GDC plays Knights And Bikes with Rex Crowle

hi everyone welcome to the GDC twitch channel my name is Brian Francis I am a contributing editor at gamasutra comm and I am a your community manager for the Game Developers Conference um I am sitting here today unfortunately not playing a game like I usually do we are unfortunately watching some pre-recorded footage with the game we are checking out is a little game called Knights and bikes bikes and bikes comes from foam sword games and had a successful Kickstarter a couple years ago principally its designers include a1 Rex I should have really figured this out before and as a crowler Crowley Crowley's gate yeah Carly yeah made me hesitate I'm Rex how you doing you you worked on this time right I did yes yeah I'm very good thank you yeah it's me here cool thank you hey everyone in twitch chat we were happy to have you here feel free to drop your questions in

twitch chat for Rex we are taking them nights and bikes came out a few weeks ago it is a two-player co-op adventure or you can play a single-player like I did here featuring a couple kids on a I think it's a fictional British island right it's not a real one that's right yeah yeah it's a fictional island going out on adventure that's it's a little bit Goonies a little bit if I say it's a little bit stranger things it's only because stranger things some million things that from the 80s already but thankfully what's interesting is unlike a lot of other eighties themed games some of which we've checked out here on this channel it's it's not evident that it's like this but it does have that like kind of kid focused adventure vibe that kind of appeals to every want the kid that's inside every one I'd say is that fair Rex yeah yeah I mean it was definitely a choice to like try and get some of that like coming-of-age stuff that you get in films like The Goonies and I think a lot of the world to me a lot of the best

coming-of-age staff moments because I was a you know a similar age at the time was films in the 80s like The Goonies and Stand By Me and things like that so yeah is a big influence like video early on in the project you know and we and we took a decision not to go like you know over the top with the 80s references and I think stranger things is it's cool but it is quite a sort of cleverly put together package of like the greatest hits of the 80s and I don't always think that it's necessary adding quite a lot to that whereas we wanted to go a bit more kind of I don't know tell our own story whilst being influenced by those comedy films right on I guess we haven't given knights and bikes a fair introduction yet Rex how would you mind explaining where Knights and bikes came from and what kind of game you were setting out to make besides just being like this a navies game which really

yeah it sort hasn't yeah so it is a action-adventure about these two girls one girl called Demelza who is one currently on her bike with the red hair and the other girl is called Nessa and they are exploring this this island trying to find a legendary lost treasure and you know like with any of these things you know that's that's the big quest but along the way they're learning a lot about friendship and about sort of know they're like pushing slowly at the edges of like well they're like childhood experience you know they're starting to get independence you know and that's that's very much what bikes you know bikes of the title represent for us you know when you're a kid and you get your first bike then you can actually go somewhere without the parents so it's just on that edge of

like kids that are still yeah emotions on their sleeve and and you know just be very expressive and and open but at the same time just trying to play it a little bit cooler and and kind of you know gain some independence and you know just grow up a little bit right on moving on Rex is it accurate to say that your title on this part is kind of art director and kind of Co creative director with along with mu you yeah I mean like and say I mean you know it is a tiny team there's just reverse it foam sword which is a company the two of us set up so it's me doing like art animation lighting yeah all of that kind of stuff and then movies doing like the tech side and and and like holding the company together and doing the business

and all of that side so you know it keeps us very busy but you know it's kind of fun as well to be able to make a again just say at your kitchen table like I am now and you know there's just the two of us we have a couple of great collaborators as well so we have Ken Young who was audio head of audio and Media Molecule for a long time so that's where both myself move met so you know we both know Kenny well and it's a great friend and an incredibly great sound designer as well so you have him on the project helping us out and then also the music is composed by friend called Daniel Pemberton who's his big shot film composer these days so he doesn't work

so much in games but he's recently done spider-man into the spider verse and he's just done the new Dark Crystal series as well so he's a very busy guy we had a little bit of his time as well so yeah right on a spider verse and the dark nude or Christmas series are both really good well yeah Rex I guess I'd say like here's a question when you you and I get to talk about you and move real quick in your work um it's one thing to sort of talk about knights and bikes being an adventure but there's also kind of a specific there's a specific way this game there is kind of a top-down you know one's a brawler one is a brawler one is melee if I were describing it sort of kit it sort of brought candidly but there's the way you interact with the world in the environment is not like you aren't on a dungeon crawling adventure it does feel like you're in this lived place and it's sort of how two kids sort of poke and prod at the world around them

what was your guiding principle for making gameplay and sort of their like I sometimes they feel like games like this can sort of fall prey to they have with between incredible animation the game itself the gameplay itself doesn't have its own identity but thankfully you all here have your own identity with this game play like what was kind of your guiding principle for making this thing interactive well I think I mean initially I think it can help to just kick like another game to be inspired by so that you have some kind of basis you know like when we worked on LittleBigPlanet back in the day you know we knew we wanted to make a sort of 2.5 d platformer and that was very useful because then you could be quite experimental within that framework so for this game i think the two of us we had slightly different slightly different obsessions so for myself it

was earthbound as one of my favorite games of all time and I just loved the combination of sort of the real world being given a video game twist know like the different abilities that you got always like made sense and the fact that you were you were fighting like bullies and people that had like listened to too much jazz music and you know it's kind of I don't know they were just it was really memorable and obviously like the story and there's quite sort of bittersweet element to it so that that was definitely an influence and then mu he loved Secret of Mana that was one of his favorite games you know from a similar era as well so we knew we wanted to make this kind of top-down well semi top-down perspective to be able to like run around in the world

quite easily but early on we actually try turn-based battles but those didn't really quite work so well I mean you know they're too energetic kids running around like no getting up to trouble felt a little bit strange to be just sort of like you know sort of sitting there and stroking your chin and pondering your next move it didn't really feel like what you know the kids in the game would do mm-hmm so I guess you know a lot a lot of the gameplay is just it just thinking well I would how would I react to that but I if I was just a mischievous kid who just you know just wanted to look for treasure and dig up you know dig up the soil and check what's under each Rock and just you know be really curious about the world you know they don't have any I don't really have like so much of

the the pressure of like slightly older kids would have no at the moment we're in the video actually referencing the fact that Demelza she does have some quite dark things in her in her background in the mothers just fairly recently died and she's kind of processing that we'd love to hear your questions if you want to hear more from Rex about his art process about knights and bikes design process or if you just want to know what is what album he's listening to right now ask away Rex I know that there's something very particular going on with the audio in this game if you pay close attention I left a little bit of audio up for folks to hear it when the dialogue is happening there's like this kind of plink plink plink bootleg it's almost sounds like rain it's either rain or something falling on wood and it hits

every kind of string by string it hits sort of every word that's generated um what's driving that that's not really cool yeah here it's a drum it's like a little drum for beer demon and it's like yeah could you dig into that system yeah I mean well I don't know if I can dig into it that much because you know I wasn't quite so involved in in that'd be something to really discuss with with Kenny but I think we were sort of thinking that you know in a little bit like what's-his-name Charlie Brown know you you'd have like there sometimes when the adults are talking they just make like wah wah worldwide you know kind of as a kid you're just like whatever you know I'm not really not really concentrating on what you're saying and I think it it does create a nice sort of thing of feeling like you know our two girls they've got their own way of communicating they often talk with these subtitles that just popping up very

quickly at the bottom of the screen and they're quite in tune with each other whereas you know when they when they come and talk to an adult you know suddenly it's like the sound of you know pots and pans falling down the stairs you know it's a very alien very very alien tongue to them really the adults like you know they see the world completely differently I mean if the adults are coming to this room that we're in now I don't think they would be imagining a little puppet theatre with some some shrimps talking to each other okay so that's what's happening here I was so wild about I windows room and I was like what is happening he's got the curse yeah I mean there's definitely you know I've had a lot of fun with just you know what with each pass of the game like things are worked on in a very intuitive way of just thinking oh I'm sure we could we could ring a little bit more out here you know if I was I was a

kid running into a warehouse that just had like lots of seafood on the ground could we maybe do something with that a little bit more you know rather than just well just crunching around in some and some shrimps you know actually bring bring them to life I mean here Demelza having a conversation not with the fishmonger but with the fish and you know the fish doesn't have a lot to say that you know it's just trying to trying to just create this is quite different dialogue between the characters in the world than what the adults would have that though with that same location don't know if it's interesting but lately I've actually got I didn't know you would go play this bit because this is like two hours yeah where's the game something like that actually got because I do all my like design work in sketchbooks yeah um so I've got I mean I've got stacks of them yeah like this

and I just thought it might be interesting to just see it Hey yeah that's it that's ways that you don't know house well you can see that but um no I well with map and so yours image froze just before you held it up ah let's see me other than the sketchbook your face is just kind of hanging there and this is quite awful hang on I'm gonna pause our footage real quick I'm gonna wreck someone or redial you for a minute that's not gonna happen live on stream this is the art of live video everyone rex-1 I will call you right back alright everyone I'm sorry about that this is what happens I'm in California Rex is in the UK getting some Skype anyway know if you folks out there how are you all doing today feel free there okay Rex we got you back

movement all right let's see the sketchbook all right I just had to I had to rate how what the quality of the call was like so I gave it one star yes so this is I don't know if you can see that but the area a page from this area and you know try and sort of map everything out and sketchbooks and like gradually like I guess my process is really to get everything like written down and paper so that you can really externalize it and I'd sort of look at it and think about it and I think like so tools aren't necessarily like the best tools ratchet thinking they're really good for doing and like making a result but not necessarily good for like planning stuff out and you know going off at strange tangents so you know I try and use my sketch but it's like a more like a

visual journal really sometimes it's it's more specific like this week you know writing out the whole we've got the map and then maybe on the next the next page is like figuring out well what what abilities what are the things that the kids can do in at this stage of the game and walk a what could they interact with and you know just keep going yeah right on Rex to do the GBC talk this year about the art of next nights and bikes he talked about to make the characters and to make a lot of art for this game you would start by doing kind of a vector paint or a vector a vector drawing and then you would do a repaint with two specific brushes and then that was kind of like you'd do that and then there was like then he showed off there was that then there was the final pass would you mind talking about that specific process for

making giving this game like a really specific look because it's got it got a 2-dimensional look that is papery but it's also a three-dimensional look in that you move around the space I really appreciated what you said in that talking well I mean the I think that in the the thinking behind the art style is really to try and give the sense that you are likely seeing the world through the eyes of the kids and that comes a lot of that comes from the way that it's it's as you say it's all painted with these two brushes and those brushes are kind of similar to like chalk and impostors so kind of like that the materials that these kids would have to tell their own kind of tales you know if they needed to I you know at the end of the game if they needed to like write it all down to tell our friends then they you know they might make something that similar materials

but at the same time you know I don't want it to look I want it to look like one of those like stereotypical like grown-up does kids artwork kind of you know stick person with like a 2d house and you know I don't know that sort of crayon style so trying to keep elegance to it as well yeah it needs to be believable you don't want to feel like we're just running around in like a crayon drawing so you know it's it's a constant it's a constant balancing act of like trying to stylize things and make them look intriguing and and different but also keeping it very believable as well so that you really do feel that you are like you know you are in this is Cornish seaside town and you're exploring it and it's you know it's got a certain atmosphere to it's got a like a quite a rundown feel so yeah I mean a lot of the process is it's

basically taking a screenshot of the game and then painting onto that screenshot with like a new item find it quite useful to use the is like the canvas essentially that you know then you're like matching the style and it you know it feels like it all ties together yeah so that's that's you know the majority that kind of the painting side like you said some of the things particularly the characters were designs in vectors first as because it's very quick to like move things around and that difficult choices but then they be repainted in all of those brushes I think the brushes are really useful just limiting to just two means that it ties everything together you know if you're gonna make an entire universe of all

kinds of different environments and different and yeah well just very different kind of regions and characters and what-have-you it it's useful to have some kind of unifying thing that pulls it all together and it's definitely being like that sort of painterly art style of this that's really helped bring it together and then I you know it's it's obviously it's not a static painting right it animates so the animation was a really big thing to figure out with the game trying to get a feeling of both like the energy that kids have you know that they're you know they've got endless energy they're just you know just expending it the whole time just running around you know to never sit still you you know they're sitting on a chain turn around turn back they're like sitting with their legs at the back of the chair and next time you turn around its it and completely

differently again you know always moving so it felt that the arts needed to be very you know have a sort of dynamic quality so I mean you can see at the moment there's lots of you know they're all sort of flower beds were blowing around and flags blowing around and things and they're all pretty much all just hand animated like by drawing multiple frames but some of the elements like if I tried to get a sort of stop-motion feel but you know it's drawing attention to the fact that it's being redrawn each frame there's kind of the animation term of like line boil where you know things are like wobbling and vibrating I think it's it's useful to convey that that energy of the kids and it's and it's also

useful because it has a sort of painterly look as well so it kind of brings those those concepts together they say something else that I go off on you know a big old spiel about about art yeah so I mean the characters are a mixture of like rigged animation but then with with some hand hand drawn elements like demelza's hair you can see they're her little red bunches those are done in like a stop-motion line Boyle style trying to convey both but she's always moving she's got lots of energy the fact that it's very stormy environment so you know the wind is always blowing in our hair as well but also it I like to think that it's also

representing the aspects of the game which is that the kids are like adding to the world and with their imagination so the kind of the movement of her hair almost represents like the ideas that you know like pissing out of their head and throughout the game we use the hand-drawn style to actually draw things onto the landscape as the kids like imagining it so you know there's a bit later on where they see this just like car crusher in a in a scrap yard and you know that's kind of a cool thing for kids to see anyway but you know their imaginations get carried away and they play to see it as a dragon so you know you use this style where I like draw like a white sort of ghostly stop-motion version of what their kids are imagining

over the landscape they haven't seen like two minutes on because of that in this bit because it's quite relatively early on in the game but yeah it's I think maybe yeah gives us lots of ways they like to play around and be more creative the way it looks speaking actually I think those those white speed boosts are a good example of that of those white lines coming into over the sort of normal landscape um Rex this game goes it does have that it's a it's a adventurer with two small Highland mild spoilers there is a supernatural component to it that's pop that pops up really early within the first hour and you're about to see more of as we enter this next area how do you oh dear this is one my controller just straight disconnected okay past me got

it working again um what would you say is a defining when you have a game where you have you have a world you have a how the kids see the world and you have a supernatural component to it that follows how did you SEP like like add in that third style I guess like like this kind of when kids are already using their imagination and imagination lends itself towards the otherworldly how did you then define the style that and an implement a style that that could keep the player knows that's real that's ghosty that's that's kids imagination right yeah I mean I think I think audio helps massively there because you know if you see some of my kind of you know hand-drawn sort of wobbly imagination type driven things you know that if the if there's no sort of like audio cue then you know everyone knows all that's that's that's kind of its kind of there

but it's not really there at the same time whereas if you see I don't know if you suddenly see like a Knights gauntlet which is coming to life and starts charging at you and with the audio that's associated with it you know that you know that's that's kind of that's gonna hurt you you know that's a bigger deal just kind of an example that just popped up those little pink smoke that just popped up there was a poof as they vanish which which can give me a clue that something was up when I was playing this yeah yeah there's a little like court jesters yeah cuz I'm all through the game obviously like you know it's called Knights and bikes so you know bikes is a big element and you're seeing lots of cycling around but also the Knights of the title refers to this ancient treasure that's hidden somewhere on the island that the kids are trying to find and that treasure is protected by a kind of evil curse which will kind of

reanimate things that are not animating and that's you know the main the main kind of like video gaming aspect of the game which you know you have to deal with enemies and you know that creates the drama on top of the you know the moral kind of coming-of-age story and you know all the things about childhood and end of childhood and all of that stuff right on let's talk about level design I think this game is interesting in that it's pretty linear like you're going through area by area and there's kind of a pace and flow to things but in those there's an exceptionally windy logic to all the spaces you go through some of its natural some of its natural like the natural shape some of its just houses or other objects getting in your way what was kind of sometimes I feel like games like this can fall into a

space where they do have a great look they do have a fun combat loop but then sometimes the player can just sort of be walking from circle to circle where where combat is happening and I noticed that nice and bikes does a lot of work to make sure that the player is constantly using that joystick to like weave around the space what was did you do you have any thoughts about making what the world felt like from a movement perspective especially with the bikes right right yeah yeah I mean this is interesting that in the in our first ever prototype we actually had a completely 2d game and you know it looked cool it looked like a painting and you were moving around in it but there was no sense of discovery because you know because the camera wasn't moving you you never you never had things like being revealed as you move through the environment and as soon as we switched this the view that you can

see now where it's lots of 2d things but rode up in a 3d environment it suddenly became much more testing because as you moved through the world my things would be revealed like you know either like being wiped off the screen like we just saw there or you know some some lever that you didn't know was there you know slowly appears as you move around so the the visual style definitely helped sort of spur that on in terms of level design I think each is I mean up until this point we haven't really on the stream seen like what I would call like a proper level we're just going into one now which is a bit more sort of like you saying it's more linear once you're once you're inside it we've been looking up until this point at the more sort of like open

world you know in that that that part of the game is there to try and give the feeling that the kids are you know pushing outside of their local you know that their kind of sphere of comfort almost and they are like diving off into the bushes and they can cycle wherever they want and there's kind of a like a carefree nurse but also up a slight well sense of a slightly or them in their sense as well because you know they if they are going slightly into the unknown but when when they get to a level like we're just about to get into now which is a thing as a theme park but in part that season then the game becomes more focused in on on that puzzle puzzles and combat and and and you know more little I don't know little moments see a little

cutscene just coming up in the second they're all driving the story forward this is funny I was very pleased with that visual gag I don't know you know if the rest of the world finds it as funny as I do I think it's I was really amused by the idea of like just saying someone with all the skin missing off their face I'm thinking that's horrific and then realizing that it's just a biology book you know I remember with the kid I there was a it was a like a pop-up book that we had in school which light showed how the body works and when you open the pages you know it would it would show you like here's here's the human body but with their skin removed and it was just horrific you know I mean this I don't think I've ever seen anything is quite as disturbing was that book I'll guess that I've sneaked into the game in an interesting moment in my playback because this is a point where I got a little lost as a player and this has happened a couple times in nights and

bikes and I sort of think this angle I navigated to is a little unfortunate you so wait the put what you viewer seeing is me wandering back the way I came looking for some crisps I'm checking the buses and such because I was just find some crisps paying attention to the very obvious when we get back up to the top of the map you'll see there's a white line that would have guided me right towards where I need to go and there I found said crisps but instead I went back and kind of tried to follow park logic like okay where can I get crisps at the edge of a park so maybe I'm just dumb maybe I'm a dummy maybe I'm a big ol dummy of a game player but um Rex what are your thoughts about when when you're using these these familiar but harmful painterly components to making helping players understand what they're doing what they're looking for etc in a game space well I think yeah I think it is all about little clues like

you say with that white line that leads you through it's it's very it is incredibly tricky I find to know how to balance those visual clues and you know hit that sweet spot where it guides you but without you really noticing that it's helping you I think if there's you know something we used to find on LittleBigPlanet was you know we would sometimes sort of stick in like because because of the way that in LittleBigPlanet you could just sort of like sticker put actual like stickers on the environment and sometimes we put like big arrow in to help you but it or it really takes you out of the fantasy just having an enormous arrow just pointing where to go so then we replace that with just certain shapes that maybe like guide your eye in a certain way one of my favorite things to do on this game is to just put put like Birds or animals

that will run away I think they're always like a good one because they move you know so they catch your eye and you know my monster whether you pet them or whether you just you know just wrecks for those two sadly the the we're trying trying to bridge this call between the UK and california is difficult could you repeat after the animals run away could you repeat what you were saying yeah i mean just that they you know an animal is you know that they're moving they that you know that they're just something you want to interact with whether you're like a mean kid and you just want to you know run up to it and cause it you know some kind of mischief or or or whether you just want to go and pet it you know it's it's something that that i think players respond to and then

if that bird flies off in a certain direction and you're you know you're led that way so i think you know there's lots of little little tricks that you can that you can put in that just guide in a in a very subtle web right on are there any particular uh any other tricks you like i noticed in this level the orange and blue lines that we saw on the map back there show up on the ground there any other particular visual tricks that you think you're should consider when trying to get players to go the right way I think I mean it's interesting just thinking about what sort of space that you're designing so I mean this is a theme park and obviously if you're running a theme park you want to make sure that your people are able to move through the theme park so this was kind of an easier level because you could just use some of the design tricks that a natural theme park designer would you know would

employ so if we have these no cars on the ground that you know that if you're if you'll just follow that Orange Line but you know that will at least take you on a loop and then there's also a blue line that's going off a different way so those are kind of useful I think sometimes things like if if a level is is more linear in terms of you know you need to move from say left to right then just just the way that like the wind is blowing through the level no that can really help with everything in the world is steering you in in one direction that can I don't know it's just you don't feel that you're having the friction of you know of the world pushing against you a member of friend who Peter who worked on last of us he was talking once about how you know all this all the staircases you always felt like you were

going the right way because of which side your weapon is on and if you're if you're kind of going the wrong way then the staircase is obscured by the weapon and if it's the right way than it isn't and you know cool stuff like that I really like obviously this isn't like a first-person game so you know you can't use tricks quite like that but yeah and then there's definitely a lot of so a subtle signposting and then you know like you know we we have to experiment and prove play testing some of the some of the areas in this this particular level once you sorted them out there their doors would open and you could you know continue a loop from what me visit earlier spaces and actually that didn't really work so well for players I kind of liked having a little bit more you know it allowed you to

explore more and and walk back over scenery that you've already seen but the problem was that obviously like once you I opened up one of those loops then a player can just start going round that loop forever without actually going off in the direction they supposed to be going so yeah lots of play testing and responding to that it's interesting how even after after like like everything you subscribed was a very thorough these are very thorough it's a thorough process there's a thorough tools used to get the player like figuring out that there's sort of like sort of just need to go forward it's interesting how players will still like just reflecting on myself here in this level you're gonna see me backtrack of my own volition because I believe like I'm sort of stuck where I am so I backtrack to see if I'm missing anything else you're right friction is sort of what tells play or at least for me if friction tells me a lot you know they're going the way right way is that line about I think halo um you know you're

going in the right direction if there are enemies showing up I'm sure they also had complicated tricks related to like your your friend who worked on the loss of us but is I guess like I I don't have much more to add besides it's interesting that players will still do dumb things I guess which is a designer like how do you and when you're trying to make something that's a little more there are games that like sort of like keep the space for dumb things open if you talking about more open systems driven games we had Astro near on the astronaut here a while back games like that are very attuned for that like if you do something dumb it may be the answer to move something to do something right but if you're in playing nuts and bikes if you do something like backtrack you're genuinely losing sort of it's not that a game needs to be played efficiently but you are in a state where the game is not being played the way you and when everyone else wanted it to be played right like you wanted the players to be constantly engaging constantly

finding the fun stuff you guys know how what sort of your thoughts about that and and how to do you have any do you have any thoughts about like about that space for letting players either letting players or accounting for wind players do the dumb stuff that you're gonna see me do and you've already seen me done I play games I think I mean it's it's definitely I I would always like a game to allow players to play in it as well as play it you know so for instance you know there's there's various interactions that the two characters and the goose and haven't really talked that much about the case we've got a game since I gave you guys beat untitled goose game into the punch and they unfortunately hate your lunch on the goose front yeah yeah I think it's particularly in a in a game that can be played co-op it is good to be able to

you know play with each other you know so that you're not just constantly needing new content and sometimes I get frustrated sometimes when I play like very you know beautiful very dramatic games where you know you're running down a corridor and the floor is falling away and you know it's it's very dramatic but as a as a craftsman I guess I'm I get very stressed playing that kind of stuff sometimes because I'm just like I wanted I want to look at all the Care that's gone into this corrigan it's all just you know - seems greatly so yeah that's just me as a player but I think yeah I don't I don't know yeah we do genuinely

like like like having user questions I sound a little desperate I'm Jin but I genuinely want to hear we have some great folks who ask great questions to our guests and I I miss them I want to hear their thoughts it's twitch twitch is not just us it's you it's the viewer that's what I'm told in the emails they send me daily Rex do you have a really great part of your GGC talk which is sitting there in Twitter which I've linked earlier in twitch chat you talked about how you listen to audio to to help guide your your craft and the things you want to make people should go watch the talk there's some really choice audio bits that both just sound like Knights and bikes even though they're not nice advice and also they're just great they're just great weird British things I'm really sorry I've like described your homeland as weird

and so pretty wait at the moment I can tell you anyway yeah what what's your this is a very abstract question but what is your thought process for for converting the things you're listening to into visual styles because you talk about both recordings and just general cafe noises two things - well I think I think often it's I think people you know you can think of influences as being visual things often especially if you're you know from an art background like myself and I always come at things visually first that will be the you know the focus for me but I find that it's actually quite useful to to use audio as your main influence rather than other

visuals while you're working because looking at other other visual styles and other visual work can be quite distracting because you know you're you're you're you're operating in the same space you know it's I don't you know it just overlaps too much where is audio is reading is really interesting because it sort of augments what you're feeling and and that pushes you in strange new directions and you know for me a lot of like making games is is not just about the it's not about that not just about the look but also that feel and about the atmosphere and the tone and all of these kind of things and and music will just transport you into a completely different world like magic clew know straight away you know if you just open up like you know your music library and just hit a track at random it will just

totally change the entire mood you're in and the environment you're in so I find you know obviously you know it's just great to put yourself in these different spaces while you're working and I think because I used to do a lot of trailer editing and like make all the trailers at Media Molecule back in the day along with other stuff so it's yeah you can just you can just really take players on a on a fun journey with audio as well as you know influence yourself and we don't have footage of it today but the opening of the game has quite a dramatic opening with this like wild Punk track which Daniel wrote and recorded and it features a one of our friends kids who's 8 years 8 years old

just like absolute news like screaming screaming his lungs out and the idea of that track you know it's very punky you can hear it on our launch trailer was to sort of set an intention of you know these are kids would like you know too much energy and and you know anything's possible and you know we didn't want to have one of those like slow openings we've just like lots of establishing shots - kisses - play again you know you want to be just like right into it straightaway so having this like wild Punk opening trap I really sort of set the tone for the rest of the game yes oh yeah I just audio audio is the best you know and I always really enjoy working with with audio people because you're trying to achieve the same goal but there's and there's total overlap

between what you're doing but also there isn't any at all no I don't feel there's I mean I would never like lean over and like you don't start tweaking there tweaking the synthesizers whereas you know it's quite easily with in other areas to like you know sort of get a bit carried away yourself Rex might some bikes has Austin counters kind of what are your what are your earlier I thought a bulldozer it it wasn't on camera unfortunately um what do you think makes a good boss fight in the game like this I think boss fights are interesting because they used to be you know the high-water marks of skill you taught the player but things and bikes is only just loosely the new tools or like you said it's more about poking and playing prodding what do you think makes boss

fights work in a game like knights and bikes that's kind of an interesting question because I actually hate boss fights no no that's that's okay I'm pretty I I am NOT a big fan of them at all I find what really kills me is if particularly these days when games have become more open and more experimental and they're just able to play them in your own style I hate it when I get a boss battle where I just have to do a very very specific thing it's like doing a like doing a puzzle where you are being shot with lasers and you know everything else is being chucked at you at the same time and I don't particularly enjoy that and I don't really enjoy the just constant failing over and over again particularly you know you're really enjoying again and

then suddenly you hit this massive difficulty spike and you're like well whenever they get past that and we've kind of got the only really the only medium where people don't get to the end of the experience that they've bought which I you know I was find frustrating if it happens to me so I mean our boss fights are you know they're there for some some drama they're there to give you a good moment to like high-five each other afterwards and you know sort of congratulate you know your your code player if you're playing a two-player but you know then they're not there to just prevent you from progressing there's you know there's some extra drama but then not too not too taxing hopefully I think

would be a long time but it before you know I feel that I want to do a boss fight that sort of matches up to rez which is my favorite game ever and has the only boss fights I really love I should follow up what about rez we there I need to plug more GDC things I guess but we have a great resume or time sitting in the GDC vault resonate with Rex so I think you know it is that it's that perfect fusion of of all the things that make games great it's you know it's the audiovisual interactive experience everything you're doing just feels so good but he's it's so surprising as well the way that no it's just brought a lot of different

influences in it's not like you've gone into a computer and it's all like go techie and that's it there's the whole of like the whole history is in that computer and yeah just just seeing the with the artistic vision of that that game is just incredible yeah I love it I play it just all the time nights and bikes was launched on Kickstarter I know Moo is kind of at the business end of things but I'd love to share your thoughts about connecting with a player community and what do you think has been important in getting this game out in the world and connecting with people individually like being able to solve B and being able to sell this game to I guess is the next part of the question what do you think has worked for you as a dessert as a team in that regard well we like Kickstarter's worked

really well for us I think the thing that we have really concentrated on is just making sure that we have really good and constant communication with our backers you know it doesn't doesn't take a huge amount of time each month to just put together an update we always put an update out on the first of the month and you know that that's good for the backers they you know they can see that the project's moving forwards our project has taken a fair bit longer than we initially thought it would but just keeping them in the loop and making sure that they all feel like they're on the journey and they're getting to see progress you know there's quite a lot of backers that are just like no you know take as long as you want you know take longer we're enjoying seeing the know how it's all coming together and from our side it's really useful because it gives a bit more structure like doing a backer

update on the first of the month always means that like in the last week of the of the month previously we're kind of thinking or you know can i what can I show it's almost like doing like a milestone for a publisher yes kind of like what you know we've we've got this big giant system that's all very clever but it's not it's not an easy thing to show so you try and sort of get a nice mixture of like you know here's some cool thing that moves down is like you know here's something much more much smaller but kind of maybe more character lawyers like a little gift or something that maybe I've been working on is a is a photo of like Kenny with like a bike up on a desk with a hundred microphones around it trying to record the sound of the wheels turning you know all of those little details I think it's a really good to share them it's it's kind of fun if you do you know I don't

really understand why you wouldn't should go to Kickstarter and take a lot of investment from people like you know if you just it's it's just fun to share it with them yeah so you know we we've always tried to make sure that even though we're tiny tip in that we are you know we always there and community yeah my characters venture into the heart of making a proper scone I'm gonna start wrapping things up for this stream today Rex thank you so much for joining us if people have questions about knights and bikes where can they ask them so they can ask on on twitter at foam sword games or on a website Knights and Mike's comm there's a good spots we've got a got a discord as well

you know all the we have lots of lots of places you can find out about it right on and like now just like a person who does not make a scone correctly I shall venture into the sea with that everyone thank you so much we would appreciate it dear viewers if you were to click the follow button on this year channel if you like chatting with Rex you would also like fact that we interview a lot of other game developers in the twitch channel in fact in just another hour we are going to be talking to the fine folks from gunfire game as I believe we're talking to John pearl right here on the air I did cool ok we're talking to John pearl of gunfire games about remnants from the ashes it's a really cool it's not it's it's a third-person combat game that's got a lot pay tribute to before Dark Souls but it's got a lot going for it on its own setting hand combat wise that makes it different so we come back in an hour and we'll be talking to John and if you are

interested in joining us at GDC next year if you have a talk to give the GDC summits are now taking submissions so go by our website ggd calm calm and you can find out more information about that if you would like to join if you're a VR developer or working in AR we have XR DC going on in October you should also join us in San Francisco for that and if you're just a person at home who just likes video games and likes learning about how they get made we super appreciate having you here and we hope to see you next time we go live which it'll be in it'll be in the next hour and then we're gonna go live if any more times this month with many more great game developers Rex thank you so much pleasure thank you have a good day everyone bye