Making Friendslop Work | Design Club

[music] [music] Good time zone internet. Hello and welcome to Design Club Live. The only game design show on the internet that's back after we missed a week. But we also have guests and they have a a lot of cool info to share with us. I'm your humble host, Will, joined as always by my pal Jeff. And we have guests today. Yes. Would you please introduce yourselves for those who missed our earlier stream with you guys the last time we did this? Uh, and we had a blast with it.
Sure. You want to start?
Sure. I'm David Whitaker. I'm one of the co-founders here at Codename Entertainment and I am the game director for Without a Hitch.
And I am Eric Jordan and I'm the CEO and uh and your humble uh fourth player of Without a Hitch. [laughter]
Great. Excellent.
Always need that humble fourth player.
Yeah, that's right. I'm just here to fill the group out.
I I feel like that's an important role

though because it just there always needs to be a person who's willing to jump in to fill the group because if there isn't, it always feels awkward, right? Because you're like, man, we could have someone else, but we don't. And that's sad. So, having a friend who's like, yeah, I'll play anything. I just want to come on and hang out and play. Very good. Very good. Uh
especially one familiar with development.
Yeah, that that helps a lot. Yeah. For those who don't recognize me because I'm wearing a hat today and you're watching my beautiful hair because we're playing without a hitch. I am put on my truckeriest hat I could find. Um, but I'm Jeffrey Zatigan. I am the co-host of Design Club with Will. I am our resident game designer and residents for extra credits. And importantly for today, I am Eric's I'll put the right way. Eric's friend, which is how I found out about this early and we got the sneak peeks though. I hear you guys have a demo out now and a couple of people have heard of it and

you're getting some good reviews. Can you tell us about what's happened since we last checked in?
Yeah. [clears throat] Uh, we do have a demo out. So, it's out on Epic and on Steam with crossplay, so you can play across both of those. We're in Steam NextFest, which is obviously taking place on Steam. And so, yeah. So, there's a free demo that you can check out and uh play. And last time we were here, we were just chatting about this earlier. We had done two play tests and we all played together in play test number two and so we took a bunch of that feedback rolled it into the demo and then that demo is what's live right now. So people watching want to play that that's what's there but what we're actually doing because Dave is a wild man [laughter] he gives us the Whitaker warranty that it's all fine. We're actually playing a build that was finished
I don't know maybe
30 minutes. 30 minutes ago. Uh fine.
And so if this build works well, then I assume the plan is to push that over to

the demo, I think.
Uh yeah, the little bit of polish items on here that we still need to address before it goes to the demo. But uh bunch of updates to the demo uh are in this and they'll go out hopefully by the end of the week for the demo.
So So yes, chat um as when we when we get the game on screen, we'll give this disclaimer again, but yes, this this code is hot, fresh, off the presses. So, a reminder that the gameplay that we're showing you and the stuff that we're talking about is all very much in development and that's the point. So, if it changes, that's why. So,
I I I have this burning question, right? Because I've I've helped, not helped, I've participated in play tests and in early accesses and in um like streamer early release events for games that are sort of in an equivalent spot to Where Without Hitches. But what I'd love to hear from you guys is how do you take metrics, feedback, questionnaires,

comments, whatever from something as big as as your second play test and then distill all of that down into like this is a list of actionable things, right? Cuz like I'm sure you get comments that are like the game doesn't have that devivve I'm looking for and you're like what does that mean? I don't even know. [laughter] Right. And so, how do you how do you take all of that and put it into the thing that we're going to play into it?
Uh, sure. So, you know, during the uh during the first play test, at the at the end of a playthrough, we did have a survey. Uh, the survey allowed you to, you know, give your comments or things that that you enjoyed playing through, things that you thought could be improved. And so after we gotten all that back, uh, I went through all of every single comment that was listed and and I kind of coded it up in terms of just from a survey response to say, you know, this item is talking about the difficulty, this item is talking about vehicle controls, this item is talking about camera controls, this item is

talking about, um, you know, things that are in the game to do, uh, etc., etc. So, I ended up with a quite a large list. I think it probably about you was about 50 different items sort of categorized and then how many different how many times someone had mentioned that particular thing and then sorted that through based on sort of the ones that had the most references to them. um and kind of the and shook out sort of what were the items that that really um that were commonalities the players were all asking for, all asking about. Um which for us actually on on the playthrough there came kind of down to to two really really big ones and then everything after that was um pretty similar in size. Um but the
Yeah, it was a real drop off. There was like two that everything was kind of there and then a drop to like nothing was more than like 5% after those first two.
Yeah. And those first two was was just like things to do. You want to flesh out the world and then difficulty. There was a lot of comments on that. There wasn't a lot of things that were threatening you. There wasn't a lot of things you had to overcome. Um and so one of the key things that we've been putting into

uh into this build into into the demo build and actually more so into the build that that you have in front of you right now um are enemies. U so things that that actually will defend the the points of interest as you get to them. Um, and then in terms of just actually having fleshing out points of point or things to do, um, we did actually end up adding um, but the best word for it would be like an active game status display that tells you sort of what are the things that you've accomplished on the current level. What are the things that are left to do? You know, how much is there more? Can you can you move on now or, you know, there's still things to go out and discover. Uh, we sort of give a little bit more direction to players on on what to what to be looking at as they're playing through a level.
Kind of all the collection a collection screen if you will. this.
Because there is a group of players where if you tell them how many widgets there are in this grain silo, they will

dive in with both hands until they have found every last widget because you told them how many there were. Yeah, I I personally that's like 100% the way I love to play these kind of games. And so I was thrilled to have the kind of collections thing and I could be like, "Oh, I've got this out of this and I want to find these things and then I'll go around the map to see if I can find stuff."
Yeah. And and certainly there's a a comfort in knowing that you found all of them. You can stop looking now. It's okay. You can move on%
that actually is surprising. One of the things that I think a lot of younger designers miss that I think just older designers kind of have tucked in their brain that it's good to tell people when they're done
because it can be really frustrating to not know
both on the for both sides like the completionist and the non-comp completionist
because at a certain point when you're like you're done you're you're mentally allowed to move on uh in a way that you're not when you think there might still be something around.

Yeah. And we kind of actually designed in two done states. So there's two different ways of messaging that you're done and they're for kind of different player groups. So the package has a value that you need in order to finish one run, like a day run or a night run. Um, and so you can finish the package value. You can still collect more, but you now have enough. And so for people who are like, "Okay, I'm good. I don't want to find everything on this map." Those people now know, okay, I can be done. And then the screen we were just talking about, the collection screen, is for people who, like myself, love to kind of find all the things and want to know, I've got all the things. Now I'm done. So we actually, it's not just done, it's done for different groups of players and what they want.
100%.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now, now one thing, Will, um I'm going to pretend to be Will. Channel my best will. followup question that I know because I have inside information to Dave is when you're going through a

whole bunch of feedback over a weekend because I know that's when you did most of it. Um and then you're halfway through and you realize oh I wish I had more granularity on my coding system.
Uh what was the piece that you because there was some I just remember afterwards you were like oh yeah it would have been good to divide because you sort of you know you come up with the coding kind of just as you're reading through really.
Yes. Yeah. sort of that survey coding the survey responses um which is you know basically saying that this this response is referencing this category and then you find that you've got enough items in the category that there's maybe that should have been two categories. I know I ended up just tagging it with the details and notes about what items were included because I guess at that point I was loathed to go back to [laughter] the beginning and go through all of them again to create. Um and so uh I know there were items that got coded in under like the the you know more to do um this uh like in terms of like finding the points of interest and times finds the enemies and the difficulty that got grouped in that were like maybe that

could have broken out into say two categories. was one that was specifically around like actually I found this part pretty boring or rather this over comment of just actually I didn't find enough things to do,
right? But
yeah.
Yeah.
And then I I guess I do have a question about enemies. Um did did everyone not run into the elevator mimic? I felt like that was a very [laughter] challenging enemy that just absolutely devoured the package and me. So, you know, I feel I feel like they weren't looking for enemies in all the right places. Interestingly enough, in one of the categories was that the elevator killed us. I think that was one of those five categories referenced
boldly leading the way into into a tiny niche category. I'll take it. So, um
actually hold on before that I have a question on that because this is always one of those things. How much feedback completely surprised you? Because like a team starts working. They kind of got an idea of things and then you show it to people and you get reactions that you've never seen before because you know you've been showing it to your select group of people and then somebody's

like, "Hey, but what about this or you know that kind of thing?" Were there ones that kind of came out of left field for you from the play first play test or did you pretty much have anything locked everything locked in for it was around what you were expecting? you know, nothing off the top of my head comes up as something that was particularly surprising. Um, but that said, we have been running the tests internally with a range of about 20 to 30 people weekly for quite a long time now. And so I think we were kind of getting a lot of the categories covered. Um, there was something not in play test 2, but in the first play test that surprised me. And it wasn't even feedback that people provided through the survey form, but I was also watching Twitch and, you know, people would play the game and just tag it as without a hitch. And so I would go look and kind of see. And within the game, obviously the objective is you pick up a package, you go collect parts, and the parts kind of suck into the package, you get money, you ultimately

turn it in, buy upgrades, and off you go. And what I was surprised about was if you don't have the package, you can pick up these parts and you hold on to them. Um bec because for us, you then want to take them to the package, they go into the package and you make more money. And people who wanted to drop the parts because they hadn't quite figured out why you were collecting them. And and because one of the things and I think this is kind of part of what you were alluding to Jeff is when you're doing the test like we have been internally you're seeing the the game kind of build if you will hopefully along kind of one trajectory and so there's kind of a set of unwritten assumptions that you've all got because you've seen how the game's coming together and you know that this is the design intent behind it and then when someone just kind of drops in and they've never played and and these kind of friend slop games are very tutorial light would be one way to describe them or essentially zero tutorials. Um so people just kind of drop into the world

and kind of start going and um and to see the preconceptions that people bring into that experience and what they think about it. That's always an interesting bit because it's sort of like I always kind of think of it as the game is sort of this thing that you are coming at from this perspective but people are coming at it when they play it from a completely different perspective. And so that's what I I find really interesting. And personally, it's also one of the things that I find the most rewarding about making games is watching people play this thing that I've been part of kind of coming to existence and watching them laugh and have a good time and all that stuff in ways that I sometimes you expect hopefully a bunch of them, but sometimes you're like, "Oh, I think they would do that."
I think that sort of from a feedback standpoint, nothing in there stood out in a way that was like, "Oh, yeah. I haven't seen something of that nature." But definitely when you watch people play it and the way they start approaching problems um is very much often see things you completely don't expect. It it it invariably makes me think of that uh
the YouTube short or the Tik Tok short

where the the developer is watching someone put the the pegs into the the little that little game for kids with the square hole and the round hole and the the the cylinder hole and she's watching them, you know. All right. The square thing goes in the square hole and then the round thing goes in the square hole [laughter] and the triangle thing goes in the square hole. That's right. What are you doing?
Yeah. Every Yeah. Everything will fit in the square hole if you contort it enough. Yes.
Um
Yeah. I I think that that is another really interesting u part of the ecosystem now is that people will stream your stuff and and like I'm acutely aware that when I stream a game, especially one that's in development, I will be accidentally showing problems that I have no idea are problems because I don't know what I don't know,
right? So, I just like playing along like, "Oh, this feels this way and this is my feedback on this." And the developer is like, "Okay, yeah, totally." but did you see this pixel?

And you're like, what? I didn't see anything. And they're like, yeah, there was this whole thing that you missed like go over here with and you just you missed. Right. That's one of those things as a dev that you often have to do is the stuff that you think everybody understands you actually have to make like five times clearer than you ever thought any you ever would have to just because sure some people will but that you know 5 10 20 30% of the people who don't it's really frustrating.
Yeah.
Like it's really frustrating.
Yeah. And I think
well and I think I say I think it's also it's hard to assess when you're part of making the thing and so you kind of know how all the pieces go together
what it's going to be like for someone coming in who doesn't have that context. The same thing is true for running D and D games. If you dungeon master like I know several of us here do um designing you know puzzles and you're like because you designed the puzzle you're like I know the puzzles like this but people coming in who don't have that context

and you're like why are you trying to do this crazy thing over here? That's not at all what I was trying to get you to do.
Right. And and the other one is the underlying genre assumptions. Right. Like you mentioned friends games are tutorialike. But what if what if I'm not playing without a hitch because it's a friend slop game? What if I'm playing without a hitch because my favorite game is Rocket League and I also like driving around as a car, right? And and so my I I might not have the genre literacy that you would expect of someone who's a diehard Peak Repo Lethal Company player, right? And so that's I I feel like that's the other end of it that we get. Um, and that I I often remind people that like and they're like, "Why is this tutorialized so much?" Or, "Why is this?" I'm like, "Because you all know this, but this might be someone's first game in this genre or in this category." Or it might be someone's first video game, period. Which is a wild thing to

think about,
right?
This just grasses one, by the way, just for if you can you guys see it on screen?
They can see it on on my on my camera. Yeah. Um, Grace says, "I still remember as my first big project uh where I coded a simple character creator. As soon as I had something, someone else try it. It caused it to crash by clicking outside of the grid where you were supposed to interact with. I'd never tried to do that. Is why would you do that? It doesn't do anything." Yes. [laughter] Exactly. Right. Um, what the there's a there's a joke about QA testers, right? Um, a QA tester walks into a bar, orders a beer, orders 10 beers, orders negative one beers, orders 10,000 beers, and walks out. The player walks in, orders a glass of milk, and the bar burns down. Like, it's that, right? Like, you're testing for a group of things that you assume are going to come up, and then they don't or something completely different does. Yeah.
Yeah. And again, that's actually as a designer

sometimes that's one of the most fun parts of the design is figuring out how to craft it in such a way that the way you build it is elegant and covers all of those weird eventualities that you just don't want to deal with rather than trying to solve each one individually.
Yeah. Well, I think it's one of the big differences between being a player and being a designer and something that players will often not necessarily kind of grock as much, which is players are presented hopefully with elegant solutions. Designers had to go through a bunch of messy solutions to get to the elegant solutions. And so the things that kind of seem self-evident after the fact often didn't seem self-evident through the journey to that self-evidence. And so when I'm talking to people who hope to become game designers and make games and doing game jams and stuff like that, I'm like, don't ever confuse the experience of playing that finished game with that elegant solution with the

experience of making the game and having to go through a bunch of trial and error and very inelegant things to get to that elegant place. And and I think um the the way that I have come to phrase my experience with a lot of games that are in that inelegant state is that the bones are good, right? Like you can see
how eventually all of those rough spots will be polished off into an elegant
might get to the point where they're
Yeah. [laughter] Correct.
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Um, but in the moment you you sort of um give it some grace, give it some forgiveness because it's not there yet. Uh, and that's okay. Um, some of my favorite games are, man, there's a lot of problems with it in its current state, but the bones are so good that I'm so excited for them to be better.
Um,
yeah, because you're looking at the potential at that point.
Correct. But I I also have to admit that of all of us, I'm probably in the

weirdest position in that I run through games and need a uh a sort of not methodical, but like very broad-reaching understanding of games that are relevant right now, even if I don't play them. Uh, and so my
analysis, my absorption of different games, particularly in genres that I don't, uh, play a lot of or don't have time for, um, is sort of weird and off access from, uh, professionals such as yourselves who have who have made all of these different games.
Yeah. One one actually comment I was thinking as you were talking about describing to would be up and cominging game designers about, you know, the elegant solution they're seeing in a game versus what they're working on and how it took to get there. I I would actually comment that often times I see solutions in, you know, published like live games that actually aren't very elegant and those are elegant. Yeah.
And and you you would assume that they

actually took quite a bit of time to even get to that non-elegant solution and didn't quite get there. Um, sometimes it, you know, takes multiple uh, like sequels to get there, which like I, the game that immediately came to mind when you were talking about that was was The Witcher series, which going from one to two to three had just such night and day in terms of the interface and how it played and how to the point where if you started with the third one, you probably couldn't go back and play the second and first one without being extraordinarily frustrated with how it played. And and I think that that happened a lot um in a lot of I think that's weirdly a very trilogy thing,
right? Especially like over like when the trilogy gets a long period of time. Um and I think like Civilization is another series that participates heavily in that because by the time you finish Civ 6, you're like, why would I go back and play Civ 5 at all? It's like a totally different game. Um,
it's weird on Civ like sometimes they make enough changes like five and six

are both excellent games and you can swap back and forth but like going say from six back to three.
Oh yeah, three or two.
Three was the one. So that's also several decades because three is the one I played when I was in high school. So we've got we've got a fair bit of time there in that in that equation as well. But uh I was also
actually never I'm not gonna get into say
civ is also like it takes three expansions to get good usually. So
yeah that is another problem. [laughter]
Anyway I say that with love.
The the other thing too that I wanted to bring up about elegant versus in elegant solutions is in live service games. One of the things that I have found a lot of uh playing I play an MMO recreationally and I've been playing an MMO on stream so I'm seeing a lot of this is that players will wear the corners off of an inelegant solution with repetition until the point where for them it is not

so inelegant. Right. Of course it works that way. It's always worked that way. you just need to, you know, turn three times, spit over your left shoulder, and, you know, speak backwards in Latin, and then it'll work fine. Doesn't everyone know that? Obviously, right? like that that sort of um ease of use after long practice is also a thing that is kind of interesting because then
if you change that inelegant solution into an elegant one, it will upset the players who are used to turning three times and spinning over their left shoulder and chanting backwards in Latin. Right. Like that's it's sort of an interesting
my day. You're right. [clears throat] Yes. Exactly. Okay. Or like um the uh the attempts to discern what actually affected crafting quality in EverQuest that Jeff talked about where players thought it was like everything and it was just RNG. Like they thought it was like the direction you were facing or the season or the time of day or the what it had it has to be something. It has to. No.

No. There was a hastefully implemented system by a single designer who had to pick it up at the last minute.
Yeah. That happens too. Um, cool. So, I think I think that answers like most of my like early play test questions. Um,
what should we be looking for on this build as we're heading into it? Like that we should be looking for on this both for fun or are there like note improvements or feedback like what's why is this one up?
Yeah. So, there's been a lot of changes uh since the last time we played. Um a key change in terms of um just like the first thing you're going to noticed is that the the visual fidelity has changed. Um we have changed quite a bit in terms of like how the terrain is drawn. Um the way that there actually are for for um I guess detailed details on on the terrain. So we actually have um you'll see that the mountain cliffs have have cliff sides and that the valleys where there's water have sand that looks like it's wet. So lots of

visual changes on that. Um, we've added a set of collectible coins. Those are the wool coins. They'll they'll show up at the various points of interest. Um, we've added enemies. So, we've got turret enemies that'll shoot at you. We've got a little tank guy that'll drive around and and and chase you around.
Um, we've also added a sand shark.
Uh, this is this is an Yeah, I maybe I shouldn't go too deep. We've added various enemies. Um,
did you say spoilers or spoilers?
Spoilers.
Spoilers. [laughter] Spoilers. There actually aren't spoilers, but they are spoilers. There's no spoilers. There's no spoilers on the car. Um so,
um so so lots of uh more more interactable pieces there.
Um we've added various toys to the base. At this point, we've really messed them up. I think uh they're all over the place because we were playing around in here earlier.
Um you'll find that there are more um more sort of what we call sort of toys that are out on on the world, including ramps and boosters that are on the road. Um, yeah, I think

and at least for me, the single most exciting piece is when you hit tab, you bring up this lovely collections menu or kind of progress menu which shows all the things and so I know how many of the treasure racks I found and how many points of the interest I found.
Okay, cool.
Yeah,
actually uh let's let's slide into the game and we can show off that that menu. So, I will uh move us on in. All right.
All right.
So, here we here we find ourselves. Uh I've customized my car. By the way, that was another thing that we mentioned is that cars are now uh you can pick a color and it's it's a very nice hue selector. Um uh but this tab menu, very nice like like this a lot. Um we also have these wo coins which uh we were talking earlier are kind of reminiscent of the the Kong coins is another thing. I can I just tell you though that I absolutely love that we have a counter for how many splines we've articulated. I really feel

like that's [laughter] the soul of the game. Like we're at large right there.
Um
big fan. So
to break it to you. It's uh it's not actually accurate and it doesn't update.
I'm my heart is broken. I am devastated. I don't know if I'll ever recover from this loss. Uh, also chat, uh, you are now free to ponder the orb, um, while I use it to flip Jeff over. Uh, okay. So, um, for for those that missed our our first stream of without a hitch, uh, let's shall we shall we go over some basics, uh, for for what we're doing, what our goal is, and how we're likely to blow each other up.
Sure. Yeah. [laughter]
Did you do you want us to go over the basics, or do you guys You're pros now.
Uh, let's let let's see. Let's see if we can do it. So, our goal is to take this package that has googly eyes on it, just like we have googly eyes. It's over here. And we're going to use this crane to grab this package. Give me the package. Uh, and

is it like it's control and then was it Q and R? No, it's right click. That's right. Um, so we're going to take this package out through the desert and we're going to try and fill it up with $30,000 worth of junk or valuable treasure acquired from the corpses of our fellow cars. Uh, and we're trying to get through the desert to uh the next place and we'll buy upgrades and we'll have cannons and everything will be great. Also, can I tell you how happy I am that the cat eyes just won't behave ever on the front of the car? [laughter] just it was so distracting for a moment that they were just like looking all over the place and then not looking in the same direction and then they were and it was great and I love it. Um
I'm trying to remember what was the pickup button
control.
Yeah. Control left
and then left mouse button.
Uh and and you'll see that we've uh over here we go
we have gathered uh some Auchra Ma from around the uh from around the starting area um which we will uh

be using. Hold on. Somebody's
mic is coming. So, I'm gonna do this real quick.
Whoa. What was that? Laser.
It's a freaking laser.
It's a freaking laser. More monsters, remember?
Yeah. Yeah. We're going to have monsters. So, you got you all got to protect me from the thing.
Uh, okay. So, once we're all in here, it'll it'll open up and we're
off to a great start. Just the best start. [laughter] Just truly the what what other start could we have hoped for? Also,
oh yes,
okay, that was interesting. Uh I was Oh, that might have been because the laser was firing. I was off road and was getting continuous camera shake.
Oh no, that's because he's firing the laser.
Okay, great. Excellent. No,
you can kill him. So [laughter]
yeah, I was going to say please please don't. We're going to die immediately.

Jeff has a laser. Um that he's got
I dropped it. I was kind [clears throat] of hoping I was going to hit kill something with it.
Yeah, me. You were going to kill me with it.
That wrong person.
Okay, so we've got we've got sort of a direction to go and we've got sick evil conval tricks to do apparently.
Oh dear.
Oh, I just found car loot up here. I still want a flare. So, we do have as we come across these uh little road intersections where we got the dirt roads, each one of those is going to lead to one of the point of interest where we can find treasure.
Uh and there's one early on that I think we've actually already driven past. Just you know,
just so you know, you know, the completionist in the audience,
you hit that tab and you see that it's uh 06 so far. When it gets
Okay. Oh, no. I bulked the baggage. That's my bad. Okay. So, it's a dirt road off of the main road. So, it's over here.
Yeah. And it's got little signs usually

next to it.
Yeah. A little signpost. Of course, you can run the signposts over and uh
they're not there anymore.
Oh.
So, this is like a fine-tuning question. How did you decide how long to have the interact button hold me? Like I know that's such a like a weird nittygritty question, right? But it feels like that's the kind of like little detail that really makes a big difference. At least in my mind.
Yeah. I mean, I have to say it wasn't certainly like a decision per se other than I put the number in, I held it down. Did it feel right? Nope. Okay. Increased it a little bit. Was it too much? All right. Nope. Turned it down. And then
manual tuning.
Yep. Guess guess and check is good. Okay, so it has a name.
It has a name and it's called jump for the hills.
Yeah.
Oh, I see the jump back here.

Ray jump.
Oh, hey. Yeah. And so these I mean the levels I think last time we did the play test it was we just gotten the procedural generation of the levels working and so this is I haven't actually
getting shot at.
Pick them up and throw them somewhere. Oh, fun.
Don't die.
You got to pick him up.
Oh, no. Okay. Interesting. Interesting. Uh, gents, I I have discovered yet another problem uh that seems to be peculiar to me. I I I I welcome you to observe this phenomena. So, I um I was driving straight off the ramp and I believe something happened with the package. Let's see if I can replicate. No, it'll do it fine this time. I spun in a circle. Boost, boost, boost. Trying to grab you. I was trying to grab you.
I know. I know. I believe you. But there's also a thing back here.
Man, that turret messed me up.

So, wait, hold on. Do I have to Okay. Collected an A.
Are the co Oh, are the wool coins communal?
They are.
Okay. I I feel like that's a really good way to do this so that you don't end up in like an accidentally um like you know grief competitive space
uh accidentally you can if you want to purposely but right but like
yes
so are there ways to actually fight that turret or is that turret just kind of a thing you have to interact with Uh, so that's actually that's one of the changes from the current demo build to this one. Um, is that the turrets actually all the enemies have health. You can pick it up. You can uh it's a little awkward from that angle, but you can jump and grab it. You can also knock it over.
Um, and if you've got multiples of them, you can get them to shoot each other and they will blow each other up.

Um, but as it stands right now, um, the best thing to do is to, uh, pick it up and put it somewhere that it was a little less harmful. So, I can probably knock him off here. Oh,
it's like that one sitting on top that I couldn't reach. That's just one of the not going to do much about it ones.
Uh, I think we can actually get up to that guy.
Oh, okay.
Jump there and reach him before I die.
I found when I was up there with Jeff.
Yeah,
it was aggroed on Jeff and didn't even bother shooting me. So, you just need someone.
I was janking.
You need someone to kite it.
Kite involves movement. Can I tell you though how much that voise like of handing off a treasure to one of your buddies
Yeah.
is nice.
Works very well.
I'm going to keep the package safe away from the turret floaty thing.
Jump. Jump.
I'm going to
Oh, I got it.
Ah,
did you get it?
Oh, now now it's shooting me.
Oh, you knocked it though.
I did. I didn't hold on to it long

enough. Ah,
this is this is phenomenal.
There we go. All right.
All right. Take
Oh, [laughter]
off you go. And it's gone.
Down. Okay, we got it. Now there's no treasure up here.
Yeah. Now, and additionally treasure and I'm taking it over to Will
that laser you were waving around earlier. You could also use that to take out the the turret
and your friends
provided you could aim it and provide
and your friends
friends.
My aiming on that was significantly not great.
Yeah. So, I will say I like this this POI system a lot. Um it already feels like we have uh done a thing right like capital T thing right there is a thing which has occurred and it is now part of this journey as opposed to hey I remember that one time when uh we found that one car in the desert that was great and then there was another car in the desert right like it's hard to diff it was hard to differentiate individual moments that weren't and then Will blew

up right um
well and Yeah, the points of interest also have names and stuff on them as well. So, you're like, I saw that one,
right? So, there's there's one off to the left here,
I assume, because all dirt roads must lead to POIs,
the boom cave. Hey, Jeff, I'm going to need you to come check this out in front of me for reason
because it's called
Oh, look to your left.
Boom cave
or right or Yeah, the other left.
Oh, hey, that's Wait, but why? But that's not fair. He's got the coin behind him.
Well, you're going to have to face him.
Oh, hold on. Jeez.
Put the package.
Oh, is it over here?
There's two of them close by here, I think.
Oh, interesting.
Okay, the box is on the road.
Okay, I brought the jump thingy. The bounce back.
Oh, good. We may need that later, but not for this one. We may need that later.

No. No. Oh, look. He blew it off.
Okay.
What happened?
Uh, I'm not 100% sure. I just looked up and it was exploding.
Well, there was a there was a bomb robot up there.
Oh, and it killed the uh the tank. Now it's got it corpus. It's corpse. [laughter]
Oh.
Yeah.
Well, you know this, Dave, but a minor change between the last play test and this one.
Is it a minor change?
Yes. is when you blow up mines, uh, they drop a bit of loot.
Oh, excellent. That is that is always nice having um little
squarely inspired by Mario.
Now, the entrance to this cave down here is still blocked off. So, we need a mine.
Oh, is this that one? I really like that one. Oh, there's a mine right there on the left.
Oh. Oh,
you can grab it. Oh, it's it's aggro, though.
Oh, don't let it die. Or if you're going to let it die, do it right up against the
thing. Oh, not like that.
Okay, we need a mine.
Is that you, Dave? Uh, maybe
I was hoping it would follow me as I charged in.
It anchored on me.

There's an oasis.
Will's just like, I'm going to go out and do another thing.
Yeah. No. Okay. Wait, wait, wait. Okay, hold on. Wait, wait, wait. I need in my defense,
the dirt road continued. The same dirt road continued in this direction. And I got told that all dirt roads lead to shiny things.
They do. That's They do.
But he hadn't got all the other shiny things. Will,
I'm looking for No, no. Those shiny things were now old. Uh and uh there were new shinier shiny things.
Yes.
Uh and those are
shiny inflation one might call it.
Yes, that's right. Exactly.
So I can't remember. Can I pick up one of those little explody guys and bring it back?
Uh yeah, I've got one. I got one.
Oh, you got one?
I got one. Yeah.
Okay, cool. Cool. We'll just wait here at the entrance.
Let's just hope I don't run into you when I get there.
That's why I moved the tank out of the way.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
He's so angry. Take that. Oh, do I drive?
Let him go. Yeah, let him go.

Just drive up and let him go.
No.
Oh, god damn it.
You were too far away. Ah,
who designed
If that's too far away, I might increase the interaction range at times.
Ah,
wait a minute. Was there anyone see like a respawn car nearby?
There was. Yeah,
cuz you could just go up and suicide against it, too. Okay, here we go.
Oh, you can do that.
Yeah, I've got a respawn car. So, I'm gonna bring the car over so that we can respawn.
And then I'm just gonna use use my own blow myself up.
All right. So, I'm gonna put the respawn car down.
Sacrifice yourself.
And I'm just going to go
Don't do it. Life's worth living.
And And boom.
Whoa. Hey, Will. That was carnage.
And respawn.
Oo, treasure cave.
Hey, no. Give me that back. What are you doing? [laughter] Here we see the real problem of play testing a Fred slop game, by the way, is that even and perhaps especially in a play

test, the devs are the ones who want to sabotage their friends while everyone else is trying to test the game. Just I have a thing I wanted to show off. No.
Yeah. Well, you know, kind of related to that as you're playing, like I'll come in and play on the weekend sometimes. I got a Steam Deck at home and so I'll play just to see how it's running on the Steam Deck and then like
two and a half hours later I'm like a I I need to do other things than playing this game.
But do you It's work. It's it's you know
it's true but it's my weekend and I need to you know prep my TTRPG game. So
yeah. No, that's that's very fair. Uh okay. So
let's go find that oasis.
Yeah. Where Yeah. Come on Will. Lead us will
uh so if we go this way
Oh, yeah. And I dropped the boost pad by the mine, which was back there.
Okay, we might need it later.
No, it's up here.
Okay.
Yeah.
Whoa, boost pad.
That There it is.
You found it.

Yeah, I want to get all the wo coins.
Yeah, that's true.
My completionist tendencies really
I know you were shaking your fist at Mark earlier.
I was I was we have here a tank. There's a tank. There's also a sentient cactus.
Oh, it's doesn't have much of a brain. It's driving into a rock. [laughter]
Will it Will it boost to be
Hey, it can shoot me while I'm holding it.
Yeah, it
Yeah, it's not going to
I dropped to like one foot and it exploded.
This is a very untanky tank.
It's bug.
It's dead harder in the future. Uh,
can we feed it to the package? Oh, this that one.
Is there a WO coin in here?
It doesn't look like we had a WO coin at this at this particular one.
And that one down there. Yeah.
Yeah. So, the W coins spawn randomly at the point of interest. And of course, there's more points of interest than

there are WO coins for a level. So, not all of them will have one,
but there is money and stuff.
Oh, of course. Yeah. Yeah. So, pro tip, when you don't have the package and you're collecting the money, instead of opening the cars, just pick the cars up and like for something like this, just throw them off.
Yeah.
So, we get up here.
Oh, come on. Oh,
kind of hate this jump puzzle.
Oh, dar. This was This is my ending.
Oh, you made it. Oh, yeah.
You made it and you hate it. Perfect.
A+ design. No notes. I made you brought the boost pad, Eric. We don't need to use that. We need the jump pad. We brought it with us. [laughter]
We're really not very good at our own game.
All right, I'm just going to put that there. And
being good at the game you design has absolutely nothing to do with designing it.
Not enough.
It's It's [laughter] true. It's It is really amusing, especially like at at higher levels to see like

how will people I'm behind you. Oh, I was bringing you a car.
I'm I'm I'm chill. I'm being the camera watching uh
Oh, it's not high enough. It doesn't jump high enough.
Watching them try and get up.
I made it up.
You made it up. All right, drop them off.
Ah, no. No. No. Damn it. [laughter]
Oh, man.
Who designed this? Dave, why do you hate me, Dave? Dave, why?
We've been over those reasons. [laughter]
Oh. Oh. Oh, no.
I will like come bearing corpses.
Excellent. Please give me a moment with the corpse to loot all of the tasty tasty things out of it.
Delicious.
It's not helping. Uh I ended up as a skinner in uh in WoW. So uh all of I keep making references to skin. I keep trying to make a word like

cannibal is a word and we're cannibalizing other car corpses,
right? So, we're good. We're not a carnival,
right? Yeah. There we go. There we go.
Come on. I made it up top. Yay.
Oh, good. Somebody made it.
Finally. I I'll throw some car bits over.
Who would win four sentient cars or a cadian mini puzzle? Great question. Next question.
Oh my god.
Like how Dave is now attempting purely out of spite.
I mean, I should be able to get up there. This just feels like, you know, I can't let it defeat me.
Well, this is um this is sort of in many ways in my mind related to the maze problem,
right? Of you you have a minute to design a maze that takes 2 minutes to solve. M
that's sort of like very that is way more difficult than I think a lot of people give credit for because you have

to make it not only take a while to solve but also be enjoyable to get through that because obviously one of the easiest ways to do that is like press a button, right? You could design a thing that makes a that has a button. You press the button and the number goes up. And when the number reaches 10,000, then a thing happens, right? And it'll take long.
Pay respect.
Yeah.
Damn it, Eric. I made it up here and you took all the cars off.
Well, I threw them off.
Yeah. All right. Well, I made it anyway.
So, actually, I have a design question around that. As part of the philosophy for what this game is,
is it cars solving puzzles or is it cars driving around doing silly things? Because for example, we've this has been fun to do, but we've like a couple of us have been sitting around watching other people try and do it. Um like I'm kind of curious on
is this kind of the design of the game you want?
What? Yeah, I think it's, you know, it started, the concept started with cars

driving around and solving puzzles and certainly the puzzles as we've sort of um prototyped them out turned into cars driving around and doing silly things while attempting to solve silly puzzles.
So, we do have quite a few sort of like puzzle elements that are in our on our drawing board, so to speak, that'll be coming for future points of interest. um which hopefully will incorporate more puzzlininess, but um we'll see how much that survives the the creation and testing of those.
I also want to point out that there is um we should avoid drawing too much from uh the play pattern that we're engaging in specifically because this is
Oh, over here. Over here.
Yeah, just the off the road there.
No down. Yeah, it came back.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I love this one.
Okay. Well, I was going to grab this car in a second. [snorts]

Road signs.
Two kind of points of interest that veered off at the same place. One path went left, one path went right. The right path here.
Two approached diversion of yellow desert. And I
Sorry, I could not be one traveler taking both. Anyway, oh, that's really creepy. I love it. I love I love sign graveyard
here. Let me head in and test. See what explodes
cuz I I feel like there's definitely something about like driving through this without touching the signs. But I also feel like that's immediately not what's going to happen.
But also
the first sign will
I can't imagine. So I guess minds in these are random based on the level, right?
Yeah. Some of the ones we played earlier had like minds in here.
Yeah, because the first one I saw I was so excited because I had seen a video

from one of the artists showing this and I'm like, "Oh, I really want to drive through one of those." And when I played one of the levels internally, it had it and I've been palming it and it was one of the biggest minds. It almost killed me right in the middle.
Yeah. And actually the um it was um it was Mark was the developer that made this. Um it wasn't the art side at all. Oh, I thought it was big boy. I think Jeff's dead.
Oh, how's Jeff?
Did you find a mine?
Uh, he found the big mine.
Oh, yeah.
And then just kind of sat there while it exploded.
You picked it up.
I picked it up. [snorts]
I I will say uh of note, Sland feels like there isn't any loot. Am I missing something? Did I miss?
Uh, let's see if it's in, you know, we're I think it might not be
didn't spawn.
Well, sometimes a wool coin can spawn here. Um, but additionally, um, and this is
if if a wool coin doesn't spawn here. Right now, it looks like there isn't loot. Uh, the intention is such that

when you knock everything down, then loot will spawn.
Something spawns. That's what I thought.
Yeah. Y
and and um there's a big package of ideas around. I'm super low.
Uh there was health back off the main road.
Let's see. Because I do think that that is one of the things that happens um frequently in games like this where and this is particularly true in rogue likes where you get a what is perceived to be a bad event, bad room, bad path, bad whatever and then it's just ignored because it's not considered valuable. And that's a risk that you always run into when there's like variance in uh quantity
down this way. Jeeoff, I think.
Did you find some or you
uh I saw Will open a car down here. So I

assume
I opened one past the uh
right over here.
Yeah, I see some over here, Jeff.
All right.
Don't do the big jump.
My health is so low.
Yeah. I'm saying I got distracted by the chat messages saying that I yearn for the mines.
That's that and that's
You're not on fire anymore. That's good.
That's good.
And we go dispatch.
How's our progression going, Will? Do you want
We have 33,000 doll hairs and we've gotten about half of the treasure rex in about 2/3 of the POIs. That's nice.
And half the woe.
Yeah. Half of Wo. We got
we know that that means that there is one coin in each of the remaining few.
We go I guess. Ow. [laughter]
Did you keep Oh, you do have it. Good.
Yep. I got it. Okay. I'm like, oh

shark.
The lair of the beast.
Oh, there's the wo coin.
Yeah. Oh, hey, look. There's the coin. I think we probably need the jump pad to get
Whoa. Can I get him?
Leave me alone.
Come on. I want to pick you up. Come here. Come here, Sharky.
Actually, no. You know what? Don't just go ahead. [laughter]
My day.
You know what? I don't know if you can, but I want you to try.
That's what That's where. Yeah, that's
There's a res car over here, so
yep,
that that is true.
Sure. Can't hurt me. Friend slop does
casually deflecting it. get gets a little bit of um additional protection because uh as long as things are stupid and fun, we're okay.
Yeah.
Right.
Okay. I do not seem to be able to fish for the shark.
Which is probably a good thing cuz I would have brought it over to the group to show it off.
Yeah. All right. Okay. All right. Good. Good shark. Yep. The great shark. I'm

going to leave with the box before I
Oh, dude. I body slammed it.
L shark.
Do not hug the shark, chat. That's not helpful or conducive to anything.
Oh, dude. How many eyes does it have? That's pretty good.
Bonus eyes.
It does.
Bonus eyes. It has the normal amount plus the
There's at least three on each side.
By the way, the charm on the treasure car is very good.
I don't know if that was in the last time we did it. Very good.
All right. I don't even know if we can get this wool coin, actually.
Oh,
well, I'm not jumping high enough. I think we might have changed the jump. I mean, you might be able to
Wait, wait. Can I double I can double jump.
Double jump. Double jump.
Right. Like, if we go off the pad and then when I'm at the top of the jump, I should be able to jump again and maybe I'll make it. Can you
I have I have Oh, interesting. Uh, so if it makes contact with a solid object,
does it
the shark does it lose collision

afterwards? Uh, I'm not 100% sure
cuz it just booped a wall and then fell through me without contacting me.
Oh, I got it. Well, I don't think it h I'll have to talk to Mark about that one.
You grab the other treasure car there, Jeff.
Yeah, let me get it.
I'm trying to keep the box away from the shark, but the box the shark definitely just chased me. Oh, shark.
Okay, we can definitely get the coin, but someone's going to need more skill than I have.
Oh, really?
Well,
I'm trying to get out of where Okay.
Oh, there's more. There's a bit more stuff back here, Will.
Yeah.
Oh, shark. Shark is I'm getting chased by a shark.
Oh, that's the client up there. I see.
Oh, I got it. Oh, now we can leave. Okay. Where is Will? Whoa. Like with the grain, not against

the grain of the shark. Chat, why are you like this?
Not helpful.
Yes. And now it's Whoa. [laughter]
All right. All right. We're good. We're good.
All right. We're leaving. We're Goodbye. Goodbye, shark.
I'm going to need a bigger desert. [laughter]
Okay, let's get out of here. I think his name's Spruce.
Ah,
cuz he's six.
I call him Mr. Bitey.
Tiny.
Mr. Bitey.
Mr. Bitey.
So, how far is his aggro radius? Will he keep following us?
No, he won't. He'll uh he'll stay within about like 100 meters of the of the obstacle back there.
It's his nest.
It's his nest.
The lair of the beast.
Okay. And then we hang a left. I feel like the sun's setting, Dave.
Yeah.
One of these days I'm going to catch a

mine as it's jumping.
I think you want to You want to get them when they haven't aggroed yet? Ideally,
you can still get Yeah,
hidden treasure.
You can't get them when they're doing their uh the dive bomb though. Once they're dive bombing, that's it.
That's what I was going for.
All right. Oh, we found a this one. Okay. Yeah. Is there another coin in here? Oh, yeah. The coin's down here. Uhhuh.
Whoa. Coin colle money for it. Oh, that's it's not just like for its own safe.
No, no, you get the money for it. And we're hoping to add a a shop to the base that only unlocks if you have all the wool coins.
Uh, sorry. There's a there's a
Okay, I think we've
Yeah, I think we've got
we missed like nine cars, but I think that's probably fine.
Yeah. Yeah.

Whoa.
You got some mayor there.
Well, yeah, the mine hit me. Thanks, mine. But there's lots here. So
I would very much like to suggest, and I feel like Jeff will appreciate this as well, which means that everyone else should brace for this,
that you should occasionally
have a variant of that enemy that is in black and white and silent.
The rare mime variant. Thank you very much for coming to my TED talk.
Oh,
I'm putting the box on the thing. Any objections?
All right, we just need two. No, we just need two two players to join us in the airlock.
Oh, mine mine explosion.
Just waiting for Jeff.
I'm trying to bring a mine over with me. It's not wanting to cooperate. So, here I come.
Don't bring the mine into the base.
There's definitely not an achievement for that.
Definitely not.
Definitely not.
Absolutely. No one should attempt to do

that immediately upon starting the demo. I understand.
I like the framing better. [laughter]
Yes. Yes, I fixed the framing.
You picked the framing.
In the last versions, the framing.
Well, in the last versions, that number was like so high up on the screen, it was tough to see. It was counting down. Okay. So, it's a shared amount of money people here. So,
I'm going to spend it all.
I was going to say, so that means that in true friends fashion, one person is going to buy themselves a completely useless upgrade that does it is like a gold crown.
I I have a question. Are purchases do they hit the whole team or just one player?
Oh, just one.
So, other than the package upgrade that I just purchased, which increases the value of items picked up by the package by 10%. Uh, that one is shared, of course, but all the others are per person. I'd be curious to see if you guys ended up doing a play test where the upgrades were universal because I feel like there's a certain amount of the player base that just

isn't going to care about shopping
or would rather have somebody else on their team shop for them. So, and that is uh to to that point that is one of the more popular repo mods which has a very similar upgrade system to this is one that allows one player to purchase upgrades that affect everyone and makes it makes everyone more powerful but it's friend slop like
that's fine
ball. All right. Anyone going to buy a final upgrade? We got enough money for one more upgrade.
I bought tires and that's that's not good enough for me. End time. I missed the back of the package. The back of the package says end times on time. Apocon,
it's on our thumbnail.
I missed the end times on time thing. I just missed it.
You think I read the thumbnail? No, you sent me a thumbnail and I post it.
You got to go to the QR code.
Go to the Don't go to the QR code.
Oh, there is a QR code on it. Oh, that

is a real QR code, isn't it? have to uh you'll have to zoom in on it and see.
Yeah. All right. I will uh I'll work on that later.
Tell me you're sending us to a Rick Ashley video. [laughter]
The silence is deafening.
Hold on. Let's see. Will, if you rotate that. Hold on. I got my camera. Let me see if I can get a picture.
E.
Uh do you have the Make sure you're at high quality settings, too.
Oh, yeah. I'm at 4K. And if you hit E, the package will rotate, will.
Yeah. Oh, a little more. Little more. Little more. Stop. Stop. There we go.
Come on, camera.
No, that's very low. I would need to get it closer to the camera somehow.
Like that?
Oh.
Oh. Uh, interesting. Let me go into some settings here. [laughter]
Graphics quality is high. Interesting.
Okay. Yeah, you should be able to
Okay, let's see.
Ah, it moved. Come back.
I'm trying. Look, I have I'm trying to back into my own camera. Jeff, this is

not as easy as it looks. Okay,
my iPhone is not doing it.
Yeah, I think it's a I think it's a So, uh,
screen it's a resolution through resolutions through resolution thing.
Yeah, I might be able to get it, but let's let's find out. Let's Hey, let's let's stop everything that we're doing
to see if I can get this QR code to work. It does in fact work. And it is in fact what you thought it was.
It's a Rick roll.
Uh well, it's a YouTube link.
Sorry, what?
It's a YouTube link. Hold on. It is
indeed. Uh it is it is not only not only is it a Rick roll. It is a 10hour mix of a Rick roll.
Nice choice.
Well done, gentlemen. Well done. Excellent. I I won't lie, that's something that I might put in like that's the kind of joke I'd put in a game
this way. Will Will over here.

I was I was gonna blow I was going to trigger that mine and then get some value out of.
Oh yeah. Okay. Well,
yeah. But yes, we can go we can go to the point of interest. Now, here's my big question.
How many points of interest are in the pool?
Oh, like total points of interest.
The flinger.
Oh, watch out for that big mine. Currently, there's about 12. Um, but we're aiming to have about 30 to 40 when we get to release.
Oh, this one.
Oh, yes. This is
Oh, someone's going to need to aggro that guy.
You know what I noticed? I don't see the big bad. I don't see the We should have a monster on this level. Oh. Oh, never mind. I see it. There it is.
Yeah. Yeah, I see it, too.
Yeah.
Um, all right. Who wants to rotate this? Who wants to get on?
Who wants to watch Jeff die from that mine?
I'm trying to get the mine to
Oh no. Oh

Uh, I'm still alive barely.
Yay.
I was trying to Man, it just didn't want me. I was trying.
Okay. So,
okay.
So, who's going up the
I think since well as the camera should put the box down and ride it.
Yeah.
Get Get on the
I'm riding I'm riding the flinger chat.
Yeah. Oh, here Dave, I got some help for you.
Oh. Oh, I think Will needs it, too.
That's fine. I'm only like at half.
And there's parts there, Will. If whoever has the package,
I put the package down cuz I don't want to. We learned our lesson from me interacting with things with the package last time.
So,
yeah, that's true.
You know,
over there, Jeff. [laughter] Oh,
I didn't, by the way. Excellent shot. Didn't touch the keyboard. Didn't touch the keyboard. Just got it. Oh, and I love how there is a respawn point up here.
Why am I not picking up anything?
Oh, dear. Okay. All right. That's not

That's not the way to go. That is not the way.
Yeah, the going out going out the back is not necessarily a great idea because it is an immediate drop off. H.
So, I've been finding, by the way, with the pickup that every once in a while I get in a state where I'm just driving around and like nothing picks up.
H like right there.
It's a feature, Jeff.
Oh, I'm sure. But I was mentioning the feature. Okay. Come on. In we go.
Product pitch to go for a ride. Boom. Got him.
Do you want to grab the package again? Will
Yeah, I got it. I'm also trying to grab all of this health.
Yeah, all the
Okay, I just impacted on a dirt wall.
Yeah, you did. You did not make it all the way.
I don't know why that would be on Earth.
Stay on target. Stay on target.

Yes, we have.
So, that's one of six. All right, let's find the next.
Oh, look. He's coming.
Oh, I see him.
You see him, Will?
I do. I know. I know. To drive away from the big spoopy lasers in the middle of the desert anyway, see things.
Really? What? I mean, it's a big red laser. What could be bad about that?
Yeah, definitely nothing. Nothing could possibly be bad about that.
You got to look at its head. You got to look up at its head, though, will
amazing. Trying to not let this mine run. There's a mine chasing me. Oh,
package.
Definitely not let it run into me by letting it run into everyone else. Go me.
Hamper preservation for the win.
Whoa. Okay, that guy just came into view for me.
Secret agent car. Anyway, just going to

sneak around. It is good the cars are sneaky.
Yeah, cars are known for being sneaky, Jeff. That's actually one of the defining adjectives used for cars.
Well, that's why so many spies like to use cars.
Just turn off your your headlights and then they can't see you, right?
Okay. I dodged a big bomb and I went left cuz there's another
Oh, okay.
Look out for those big bombs. They hurt you, too. Oh, I have rediscovered the oasis.
Oh no. Ah
You're trying to die. I jumped.
Also, I regret to inform you that there is a tank and it's very confused because it's pointed directly at the wall.
Whoa.
It's just also there's a
What is going on? Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Whoa.
It's much larger than I thought it would

be. That package value is going the wrong direction.
Listen,
there was a mine.
There was a mine and I thought I was out and safe and I was not.
Can I tell you, by the way, how much I appreciate the boost for like getting that last little bit up a hill or the turbo.
Yeah, the the the boost the balance of like how much boost you get seems about.
Oh, this one.
Yeah, boy.
So much we've had so much back and forth on that to kind of get that to a place that feels good.
Ah, no. Why did you just not go in?
There we go. I just dropped off another corpse.
Bring out your dead.
It was Eevee.
But this one's not dead.
The tank is E.
It need this.
Not dead yet. That is one of my favorite things that Twitch chat's ever done is they made the TTS text to speech engine.
Um, read uh all of the MIB style knows where it is because it knows where it isn't. My style has had a long day of

splashing bandits and needs just a small sleege. Uh, copy pasta. Amazing. 10 out of 10. No notes.
Wait, Will, do you see what's coming up behind us?
Yeah, I did. I did in fact see that it is in fact
it's getting closer. Man, I love that big like infrared or not quite infrared but the big red eye beams.
Yeah. I have questions. Um beginning with can can we go between the big red eye beams?
All right. I got up here.
Yay.
Oh coin.
Are you going to drop off some of that?
I'll drop the cars off.
You might want to do that more quickly rather than less quickly as a note.
Oh I'm going to hide.
Yeah, cuz um there are lasers now.
Can you hide behind the rock like that?
Oh, yeah, you can hide.
Oh, nice. Okay,
I imagine that the red
Wait, no, you can run and you can hide. Never mind. Ah, laser. Whoa. Oh, man. I just burned my ass.

Actually, uh, interesting question. Does this mean that the bigger cars are actually at a disadvantage here? What's going on? Uh
oh. Tractor beaming the tractor beam stuff.
Okay. Oh shoot. I'm dead.
I'm just going to
Let's see if I can kill
you. You sure?
Oh no. Oh no. Oh god. No. Oh, that was terrible. I got stuck on geometry in front of the laser. The worst.
All right. Well, that's two of us.
Two dead.
Two dead.
Oh, great. Okay. Ah. Oh. Okay, run.
We need the package.
Yep,
I got a package.
Oh, okay. We've got it. Okay, back. Okay, I'm going to
I'm running back with it. I'm following the ghost cars.
Run, run, run, run.
Okay, so we not need not
driving when chased by a giant robot shooting a laser. I am in.

We need not one but two respawned cars. Oh, you know where the other one was. You're going back to it.
Yeah, I'm going back to this one. I have successfully managed to get on top of it. I just need to get inside of it now.
Okay. I have dropped the package off at a safe distance back along the main road near the base where we started.
Oh, okay.
Okay. If anyone knows where there's another respawn point I
was there would there be one at the top of that?
I'm going to need somebody to maybe launch me out of the thing.
Whoa, this guy is still following.
Oh, yeah. No, he's he's he's been moving in the direction of spawn since we started. I Yeah, I just Okay. Whoa.
Okay. I grabbed the package and I'm just running with it.
That seems way
Oh, is there another one over here? God damn it. How many of these big monsters are there?
Uh, I don't know. There could be There could be three.
There could be three.
Yeah, there could be three. It's random.
Okay. What do you mean random?
I mean, it's like the crafting we were

talking about earlier.
It's all random. Um,
I will say it is a little on the difficult side to like precisely line up to do things like get in the in the launch thing. I need somebody to come push this button real quick.
Okay. Uh, I'm trying to not die.
Oh, are you trying to launch as a tire?
Yeah,
that might be a bad idea.
Okay. Oh, do I have decreased gravity?
I think I heard I had a bug report on that earlier. Um, maybe someone else should go up and get the car for you.
[laughter]
Well, it's going to be tough because there's the thing.
I'm getting sucked into something.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay. Oh, good. Okay, good.
I'm fighting it. I'm fighting it, man. I get it.
I am fighting it really hard to keep interesting.
Yeah, that's and the tire controls the tire moves a little on the quick side. It's currently like not there are points in time where I'm not actually rolling where I'm just sliding.

Like I got I got stuck and stopped rolling entirely.
Will I am near the catapult? Did you need me still?
Uh no. We we discovered that we can't do that. Although, can I push the button with Jeff inside the catapult?
Uh maybe.
No. No. No.
Ah. Whoa.
All right. Get the catapult.
Do it. Do it. I can't. No. Oh god. Jeff does too.
All right. Well, now we can find out. Jeff said the catapult. [laughter]
I actually don't have fine enough control to end up on the button.
I can end up in the catapult.
Oh, you're dead.
It does. Okay. And then what just happened?
I'm going to go try and help him.
I went backwards.
Okay. Jeff went backwards. All right. Go to the very front of the catapult.
I was at the front last time. I'm trying farther back to see.
Oh, wait. Now we're all dead. Eric, you're the only one alive.
Well, the rest of us are playing with a catapult, so it's on you.
You're our only hope, right? I'm on the

catapult. Now it doesn't work for the tire. That's
Yeah, it doesn't have enough mass or whatever is doing the physics.
Yeah, the tire is not a
It's not a physics um
Yeah.
character. And I think that might be the problem with this.
I kind of think like have you have you thought about yes or no on that? like is that an intentional choice or a
So it was on the list for quite a while to actually switch it over to that and then I think we decided that from a from a like a technical standard from a a commitment of time to it that it was going to be a bigger investment. Um but I'm actually thinking more especially I play with this and that it should interact with the other toys and making it um more physics based and that might be the way to go but it certainly it'll end up being an investment of time to make it handle properly. Um,
yeah.
Turn for Yeah,
I I I do think um as someone who has an unfortunate propensity to be the one who gets murdered early in front of games, I

do think that that is um at least from my I'm stuck to a cactus. Amazing. Uh, I do think from my point of view that that's a worthwhile investment because
you're going to spend there are going to be a very non-trivial number of player hours spent dead,
right?
Yeah, it definitely seems that way.
Uh,
Eric, you're the only one alive. Are you?
I know. I'm just collecting.
You're going to finish the level?
Well, I mean, someone's got to do the work here.
A beast.
He's going to get got by a shark. I just know it. I just know it. He's going to get by the shard.
Friend slop dragoon. Listen, I a little bit of everything.
Hey, I found a I found a res.
Oh, good. Oh no, I'm I might be stuck.
Oh wow. Yeah, I might have gotten myself into a
Okay, where did Eric go?
He's over at the package on the Ah, no.

Shoot. Get away from me. Not you, Jeff. That Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no, no. Okay. Full fall full. Okay. Hide. Stay.
Ren's playing paintball there. This is amazing.
Okay.
Yeah. Friend slot floor tank is a kind of support because you die so that other people don't generally speaking.
Oh yeah. Uh other other advantages to having the tire be a physics object. Uh, I can't do the out-of- bounds thing that I'm like accidentally kind of on purpose doing now.
Oh, that's the beacon where I'm going, not the beacon. Wait. Okay. Where is [snorts] so cute and stupid? I love the reptar thing. I don't know if you meant for it to be reptar. Oh, almost had it. Can you

collect W coins while you're dead, by the way?
Uh,
I don't think you can. Can you? That'd be cool if you could.
I don't think you can, but now what was this about Reptar? Is that that that is not a a reference I I recognizing, so maybe not.
Boy, okay. Reptar is a giant um uh robot dinosaur from Rugrats. the Nickelodeon uh kids show. Um, and it it does it does bear a passing resemblance to the uh reptile head upon your giant murderous monstrosity.
Well, any resemblance is uh strictly coincidental.
I'm sure I [laughter] I I believe you. There we go. Hey, I'm coming with a car corpse for uh
Yeah, right. And Repar is itself, by the way, legally not Godzilla. That is

correct.
Ah, yes. Oh, wait. Here, Jeff.
There we go.
I am so stuck. It's not even funny. [laughter]
Do you need health, Jeff?
No, I'm actually having just been resurrected, surprisingly.
Oh, okay. So,
I do like the beacon on the package.
Yeah, that is I actually got it mistaken with the beacon for where we're ending up going.
Yeah, they're the same color currently.
Are they Isn't the pack the
package one is white and the beacon for the color is blue?
Both blue.
Okay. The survey says
when they're in the red laser
cannot pick up a W coin.
Oh, is there a path down there? Well,
uh, yes, there is a there's a hidden treasures there.
I did it. I got free. I freed from my

entire prison. Now I just need a respawn.
I want to be free.
Oh. Oh, there it is. I see.
At least the big bad can't get me anymore.
Okay, great. Great, great, great. Also,
I think there might be a reason.
Oh, that's very interesting. Okay. Uh other cases for it being a physics subject, not getting stuck in places like the treasure cave where you're supposed to have a one way in and then a door that lets you out.
Yeah.
Oh, somebody got a call.
I got it. Yeah.
Oh, what I was saying for the um the big uh beacon lights when you're in the red robot eyes, the colors are not as um
distinct
distinct. H
although you could and you could solve this in a way that gets two birds with one stone. Um which is much like you did with the cars. Leave it player decidable because then it also uh functions as an

accessibility feature so that people can change them if they're not distinct enough for their liking or for their particular needs because those are huge sources of information.
Okay. How do I kill a big robot? Let's see. Well, bumping it doesn't do it.
Oh, that's right. Hold on.
Excellent.
You want to kill the robot? You got to drive past it, shoot out your like lines, and then tie up the legs, and it'll fall over. And excellent.
I was just trying that.
Or alternately, you could grappling hook underneath of it, use some kind of legally distinct laser sword to uh open up the underneath, and then just hand grenade it. Also an option.
Oh, I have like one hit point left. Woohoo.
[laughter]
Two mines tried. I was trying to pick up mines to go drop with the legs and see if I could cause it to unbalance and fall over.
Don't having each leg have a separate hit point total would be kind of cool, but probably a big pain for if you

killed one. See, the interesting thing is as a dead car, I can trigger the mines and it can't hurt me anymore because I'm dead. So
So it's just a minor inconvenience.
That's right.
Oh no.
Oh, there's the last w coin.
I don't think there's going to be actually there's probably enough money left. I was going to say
I there are the 15 treasures.
The treasure. Yeah.
If only there was a way to check and see,
right? How many there were left on the map?
Ways to kill your friends. Yeah. Laser sword. Yeah. Player selectable texturing. Yes.
Ow.
You still haven't reserved. [laughter]
You're not going to be an owl. You're dead.
So, I have a question. And have you guys considered like now that you're starting to make more lethal things than we did last time?
Yeah.

Plugging something like equivalent infinite respawn back at the starting base.
So you always know, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Sorry.
And I'm not saying that's the solution. I'm just going to like what have you curious on like current thoughts on what to do for that if or if it you consider it a problem. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things that we want you to be able to do is, you know, is to lose. Like a losing state is a is an option. So, if everybody dies, um, then you lose. I do think there should be more respawn options out here. Um, I mean, potentially you could have something where it's on a limited quantity, like you could you could respawn back at the base, you know, say three times or something, and but it's a shared pool amongst the party. I could see doing something like that. You could also charge them,
pay for it out of the piggy bank.
Pay for it out of the package [laughter]
or or or the piggy bank, right? Which it it means that if you're not It gives you something to do with money that doesn't

neatly fit into an upgrade.
Oh, hey, there's an elevator and I'm already dead. So,
so I just dropped off a car wreck at our destination
with a whole bunch of loot outside. So, if you get to the destination, it should tip you over the balance.
Yeah, I don't think I can get the last W coin without the boost pad, which we do not have. But I think this will give us also enough.
If it doesn't, like there's a Yeah, right there.
I need someone to come push the button so I can see what the elevator ride is supposed to look like. It's very important. I need any closure on this topic.
Let's see. Where are you? I'm in I'm in I'm in the elevator.
Oh,
I didn't do it.
I just hit M and all the lights.
Yeah, totally. Uhhuh. Yep. The the time change just randomly. Definitely totally randomly.
Had nothing to do with the fact that we

had multiple developers in the game with us. Nope. It's totally random. Just happens sometimes.
I got to turn that key off. M is for midnight. Don't hit the M key.
[laughter]
I hit it by accident while looking for another thing.
Like, I wish there was a map. M. No, no, that's midnight.
That That was exactly my thought. There wasn't a map, was there?
So, uh, do dead players also not show up on the radar.
Uh, the compass. It doesn't look like it because I only see the package.
I see one car. I see I see a yellow car. Well, the package is under
one because the package takes priority, which makes sense cuz if the package is moving, then someone has to be carrying it.
But
yeah,
maybe the other one would be like having dead players on the on the radar. Also, I love I love the wibbly tire idle animation when you're dead.
Okay.

It's very whimsical.
Yeah.
Okay. Should we be heading for the base or am I find my way there without dying.
Turbo.
Oh, is the base there? No, that's the base.
That's the If you look on the map compass,
it's north, right?
Should be It should be north. Yeah, maybe find the road, you know.
I know. I know. [laughter] That's what I was looking for.
There's another tire that way.
Yeah,
I bet the road's that way.
That side of the road that way.
I think it's to your right.
That way. Yeah,
they will.
Mhm.
Is this the last one or will we be retiring or
uh huh?
We probably won't have time for another level, so we should [laughter] wrap up on this one to answer going that way. I think
I'm in the river.
Oh, that's a tire. There's the base that way. Okay.
I love how we're just like chilling at the end trying to guide other people to us.
Left.
Yeah. Keep going that way and then that. Yeah. This is like the best case of

giving your friend directions in your hometown while you're driving around in the passenger seat and for some reason can't see anything
this way.
I don't know there. Yeah, that's totally the I see a I see a
a power pole.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I see a thing. I see a thing. Run. Run.
Go. Go. Ah.
Okay. There's the Yeah. All right. There's the destination.
Can I Can I draw aggro?
All right. Oh, you found me. I got a laser on my ass.
Get inside quickly.
Get to the chopper.
You inside here. So, get everybody get in
quick.
Yay. We did it.
We indeed did it. We live barely by the skin of our teeth.
Why teeth have skin? Great question. Next question.

So now what?
Uh well, it should have opened the gate, but
Oh, and I can't move.
Oh, you know what? We're playing in a level set that only has two levels.
Oh, [laughter] that's fine. There we go.
It had to be the last one anyway.
Yeah. Okay.
My horn worked.
What?
Oh, that's I was like, where's the cat? That's Jeff's horn. Of course. All right. They took away my um Lost Boys one in this build.
Yeah.
Yeah. We restricted the uh the actual customization items are in a progress of having mechanisms to unlock them. So if you haven't unlocked them, you don't have them.
All right. Okay. All right. Excellent. Well, let's let's get back to to talking here. So, um, by the way, I just love I love in the background you could just my screen is continuously shaking cuz the robot is right outside the base and it's trying to get in to get us, but it can't because we're inside and so it's just like outside being very angry. It's great. I love it.

Um, so I love the direction that's going. I love all the the POI editions. I feel like that's it. What? So what what what's the the next step feels like next fest demo? Collect a bunch of information. If you're going to go out there and play the next fest demo after seeing this with your friends, make sure you fill out the questionnaire, leave a review, uh wish listed, tell everyone you know, create a Steam account for all of your relatives. Have that Steam account wishlisted or don't do that. But um
yeah, don't forget forget to like, share, and subscribe.
Right. Yeah. Right, right, right, right, right. Don't forget to be a werewolf.
Like and subscribe. Anyway, um [laughter]
uh so so that's obviously the the next big step is to get all of that feedback when when NextFest wraps up. Uh, and then I guess my question is, and then what are are you in sort of like a a place where you think it's going to be a

um like a play test develop, play test develop, or do you think you're going to do the thing that sometimes happens where you get a bunch of play test data, you get a bunch of demo data, you get a bunch of feedback and everything, and then you just kind of like take it and you go, "Thank you very much for this. I'll be back in six months to a year." Haha. And then you fade away into the background and you come back and it's like polished and shiny and different. Well, I think that I mean the great thing I think about where kind of the just the industry is in terms of gamedev in particular on platforms like Steam and Epic, you can have these tight iterations. So you can go, we think this is a cool idea, put stuff in, put it out, go, oh well, people like this, didn't like this, respond it differently, and so you can iterate. And so I think the longer, you know, like, oh, we took that data and it'll take us months to get back. We're really not in that state overall. Particularly, I think with games like Friends Loft games.
Yeah, if this was Civilization, you might disappear for three to six months

after a big thing. But because of the bones of this game and the ambition of how much you're trying to do in the scope, like this isn't a disappear for six month kind of game. It's a let's tweak and tune. And my guess is in the next probably you'll have fun builds up in the next couple days, but the next couple weeks you'll be ready for the next round. Yeah. I mean, we because we've done like so this demo went up
Friday night, I think, right?
Yeah.
And then and we'll have a updated version, the one that we're playing here uh without some of the challenges we just hit. Um we'll be up
new challenges.
New challenges. Yes, that's right. Will be up uh tomorrow, right, is what you're shooting for. So we're even within one demo cycle kind of iterate because I think one of the pieces of context is we come from the live service you know kind of freetoplay live service and obviously Idol Champions the Forgotten Realms are licensed Dungeons and Dragons game that game gets an update every Wednesday 52

weeks a year and we've been doing it for over eight years so we're really used to kind of a you know put something out get player feedback iterate on it put something out kind of cycle. Right. And that's actually one of the things that you almost never learn about in game dev school or learn about at all if you're not part of the dev process is the teams assign different cadences and they work within that and there's different cadences for development release etc. But if you get a studio like actually take extra credits and extra history, extra history and extra credits release a short a week for history a video three weeks of every four. Like our cadence of releases is what our studio is built around. And like when Matt and I over Matt and I the past eight years have continued to hone down how our studio operates to make it fit on that. So we can do the length of our videos is actually based on how much animation can comfortably get done by an artist in a week and we know how many

weeks are devoted to each episode. And so like if we have one that's 2 minutes longer that's actually a hiccup because it's you know x amount more artist time
that has to be devoted to that and that artist time doesn't come out of nowhere. And so that's the kind of thing that just as a working studio you get used to. How fast can you go? Is it sustainable? how you know for how often you need to be doing things. And so you guys have a real advantage over at Codename because you've been working in a very short loop cadence where honestly a lot of devs don't um unless you're on this kind of live service and the kind of thing you're doing.
People over at Rockstar have no idea. I think one of the things that people fall the one of the traps you can kind of fall into and to be fair we fell into many years earlier was when you're in the development cycle and you're like okay we're planning that we'll do live service but you're not there yet but you want the game to be as cool as possible. So you end up doing a fidelity that you

can support when you're not live servicing the game, but then when you get to a point of live servicing the game, you find yourself like just, oh, like we can't put out content at the rate that we want to put out content because the fidelity. So like when you're talking about the animation, Jeff, if the fidelity of that animation was like 5x what it is, then suddenly your numbers all vary. So
Oh, yeah. For us, understanding what a live service schedule looks like for a game is like a really foundational piece because so many design decisions flow from it in terms of the fidelity for the art and the world and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah. And that's where a good producer really helps make a project work because they're often the one who are going around and checking how long does this take, how long does that take, and starting to add up schedules and coming back saying, "Okay, we have 15 man years worth of art planned, but enough artists to do 10 man years."
Right.
Yeah.
And you're like, "Oh, that is good to

know now." Right. Because what that means from like a studio is do we hire that many more artists or do we scope down because both are options or is it an in between or do we find a new tool set that lets us get 15 manurs done in 10 years like there's lots of different possibilities but it identifies the problem hopefully early enough that you can act on it rather than being like oh release is supposed to be in three months and we're two years out still. Yeah, that yeah that that does seem yeah that that that feels like the uh the worst possible uh solution. It
it has happened to a surprising number of games way past where you think it should even with senior people like scope managing scope is always hard cuz nobody wants to put out a crappy game. Like everybody wants to put in way more no devel I I would make this bet. I'm curious to see if anybody disagrees. No dev team ever ever ever ever ever has gotten everything they wanted in their

game. And this goes all the way up to like people with rockstar budgets. Like no team ever has gotten everything they want in. Uh the the the the team team Cherry has said in interviews that despite going completely off the radar with a functionally infinite budget for their threeperson studio, they were like, "Yeah, we couldn't fit everything in and we realized we were never going to fit everything we could think of in, so we just decided to call it and put a bow on it and tie it up and release the game."
Oh, yeah.
And yeah, so I think it applies to Yeah. studios of every size. I definitely agree with that. Yeah. And but the and the counterpoint to that too though is that creativity comes from some constraints, right? Oh yeah. And so like having infinite budget like we think especially when you're in the process of dreaming up ideas that oh if all of my ideas are in there that will make the thing better. But that's often actually not the truth at all. Right? Especially a player engaging with it being like oh why do you have all of this in there? So

having some function that forces you, it's like a good editor, I would gather, in writing a novel or something like that, it's like, well, maybe we don't need this. We don't need this.
Yeah. I I feel like um and one of one of my favorite categories of game uh and without a hitch, uh I believe I looked at the numbers and it fits is the sub gigabyte highly focused game.
Right. the like for as someone who installs and uninstalls a lot of games. I was hanging out with my best friend this morning and she asked me how many games do you have in your Steam library? And I went,200 and some odd and I've played more of them than I've played a greater fraction of my Steam library than a lot of people have, right? And so like that that like extremely focused small game that it's easy to install and play when you want to with your friends is like great because it's focused, right? It's not everything. Not every game is going to be Skyrim for the 15th time.

Matt is currently playing Skyrim for the 15th.
Matt was telling me about this. He just he put it on his Switch or
Switch two. He got the Switch 2 upgrade for it and he was like, I wonder if it's better and it's better. And now he's playing Skyrim again.
Oh, it's funny how that happened. I think we all game or two like that that this sucks you back in more times than you can count.
I agree. I I very much agree. Well,
I know.
Gentlemen, as we're doing a wrap-up, any last things you'd like to say before we wrap?
Dave,
no. I mean, I think uh that that that test of the current build went really well for us and I I look forward to getting that out tomorrow for players who are playing the demo to to try. to both the the new visuals there and the new enemies and and um definitely uh yeah download it, give it a try and and leave your feedback because uh any feedback that goes in there, I'm personally going to read it all. So So leave it there and uh and we'll

that was not an invitation to post really take really really long fanfictions from strange sub Reddits and post them in there by the way.
Oh. Oh no, there's actually a 2048 character limit. So that's [laughter] it actually
only post the first 2048 characters of the be movie. Sorry. So yeah, so it's on so it's on Steam. It's on Epic. It's got crossplay between Steam and Epic. It's currently in Steam NextFest. So all the things there and yeah, lots of places you can join the Discord if you want to provide feedback and interact that way. We're posting kind of behind the scenes stuff on the Discord. So you can see things there. But yeah, it's and thanks for having us back on to kind of give you an update on sort of like where we were with Play Test 2 and where we are now. Yeah,
it's really fun to be able to kind of show like as a dev you see this but as non-devs you don't get to see it a lot. So, it's fun to be able to kind of share that and post it up here so that, you know, not just now, but people, you know, devs years later on YouTube who are checking out, you know, VODs of Design Club are going to be able to come in and be like, "Oh, hey,

this is this is the difference that a month makes, right? January 29th, February 26th, this is the different this is like and and across both sides of a play test. I I really can't thank you both enough for uh bringing us this excellent snapshot. It's really cool."
Yeah. Uh, I think that that means that all that remains to us is for everybody to say bye to the people.
Goodbye to the people.
Goodbye people. [music]