How Playtesting Changes Games | Design Club

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Good time zone internet. Hello and welcome to Design Club Live, the only game design show on the internet that is powered 100% by the cats that are currently stalking around every camera that's involved in the show. I am your humble host Will, joined as always by my pal Jeff, and this week by some very special guests. So, I'm going to let everybody introduce yourselves. Jeff, who the heck are you? What the heck do you do and why the heck are you here? Hey everybody, my name is Jeffrey Zatkoff. I am the studio director Extra Credits and Extra History, and more importantly for Design Club, a long-time game designer professionally almost I'm actually like more than 25 years a long time. Duh. And And joined by
my pal Will, who is our who streams every day with us, is our Twitch overlord and voice of the people. And Will, why don't you allow these gentlemen a lot I'm going to It's mirrored. There we go. Or actually, gentlemen, why don't you

introduce yourselves? Because we have a cool topic for today. Sure. Hi, I'm David Whittaker. I am one of the co-founders here at Conifer Entertainment, and I'm the game director on Without a Hitch, which is the game we are about to play. Ooh. And I'm Eric Jordan, and I'm the CEO of Conifer Entertainment, and I've been working tirelessly with Dave on bringing this game out into the world. Okay.
What? It takes a little bit of effort. Actually, it's a fun thing. Just backing up, for anybody who's never been involved in game development, um similar to plays, movies, novels, and every every other form of creative endeavor, we celebrate when things go live because there is so much effort behind getting even what seems like a trivial thing, let alone something as complicated with moving parts as a game or a play or a movie or any of these things out the door and into creation, that it's a minor miracle that happens every single time it actually does happen. So,

congratulations, Codename. You guys launched a game. Actually, how long ago? Was it 4 days? 5 days? How No. It was Tuesday. Tuesday, 2 days ago. 2 days, okay. 26 hours and 17 No, no, 40 40 49 hours and 17 minutes. Not that you're counting or anything. And of those sheer curiosity, gentlemen, so that we have a read on it. Of those 49 hours 17 minutes, how many of them have you slept? Uh some. Yeah, okay. As anticipated. Great. Excellent. A lot. Yeah, yeah. Especially with the lead-in to it as well. We did a It we internal I guess we're jumping ahead slightly, but we do a We did an internal playtest on Friday that left a lot to be dealt with for the [laughter] weekend. Oh, was that your last last last playtest before going live? Um No, no, we did one Monday, too. Yeah, we did one Monday before we went live [laughter] on Tuesday

to make sure we dealt with the stuff from Friday. Okay. Actually, that is fair. Um and actually, one of the things we were lucky enough that we've had these gentlemen on before was we got to play a very I won't say early build, but a pretty early build of Without a Hitch. Um and then we checked back in a little later. And it's one of the topics for today that, you know, I think kind of what we put up on the marquee that people are here for is you guys just put a game out live. Congratulations. It launched. But you've been testing and playing the game now for a while. And we've talked about a lot of different topics on Design Club, but one of the things we're always fascinated with that we don't get a lot of people on to talk about is how what changes kind of that last part of the game where, you know, you've put up your candidate. You're like, okay, this is where we can start let people testing and playing. And then you go do all the play tests, and you do the demos, and like it's a big push, and there's often a lot of changes and iterative design that is very condensed and happens in

that last part. And it's sometimes what I've heard a lot of developers, including myself, say is where you um do the extra part of finding the fun. Because you have an idea of what's going to be fun, but then you get to go test when you actually put it in front of people and see what everybody gloms onto. And um that is kind of the topic I think we like to like chat about today, and then maybe hop into the game a little bit after that and take a look at what has actually changed since we last checked in. Yeah. So, for instance, I want to know if the streamer eating elevator made it to the final build or not because I [laughter] really loved that part of our play test where we just we found something brand new and interesting, and it was an elevator that ate me. Um
[laughter]
it was amazing. Elevator mimics, everybody. It's going to be the next new thing. Oh, that's a freebie. For if if you're if you're doing any kind of like modern-esque fantasy thing building, one too many elevators, elevators a mimic. Boom. You're welcome. Your adventures will hate you. There you go. Have fun with that.

But um like at a high level, even just, you know, from when you guys started thinking demo and play tests, well, let's start Let's back up. What are you guys hoping Where are you when you start doing that in development, and what are you hoping to gain out of it? Um yeah. So, like we started the like the play test and demo level of this fairly fairly early on. I mean, we were trying to do a really um have a have a pretty tight development cycle. Um we started building the game in in [clears throat] late September. And we very quickly went from having just a concept to having an actual playable game with sort of the core bits where you could drive around as a vehicle and pick things up with a crane. Um but it I think it was it was early January when we got the first plate actual play test out.
public play test.
yeah. So, we we've done and maybe at a high level to frame it, we've done several different playtests. And they kind [clears throat] of go into maybe three streams. One being a set of internal playtests

cuz we got 30-odd people here in the company and so we started before the January one doing some internal playtests. We then ended up running three public playtests that you kind of sign up and play the playtest build. And then we also did demo where we gathered feedback as well. It wasn't kind of a defined thing in the same way as the playtest. So, we sort of have the demo, the public playtests, both of those being public facing, and then the internal stuff. So, I think yeah, maybe the internal one was like not very maybe October was our first
Yeah, we sort of did involve the internal playtesting with a small group at first every Friday and then that was cuz at the same time we were also playing other games with similar genre to with everyone at the company to try and get everyone to sort of getting their head wrapped around how this was going to play. And so through through November, I think we were doing every alternate Friday the team was playing what we had what we had gotten done in the last two weeks. And then through December, we continued that. Then our first public

playtest was early January and starting early January at that point we did start doing weekly playtests with the entire team. Which we did that for about two months before we split it up and actually started doing alternating teams. We split the internal company into two teams and they would alternate so that they got more like more significant changes that they could see from week to week. And get feedback on that and then as that feedback came in like every every week we would read through every single line of feedback we gotten from internally and then categorize it, prioritize it, and try and get those changes in for the next playtest. And how much of that like process Um You have this is not your your first rodeo. Um obviously, you've got other successful projects. Um how much of that play testing schedule and methodology was informed by the fact that this is fundamentally like a a party friend slot game, right? Versus something that might be a little more um

cerebral, right? Something that's got a lot of like numbers and needs a lot more data versus someone's um qualitative experiential feedback. So, moving Idle Champions to Without a Hitch.
[clears throat]
For instance. I think it informed it significantly because we definitely needed to have a full set of players playing in each group or at least some combination of two players, three players, four players uh to see how it all worked um as well as getting variety of input from different play styles, different players to see how they were responding to it because it it's the kind of game uh where really your uh the fun that you end up having from it is sort of the chaos that you can cause, that you can create with the the group of people that you're playing with. Um and so, just seeing how they were interacting with each other, what things they were finding, um and then taking those and using either amplifying the ones that we thought were cool or uh well, I guess we didn't really we didn't really pull anything out that people were doing that we thought was wasn't appropriate, but we did amplify on things that people were doing that we thought um like, "Oh, they found this

new thing, like being able to jump off of each other into the sky." Um and sort of making sure that we didn't remove things like that and then added things where you could take advantage of stuff like that. So. Okay. The accidental discovery part of the gameplay where somebody does a thing you're like, "Oh, that was cool. We didn't think of it. Let's you know, make sure that that stays in becomes a feature." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting cuz it's sort of like comparing it to Idle Champions, which is, you know, much more of a systems-focused game, kind of more like chess or something. It's very much about kind of thinking about how you're going to do things. And so, the math and the system's is important in that way. But this one, the system is important, but it's important in this sort of like what tools are you providing in the system to sort of have people have organic things they can do. One of the streamers that I was watching on the weekend play it, um and they were commenting how they really enjoyed that um the different kind of challenges you have. A lot of them actually have multiple ways you can solve for them. Like, oh, I could do

this, or oh, I could do this, or I could throw my buddy and do this. Um and so, there is still It's still fairly complex system, but it's a manifestation of a system that is very different than kind of a chess idle champions kind of system.
Yeah, the actions that you take are sort of emergent from the tools that have been provided to the players, rather than having it more being like a discrete set of rules. Yeah. So. And then that's all that's separate from what we we kind of identified, and Dave in particular, right at the very beginning, one of the biggest like unknowns was can we get the game to programmatically generate every level, and have that level be playable and fun. And so, then there's a whole other system, if you will, of kind of like just making that happen, which was like, oh god. But, it did. It did come together. That's one of the things I'm most proud about how the dev team has come together to make that happen.
But, that's also one of the things that like players there's systems players notice and they don't. Like, I can honestly tell you I don't think almost any player will be

like, oh, cool, the levels all generate well and are playable. Like, that's a thing players just assume happens during development, whether it's handcrafted levels or other things. Where little things you put in that were like tokens, like, oh yeah, you know, we threw in an extra couple of customizations, like can like might have an outsized effect because the one player, or excuse me, the cohort of players who likes cats are now like, look, I can make my car look like a cat. You know, that it's weird how and some of the things like take different amounts of time but are still in a lot of cases the table stakes for getting the game to play and engage well. Like our friend slot customization is a big thing. But also so is like the ability to go play your level. Yes. And not have it be the same level every time so that people playing in always feel that there's a little bit of exploration because exploration is part of the core loop of your game. Yeah, I think a good example of that through our internal play test in

particular was the dev team was really focused on like getting these pieces technically working and in the game and they weren't balanced. And so we would have stuff like the enemies were super overpowered or something like that. And we would have notes our producer on it Alyssa would have a detailed set of notes that no matter how many times we said, "Hey, read the notes before you play."
[snorts]
We're going to So that was [laughter] read and then everyone would put their internally their feedback into a Google Doc a shared Google Doc. Um and then people would be like, "The enemies were way too way too difficult." It's like, "We just put them in and we can balance them and it's not like super hard to balance them but the the just changing the math on how hard the enemies were has a massive impact on of course how fun the game is but getting it all to spawn and be there is much more of a technical challenge than like going in and going, "Okay, they're their health is half of what it is and they don't do quite as much damage." And you like it's table stakes that the technical part works and then the people things that people notice is like, "Ooh, the cactus

has got googly eyes. And then that speed limit sign says 67." Yeah, last night that was one of them last night. This is the era we're in now.
[laughter]
Um I did want to ask you mentioned amplifying some emergent player behavior, right? That you found and noticed during your playtesting that you found to be a rewarding thing to amplify. What was the weirdest piece like the weirdest player behavior that like you came out of left field and you were like, "I never thought someone would do that. That's a great idea. Let's make that work better." Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I think the first thing that came to mind on that and maybe it wasn't the weirdest thing, but it was this desire to be able to just like do a drive-by throwing, which is really like you drive by your friend, grab them, pick them up, and just fling them into the air. And this was something that the early controls didn't really facilitate that nicely. It was something where you'd have to go you'd be driving by, you'd go into crane mode, you'd quickly click the thing to pick them up. You had to have a little bit of skill to do it. And then you'd switch over and then throw them. Whereas as seen that a bunch of times, we thought, "Well, we should be able to make this a lot easier." the way the

controls have been shifted is you don't even have to go into crane mode. We've got an auto grab. If you're next to something and it's the only thing nearby, you hit grab. And then there's also like a throw that doesn't require you to be in crane mode, so you can just drive right past, grab and throw them. Um and obviously that makes the whole thing a lot more fun and a lot easier to do. And then, you know, players pull that one off. Um I I can confirm behind the scenes we're in a lobby before we get started and I have begun chucking them around. So, yes, I can confirm this works great and I love it. Thank you for telling me that.
I should log in then. Yeah. Yeah, I think one of the things that in very early play tests, I think, you know, we had the idea of the cars and the googly eyes and all that kind of stuff. Um and the idea of a crane, but in some of the earliest play tests, people were you'd have four people in a group and everyone would start picking each other up. Yeah. And and and just that being hilarious. And then one person driving around with all the people and and seeing that is like, "Oh, yeah, that's super fun and super silly." And I

started seeing it as I watched streamers and folks come to the game for the first time and play it. They're like, "Oh my god, there's that moment. I can pick my friends up. Oh, wow, where does that go? Oh, then they can pick their friends up and we can keep we can chain it." Yeah, I think another one too that had a quite a bit of back and forth internal on the feedback was the being able to to drive at a near vertical. Um like early on, the way that the physics have been set up, you actually could very easily just like scale the walls and just drive straight up. And then we got a lot of feedback from players or from our internal players that was like, "Well, that's not realistic." And so we turned it tuned it down, we added traction, and then immediately started getting the opposite feedback which was, "This is like why can't I go up the wall anymore? I go halfway and then I slide down. Why have I got no traction?" And so that one was one we did turn around and lean back into to say like, "You know what? If you want to drive up the wall, that's perfectly fine. In fact, let's make it so there are places that if you want to get to, you have to drive up the wall." Mhm. I counter argument, I am a sentient car with a magnetic levitating crane.

Realism, not high on my priority list. No. Not high on my priority list. [laughter] Not high on my priority list. I'm I'm a car. It is okay. I I think some of it too came from pushback on the dev side from where they were developing of the the puzzles and the blockers that there was this desire that they be um not cheese-able, I guess. Some some of the developers are like, "Well, I'm putting this effort into making this thing like perfectly lined out and produce the puzzle for it and you have to solve the puzzle like this and if you can drive up the wall and jump over it, then why am I doing this?" It's like, "Well, you get that sense of accomplishment. You get to want to solve it in multiple different ways, then then that's fun, too." So, Yeah. Um Yeah, I solve it their way. And I think you know, developers don't want players to cheese it. Players love cheese. Yeah, 100%. [laughter] Yeah, and they're like, "Woo! I figured out a way to do a thing." I think another thing, and I'll I'll I'll say as a player of who um enjoys limit testing. Yeah. So, it is sometimes not the most obvious when there is only

one intended solution versus developers intentionally putting in multiple solutions that have different So, for instance, um there is a fair amount of dexterity required in the car car core car core with a car. Whatever we want to call it. Car core, okay. Yeah, right. Car core. Car core, yeah. Yeah, right. Exactly. Um if that is something if that is a skill that I want to master and spend time practicing and do and then I can pull off cool parkour jumps to bypass a puzzle that is something that feels like it might be a way that you as developers would be rewarding me for being an experienced player versus something that might take longer but have a lower manual dexterity or lower practice skill uh threshold required to accomplish it, right? I can find all the keys or if I'm really gamer at this, I can just eat myself over the wall. Or both feel like

neither one of them necessarily feels to a player like cheesing. Sometimes they just feel like, "Oh, hey, maybe maybe this is here as like a cool thing for me, right?" So, that that that is the other way that at least I tend to think about it while I'm busy snapping games in half like dry kindling. It's fine. I'm sorry. Yeah, no, I I 100% agree and it's definitely been something that as we've been developing particularly like the points of interest, the puzzles, um when it when whenever someone brings it to me like, "Oh, you can just get up here. You can jump around here. This might be the I say, "No, no, if they can do that then awesome. That that's that's a solution that they can do. Like that's like don't lock it down. Like leave those open. Yeah. Puzzle design for a 3D environment, especially one that's kind of fast and loose, is just a radically different concept and a thought process than process than for something like Idle Champions where it is more positional and math puzzle or like there's different kinds of games with different kinds of puzzles. Like you guys aren't looking to make it let's just say hard. You're looking to

make it interesting. Yeah, absolutely. And and provide opportunities for there to be uh chaos, particularly when there's more than one player. Like when it's three, four players all trying to do the same thing, you know, you're picking your buddy up and you you know, maybe you accidentally accidentally drop them into the lava. I mean, that's uh that's
[laughter]
Accidents will happen. Well, why was there lava if not for me to throw little Timmy into it? I I ask you, right? It's a game with throwing your friends and you put lava in it, Timmy's going in the lava. Well, then I guess an added um dimension to doing the puzzles for this game is that the levels are all programmatically generated, but the puzzles are hand-crafted. And so then the puzzles have to fit into this programmatically generated environment with hand-crafted puzzles around them and how that all come together in a way that is fun. And there's definitely been cases where we've seen generation and you know, it's fun when it happens where there's a mountain or or the terrain is high

enough up around a puzzle where you would have had to have jumped through it and you can actually just like double jump over the terrain and onto top of it because it generated in a spot that that was lower than um than expected. I don't I I was actually about to ask on that. How far out did you kind of lock down puzzle area just to make sure that you didn't get weird interaction with terrain to puzzle? Yeah, so it's been a bit of a tight balance for that because we've been trying to make sure that we can fit as many of them onto the map as possible. So we don't want to leave too much of a of a boundary where they're they're isolated, but um it's it's pretty close. Like I think each one of them um sort of in-world units probably has about 50 m around the outside edge where it gets feathered into the terrain. So um it depending on what the scale of the terrain around it is, uh it can turn into something where it just blends in and you don't even notice or if it's a very vast difference in scale, you can end up seeing like big cliffs carved into the world where these things got placed. And so it tries to do a good job

of averaging that out, but sometimes, you know, it doesn't quite get it and you end up with something that's uh well, you can just drive up the hill to the side and jump over and in and it's like cool. But then you're like great fun, you know. Yeah, for for for the first area that we'll be doing we have according to our in-game thing here, 13 points of interest, 13 puzzles that we'll be dropping in there. Now, not all of the points of interest are puzzles, yeah. Yeah. And they do vary in size a bit, so. Yeah. 39 treasure wrecks. So far.
I love this screen. Oh, is it No, the 39 is for the area. Like the first area that we're in, right? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, but some can spawn. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, there's some some points of interest spawn treasure cars as a reward, so. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Not very many, but some. And so if we had this switch where a lot of them spawn parts, but some of them actually spawn full cars and then you have to open those, yeah. So, as you guys were designing, I actually have a question. Did the length of time that you thought

like an average scenario would take, go out, get the thing, you know, head to base, change over the course of play testing, or was that something that kind of ended up being roughly what you thought was going to be fun, ended up being fun? You know, I think it started like I don't remember exactly what our original time was. I think we were thinking it would take about 15 to 20 minutes to do a run and we wanted to get at least a good 2 hours for and so we'd aimed it to be six six runs like two three days with a day and a night, so six levels. Yeah. Um and then as the play testing had gone on, it had seemed like that number was actually getting larger and the players players were taking longer, 25, 30, 35, 40 minutes to do a run and as we finished up, it actually seems like it's come back down. Um and maybe some of that is because as we've been playing it, we've been getting better at it, but on our stream on Thursday or Tuesday, we did um four uh two hour groups

and and almost all of them finished uh just in the nick of time.
Yeah. Um Yeah, we we did for celebrating the launch, we did 8 hours of streaming from from noon to 8:00 p.m. So, we did four 2-hour streams to kind of celebrate it with the community and show off the game and stuff like that. So, yeah, though it does it does vary cuz there was the streamers the big ones that streamed on Sunday and they in 2 hours just barely finished them. And then there was ones last night who streamed and it was 2 hours for them and they were in
They were in level four. But this it was I think they just started the night
Yeah, night They might have just started that.
night of the second day, so level four. And they're
They were getting destroyed. Yeah, but they and you know, one of the things we talked about earlier is like there're multiple types of people people get fun have fun in different ways and so there you want to kind of

create an environment where people who want to go explore all the things and collect all the things can have fun for example or people who are like, I just want to speed run it and get through it as quickly as possible, they can have fun. And so your your play time is going to vary pretty wildly. One of the guys at the office Mars stream after we did the whole launch day and everything, he just kind of settled in did a single player game and and he spent 5 hours on his run. Finished it and was posting his at the end you get these sort of your your stats of how well you do and he's posting that and like, I challenge anyone in the studio to try to beat your number. Yeah, all of the all of the score numbers. So, so yes, I think it can vary a lot, but interestingly it did sort of come in. That wasn't of the things we had to fine tune, it didn't feel like that was one. Yeah, that was certainly yeah, it was like I said it was it we had a target

which was a 2-hour play through and it seemed like as we were going it it shifted but then it landed at that and it wasn't something that we it wasn't something that we went out of our way to to tune one way or the other. It wasn't like we were making the level shorter or longer adding more or less things to do in them. Just sort of shook out like that. So, yeah, that was a little bit of serendipity on that one I guess.
[laughter]
It's funny I think the opposite of that was the car driving control.
Oh, yes. And kind of the physics and the interaction and you kind of touched on it a bit with the tires and going driving up the side of things and stuff. And that it was just constant feedback on that and this particularly I guess also the external play test especially the internal ones and there'd be the exact same building and some people would be like, I absolutely hate these controls. Other people would be like, I love these controls and just like I don't know Dave. Sorry I'm jumping in Jeff asking questions to Dave but from what I observed that was like the single biggest thing that we just kind of had

to
It was definitely something that we had to go back and forth on quite a bit. Like everything from, you know, what the actual controls were and and the controls like the keyboard and mouse controls weren't too difficult to hone in but the gamepad controls took a lot of going back and forth on. I I think and I sort of after doing that there seemed like there were sort of three sort of common gamepad car control setups. And one of them being like sort of standard race car one where you've got your gas and your brake on the triggers and you're steering with the stick. And then there's more of an arcade-y one where you're steering and gas and throttle are on the stick. And then I think I hesitate to say that I've seen another game other than Halo the Halo the Halo controls where they did it where the gas and throttle like throttles on on the left stick and camera's on the right stick but camera sets what your direction is so you go where you're looking. Like that that's a bit of a Almost tank controls, not quite tank controls, but like almost tank controls. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so getting those to feel good

was definitely a lot of iteration, but also just setting things like we've got a lot of fine maneuverability you have to do in some of the puzzles, and that was a balance of making sure that A you had a turning radius that made sense as well as being able to like um re- like reorient yourself if you're trying to Oh no, like if you're on like a ledge and you need to be going left, but you're facing right. Um and then coming back to some of those and just changing the design of those as well so that they made sense that you could actually maneuver them with a vehicle. Um and then yeah, so I think that one was a tough one. Uh and definitely mixed feedback on on the traction one as I mentioned before. Like people Some people were were adamant that the vehicle should not be able to go up the up the side of the cliff. Um and then when we pulled that in and added the traction thing, then we had this problem where we were simulating uh traction in more of a physical way, which um I had to go back and forth with the developer on that one being like, "I know you've written it right, but how about we make it so that uh it's more fun."

This is correct, but not right.
Yeah. It's like, "Well, you you throttle it down, your wheels are your full throttle, and you hit the ground, your wheels are spinning, well, they're going to break free, damn it, you know?"
[laughter]
Well, I I get that, and I agree, but but people are not having fun with that.
Well, also, I feel like, you know, most car games, and maybe chat, you can correct me if I'm wrong, I feel like the majority of car games where you're controlling a car with a controller don't involve double jumping the car. Right? Like they don't they don't involve the car Like you might go off a ramp, right? But the car itself also does not have double jump like these cars do. So I feel like that is another confounding factor to the whole question of like how does this or should this control? Right? Because you're you have a fundamental tool that most car games just don't deal with. Yeah. Yeah. And you just described one of the interesting parts of a game designer's job, which is going within the team,

advocating for fun. Because there's a lot of times when there are things that are technically correct, or even implemented as designed, and it's part of your job to look at that in the kind of the whole gestalt of the game and say, "But when you add all these pieces together, maybe we do break these couple things or add this extra thing that seems superfluous currently, but once it's in, that's part of what will drive the engagement, drive the fun, and get people really excited about it." Yeah. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Totally true. And it definitely comes up on a regular basis of like, "Well, this is how it was designed." It's like, "Yeah, and now that we're playing it, I think we're going to change it."
[laughter]
Yeah. I need you to do this wrong. I know you did it right, but now I need you to do it wrong in an interesting way for reasons. Oh, it's not even wrong. Like, because designers design is iterative, like, a really good game designer, like, really good, might get

70% of the stuff right on the initial draft of the design documents. Because they put it in, but until you see everything together, and because of the fact that a lot of these are iterative, and you need to kind of get in and play with it, that there's just stuff that you know you're going to get wrong, but it's this is your first best guess. And the really good designers just happen to be a little right a little more often on their first best guess, or right in a way that lets you build the thing more easily to tweak that last part of where you're getting around it. I will also say that um a thing that I've noticed as we've talked with um the Codenames crew and with other designers and with you, Jeff, over the years is um the other thing that defines a good designer is being able to take that 30% that isn't working and check your ego and just eat it and just be like this isn't working. I I thought this was going to be cool, but I can clearly see that it's not and not feeling like you might feel like a little sorry that the that that part

like you maybe your favorite thing is in that 30% and you're going to have to throw it out or change it or tweak it significantly, but like being willing to iterate significantly to get to a place that a good product is a difficult skill. Um Every superstar and high-level game designer I've ever met has the ability to check their ego. Well, like I've been in conversations with Ralph Koster and Will Wright and Warren Spector like some of the you know like standout names in the industry and when you start talking shop, one of the phrases you'll most often hear is like we did this and it was wrong and it was really exciting and that I they'll freely admit you know, it's fun hearing Will Wright do a talk and saying oh yeah, I was wrong on this thing and because of that we were able to do like like they don't care. Really good game designers it's just part of being a good game designer. They're like oh yeah, we did this it was wrong, you know, we transitioned over to this other thing like it's not an ego thing where more mid-level and junior

designers will often be like oh man, I messed this up, you know, it's like no. We gave it our best shot. Luckily they know now we move and we keep going kind of thing, but it's really interesting how as you get the higher up unlike a lot of other professions the ability is oh yeah, this didn't work is just kind of something you have to be able to mentally do. Or you're just you're not going to be good. I think that's one of the things that's so great about game jams is you know, it's you kind of have this very tight scope. You're not doing it a long time so it's easier to kind of check your ego because if you haven't been working on something for 3 years or you know all that kind of stuff. Um and so you can just kind of experiment and I think that's such a such an interesting thing about the process of making games versus the process of playing games is when you you play a game, hopefully the game that comes out is fun and is there and all those systems interact in great ways and have a level elegance to them. But what you don't see when you just

kind of come to them that way cuz those solutions feel so of course they would do it that way. But from the design perspective when you're doing it and and you know journeying into that experience, you kind of start off with this idea and you put these things together and then they don't interact in those ways and that thing that is elegant is actually the result of a whole bunch of trial and error sometimes. Not always, but definitely a lot of times. Lots of trial and error to get to the point of like, oh here's the thing. Yeah, I I evidently should totally been there all the time. I think there's definitely there's lots and lots of things that we put in here that certainly we didn't get right the first time. And I can't see us having arrived at it the first time without having tried it, tried something else, played through that, had seen what people reacted, tried the next thing. Yeah, I just can't imagine I can't imagine getting it right the first like out of the gate that first go, you know, set it So I I have one I have one more question for for you before we we get started and

it's kind of a kind of a question about the the play testing and kind of just a general question now that the game is out. Um which is did you end up having to use what I will affectionately refer to as a squirrel timer solution for anything in the game as a result of play testing? Like something that was just so outside the realm of what you had planned for that you're like, okay, so we don't have a solution for that, so we're going to tie everything to the animation cycle but invisible squirrel that lives under the map and that's how we're going to build timers. Fun facts, there are games I'm not entirely sure I understood that. Can you say that again? Is were there any problems whose solutions were so like out of left field that like you didn't think you were going to have to build them in when you started? Was there anything like totally weird
an example. Um so, okay. In wow,

there there is a famous story that for a while there were no timers. They didn't build a timer function in. So, they instead tied everything to the animation cycle of a squirrel. So, they put an invisible squirrel under the map and had it count the number of times it went through its animation cycle and that's how they built timers. Cuz there's an invisible squirrel under the map running its animation cycle and incrementing a counter for each time and that's how timers work. So, they cluged it. Okay.
they yeah, what but I didn't want to use the word cluge cuz like not everyone knows what that means, but yes. Like were there were there any like surprising technical challenges you had to cluge a solution together for or anything that like really took you out of left field? Yeah, I mean I guess I understand the question so like is there any sort of like really unfortunate bandage solution that's running and holding things together that that we just couldn't work around. Um you know, I'm I'm thinking and if I if something comes to me, you know, I'll

I'll I'll pipe up with it later, but I I don't think we have anything that's quite that quite fell into that category. I know there was for a long time an issue that we were having actually right up until launch. We've been seeing this where it had something to do with the network timing that on the clients at random sometimes all of their physics objects would stay in the original orientation that they were in instead of falling to the ground. And so sometimes if you were if you were one of those clients you would be driving along the road and you would see all these boost pads and they would be in the sky. And I think the reason they were so far in the sky is I think when the design was done on that to get them to place on the road properly, I think I think the developer who was doing it just gave them a big offset and said whatever they'll fall to the ground and they'll land where they're supposed to be. And for whatever reason this timing issue was causing them not to update their physics state and then they would just be in the sky and they would be there until another player

touched the one that was on the host and then it would update the position and they'd fall back in the spot. And I know that Mark the developer who'd been working on the network side of that had for had been trying to make bandage solutions to get that to like oh in this times then just tell everyone where you are update the positions again and it wasn't working and it wasn't working and he thought he'd solved it but um that one unfortunately from a bandage solution standpoint uh he did eventually figure out what was happening on the network side of it and patched that into the network system and now it all works. So that one didn't end up with a squirrel under it. At the time there was there was code in there that was attempting to just say nope if you didn't get your update everyone down on the ground but yeah. Um I I I will say that's that is quite impressive because one of the most played multiplayer games in the history of multiplayer games still has a very similar problem. Minecraft still has block update problems and that's a very very similar client host object

desync problem. If you've ever played around with any amount of modded Minecraft on a server you will know that sometimes blocks are not where they are they're where they think they are and that's an entirely different problem but very similar to the one you're talking about. So well you were you were hoping for a cat box weren't you? No not necessarily. I just think it's very interesting when we talk about like play testing and development that like we have an opportunity here to talk to two excellent two two excellent folks on this team and a lot of the time we get like the rosy glow like and then everything went fine. Everything was wonderful. Everything smelled like roses and like it is nice sometimes to hear about like the the ways that you overcome like the weird problems. Chat is bringing up the fact that the train in Fallout: New Vegas is a hat that an NPC is wearing under the map. Um that's a good example. Um Team Fortress 2 to this day has a load-bearing picture of a pineapple in the game files.

No one knows where it is referenced, but if you remove the load-bearing picture of a pineapple in Team Fortress 2's game files, the game will not launch. No one knows why. Um so it's just it's nice to hear about these like kinds of like the realities of developing and releasing a game uh especially in the face of public play tests which discover a lot of these things. Did I I tell you two real quick ever told you guys my cat box story from EverQuest? One of my favorite ones. I don't think I've heard it, no. Back with So remember, we're devving back like this is like '97 to '99 for like dev. So there is no Unity, there is no Unreal. We were making our engine as we were making the game. So our level editor was not necessarily the best level editor because we were making it as we were building the game, which is never the thing you particularly want. And there were places for a lot like through beta and into even live where where the verts would join together on the ground. Sometimes there would be a hole there that people could slip through and just

fall plummet through the world and into the void. And you know, we had a call GM function for help, but it was really distressing to just be falling endlessly through the void. And so after several attempts to like fix that, I actually just went to every zone, made one really large rectangle, slapped it under and put a teleporter on it. And so if you fell, you'd hit the teleporter and as a level designer, every level designer would make a little box in the 000 coordinate because that's where you would start as your level designer to go make levels. And because I'd built a couple levels before moving on to the system design, I knew this. So my teleporter would just shove everybody to the 000 point in the zone and they'd be stuck in a basically the artist loading box where the GMs would know to come pick them up and put them back in the world, but this like went through into launch and level designers started decorating their boxes because they knew players would occasionally end up in

them. And one of our very early level designers, Kevin Burns, used to just post pictures of his cat there. And for some reason a lot of other devs kept this on, so when a GM would get a message said, "Hey, I'm stuck in a cat box." or I'm stuck in a box with pictures of somebody's cat, they would know exactly what had happened through this whole sequence of events. But yeah, it's just like these are the things that make it to live when you can't figure out how to, you know, get your load-bearing pineapple or other things. Right. Yeah. Exactly. To be fair, now that you've said that, there was a last-minute patch or or band-aid that I put in and that is that the treasure cars, if they spawn in the ground, they can fall through. And if they fall through and they reach lower than -1,000, they get teleported up into the sky and they come crashing down wherever they were above. So Perfect. Yeah. Perfect. So you're telling me that under the right circumstances, it could be raining cars. Correct. That's That's truly phenomenal. Um I think that is a good transition in

into our gameplay. Uh gents, did you have anything else you wanted to to tell us since last time we played the game? Any anything else you wanted us to know before we before we jump in? Oh, we have so many changes since the last
was going to say I actually don't remember. What? Was it the play test three maybe? I think March. I don't know. It's all sort of a blur, honestly. Yeah, early March last time we played. Something like that. I think it was it was late March or early April. Late March, I think, is correct.
Yeah. Yeah, no, there's a lot of there should be should be a lot of of of changes. A lot of new things. I'm noticing right away like I'm in the lobby. My lobby looks a lot different. Yeah. Oh, yes. Yes, that all
Like I was in a junkyard last time. Directly out of play test stuff. Yeah, and that's actually the one of the things you mentioned earlier about having to to not be uh uh I guess too too married to your designs. In the earlier versions we played there was a

uh the package comes out of a factory and you'll see that it's quite a bit different here. And I know that uh unfortunately the factory which was a significant chunk of work for one of our artists is now no longer in the game. Uh which I did feel quite bad about actually. I had to modify that. Was Michelle made that. But uh it sometimes you look at it and say no, we we got to do something different. So. Yeah, and that was definitely play test feedback. Yeah. All right. Well, now we now we have to see it. So, I'm going to I'm going to fly these two gents out and we're going to get into the game and we'll we'll play some without a hitch. Whoops. Thanks, Jeff. Didn't realize it was going to go quite that far. Uh-huh. Okay, I need to go in here and do audio and then turn voice volume all the way off because somebody has a mic up. I'm getting I'm getting double done. No, no, let me go. You can't. One one thing that we could do, which I know streamers have been doing, is that if you turn your voice volume all the way to nothing, but you still have a mic, the hoods will flap, but there won't be any in-game audio of the voice chat.

Oh. Yep. Let me do that. That sounds fun. Yep. So, now you can see that my my my flap on my on my on my thing is moving. I do I do like being the panel van. It's great. Although I will say it is the random grab is a little aggressive. The snap to grab? The snap to grab is well well it's taking me a long time to get used to because I played in in early play test that didn't have it. So I was like I'm used to using just like clicking the mouse as part of my camera movement kind of idea from other games and so it's a little I got to I got to
feel nice and tight though. Yeah. Like it feels good. Yeah, so that is one of the changes from the last time we played is that you can now grab things without going into crane mode. So anything nearby if you just click the left mouse button it'll pick it up. Yep. Um and then the right here if you click there we'll do a throw. Like that and I will get yeeted into the ceiling. Someone asked are these head map flaps new? We didn't have them on

because of the way that we have audio set up. Normally they are to do um Uh normally they they sync off of in-game audio but since we're not using in-game audio they they weren't on but now we've got a way to turn them on. Uh I like my car flapping. Yeah, like that's a great indicator that somebody's talking. Yeah, it's why it's usually one of the first things people comment on when they're playing it.
Okay, so You have to use a weight and anything else is cheating. But Oh, I see there's a weight. I see the very interesting. So you got to this is sort of the tutorial. You've you've expanded the tutorial.
[laughter]
Where did that go?
Throw the weight away. I I look I tried to put it down. Left click to put it down, right click to throw it.
I did left click to put it down and it Uh Okay.

It's getting in the way. Right. He's going to put the stuff on the buttons. We're just going to get in the way. Okay. All right. So, we've got we've got this this this whole shenanigans going. All right. I like it. I like the little alien statues, too. This is directly out of the play test. [music] People were like, I would need more a little more onboarding to kind of do do stuff. Uh somebody's pointing out that the weights are in fact over 9,000. Well done. Um uh hey, just out of curiosity, um
That is the joke. Yeah. What if I just didn't want to and just like skipped out of the tutorial by going up those ramps and out the door? That is available for that very purpose. Yeah. Okay, that's kind of cool. You already know how to jump. Uh you can leave the tutorial. That is a really cool Yeah, okay, cool. Especially because this happens every time you host a new game, right? You you have to drive through the tutorial every time you host a new game. So, um for experience you have the you have the

developer shortcut, as it were, where you just you know what you're doing and you just But for the sake of of showing off the new stuff, I I think we should definitely finish the tutorial. Get your testing sphere here. Okay, it's legally not uh it's legally um not a companion cube.
[laughter]
Okay. All right. Mhm. I believe in you. That makes more sense. Don't forget to sign the waiver. Where's Where's the waiver? Waiver? I hardly know her. Aperture Oh, Aperture on delivery. Oh, I have to interact with this. Oh, hey, it's the junkyard. Welcome, Aperture on delivery driver. Your mission, should you choose If you choose to accept it, is to deliver this crate of unknown contents to its destination at 123 Fake Street.

Although it's large, but using our patented Amazon cargo kit and gathering engine or package, we'll make transporting it a breeze. Or you can sign without reading the waiver. Yes. This route will take you across the treacherous wasteland, but don't worry, we have various way stations along the way offering repairs and upgrades. Of course, these will cost you. Amazon is not a charity. Use the package to collect and bring valuable car parts to trade in. There are plenty to find out in the wasteland and on the wrecks of your fallen comrades. Cannibalism. Before we begin, some quick and standard corporate paperwork. A few quick clicks and you'll be off. Nothing to worry about, nothing you or the drivers who came before you aren't already accustomed to. By engaging ignition accepting transport of the package, hereafter referred to as the package, it, or please don't ask what's inside, you, the undersigned automobile entity, agree to and accept the following perfectly reasonable terms. The package is highly valuable, extremely unstable, and possibly sentient. It must not be opened, shaken, insulted, or exposed to smooth jazz. It may hum, whisper, glow, vibrate, or judge you silently. Any attempt to inquire about the package contents will be met with vague corporate reassurance or immediate regret. You may experience sudden and

irreversible loss of limbs, including but not limited to doors, bumpers, mirrors, spoilers, and that one hubcap you were really proud of. If you fall If you fail in the line of duty, your wreckage may be salvaged for parts and sold by your fellow delivery drivers who will insist that this is what you would have wanted. Tires may become flat, punctured, shredded, or emotionally deflated. You understand that just one more mile is a lie. Scratches, dents, and catastrophic aesthetic humiliation may occur. Your once glossy finish may be replaced with a well-loved look, also known as ruined. We agree that brake failure at the worst possible moment is part of the experience. You may leak oil, coolant, transmission fluid, or tears, possibly all at once. In the event of engine failure, you may be unceremoniously dragged away while others watch. This is normal, try to maintain composure. Under certain conditions, you may detonate dramatically. This is considered a feature, not a bug. In the event of total failure, you acknowledge and consent for your remains to be repurposed to assist in delivery of the package, which will continue forward indifferent tiers absence. Exposure to open flames, directed energy weapons, aquatic threats, and giant mechanical monsters is expected and classified as a standard unavoidable workplace inconvenience. You're expected

to deliver the package intact, arrive in one piece, though this is considered aspirational, and avoid asking questions such as why me or what is happening. Failure to deliver the package may result in disappointment from management, disappointment from your peers, and a deep and lingering sense of personal failure.
[snorts]
That's about [laughter] right. I love this. I hereby release Amazon from any and all liability for vehicle damage, injury, physical and emotional, any and all damage to relationships with the co-workers, confident or otherwise, occurred before, during, or after the delivery of the package. I have signed the delivery waiver and shown everyone my dragon's butt.
[laughter]
Because of the because of people. Googly eyes. I I feel like I feel like of all of the like the minor touches in the game, I have to say googly eyes on the package remain one of the most like defining like just little touches that means the world to the way that the game plays,

right? Cuz like anthropomorphizing or carthropomorphizing the package is just such a good move, including the line about it potentially being sentient. It's just perfect. Interesting decline was darkened out. Listen, I'm just saying that's my favorite in-game disclosure agreement since Helldivers, okay? So It's real good. I like it. Great. Okay. One more to the breach, dear friends.
We got some cars over here we can start with. The tutorial cars to show you how to I I love I love the little dead eyes. Oh.
[laughter]
Is it dead? Yeah. Why um hey, why why is there a disco ball question? Actually, I'm not supposed to ask questions. Also, that, uh, interesting.

That object was there again. Oh, yeah? Yeah, it it was it was there for a second. I saw it downstairs. Yeah. It's, uh, we we we've discovered a small interesting phantom object that is occasionally appearing near our, uh, cars. We try and pick stuff. Uh, do te do. Uh, yeah, those are health, Jeff. Just drive over them, but we're all fine in here, so. It's all fine. All good. Yeah, another actually a significant change probably from the last time we played is now the package actually has a radius around it. Yeah. And everyone can pick up parts and they fly into the package provided we're all inside that radius, so everyone can contribute. Yeah. It's not just the package. And you can see our scores. That's true. Uh, I see, okay. Up here in the upper right. That's very good. It's ultimately cumulative in terms of package value, but you can see who's doing the heavy lifting. Certainly not me. No. Woah.

Yeah. Get him. Get him. Throw him. Got him. Bye. All right. Oh, wow, that is quite a significant distance. I can see it now. That's that's a big boss in them now. Oh, they have loot, period, full stop. They didn't before. But they have like a lot of loot. Uh, not too bad, yeah.
Hey, um, Yeah, I know. I'm not complaining. So, what's going on? I know I'm not supposed to ask questions, but, um, wha- why wha- wha- why is there a giant fire hydrant out in the middle of the desert?
Oh, no. Watch out for a giant dog will. I do
[laughter]
running running right now. Uh, this is great. I love this. Is this Is this Is there anything here or is this just the POI? Uh so sometimes uh, a wool coin will spawn here, but otherwise it is just it's just decorative. Okay, and we should probably explain that the wool coins are a bonus mechanic that we saw in a previous playtest where uh

Wow, that was a significant throw. Well well done, Matt.
[laughter]
I was waiting for it to come back down and I think a big difference probably from the last time we played was if you hit tab well it brings up that menu of things and then you can go there's a map now. Okay. And then you can also see your stats and the controls if you're kind of like how does this thing work? But particularly the here's all the things and the map. And I think it's M M or M will bring up the map and you've got the mini map on the top left as well. Top right. I'm really enjoying the pickup radius by the way. Like the pickup my stuff just goes to the package. Yeah. It eliminates the not tedium but the minutia. Yeah, I think it's the word I want to use of like needing to do a whole bunch of of of like little trips to the package carrier. Yeah. Yeah, it feels a lot better. Well, for those who were kind of missed it during Will's explanation, our

job here is to find loot gather it into the package and deliver it with the caveat that um the the package can get delivered decreasing its value requiring us to go find more loot. Uh damage to be yeah. Um okay, this is cool. I like this. So this is a like a procedural challenge that you have to cross in order to to move on. You have to find the ball and put it in the in the cup. Oh, I might have hooked a ball
[laughter]
earlier.
Uh oh no, that's a different ball. But yeah, that was a beach ball. Whoa. I'm going to leave that to all of you and I'm going to Oh, okay. And it it alerts everyone when someone finds it. That's very nice. Okay, we got we got lots of good stuff going on here. Free candy. I don't know that I believe you.

Oh, it's it's literally just the the gate. Oh, no. I right click the box. Why are you on fire, Eric? Uh, I got hit by one of the big mines. He's like, "Click the box." You're throwing the box away? I did, but I got I got I got I got an achievement, so that's worth, right? Right? I did it all for the achievement on purpose and definitely not accidentally because I right click a lot of the time for random. Um, although I will fully blame my daily driver game of choice, um uh, which is Final Fantasy XIV, uh, right click like you right click and drag to change camera. Uh, and so I'm probably over habituated to that principle. Uh, that's right. I'm probably not Let's see. I got Okay, where did the gate There's a big beam of light. That's I fixed it. I fixed it. Everything's fine, probably. Maybe. Don't look at me like that.

I'm very concerned about the fact that someone has found the abyss. There you go. I opened the gate. You opened up It's a It's a very normal thing to find the abyss.
Oh, no, wait. I just bumped the ball out of the way and it closed again. Okay. Ball has to stay in the gate. Yeah. Abyss, if you don't find the abyss, the abyss will find So, now we drive under the gate to bounce. Oh. Uh here we have a revival car. We found one. Okay, and it's labeled as a respawn point. Okay, nice. Uh oh, I think I see Oh, that's a nice touch. There's a little gate opener on each side. So, you can't get stuck, right? If you're If your friends

uh are trying
You go through and your friends take it out and strand you there. Or because it's programmatically generated, you can potentially like climb up a you know, a mountain that gets formed next to it and then kind of jump over the fence. So, you kind of get over it one way, but not necessarily the other way.
you're covering a lot of bases. And I'm sure a lot of that was, "Oh, I guess they can do that." How many "Oh, I guess they can do that"s did you have in uh in playtests, Rick? Uh I I think I kind of operated from the they're going to be able to do that. So, you know Yeah. [snorts] But it was a uh
Blockbuster. Mhm? Jeff. Jeff, go watch my bones turn to dust. Where are you?
Hold on. Oh. Block. Blockbuster. Fantastic. No notes.

Yeah. Now, one thing I will say, which maybe you know is a little bit uh behind the curtain on the one with the two-sided there, is actually when we initially put it together, we didn't have the uh this is the the procedural system didn't know what direction things were going in. And so, in order to make sure the tutorial gate, which is what that it worked, uh we just put one on both sides, so that it didn't matter which direction it spun on, you could get through. I mean
did add support and directionality, but uh I I I feel like, you know, that's fine, right? Like it doesn't But it's actually kind of hits that mid and senior level or or the more thinking about a game designer, the you know, it could happen this way, it could happen this way. We get the versatility, we build it once, we get the versatility for all of these. Right. Why not just do it? Yeah, cover all of your bases as often as possible and you won't have to go back and fix things later. All right.
Here, Jeff, there over the other way.

I'm just taking the package and going my own way because I keep running into people and that's Here in this Here in this way, Jeff. Oh, here. That's a bomb. And you can see them on the map. You just run into it and blow it up? Uh I was trying to pick it up. All right. How did I know? Yes, I did run into
[laughter] [snorts]
Oh, okay. Let's see, map. Where is Will? Uh Jeff, we were talking about the the googly eyes on the box uh before and that they definitely do add quite a lot of character today. Will Will is to the west of us, Jeff. Go west, young man. Go west. And I'm currently in a Cthulhu drawing behind a waterfall. Uh yes. Oh, oh, I see it. It's It's in uh It's a It's a D&D uh Easter egg

because that car had dice in it. That's very good. That's quite clever. Can't imagine why you would put a D&D Easter egg. Can't Can't imagine. Definitely no ideas regarding uh Idle Champions of the Forgotten. No no clues at And I think just the love of the material. Awesome. There we go. Whoa. Oh, Dave. Oh,
[laughter]
Did you actually completely open I did. Oh. I'm surprised I just threw it. The thing about the ones that shoot is that you don't throw them. They start shooting at you.
Yeah, that's true. Okay. All right.
Go. So, what in your experience, how often do people like 100% the level versus just being like, all right, good enough and we we're moving on? Like, do you find that there's a

majority of the player base that does one or the other? Cuz I'm sure now that you have like uh the player displayed stats, you can track that, the how much players finish the level versus just get enough and scoot. You know, we don't have uh direct analytics on that. Um and having that the tracking stuff in like and fully fully working there for the display is something that hasn't been in there for more than about 2 weeks. So
[laughter]
Maybe So, what you're telling me is maybe in a future update. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, it'd be an interesting thing to be able to tune your levels with if you're like you know, we put a hundred thousand dollars worth of stuff, they need twenty thousand, you know, how much stuff is destroyed versus you know,
coin. I see a coin over here that needs to be thrown. And you're the you're the volunteer. The world's the largest
All right, I'm going for a ride, Chad. There you go. Good. Yes. Nice.

[laughter]
Here, well, I'm bringing the important thing over to you. Okay. All right. Okay. Never d20.
Must be lost or I've 10,000 m in a single run. But I feel like most people will drive 10,000 m in a single run. Yeah, some of the achievements are easy to get and some of them are a lot more difficult. Yeah, as as they should be. As someone who is currently achievement hunting in an MMO. Yep, that's the way it should be. Stock landing. Drive it like you heisted it. No, we're not Well, I suppose we're kind of heisting. Yeah, you can have a little heist as a treat. Brad is a big fan.
Oh, shoot. Oh, what happened? I got shot. Oh, no.

Uh-oh. Now I'm a tire. All right, where's the respawn car? Oh, I see one. Oh, I see where I am. Well, I hope you're not a motorcycle. We might not be able to continue if you were two tired. Uh No, no. Ooh. Oh god, I almost died. I just died, too. What? How did you die? This respawn car is mine, get your own. You know, I'm going to leave this area of death where everyone keeps dying and I'm going to get back on the road. Yeah. And I'm going to value we can go on Yeah, just go go to Yeah, well, especially given it's 12 points, probably. Oh, I should do the turn.
I just noticed I could bump into a ghost wheel. Yep. I thought we just like completely left and we didn't go on the road. Like there's a perfectly good road here with like boosts and that like makes the journey fast. Did we use it? No,

absolutely not. What did we immediately do? Go off into the off-road and die. That's where all the stuff is, though. It's true. I mean, if it was easy, they would have sent the newbie deliverers for it. True. Oh, lost your package. Get a replacement. Okay, that's cool. So, like if you complete
relatively recent addition.
Yeah, that went in last week.
[laughter]
It's important because it's easy to lose your package. Well, there's a There's a Get out of here. We're waiting.
Oh, yeah, we're waiting on you. Here I come. Wait, do you have collision now? Oh, you do, as a ghost. That's what I was saying. Ghostly collision. Bonk.

Ooh, I unlocked a camel sticker. Slightly improved roadside installations. Okay, cool. And so, is next level generation dependent on the hosts' PC strength, essentially? Uh no. So, the levels are generated from a seed that's shared across all the everyone in the play session, and every client generates the same level. Mhm. Okay. Got it. And then you Okay, yeah. We did not get all the whoop whoop.
all the whoop. Don't get to have the whoop.
Well, we do Someone There is a There is a triple jump here. Should I buy the triple Oh, I I I think Will should get Yeah, you should buy the triple jump. Where's the Where's the It's over here. Yeah. So, are what spawns here for upgrades also random?

Uh it is, to a degree. There's about 10 items total that could spawn here at the first base, and uh get a selection of eight. Okay. I'm going to take this. As you get further on in the later levels, there's more options, and so the randomization of that's a little more more likely to get to not or to get something interesting. It's a really terrible way to phrase that. Oh, interesting. And purchases are one time, so like because Will bought the triple jump, I can't buy it. That's right. Yeah. Oh, I see. So, in between uh at every stop, I can add the new things that I just bought. That's right.
Yeah. I want to. So, this really does encourage you to kind of over farm um package value, cuz you come in here and you can buy more things. Correct. I like the pirate hat on the engine lift. And I'm going to buy the money for myself real quick, and then I'm going to head out.

Or should we spend the rest of our money? That's true. I bought two upgrades, so I'm good.
Eric, I just bought an upgrade. Yeah. This says they're playing with the PS5 controller, and don't know if you like the default or gas on stick controls better. And I'm glad that there are options, right? Cuz like controller controls are one of the weird things where people like it can feel wrong, and you might not have a a sense of like how you rebind it to make it feel right. Mhm. That makes sense, right? Like you can you could be like, "This isn't it." But you don't know what you'd like better, particularly with controller. Keyboard mouse, you could kind of like fumble around and figure it out, I guess. Definitely. Yeah, the tough thing about the controller, too, was not just the the picking the right, you know, car controls, was also trying to squeeze in the crane controls. Right. Um because it's like the the triggers for for gas seemed to be like what I would go to,

but then I also wanted the triggers to be used for the crane, and now they're have a conflict. So, hence the default one is the gas and and turning on the stick. Um Who's fault? Default. Oh, he's gone over this way. Okay. And I found the quick hitch chapel where there definitely aren't any zombie cars. Wait, what's it say? Till death do us part. End times. I wonder if it's funny because we're collecting parts. Yeah, I get it. So, why are there pizza boxes? They're just a whole bunch of Oh, this is the This is the delivery point for Pac-Man pizza. Yeah, there's the pizza. There must be a Pac-Man pizza around here somewhere. Okay. I don't think I've yet successfully I mean either found that and then not found the pizza thing or found the pizza but not found that. All right.

Great question. Chat wants to know, do Do you Do you have on-screen glyphs changing to match controller input? Or uh yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah.
I've had many a problem with with that not being the case. Um or with things being in an odd configuration. Um we were talking in as we were getting the call together about Pragmad uh uh uh um because it's a great game and you should play it if you have it. I'm playing it here on the channel if you want to watch someone play it. Um and the I'm using a Switch Pro Controller and the up the There's a There's a puzzle aspect where you have to move a cursor in four directions using the right-hand buttons, the X Y A B. Yes. But they're in the Xbox positions even though the game knows I'm using the Steam or a Switch Pro Controller. Which it I took my brain like a good 2 hours to like sort all that out. And now I've got it figured out most.

The Crush-O-Tron. No. No, I don't I don't want to go in the I don't want to go in the Crush-O-Tron. I don't I don't want to Okay, I'll get sent to the Crush-O-Tron now. It Oh, and now I'm stuck in the Crush-O-Tron. Well, well, someone take this before I die. Um Oh. What's going on? No, I'm on I I got to be on the button. Sorry. You can't You can't Oh. You can't We're stuck We're stuck in the Okay. What's wrong with the package? Why did you drop the package? I don't know. No reason. Dying come back to the tire. All right, well, I hope you're right. I guess the package wasn't worth a lot yet. Now I'm going to go find a respawn car. Hold on. There was one near the entrance to the zone.
I I saw. Oh, there's Yeah. New pier new the that New location discovered. The Great Pyramid of Whoa.

Hey, um for nothing, uh small question. Uh what's that? That? What's what? Oh, you know, the thing that's rumbling the ground and has the giant spotlight and now there's a laser beam trying to hit someone.
no, no, he's our friend. Yeah, I know, he's very friendly friend. I totally believe you. He's totally our friend. Yes, very friend shaped. Yes, absolutely. Chat, is that is that a friend? You got to tell me, Chat, cuz I I can't tell. Is this thing Hold on, I got to get a good look at this thing. Is this a friend? The thing that looks like legally not Reptar? Red means warmth, right? Is that what that means? It might mean excessive warmth. The laser beam of friendship. It excites your particles in friendship. See, this is where I think chat just wants to see me suffer. Friend minus arm.

Will. It lights up your life briefly. I do like that assassinating the package carrier so you can carry the package is a valid tactic.
[laughter]
You can also use the package retrieval station to steal the package from them. Oh, really?
Yeah. Here, you can you can eat me cuz there's a wall point up there that I think we have to eat for. Then you can do Oh, he's got the triple jump. Oh, yeah, you can just triple jump to it. There we go. Uh no, I didn't Uh how many wheels have to touch the ground for a jump reset? Uh Just one. So, if I like nudge with one wheel, then I get my jump. Yep. This question asked by someone who enjoyed Path of Pain in Hollow Knight.

Um No, no, no, no, no. So close.
[laughter]
Okay, I'm getting out of the way. This is too many people here. Oh, wow, that didn't work. You made it. You made it. I did. I got I got after flip. All right. Red is the color of passion, that's true, boy. Balance is also the color of jumps. What was that?
There's a good one off over here. I'm I'm floating. Yeah. Yeah. You grab the uh grab the land mine. Okay, I got a I got a land mine and

we're going to use it to blow open the thing here. Alex, is that one? Yeah. This one is a minor inconvenience. Mhm. That one. Yeah. Spelled with an E cuz it's a pun. Hey, he's also the color of health potions. These are all very good points that you're making, chat. I'm so very proud of you. Good job. Does it change the fact that that is a giant machine with a death laser? No, but you are also making very good points about why it might not be a giant machine with a death laser. Even though, once again, I cannot stress this enough, it is definitely simply a giant machine with a death laser. So, we need 25,000 of which we have 11. Yeah. Oh, there we go. Oh, okay.

Oh, what? Ouch. Hey, did you No. Off. You do it that way. What? I wasn't doing that. What are you doing? I think the question of what are you doing
the treasure car inside? Well, someone drove off with the package. I was just trying to stay with the group. There we go. Items delivered to package. There we go. Okay. Here, you want to try taking the package from the cart?
means what is killing you. Still you blocking past you is still killing you. I keep picking those up and dropping them by accident as opposed to taking them with me. According to Brad, we've now run an official poll and that robot is apparently friend-shaped. So, do with that information as you will. This sample size brought to you by a bunch of Brahmins. I have questions. Well, it's good to know. Good to know. Yeah, I mean, I think it's easily

verifiable. True. I mean, the only difference between science and screwing around is writing it down and verifying your results. Exactly. How big was that explosion? Perfect. I just have Oh, I see what you're doing. Huh, why is this not opening? What's the Oh, my rock rolled off. Huh. Who made rocks roll? Oh, come on. I'm going to suggest it was someone on the dev team who was in charge of this. My guess, just my guess. Mhm. Okay. Oh, I see our friend is back. Mhm. I debate the usage of the word friend for this individual, but that's okay. Oh, hey, look, there's a pyramid with a coin on top.

Will, are you implying that it is somewhat of a sloppy definition? I'm suggesting that it wants to kill us. Wee. I do love the mushroom clouds in the big bombs now. Yoink. Nice. Yeah, mini map very good. I definitely agree with with chat on that one. The mini map is quite excellent and very useful. As someone who What like if I ever talk about playing vanilla Minecraft, it's always in scare quotes because I will not play Minecraft without a mini map. I just can't do it. Like Yeah, the quality of life is too high on some things like that. Are we hitting three peats or we going in circles? Uh circles probably. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like you guys are on the other edge of a big ravine. No.

Looks like we're Oh, yeah, we are. We jumped across. Yeah. Well, I jumped and then drove. Uh-oh. Death laser beam friend is Oh, friend. Oh, run away. Run away. We are supposed to go north. Yes. Yes, once we have enough value though. Sure. I mean, we'll get it on the way. Won't we? We get one more wool coin. Oh, we just got the value we need. Yeah, we probably left it back at the beginning. There's a whole white interest we missed. Oh, no. Oh, no. Slackers. Yep, that's us definitely slacking and not just running around trying to be enter No. No. No entertainment here. Only slacking. Got it. Yeah, only slacking. Yes. This time there's a D12.

Last time it was a D8 and a D20. Ah. Ah. I have a thousand meters in a river bed. Where is everyone? Oh, you guys are in the water. Okay. I got an achievement for driving a thousand meters in a river bed. I did as well. And a fish sticker from it. What's the purple beacons? Oh, there's someone's put their beacon down on the map.
Yeah, you can click on the map to sort of indicate things to people. Oh. Okay, so how do we get out of this riverbed?
Oh, so we can. Oh, that's very nice. I like that quite a lot. You've got that trip. I got that trip, yeah. I found apocalypse pizza.

Can any of them drain flint like No, there are no magnesium swords behind the waterfall. Stop trying to get someone to do that. One of Thunder's continual bits in response to my uh perfectly reasonable claim that all waterfalls should have loot behind them uh is that whenever he is given the opportunity to make loot behind a waterfall, it will be a sword made out of pure magnesium. And if you don't know what that does, blows up. Or potassium? Not magnesium, it's potassium. Sodium? Potassium? Yeah. Sodium or potassium will do it. Not magnesium. I'm thinking of kaboom the other way, not water kaboom. Any of the alkaline metals. Yeah, I just make a sword out of pure alkaline metals. Somehow do that without blowing yourself up and then put it behind a waterfall. Again, cannot stress this enough, without blowing yourself up. Did you get that health, Jeff? Looks like you need some health. Just got it. Uh okay, okay, okay.

I had a discussion with the mine that ended up uh kind of an explosive ending. You can quench it in milk instead of water. I have bad news for you about what milk is mostly made of. Okay, are we going for value or turn-in or We are at the turn-in. Yeah, okay, we'll meet you guys at the turn-in. Okay. Swords in like oil, anyway? Uh sometimes. Sometimes you quench in water, sometimes you quench in oil. It depends on the period, style of sword, and desired effect. Well, if your desired effect is your sword of made out of lithium doesn't explode. Right, yeah, that seems good, right? Also, probably don't forge a sword made out of lithium, just as a note. Like, just for funsies, just like as a thought experiment, maybe don't forge a sword made of lithium. Uh probably I'm going to guess here, not a sword scientist, just an enthusiast, probably going to guess, going to go poorly. Just going to go poorly.

Oh, that's I went to the wrong thing. I went to someone's marker. Oh. I have now put the marker where you were supposed to go. That's my bad. [laughter] Forge a sword out of radium. I I feel like you may not understand the word better in this context, Scott with blade. I don't know that that's better. But you said it yourself, you're not a sword scientist, so you how can you be sure? It's true. I'm not a sword scientist. You know what, chat? You want to make a sword out of lithium or radium or whatever, uh by all means, please proceed. Yeah, and they can write the results down, and then it's science. Right, yeah, and then that'll be probably the last thing they write. It'll be like, So I forged a sword out of lith Monty Python style.
scientists that come after them will have gotten the point. Yeah, that's right. But not of the sword, because that will have exploded. That's cutting-edge technology.

Terraria lets you forge a sword out of cats. Uh Hypixel lets you forge a sword out of pork chops. So, Got other things?
Yeah, I don't think so. Okay. Ah, so close on that. I'll be over here. I found a demon core. I'm taking it to forge to my to my forge to cast it into a blade of legends. Tell me how that goes, if you can, I guess. There's ah It's when you This is reminding me of one of the lessons I learned really early as a game designer, which is again kind of getting back to the customization, no matter how much stuff you put in, it's the stuff you look at all the time that drives a lot of like extra value. So, you know, I'm looking at customization of my car. I'm looking at my car flapping every time I talk. Like some of those things, the mileage you get for like effort to kind of player value

are really high. It It's also one of the reasons that UI is such a very important part of games, right? Like often times like very few people will notice or call out good UI, but they will absolutely notice and call out bad UI. Right? That's That's like another thing. So, having good UI is sort of a a thankless task, but also an incredibly necessary one because I'm looking at the UI 100% of my time in game. Oh, yeah. Totally. UI is a thankless task to begin with, too. It's a tedious thing to put together. Yep. But also super important. Like it it it's kind of funny.
[music]
Um like I said, I'm a I'm a 14 nerd. Yeah, get in the get in the
Actually, hold on. Should we wrap here since and get a wrap up since we're going to run into time or do you want to go for one more quick one? Mhm. You're right, we should be responsible and wrap here, but I want to do another level, which is a very good sign for how much I like this game.

[laughter]
I want to be responsible, but you are correct, we do need to wrap for time. Whoa. They got tossed.
[laughter]
The only reason I noticed that is I got a message from Matt asking something else. I'm like, wait, doesn't he start streaming in 19 minutes? It's It's fine. It's prob- probably fine. Um Yeah, I I I got to say I love a lot of the changes that you made. I think it's they're all very excellent. Um Yeah. The radius on like a couple things off top of it. The The radius on collection is an excellent quality of life. Like being able to drive into that big ring and just have the items go as opposed to chase the car down wherever they're currently trying to do a weird flip and like disrupting the middle of their thing. It feels great. It makes it makes me feel like a good scout going out and back. The car flapping um some of the little hidden extra details like behind waterfalls, getting to see more of the

actual like encounters um versus last time we were in there were a lot less of them. Like it just the level of polish feels a lot higher. And you know, none of those things were critical, but together they add up to the user experience. It kind of I expect to see going from like early demo into game release. I think one of the things that I know Dave and the team did a bunch was kind of density of things in the space. So, there was kind of solving for programmatically generating the map, which was like a whole one layer of stuff. And then the density of stuff in the map so that it felt the right amount of things. So, it's certainly one of the earlier play test people were like, "Oh, the map feels like too barren." And there wasn't kind of enough stuff in some of the early versions. So, I think I I feel like we really solved that. Yeah, and I think a lot of that came together closer to the end there, too, because we've been working working on getting all of those various points of interest. At

this point, I think there's over 60 of them uh that can spawn. About half of those are the sort of the larger puzzle ones, and the other half are ones that are just some sort of a um a unique visual flare like the the um the pool with the fire hydrants or the the chapel or the the flop buster sign for example. Um, but it definitely adds a lot to it. You can't drive very far without running into something interesting. Yeah, and I think that is definitely something I wanted to call out. I also wanted to comment that I was playing it up a bit for chat, but the giant robot monster that appears during the night was far more interesting in that it was less threatening and more ominous. Right? Like it didn't feel like we were constantly running from it, but it did feel like something that we needed to be aware of because it would absolutely mess us up if we didn't treat it seriously. Right? It wasn't like an

inexorable threat. It was like a hey, don't go there. Over there there are dragons. Like don't don't go that way. You can, but like don't, right? Versus like oh god, run. It's coming. Yeah.
It's the soft wall versus the you know, rigid invisible wall boundary. It's the you could keep going that way, but you're probably going to get killed and that lets you set the invisible wall boundary way farther back and make the world feel bigger and other things. So, like there's a lot that goes into, you know, feel and level design. And you guys are doing such an interesting balancing act because a good part of your level design incorporates the gameplay design in different ways than say a shooter or a MOBA or you know, RTS or a racing game. Actually, any other traditional car game. Like you guys aren't doing and most of the stuff I said wasn't traditional car games, but it's not like you guys are doing tracks. Yeah. Yeah.
Or derbies or arenas.
Yeah, off-road arenas or something.

Yeah. Mhm. Yeah, one of the things I I personally just as a player find interesting thing the the big bads in the night levels is you can kind of see them and be like, "Okay, they're over there." And then you get really focused on solving something and and they can seem like you can sort of pretty easily get around them, but then if you get too focused, suddenly you're like in the middle and the laser beam's on you and you're dead. And so it can go from like, "Oh, I'm okay. I'm okay. Oh god, I need to get out of here right now. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no." So that that shift can happen pretty quickly if you're not thinking about Yeah, and they do they do move slowly, but they're moving. And they also increase in number as you go.
and by by the second night there's two of them and on the third night there are three of them. Oh. Yeah. I also
so distracted I forgot to put my hat on. Your trucker hat?
Oh no. I also wanted to call out that I really like the Woah Coin Shop as a as a signpost for like, "Hey, if you didn't figure those out, those are pretty clearly important cuz there's a thing that you get from them specifically."

Um and I thought that was really good uh as well. I also think the like And this is a thing that comes both from the gap in between when we last saw the game and now and I'm sure from playtesting the little pieces of smoothness, like the little rough edges that have been sanded out and like cleaned up really show in a way that I can't fully express like any individual one. But the game absolutely feels much more polished and I feel like [clears throat] a lot of that is like little things about the terrain maybe not clipping quite as much or like, you know, hitting loose edges on terrain or the way that things screen physics, wheel physics, you know, jump [clears throat] there's a there's handling It's one of the things where like, this is I know like you've looked at some things. You don't often get on in on the very early Correct.
part of like design and tuning as much as you do into more of the let's throw

an open beta now or other things. So you got to come in on a way less tuned version of something than you're used to seeing. Yeah. Yeah.
And that's It's funny. That's another one of the ones that at a certain point as a developer, you just get used to. You're like, "Hey, where are you guys in the build?" You're like, "Alpha." You're like, "Oh, okay." And your brain just slots in. There's going to be a whole bunch of jank here that I should just ignore because I've heard the magic word or you know, it's like, "Oh, we're in our pre-alpha." You're like, "Oh, okay." And you know, you're fine walking through and seeing things in T-poses and UI that's half done and half scribble and like all sorts of other weirdness or hitting a button and nothing happens. You're like, "Oh, okay." Or getting in an elevator and getting mulched through like, you know. Yeah. Yeah. It remains one of my favorite moments from the playtest just cuz it was so ridiculous cuz we were like, "No, it'll be fine. Everything will be Just take the package in. IT'LL BE OH GOD, WHAT HAPPENED?" YEAH. YEAH, [clears throat] actually one of the one of the things that we did for

the internal playtests is Dave and the team, you know, they'd worked on creating all these points of interest as POIs. And so, there's a whole bunch of them. Um, and they had different levels of kind of These ones are really hard. These ones aren't so hard. And so, one of the playtests, they built a custom uh map that you just had one It was just basically a flat map with just one point of interest. And we were to go through and rate in teams of two every one of the points of interest for how difficult they were or how easy so that then Dave and the producer Lisa could use that to kind of stagger them through the levels. So, hopefully you're getting more of the easy ones at the beginning and you're getting more of the hard ones later. But, it's one of those things where we designed a whole bunch and then just let everyone play and then use that to kind of rate and sort of do And I'm not sure on the inside if there was additional stuff that you guys were doing around that. But,
Um, no. I mean, I think it was the rating both on that and we also did a rate for like how cool is this? Like is it cool?" exciting is this?

And I I will say there was there was one point of interest that got the unanimously the highest score for difficulty and it is not in the game anymore.
[laughter]
Hey, that that is sometimes the outcome, right? Where where you're like this is not like good idea not it is just not it. It's the civilization mine thing. If you remember in the old civilization, I think it was one or two the AI kept laying down mines or you'd lay down mines and the AI would walk into them and they just couldn't figure it out and it's actually a false memory cuz that was only in the beta in the beta and at one point Sid Meier wondered by and said, "Why are we spending all this time on mines? It's civilization." and they removed the feature, didn't spend the tens of hours to fix it and nobody missed it because it was mines in the game civilization. Like it was a thing they'd added to try. They said, "Oh, we could solve this but this would take X amount of time and it

is not worth it when in that X amount of time we could do this this this and this instead." Yeah, we had a similar thing around tires. You used to be able to buy different tire upgrades and they ended up creating a bunch of issues. I remember chatting with you We made a a number of adjustments to the the upgrades in the last couple of weeks and one of them was the triple jump which was everyone loves and then the other was the tires like the monster truck tires which looked really cool but they changed the physics of the vehicle a little bit. Traction changed and the and and the turn rate is changes and it was really tough to keep it like they weren't fun and they looked cool so people were like, "Oh, I want those." and then they made your game not fun and so I think we probably could spend a bunch of time tuning that to make it fun but uh we have I mean I have a list that is so long of things I wish we could get in and that was not on the anywhere near the top of the list. So, we just pulled that out um and just leave it for the

Maybe maybe that'll be a a later update to get the tire types in, but uh That's an expansion, the monster truck expansion. But it also it had such ripple throughs cuz I know I I I really like the look and I had played a single player game where I'd used them and quite liked them. And so I remember buying them in one of the later playthroughs and then I got stuck in one of the points of interest because points of interest were basically designed assuming you didn't have monster tires and I was in this very narrow kind of cavern thing and I had monster tires. I was like, "Oh god, okay." So, yeah, when you told me we took them out, I was like, "Yep." Yeah. That tracks. Which just reminds me of an early an early bug we had with the tires was when you bought the new tires, it switched out the physics objects. And I think one of the um when it replaced them, it it re-zeroed them at the at the wheel uh angle that your current wheels were at, which meant that if you had your wheels turned when you bought them, your wheels were permanently turned as forward and so people were veering off to the side. You basically had to countersteer. It was like your

steering was bent the whole way. Yeah. Uh so, people weren't having a good time with those tires. I think it's right that they got pulled.
Just pulled them, yeah. Actually, no, it's not pulled. It's uh retired. Uh yes, yes. Okay. Uh I had one more question and it appears to have left my brain because all I want to do is run around and blow more stuff up. But Since that's a That's a good point then um so, this game, for those who are checking out and listening to our chat, went live Tuesday. It is Thursday. Actually, for those watching later, it is May the 7th. This went live on therefore May the 5th. One day after Star Wars Day. Is available in the Steam and the Epic Store. Is that see That is correct?
Yeah, Steam and Epic with cross-play, so you can play across with your friends on the
linked my cross-play this morning when I logged in. Um and it it worked seamlessly, so

huzzah. And um yeah, so and one more time, if you two could introduce yourself because there are people that come in at end of stream or middle of stream. Um for joining us today, we have whoop
[laughter]
we have I I'm David uh David Whittaker. I'm the uh one of the founders here at Codename Entertainment and the game director for Without a Hitch. Mhm. And I'm Eric Jordan, I'm the CEO of Codename Entertainment. Mhm. You were nice enough to join us on stream as well as just hang out with us. This is our third look at Without a Hitch, so we went from early like just letting people look at it, mid, and this is our hey, the game's out and we wanted to talk about what changes during development. Because as you can kind of hear just from the idle chatter, there's a lot that goes on in those last couple months that or even a couple weeks that just is when you're finally at the point where it comes together enough you can do the tuning and the playing and listening to the players and everything else and kind

of push a game in from what's good into hopefully it stand out form. And by the way, that's one of the things that when you hear developers with schedules that shift is one of the hardest things because some of this last time is the most valuable time for turning a good game into a great game. And occasionally when you hear management like, "Hey, I know we have 12 weeks slotted in, we got to get it out in eight." What gets lost is part of that final, you know, to the gate where you can tune and put all the extra magic in. And that's why it's almost never a bad idea to extend a little bit, but it's almost always an awful idea to pull it in without sufficiently advanced notice. If you're 3 years out, pulling it in a month isn't bad. If you're 8 weeks out pulling it in 2 weeks is often horrific. Mhm. Well, and like like they said during the beginning, right? There were play tests last week. There was a play test on the day before it launched like iron out final bugs. So, uh I'm definitely the work really shows and I'm

really really glad that you got to to share this with us in all of its iterations and to share with us this uh this this launch version and I hope the the the launch week goes very well for you. Yeah. Yeah, I'm glad you did.
for joining us
last words before we kind of do the sign off of what's going on? Yeah. Oh, well, I was just going to say thank you for inviting us to sort of share these sort of moments along the way. It's been uh it's been fun to kind of take a moment out and sort of talk about it and reflect on it as compared to just being in it
[laughter]
and doing it. So, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And uh yeah, out now on Steam and Epic. And uh if you do end up picking up a copy, uh shoot us a review. That is always great. We read all the reviews and it's good to hear what people what people think of the game cuz that's you know, you you create these experiences and ultimately the the reward for creating those experiences is putting them in the hands of players and seeing what players do with them.

Exactly so. Exactly so. Uh I think that means that all that's left for this episode is for Jeff to say bye to the people. Bye the people everybody. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you next week. See you next time everybody.
[music]