Make a Competitive Strategy Game Survive

You basically have one chance. You don't have money to like get the player come back to your game. Just one update and everybody hates you. That's it.
This is a conversation with Yogen Wen aka Bearlike, the lead developer of my favorite strategy game of all time, Meabellum. The game is now published by Dream Haven, co-founded by Blizzard's co-founder and former CEO Mike Mheim. We talk about the Death Spiral for online multiplayer games.
The Death Spiral is like really, really strong and really, really scary. game design, game balancing, and we also exchanged some advice for each other.
Complexity for me is always uh downside. My advice for most people is don't do it. Uh it's very painful.
I found it extremely enjoyable and I hope you do as well. I don't know where to start. It's so awesome that I get to talk to you cuz Mechabellum is uh seriously my probably my favorite strategy game of all time. I I have like 500 hours in it in in Steam now. Wow.
Uh, I mean, that's like rookie numbers, I'm sure, for for some people. Some

probably have way more, but still it's like one of my my comfort games that I just come back to whenever I just want to play something chill. How was this game made? Were you there from the very beginning?
Yeah, there were just two of us. It's 2017. Uh, just me and my friend. We know each other for a long time. I just call my friend like, I have this idea. I think it's going to be great. By the way, the idea is nothing like what Mechanum is right now, but but there's some similarity between the original concept and the end product, but it's very different.
Was it already an auto battler? Was the idea already to make make an auto battler?
Yeah, back then there is there's no not the word auto battler is is still not there.
I'm just going to
what my idea is I'm going to make a strategy game. It's going to be a competitive strategy game, but it do not require very high API. That's my goal.

And also, I want it to looks epic. So, that's that's it. Basically, like you can don't require uh high APM, but have a very deep strategy. That's the idea I have like for a really long time. At that time I do played some other I think nowadays we call it um auto battler. Uh but back then it's just some tower defense and some I I don't know what clash oil are probably an auto battler and uh then tons of Warcraft 3 custom map. I like those maps and it's like it's always uh have a lot of great idea in it. So back then I want to make this game where like you got to combine uh the strategy with majong the the Chinese board game. I'm not sure if you know majong what majang are.
It's like
these little white bricks where you um

have to find the two matching ones something like that right?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, basically you are building your deck and also uh it's a uh strategy game on the board and we have like made a pro made a prototype and then we found like the two goals actually don't really mash well together because in the end I'm I want a deep strategy game and if you are focusing too much on deck building it's going to hurt the strategy inter uh interaction with your opponent because you can only focus ing your energy on so many stuff you cannot focusing on all like the deck building process is uh essentially a more self-contained uh process. So I want a more interactive game. I want it more about countering your opponent and all that stuff. So we remove the maj parts of the game. Although I do have the prototype where we have the match on tail on the screen,

all that stuff. There was a poker variant in between. It also fails. So
like a poker strategy game.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Imagine like Yeah. Every Mac have uh is also a poker card and if you have a Royal Flash, your Mac gets stronger. Something like that. Oh, nice.
Yeah, but in that I think I like countering and strategy interaction too much to for it to be a deck builder. So, we slowly change the game to what it looks right now. Uh, and back we learn a lot like at the beginning all the like a lot of modern auto battler you can move your piece your unit wherever you want. We were like that as the beginning. Uh and it it take us probably a year to understand like we do not want to
want the unit to be moved at any given

time because it's actually destroying the strategy here because it's more like if you can move your unit anywhere it's basically impo impossible for your opponent to counter your formation. So we tried a lot of different technique to encourage people to do not move their unit. Like if you don't move your unit, your new unit will double it HP next turn.
All that all all kind of stuff. But in the end, something hits me. It's like I I don't really play a lot, but I I like the idea of the game Go. It's also a ancient Chinese game. That's a really good game. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I I I think your audience know what goal is.
Of course. Yeah. Yeah. They do.
Yeah. Yeah. So in goal you cannot move your piece. Wherever you put down a piece it is there and it became part of the board and it provide information for both players to analyze. And so

basically you are building the board together that and that's the key that's the key of like adding more information onto the board so both player can uh strategize around the uh the given information and I think if go can like succeed with all the pieces not movable we can too. So, so but it's kind of strange like they are mike they should be movable but in the end that's the solution we find like makes more sense you just
don't don't allow players to move the uh unit and it immediately makes the gaming m strategy deep that's a good change but it's also like makes a lot of problems it brings a lot of problems like all the traditional uh board game like a go like chess they are very very nobody like
because because you cannot move your

piece or like if you lose your piece uh you lose it forever round one advantage going to be very huge in later round you put a lot of energy to solve that we are not totally succeeded yet but this week on Thursday there is a patch where I think we kind of figure it out a bit I'm not saying I'm we're gonna solve it but kind of like seven years later we kind of solved a little bit the round one problem. So for meal mabalum there is like round one there is no not enough information on the board. So there's very little strategy round one game play and also it's very snowbally because if you're put your stuff on the wrong place on round one it's going to affect all the future round. So this time we just set up some buildings on the map as map element. You can like form your strategy around the buildings on round one and this will

make round one more strategy deep and nice snowball because the buildings can kill units. So you will
not lose too much HP there. So
Mhm. Yeah. So you don't want the game to be decided in the first round essentially, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you watch chess players, if you don't know how to play chess, you can ruin your bot on your first move.
Yeah. The first move immediately ruin. But I find it very interesting because this is a very common problem in strategy games is just how snowbally they are also because
um espec I think in in digital strategy strategy games even more so than with board games because in digital strategy games you often have uh the component of economy and the and the economy also has the potential to snowball right but for for Mechabellum you at least got rid of that everybody gets the same income more or less. Yeah. Yeah. at least that can't snowball
at the beginning we we like I studied

all the most of the strategy game a lot and then I realized I think I read it somewhere but at that time I fully understand the concept is like in RTS games in PvP RTS games you don't really win like if you play uh PVP RT RTS games the win condition most of the time is like destroy all enemy buildings or all enemy units but In 99% of the time you do not reach that win condition, you just frustrate your opponents enough he quits. That's 99% of the time.
Oh, you're right. Yeah. The victory is that you get your opponent frustrated.
Yeah. And and I I was never thinking it's like that way, but then I understand like I rarely destroy all my enemies buildings. They just quit like why this game sucks. I quit.

Yeah, that's kind of like about the snowball nature of alpha loss of this this kind of strategy game. So that is one thing we want to avoid. So so every unit gets to reborn every round and you don't have econom you don't get punished economically. Because of this, we lost a lot of strategy elements and a lot of opportunities like there's no no econ unit or econ buildings in the game. And because all units always come back the next round, you cannot really change your opponent's board. This all have very big implications. But uh in the end, I think if we avoid like always frustrate your opponents to create problem, I think it's kind of worth it. Yeah.
Yeah, true. Yeah, that sounds like a something that's probably not good for long-term retention if like every other game ends with you being so frustrated

that you just quit.
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting point. Yeah. I I don't really have that in Mechabellum. In Mechabellum, you basically have these two health bars, right? Everybody has a health bar and often it feels very very close where it's like I have only a slither of health, but I know that I can potentially turn it around if I maybe survive another round or something. And so often times it's it's not like so it I think it happens very very rarely that people
um are so frustrated that they give up. I think it's happens a lot more often that you think it's very close and you're like damn it I got a bit unlucky there or something like that. But that's kind of fine. You just go again.
That's totally one of our goals.
So it's it was just the two of you at the very beginning. Did you use a game engine or um did you code everything from scratch or what was your approach there? We were using Unity and we are still using Unity.
Uh it's well the reason is we all we both of us well I at least I have like Java programming background and Unity

use C# so it's very close. So that's one of the
uh reason we choose Unity. Other than that it's just Unity seems easy to use. Overall we don't have many complaints about Unity. It's it's okay for throne fall. was your
Thronefall is also in Unity. Yeah,
it's also in Unity. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. So, you made the very first prototypes in in Unity as well. And did you already have networking at the very beginning like was it already online or how how did you test the first ideas?
We introduced networking at a really early stage because at the beginning we wanted to be a multiplayer game. So that's why we introduced networking that early and also because uh both of us we have the MMO developing background. Um so networking is not that hard for us and also because we have very simple

networking. So that's why we introduce uh those uh very early like we
think about technical difficulties right at the beginning from the design point we already minimizing all kind of potential technical difficulties that includes networking like we want to design a game that requires don't have a like a latency uh requirement like if you have a working internet you can basically play and you can play Yeah,
people from all over the world and it shouldn't be legacy sensitive and uh and it shouldn't be server costly. So that's that was one of our goals.
So just the way the networking works like if if I had to guess you only basically send where the units are placed, right? You don't network the all of the unit positions. You just network where was everything placed and then you probably have a deterministic simulation

that recreates it on every machine. Is that how it works or how how does the networking work?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We basically have like array RTS that basically you only notify your opponents your action like we only like both players say their uh opponent's action and simulate on their own computers. That's basically what we are doing and because we are also turn based. So this is like the the networking is like insanely low. It's probably lower than Hearthstone, lower than hard game.
So So yeah,
this kind of design also help us with server cost and also anti-che because it's turn based. So uh and also because both player run simulation like if both player agrees to the same battle result the server don't really uh get involved like if you think you win and I think you win then there's no need for the

server to verify anything. Yeah. only like if someone is cheating uh and both player like two player reports different battle results then server going to come in to decide who is cheating and also because it's turnbased we don't update enemy board unless you hit finish deployment. So you can't really if you you have to finish your deployment then you can then you will receive uh messages about your opponent's board. So basically we don't really have a cheat issue and the server cost is pretty low. So that's how we
and we wanted like that as right as the beginning because we are not that technical savvy like uh we both are programmer but I would not describe myself as a very good programmer I think.
Okay but it's in inherently very cheatroof just in terms of the

architecture and how you set it up. I see.
Yeah
that sounds really cool. Do you think um if if I want to make a new strategy game or something, would you recommend making an autobler is like would you say making an autobler is like uh making a strategy game on easy mode or
depends on what kind of auto battler? But if you want to make a competitive PVP strategy game, my my advice for most people is don't do it. Uh it's very painful. There there's a reason behind it. I will detail detail the reason like it's well the first thing incident is don't do it like run as fast as you can and like live service PVP competitive strategy game that's that is very painful to make and and because there's a reason you already know there's reason I can tell you more and all that stuff but that

being said if I game if you really want to do it you should do it but if you have multiple uh options then a live service competitive PVP games is like especially strategy game is not my re recommendation but if you want to make a PVE single player or co-op auto battler that that is I think that is easy to make
relatively relatively that is uh easy to make because inherently auto battlers are have very strong replay ability ility and I think for indie developers because you don't have a big team you uh you will be content content wise you will be lighter unless you have a highly re replayable game loop there and auto balancer it's easy to add replayability to autobanders so if you want want to make a PV games uh auto balers that's

that's relatively easy but if you bring in PVP and bring in live service. That's and basically if you want a PVP game, it has in this day this day and age, you has to be live uh it has to be a live service game
and it's very painful to run a live service game unless you have a big team uh to support you. Even with a big team to support you, it's still it's still painful. I think I think it's still painful. I think like uh for Dota I think Frog probably is tied in like heading to Dota for like 10 plus years
like I think he probably can make other games if he's not making Dota but but yeah so so so it's very painful and also like in our lifetime how many 10 years do you have like if you are

making live service game you're probably going to make like four maybe three games your entire career.
That's
it needs to be a game that you really really love in order for that to be worth it. Yeah, I see.
Yeah. Yeah.
What would what would you say are the main pain points for developing Meabellum? Like what are the main problems that you solved or that you're still fighting with? The lab service nature actually cost us a lot of time. And basically because it's a PVP game, you have to have a certain size of player base. For a single player game, if even if you just one person, he can enjoy it.
But for a PVP game, you you cannot only have two person enjoy it. You you just can't because you need to matching for different scale, different time zone and all that stuff. You have to have a rather large player base and that is like very painful to maintain like

everything you do you uh you can't like uh push out a bad patch and then push a good patch and everybody come comes back. M
so basically once the engine breaks once there are no more players it's like extremely painful to get it back back up again right cuz
yeah yeah it's I don't even know who have done it like come back from the death sparrow basically this is a death sparrow like
for a PVP game the less player you have everybody have a worse time because the matchmaking is not working as well as as before So, so you player will find like more gets more and more difficult for players to find the right match. So the death sparrow is like really really strong and really really scary and everything you do you you have to consider don't push your game into the

death spiral and also this like this threat threatens you right at the beginning like right at the beginning I think many many games like died right at the beginning
like if your launch is not as good as it can be if there's something happened even like stuff like a that's out of your reach. If you have a bad launch, it's very hard to come back. So that makes the game design very difficult because you on one hand you need to release update as as often as possible.
So to keep the player base there so on the other hand if you have a bad update you also lose the player base. So, so if if you take too long to make an update, you're you are already in the death sparrow and you are died.
Yeah.
If you don't take long enough, then this update going to put you into a death sparrow immediately. So, so there's this

very fine line where you update as often as you can, but you need to like never had a really bad update. That's that.
Yeah. I I guess if you are a big franchise and with a lot of people behind you, you can somehow can overcome that to a certain level, but not always. But if you are a small uh studio, you basically have one chance like one bad update, you don't have money to like get the player come back to your game. Just one update and everybody hates you. That's it. That's it. And you also don't have the personnel to like answer to every community questions, all that stuff. Manage the anticipation and all that stuff. So don't really re recommend developing a game like that. But on the there is a upside here. There is very

little PVP strategy game in the market. So if you manage to make one and it survived, there's very little uh competition there. So basically there's not much choice there. Like if you want a Roman themed mechabalum or a fantasy themed mechabalum, there is none.
Yeah. So
yeah, true.
The reason is because they already the competitors all already died in the death spiral probably.
Yeah.
Or or they didn't on the other hand is also don't make that much money for the big companies to try. So
yeah, you can only really make a game like this if you're really passionate about it. If you only care about the money, you would probably make make something else, right?
Yeah. Yeah. I I think I think so. Also, it depends on what you are good at. Like
probably will not make a competitive firsterson shooter.
Uh basically I'm not like I do play

them, but I don't really good at designing them. Like when I plays Counter Strike, I don't have design idea in my head pop up. But if I I play a strategy game, there's a lot of idea pop up in my head. One thing is probably is what you really are good at. This genre is definitely not something that even if you are not good at it, you want to try because it makes you so much money. Like you need to you need to like it and also like uh you need to like it and also be good at it. And that's basically you need to understand yourself and also understand your goal to to
but but I guess that's true for every game I guess.
Yeah, probably. Yeah.
Yeah. So So you mean the the most scary thing about making a PvP game is just this content this constant threat of the death spiral and you're kind of stuck between between two sides not re releasing enough updates but then you can't can also not afford to release a

bad update. And yeah, I guess one thing that also plays into this is balancing, right? Because
yeah,
you probably need to rebalance every now and then because the the meta starts getting a bit stale maybe or people start figuring out new overpowered strategies or something, but then you also can't really afford to to make an update that messes the balancing up even more. How is your balancing philosophy like in general? Like how do you approach balancing? Well, I think for everything I do, I do like if I want to do it seriously, I the first thing I do is I need to understand what is exactly is my goal here. For a lot of developer when they do like the reason they are having balancing issues is like they don't really understand what is the goal here like for mealum is our balancing goal is like make every unit have the same usage percentage or is like every unit should have the same win rate. That's all of those are not our goals.

Our goals is like first way the goal for it is for the game to be fun. And if you like looking into the deeper goal, there is a goal that we need the game to make enough money so the company can survive. Yeah. But but other than that, it's making the game fun. Making the game fun meaning even if there's only one unit that everybody use, but everybody is like loving it. Like, wow, I like Overlord and use Overlord is making me happy and everybody is using Overlord. Fine. That's that's that's definitely good balancing. There's a example for this like we have this unit hacker in all balancing data hacker have like less win rate like lower win rate and a lower use rate uh use age percentage than any unit by a long shot and we don't really like want to change that. The reason is there's a certain percentage of player really really hates hacker.

So, so I'm so I'm not aftering the the every unit is playable like if if people hate it, okay, let's let's make it weaker so people use it less. And when you're balancing, you have to look at the uh back end, the retention uh data, the usage data, all that stuff to understand what stuff people is enjoying more and what is the major pain point. And in general, yes, more variety makes the game more fun. But that's just in general. But in reality, there are a lot of age cases like variety shouldn't be your number wrangle. Fun should be your number one goal. If less variety means more fun, then find less variety.
So, so that's what our balancing philosophy. And then we have this uh double ride and the double green theory is when you look at the unit stats,

there's two stats we are focus more on. One is uh win rate, one is peak rate. And if a unit have a higher win rate and but have less peak rate, we don't really think that's a problem. Like it's okay.
If you if a unit have a lower peak rate and a lower V rate, we think that is potentially a problem because people are it's people think it's weak, but like a hacker is at that stage and we think it's fine. So if a unit at this, we call it double green because in China Lori is green. Okay,
we call it
we call it double green means uh have a lower win rate and a lower pick rate. That's that's unit going to be on our watch list. Uh but we are not necessarily going to change it. And if unit have a higher pick rate but a lower win rate that means people thinks it's strong but it don't really win that much game. And uh also then that's also fine. It's like okay people loves the unit and

think is strong and what's am I going to do about it? I'm not going to change anything with that like because the win the the player who picks the game they pick the that unit they are happy because they pick the unit they likes and their opponents actually win small so their opponency is happy. So why I'm I shouldn't need a thing. We have many uh units and specialists that have a high pick rate but very low win rate like namely the giant specialist. Giant specialist have always have like if it's not not top one it's going to be top two pick rate and it's win rate is always like bottom three. The the thing is people likes giant big robots fighting for them and if they can use that they can like even if that means they win less matches. So I'm not going to change that. That that's cool. That's cool. You're like a big robot and your opponents wins a little bit more.

That that's that's cool. So the only part where we definitely want to change is like a double right situation where you have a high win rate and a high pick rate. mean means people think is it is strong and it is strong and this going to definitely hurt the variety like a unit being weak is going to only affect the that unit itself like basically you have one less unit in the game. we have 30 units. So, one less unit is is okay.
But if you have a unit that's super strong, it's gonna affect every uh single matchup and you basically instead of 30 units, you only have one unit. That's and if people are not having fun with that one unit, then then then that's problem. So the double ride is where we definitely going to focus on. But other than double ride, we always like a player can do whatever they want and we don't want force variety like the giant specialist everybody like pick

them pick it just let player pick it. We don't want lower the pick rate for the giant specialist. That's Yeah.
And how did you design the balancing in the first place? Right. when you when you came up with all of the units and when you created all of those units in the first place, did you try to create like some rock paper scissors system or were you just like, oh, let's just make a bunch of cool robots and see how they interact or um how did you plan that or how did that evolve?
The design process for the units actually is not not very well it will be interesting for game developer but for players it's won't be very interesting. We are not designing cool robots like I have this spreadsheet uh where I have like uh all kind of parametered variables where like low HP, high HP and huge amount and a very little amount and long range, short

range and all those combination I generate from the combination like like and I pick those like most distinct from others. Ah, okay.
And also I have this uh spreadsheet function where they just generate the stats automatically like uh
Mhm.
Uh my goal is like uh if you have a long range unit and you have short range unit and one on one they should kill each other at the same time. The basic basic stats should be like that. No matter if you have a big then because long range unit have a higher chance to like concentrate the fire uh their fire and to eliminate uh enemy units before they get close in there's some certain uh percentage of data favoring the melee unit all that stuff. So, so, so this is there is this spreadsheet. There's just

kind of all kinds of variables and that spreadsheet generates all units data. So, it's kind of boring I think.
Yeah. Yeah. So, interesting. Okay.
Yeah. And in the end, we do tweak the data because that spreadsheet definitely cannot do uh balancing properly.
Yeah.
But it can uh generate the
uh baseline. Yeah, we can generate the baseline and we we have some then we change the data manually and whenever we change it we mark it uh like why do it like for example if we raise units attack by two or maybe 2% in the spreadsheet there going to be because of some something something plus two
that's that's how we how how we how we do it. So every time like when you're deviating from the baseline stats that the uh calculation generates you have to state your reason for it like for two

long range unit one is have slightly having a slightly higher stats than the other then you need to state why it is that way in your spreadsheet. So, so this way we can always like uh remember what happened here, what happened there, all that stuff. And bison wise, we don't really design counters
like we do have this basic counter. The basic counter is high damage counters single target and AOE damage counters crowd and also crowd counters high damage. That that's a rock paper scissor there. We we don't really design units for counter like design this unit to counter that unit. Uh what we design is like if you remember my spreadsheet like
what we want is every unit have their special roles like you are very unique from the other unit. If you are unique enough, you will have special counters

like you will counter something uh very specifically and also you will get countered by something very specifically as long as you are unique enough there shouldn't be balance issue and uh in the past traditionally the unit we are having balance issue is always the allrounder like don't really have the
uh weakness or don't good at something but it's in the end It can be good at everything. In our studio, we have all this like what is healthy, what is not healthy. Uh like for example for melee unit increasing its HP is not healthy. You should be careful. And for long range unit and especially high frequency long range attacker increasing its damage is not healthy and you should the not healthy not mean we are not we shouldn't do it. That's we need to be extra careful like for your
long range units increasing his HP is

cannot fight you can like have your fun and then doesn't matter that much but if you are increasing it attack then you need to be very very careful and have a very good reason. So there's a lot of rules there but they are not really rules they are kind of like a guideline. So whenever we have meetings we remember those guidelines some of the those I come out uh I I some of the those rules we have that at the beginning but a lot of them it's just what we learn through the years like by making mistake all that stuff.
Okay. So you don't you're you're not like oh we need a counter to this unit so let's design a unit that counters this unit. You're more like let's have a look at the spreadsheet. Oh, there's a free spot. Uh, we don't have a unit with this range and with this attack and with this movement speed that that could be that could fill a role or something.
Yeah. Yeah.
But then you
we literally have a sprite sheet.

I think that's a that's a cool technique. And then uh you say all of the obviously there are counters, right? But they they're not designed. They're more like they they are created emergently. They they just appear kind of.
Yeah. And I I always found that interesting about Mabellum because a lot of other strategy games I know including my own like Thronfall does this as well. Units have attacks like for example they will say armored or they will say uh biological or something and then there are units that deal bonus damage for example plus 20 damage against there there are stats that kind of stats. I have no idea. I I played throw for a long time. I have no idea they're armor type in thall.
Yep. Yep. Yep. That's the That's the case in Thronefall cuz it's like
at a certain point you're like damaged. You like you run into the same problem that you described. One of the units you can build is just stronger than everything else in every situation. So

at some point you just go in and you're like, "Okay, the hunter now deals bonus damage against monsters." So now whenever there are monsters you should maybe build or prioritize hunters. So there are some things like that or the berserks with their axes they deal bonus damage against siege engines.
And I think in thronfall we we don't do a very good job uh explaining that to the player like it it gives you some hints in the short description but but you're right it's not
uh it's it's not very obvious from from the information we show. Yeah. You kind of have to figure it out. But it's interesting in Mechabellum that you manage to get a lot of interesting counters without any of that. It's just range, health, movement speed, and and of course the attacks of the units, but that seems to create a lot of interesting counters without like forcing it artificially. It feels like
Yeah. And and I'm not sure it is right choice like we have been experimenting armor type for a really long time. Like if we ever want to make a fantasy

version of me, we definitely want to try like magic armor and physical armor stuff like it's we just don't really find the right armor mechanic at the beginning. Yes, we want it to like want the interaction to be observable without understanding armor types and all that stuff. That was our goal. But after a while, the game became more and more complicated and we want there to be more strategy and all that stuff. We definely want some armor type there. Not necessarily like armor weaker to certain stuff, but we want it want easier to understand armor type like uh your armor is like if you have armor then high frequency low damage attack should be less effect against you. that kind of armor that I think that is like easy kind of easily to understand and also add bunch of depths to the game but we

just haven't figured it out. I mean, there are armor tags that work kind of like that, right? You can like some units have armor tags that reduce damage taken by
uh by 20 or 20 per level or something like that or 60 I think it's even.
Yeah. 60. Yeah. Yeah. That's in my opinion that's not very successful attempt. The reason for it like that's mechanic is actually is I learned that from the Starcraft one. I think scarfer two works the same like basically you have armor and you just ignore certain amount of damage. The thing is balance units their uh stats is so different like crawler like like a fan have like 100 plus HP and I think fortress have 50k stats. So, so
yeah.
And so, so the also the attack difference is so huge. The the armor basically became countering not a type of attack just countering certain units.

The the armor basically counters and fan.
Yeah.
Yeah. That's for me that means that this solution is not elegant enough. It's basically a special rule to counter certain units. Um so so it's kind of not what we want. I I hope I can figure it out. Maybe next year something.
Mhm.
Hope I can figure out how to do armor properly. How do you think about the texts of the units? Right. So, do you not want do you think it's kind of a waste of a tech if you're if you say you have a tech that counters only two specific units? Do you do you not want any niche tags or do you want them to be more generally useful? Yeah, I in my design philosophy, I don't want stuff that only counter like one unit or maybe two unit. I want I want it like it counters certain characters counter it counters certain aspect like if you have

this kind of attribute you are going to be countered by this tag that's my basically I don't want to think uh tech as a counter to unit wise it should be counter some kind of stuff certain kind of stuff that that's where because
if you design it like this way there's a lot of counter you are not anticipating can happen and I think players always like a smarter uh on this aspect they will find find a special use for certain type and stuff. So I always try to design attacks to for for them to counter certain like you are countering high HP. Yes. You are countering low attack rate. Yes. That kind of counter. Yeah.
And often times some techs even come with advantages and disadvantages, right? Like higher damage but reduced fire rate or something. So you kind of make some tradeoffs there.
Yeah. I think trade-off there is like generally we don't really want to do it

unless we have to like uh because it make the game more complicated like for some people that's interesting but I think like the opportunity cost is already a trade-off like you you can pick this first then the next tech going to be you can't pick that tech tag this round and also the next tech gonna be expensive that's already a trade-off so we don't really design around the tradeoffs, but sometimes we have to like
Yeah.
And I guess there are some some different ones like the there's one for the marksman that almost turns the marksman into a different unit like assault marksman I think right
it's like a shotgun
that can be quite interesting but also I guess if there if there's too much of that then it could also be frustrating so I get the philosophy behind that. Yeah.
Yeah. the the max I like that max tag but uh that is one of the tag that have

the longest description. I usually not a big fan for long description. So uh yeah but but sometimes like the ass markment is fun so it's worth it. So for everything we design there is always complexity and fun ratio like you can a feature can only be as complex as it is fun. If you are fun enough then yes. If you're not not that fun and you add a bunch of comp complexity to the game then I'm then I won't don't want you. So that's my another
fun to complexity ratio needs to be correct basically.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You you're like not correct like there's one way just as fun as you can and as simple as you can like the right ratio is infinitely uh more fun. that's right but yeah but to certain threshold so uh basically in our team you if you come up like I

noticed some designers they they think complexity is fundamentally fun like learning the mechanic is already fun there are certain designers like that and there are players that like to learn stuff but u for me I think it is isn't the complexity isn't fun complexity for me is always a downside. You need to like bring a lot of fun to offset your damage to the game.
Do you balance the texts the same way where you're like um you basically just have a look at the the win rate and the pick rate of a tech compared to other techs or do you have a different way of balancing those? We basically have the same have the same strategy there. But for tech we are more much more tolerant with like high peak rate and high win rate tag like uh because a unit can have multiple tag. So if you have a high uh

win rate and high pig rate but uh because your unit is not that been not being used that much then it's okay like uh
for tag the balancing isn't that that strict strict because they are something uh that you can only have when you have the unit. So if the unit is balanced then the attack is isn't going to is not going to be too far off.
Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. So you basically also have to look at the unit if you balance that. Of course. Yeah. Makes sense. All right. So I guess another big question I have for you is which which advice would you have for me if I say I want to make an auto battler like a competitive one despite your warnings. I I want to make a competitive auto battler. What what advice would you give me?
I think I actually have this right down. Let me check.
Awesome.
Yeah. I think if you want really want to make one and first you need to

understand your own goals and and I I guess that's is part of understand yourself. Do you want to make a competitive auto battler or do you want to make a competitive game or do you want to make a auto battler? And is it okay for that game to like not be competitive or or like for that game to not be live service? And I I assume okay like 2 years after the game released it it went into the death sparrow and become a c classic.
And your advice is probably if possible don't make it a live service. Don't make it competitive if you don't absolutely need to. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's depends on you like
Yeah.
If I because I know people who enjoys it like have a community plays his game and he's balancing it. He have fun balancing it and have fun uh communicating with the community. I I imagine as frog

probably falls into that category like basically it depends on the person. So basically know what you really want is like very important and like because I also know people who don't really enjoying communicating with the players. If you are making a live service game you need to be six games and need to laugh off all kind of personal attack all that stuff. uh and and I know people who are like good at it like who can like shred off all kind of like very bad attack from people understand what your goal what you are imagine yourself in like this sounds like pure like sounds like human resource what do you imagine yourself in three years that's that's that's
like like a job interview right
yeah yeah thanks Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But makes sense.
Yeah. like what do you do do you really

enjoy doing and uh so in the end if you are enjoying make live service auto battler and uh also PVP that's um if you are enjoying it sure definitely do it after you understand yourself your goal you need to understand the techn technical side not not even the design side I think the technical side is very important because it is life service it is PVP you need to understand do you have the team to do it like a low latency game. Like for example, for me, we can have all Battlefield power be released during a battle. That definitely can be a design choice. Then that can make the game more fun. It can make the game less fun, but that that's definitely is a choice there like we should should be experimenting like release Battlefield part during the combat is more fun or not. But we never experiment with it. Why? It's a

technical limitation. Not just a technical limitation on our end, it's a technical limitation on physics. Basically, there's people from all over the world, there are going to be lendency between them. If you want people to play with each other seamlessly, no matter how good your tech are, if the battlefield power is released real time, then people have low like a high latency between each other going to have a uh big trouble playing with each other. So you need to understand there are technical uh difficulties and limitations. There are also technical limitations on the teams which are much greater like uh you need to understand how good are you with uh like uh programming like if you want like total war like unit count on your screen are you technically capable of that kind of programming and uh do you

have the team can to do it all that stuff the limitation understand your product understand your team is very important like do you Do you have the uh if you want to make auto battler with like let's say 100 different unit do you have the artist uh can your artist make those quick enough? So I think this probably is boring for players to listen I think but I guess this is interesting for game developers like well for some game developers some game developer don't really like to listen to this kind of stuff. I don't know. I think um I think a lot of game developers have the dream to make a competitive multiplayer game at some point. And I'm wondering a little bit like if you if you have to make a competitive multiplayer game, which is very difficult, then then maybe an auto battler is still one of the easier ones you can do. Or or do you have any any ideas for for something even easier than

an auto battler when it comes to competitive multiplayer? I don't think auto baler is is either one. I think basically competitive strategy game is like very hard to crack.
Okay.
One of the hurdle there is monetization like a competitive games are difficult to make and maintain and you're going to need it's if it's a live service game you need to income. you need income and for competitive strategy game it's very hard to monetize them and you're probably gonna have a better chance to make a FPS game like we have new competitive FPS game come out in the last 10 years like lots of them but new competitive strategy game
especially from relatively smaller studios it's very rare unless unless you want to make it pay to win then there's a lot on mobile
there are a lot of competitive pay to- win mobile games. If we go that route,

that's going to be easier. But you want a fair competitive strategy game that's going to require a very large player base and that's going to require a monetization method uh that can support you. And uh if the competitive game if competitive game is your only is what you want comp competitive strategy game especially auto battler is probably not the best choice especially for auto battlers for most auto battlers it requires a lot of uh characters. So if you can see all the autobler in the field that actually makes a lot of money they basically have the year like have a lot of character model already made.
Yeah.
Uh their their their power already designed and also they have a player base already familiar with those characters. So for those kind of auto battlers, it's very basically it's not

possible for uh indie game developers to make because even if you have the power and the D to design so many characters, people just don't do not recognize them and that makes make understanding the game play very very hard. But but that is just the auto chess TFT uh Hearthstone battleground route like you definitely have other route like a mechabalum. Mechabalum is like rel have relatively less units and also have less complicated uh units. So if I would picture a auto battler that actually for indie developer to make either either it should be fantasy or be historic historical uh because in for like if you make a Roman sim auto battler
like uh people already know what legendary what color cover is what felanks are and what they should be

countering all that stuff
that's building knowledge and I think that can work. Uh for fantasy, it's going to be require it's going to be harder. You need to do a classic fantasy setting like but those fantasy setting I think that those are well known enough. So you can kind of design that and also it can be a blend like there should be historical troops and also fantasy elements. I I can see a game like that working
that's definitely can can work. I think you need to understand like for example I see so many attempts on this kind of auto battler especially on mobile for example they have their power uh be real time I think that's all most of the time it is a mistake for power to be real time or maybe command part of your uh units in real time or that stuff that's

definitely is going to be a problem and also because of this like for game like that there's a lot of unknown territory like it take us seven years to make me make into 1.0 because we we just do not have something like we can directly learn for like we we need to learn from so many different stuff including and all that stuff to like there's a lot of problem that is not there not not solved by other people before so
but if you are making a FPS game it's probably like there are a lot of stuff you can learn from uh other people and
true but There are also more more games to compete with, of course.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, that's exactly my my point is like it's going to be harder to make, but it's have less comp competitions for the FPS games. Like if you are using Unreal, it's not

that hard to make a semi decent FPS game, but you have lots of competition there. That's that's my understanding. And also strongly recommended don't do the TFT style automatic because the market is not that big and it's already saturated with TFT and Hstone battleground all that stuff that's it's not a I think that market is already full and very competitive but if I want do something like like that there's no not that much established title I definitely can say it working But do understand there by making a competitive game there is just too so much opportunity for you to fail. The death sparrow is like really really scary and all kind of stuff like during our development we actually like encountered the co stuff that can also it's like completely out

our hand like that's not definitely not something we can control and if you are making a competitive game your team size going to be at least a little bit bigger than definitely that strong for and uh if something like co happened you need to be prepared like there's going to be one year where everybody's productivity is low and all that stuff and there's a lot of stuff can go wrong but I definitely see like macab in another like not but just auto in another setting I definitely can see it happen especially for you I think you are design wise I think you have excellent idea and you have the expertise on the definitely on the client side uh to do it. I definitely can say succeed like in but but do I think it's going to take some time like
I think we're probably not
we're probably not brave enough to do PVP just yet. I think we're probably

going to go with some PvE game first and slowly slowly dip our toes into multiplayer and then maybe maybe one day do PVP. But I I have a lot of respect for PVP games as exactly for for that reason. I'm I'm also afraid of the the death spiral. So I I wonder do you have any any tips for avoiding the death spiral?
One thing I I want to ask you are you familiar with Bizar the game the card game Bizarre?
I have seen it but I have not played it but I've seen some let's plays on YouTube. I definitely recommend
uh if you are interesting with a game that is kind of that game is is kind of a auto battle and also it blends PP and the PVE together. So, so I think it's have a lot of good ideas and and I think they are making it working with the like the offly PVP stuff and I think in that

this is actually tying to the your question that is one way to avoid death sparrow to design your game require less less player
like
if you are design a game like like TFT you need eight players to play a and they need to be at the same level. That's a lot of players. That's like four times more than me. If you like like this time I'm going to do a auto battler that also also like a PUBG like we have 100 player auto battler. I think some company tried that. But whenever I say that, I think, well, that's a recipe for disaster unless you are like really really rich and have like infinite money to spend to recruiting players because 100 player for one match like indie games sometimes only have 100 player in total.
Yeah.
And and and they they all need to be in

this one match. What happened to other players come into the game after those 100 people? would they be able to find a match? So,
yeah.
Yeah. So, so smaller uh match size and also shorter shorter match lengths going to going to require less players and that is something we definitely are worth focusing on like how can we make it like make it as fun as what we as it can be but in the meantime make it as short as it can be. So meab development is not a short game but it is as short as we can and like because short game also requires less player like if your player you if you a match of your game lasts more than a hour it's those player who are playing that match are not going to be free to match up with other players for hour. That's that's going to increase the player base players count

requirement a lot. So avoiding death sparrow is like uh you need to first design your game like require less player count. Bizarre as an example they have offline PVPs. You basically
fight other players image. Let's say that.
Got it. Right. So you I think the way it works in bazars you you build a deck and then I think either after every round or at the very end you basically fight the deck of other players, right? But they don't need to be online at the same time. Their jack the deck has just been saved to the server or something and you get a random one to play against.
Yeah.
Yeah. And also they are ranking it and also they try to make you fight your uh friends.
Ah nice.
Like like like this uh today one of my colleague is like hey I'm fighting you like I said what like like I say this is you. Yeah. So that's also a nice trick like

uh you are still have cannot have this multiplayer feeling but you don't really need that much players that many players
like not just your friend like maybe you are fighting the game developer itself himself like there will be people like be excited when they match against you.
Yeah. So, so all kind of stuff like uh I'm fighting the world number one players image all that stuff that can work like we actually tried bunch of that inside me for example the community challenge the community challenge yeah all that stuff but fundamentally meab is a more interactive game so those are just attempts but those definitely helps and also for the death sparrow part I think you are already very good at that. I think you are very good at marketing your game and that is one thing that always amazed me like I'm I was watching

your video before you release strong.
Yeah. Yeah. you always always talk about indie game development stuff and also that I so so I and I think I was always thinking that those not just interesting also helpful and so I I watched bunch of your videos and I always amazed like wow this guy is developing a game and he still have time to do all this.
No, not really.
Not really. Okay. Yeah, but I guess for me the the podcast is part of the solution here because I can can make these relatively quickly, right? I
just
record something once a week or so and it actually makes for some pretty good content and also I learn a lot as well which is awesome.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so it's like I think you are like what you are doing there is amazing and you are good at marketing all that stuff and but in the

end you need to understand probably for to avoid the death spiral there you there's a big chance that you actually need a team for marketing and also for community uh management and also to understand for PV games early access don't really work like you need to be a have a big hit. The first impression is very important. You don't really have the like I'm updating this slowly. That that's not going to uh help. You need like even for early access you need to have content already in the oven waiting for release when you are like releasing early access. So, so you don't really like because when you are not releasing as many updates as you can, it's it's really really easy to to force into the death spiral and basically it's not you are

not going to come back from from it like I I'm closely watching bunch of P games, P strategy games and and I I like I have this tendency I see the bad reviews on other people's game. I also get angry like because because lots of them are just like a very unreasonable reasonable but I'm very interesting interesting with other uh purity strategy games development and their monetization strategy and all that stuff. So I'm closely watching all those games. Yeah, obviously an interesting one recently that I'm sure you you've always also paid attention to was Battle Aces, right?
Yeah, Battle Aces.
Battle. I was really excited for that and they just canned it before it's even out. Damn it.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. battle aces and also lots of like other strategy like especially RTS games like those are like

I'm closely following those and lots of bad reviews about those games are because there's not enough players not not enough players going to hurt you really really hard when you are running a PVP game and and if you fail your first attempt even if it is an early access. It basically kills the game, you you probably will
PVP needs to either be big or it doesn't work at all.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That that that's true. Unless you are doing the bizarre style and uh Yeah. Right. Yeah. Then then that can work. And also co-op probably is like we are prototyping a new game this time. We want actually want to make a PVE game.
Co-op game.
That's Yeah. So we are prototyping it and I think it's kind of fun but well it's very early stage but that's probably can tell you even the one who

made them PVP game don't are looking for making something else
I see yeah it's not really enjoyable but I think you are on the internet long enough you you probably already know on the internet if you are making a PVP game that you're going to be get not just PVP games uh if it's a live service game. Some people are just bad, but sometimes people are just like, you never know because maybe someone just have their dog died yesterday.
Yeah. Yeah.
So, they are having a bad day and then they log into your game and lost and uh also your game have a bug.
Then probably that means you killed his dog.
Yeah.
Then you probably deserve whatever whatever uh word coming from his mouth and all that stuff. And if you have a larger enough uh player base, someone's dog always die that day. So you will always have someone

and any update you do will always piss someone off, right? It's impossible to release an update that everybody's happy with as well. So
yeah, it's like someone would always always like like someone would like it and someone wouldn't like it. We don't really re reach agreement inside of our team like even inside of a team for certain balance changes. People have a different opinion. That's just how things are like in the end you have to decide on something and also you generally generally you are you are going to make mistake and lots of them like you you are going to put generally bad balanced patches.
Yeah.
Like it's generally bad. not that bad that deserves those kind of comments but but you are you are gonna definitely gonna make generally bad updates and all that stuff and also people on the internet I think like several days ago I was chatting with my wife about why is people on internet is very mean
then I understand like for example when

we watch TV shows and when we watch movies we always commenting not always but sometimes we commenting on like this actor is prettier, that actor looks uglier, and that actor is doing a better job. And even like children like this is one ugly children, stuff like that, too.
We say say that to each other. We won't post it online. We won't say it to the actor's face, but there definitely are ugly actors. So, so, so we say to each other like, "Hey, that that's that that children is not very like not very handsome children."
Yeah. Something like that. That's just what we say to each other. And then we realize the internet is just where people are posting what they say to their wife or their friends in private online. And that's where like that's why like somehow it's like always feels meaner on the internet. And also there's

a lot of good people there uh praising your games and all that stuff. But somehow all the bad bad comments like get you.
Yeah, you're right. In a way they often talk talk about you as if you're not reading the comments or something like uh yeah such fresh update and then when you reply to them they they all of a sudden they have an entirely different tone.
I see that a lot. Yeah.
Yeah. Do have you do you have the experience of managing this kind of stuff? Do you have a strategy there?
Yeah, I mean I I have it's probably for Thronefall it's probably not as bad because Thronefall is a PVE game, right? So it's it's kind of more forgiving in terms of balancing but even still there were some balancing updates that were necessary. So, and and generally whenever I did balancing updates, there were all always people that were very unhappy with the changes and I I always tried to explain to them what you what

you just said is that yes, I am going to make mistakes and some things are going to get worse. Like I'm going to make 30 balancing changes. Some of them like most of them will make the game better, but some of them will make the game worse. Like basically every balancing change you make is like an educated guess in a way, right? So you you can't guess 100% right. You can maybe if you're if you're good maybe you can guess 70% right. But for for some balancing parameters you just need more more guesses to get it right. But but for players it's always like they they locked this in. Oh my god they ruined it for good.
Yeah. Then I have a question for you. I'm interesting I'm interested with like how do you really balance a PVE game? What's your goal there when you're balancing? And and also like there's always players asking like, can you just keep old version of that? What's what your reply to that?
So, how to for how to balance a PVE game? I think I think the goal is that

firstly, of course, fun, right? Fun is always the the first thing you balance for. I agree with that. But the second thing you want to balance for, I think in PvE is that the players have an incentive to use all of the tools you give them. So it's kind of if you give them 40 different units to choose from, but they only need five to solve every problem they encounter in your game, then then that's kind of boring cuz the mastery comes from knowing when to choose which which tool, right? So you somehow need to find a way to make every tool useful in in some situation. It's it's not like you need an equal pick rate. That's not the case at all. You don't need everything every tool to be picked equally. You don't need every unit to be used equally. You just need every unit or every tool you give to the player to have some use case. So what I usually do is whenever I design a unit or something, I try to at at least in my head come up with a with a use case

where I can 100% guarantee that that specific unit or that specific tool is going to do better than any other thing I've given the player so far. Um but I often fail at this unfortunately. Often times it's like yeah the the berserk just kills everything and I'm like ah not again. Yeah, but uh it's surprisingly difficult, but that's the idea. You you want everything to have some niche and some use case. And I guess part part of that is also you need just need the tools to present the player with a lot of different problems so that you can create enough different problems that all of your tools have some use case, right? This actually makes me because we are trying to make a PVE spin-off and then kind of understand like actually PVE players actually have a less tolerance when you nerf something.
Yes.
Like if you a PVP game, you nerf something, they kind of understand it. Yes.
But for PVE game, they always like like this is a PVE game. Why are you nerfing

my my stuff?
Yes. Yes. I have some advice for that.
Yeah. Never never try to like once it's live, try not to nerf any of the player tools. What you what you should do instead is buff the enemies. Yeah, buff the enemies
and you need to buff um obviously the enemies in a way that they counter what you wanted to nerf in the first place, right? So you if you're like, "Okay, there's this um player unit that's too strong, like the the sniper too strong or whatever, then then what you do is you almost you you almost try to fix it with the with with the problems you present to the player. You're like, "Okay, we'll we'll add more enemies that are not vulnerable to the sniper. So now the sniper is indirectly nerfed because we um presented you with a different problem." So, for example, one thing I did in Thronefall is um we like we we launched Thronefall in early access and every time we launched a new level, I realized a new thing that was overpowered. I was like, "Ah freak, the the archers are overpowered. Ah, freak

the ballista tower is overpowered." So then when I made the next level, I would deliberately design the next level in a way where where that strategy wouldn't work anymore. I didn't change the actual tools of the player, like I didn't change the uh the units or anything. I just made the next level so that just from the level design it's it's not as powerful anymore and you need to find a different strategy.
Yeah, that's smart. How But do you ever like have like stuff like you have to like hard nerf?
Yeah, I I like the way I figured out that people don't like nerfs is because I made that mistake a couple of times.
People really don't like nerfs. Yeah, that's always scary of me. And also for the suggestions from the players like they they want like you to keep oer version of the game.
How how how like do you do you think that's possible or

Yeah, I think it is. I think you can create separate branches on Steam. I'm not sure if you're if you're familiar with that features feature. you can just can just create some some extra branches on Steam and a very very small percentage of players will use those branches for example for speed running if they want to speedrun on a specific version or something and usually you don't usually you don't need to make every version available as an as an extra branch usually like people very specifically tell you which versions they want and then you just make those versions available and that's usually fine. Yeah.
So, so, so, so, so you have those in Thronefall.
I, I have some of those versions for another single player game I made, will you snail? And I think we also have a couple of them for Thronefall. Like, at the very least, we have a roll back branch that allows players to roll back to the previous patch in case we break anything.
Okay. Oh, okay. Yeah, there's like whole bunch of different balancing problem for

PVE game. We are slowly realizing like we we we were we we were thinking like we are
uh going to try the easier territory.
It is probably easier to be fair. It's probably easier. But I agree there are a couple of different problems. But hey, it's cool that you realized this so early on that players in PvE games don't respond too well to to nerfs. Like,
yeah, it's crazy for for me to think like I'm going to make a game where I cannot nerf stuff.
It's like, well,
you can you can nerf things, but I think it's just not the the first go-to solution. The first go-to solution is to change the problems you present the player with. And if that doesn't work, then you nerf it.
Yeah, I'm going to need a completely different spreadsheet for that. My spreadsheet just auto nerf stuff. That's yeah that's going to make people angry. I need a spade auto buffing stuff. What?

So what what what do do you have any suggestion for PVE games like what what what else should we like understand especially uh we are trying to make uh like very replayable PVE games. What's what what is your suggestion? And after this I have like another qu de developing question but but let's answer this.
I think I think the PVE market honestly has a lot of gaps. I think there are I think a lot of people really really love co-op games. And the problem with PvP is always that you tend to lose 50% of the games you play which is which are frustrating for most people. So I think PvE is just generally really really cool and also really underserved. I think there there are a lot of things that probably can work to be honest like
so so the market actually is underserved because I've seen many PVE games. Yeah. Okay.
I think so. I think the market for PvE

games is underserved as like there are some PVE games but you you can also see that the PVE games that do a really good good job those games do really well on Steam. And that's because there aren't that many. Like if you have a look at uh Deep Rock Galactic or if you have a look at House Things with the Space Marines called Damn it uh Hell Divers.
Yeah. Yeah.
Um I I think there's a lot of room but I I am assuming you want to make a strategy auto battler like game or something like that.
Yeah. Well, yeah, we are making kind of defensive
Yeah.
defensive strategy game. I'm not sure what's genre. Yeah.
Yeah. like a base base defense game maybe you could call it something like that.
Yeah. Yeah. Base defense game. Yeah. Kind of like stronghold but not people on a horse but more like robot stuff. Speaking of that actually the one of my favorite level is like where you have a castle on a wheel as a boss and rolling into my base and I I loves it a lot. So,

so speaking of the PVE games, so have you ever uh considered add a co-op option for Thronefall?
People ask for it a lot. It's like the the most requested feature for Thronefall is co-op. I think this is a good sign. I think if you want to make something like that, people will really really love it. Yeah.
Okay. Oh, there's there's nothing there's nothing like this. Like which cooperative base defense games are there? Like all of the all of the good base defense games are single player. They are billions and so on. Like there are some really cool base defense and tower defense games, but there's there's nothing that is co-op. Obviously, sometimes that makes you wonder if maybe there's a good reason for why. Maybe it's like do do people really want to play these games co-op? But honestly from from from the community feedback that I've gotten from Thronefall, it very much seems like people do want to

play that stuff co-op. I think they do.
Yeah. But but you personally don't really considering make a
I think thrown specifically will never be co-op because that would basically we would have to rebuild the entire game from ground up to make that possible. Adding multiplayer in hindsight is is always like very very difficult, right? Um, for I think for future games we would consider that or also for spin-off games like maybe maybe make a Thronefall spin-off at some point. It's like the same universe but it's like co-op. Something like that could definitely be an option. I personally obviously really like strategy games and I also like co-op games. So I there is an there is a chance that I might make something like this at some point. Yeah. when I was watching your uh videos and also reading patch note on throne force, I always like thinking like wow this guy like because I have this uh feature creep or feature scope

problem where I always like want to add more stuff into my game
and which going to make the development time much longer than originally planned. But whenever I read like thrown for patch notes, I like I always feel like you have a better grasp on the scope of your game like you define what you will do will not do very early on like like you told people like there will not be uh map editor and all that stuff and when I read that I was like ah if I was if I was him I probably going to be saying that I'm we are considering it like then we kind of end up doing it and not as good as something like that.
How how's you like defining the the the scope and re resisting the temptation to add more?
How how how are you doing?
Honestly, I think I personally I'm very

similar to you in that way that I'm I'm just such a people pleaser and for me personally it's very difficult to say no to community requests. But luckily um my colleague Paul is very good at setting boundaries and I I hopefully I've picked up some of those skills. So I think we've just gotten a bit better at being honest about saying no. And when when the community is like do we get multiplayer? We we're not like yeah maybe we're just like nope nope not going to happen.
Oh okay.
And
oh well I guess the lesson is have a partner that can do that.
Yeah I guess so. like you're you're not going to learn much about that from me unfortunately. No.
Oh, okay. That's a illusion break. I always thought you are the responsible one and that's like I think wow they just said all those stuff in the patch not like this is we will not do and this is we will not do. I think wow this guy have definitely is good at this like I

think the
obviously I've I've picked up some of that philosophy right along the way. So,
I think it makes a lot of sense to do correct expectation management and just if you already know it's very unlikely you're going to do something, just say you're not going to do it. If you then change your m mind and you you do it anyways, nobody's going to be like, "Huh, but you said you wasn't weren't going to do it. What the hell? Why did you do it?"
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
You can always have pleasant surprises in hindsight. So, it's like just say no. And if you if you end up making it, like everybody's going to be fine with that as well. You're not closing any doors by saying no.
Have uh thrown but sometimes just not because people are asking like I have this problem where I just want to add those stuff my myself.
Yes.
Like have you like have a throne for ever being delayed?
Yeah. I mean Thronefall was definitely a long project for our standards but like

like something like 3 years it's it's not too too long, right? So, it's kind of kind of okay. I think we just had the advantage that we scoped relatively well to begin with. We just we didn't bite off too too much and we um intentionally simplified the game in a lot of ways. We have very minimalistic 3D 3D models. We have a very minimal art style. We don't have any textures on the models. Like everything is flat shaded, cartoony. So, we took some took some clever shortcuts and that carried us a long way, I think, cuz we can we just can make content very quickly. If you make a new new unit, we can like we can make a new unit in a day for Thronefire. It's no problem.
True.
And you also can res resist the temptation of like adding a fix to it. Like I I saw like before our interview, you send me some potential topic. One of the topic is like how do you like keep evolving the meta of meabalum and

actually my answer to that is we are not trying to invol meta. What we are trying to do is we want always want to add something to fake something and in the process we break something else and then the meta just changed like we never deliberately want to just like the meta is still let's change it. We never do that. We just like
uh this time we need to do this to fix this is the problem and then then we break something and we need to fix it next time. So,
yeah, I see. I feel like I feel like Overwatch had that problem where they were trying constantly trying to fix some of their problems and they just kept creating new problems with every fix and it never really landed on a very good spot. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That can definitely happen. Yeah.
Yeah. Like last time when we we check out Overwatch, somehow they the Overwatch 2 actually have like the loot

box animation is worse. Like that's that's how how do you make the loot box animation worse? Like like
that's somehow they they managed to break break it like like the when the overwatch loot box uh over one loot box when it's open there's four item fall from the loot box onto the ground. In Overwatch 2, those four item just never hits the ground like four item is in the air and then there's a black screen and change to another UI interface and we were all stunned like like wow they must is trying to fix something to cause this.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I I don't know what's going on there. I guess they're very big and very different team now. How many how big is your your team now? By the way, you started out with a team of two. How many like how many people are working on

Mechabellum now?
There's I I just want to add a little bit of I'm not on Overwatch development team. It's so it's so it's very normal to break something when you add something else into the game. That's happens all the time. But but yeah. Yeah. Okay. And for the for the for for for for your question we have 18 people working on metabolum but we actually have like two people in the office because we have two two project we have another game
uh out of hands and like which we recently released. Uh but for me yes we have 18 people working on meal.
How's the other game called?
House what
the other game that you recently released. What's the name of that? It's uh called out of hands. It's on Steam. It wasn't selling very well, which is kind of out. It's revealed really well. Uh I guess we didn't marketing it right. Like if you are a 500 me 500 hour

meablan players, you still don't know. We have another game. We probably failed.
I did not know.
Looks interesting. Cool.
Developers. He actually make made the the prototype of that game like three years ago during a game jam. So So it's very creative stuff and
uh not a PVP game uh at all. Just like a it's a card uh adventure RPG.
Has a very interesting art style like a like a very collage like look like a mixture of many different art styles almost. Looks interesting.
Yeah. Yeah. uh he's a uh the creator of that game is a very creative person. He's like he always make like different he do different kind of art form like just inside like he he like the steel motion steel motion animation. I'm I'm not sure to to know what steel motion

it's basically like you slowly move your stuff on the table and the record
stop motion. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Stop motion. Yeah. the the stop motion. He makes those like in the office just for fun. Like like Yeah. Yeah. Like create like a funny uh stop motion little movies. Yeah. Yeah. So So when when he makes this game, I I I I just uh ask him just you like stop motion animation that much just add something into the game and he he did and people likes it. So, it's a very creative game and revealed pretty well, but I guess we failed on the marketing side. That's probably
I mean, it has a thousand reviews, which is honestly not not too bad. I think that's
honestly that that's kind of fine for for a game like this cuz it's looks like a bit of an artsy game. Like it's it's not like a mass type game. It's like a indie lava game. And I think considering

that I think it's doing quite okay.
Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of okay. So, but considering we spent three years making that, so it's not
not as
yeah, not not as good as we we wanted to be. But yeah, it's okay. Like,
okay. Um, today I opened the store page of out of hands and I noticed the recent review is already 100. Like I think wow I must have done something very wrong on the marketing side to make a game revealed such so well not selling that well like the sales of that game is definitely not good.
Uh, but people do post a lot of reviews because it actually like somehow make people want to say something about it.
I see. So, so, so the real number is higher than euro but in the end it's not a big deal for our studio but I just wish it sells more but but yeah that's how that's that's kind of a risk when you are making a game it's like somehow

some game may not sell well sell well then I guess but that's okay. Yeah.
How how's the Meabellum journey going? Do do you think you'll keep working on Mechabalum for like 10 more years or like do you have three more years of content planned or like what what are the plans for the future of Meabalum? Well, for me, I think planwise, we plan all the contents right to next year, next spring. Those are already in motion. We are already making those content and uh
beyond that I don't know probably are they going to be more content for Mabalum because Meabalum is still making money for us. So, so we are updating it and also it's uh my is like my basically everything I'm working on in the past not decades but like eight

years to now. So, so we are like up we want to update it for a really long time and in the same time we have noticing like a lot of stuff we want to do probably cannot be done in the scope of uh Macabalum especially Macabalum one like at a certain point like the the preexisting context just going to preventing you to do other stuff you want to do to do so we are considering like uh like not just considering we are prototyping uh other games like uh but uh for for Mechabalum I think there's are still lots of content we can add to the game there's hopefully hopefully there's a new game going to come to mealum at the end of not new game new new unit come to mealum at the end of the year and there are uh we are remaking several other unit like redo the model and the ability

stuff. So this year back have still have a lot of content coming to it and next year I'm not sure as that there but but something always come to my mind like whenever I think like there's enough stuff in me then something come to my mind and and I think well I we we have to add this to the game and stuff that's
that's my problem. I I have this kind of tendency stuff like the the buildings we are adding new buildings to the game and yeah like the armor type if we figured out how to do armor type not just armor type how to do armor properly for mealum then
if we ever figure that out then there's going to be a big update for armor. Yeah, we we have lot of plans for mem also the Macabalum universe like we are like there are a lot of uh prototyping early design of stuff that is not Mac

the Mabel universe
well we say it's like a universe like sounds like very big just just we want to add some something that's not Mac um maybe I'm I'm not sure if we can add those into my palm and we will try but maybe we add them into like meab 2 or a spin off of me all stuff but we are like doing interesting design that should be in interacting very well with existing mechan uh units all that stuff yeah that's cool
but basically meabellum is making enough revenue that you can keep working on it for the foreseeable future if you want to
yeah yeah That that that's is I think uh I do like games. I do love my games, but in the end it's a company and and there is 2,000 people
here and uh in the end it's like if

something is making money, we're going to support it.
If something isn't then
Yeah. If something isn't then then we going to have to do something like like to to to survive. That's that's the that's the reality here. Yeah, that's one I guess that's one reason that this field is not that competitive because there's not that much money to made here.
So
there's not that much reward but there's a lot of risk
high risk low reward kind of.
Yeah. Yeah. But but someone probably going to figure it out.
Yeah. At a certain time like Yeah. Yeah. the some of them will figure the monetization out eventually. I think there's lots of people like this kind of game. I think there's not enough resource put into this genre, the strategy PVP genre that like I guess when I was young there's a lot
I kind of have the feeling as well. I kind of have the feeling that this genre

should work and the problems just haven't been solved correctly yet.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I think but for what it's worth, I think Meabellum is is a lot closer to the answer than probably most games I've seen in the past because um for for example what I really like about Mechabellum is that it's it's a strategy game that really focuses on the strategy and nothing else. Because know most other strategy games are also about how fast can you click like can you do 20 things at once and Mechabellum uh is finally strategy game where it's like it's very much about the strategy and you also infuse like the correct amount of randomness into it to create interesting decisions for the players. I I very much like that. Yeah, we hope we are like the correct amount because the player base definitely don't think it's a correct amount. How random.
Yeah, I mean the the problem is of

course that sometimes you you lose due to bad luck, right? Sometimes you just get unlucky and you get countered and but like
Yeah,
I think if you play it with the correct mindset and you're like one match doesn't decide your skill levels like 10 matches, it give you maybe a better idea of what your skill level is against the person, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I I definitely think so. Also like don't think like a game as if a game is as deterministic as possible is going to be very fun. Like if that's like we have a game where people just measure in each other's height and then we compare who's who is taller.
That's is very determining stick very competitive.
But I don't think it's very fun. It's like I definitely don't think it's like if the you always like if the better player always win. I I don't think that's I don't think that is something like we should aiming for especially who is better is very it's you shouldn't create

this standard that measure how which people is better than which people does which people should always win. That's
yeah that
like it's it's makes it more interesting for both sides if upsets are possible right like if
if a very skilled person ranks against a not so skilled person and they immediately know the outcome of the game it's kind of not not that interesting but if if there's a slither of chance that it could go the other way that's that makes it a lot more interesting for for both sides
I think yeah I agree and also people are not just one dimension like you may have a highMr But maybe my play style counters you like
true.
Yeah. So, so my so so it's not like like people are not one dimension like you you are good at something and you are like slightly higher than me in MMR wise that doesn't mean you are better metab uh back metabolum player you just have a

higher MMR right now and that doesn't mean you should beat me
in the next match because maybe I started the game a little bit more or maybe I during In this game I have a genius revelation that I have some come up some very innotative uh strategy or all that stuff and then I win and I think player don't really have something against this kind of sentiment but uh the thing with randomness is like sometimes like something can be random to someone but not random to someone else like for example I'm not like when I visit the the the village and the farmland And if there comes a call, I cannot know do not know it's a male or female call, I guess. But I I guess in English it's different word. Let's shape. Let's come out a shape and I don't know it's a male shape is a or a female shape shape. So it's random to me.
So if the shape is random is male or

female, it's random to me. But for another person, he take one look at he know it's a male go shape. So it's not random to the other person. So stuff is uh random stuff is like something is random if you don't have enough information knowledge or you just don't have the ability like for a bland person for a blind person a lot of stuff is random.
True.
Like Yeah. Yeah. And like for like you can say people uh small children they play the I'm not sure we call it means like the you have like a nice square on it. Nice square on the board and you place cross and circle on it. What's that?
Tic tac toe.
Yeah. Yeah. Three. If you you have three cross in a row then you
Yeah. I think that's called tic tac toe. Mhm.
Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you watch small children play those the outcome I have

very random but if it's adults playing them then then no so so it's sometimes the random randomness is is tied into how can you process uh informations like maybe the information is there maybe there is random but not as much random as you think that that it is just simply because
do you maybe is what you're saying kind of that the more advanced players can maybe more easily predict what you're going to do, for example, or what what you're going to pick. If you have a bunch of different cards, then maybe an experienced person knows what you're most likely to pick and the other one is like, I don't know what the other one's going to pick. This seems kind of random.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Something like that. also like some people can analyzing not not like it's not even like a more advanced like maybe I'm not as high as MMR as wise as you

but I happen to familiar with these three units
and then then I will have a better understanding of how to use those stuff to counter whatever stuff and you happen to just don't as good as like as knowledgeable to those three units as me and then those three units come up as like a card to offer to you then you feel like well I have to have bad luck all this are bad units sometimes it's like generally bad for your board then sometimes like it's it is maybe very useful for your B you just do not know it and it's not even because you are weaker you just happen to not know it stuff
yeah sure so you I I see so you can run into some funny situ situations where maybe you think you got unlucky even though you got very lucky or maybe even the other way around where you think you got very lucky even though you didn't really get lucky. So this so your personal perception can be different from the reality there of course.

Yeah. Yeah. That's definitely true. It's like something like very useful come to you. You may not even realize it is you know useful. That's happens a lot. So, so the randomness like in the end what I think as a developer what you want to minimize is the feeling of unfairness and the feeling of randomness like reduce the actual randomness is like not possible. Sometimes like people if you describe the concept of paper rock scissor people would think wow this game must definitely be so deterministic so fair and so unrandom because you can choose paper rock scissor at any time whichever you want like you want to play rock you can play rock you want to play paper you can play paper but the outcome is super very random and like you the the feeling is like you have three choice choice. You have three choice and uh you can choose whatever you want and

but in the end it actually you don't have choice. Your choice is not play it and play it. If you play it the outcome always 50%. You the three choice actually is a illusion. You don't really have three choice. That's yeah that that that's but if you present this concept but don't cut it rock paper scissor to players they will feel like well I have I have a say in this like I can choose like there's always this three choice these three choice are not randomized and I can pick one of them what's random here there's not random some something like that yeah
are you so you're trying to get that feeling maybe in a way into meabum where you're like it's random but it's not supposed to feel random because you always feel like you could have chosen something else.
Yeah. Basically, you need to give stuff control. I think in Europe you guys are like really hot on the football. The outcome of football is like highly

if you are from the statist perspective the outcome of the football match is very random like the higher ranking team can like losing to lower ranking team all the time and and there are people thinks that football is very random but the majority of the football enjoyer don't really think football matches are random because there are a lot of especially yeah like for penalty Even like for things like a penalty for penalty is like really really random like you can't score a penalty but even that because people have agency in those even though the outcome is highly random
people still feels like we is deserved most of the time that that is something I'm always thinking like how can we add something like this into me balm to to like somehow a player more agency. So they they feels like uh they have more

control because in reality player already have play plenty control. the from our stats the higher MMR player already have a very saving rate against lower MR players and we are not looking to increasing that like we are not actively looking for ways to make higher memor player beats lower memor players more dismantically
you just want to increase the feeling that you have
yeah yeah we don't really want to like and and for people who are asking for that is also like they probably don't really want that like for high MMR player if you meet a high MMR player you just auto lose I don't think
yeah that doesn't really want that
yeah but if we remove all randomness it shouldn't be the case like if if somehow it's just a tight mirroring contest like you are not going to beat someone who just two cm higher than you that's

yeah I don't think player is asking like let's make this like some some some someone just better than me and he beats me all the time or I beat someone worse than me all the time. They are they just want like the feeling of I have agency here but I can also if I play well I can upset someone else or all that stuff and in that we should give player like both real option and the fake option like a rock paper scissor. Yeah,
like groupers really really really present fake options to people but most people don't really think those they think wow this three very fair options right in reality is not not option whatever you choose you have 50% brain rate but
yeah true
interesting interesting perspective yeah I think yeah I think influencing the feelings of the players without

influencing gameplay too much is definitely a a big challenge. So, I'm curious to see if you'll manage to do that. Yeah. Sounds very difficult.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I I I don't really plan to solve it anytime soon. Something in my mind.
Okay. I see. Yeah. It's a interesting interesting thought. Yeah. Something to wonder about.
You only need to answer this if you want to.
Are you already working on your next game?
Not yet. Uh, I've made a little mobile puzzle game as a like an in between project, but just a minor free mobile game that I'm going to release sometime soon probably. And for the for the next big commercial game, we have some ideas, but we haven't started development yet. So, it's still still completely open. Could still be anything. Could be single player, could be multiplayer. If it's multiplayer, then it's probably going to be PvE co-op, but could also be single player. I don't know. There's still still a lot of lots of options, but we probably don't want to make a live

service. We we probably just want to make a a game in two one or two years or something and then just move on to the next game.
That's the plan for now.
Stone for probably made enough money for you for you to expand your team if you want.
Do you do you want to like expand expand the team?
I don't think so. I think we will we'll just keep working with the two of us for now. And there's I guess there's one model that I've seen a lot of indie developers do that I think is is reasonable and that is you de you kind of develop the vision of the game in a very small team like similar to what you did almost like you develop the the core vision for Meabellum in a team of two, right? What it sounds like. And then once you know what the game is supposed to be, then you bring new people into the team to so that you can basically finish it faster or make content for it faster. And may maybe you even do that with freelancers, right? So you're like, um, okay, we know what this game is supposed

to be now, so now we're going to hire five freelancers to help us. And then after that, it's just the two of us again. I can imagine something like this as well. But yeah, I don't think we're too keen to grow too quickly cuz we have or or I have seen a lot of indie game developers that have regrets about growing too quickly where they're like now we have a burn rate of like 50,000 per month and that's uh that's very that sounds very stressful. Um so yeah, we're we're trying to avoid that.
Yeah, bigger team definitely is more stressful. Don't really recommend it.
Yeah.
Yeah. But I'm happy to I'm happy to hear that it's working out for for Meabalum. That's really really nice.
Yeah. Yeah. For for for now we are here and we are like paying our bills like that's that's something I'm I'm actually grateful like in this. I'm not sure what what is your situation in Europe but here in China like if you stay alive that's that's already a win. We will come come stay alive already

uh win you I just want to stay in the two person team that's just amazing I like I have always think that the FTL uh developers the into bridge developers they are a small team that's I think that's takes strength to resist the temptation to to like make a bigger game that's definitely and and I think you are definitely you are doing good here. Paul and I are also just scared of becoming maybe people managers a bit too much because we really like working on the game and we're a bit scared that uh if if we add like five more team members then one of us will just be we'll just not be working on the game anymore. We'll just do people management.
Yeah. Oh
you feel like I do over times all the time.
Yeah. Or that like work till midnight every day. Exactly.
Yeah. That's probably my life. Well,
kind of like a

during daylight, I don't really have stuff I would like to do be done. I only just wait until everybody out of the office and then I do my Yeah. do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do the game stuff. That's
Oh, well that's it.
Wow.
Well, that that only means you'll you'll get an extra thank you for making time for this talk, man. This is really really was really really awesome. I really enjoyed chatting with you and also I think it's it's always cool to to know the people behind the games you play. Really cool. Good stuff. Thank you so much for inviting me and for actually is is like one of my like favorite game recently like near like especially like since I'm not like I don't really have that much spare time and strong for is the one game where I can get into very easily and there's lots of smart design in it and actually we are learning like since we are making a PVE game we actually are learning from

zone Nice. Yeah, I think we I think I subconsciously also probably stole from Mechabellum a little bit when we were making Thronefall. Like I really like the the four choices for example like we have a similar game similar thing in Thronefall, right? Where you can often uh choose between four upgrades. So there might have been some in inspiration there maybe. Oh yeah, we are actually like playing your endless mode for because we want to make a more replayable PVE game. So, so I'm very delighted to see the the endless mode from Stormfall like oh now there's something we can learn more.
So
yeah, true.
Yeah.
Yeah. I think also I think that's a very interesting design where like each level you guys play several days and but the days keeps increasing all that stuff that's I I think that's very interesting like at the beginning I heard the endless mode in S for I thought it's

just a map where you just there's just so many days in a map when I played I oh okay they are changing maps every few
days and that's some That definitely is more interesting than just staying on one map.
I agree. And also it solves the problem of having needing infinite content on one map ready. There's we don't have enough upgrades that you can keep playing on one map forever. But one thing I will say about this one learning from the endless mode is that
like people are not the not the biggest fan of the changing maps thing. Like I think if if we would give players a choice, they would be like, "Yeah, I want to just keep playing on the same map till I die." I think if they they had a choice they they would pick that cuz it's more satisfying from a fantasy perspective to be like okay I built this up as big as possible and I can build even bigger and even bigger and it's like if somebody comes along and it's like now you have to restart then it's like ah
do do you think uh this is the

commandment do you think if you have like this kingdom but you have multiple towns and for the first level you play on the first town for 3 days. Then you move to another town, but your first town didn't get wiped out. And on level five, you revisit
your first town and build that town a little bit further. So basically, you are building more and more tongs in this kingdom and in the end you like and you just like
take a turn to play
in each town.
That's interesting. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that could be interesting. I think I think yeah I think it's mostly that um people are not so keen of something permanently being deleted, right? So if it's like I've spent so much time building this and now it's just gone and I'm never going to going to see it again. I think that's a bit frustrating for people. It's also a problem we had with our other game Islanders where it's just like whenever you go to a new island the other one is just gone. You're never going to see it again and

that's a that's not something people seem to like. But I think if it's if it's for example saved somewhere or you can revisit it later, I think that probably makes it better. Yeah, good point.
Oh, cool.
This is always interesting to learn from fer fellow game developers. Like I I I didn't like anticipate like we like you are considering making a PV PVP game and we are considering making PVE game and somehow we are exchanging notes here.
Yeah, true. Yeah man. If you have any any more questions or need input on anything else, feel free to just send me an email. I'm totally willing to share all the insider knowledge that we have. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
All right. Cool. Let's let's wrap it up then. I'll just stop the recording.