How To Make Games In 2026, 6 Years On 1 Game, Making Custom Engines (Edmund McMillen & Tyler Glaiel)

In a world where indie game devs battle burnout, they crunch through long all-nighters, and maybe they chase the dream of a viral hit, there's one question I think that I've been asking myself. Is this soul crushing grind still worth it? Is it still the path to becoming an indie game dev in 2026? Or has friends slop, these short and sweet, hyperfocused indie games, are they the new standard? Have they flipped the script? These super sweet short games, they let creators release profitable indie games in just a few months without, well, losing their sanity. And what happens when visionary developers like Edna McMillan and Tyler Glale pour 6 years into a wildly ambitious rogike like Eugenics? Blending poop humor, cat eugenics, and 50s jazz vibes into something almost [music] infinitely deep and replayable. This game is massive. Let's jump into this super honest and raw conversation with the OG indie game devs and answer the question, is grinding for years on a single ambitious idea even worth it anymore? Or can quick

wins truly satisfy the soul of game devs in 2026? And be sure to stick around to the end because we dive deep into so much more. It's kind of a therapy session. Honestly, conversations with Ed are always therapy sessions. and the cherry on top. At the end of this conversation, Ed and Tyler actually crack open eugenics and they show well how the meat is made. So, stick around. It's really, really fun. That question I have about play testing, if someone was to stream it, I'm just curious cuz I'm I'm I'm wrapping up my game right now and I put a big confidential logo on the game just cuz I got paranoid. Like, if someone was to stream the game, do you think it would hurt it or help it?
It would help it. Yeah, it wouldn't matter.
But I mean, I don't want to say that.
Yeah, [laughter] we know. We don't want people to just like go and show it like the the second and third acts like final bosses or whatever are. Yeah. Like
we've we've talked about that. I mean, we we've talked literally about like because you know when you're showing off

cool stuff and in our game the cool stuff really doesn't the spicy visual stuff doesn't pop off until the mid t uh mid act two. So, like we we want to show a little bit of that, but we don't want to spoil too much. But then we like, well, what the does it even matter? Like, we could show the whole game and I don't think it would take away much at all.
Yeah.
But there's it it feels like an unfair advantage when it comes to
lore or something to spoil
too much of the game's story and stuff like that.
We don't want people to just like know everything that's in the game going in. We want people to be able to experience it together and like discover. Yeah,
all the stuff that's in the
Ed. I know you've I was going to ask if you guys have made a linear game before and I know Super Meat Boy, I guess we call that linear, right? Um but um Tyler, you didn't work on Super Meat Boy, right?
Um no. Okay. So, the thing about linear games is it's kind of one and done,

right? I mean, if a streamer were to stream it before it releases, you know, they can show all content. Binding of Isaac and and Mugenics is is mugenics basically infinitely playable.
I mean to a point I as much as Isaac is
Yeah. Okay. And it's fully dynamic, always changing all the time. So even if someone was to stream the game, they're not going to even get a tiny um
No. Yeah. You know, no two streamers are going to have the same rod.
Yeah. And that's that's the charm of it, right? I mean,
yeah.
It did you guys make the game with that in mind knowing that that is a marketable thing to do?
Um,
not so much marketable, but that it's fun and it's it makes it for a unique experience like going in. It's like how can we make this different for each person and I had mentioned um to Tyler earlier too and just saying like it would have been really fun or it could have been a thought that I had. I don't I don't know if I mentioned it. It would have been really fun to be be to have

recorded all of the PR stuff that we've done with when we do runs with with writers because every one of those runs is vastly different and the last one was hysterical but the guy didn't really talk much about it [laughter]
and it would have been a really really fun one to show
um
to the public. Uh I kind of regret that but I mean it just makes me excited for what's to come.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the reason I ask uh and then I want to jump into some some Twitter questions because I feel like that'd be fun to break some ice with just some questions for my audience. But the reason I ask is because I mean Ed, you and I have talked about this. I'm making a linear first-person shooter, you know,
and I I don't regret it because I love making it. I'm making what I love,
but it's taken four almost 5 years and it's just a massive project and it's one and done. you know, you play it and you're done. And I'm just sitting here at the end of the pro the project ready

to ship it, almost ready to ship it. And I'm thinking, is this is this the is this not a feasible way to make games anymore? You know, a linear game, not very dynamic. It's fun. It's a great story. It feels good. You know, what do you guys think? Is that a feasible way to make games anymore?
Yeah.
I mean, don't aren't all like the major blockbuster games linear games? I wouldn't say so anymore. I don't know. Like I I kind of I don't know. I don't really play
They're all open world like
sandboxy. Yeah.
They still like Last of Us. I mean Resident Evil is not going to be sandboxy.
Correct.
Yeah. True.
Resident Evil I feel like [snorts]
I'm not saying it is like nobody makes linear games anymore.
What I'm saying is it's I think it's still viable. I think in a lot of ways it's there are a certain amount of people out there who look at a game like Isaac or Mugenics and think to themselves, I don't have that amount of time.
Yeah. I don't want to play a 200 hour

game.
Like isn't isn't uh um God the the new big giant indie game Hollow Knight Silk. That's a linear game for the most part.
It's Metroid Vania.
Metroid Vania. Do we consider Metroid Vania linear games? Yes, I would consider that a linear game.
There's like two paths there. There's a few branching paths, but that is h
I think don't we consider that
linear? Linear is a weird word. I like
on single player campaign story
driven. Story driven.
Do you guys ever Do you ever wish you had some time to do that or do you enjoy creating things?
We've worked we were we were working on one. Um, when when Tyler moved to Santa Cruz, we started on Ether, a full version of Ether, which was the first game that we made together.
Yeah.
And um, that was I mean, it's I guess it's linear. I mean, you still get to go wherever you wanted. It's open world.
It wouldn't have been linear though what we were talking about for it.

I Yeah, I guess it's still open world.
Yeah. The End was a linear game,
right?
Yeah. Yeah. There you go.
Yeah. The end like that was a linear game.
What do you What do you prefer to make? I mean, is it just seasonal? It depends on your mood. This is uh the end design was pretty easy to make because it only took nine months to make and there weren't any like hiccups throughout development.
Platformers aren't the hardest thing in the world.
One part about working on something like Mugenics is infinitely replayable is that
you don't get bored of it while making it.
Yeah. Yeah. Which surprises you, right?
Which happens with like a single player campaign type game. you know, I well, in the leadup to The End is Night coming out, I would I could 100% the game in 4 hours, and I I did that quite a few times. So, you know, it's hard to like view that from the perspective of a player because you're like, "All right, I've I like at this point I'm a speedrunner of this game. Like, I've played it so many times that I know every every like little piece of uh of the game like by heart." And um it's

hard to like uh just have fun playing the game. I mean that game was I did have fun playing that game, but it's hard to engage with it as like fan.
Yeah.
Turn that into a six-year project. It wouldn't
it felt nice.
A tutorial of Mugetics that I've had to play like a hundred times is like that's what that's what grades me when I have to like start up a new run. I'm like, "Oh god, I got played [laughter] 120th time." That takes me like two minutes to play the tutorial. But
yeah,
realistically, I don't I don't think any genre isn't viable.
Okay.
I think I think in fact, I think the opposite. I think it's the it's the linear, nonlinear, it doesn't matter what the hell you're making as long as it's something new that people don't know that they want. Um, totally. Totally. Once somebody has bought a game, they don't buy it usually again, right? So, it doesn't matter if you've got them playing the game for eight hours versus

a thousand hours. That doesn't translate to to more money with Biting of Isaac or whatever else.
Well, it matters a little bit in how long people stream it for.
Um, okay. The reason I asked you all this is because [snorts] uh I had a a previous guest on and he wanted me to ask you a question, Ed. And Tyler, obviously, you can pipe in.
Is it why poop? because I already answered [laughter] that one.
I answered that one yesterday.
I think maybe maybe we have some Twitter people follow me on Twitter who
it's the new it's the new why meetat man. I'm I forgot [laughter] I forgot all about those questions.
Yeah, I played with a lot of poop. I played a little bit of mugenics today and I had a good I had a great time actually. Um but lots of poop. But uh the previous guest um he and I were talking about friend slop and I don't know if you guys even care about friendlop or know what friend slop is. Um because you just because you seem like you're in your own little silos.
What's that Tyler?
I've played one or two of those.
Yeah. So the the question is basically like Friendlop is this like relief to a

lot of indie developers because they feel like they can and it's true like they can spend three four months on a game, make multiplayer, use assets, and just pump it out there on Steam and have a ton of success in like four to six months, you know, maybe even a month. I've seen some developers spend like 30 days on a project, I think, and it just blows up. And the person who was on the podcast, his name is Chris Sakowski. He's a he's like a marketing expert. And he's looking at the data [gasps] and he said that indie developers don't have to be miserable and grind for years to make great games anymore. They can make them really quick and pump them out fast, and that can be a really enticing idea. Um, and I said, "Well, you know, when I first started making indie games, you know, I I saw, you know, Edmond McMillan on that documentary and he was he was just grinding and he you were suffering,

you know, and I said, I don't know what Ed would think about this because Ed has had to suffer and spend years on projects." Chris on the podcast, he said, "Well, ask Ed how he feels. Is grind sometimes a necessary thing for great games or are you doing something wrong if you're grinding and you're miserable?
Um,
is that a convoluted question? I'm not sure. But
I I I think depending on the situation. No, I guess I understand I understand the question. Um, yeah, I mean the question of like if you're grinding, does that mean you put yourself in a situation where you needed to do so? Um, in the situ in the times that I've the first game I ever worked on and first grind I ever did was for to release Gish. Um, and that was literally we needed to do it in order to make money. We were out of money and we needed to do a bunch of 24-hour shifts to get this out by the date that we said

that we were going to do um, in order to get it out to people because everybody expected it then. That was the first one. And that would repeat for almost every significant one until mugenics. Um where it was like lock a date down um because me or somebody I'm working with is running out of money and we crunch to get to that date. Um and there's more to that though. It's it's it's the word crunch. The it's the idea of crunching for something. The hustle, the the throwing your life away into a project.
Mhm. I don't count that as crunch, but that is required for this. That is a reality. Um, and I talked about that recently. And it's a reality simply because if you don't do it, there's a out here that will and he'll crush you.
It's very competitive.
That's that's it. That's the reality. Like there is somebody out there that will step right up in there.
And you that person might have no life other

than this. So, it's like, well, you got to do what you got to do and you got to get in there and do it. Um, that is simply factual, but how you hustle and how you how much of it is a torture to yourself or a detriment to your life is really up to you and um but I do think it's still a requirement. But I can understand the argument. you feel like it is a required like cuz I that's what I said in the podcast and I just said I said most games at the end of the rainbow you have to live in hell for a little bit you know two months 3 months of just grinding and and you kind of you might even hate your game you might be kind of sick of it um and if I I just said like if developers are in that hell it doesn't mean they've done something wrong that's just what happens Especially towards the end of production, you know, that final 5 to 10% of development is actually like the final 40 or something.

I think the really like contentual thing is like when it's a big company forcing employees to do that for them and that and they're not getting all they're like not really a part of the project beyond being like a credited name. Like they're not it's not their game, it's somebody else's game. And I think that that's, you know, that is understandably like considered bad these days, but it I don't think it uh fully applies if you are like if it's if it's your game and you're you are a
like a stakeholder and like a main like core part of the game
and have an investment in its success,
in which case I'm going to do all the work that's required to to get the game done.
Yeah. I guess I this is related to friend swap because and believe me guys we're I will talk all about mugenics but yeah I did I did want to ask you about this um mainly because
mainly because Ed when you were in that

documentary and I know you're sick of the documentary probably um
they're coming out they're coming out Monday
uh with another one.
No they're coming out to film.
Oh are they? [laughter]
Yeah.
Oh man. Okay. [snorts] Well I'd love Yeah. So, like um congratulations by the way. That's awesome. But like the reason this is related to the documentary is because I learned from you that if I wanted to make a game and a great game and I wanted to have a stake in it and make some money from it and not work for somebody else, uh I would need to suffer a little bit. And just cuz I observed you doing it and I was like, "Okay, well, he's doing it. I'm going to do it." And a lot of indie developers felt the same way. they saw you suffering and they were like, "Man, this guy's like he's grinding and this is kind of cool." Like it's almost like um it's like uh you know, you're rooting for the hero to to win the war. Um, and [gasps] this is related to to Friends slop

because it feels like there's this thing I don't know if you guys have seen like on Twitter and stuff like so many Friend slop games have been going like blowing up and doing so well [snorts] and it seems like this fantasy of hey, I can make a game quick and fast and dirty and make a ton of money. It seems like that fantasy is being propagated on Twitter and I'm trying to figure out am I am I old school or and am I wrong to think that that is a fairy tale or is that actually really happening and is that something
I think an answer to a lot of your questions is stop caring
you're think you're overthinking this dude
you want do you want people to refer to your game as blank slop like that [laughter]
like I mean it's kind of just like in the genre name at this point. Like that's what people think about those games.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, the the reason I bring it up and the reason I care is because so I have a YouTube channel and I I I I talk about game development. I just tell

people my journey and I I I try and encourage them and cheer them on. And I'll cheer people on through burnout. I'll say kind of get over it and just keep going through it. You got to burn through it. And sometimes people are like, "No, actually, if you're burnt out and you're miserable, you're doing it wrong. See all these friend slop games. See all these developers who've made a game in four months. They're doing it right. Thomas, you're giving bad advice." And so I'm trying to figure out like, am I am I wrong here in in telling people to power through the burnout? You know what I mean?
Uh, yes and no. I mean I the answer to all these questions is also yes and no.
It all depends.
I'm a proponent of people making games like if they if they are low like early on in their career and don't have much experience to just make stuff as quick as they possibly can
and learn the whole the whole cycle,
you know,
prototype, development, release,

support, like all that as fast as possible and make as many as you can.
Slop it up.
Slop it up.
Slop it up. Swap it up. If you're learning, swap it up.
That's good.
Both of both of us made like a of like Newgrounds games back in the day, and those took
between days and weeks to make,
sometimes hours for me. It feels like the the first slop. Go ahead. Sorry.
My most popular like Newgrounds game took me three hours to make. [laughter]
Slop it up. Yeah, it feels kind of like the Newgrounds era is coming back in a weird way. Um, with so many
Sometimes it doesn't matter, sometimes it does. It
it in the end, all that matters, the only thing that is shared amongst all of the successes is someone is offering something that hasn't exactly been done the way it's being done here and it is fun.

Got it. So, newness is really important to you, Ed. I mean it doesn't even as long but yeah newness is important. Um I don't want to make something that's boring. I mean I think that stuff that seems old is boring. You don't want to do the exact same thing as everybody else. You don't want to do the exact same themes and genre and everything is you know you want to try to mix it up as much as you can. But there's another component is that is is the game good which is a very hard thing to figure out especially for new developers too.
Um like is this elegant? Is it obtuse? Does it work? Is it giving you all the bits and pieces? Like, is it is it stimulating all of the fun centers of your brain that it should be? Is it making you feel like you're doing something difficult and overcoming it? Is it is there uh some sort of repetition to it that's meditative? You know, there's all these different elements of what makes a good game good um that aren't universal. So, that one's

hard to quantify, but what are you going to do? But that's what John Blow would say. Like if if if someone was coming to him and say and they were like, "Here, I'm burning out on this game."
He would look at the game and then he'd be like,
"Maybe the game's not fun and that's why you're burning out on it."
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's a that's a reality. And it's a harsh reality.
Sometimes that's the case.
Sometimes it is the case.
Yeah.
Um and it's not to give up, but maybe wrap it up. Maybe wrap it up. [laughter]
Like wrap it up. Move on to the next I think
John Blow does seem to be a fan of like I don't know take a break and then come back to it with like a fresh set of eyes or whatever.
Sometimes sometimes it works
which is sometimes what's needed. Um my thing is always if you're making a game people and you want to sell it and it's not just for like a learning thing, you need to have like an like a reason why people would want to play your game specifically over any of the billion other options that are on Steam.
Exactly.
You can't answer that question then

you're going to be in for harder time.
Right. So, let's let's shift gears here and talk about mugenics. Um, you guys are in the middle of play testing right now, right? Or would you call it beta testing? Is it beta testing or is it just
It's play testing. I And I totally forgot to
I totally forgot that I gave you a code. And then when you mentioned playing it, I was like, "Wait a minute, did I give you a code?" I'm like, "So, my brain is just full." Um,
yeah. I I played I played I think for um like an hour and a half which I know is not long enough. Um [laughter]
I think maybe you needed 20 hours from me before you could get a good assessment.
I would say six hours.
Six hours.
But I will say, man, you know, it's cool. Uh you know, these games are not for me. They really aren't. I'm just telling you the truth here. Um I'm too like uh I'm not heady enough for these kind of games. And I had a blast. I think I think the reason I had a blast and I wanted to move into this as the first question. The reason I had a blast

was because the tutorial and the teaching was so well done. I want to ask about that. What h like was that a pain to to to tutorialize this game?
Tyler really did that. Tyler did that. Well, we were we started working on the tutorial uh like a year and a half ago probably. Most of the systems were in place. We did like this was a it was a long process because we knew this was the first thing that we did was we did a lot of play test runs with like Steam remote play where we would stream the game from my PC on like people would play it on my PC through Steam remote play.
Oh wow, that's cool. And we would just see what we needed to tell people to get them to learn the game when they play their first run. Keep notes of that and we're like, "Okay, people need to know this and this and this." Like every single run starts with, "Okay, here's how you click things and here's what the mana cost is and and here's where what

the UI means." Then it was um when we sat down to make the tutorial, we wrote a quick I think I wrote like a quick outline of what needed to be said. like it's going to be an intro adventure where you do a battle, an event, a treasure, and then a boss fight or like a, you know, intro boss fight. And in the battle, it needs to go uh we need a character to pop up and tell you these things. And because this is the very first thing that people will see when they start the game, we can put a lot of effort into polishing all of that stuff,
like um having the NPC just pop up on screen and point to UI elements and stuff. All that is really annoying stuff to do. Like there's a reason why most of these games out there, their tutorial is it'll pause the game, dim the screen, and just pop up a window that just says this is what a parry means, okay? And stuff like that, which is fine. It just the goal is just to teach you to play the game. But a lot of the like a lot of the the work that we put into having the

NPCs feel alive when they're talking to you, having like personality in that uh we were able to like all that stuff later on in the game as well. So it wasn't like effort wasted for just a tutorial.
No. No. And like like I said, you know, if you could capture an audience that includes people like me.
Yeah. with those tutorials and because I honestly guys I've never played a game like that. I I play I play like I said I play story games and horror games and so I was just like oh this is actually really fun like a turnbased um turn-based game like this and it was um unique and fresh for me but I think what really worked about the tutorials is is they were funny.
Um the whole game the whole game is hilarious.
Who's who's the mind behind the humor?
I think it's me.
[laughter]
Yeah, Ed writes the text. There's there's some bit there's some bits of me in there.

Yeah, Tyler wrote he go [laughter] I laughed when I saw that. So, good job.
Everybody reacts to that, so we can't replace it.
There there are certain things in the game that I don't I I that Tyler has it placeholdered in that are just legitimately funny for many different reasons and I don't change them.
Yeah. You know, it brings me it brings me to to think about um adding features to games. Games like this, when you add a feature or a new ability or whatever, do you guys think if we add this, we have to tutorialize it. So that's like an extra layer of time and development and cost for this type.
We did all the features and then did the tutorial.
Oh, really? So you don't ever It sounds like a long time ago, but that was like four years into development. Really? So you you knew you knew what what features you needed at the beginning of the development.
Yeah, that's I think that's the general like uh way you design a tutorial is

that you never want to do the tutorial as the first thing you make because it's too important and you don't know what you need to tell people. So, we had the game in place when the tutorial was uh being worked on, and we could measure how well it worked by just giving the game to a new person, letting them play the tutorial, letting them play a run, and then seeing if they actually know how to play the game after the tutorial. And over the course of like I don't know probably six months where we're slow where we're slightly rearranging things that are said in the tutorial and being like oh this isn't the right place to mention turn order because people gloss over it here. We do have to mention turn order or else people don't know what things at the top of the screen are.
Yeah.
Um just slightly adjusting things over and over until until it seems like we can hand the game to a new player and they could just play it and not be confused. We've continued to to add and chip away at it. There's and and there's always a back and forth like I'll I'll

get a play test report from somebody because so the way I play test too um is I encourage you to beat Boris because that's I need that in order to play test. That's the whole point of me giving you a code. [laughter]
So beat Boris so I can ask you some questions.
How far how far into it is Boris?
About four hours.
Okay. But um so I'll get feedback and then I'll be like, "Tyler, people still aren't understanding this. What should we do?" At this point, it's it's fine.
Yeah. [laughter] There's a lot of there's a lot of nothing like
Yeah. Do nothing.
There's there's a there's a danger in adding too much information to the tutorial that you don't immediately need to know.
Yeah.
Um
cuz people will not read stuff like it'll be like, "Oh, there's too much text." And yeah, quite a few times I've gone through that tutorial and chopped out walls of text and then had to be like, "Well, we need to add this." Like, I just I'm going to add two more words here that'll give enough information that hopefully people will retain it. Fingers crossed. There's only so much

you can do. Um, and hopefully they will learn from experience or when in doubt, they can always talk to an NPC and get tips, which we do have in there,
but nobody seems to do. So, is this um is this a a particular problem for for this game?
Like, do the tutorials need to be much more in-depth than your previous games?
Of course, this needs words and all the other ones don't need words.
This is the worst the worst type of like tutorial to like [laughter] make is this type All the other games.
It's a board game. Like, it's a board game. It's like you just make a level where you controls on like a wall and then you press the control like oh that's jump. Oh, I got to jump over this thing and then that's the tutorial. Like that's all the other games we've made literally like what's the tutorial for Isaac is the starting room has the controls on it.
Yeah, there's a drawing on the ground.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like the starting area of the end just has some drawings on the walls. Uh
Yep.

Older games are similar to that. That's nice. I like doing those types of tutorials a lot a lot better than this like X dialogue like thing that takes six months of iteration to make sure it works right kind of thing.
Well, how are you guys feeling? How you feeling about launch?
I'm feeling good.
Yeah. You good? Um, [laughter] you know, just we're like in the weeds on the on the boring part of devs and it's hard to like think ahead too much.
Yeah. when I have to be like, "Oh, I gotta like do gamepad controls,
right?"
Tyler's really in the most boring part of development.
Yeah.
Um,
is it bugs or is it um
No, no, the game doesn't have bugs. No bugs. Zero. [laughter]
Promise. Guaranteed.
Tyler's making gamepad support. He He's He's just finished the bulk of getting everything ready for localization. Um, which involved him going through how many lines of of text? How many words?

What?
140,000 English words.
Good grief.
Which is like several thousand tool tips. And what I had to do the previous month was read over every tool tip with the code in another window to make sure that there wasn't like, you know, we didn't say the wrong thing in the tool tip or what the code does and be like, "Oh, I don't remember what this thing does actually." and have to load it up in the game and double check and stuff like that. And that took forever. That was a nightmare. And then we have another guy we're looking over for grammar and punctuation errors. Um,
yeah.
And like slowly whitelisting a bunch of text that's ready to be localized, which there's still errors in it and they're catching it. But
so is this
it's the most boring task I've ever done?
Is it stressful to you? Like does it does it cause you to kind of freak out or is it just a grind? It's
not just a grind. Just sit down and do it, right?
Yeah. I mean, this is this is not both

of y'all's first rodeo. You've you've releas you've made and released games,
but is this your longest development cycle?
Yeah.
For a game.
Yeah. Yep.
It's five years for both of us.
Six years.
When it comes out, it'll be like six years and like a month from when we started in this version. That's not counting prototypes before we started working.
Right. Well, that was I think I saw a video that mugenics has been in development for 10 years because it was like you had like a small little prototype at
Well, that wasn't in development. It there was an iteration of Mugenics that was a prototype that was much different than the game is now. Um, which was in development for about uh 18 months um and cancelled.
Okay. Uh, and then it was nothing for many years and then yeah, officially back in development six years ago.
So why do you think it took six years to make this game?

It's big. [gasps and snorts]
We've talked we talked about that too because we got to the point last year where we're like, "Oh, most games like this would have only done the first two acts and that would have been the end of the game." And a lot and our testers just assume that that is the end of the game and then they're floored when there's a third act. Um, and so we could have chopped a third of the game out and probably still bit had a pretty okay game. I don't know. This really felt like a we're going for it type situation. Like this. Me personally, I think this is my best game and I don't want I want it to be my best game. And if it has the I see the potential for it, so I want to go for it. And I think without even saying that, me and Tyler agreed that without saying we agreed, we know that this game needs this in order to be what it should be.
Yeah. So you kind of you kind of view it as your magnumopus. Would you say that?
I guess if if Yeah, I guess.
Yeah. It's
it really And it's the culmination of

everything. not only what I've learned through all these years, but also thematically it pulls in characters and aspects and storylines from a majority of my games.
Wow.
That are all sucked together in in this thing.
Well, Tyler, what do you think? Why why do you feel like it's it's taken so long?
Well, I think what happened was we kept adding stuff to it and it kept getting better. [laughter] Like that's that's like the short of it. Like as we add stuff to it, the game gets better and better and better. And like normally when you're working on a game, you just keep adding stuff to it until it feels like you've added all you can and then it's done and then you release it. And this game just never feels like it's done because everything we add makes the game better. And it's we're we're not done because we've got like enough content in our like ideas page of the design spreadsheet to like make DLC's, maybe three DLCs. So there's a lot of uh just, you know, it's a big game. Yes,
it's a big game. We also like we work

very efficiently. Like all the setup that I have to implement content, it's very quick to add items and enemies,
right?
And so that time six years is really a
Would you guys say in terms of like visual fidelity, is this game more visually um I don't know the word like polished than your previous games or is it less polished visually? It's more It's more polished than anything I've done.
Okay. Okay. And there's a ton of assets, right? Like just a ton of assets.
Yeah. Insane. Like [laughter] crazy numbers. Crazy crazy numbers.
Yeah. I should add up how much how much uh seconds of animation there are in the game if you add up every enemy's like animation set.
Yeah. The the bulk of the work is animation. Like we we have three animators who've been working as much as they feel like working um for the past couple years. So, it's it's a it's a tremendous amount of animation work and uh it is a situation where now that

we're polishing we're doing cut scenes and and and wrapping that stuff up, but that's closing. Like within the next month and a half, I think they'll be all be done and then all these three animators can just dive in and just pad stuff out, make stuff better, add more animations. It's kind of the more the marrier situation where it's like we still do the Pokemon thing where most magical spells have one of seven animations that that are used. [clears throat]
And it might look cooler to have a custom animation for a specific ability.
Yeah.
Um so they can go ahead and they can do that and they can rig it together like like Tyler said like his stuff works really well. All you do is put it in and export it and then you write what it is in play animation this one and then it's done. So, it's it's a very easy thing for anybody to jump in and do.
Well, it's one thing.
We have well over a thousand cat animations, too. It's
are you
kind of crazy at this point how many there are.
Dude, that's crazy. You know, I think about the complexity of visual and like visual assets and audio assets. And

that's one thing, but something that I was thinking about when I was playing, you know, in the time that I had to play it was how complicated the balancing of this game must be. And I'm thinking about it because for for the project that I'm working on, which is again a linear first-person shooter, about 3 hours in with my current play testing that I'm doing, about 3 hours into the game play, the balancing just completely unravels. You know, too much ammo or too little ammo. It's very bipolar. You know, some people have way too much uh currency, some people have no currency at all. It's like this balancing nightmare and it keeps me up at night because I'm thinking, how am I going to solve this without just like understanding where every single item is placed in the game? And so I wanted to ask you guys, how are you balancing this game? It
because there's so many variables. There's so many [gasps]
so many. It's balanced like a board game. It's bal balanced like Magic the

Gathering. There are casting costs for spells and those translate to, you know, uh like on on average uh a spell that costs five mana and deals three damage is like an average,
right? Um it's actually a little bit lower than average depending on the class that you're going with. There are certain classes that can do things more efficiently than other classes. There are certain classes that can do things that other classes can't. week. There's there's certain classes that can never do certain things. Um, but it's a numbers thing that does
isn't that hard to tweak and tune. Yeah. And and and [clears throat] we I think a lot of it comes from our experience with Magic the Gathering. It's and playing board games period. Like Terraforming Mars, Magic the Gathering,
also a rogue like which kind of thriving imbalance in a lot of ways. You know, people want to want to do crazy. you you know maybe you'll get an over overpowered ability but you won't get that in any other realm. So that's you have like the you have this thing where

it's like this cat is really crazy right now. This [laughter] only time I'm ever going to have this specific cat with this combo because it's so rare to get this like one disorder and [laughter] whatever. So then you're like even though it's overpowered you're like scared like what if I lose this cat I don't get this stuff.
Yeah.
And like people play differently like that. such
and it's easy to collide the when me and and Tyler have are playing um and we tell each other, "Oh my god, look at this broken run." And then we show each other the chances of failure is high because you you fly too close to the sun. You get really relaxed with your play styles. You're like, "Ah, whatever else." And then you're
or or it gets really tense, which is great because the tense moments where you have to like, "How am I going to survive this are always really fun."
Um
Yeah. But we are on the lookout for times where that's not the case where you're like this is broken and I'm not in any risk whatsoever and this is only

like two pieces of a combo or only one ability in the worst case. Like what I had a run the other day where all right this is still these are early game classes so I could still spoil the abilities but Hunter has an ability called traps which uh if he shoots his attack on an empty tile it places a bear trap on me. Okay. And this ability had an extra passive on it that was whenever a trap catches something, he gets a b an extra basic attack. So he can use two attacks the next turn. Like he basically gets the the bear trap back. Turns out that was extremely broken when comboed with one other ability the hunter has, which is split shot, which hits five tiles in a plus shape. Cuz you just shoot one enemy with it, does damage to the enemy, and then surrounds him in bear traps. The enemy can't move because once he moves, he gets captured by the bear trap. You get your attack back. You then just like scatter bear traps in a larger area cuz you have two attacks

this time. And then you just spin them around there. And then he can like push at it and he's into the bear traps and he'll have like eight attacks the next turn. And like I can't lose. Like this is it's impossible to lose. I'm not even in any danger of losing because I can surround every enemy with bear traps and just stand back.
Oh, so we did have to nerf that ability like
Yeah. What's crazy though is that we played for god knows how long. This is an this is a combo that is within the class. This is not a crazy combo. like you should you should have run into this at some point, but the odds are still very low. So, we just never I've had the option. I never even I just didn't think, oh, wait, maybe I should try this. I usually have something better to do.
But, uh
Well, and now you know there wasn't anything better to do.
Yeah, [laughter] now I know. Well, it doesn't matter now.
It doesn't know you're doing the right thing.
Imbalance. Imbalance. To your point, Tyler, imbalance is kind of a feature of this genre. in to some degree.

Well, it's definitely a feature in Isaac and that's one of the reasons why people like to play.
Yeah. Is it Is it because it's just really surprising and really funny when something when you have a run that's just totally different than you expected?
It feels rewarding. It feels rewarding when it feels like you figured out how to break the game.
Yeah.
Yeah. And it's like a fleeting imbalance because once the run is done
Yes.
you're back to where you were at the start again. like you have you have your fun for the hour that the run lasts for and then you're like all right well time to find something else now. Whereas like and this was an issue that I had with older uh tactical RPGs that I was playing like uh Final Fantasy Tactics uh A2 like the DS one where I figured out an incredibly broken combo in that game at around the halfway point where it took to the halfway point to like train up all the dudes to have the stuff that was broken where I could just beat every combat in like two turns without enemies

taking a turn. But then the rest of the game was boring cuz I was just doing that over and over and over again, right? Like like I ruined the game for myself by breaking and by figuring out and is it's very fun. Like it is a innately like fun thing to figure out this type of stuff.
Yeah.
But so so it's like the the genre this genre thrives in you can figure out this type of stuff and you can have your fun,
but you can't lean on that for the entire game. like you just you have your one moment of like this is crazy and then enjoy it while it lasts.
Dude, that's that's such an interesting I I've learned a lot from what you guys are saying because with with like a linear game, you know, like a first-p person shooter or something, the game stacks on itself and if it becomes imbalanced, you need some kind of I don't know what my solution is going to be, honestly, you know. Yeah,
you've gota you've got to have some kind of thing that that balances it back for

the player. Resident Evil does Resident Evil 4 does this so well. You know, they're going to give you items when you don't even know you need them. Um, and the algorithm or whatever you call it, the the functions behind behind the code are going to are going to do it for you, you know. But that's incredibly
Resident Evil just like doesn't have ammo in drawers until you open them and then it decides whether or not it should. Yeah,
something like that.
Yeah.
Well, that's great, guys. So, let's let's shift gears here before we open up the I would love to open up the game in I guess are what what engine are we using? Are we using a custom engine?
Yeah, it's a custom engine.
Cool. If you're cool opening it up before we do that, I have some questions from my audience for you guys if you want to jump into those.
Yeah.
Um, this is from Nen Steiner. He says, "Making indie games is risky as hell and staying healthy mentally and physical." physically is a key factor for good work. [snorts] Uh, at least for me. So, I'm genuinely curious. Does Edmund, and

Tyler, you can answer as well. Does Edund take any precautions to protect himself?
What? From SARS? Okay. No, I DON'T KNOW. [laughter]
Wasn't that
co is right?
Yeah.
Got him.
Co. Okay. So that's [laughter]
I feel like we all we all went through that in 2020 anyway. So whatever.
Great. Uh okay. This is from Vista.
I don't use protection.
There you go. Use protection. Very.
No, I I don't. I don't. [laughter] I'm married.
How should indie devs decide which other devs This is a great question actually because you guys seem to have really good chemistry. Uh, how should indie devs decide which other devs they should collaborate with? How do you how do you decide how long to spend making the game and why is that too short or too long? So, I guess the first part of the question is how do you know who's a good who's a good partner to work with?
I think it's important for me to find somebody who is smarter than I am.

Number one,
I think it's important for me to find someone who's dumber than I am. [laughter] No, I mean uh do a game jam, right? Like do a weekend game jam project. You'll you'll learn pretty quickly how well
that is hard though. I I that people ask that question a lot and I'm sometimes like what like how how did the people that I found and sometimes it didn't work, you know, like a lot of the times it didn't work. um a few times it did work and you know I'm still in touch with a few programmers that I've worked with over the years that I'm still friends with and um I don't know. Yeah, you [gasps and sighs]
that's hard. It's hard. It's hard. Like I I I uh I I lucked out with Tyler for sure. Um not only is he smart um but he's also incompetent, but he's also incompetent or

um but he's also as driven as I am, which was always hard to find. Somebody who wanted this as much as I did and wanted to work as much as I did. Like I mean, if I didn't have kids, I would be working in tandem with him and I'd probably be divorced at this point. [laughter]
Like I enjoy it a lot. Yeah.
And I Tyler enjoys it a lot. Um, and that's important. Uh, finding somebody who is on the same page with you as far as that I think is very important.
Um, because it's very easy to just slip past each other.
Yeah. Finding finding like an even partner is is very difficult. Like in a lot of my early games, it wasn't it wasn't like a even relationship because it ended up being me doing the bulk of like the design and programming on some of my earlier projects like like uh as much as I wanted the artists I was working with to help with like the game

design stuff as well. I would be like, "Hey, try making a level." They people would make a level and be like [laughter] and they they don't quite understand the the what's what goes into it. Well, so I was like, "All right, fine. I'm just going to you're going to do the art and it's going to be fine." But uh I also just like I worked with a lot of people on flash games. Like I would just try working with people and they would be it would be very short projects. So it was like all right well if I get this guy after then what? weeks wasted working on some piece. A lot like there's a lot of Newground stuff encouraged to team up with someone, make a game, see how well you work together, see if it was see if it felt like both parties were pulling their weight and like contributing creatively to the thing or if it was like, "All right, well, I'm working on this thing and they're not and then release it."
Yeah. Well, one of my games I the artist basically said, "Sure, I'll make a game

with you and then just send me a file of art from a cancelled project." [laughter]
And then I made a game out of it. And then he [laughter] to be fair, he was very busy at the time with actual important games.
Does having a stake in the game financially does that help?
Uh, yeah. I know I would not work on a project if I [laughter]
I'm not working for I'm not working for anybody but myself really.
That's right.
I think that's that's an important question to ask
like Yeah.
Yeah. Cuz like, you know, getting paid to make a game is a lot different than, you know, uh risking risking it all to eventually get paid with with a royalty, you know. Um, and it seems like that's what you guys that's the arrangement that you guys are you're both sort of partners on this, right?
Um, okay.
Um, have you guys ever had a a real conflict like one where where you just buted heads on something?
Once it was fuzzy feet versus static

shock naming.
There was one other
What was the other one?
We'll go with the fuzzy feet one first. [laughter]
Here we The other one was The other one was the map uh visual.
Oh, yes, yes, yes.
Yeah, that one. But uh the fuzzy feel one was funny. So, I had an ability for a class that um as it walks and builds up static charge and then it stops walking it like arcs it to the tiles. I called it fuzzy feet cuz I thought it was funny.
Static shock [laughter]
and Ed wanted to call it static shock. But I think the thing what happened was that Ed um asked me like he was okay with fuzzy feet when he thought that it was a thing that I called static electricity when I was a kid.
Yeah.
And that's not what it was. It's just this fuzzy feet cuz the cats have fuzzy feet and they make static electricity when they walk.
Yeah.
But it's a funny little um
I got to switch it through.
So that was like that was like a for real conflict.

Yeah. Well, we couldn't agree.
We couldn't agree. It doesn't matter. But like We took it to We took it to Twitter and then they voted on Fuzzy Feet. [laughter]
So, I lose. I lose.
Have y'all
It's still In my mind, it's still static shock in my head.
Yeah,
I see it.
Have you guys ever had a uh like a conflict where
we physically hold each [laughter] other down on the ground
where where it scared you where it scared you like you were like,
"Wow, I didn't I didn't know that you felt that way." [snorts]
No, not No, not me. [laughter] That's good. Seriously,
I like what the like the biggest like butt heads thing was probably the world map stuff.
Yeah,
there was um I wasn't I was not willing to let that go for a while.
Tyler really really wanted it to feel like you could visually see the cat adventuring through the world. And I I I agreed with him, but his suggestions weren't working with my my um the way I

visualize things. and I couldn't get it to work in the way he was seeing it.
So, the compromise was to have transitions where you transitioned through to the different chapters, which you haven't seen,
but you will one day. [laughter]
Yeah. Basically, there's a part in the game where like when you go from the alley to the sewer, it shows like the alley front sewer in the back and it like zooms out of the alley and into the sewer. That's the current that's the uh the compromised solution. But for for a long time it was placeholdered as like a world map with like alleys sewers and then the cats would just move from alley to
Yeah. Like like you could see a globe or a large map of the whole area. But the the problem for me, we're getting into the nitty-gritty here. The problem for me was that it would work if if it was like a topographical topographical map. it works if if all the locations were on

the top of a map, but the majority of them are not. They're under the earth. So, it's very hard to visually make that work in a way that works and is pleasing to me, that makes me feel okay. Um, I've seen other games do it the way I tried to do it. I hated it. So,
yeah, we didn't end up doing that.
Yeah.
Uh, so Tyler, do you feel like you agree with Ed now on that one thing? What? NO, [laughter]
like I would have preferred a map there, but you know, we don't have a map, so whatever. He would have preferred static charge instead of fuzzy [laughter] fuzzy feet. So,
yeah. Okay, next question here. At a GC talk after making Super Meat Boy, someone asked Ed if the crunch to get Super Meat Boy out for Xbox was worth it in order to have their crazy success. Ed, you said no. Since then, I would love to ask, have you found a happier path to your own personal satisfaction in gamedev?
Yeah, I'm not I'm not unhappy in any

way, shape, or form. I mean, I think that that answer caught me in a time where it didn't feel like it was worth it. I looking back, I thought my answer was I don't know, and then maybe I said no. But um [clears throat]
I just cut out the I notes FROM [laughter]
but I mean even and then looking back now all that said and done
probably not. [laughter]
It probably wasn't worth
it probably wasn't probably wasn't worth it. But I mean either way like this it got me to where I am. It needed to happen. It did happen. There's nothing I could do about it. I I never have and or will put myself in that same situation again. The crunch was art wasn't us that was doing that. It was a company that was telling us we need to do it in order to get into a thing we didn't even get into, which was a promotion that they cut from us.
Golly.
And that's why it didn't feel like

[laughter] it was worth it because it was a lot of killing ourselves
for something that was promised that was taken away.
Wow. and we didn't get to see anything. Everybody else got the promotion, but since we were the last game in this failed promotion, they just got the promotion and it didn't matter and we could have released later.
Tyler, have you ever have you ever crunched like Ed did for Super Meat Boy where you feel like it may have not been worth it?
Let's see. uh for closure was my first commercial project and we we put in a handful of all nighters towards the end to try and submit it to uh the Sony search for PlayStation 3. Um which like you know all nighters kind of suck. They're they're not fun is it wasn't good. I think what happened was I think the artist needed to needed to pull an allnighter whereas I didn't finish what I needed to do and I just in solidarity pulled an all nighter with him.
Right. But, you know, that's not quite as comparable to I have it with with the

with the Meat Boy stuff. I don't know. I I like working a lot if it's I feel I feel good when I'm getting work done and being productive. I feel bad if I'm like sitting at my computer and being like, I got to get work done.
Yeah.
And then not getting work done. Like that's that's when I'm like, I need a break.
Well, how many hours do you guys work a day? And you know, maybe it's random, but I'm just curious what your schedule looks like. Uh, I usually I try I try to work from 8 to 4.
Okay. That's a lot different than what it was during the documentary, right?
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I but I've got two children and a wife um
and I'm the only one who drives.
Got it.
So, it's difficult.
It's amazing how a wife and kids, you're you're just not allowed to you're just not allowed to work whenever you want anymore, you know? And I I think that's a good thing. I really do. I mean, I have to I get down downstairs at 5:30 every night. Not lately. Lately, I've been burning the midnight oil, but um typically, yeah, I'll get downstairs at 5:30 and the game dev switch has to turn

off, you know, and you got to be on for your kids. What about you, Tyler?
I don't like pay attention to the hours that much. I just work when I'm feeling productive and try to stop when I'm not feeling productive. For a lot of Muse dev time, what that usually means is that there's a lot of days where I will start getting uh work done at like 11 or 12 in the morning and just work until dinner and then maybe come back in the evening or maybe not. Um, there's also times like the last month where I'm reviewing these tool tips where I was,
oh my god, this is like the worst day for me where I put in I like wake up and sit down and just reading tool tips and spreadsheets from like 10 in the morning until dinner and then eat dinner and then come back like play like one game of Counterstrike and then go back in spreadsheets until like 2:00 in the morning. [laughter] And then I went to bed and I had one of those like Tetris effect type dreams except I'm like scrolling through

spreadsheets reading tool tips.
Yep. [laughter]
Which is like I this has happened with like programming stuff before if I'm working on like an unsolved like bug or whatever. And in that case I can like solve bugs while I'm sleeping like in the in the dreams where I'll wake up and like I got to go check that that part of the code and I'll check it I can fix that bug there. not the case when it's reviewing spreadsheets [laughter] for for grammar errors. There's nothing that I'm finding the next morning from that.
I'm like, "Okay, I can't I can't work till 2 a.m. on this anymore. I got to like I got to like stop and I got to like
like play it some video game or watch some dumb on YouTube or something instead of just
It's funny you bring that up, Tyler, cuz I I messaged Ed earlier today and I asked him if we could do the podcast another day because I was up till 12:30 last night or this morning I guess uh working on my game and I could not

sleep. my I was solving problems and I thought I was asleep but I wasn't asleep. So I think I may have slept two hours last night and so I'm I'm I'm definitely feeling it right now but
I don't know how to solve that. I think what you said Tyler's probably the only solution which is just don't work till midnight. You got to shut it off eventually or you're just not going to sleep.
Yeah. You need like a you need like a barrier between when you stop working and when you like go to bed. I mean I have them in playing certain types of video games as well.
Yeah. Okay. Last question from the audience here and then we can open up I'd love to open up eugenics in the engine. Um if you guys are cool with that. This one is for honestly I love this question. I I I've kind of wanted to ask you this as well Ed. Um and again Tyler as well. Tyler you're very influential in the industry as well and you have a ton of history and a ton of experience. But Salazar asks I want to know how does it feel to be a living legend? And this [clears throat] this this might

sound like a like a flattering question or something, but it's actually I think a a really good question. What does it feel like to it's not really a financial question. It's just like you're out you're in the atmosphere now. You've you've pretty much arrived. You you I feel like you know that you make good games. And surely it must feel good to be confident in your abilities to know that you're good at what you do and that you make hits. How many how many how many uh followers do you have subscribers on YouTube?
Uh like 440 440,000.
How does it feel to have 440,000 followers on YouTube?
That's a great question. Um initially it feels it feels like you're worth something.
Sure. And how will it feel to have a million?
Same thing.
Yeah.
Yeah. In fact in fact it gets worked. You know what I mean? Um,
I couldn't tell you. I couldn't tell you because I don't feel that way.

Yeah.
Um, I know that people know who I am. I know that a select few of mega nerds, you know, dig my, but I don't feel different. I feel like I'm just somebody who makes stuff.
The better the better question is simply just like, well, how does it feel to be an artist? And um right now it feels good because I'm able to express myself freely with my work. Um and I'm able to curate an experience for people and I really do enjoy that in some in some weird way. I'm like a entertainer and I and I and I do like to entertain and it feels good to entertain. Outside of that it's unquantifiable. It makes no sense. The question doesn't make sense. How does it feel to to be this thing that I don't feel like I am? It does. I don't feel, and I'm not saying that in like a humble way. I'm saying that like I don't, it doesn't feel like that. I don't feel any different than I did when I was 18. You know what I mean?
I I do know what you mean. I think that

I [clears throat] think most people when they hear you say that, they probably feel like you're special, like you're just so humble. And I'm curious, do you think that's is that the case? Is it that Ed has a a humility and he has a good head on his shoulders or is it true that pretty much anybody when they get success it's almost like their subconscious can't compute that success?
I don't I mean I don't know.
I've known before me boy. So
I How is it like not like changed all that much other than being able to just buy like a 100 pinball machines for your girl? [laughter]
Exactly. That is buying pinball machines. Yeah, buying pinball machines is the most ballerit I've ever done in my whole life.
And uh but I'm not doing it. And Tyler knows that if those pinball machines were actually only $500 each, it wouldn't it'd be the same situation. I'm not trying to get like expensive things

or whatever else. I'm not a flashy person. I don't revel in my notoriety in any way, shape, or form. Nor do I think it's very valid. I like I like to think that I can inspire people who feel the way I feel because growing up feeling the way that I felt wasn't fun and it was felt lonely and terrible and I didn't feel like there was anybody out there like me and I happened to have a select few people in my life that pushed me towards art and expressing myself with my art and to be that for someone feels great. I feel like I'm serving a purpose like a father and that feels good. But outside of that, it's not like I just I like to feel like a teacher in some way and I do like to entertain like I said, but beyond that it's it's whatever. Well, Salazar continues the question and he says, "And Tyler, if you

have any thoughts as well um about how you feel knowing you're a confident game, you you you have success as a game developer." Feel free to pipe in. But Salazar says, "What role do you think?" And I don't think you're going to like this question, Ed. He says, "What role do you think an artist should have in this day and age? Political? Uh is it beauty? Is it divine? Is it raw emotion? Is it about money? What should the modern artist be?
It's none of those things. None of those things.
It's about art, right?
It's about honesty.
That's what an artist does.
Yeah.
An artist is somebody who is honest.
And it doesn't matter if you're a up terrible person who makes art and it's all [ __ ] up and terrible as long as you're honest about it. Because it's a picture.
It's a it's an honest picture of something. And most of the time it's an honest picture of who the person who's making the art is or an honest picture of what the art is about. And all that really matters is how honest you are

about it. Because that's what art is. Art is being honest. Expressing things honestly. And in a lot of ways I've said like business will that up a little bit because it'll make you take a step back and it'll make you question why, you know, shouldn't I? People don't like poop. Turns out I found people think it's weird. People think I'm a weirdo. I put poop in my games and that's crazy. Woo! Cats hump. Oh god. Oh my god. The cats. The animals thating do it in front of everybody. We all see it. We've seen this is like more contentious than like the eugenics stuff in the game. [laughter]
It is. It's like I could cut I could cut that out of this game and the game might sell more. That's what they tell me. So they're telling me the the kids,
the people them
people on the Xesp [laughter] everything.
If I remove those things, then I'll sell more copies. That might be true. That completely might be true. I remember when I made tapeworm and somebody said if I just made it with trains instead of tapeworms.

Oh,
if I just made it with trains instead of tapeworms that it would actually sell well. And I and I do believe that's fact because it's just a game. It's just a mechanical game. But I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't do that. Somebody else can do that. I wouldn't do that. So, I'm not doing that because I am an artist and it would be dishonest of me to do that.
Um, can I get y'all's take on Go ahead, Tyler. Did you have something to say?
Yeah, I was going to say I think like art is like at its best when it's like surfacing like unconscious thoughts from the person who made it. like stuff that they can't fully put into words correctly, but are thinking like it's in their head somewhere when they're like creating their work and they don't have a they don't have a good way of expressing it like just with words. Or maybe that's how they do express it, but they don't they don't like they have something that they want to want to say in some way, but it's not like super

direct or even known exactly what that is when they're making like that. All that stuff is awesome.
That is Yeah, that is the best way I've heard that said. That was really good.
It was good. Well, you guys want to show me your game in engine? Do you have time?
When you say in engine, you just mean the game. No, I mean, so what I usually do with
You want You want to go into the guts?
I want to go into the guts
there. You're not seeing the guts. We can't show you the guts.
Yeah, we can't show you the dev menu just has spoilers game in one screen.
Okay.
I thought you just wanted us to go over the game.
No. But do you want to go over the game?
I'm not sure.
Yeah. I think that like you're picturing something like Unity or Unreal where you have like a camera re
Sure. But also like for example Jeff Vogle he came on and he shows us his custom engine and how it works um and how the code works and how you guys are how how he assigns variables and all that.
So he has a he has like a visual editor for that type of stuff, right?

Yeah. So he's got this is um our custom or my custom engine is uh like I can explain it and there's not much to see since it's mostly just code.
Wow. But we do all of our own animation in Adobe Animate, which is Flash. They export SWF files and I can load those S SWF files in C++ and draw shapes and animations from those S SWF files. Everything else in the game is um like we don't have a visual editor for anything. It's just code. We have a lot of We have a lot of text files that describe like what abilities do and stuff and it's just all edited in a text editor.
Wow.
So there's nothing there's no like visual that like shows this stuff off because
that's just crazy to me. That's so crazy.
Not that.
I could potentially show you the cat parts FLA if that does anything for you so you can see how cats are generated.
Oh, cool. This is great. Thanks.
Is this is this what you're looking for?

Yeah. Stop. We just want to see how this game is made to some degree. Uh, so we're in Flash basically. This is crazy.
Let me go. Let me go to cat animations.
So much nostalgia from this. I haven't opened Flash in
10 years.
Okay, let's just go to
one of three files of CAD animations cuz this file is too large. So all the new animations go into cat and 2 and then they get glued together in engine.
Okay. Is it actually art guys on the export or is it a PNG on the export?
It's a vector. Oh, and it's exporting a flat like a whole like S SWF file like the same ones that you would upload to Newgrounds to play a game. I um
this is just like a like a like a tool chain like philosophy for me, which is that the less steps involved in getting art into the game, the better.
Uhhuh. Um, like I definitely had looked into uh in in Unity like there's a handful of plugins that do a not great job of letting you export flash animations.

Oh, and go back into that one. Actually, there's like the head that appears.
Mhm.
See that head right there? That is a uh a facial blend head where I just basically said, "All right, I told the animators if you give a head with this certain name, it's going to blend the face between two face states based on the alpha of the of the upper head." So, the one animator knows how to do that and can like make the make the faces blend between.
Would you guys consider Adobe Animate
No. old school or is it [laughter]
sorry
is it old school? Is it you know legacy or is it No, it's still a modern tool that
it's not it's not a modern tool and it's not very well supported by Adobe
I figured
and there's a lot it has a lot of bugs and there's a lot of bugs that I know exactly what's causing the bug and have

reported it to Adobe multiple times and they're not going to fix it or they just don't care. And uh you know there's times when I'm like I should just go get a job at Adobe, walk in there, fix the [laughter] bugs that I need to fix.
That's right.
There it's it's [snorts and sighs]
Oh, that's great. Wow.
No other no other animation software works like this.
Yeah.
And there's a lot of uh good and bad in the way that you could do animations.
There it is. See this? This is the point of the where the projectile shoots out from.
Yeah. And trying to figure out because the game is in 3D space because it's isometric, but Flash is 2D. So trying to figure out how to specify a 3D point in a 2D animation in Flash.
Um, you find one on another one of those projectile points at some point.
So your Tyler, your your engine is actually generating a isometric 3D space.

Yeah. Well, the game is in isometric 3D. So, all the coordinates for where everything is are in.
Okay. Cuz a lot of times you can you could fake it, right? Um with layering, but you're saying it's actually threedimensional with like a Z-axis.
Uh well, the art is still 2D,
right? But it's it's on a threedimensional plane
in like internally everything is represented like the position of object of game objects are
okay.
But the animation like there's no 3D information in any of these animations. So trying to figure out how to get 3D information out of things like the projectile spawn point
is uh there's a lot of lot of jank and math. And [laughter] so let me let me break down what you're seeing here because this is all all this is is the the uh animation saying this is where the leg is. But these aren't the actual pieces of the cats. This is just the points saying okay this is a head in this FLA. These are the actual

cat parts.
We've got each part of the cat up here. So, each possible part of the cat and then I've kind of rigged it together over here. Um,
this flash will collapse if you try to animate these parts directly.
Yeah. Uh, and that is because there's a billion frames in these. So, if I open up the leg and there's a mask that's happening here because there's also a texture behind it. And this is the texture all the possible textures. Let me make this look better of the cat. And the reason why it's in three, four, three, three colors is to actually make it so it's more than that though because if we go over here, there's a little color chooser. Primary, secondary, third, extra mouth, lip size. These all these uh hex code shades of gray translate to another file, which is a PNG file that has a pixel for each of the different colors of each cat. um including like the classes and whatever

else. So that's how we dynamically change the colors of these cats and the the and the way the textures actually read out.
Everything's gray grayscale to um yeah to uh to start with. But you go into legs and these the first two 250 frames, this is all common legs. So any cat can be born with these legs.
I see.
Um and that's their back legs. And then there's their front legs. And this goes in I'll just choose I'll show one freaky leg. Let's see. Let's go to 410. All right. We got a really fat or muscular leg. I can't tell. Um this probably looks like it's fat because the constitution's up and the speed's down. So it's a flabby leg that raises constitution lower speed. This is a mutation. Um and we can go all the way across this all insanity and it goes on forever. And uh it's the same thing for every piece. same amounts
all the different possible things and each of these has a texture.

So Tyler is your C++ is it using some kind of I don't know API associated with the SWF and it's using go to frame or something like that. Uh, no. I'm loading it manually. Um, like the the the the flash file format spec is slash was public. Like there's a there's a 200page PDF that was on Adobe's website that describes whatever field file was.
Wow.
So you just read through that and load it.
This was it's the same engine as the end is nigh. So the the bulk of the work for that type of stuff was done like 10 years ago by me. So, is an S SWF um what what's it look what's I don't know how to explain this. What's the code look like inside of an S SWF? Is it a bunch of um like variables and stuff that you can access?
It's a like uh
it's a file format that has a bunch of like tagged um it'll it's a bunch of

tagged fields. So, they have every field in the file has a tag and then the size of the field
and you can skip
using the size. you can skip over the tags that you don't care about,
right?
Um, you know, like I'm not loading any audio from these files, so I can just skip any tags that are like this is for the audio.
Yeah.
Can we um do you mind if we uh shift gears here really quick and talk about audio? Um, the games.
Should I close this?
I mean, yeah, you can. I don't know what we'll open up though. I mean, I don't know if you want to open up anything related to audio, but I just wanted to ask you guys, the music is um
amazing.
Just open up the game.
Yeah, I can get past the debug stuff and then open up the game.
Absolutely.
Go to the uh like the cat like voice tester menu.
Yeah, that's what I was going to
cuz we can make the cat sing along. Some of them there's there's three or four songs that are recent that they've not

made MIDI files to go with yet.
Wait, what do you mean, Tyler? What are you saying?
The cats can sing along to the songs.
No way.
One sec.
And this is this is like coded.
Uh yeah, all the songs if they have a MIDI file associated with them, I can have
so cool. You guys are
That's so creative.
Okay. [laughter] Uh let's see. Let's do Let's do a regular sounding cat real quick. Uh, is this it? Yeah. Okay. So, these are all these different cats. And this is the audio breakdown that we have for all of them. Um, each cat each each audio set for each cat has angry, happy, normal, hit per, sad, death sounds. Uh, and we have a bunch of different guests, artists that come in and or friends and family that meow for us. And uh, sounds a little like this.

[laughter]
And we had we have them open and close their mouth uh when the audio stops and starts. Um and like like uh Tyler was saying, I we can make them sing along to the song. So, this guy will sing one of the Let's see what this guy sounds like. I'll have these two sing together.
Starts [laughter] meow.

[laughter]
stupid. Um, and then we've got uh Oh, don't show that. Cut that part out. Can't open up that tab. Um, okay. I I'll uh Now you can go back to talking.
That's so cool. So, can the can the uh can players play with this
in game or
I mean you can get to this menu by setting their a flags in the settings file?
Yeah. So, the music is incredible. So, it's is it all MIDI except for the voices?
No, only the voices are the only the cav voices are MIDI. Everything else is normal music.
No. So, what I mean is you said there's a MIDI file. Um
they make a MIDI file.
Yeah, they make a MIDI file which is what the cats use to sing along with the music.
I see. I see. Yeah.
Who who's writing the uh the music and singing in the game? It's incredible.
Ridiculon um did everything and that's

John Evans and Matias Bossi who also did um all the music for um The Binding of Isaac and The End is Nigh um and many other things. And uh they're very very very good. Uh this is this is 100% their wheelhouse. This is um
amazing stuff. Very well produced. lots of guest appearances by different musicians. Um, a big range of genres, but for the most part, it all sounds cohesive and very 50sish.
The tone is so interesting. The moment you start up the game, you you get this gritty, obviously gray. It's kind of Yeah, like a 50s jazz vibe. And I guess on the surface I would have never thought that that would work for a game about cats. Um, but it really really works. So my last question for you is like [snorts]
how did you come up with that flavor

for the game?
Fallout.
Yep. [laughter]
Stole it from Fallout.
Stole out.
No, I don't know. There's there's something about
I mean Fallout stole it from other things. It's it was that whole like what if the world
did go into
nuclear fallout
in the 50s and it locked from that point like when the bomb was was made what if that happened nuclear war happened and it ended there and we had to move from that point. I always like that um that stuck in time type stuff and uh it felt correct and originally the game was completely grayscale just gray. Um, we needed we needed colors to show the classes. I think that was like the key the key factor of making it more colorful [laughter] um was because you needed that for classes.
Yeah.
But um
it slowly got more and more colorful from there.
People saw like where's the color? I'm like
look at it. There's color. Like what? [laughter] There is color in the game. Just look at it.
It gets more colorful as it goes too. But yeah, I mean that was that was the

kind of vibe that I always wanted to go for. this like fallen 50s depressing weird, you know, smog covered city that was just in disarray. And uh that's where I was building out of and
they really got the vibe and
you know all it for me all it takes is just an email with a bunch of feelings and
and maybe a few references songwise and they just [ __ ] bust it out. And I don't I mean I are there I think there are like 50 tracks in the game like with with fully like fully produced ones.
There's like three hours of music I think.
Yeah. And all of them, I mean, the ones that I heard in the first hour and a half are all very humable. Um,
yeah,
I was I I would caught myself whistling one of the tracks uh during lunch before the call. So, it's really good melodies. Um, but yeah, from what I what I from

what I've played, and I know Ed, you want me to play four hours. Uh, from what I've played, it's really great, man. I'm I'm so so excited for you guys, and I think you're going to have a really good launch. Um, so good luck. Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah.
I will take that luck and smoke it. [laughter]
Did you guys want to close with anything? Any other thoughts before we wrap up here?
Sure. You can you can wishlist the game that that is supposed to help.
Um Thomas says so. He told me. So, I'm going with that. Um
I've heard it helps.
I have a feeling you guys don't need wish lists. you you you already have a huge following so you're fine, right?
Well, I mean I I it it does I mean we can tell you that once you get to a certain point the wish lists do come in a little faster because you've
Yeah.
Yeah. Algorithms and AI and on whatever.
So, but does it translate? We don't know because we haven't released the game

yet. And will we know? We won't know. How will we know? because we don't know if if a good good chunk of those people that wishlist it didn't actually buy it versus the other people that are buying it. And who knows? Who the knows? Do they know? Do we know? Who knows?
Does anybody know? [laughter]
Does anybody know? Is anybody real?
Does anybody know anything? Are we f Are we in a simulation? [laughter]
Um, but for my my inspirational out is this. Try not to obsess over the financial aspect of things. Try not to obsess over success. Um if you are late to the game and you're like how the can you say that I need to pay rent, then you pay rent with your job and you do this for fun.
Yeah.
Um make smaller or whatever.
Yeah. If you are young, if you live at home, if you if you have an advantage, if you have the advantage to do that, like you have the ability to be a basement dweller, then use it. use it

and make a bunch of cool [ __ ] because that's when you can make big risks, take big risks and do crazy [ __ ]
Um, and uh, you know, have have fun making trying to make something that shows the world who you are because in the end that's that's kind of what you're going to end up doing. like you're going to show everybody your guts and um [snorts] and uh and that could be scary and uh it can hurt, but uh it it is worthwhile and it is it is a healing a healing thing to do. [clears throat]
That's good. Tyler, you got some inspiration for us?
That pretty much covers it, I think. [laughter]
I mean, I just make big small things. If you not if you don't know what you're what inspires you yet, if you're like starting out, uh make just make stuff like make as much stuff as possible as fast as you can and don't worry if it's good or not. Like just get your ideas out there and then

see where that takes you and then follow the follow the the threads that seem promising out of
All right, guys. I'm going to let you go here. That was super duper fun. Thank you for giving up your time and and coming on the channel. channel. It really means a lot to me.
No problem.
All right.
Thanks for having us.
Yep. Links in the description, everybody. If you want a wish list, please wishlist if you think it looks cool.
Yeah.
And that's about it. [clears throat] is