GDC Plays Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden with The Bearded Ladies

Uh good morning everyone. Welcome to the GDC Twitch channel. My name is Brian Francis here. I've got the games going a little bit loud there. So your ears may have popped slightly at home. Sorry about Sorry about that. Turn on the volume. Um Welcome again to the GDC Twitch channel. My name is Brian Francis. I am a community manager at GDC and a contributing editor at gamasutra.com. What you are watching in front of you is a game called Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden. Um it is a game about the life and legend of a one talking duck named Dux and his pig friend Uh I'm forgetting the pig friend's name. Could someone one of our guests in Sweden I missed that. One more time? Bormin. Bormin, right. Yeah. Dux The Adventures of Dux and Bormin as they It's like the It's like Frog and Toad as they talk about life's mysteries, life's great delights. Um Uh or if you're actually a person who knows what this game is, it's a

strategy RPG from the developers at Bearded Lady Consulting. Three members of which are down in the lower left-hand corner of your screen. Lee, could you introduce yourself just to get us started? Yeah, hi. I'm Lee and I'm the game director. Um and also the lead level designer, you could say. I'm the lead artist as well. Oh. Yeah. And Kalle is going to have no objections to that. Lee. Uh Lee, who's who who has joined you today in this on our mysterious adventure through a post-apocalyptic wasteland? So we have Kalle. Our um real lead artist. Mhm. And artist and animator. And David, who is the co-director of the project and um the technical director and the lead programmer and Yeah. We're We're a small crew, so we have many hats. Yeah. Uh Kalle and David, thank you also for joining us. If you're watching from home, if you're like me in California,

it's very early. If you're on the West Coast, thank you for joining us early. If you're in chat and you're from elsewhere in the world, well, thank you for joining anyway, even if it's not as early. This is a Q&A stream. Just a full disclosure, the game the footage you are seeing in front of you is from I'm told an older demo of the game and you might see a couple hiccups like that one that just came by. And it's pre-recorded footage, so unfortunately can't yell at me when I screw up, which you're going to watch me screw up because you don't need to be good at video games sometimes to do this job. You just need to be able to make the shooty shooty bang bang happen. To get things started, we're also going to point out this is a game where we're talking about this from GDC. At GDC we like talking to interesting game developers, which most of them are interesting. Just a question of how interesting. That was meaner than I intended. Uh We are here talking about how games get made. We're here talking about how sometimes games get marketed or the

process of running a small studio. This is what we're going to be talking about today. If you have questions about sort of nitty-gritty things about the game from a perspective of playing it, we'll try to work it in, but if you're in chat, please ask questions for these fine folks. They have answers for you about making strategy games, stealth games, and all kinds of other fun stuff. To get things started, Lee, David, and Cali, would you mind explaining Cali, sorry. Would you mind explaining what your background is on the project? And I know this is an adaptation of a Swedish pen and paper RPG. Would you mind explaining how this game got started and how you settled on like the vision of where this game would go? You hear me? Yeah, I think it's awful. I mean David was the original when it was started the project. David, yeah, let's let's let's hear your let's hear your take. So so Lee uh British, so he didn't grow up with this, but uh me and Kalle did. Mhm. Um and it was uh long time coming. It's actually something we wanted to do

about 8 years ago, 7 8 years ago. We started looking at making this game. Mhm. Um but we were not experienced enough uh and we didn't have the uh manpower, the muscle to do it. So it's been a It's been a a long time uh dream to get to do it. And then, I don't know, 3 years ago or something like that, we started up uh I just played uh XCOM again uh on Iron Man and decided that the world could need a little bit more of that genre. So uh that was kind of the It was something we were looking at already uh 7 8 years ago uh making some sort of turn-based tactical game out of it because we figured that would be what would suit the RPG well and the size of our studio. So um yeah, I called Kalle up and uh I had just uh quit my job at IO to do this kind of thing. And I was lucky enough that Kalle was also kind of in in the middle of things

and uh we started making prototypes 3 years ago and then got Lee on board a half year later or something. Yeah. Yeah, it was about that. I remember quite well cuz I was I was still working at IO at the time. I was the lead uh level designer for Hitman season 1. Mhm. And then he gave me a call, he said, "Lee, do you want to meet up in a bar in Copenhagen? I've got something to show you. See if you'll be interested." So I thought, "Yeah, okay." So went down to the bar and we had a beer and then we had this iPad with him with some videos on showing the original prototype for the game. Mhm. Looks a little bit different from what you see now, but mechanically quite similar. And he just said to me, "Lee, do you want in on this? I'm putting a team together to build it." So I went to the bathroom. I just stood there and I looked in the mirror and I thought, "That looks like a lot of fun." So, I just came back out and just slapped my hands together and said, "Yes, let's do this." Yeah, he's

He makes quick decisions. And I think the original pitch was something like, "Well, I grew up with this um I'm going to put a lot of heart into it and then I wanted to feel like when I was playing in the woods when I was a kid." Uh-huh. coming across old abandoned houses and that was kind of the the direction and then let's go from there. Oh, that's that's actually that's so else okay? That's so cool. So, was it kind of like I mean not to not to ask too much about your childhood, but um uh um oh, dang it. Unfortunately, chat's having a harder time hearing you guys, which is something I still don't fully Is it the mic or the stream? Uh it's a little bit it's cuz I can hear you all just fine. Unfortunately, we've been having a thing where sometimes the Skype audio is not talking coming through on XSplit very well. So, trying to figure out if I can change anything over here. Uh could you talk

for me real quick? Sorry to Oh, yes. So, continue where we were then. Yeah, I I guess I'll just ask the question. You guys can rattle while I poke buttons. Um uh uh really quick um uh so, were you as a kid David, did you kind of like play the tabletop RPG and then like kind of go out in the woods and just kind of imagine yourself on these adventures just like the characters are right now? That's kind of a personal question, but it's kind of fascinating. That's okay because that's more or less it because I I played this um the pen and paper role-playing game came out in '82 or '83 or something. I didn't play it then. I'm not that old. Mhm. Uh but I played it when I was 10 or 11 or something the first time. So, it probably around the same time I would be, you know, imagining things while playing in the woods. Um so yeah, it was a big part of uh of my childhood uh which is was just a good like a a good start a good starting point to to get going with it, I think. How did you um I mean it's kind of like

if it's a if tabletop RPGs are sort of, you know, nice because you can do anything, and I obviously with XCOM in your head is a format, but how did you sort of uh move it from uh you had those two you had XCOM and you had uh this this childhood experience, and how did you sort of move it into uh what we're looking at right now? Um well, I I built most of the game world. Mhm. I didn't have that much experience with Mutant before I started on the project because most of the Mutant role-playing games were all in Swedish since the '80s, and it's only recently it'd been translated into English for um Mutant Year Zero. Mhm. So I sat down with all the material that I could get hold of, uh the books, the expansion books, all the stuff available in English, and just went through all with a fine-tooth comb. Mhm. And then tried to craft the the world that you see now based on the images I was getting in my head as I was as I was reading the books and as I was imagining

how these sessions play out and the kind of the kind of feel and the dark humor um but the touch of seriousness to everything and Yeah, that was kind of on the world play new. Yeah. And that was really nice. That was something me and the killer said early on. The killer was really uh worried that it would become too Swedish the game if we made it with uh with all our backgrounds. Mhm. So So it was great to have somebody from the outside come in and uh kind of rediscover it, right? Uh and then when it came to the game play, I think we quite early we said we're going to skip the parts that the pen and paper will do really well. Mhm. Um it's the the social interactions and all the stuff you get from the pen and paper, we could never do that as well in a game. So, um so we figured we'll focus on the combat and see if we can tell some sort of story in a different fashion Mhm. in this game world. Right on. Um I'm going to um

bastardize a question from Steak Applebee's here because like I said, we're trying to keep this a game developer focus. Um Steak Applebee's Steak Applebee's would like to know um how many playable characters will be available at launch and will more be added later on and I'll guess um I know in a game like this with a game that has perma-death with characters that can you know leave if you don't resurrect them fast enough. Um what was the design decision the the the thinking behind that having a game implementing that in the game as opposed to sort of doing the you know a fixed party of characters uh something more like um Pillars of Eternity which is another table top inspired like RPG like this. Well, when we first started out with our original prototypes, we did have um a limited amount of characters that you could be in the arc and a very XCOM style gameplay where it was more about recruit management Mhm. things like that but the problem is as the as the characters that we have started to evolve and as the story of the game evolved, um

it would get into the point where especially Bowman and Doc and the other guys had a such strong personalities and such strong visual identity Mhm. we were struggling with the idea of having four Bowmans on the battlefield and things like that. It wasn't really working anymore so we had this conflict of the the gameplay was starting to conflict with the game's um narrative and identity a little bit. Mhm. So, we decided if we took the call to basically concentrate on the the characters so the characters don't become just blank recruits. And they have their own identities, they have their own personalities, and really hammer on that side instead. Mhm. Right on, that's the that's Yeah, and I guess we we can answer the first question now as well, right? Yeah, we're allowed to say how many? I I'm not sure. Are we? Well, you you start off with Bowman and Ducks. And all we can say is that you start off with Bowman and Ducks. And as you explore the zone, you will find some other mutants who can join

your party. Yeah, we're not certain we need to make a call to marketing. We're not certain if we're allowed to say how many will be in the initial game. But the plan is yeah to add characters to this further down the line for sure. Yeah. Yeah, Lee and David, since you came from uh IO, I guess you have experience like not just making a a stealth stealth you know, tactical game. You have it's also a game that you're used to making as a live game. What do you think were some of the changes that you sort of thought about in your game dev process for making sure that you could update this game down the line and and sort of make it not necessarily you know, like fully live, but more live than I think RPG developers were used to in the past. I think a lot of players are expecting more frequent updates these days. Yeah, I we we should say we didn't

Oh. completely honest. We we made sure that we we didn't go out of our bounds. Early on we were looking at things like generating a huge world, making it streaming, and and we realized that it would probably not be the greatest like use of our time in the end. We would have rather make sure that the combat is fun and the stealth works. So, we decided to split it up into uh more of zones, a map where you you go exploring and you switch out of uh real time and and tactical Mhm. as you're seeing on screen. Uh and then that's one kind of contained area with one story. That way it makes it easier for us to expand on this uh further down the line without uh having to maybe you know, um think about too many other things that will interlock with it, so to speak, if we were to open an area in an open world or anything like that. So, um that was one of the things, I should guess. Yeah, I think for me as well, when we were experimenting early in the project,

um we came to the conclusion quite quickly that randomly generating maps uh you can get a lot of content if you randomly generate maps, you can get almost unlimited content, Mhm. but the problem is is it quality content? Mhm. Uh because if you handcraft a map, you can go so much deeper with the environmental storytelling, with the little touches in the game world, the the visual side of it, the lighting, the effects, you can you can get such a higher quality level Mhm. maps rather than just randomly generating. Right on. Um uh the What else actually uh I'm sure there are things we thought about that uh can't come up with now. Oh, it's fine. We'll we'll we'll like when it comes to the character systems and spawners and things, right? Yeah. What um what engine what uh I'm curious what what what engine is this game running in and sort of how long does it take to take an interesting idea for whether it's an area or a story beat and how long does it take to implement it

content-wise? So, it's a Unreal 4. Mhm. And uh oof. I think for maps, uh we we because we modularize as much as possible Mhm. in the game's assets, I can get a map up and not finished, but just up and running so that we you play it within about a week. You And then Yeah, then and then once the map is up and running, then we iterate very heavily on the layout and on the on the gameplay feel. Mhm. few weeks, and then after that it goes into what we call layering. Mhm. We layer on the graphics, and then after this continues and continues until it's to this kind of quality that you see now. Yeah, it's been it's been rather quick the the last few ones, but that's it's always a hard question where where we'll almost have to do a postmortem look at the look at a few submits to to time those last levels. Mhm. Because of course it's gotten quicker.

Um but some of them have been integrated yeah, for a long time to make sure that any changes to gameplay has to be, you know, reflected in level design, for instance. What do you think changed like from from your team's experience level? Cuz obviously, like you said, you're a small team and and it's not like you can throw a third It's not It's not Ubi- Ubisoft where you can throw a thousand Ubisofts at it to fix any given problem. What do you think your team learned from from those first levels to the later levels that sped up your process? Yeah, that's hard to I would say basically layout for tactical games Mhm. was surprisingly took a long time to to nail, like cover positions and high ground positions, and especially when when you got the the mechanical side of the game is being developed at the same time. Mhm. So, stealth and the what numbers are involved in stealth, and then you know,

how the distance for weapons firing and things like this. Yeah, I remember I remember quite early going I didn't think because they actually said we've made stealth games, but never made an XCOM. Mhm. before, right? So, it was one of the things I remember at least saying uh it wasn't early, but maybe half a year into it, where you realized that like the combat, the maps the turn-based takes it it needs quite a bit of space. Yeah. Way more than we actually were planning for initially. So, our first couple of maps, once we started putting enough into them, became too cramped. Yeah, really cramped and claustrophobic feeling. Uh So, we learned that yeah, we we kind of learned what what is what a small map is and what a large map is. Mhm. And then, um we quite early, so it's it's completely tile-based, right? So, we made sure that everything worked within that system. Uh and we were actually we kind of generating ground and everything around it for a while. And well, we learned that that's

like Lee said, it it it doesn't it we can't create the quality with that type of system. Mhm. But if I should say one thing for the developers out there, Callame made a choice early on, if you want to make an X-COM to put the data on the edges rather than on the grid points. Mhm. Do not do that. That's come back to haunt us. Quite a bit. It complicates things. When you can come like you can have a So, when you have corners, for instance, right? Uh that's a complicated setup all of a sudden, where if you just had a specific corner tile, like metadata that said it was a corner, you could treat it as such right away. Now, we were a little bit too uh free with what we could do. So, you can you can make, you know, T junction setups and all that, because we were putting everything on our edges. So, I wouldn't do that again, I think. Callame, uh what Callame, I want to give I want to give you some time to to to have some fun here. Um Callame, I'm curious,

this is a this is a small team. This is a small company, and I think something that I I didn't understand until I started talking to game developers was that um uh everything you look at in a game takes time to make. And what we're look, you know, just this one house and layout area we're looking at right now is way more time than I could have ever imagined, uh, I'd say three or four years ago. Um, what what do you think helps your you and your colleagues out, uh, being able to make assets for a handcrafted level built like handcrafted levels as opposed to procedural levels? Um, how are you able to do it efficiently, uh, and make things so that a small team could manage it? Um, it's probably I mean, a combination of Unreal being pretty flexible and also, I mean, we have been using, um, outsourcing quite a lot. Mhm. One of our first recruits was actually, uh, an outsourcing, uh, manager and

artist. So, um, yeah. Yeah, I believe that that was key to get some help, uh, as a small studio. So, we knew we could get that help, but then in the end, uh, when it comes to the characters and stuff, I mean, it has been a little bit has been outsourced, but mostly done in-house. Mhm. Yeah, I mean, when it comes to the levels, uh, it has been done uh, in-house. Basically, everything. Uh, only props, um, has been outsourced, I guess. Um, I think one thing technically as well that helped a little bit is that we didn't go in any, um, baked lighting. Mhm. The game was mostly outdoors, it wouldn't really bring out the fidelity maybe that much anyway, but it was a choice early on, mostly actually from a production standpoint because, you know, re-lighting levels, whatever we do something, uh, would have been too much for us. Um, Right on. Yeah, and it's it's a case of making

smart decisions as well. It's like looking at your team and who you have on the team and what they're strong in. Mhm. It's like for the main story beats, we use these as you see now, these 2D uh cut scenes. Mhm. It's because we have a member of the team who is a an amazingly good 2D artist. Mhm. Uh he's actually a traditional painter. Uh so it's like, okay, well, we have someone who's crazy good at 2D art, so we should use that. Yeah, exactly. Leverage what Leverage what you've got, yeah. Leverage your strengths. Um Uh which which artist is that, by the way? We should credit them for the great art we're looking at right now. Uh Oscar. Oscar Bodin. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Well, Oscar did a good job on these, I think. Um how What What made you all make I I I played another stealth uh stealth tactical game earlier this year called Phantom Doctrine. Uh it was really good. I liked it a lot. Um but it it could be kind of a slower

game because even though it was a stealth game that also had, you know, XCOM combat, uh um they they did a turn-based stealth thing, which was fun, but also, like I said, it took a while. Um how It seems like you guys have more experience with making stealth games than making XCOM games. Um but what was your sort of guiding philosophy for doing stealth in this kind of setting and knowing that players would probably want to barge into combat anyway, um given the given the you know, it's it's an XCOM game. You You You You move units and you shoot things. Yeah. Um quite early on, from almost day one, we made the decision that we wanted to keep the stealth aspect Mhm. as simple as we possibly could. Uh a reason for that was we we didn't want the players spending any more time there than we needed to kind of tell the story and let you explore the the world because what we wanted you to do was to do the stealth moments or, you

you set up for combat while you're in real time, so we could speed it up a little bit. Mhm. But if we started adding too much functionality to that, it would have slowed it down again, right? So, we made a decision very early on that we wanted to keep the amount of game mechanics that you can utilize in the real time to a minimum. Mhm. Keep it very very simple. So, that's shown for instance in the attention uh circles that we use rather than any vision cones or anything like that. We didn't want people trying to sneak on a corner too much and and spend too much time doing that. Yeah, cuz the I assume the vision circles make it easier to let the player know, "Hey, this is where this is where they notice you and this is where they don't." as opposed to like nitty-gritty Hitman style trying to, you know, keep keep at the corner of a of an NPC's vision or something. Yeah, exactly. That was the choice. It was either that or, you know, giving them whenever you get discovered, you get a little bit of leeway time so as we would have done in in Hitman for instance, you would you know, the guy would come over and they investigate, but that gave us other problems, right?

For balancing the game, so so that was that was quite early a decision. Yeah. Um that we we don't put um anything extra that we didn't need into the real time and and as you can see the attention circles here now are like as long as you stay out of them, you have the advantage, right? Yeah. and that communicates very very clearly. I really like the uh the little red highlights that come up uh as you get close to them. They're kind of just like, you know, it's almost like it's like a uh it's like a a a stove that's too warm. Um Yeah, I think that that was the idea was that this should be a tense moment, but you shouldn't feel uh stressed about it Mhm. so to speak. You should feel that you have the time to check out the guy coming in uh on a patrol here and see what's behind him, etc. Mhm. the first setup, and then uh if it were vision cone-based for instance, that vision cone might just bam come all of a sudden as he steps in behind the from behind the building or a car or something, right? We We didn't want to uh make it too

skill- based, basically. Uh when you sneak around, it should be more about making a tactical decision rather than being stressed and yeah, making quick decisions. Yeah. For instance, you you should have climbed the roof of the uh petrol station here. Oh, well, you know. Yeah, it was it was always a always a design that we wanted the stealth to feel to not be twitch gameplay. Mhm. Uh because the game isn't twitch gameplay. All the game is very much about planning and um making good tactical decisions. Mhm. So, the stealth had to feel like it was feeding that quite well. Mhm. So, the stealth in this game is much more about you finding good positions and working out maybe there's someone who's isolated who I can pull down by where anybody else seeing and Yeah. That's what's what's happening uh if we're watching the footage right now, that's actually what's happening. Like I was surprised to discover this that you could just sort of um sneak your characters around and pick off the isolated uh enemies. Um that's really that's really neat nifty. Like that's that's that's something XCOM doesn't have cuz once combat starts and XCOM

combat starts, like there's no more uh there's no more, you know, uh sneaking around the level. Um is there anything uh is there anything in particular you had to set up to make sure that like players could figure out that they could do this kind of thing? Uh so that or that so that they didn't just barge into combat every time? Um I mean I mean the very start of the game that you're just seeing now is very much designed to be a general introduction Mhm. to stealth cuz there's some extremely obvious patrols of guys with low health walking around on their own and it's not very taxing, it's not very challenging. It's uh and and the characters when they talk, they're heavily hinting at least two or three times that we should we should investigate who's here and we should sneak around first and So, I would say the first 20 minutes of the game is gently kind of pushing the player Mhm. into this kind of play style rather than us um hitting them with a hammer.

Mhm. That makes sense. Uh when was it useful to hit players with a hammer though? Well, that would be the tutorial screen, I guess. Actually, it is a good one because we had uh in user research about a month ago or something. It came It was one of the things that uh we probably didn't communicate enough. We have added some tutorial messages around this because if you don't figure it out rather quickly, the the levels can become quite hard later down the line because we really we wanted you to to scout out these positions. You don't always have to pick up everybody around the map, but at least figure out that they're there. Mhm. Or when more advanced units step into the field that can help other units and such, it's very important that you that you know about these units or they will surprise you. Um so, yeah. Yeah, it was also important that the the stealth doesn't become boring in the game because this pattern that you're doing now, you repeat that too much, it will start becoming stale. So, when the game's balancing,

um the enemies they get harder the further into the zone you get. And the enemies' health will slowly start to track ahead of your stealth weapons. Mhm. So, at some point in the game, you're going to start having to use multiple characters with stealth weapons to kill an enemy. Mhm. Make use of your mutations that allow you to do double damage or crit damage and stuff like that to be able to pull off a stealth kill. Yeah, it was actually balanced quite So, it's actually um now you're out of combat, but of course we have a critical hit and a regular one, and that's the balance you were talking about. It comes kind of in layers. That balance is quite nice where yeah, during the mid game you you have to start doing critical hits with your silent weapons in a in order to take these uh straggling characters out or these uh outliers, right? So, it becomes a little bit deeper to do it, which is is quite nice. And then towards the end, yeah, you'll have to use basically all the tricks in the book if you want to take anybody out on the outskirts. Well done. Uh that's actually kind of that's interesting in that um I've been

playing a lot of Assassin's Creed Odyssey and just thinking about I've been thinking about how like familiar routine I fell into with that game as far as I can sort of feel where the game wants me to improvise and you know, just sort of roll with it if uh if if if things escalate and go badly, but uh if you're if you're very careful, you can make a very, you know, repetitive um uh stealth stealth routine in that game, you know, picking off people one by one and then going for the biggest, toughest person for last. Um I'm going to move on to another question, which is uh XCOM is sort of infamous in some ways for uh how it communicates uh hit percentages. Um and it's kind of I think I think it's considered a positive element in some respects because players don't seem to be averse to the fact, you know, the idea of missing a 90% shot, you know, at close range, like you stand there and fire the big gun and the alien doesn't get hit. Um I noticed the hit percentages were a thing in this game. What did you learn about communicating those values to players and I know there's some lies like XCOM is lying to

you sometimes about percentages and a lot of tactical games will will actually do that to you. Um what did you learn about that uh from your own perspective? Uh how did that affect your design decisions? Well, first of all, of course, we're also cheating behind the behind the scenes because people do not understand percentages very well. So, when a 75% shot here is is a bit higher, right? Yeah. And um we'll also do a few tricks on the AI side where if they if they hit you, they'll actually have less chance next time and such so that you don't get into these streaks of the the enemy feeling super powerful just because they got a lucky run. Mhm. Um you need to do a couple of these things um specifically around uh 50%, right? I think 25% to 50% is where people were You shouldn't be taking those shots, really. You shouldn't be taking 25% shots in the next XCOM game, but people expect four 25% shots to be a hit. Mhm. So, um one way of doing that then, of

course, is to add a bit when you miss, for instance. So, uh we have a few of those tricks going on behind the scenes. Mhm. Um and I think it doesn't deter anything from the game. Uh we added more along the line where we felt it was uh needed. Uh it's better that the game feels fair Mhm. than that it is uh fair. Right. Well, essentially the hardest thing to do in these games is to make them feel fair. Yeah, and Lee was also very early on with the percentages. He He wanted it to be We looked at Mario Rabbids versus Rabbids, I think. Yeah, I mean, they do 150. Yeah, they They're more extreme than we are. Yeah. But, you We We went with a system in between. Yeah, we went for like an in-between system where we round the numbers up to the nearest 25%. I think it is. Yeah. Because it just feels a bit more, for me personally when I'm playing, it just feels a bit more easier to predict what's going to happen. Mhm. A 75% is not It's not To me, it feels

not guaranteed. It is still a bit of a gamble. Mhm. Um 50% feels like it We know a 50/50 is is a complete gamble. Mhm. If you get a hit or 25 that just feels like it's going to miss. Mhm. Uh Whereas if I'm playing and I'm getting an 87% chance to hit, that's a little bit more difficult for me to to get a feel for what that number means to me. Mhm. I'm taking my shot. How do you um uh So, it's kind of interesting that there's almost like there's two calculations going on there. There's the first calculation that I assume just checks, you know, it checks enemy level, Well, your player's level, it checks the player's uh gear. Um then there's a rounded number that's presented to the player. Um uh what uh what internally uh are you do you think makes for like like from a I guess thinking about making those formulas, uh what do you think makes makes a good version of those formulas from the dev side before it's presented to the player? Well, that's a it's a good question. Um

but I I think you I think rounding was a little bit the little bit wrong because we what we did is basically we all your bonuses are on like a 25% so low cover will give you 25% while a high cover will give you 50, right? Yeah. Like that kind of um stepping instead of going with 10% or you know, some certain angle trying to be a little bit more binary so that players will learn that okay, I'm going to take 75% shots or try to get a 100 because in our game it's quite easy to get a 100. As long as you flank an enemy, you will most likely be getting it. We we do have range in there. Um but uh that's what we wanted. We wanted players to figure out how to get 75 or 100 shots every time, right? Mhm. Um and then try to be pretty harsh on the other end so that you know I'd rather give you 0% than 5% uh so to speak because we don't want you taking 5% shots anyway. Yeah, it was like to try to make the game feel a lot more fair where

we want to reward players for doing good tactical moves Mhm. a lot more than other tactical games will do. So if I pull off a really really good tactical move and I'm flanking someone Mhm. but then I only get a 82% chance to hit and I miss it doesn't feel like I'm being rewarded for doing some good tactical play. Mhm. Um so in our game if you do a good tactical play, you do some good positioning um which this stuff is directly feeding into that Mhm. then you'll will rewarded pretty highly. Nice. Um It is a It is a tricky one that we haven't solved completely here, which is um teaching players what flanking means. Because it's the same rules as XCOM uses, which basically means you need to be on the same like behind the grid point that the that the cover is on. But that since we have quite uh lush environments that look uh almost biological at times, it can be really hard to communicate that. Uh

and uh we we opted to go for the uh let's see if you switch to combat here, making sure that we show the line of fire and uh kind of your percentages to all the characters Mhm. uh in a preview from any tile that you want to move to. And then that way you could kind of explore where you would get the uh uh the best advantage. I'm not sure what what's in this demo actually cuz we've been adding Yeah. Lately, so All right, that's Well, let's see if when you get into combat. This this gets really interesting cuz I totally thought I was boned here, but uh um I do actually Now you have this guy behind the house. And I used the silent weapon, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but that was a tense moment, right? Yeah. I've been I've been caught there as well. I I liked how he like came to look for me and I was just kind of like panicked into a corner. Um and I was like, "Ah, what do I do? Fire, fire, fire." And and it it worked out okay.

Yeah, you should um be careful there because uh the boar doesn't have a silent weapon at the moment, right? So Yeah, yeah, that's that's You can see I I stuck him here to get ready to fight uh while I move my my duck around. Uh Um uh I guess that that that brings us back to the environment a little bit, which is um uh What do you think uh helped you like like move from the vision of uh exploring the woods and and finding random buildings in the woods to taking those woods and making them low cows that that could make for these interesting decisions cuz um it's sort of easy I think to Well, no, no. It's not Nothing in game development is easy. What am I saying? Um it is it is one thing to to make, you know, a lush rendered scene that's interesting to explore and then it's another to say like that one bit of cover out there. I'm You can't see me pointing. What am I doing? That one box on the right side of the screen right now is its own strategically placed bit of cover that changes the flow of gameplay here. Like what what's that

process like moving from like the the the the the sort of high level to the low low level here? Yeah, it's difficult to explain. Um just a lot of playtesting. It's the only way you can do it. I mean, this map that you're seeing right now, I must have played this a thousand times. Mhm. And every time I play, I I adjust the covers around and then I play again. And then I'm like, "Oh, this would have been so much better if I had a cover here." Mhm. adjust the covers around and just keep doing that process over and over again. Yeah, cuz it's um I remember but when when we generated trees, for instance, at some point we had a distance that we wanted to put them so that you could always get a cover, but that doesn't work to make an interesting space in itself. So, I think yeah, I did there is no shortcut there. You really have to play it. Um I mean, there are some ground rules, I guess, you learn after a while that you know you need to have four tiles between high cover walls and buildings

or such. Mhm. And sometimes it's fun to remove covers from an area as well. So, the player has to make completely different decisions. Maybe they have to make a sprint move to get to the good covers on the other side and but the only real way of doing this is through just a lot of playtesting. Ooh. Yeah. Right on. That that Uh yeah, I got lucky with that. I mean, I had this under control. This There's only one of them. Um Stake AppleBeats would like to know, uh what were your main takeaways from the beta period for this game? Uh that it is a large game to balance. Yes. Uh I mean it is it's about 15 hours of gameplay even for us that know the game Very well. to try and get through it. And of course

uh we like we discussed earlier, we we we changed the balance for the stealth for one. So like how many units you can take out. Uh then you can take them out if you use the correct strategies, right? So lots of lots of balancing and they really really tricky to balance the whole way because because of of the amount of time, right? It takes to Yeah. And I think one of the big things that have hit us from the the public demo that went out was the response. Mhm. It has taken me by surprise how much people are enjoying the game. I guess we're we're completely closed We're completely closed to the game so we can't see it anymore. We're completely blind to it and there's the old saying with game developers, we only deal with problems. That's our entire day. It's just problems all day long. Uh we never took a step back to go, "Oh, wait a minute. Maybe we're actually building something that people really like." Yeah, but it but it was for balancing because we have we have two different we get two completely different answers from two different people, right?

Mhm. We have uh Rui, the CEO of Funcom. He's a really hardcore XCOM fan and he's constantly been telling us to make it harder and harder and harder. Yeah. We have the people that are not hardcore XCOM players, right? And they they're all like, "It's way too hard. It's way too hard." And then you have because we went with this option that you that you can take people out silently, that became another one not not just balancing a fight. But if you don't take anybody out, that fight will be very hard. If you take as many as possible out, it might become too easy. So that's that's been a that's been a tricky one. Have you had Oh, sorry. No, go for it, yeah. So then a a a top tip for any game designers out there, stick all your numbers in a big Excel sheet and make some formulas in there. Mhm. So if you change one number somewhere, you can see what it does to the rest of the game. Yeah. That's that's my approach with this and it's the only way I've been able to

get on top of it, I would say. And if I change the how much damage the crossbow does over here, I can I can roughly see what it does to the end game. Yeah. We've finally become old enough to praise Excel. Yeah. I know. We're we're making fun of Skype earlier, but I think I think the number one thing is Excel I think that's the one thing I've learned from game designers is Excel is wonderful. Skype is nightmarish. Yeah, but it's true. I think that that was probably the biggest thing we went through during the beta period now was uh just how large the game was. We um it's always hard to say how many uh gameplay hours you have as well, of course, early on. Um and we were playing this in different segments, you know, calling it like you would the start of the game, the mid game, and then like the end game and and we were just playing those segments, but never doing that full run. Mhm. Um you want to do it as early as possible, we always do it too late.

And in our case, that meant uh we had a lot of hours to balance uh all of a sudden. So maybe um maybe we should have uh I don't know what we should have changed, to be honest. It's just a large game. Yeah. Um Lee, I wanted to follow up on the the kind of one that you halfway talked about it with an Excel spreadsheet with formulas that can change. What did you find yourself like making new formulas as development went on? Like I assume you had some sort of like core balancing formulas and then made things that were tuned for, you know, specific gameplay instances, but after that beta period we sort of like, "Okay, I need to solve this tiny problem. That means I need to create of formula to create something more, you know, that doesn't It lets me not have to change all the base values and let's let's you be more flexible." Uh not as such. Um The the the the Excel sheet I've been using for most of production has not changed much.

Always changes the numbers that's in it. Mhm. And the main the main the biggest thing the big the hardest thing that's been to balance is the stealth. Mhm. Making sure it's not too powerful but also making sure it's not weak at the same time. And also making sure it doesn't get boring halfway through the game. Yeah. Um Fredan, grabbing a question from chat. Magravelp would like to know do Scrab and enemies respond so that players can grind? I noticed in in while I'm in the zone nothing responds, but I didn't return to any zones during the demo. If if and I guess the follow-up question I would ask is why or why not did you implement grinding in this game so that players could just sort of keep gathering stuff? We didn't. Yeah. Um we we earlier on we actually we had the many metal loops that we tried out and and grinding in such a slow-paced game as a XCOM turn-based we felt was probably not

the right way to go. Mhm. Um so that that also I I mean I mean, it harder to balance in a way as well because if you have the grinding element, of course, that becomes a little bit of a uh self-balancing act from the player how much they want to, you know, level up before doing something. Mhm. Uh but we we cut that It was quite early. It was quite early. We did some tests with it and it wasn't it wasn't really working. No, we we felt it was, yeah, not not the route to go. And then instead try to What we have though instead is is we have optional maps. Mhm. So, there there are there are forks in the road where you can move around the map here. Uh and there are certain almost hidden areas that you don't need to do for the story or you don't need to do to progress. Uh but you can come back to. So, if you skip them and went further in the game and it starts becoming too hard, then of course you could return to them at that point. Mhm. So, that's that's kind of our grinding are those extra uh

non- uh story. Yeah. We found as well that without having the grind in there, it allowed us to get the balance in very, very tight. Mhm. So, we can balance it so you only just have enough med packs, you only just have enough scrap. And because in a game like this, your your resources um really matter in the tactical side. If you can grind for unlimited med packs, then the tactical side of the game becomes a bit meaningless. Mhm. There's no there's no like um this this skill-based decision making anymore. There's no like, "Ooh, I can't really use I should save my grenade and do something else because I can just have I've only got two of them and they're really expensive." and that kind of gameplay disappears if you can just keep grinding them up over and over again. Right on. Uh we got a few more questions in chat. Thank you uh folks like uh Cal Cal Cloven and Everpeer for for checking in and asking questions with us. Um you you guys did

say it was uh you just to answer Cal Clovis' question really quick, you said it was 50 hours of gameplay is what you were pitching? No. 5 0? 15 is our current speed run here I think. Oh, that's the speed run. That's the speed run speed for 15, got it. Yeah, well yeah that's that's that's basically QA. Yeah, that's the QA speed. Yeah. Um, so I mean we can't put another We've always been saying a minimum 15 hours, right? For that. Uh, so that's the only thing we can say. Then of course if you fail a couple of more bigger battles Mhm. it might take you a couple of more hours right off the bat, right? Because there there are some there are some quite big fights Yeah. through the later parts of the game. I'm actually really excited about a battle we're about to check out as we close out the stream today. Um, the um uh after picking up Selma here, there's a really interesting battle up the hill that was the first time that I saw I saw

you guys spawn in new enemies and I at first I panicked because I was like, "Oh no, that's way more than I expected." Um, and then I realized I could deal with it and I was like that was one of the coolest feelings I've had in a uh strategy game is always, you know, "Oh no." and then wait, I can handle it. Uh that kind of that movement from the first emotion to the second emotion is a really good one. So, after I recruit Selma here, we'll get to look at that. Um, we are coming to the end of our hour here. Uh thank you really quick to our developer friends for for joining us today. We've we've got time to take in more questions. Um, we are we are doing our best to answer questions from players, but you know, we are hoping to um learn more things about making games, so we're going to be pivoting uh we're going to be making sure all of our questions are game development related going forward. Um, a question for Lee and David, um licensed licensed properties are kind of an interesting paradox for game developers. Kind of on the one hand, they are an opportunity to attract, you know, an existing player

base or fan base. And on the other hand, they they incur both costs and expectations as you move into development. What was your experience going from IO Interactive and and sort of having more control over Hitman and what Hitman is to going in going solo and make working on a even if it was a lesser-known internationally license. Um It was still one that had some expectations with it. Yeah, what to say? Actually, we we were lucky enough to get quite free hands on this one and what we wanted to do with it in this case. And and of course, maybe that's partly because it isn't a big international IP yet. Yes. Uh so and and so we were Yeah, we were blessed by that and I the the the guy that made the original pen and papers back in the day. He was actually one of the

first backers and investors as well. So he was really on board with it. So it was It's been It's been really smooth actually. Yeah, it's been really smooth actually. Yeah. Not if that will apply to everybody, right? There is of course, like you say, that trade-off otherwise. Mhm. But I think we showed what we wanted to do very early on, very honestly, this type of gameplay and all that. Mhm. And got got that okayed early on and then uh then it has been smooth sailing for us. Um So yeah, it's maybe not the right people to ask answer that question. Well, I I actually I mean I think I think I A this by the way, that moment creeped me out right there so much like what is moving overhead? Like what could be I'm so happy that you You this was the first like real encounter you felt because that was the idea. Yeah. This is the road the road fight which has been called. It was supposed to be the first challenging

like challenge you would get in the game. Mhm. And so we've uh not not now towards the end of the project but towards the middle of the project I think we were balancing the game around this fight. Yeah. It's important, right? To have some sort of this was like the first fight that's meant to carry on for a little bit longer. Yeah. This was this was really cool like like watching this you're this this the fact that this butcher um you're about to see me take him out right now but on the middle midway through the fight I don't know if we'll have time to show it cuz I kept playing for past the hour that we have today um but uh um uh the med bot that is around the corner over there um ran up and resurrected that butcher midway through the fight and I was just like, "What?" Like, "I dealt with him. What are you doing?" Um Yeah, we have quite a few interesting enemies that uh you come across. So, that changes the fight dynamic a little bit, doesn't it? Yeah. Um That was also one of our key game design things that we wanted to do. Make sure that you have to make a choice which

enemy Mhm. and maybe in the middle of the fight having to switch that choice, right? That's kind of what the med bot does. If he goes running for somebody, if he went for this axe ghoul here, maybe you you would be okay with that because it's just an axe ghoul. But if he went to heal a stronger character, you you'll have to deal with him. Yeah. kind of wrenching, right? Yeah. I play another strategy game that I talk about way too much on these channels called X-Wing Miniatures which is a tabletop game and the concept of focus fire is something I've been thinking about constantly for that game and to have see to see a another game sort of like force you to make choices about that is a really good uh design thing to see. Um You used to play X-Wing as well. Yeah, we used to play X-Wing as well. Oh, hey uh you should you should come back for 2.0. It's fun. Oh, yeah, right. Yeah, we should pick up the game. Yeah, we're picking it. Should pick it up. Uh FFG owes me. FFG needs to owes me something. I don't know. So, I'm getting getting game designers hyped about Axe Wing is my new brand. Uh

Um uh I guess as we move out uh this is sort of just um uh is there anything uh I guess uh you all have been thinking about uh like you sort of been running up to other game designers at the bar in this magical Swedish bar where everyone from Ubisoft to DICE is hanging out. Um is there anything you've been running up and sort of telling other game devs like, "Hey, like we learned this uh either striking out on our own or going into a genre we didn't know anything about before." Is there anything you all uh have been saying that you think other devs would like to hear? Ooh. That's a difficult one. Uh that's a Well, yeah, we've been saying loads, but I don't know if you can say it on camera. Yeah. Swearing is allowed. No, I we haven't I don't know if there've been that many curveballs for us this time around when it comes to the actual game development. Mhm. Uh

maybe biting off a bit too much. Yeah, but that's all that's always the case. Uh No, and then and then you come into on on the technical side with Unreal. We've actually been reasonably pleased pleased with Unreal. Mhm. We had We did a late upgrade which you never should, right? Mhm. to the engine. Which uh caused us a bit of a headache towards the end, but other than that, that's also been reasonably uh smooth sailing. But uh if you do work in Unreal, make sure you If you're having problems with loading times, make sure you handle that early on. Uh that's uh uh That's one that came back to to bite us cuz we had a bit of a technical issues but after upgrading Mhm. that certain things would would not work in the same way and then having to redo a lot of it. Well, a lot of stuff. Yeah. Just kind of a I this is not necessarily the most

brilliant question to ask. Oh my god, here's what the respawn happened and I just was like, what? If if I He's the coin blower. I I I um I do love actually the horn he has on his head on the back of his back. Um uh I was going to say um uh something I've been hearing from devs a lot uh lately with both Unreal and Unity. Oh god, yeah, poor Selma. I had to struggle I struggled a little bit with uh I did win this fight for the record. I did not die and have to do it again. Uh yeah. So, whatever you see today, know that it works out okay. Um uh I was going to ask uh I know that a lot of developers working in Unreal and Unity are utilizing the stores marketplace to get a lot of like sort of pre-pre-baked and pre-built tools and plugins to help improve their their gameplay expe- their their game making experience. Did you all rely on any tools from that from that setting uh and did they help you out at all? Yes, and that that's actually one thing. The marketplace works really well for this for the let's say the asset side, I

think. But I think it's very risky if you go into more complicated blueprints Mhm. because that's one where it it might not be tested that well and then we ran into that with upgrading as well, right? That maybe the support had been dropped or you were using it in a way uh that the original developers didn't think about and if you hadn't built it yourself, it might take uh take more time, right? So, I think when it comes to I mean, plugins, uh yeah, of course if they if it's solid C++ stuff, I don't think it's a problem. But we did have uh some problems with some blueprints that we had uh bought early on that got uh in the game. Um Mhm. That I took a lot of time to fix in the end. So, I think you you you should be careful when you buy cuz a lot of people when they when they do assets on the store, they like to show it off. So, they make really complicated materials for instance, which you can't really use in the end because I mean, we're shipping this on consoles. So, we can't have massive super smart

materials everywhere. That would ruin performance. Right, but it's also doing more than we actually need to Mhm. Yeah. So, we we actually we were pretty adamant earlier on at least where we if we bought something, we would actually put it in a different project and then just move stuff over to force ourselves to kind of rebuild materials. We'll use the textures. We'll use the meshes and such to kind of force ourselves to do it. So, that we wouldn't end up loaded with all this because that's probably the biggest uh problem you could run into that you you bloat the game because it's so easy. Yeah. That's the danger with the blueprint scripting in general I would say that uh you need to kind of keep it clean. Otherwise, you end up in with a mess where um yeah, you have a lot of messy uh blueprint scripting handling important stuff in the game that yeah. Yeah, we we've had a few now lately as well, right? Where I think everybody works

in Unreal runs into this at some point where you make some blueprints earlier on when you're prototyping. Uh and then you kind of forget that those blueprints are not up to, you know, shipping spec. Mhm. They might not support the save games in the correct way or all that stuff, right? Um so, yeah, you need to kind of keep track of that. And and if you bring in too many blueprints from the marketplace, I think that might become a an issue for you. Right on. Uh it is uh in here in California, the sun is rising. Uh it is it is about 8:00. We are we are running out of time sadly to continue this conversation. I will before get out of here throw a couple of questions from chat in just to help you all out. But before we, you know, sort of start wrapping up. Yeah, Air Viper would just quickly like to know will there be a new game plus on launch or is that something you all are looking at later? There is no plans for launch, but we'll we're looking at a lot of things for later. Cool. New game plus.

Reminder. It's this thing where you can have I think it's making a game. Yeah, it's like a nightmare mode. Oh, oh, the nightmare mode. Yeah, actually we It more accurately it's it's where you run through the game again with stuff you already have from your first run. Yeah, yeah, and with more No, it's not something we planned right now. We did we did include the Iron Man mode from start though which has been a discussion back and forth if you wanted to do that. Mhm. Um because it is really really really tough. And uh but we felt if people want to punish themselves they should be able to. Right on. Cal Cal Cloven actually asks would How is Funcom wants to know how is Funcom been helping you out on this game? And if you all have any planned DLC after launch? Yeah, we can't really talk about launch pre post launch plans yet. Cuz it hasn't happened yet. Sorry, well but um Funcom's been really

They've been helping us with the marketing, QA, some development support as well where they we've been borrowing programs from them to help out with UI and localization and they've been they've been helping us with a lot of the the wrapping that goes on around the game. Mhm. So yeah, QA stuff, localization stuff, marketing stuff. Um looking after people on forums and all these kind of things. Mhm. Which is a lot of game developers just tend to forget about, but it's really important when you want to launch a game. Yeah, especially we would never have localized the game if we didn't have Funcom because that is a huge thing to do a lot of times, especially we have a lot of we have a lot of voice acting and we have a lot of menus. It would have been completely unfeasible for us. Right on. And yeah, like you said, they have they have their QA, of course, and then being able to borrow a few programmers for a while has also been a Mhm. blessing. Yeah. Nice.

Um with that, uh I think it's time to uh pleasantly wrap things up. Thank you, uh Lee, David, and Kalle, so much for joining us. Um if they have got any more questions about making the game, uh where should they ask them? There's um the official Funcom forum, where they can go there to ask questions. I think it's probably the best place. Yeah. Or uh yeah, I guess you're free to send us stuff on the Bearded Ladies Facebook page as well, but we actually handle that one, so we might not be super quick to answer since we're kind of in release mode here. Yeah. Well, thanks. Speak Speaking of release mode, thank you so much for taking the time to join us. No problem. No problem. also say if you said it's sunny in California now, I think we just got our first snow. Somebody shot Probably missed by about a mile. I'm jealous. Oh, I love snow. I mean, in theory, I have a mountain just like a few hours uh east that I can go to for snow, but I keep forgetting to do that. Um Uh but it it's going to rain tonight. It's going to rain tonight in California, finally.

Congratulations, California. Um we need it. Al- Although it might cause mudslides, um so I don't know. Um Anyway, uh thank you all for joining us today on the GDC Twitch channel. Thank you for joining us so early. Um uh Mutant Year Zero launches uh uh in uh on December 4th, um or I should say Mutant Year Zero Road to Eden. Um, you can check it out on Steam, Xbox, and PS4. Um, for us at GDC, we would love it. For those of you who are not familiar with the channel, if you were to click the follow button, if you are a person who, if you're a person who likes talking to game developers, learning about how games get made, what you'll find out is that we do a lot of streams there now, talking to different devs about how their games are. What's really cool is GDC's coming up in March and we have more and more speakers, more and more talks confirmed

for next year's show. And what's cool is we are planning to start talking to a lot of them this year. So, we're going to be talking to them about their games as their games get made. Usually, we're doing, you know, we're trying to check out new games. We're talking to developers about games that are very interesting or very unique or like like Mutant Year Zero, which or you know, um, but also by talking to GDC speakers, we have an opportunity to revisit games from last year. So, we don't know quite know yet who we're getting, but we plan to bring them to you and ask them interesting questions on your behalf. While I'm at it, if you're interested in GDC yourself, you can always scroll down and click the button in order to get your own pass for GDC. Um, and apparently in chat, I don't know if Cali Cloven works for Funcom, but they would like everyone to know that if you are interested in this game, check out the Funcom stream happening in 1 hour for Mutant Year Zero. They say there is a quote surprise coming. I don't know what that means. I don't know if Cal works for Funcom or not, but

in case you are at home or interested, you should definitely go check it out. David's looking at David's looking at casting a knowing look. I hope I hope the surprise is a nice surprise, not a sad surprise. Um, I think we know what it is. I think we know what yeah. All right. With that, thank you everyone so much for joining us. Have a good day. Bye. Thank you. Thank you. Oh. I have such a lily.