difficult but it's kind it's worth it it's worth it so if you want to take a risk make sure the people you you talk with is worth of your trust and if they trust you and you want to work with them see the opportunity say yes to risk and and kind of accept that it's risky upset but it's difficult but this is our thing work here i think irve and now i will throw the question to you with just for repeating which was how do you manage going directly from school to the professional world i think i agree with mateo is some kind of luck but as you know you can have a little influence on luck

by showing yourself on the best way uh be resilient be confident and also what interests me as an investor for example is something i cannot do myself something different something i've not seen so it's much riskier it's more difficult to convince people and even when we start downtown it was a long long long long time before we started this huge company it was difficult and we found people we're confident because we bring something they're not saying elsewhere don't i don't say you must be a rock star but in a way try to act as a rock star you're right and if you don't find anyone who believes in you it's price that you are wrong but if you don't try you'll never know so you have to try first and then will not come with trying showing what you are doing whatever it is and so try to bring different something new fresh and the things even if people say you should do this and that

if you don't agree don't say i will do this and that i think that's one of the key i think the great greatest student project and greatest in the project are projects who are different and quite nobody believes in first and then okay there are a huge big success and they're always coming from outside of anybody's mind and so if you want to be a student and go to video games so you have to take risk first and you have can take another process that going to be more senior exercise yourself in other companies it's a wiser way because when you're a student sometimes you also have to to pay for your studies and so it's not easy to start a company at the same time so there is a very different way but believe in your luck but to believe in luck is because you work and do things different and also help people who have great ideas if you are not it's not easy to have a good and great idea so help people

who are able to have writing don't be too pretentious also right on well uh mateo and irve uh thank you so much for joining me for everyone in chat uh y'all came up with some good questions right at the end but unfortunately our time is running out um nameless13 is a twitter account uh at underscore nameless underscore 13. there maybe there's another underscore in there um oh vernon thanks so much yeah we're we're we're so glad we can do these kind of q and a streams and i'm glad i'm glad you all like the game this is a super neat thing i was super excited to play it myself um and i and and to irve and and mateo thank you so much for bringing this this is a neat game the the story of inside the game is neat and the story of how it was made is also neat so with that i'm going to sign off and i hope everyone has a very good thursday bye bye thank you thank you very much