Tom Francis: How He Sold 1,000,000 Copies Of His Games | Ep. #052

Imagine drinking coffee, listening to cozy, lowfi music, and making indie games from your home office or bedroom as a full-time job. What if there was someone who could show you exactly how you could make this dream a reality? In today's show, I sit down with Tom Francis, who has maintained this gamedev dream for over a decade. He's had no outside funding and no publishers while somehow releasing wildly successful indie games that all came straight from his brilliant mind. like Gunpoint, Heat Signature, and his latest hit, Tactical Breach Wizards, which won excellence in design at IGF this year. You're gonna learn from someone who is honestly doing what so many of you listening dream of doing. So, this podcast is honestly the best way for you to learn and hopefully replicate his success. We discuss something called iterative game design, which honestly is a huge tool that every aspiring game developer should use. We also talk about the future of gamedev with AI, whether or not it's a bad time to make games because of the health of the game industry. We wrap up the conversation discussing how to finish

your game, and why exactly games take so long to make. And as always, I've saved the best part for last. We open up his hit game, Tactical Breach Wizards, in Unity. And honestly, my mind was blown. He and his team created this tool that honestly, you've just got to see the tool to fully grasp its brilliance. And I'll be honest, seeing custom tools in Unity, it used to intimidate me. I didn't know the first thing about how to make them. But did you know that AI tools like Bezi can create editor tools among a ton of other features for your game in just a few seconds? And by the way, Bezi is today's generous sponsor. So, here's a little bit about Bezi. Bezi is like having a development partner. And with their new agent mode, it's almost like you're adding another team member. It doesn't just respond to your prompts. It has this full context of your entire project and makes tailored suggestions by searching your assets, your scripts, your scene graph, Unity docs, and even the internet to give you the most accurate help possible. See, with agent mode, you can modify and

create code directly in your project through the Bezi app. It speeds up repetitive tasks, helping debug tricky issues, pinpoint performance bottlenecks, and it even tracks every change so you can revert at any time. I've been trying it out on my own projects for a while, and I recently made a full video showing how it quickly helped me fix four very real issues I've been meaning to fix in my game, Brave Boy. It really shows how powerful Bezi can be and how much time it can save during development. So, definitely check it out through the link below. The best thing is that Bezi is completely free to try and if you like it, you can get 50% off your first month of Pro using the link in the description. you strike me strike me as somebody who's highly intentional with how he makes games. Would you say that's true?
Yeah, with the caveat that I I'm also like um very iterative and experimental. So try see if they work and then change. Um so I think a lot about what I want to do and what I'm trying to achieve. But

uh once I try it, if it doesn't work, then I I pivot right away.
The reason I asked that is because I've been me and my wife are building a house right now and we're working with a builder and he's very precise about every decision he makes, you know. um who he subs out to and everything has a cost associated with it and there's a spreadsheet and he has to do that because he has a client me and I don't want him to go over budget right and I was thinking why can't I build games like builders build houses why can't I do that everything for me is so there's so many feelings attached to to when I'm making a game like I have to see it and smell it and taste it and touch it to know if it's good
and I wanted to know about you you know you you strike me is somebody who's very like structured with how you make a game. Do you treat making games like a builder builds a house?
No, I think I'm more like you um in that it is going to be very experimental and just to kind of see how things feel, but I do go in with a lot of ideas and opinions and and things that I want to

try. And for example, in Wizards, uh one of the main features is that you can rewind your turn as many times as you like. So, you can undo uh each little action all the way back to the start of your turn. And there's no limit on on doing that. Um, and I had a pretty strong instinct that I was that was going to be that was going to work out. At least it was going to make a kind of game that I would like. I I knew a lot less about whether other people would like that kind of game. But um uh I always we're always trying to make emergent gameplay and uh I've noticed that the thing that stops people getting into that kind of game is the fear of consequences that they they don't feel free to risk trying something because they're worried about what will happen if they do and and that they might mess it up and and uh you know a lot of the time they're right trying something crazy will will mess up. Uh and so if the consequences were that high then most people just don't engage with it with experimental gameplay. They don't try the crazy plans. They don't use the weird interesting abilities. They just stick to like, let's just do some damage and let's just hide behind the cover and then do more damage. So, I knew I wanted

to try and remove that stress for the player and try and welcome some more people into the idea of emerging gameplay and and to push them to try weird things and and crazy strategies. And so, removing any risk of consequence was um uh was a drastic uh thing to do, but I had a pretty strong feeling that it would work out. People told me I'd pitch it to people and they'd say I think that's going to cause decision paralysis where like people just never commit their turn because they could try anything. So just spend longer and longer on your turn and you know there's an element of that but um I think uh it didn't really end up being a serious problem. We kept asking people like you know is that happening? Um and some people spend a long time on turns but those people are having loads of fun like they're they're happy about that. They're like this is great. I get like if you're enjoying yourself then you do dig in and and you try and find this this perfect solution or or this amazing you know way to get out of a difficult situation but if you're not enjoying it um we generally found people to just progress and I was actually surprised um at how unperfectionist some people were just like yeah took a bit of damage but

I think that's okay we'll just we'll just soldier on and um and get through it.
So you have to you have to test out every instinct. So you have an instinct as a game designer.
It's is it are there some design principles though that you've you've just figured out are tried and true
that you can rely on or do you have to really iterate and test every little thing for each game?
Um I guess I don't really have like a lot of global principles that like always apply. Um, but I do, um, if I do ever do hit something like that, uh, you'll see on my YouTube channel, I do a series called design talk where I kind of like pick a a sort of design concept and, um, uh, and explore that. I guess there often the most universal things are things not to do. So like um, snowballing is is one of the design talks I did, which is the phenomenon of like as you if you're doing really well at a game, it gives you a mechanical rewards like an upgrade to your gun or

extra health or whatever. And now the game is easier. And I don't like that as a pattern because um the people who are finding the game easiest, it gets easier for them. And the people who are struggling with the game don't get given any advantages and they're already struggling so they keep struggling. Um and so both in both cases it gets worse. So we're pretty strict about trying not to do that. That's why in Wizards, um all of these extra missions you can do, they can only unlock cosmetic outfits. They never get you any more experience or any more perk points or anything that mechanical. Uh even though that's a much better sort of character dangle for the player. the players more excited about that stuff. But if they're really digging deep into the mechanics, they're probably already good at the game and giving them extra advantage is just going to make the game easier. Um,
wait, so there's no there's no upgrades.
You upgrade as you go through the campaign, but everyone will get the same amount of experience, the same amount of upgrades. So by the end of the game, your your riot priest might look different to mine in terms of the upgrades you chose, but we'll both have spent the exact same number of perk points.
So it's it's something like discouraging wealth disparity in like economics, right? uh you don't want the wealthier

to get wealthier and the poor to get poorer. So, as a game designer, you're it's there's like an economy almost that you're trying to make
uh available to everybody uh equally. Is that kind of what you're saying?
Yeah. Um and it's I think it makes life better for everybody because the people who are finding the game easy don't want it to get easier. They they they want more challenge, right? they don't maybe they don't want it to get massively harder but um uh if it gets easier it's going to eventually just become nothing to them and the people who are struggling probably would like to progress a bit faster and and get a bit of help. So a a a a de developers listening right now, including me, we shouldn't feel like imposters or we shouldn't feel guilty if we have to feel out our game as we create.
That's the way it's done. Is that what you're saying?
Yeah. That's I think more than half the job is is um is you've built something, now try it out, you're going to test it internally, see how you feel about it, and if you like it, then you test it

externally and see what other people think of it. And in both cases, you're going to get some results you didn't expect and didn't want. And how do you react to that is yeah, I think more than half the job. I think there's like a sort of mythology about like designers that they know how everything's going to be in advance and they're just so smart that they they uh have everything in their head and they're going to be right about everything. I don't think that exists. Um and those people will tell you that or people who idolize those people will say, "Ah, but you don't want to test too much because you'll like you'll round it all down and it'll become nothing. it will become sort of designed by committee and like obviously you could you know make something mush by just taking everyone's advice all at once but that's not what testing does that's what you do after reading the test feedback like test feedback then you be a designer that's that's half the job is you know what people what problems people are having you know what they love you know what they they don't like and then you figure out how do we steer around that stuff how do we navigate around it
sounds like a very human process making a game
right and everybody's freaking out about

AI right now and there's plenty of justifications, believe me. Um, can AI make a good game? What do you think?
Uh,
without human input?
Uh, not right now, I don't think. Um, and I'm not really interested in the games it might make or it's just I I think there's always going to be uh a lot of interest in in uh humanmade games uh regardless and human intentionality is part of uh what we get in our relationship with a with a game. I think it's even true that that even if an AI had made like one of our games that players would get less out of it knowing that it was made by an AI like some of the choices that that you know in Bach Wizards there are some twists there are some surprises sometimes we do something out of the blue that that feel shocking and and you know uh maybe even unwelcome in the moment um but because you know we made it uh you're waiting to see where

are they going with this like this is this is surprising Why would they do this? They made someone made this choice to
to, you know, have my character suddenly get shot on screen. And uh I'm like, you can't do that. Like what? I'm waiting for how are you going to get out of this this problem you've created? Um when you know there's a human behind it, that's this kind of it's a human relationship. You know, you're you're kind of in dialogue with a creator and it's a treat. you know, if you're in the hands of a good creator, this is why I wanted to go back to making a a a storydriven game uh after making a procedural game for the last one. Really proud of Heat Signature and it's really fun to play. Um but we didn't get to sort of take the reader on the player on a little journey and I really enjoyed with with gunpoint sort of knowing, oh, at this point the player's going to be feeling this and I'm going to do this to them and then they're gonna have this experience and seeing that play out and have people have those experiences. I don't want it to be the same for every player, but um I love that as a as a player. I love that feeling of being in good hands. You have that with Halfife 2. You once you've played a bit of Halfife 2, like,

"Okay, everything that's going to happen is going to be amazing in this game, and I'm in good hands. I can't wait to see what treats they prepared for me next." And I think you need a human at the wheel to have that feeling.
Yeah, I think you're right, man. I think that obviously there's AI tools that help game development. Um, but it's there is something that I think I talked about I talked with um Jabbrril's about the value of humanmade games and I think we even maybe disagreed. But I'm I am curious if there's going to be some kind of human certification where it's like a game gets some kind of stamp that's like or or a badge or something that's like this is true. This is a humanmade game, you know?
Yeah.
Um because you're right, there's value in that, you know. It's like what makes something art? In a way, it's basically just like if if you're connecting on another level with a human being through art, then it's art. Um, if you're if there is no connection, you wonder if it's art. Um, or if it's doing what art should do, which it should make you feel like, I don't know, understood. You feel

like you're you're reflected in the art. When I play like I love Halfife 2. It's huge inspiration for me. When I play that game, it it feels like someone understands me, you know?
Yeah. And um I think that if we if games start to feel less human um we won't feel like we're connected and and it just won't be valuable. It won't be fun. So I think you're right.
Yeah, I don't think human made games are going away. Um uh I think we'll always want that connection and we'll always value it. Um and yeah, intentionality is is very important. Um it comes back to what I was saying about testing. You know, if you if you did just test a lot and then you had an AI just react to that feedback and and try and implement all the changes that people are asking for, you probably would get generic slop that would be rounding off all the interesting corners and there'd be no um intentionality in the final result. And that is what a game designer's job is is you are going to be intentional in how you react that feedback. You don't just do what everyone asks for. You can't for one thing because they're going to ask for conflicting things.

But when they when that happens, you're making these decisions about no, this matters to me. I'm going to make it this way. and the fraction of people who are who don't like that, I'm going to do something to try and make it more palatable to them and and I don't want them to be frustrated or put off, but ultimately this is the game we're making and it's not this other game.
Well, let's um let's talk really quickly here about where the industry is going. Um because it's something I'm really interested in. Um because you've you when was your first game? It like 20 um
2013 it came out.
Yeah. So, you've been around for a long time. I mean, I that's when I I was I've been making games since like 2010. And so, we we both been kind of around all the way basically until where it was the beginning of this big indie game boom and kind of the end of the flash era. But you were also in game journalism. Am I correct there?
Yeah.
Okay. So, you've seen the journalism side of the game industry, which is no

small thing because there that's a whole industry in and of itself that seems like it's dying. I want to talk to you about that. But also, it seems like the game industry itself is going through this weird metamorphosis, and I don't quite fully understand it. Lots of studios are laying off employees. The tech industry is struggling because of AI. You've got you had a bunch of stuff going on with Embracer last year or the year prior, funding issues, publishers closing doors, publishing dropping publishers dropping projects, and even my own project Twisted Tower having budget cuts. All that said, all that said, with your level of expertise, let's first start with what do you feel is going to happen with game journalism? Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, I don't have like an expert opinion on the sort of industry and the the economics of it because uh you know I left game journalism when when my game uh when Gunpoint came out in 2013 and

even when I worked there I very consciously avoided ever being in charge of anything. I was like I loved writing about games and I wanted to keep doing that. So I was doing it nine years and I was I changed job titles a couple of times but I hit a ceiling where I'm like I can't go any higher or I'll be managing people instead of writing. Um and but obviously I had close contact with you know the editor of the magazine who's who's has to you know figure out how to make each issue sell. And um I I started in the magazine era we were selling a magazine for6 PC gamer.
Yeah. And we when I started we didn't have a website like there had been a PC gamer website then it was shut down and then uh for a while we had a little corner of computer and video games.com that was sort PC gamer branded and we got to do a little blog there and that was it. And it was a while before pcgamer.com, you know, became a proper thing. So it was all magazine. That was a much simpler thing because you're selling something and just like we write the words and people buy it for six pounds and that is uh sufficient for for

us to pay staff and and have a it's quite a healthy model like it's it's very oldfashioned now. And then the website was a huge success and it it was a big extra income stream for us. We were using a lot of the same content. who were writing stuff especially for the for the website. But um for a while a lot of stuff was just going from the magazine to the website. Um
and uh it was a a huge success popularity wise. But then as the you know the world and and the industry and and PC gamer shifted to being just online only I did again I didn't have to manage this stuff. So I don't know um all the ins and outs but the impression I get from all my games journalist friends is that it's just really [ __ ] hard to run a business on advertising. Um it when you know the stuff you're writing is people are consuming it so casually you know uh news especially like you just get news from wherever you get news and if that the news sites start saying you can't read this article until you pay us $5 then you just say I get my news from somewhere else like the attachment is so low there.

Yeah.
That um it's very hard to make money from it. So, the stuff that that seems hopeful to me is um when you have a consistent voice and you have great writers and you you have an audience that trusts you and cares about your writing and likes the writing itself. Um then having a way for them to support you like the the Rock Shotgun um supporters program. Uh you know 99% of the stuff is free and there's a supporters program where uh you can pay them uh every month and the only thing you get access to is sort of one post. I can't remember what the frequency is but it's it's a very tiny percentage of content and people aren't really paying for that. They're just paying for support
that's a good model. It doesn't have to say um uh I'm not saying why doesn't everyone just use that as their funding model because it it doesn't scale like there are no it doesn't want to give money.
Yeah, dude. Does that mean that I mean does that mean that that getting articles written about your game isn't very important anymore?

I mean I think it's less important. Um definitely when I started in 2013, you know, to promote that game, uh that was the peak of my press contacts and the peak of press importance in terms of like getting a preview or a review um was was kind of everything. Uh and streamers existed, but um they weren't sort of seen as like a the primary way of getting the word out. Whereas these days, uh I feel like streamers are sort of more important um than and by streamers I just I mean content creators, I guess, like people making videos. whether that's live or not. Um they seem like, you know, definitely a bigger audience. Um and uh yeah, getting your stuff in front of them is more important. I still think pressure is important and I I care about it anyway, even if it wasn't um you know, crucial to success. Um I really want to know what critics thought of my game and I want to I want that score to be good. like it's it matters to me partly because I was a reviewer and I know I know that it's more meaningful than than some people would would assume. You know

when you give a score you put a lot of thought into it and it it matters and is that
true with every writer?
Um no probably not every writer.
Yeah. Yeah. But I will say in general like being on the inside of the games journalism industry like yeah um you know almost everybody is in it for the love of games and they care deeply about what they write and the idea that they're you know inflating a score to appease somebody is was just kind of ridiculous. Certainly on on in the places I had direct experience of with PC gamer mostly um that just never happen. It would just like um you're doing it for because you care about games. is very badly paid. You're not doing it for the money.
Yeah. So, did you um do do you feel like the game industry is healthy right now?
No. Um
I love how you immediately start laughing.
Yeah. Just I mean I'm just uh it's weird because I have our company has been unaffected by anything really uh in the last we weren't affected by the

pandemic. crew unaffected by the the recent state of layoffs, the the sort of
funding freeze or or whatever we're calling this kind of period, the indie apocalypse. Uh we've just sort of been standing through it all and and unaffected mostly because the kind we got lucky early on, you know, releasing a game in 2013, perfect time to do it. The money from that completely funded the next game. The money from both of those completely funded the third game and hopefully that'll carry on. So when when purse strings are being tightened in the industry at large and people are being laid off and people can't find funding, it hasn't affected us at all and it's it feels sometimes like you know you wake up and there's been a hurricane and and your house is absolutely fine and everything else is in tatters and you're like oh my god what happened and like why are we okay? But I I know very little about the um you know how it all works and and what the causes are behind the the ongoing like uh onslaught of layoffs and and studio closures and and uh everything. But um uh yeah, it is weird to be in in

this isolated bubble of of like so far we're fine. I mean maybe I'm speaking too soon. Maybe something's going to going to screw us. Um but we have enough money to make the next game. And um uh so it doesn't really matter how how tight the purse strings get on on other people, which is a position of huge privilege.
Um and that was yeah getting lucky very early on and then staying small. We never really grew. Like Gunpoint was six people uh and our last game was five people. So
wow.
Um
tiny. It's a bit of a false comparison because uh some of the people on Gunpoint were just they contributed one thing at the start of the project and then um uh weren't ongoing contributors necessarily whereas the Wizards people were were much closer to full-time. Um
I think the difference between my studio and yours at this present moment is my studio we had funding from funding sources from funding sources from funding sources and you never really know where it came from.
Yeah. cuz like it's like 3D Realms my publisher went through and this is like

all public so it's not like it's a secret they like got bought or they got sold or something but like there Embracer was involved and then they weren't involved and then money from I think Saudi Arabia was going to Embracer. So it's like all these different places that money and was coming from billions of dollars just flying all over the place all over the world based on essentially speculation that the game industry is going to be continually uh like infinitely profitable like it was during co and then when it wasn't everyone freaked out. It's like it's almost like the stock market. I mean that's kind of how it it feels. It's all it's all super speculative and people started freaking out because other people were freaking out when maybe they didn't even need to freak out. your studio and and I'm by the way I'm grateful for 3D Realms and I'm they they've they've funded they funded the project. It's published by 3D Realms and they funded a the a huge chunk of the beginning of the production. So super grateful to them and we're going to finish strong. Um but the difference is with your studio is and this is one of

my questions I've written down. You've never taken money from a publisher? Nope. Haven't taken from anyone. No. All completely selfunded. The first game we made in our spare time, so it didn't cost anything, you know, in terms of actual resources. Um, obviously it cost our time, but but uh I didn't have to quit my job or anything to do that. I did take three months off from my job towards the end when it was really like getting towards the finish line and and I thought a push could could finish it. But um if the game had not been successful, I could have returned to the job after that. You know, that was uh I made I made sure that I wasn't giving anything up. It's like the least rock and roll story ever. I was like, didn't take any risks. I was like, uh, even though everyone's telling me this game's going to do well and everything, I still I'm not going to quit my job to finish it. I'm going to, uh, make sure I can come back to my job if it doesn't sell or, you know, if something goes wrong. So, I was very very careful. Um, and then just so lucky that that that first game, it did so well and it it was just the right time because um, you know, for a first project, uh, very hard to pick something that's going to stay within

your scope that you can actually feasibly do. Like I say, I was I was doing all the programming back then. I was doing a bigger share of the work back then than I am now. If id picked something, you know, even slightly bigger or or or the concept had been harder to implement or or anything like that, then probably never would have finished it or um would have dragged on um or had to cut it back and then made it just not quite interesting enough. You know, there's that threshold of like interestingness where uh you're going to get attention and that was so much lower back then in 2013 as as I'm sure you know. Um
Oh, yeah. standing out now is so much we could release gun the first game today and I think no one would notice
dude I think a lot of people are trying to stand out these days and the way that they're trying to stand out is making them not stand out so what I mean is like everybody's trying to make some weird twist on a genre um and it's to me it's getting kind of annoying because it's like it's like yeah it's interesting but like putting frosting on pizza is interesting
you know but it doesn't mean it tastes

Um, and it just seems like it's happening so much. It's like it's a twist on Vampire Survivor, it's a twist on this or it's a twist on that.
And what I I've done, and we'll see if it pays off. I have no idea if it pays off. But what I've done in the last 3 four years of my time is I'm like, I just want to make a genre, a a a game that's pretty much already defined, and I just want to do it again and just give people more of what they already know. And that's what I'm doing with with Twisted Tower with like this Bioshock. It's like it's just like it's Bioshock but in like a Disney park. And I'm like if if there's nothing really unique there. And a lot of people might say, "Well, I'll just play Bioshock then." But my suspicion is, and I could be wrong. My suspicion is people are going to say, "I actually do want to play Bioshock again in a different environment,
you know,
and with a little with a different story." You know,
something's like Underserved. I think that could work really well. like um Stardew Valley Value is obviously sort of hitting the Animal Crossing vibes that that PC players weren't getting and

um I I can't speak to that game or the comparison between those two, but it really felt like people were just crying out for that kind of game and and obviously it's a great one, but um uh its success is is uh you know, phenomenal and uh I think shows you how many people wanted that. And then with um Sim City and and uh City Skylines, uh we kind of saw like Sim City fans weren't getting what they wanted from from main Sim City and then City Skylines came along and they they all flocked to that because it was doing what they wanted.
Yeah. And it didn't really it didn't really do anything new.
Yeah. I mean I again I haven't played the two well enough to comment on that. But that was the impression I got is people wanted a good Sim City and it was a good Sim City.
Dude, when I was in um when I was in second grade um I remember specifically second grade my teacher said, "Who do what do you want to be when you grow up?" And I wanted to be a painter. And the reason why is cuz I was like my mom or something had showed me a bunch of paintings from Norman Rockwell. And his paintings were so good. They were so I was like, how how does somebody draw this good? And then I found out like two

years ago that what he would do is he would take pictures and then he would paint over top of an actual human form. And I'm saying all this because I'm saying I think a lot of game developers feel like Tom Francis is a genius and he's coming up all with all of this on his own from scratch when in reality I think what you're saying is it's totally fine to just fully understand a game that's already been successful and do it again but with your own spin.
Yeah. I think um for me anyway that the spin part is quite important. I I I want to be making it for a reason. Um and to to explore something like, oh, I bet if this game had this feature, you know, you could maybe say Bridge Wizard is like Into the Bridge, but with infinite rewind. Um and that wasn't how we how we started it. Um but that's an interesting thing to explore. Does that work? You know, for me anyway, I find when I start building something, I end up making a bunch of decisions differently to to whatever reference point I'm going by. Anyway, Gunpoint was supposed to be a 2D DSX when I started it. I was like, I

know I can't make that, but let let's go in that direction. Just
That sounds so fun, though.
Yeah. And I took the principles of of DSX about subverting your environment and turning it to your side. And and that became the hacking mechanic in Gunpoint. And that what I ended up with was a puzzle game, which is not DSX. Um, but uh that was me sort of trying to see what I could distill out of DSX and think, okay, subverting your environment is cool. What's like the most global kind of subverting you could do? And then once I built that, it was like, oh, this is a puzzle game. This is a mechanic for solving puzzles. So I got to build some puzzles now and I became that. So I find things drift a lot like when even if I start with a reference point I end up making things differently and then it's you know the uniqueness part is kind of covered. Um
so you're not being experimental or cuz because there was a quote that you said in one of your uh videos you said um don't be experimental about structure in a game unless that's the point.
Yes.
Is that related to what you're saying here? Like at what point is it a good idea for a game developer or a game designer to start twisting and changing

things and being experimental?
Yeah, like say I like to go in with an idea of what I'm going to do different what I'm going to do differently. And yeah, you it's definitely possible to go too far in that direction and just be like changing everything all the time, especially like pivoting like changing your mind about okay, we built all this now we're going to throw all that away and do it this way. If you have to do that because feedback is telling you it's not working, then fine. But I think some developers sort of lose themselves in their own head and then lose faith in something before they've even tried it and then um uh keep changing their mind about what they want to make and that's very timeconuming. So yeah the structure comment was about uh came from heat signature because with heat signature uh we built the core game first which I think is the right way to do it. Make sure you've got something fun at the core of it. Uh but there was no structure surrounding it. And then when I came to build that, I wanted it to be like a whole galaxy of of space stations and each one is divided into territory and um uh there'd be these ships flying between the space stations and you'd hijack those and that change the trade routes and you could sort of modify the

the the infrastructure of the galaxy by how you did that and create new trade routes and create new empires and things. And it's all very ambitious and it's being ambitious is okay as long as you can test what you're trying to build quickly. Um, and when you're when it's the structure surrounding the whole game, a it took a long time to build anything at all to test. Um, and then B, testing it is also really timeconuming because you have to play this is a theory about how it will feel to play a whole campaign within that structure. And so to test that once you've got to play a whole campaign like there isn't really a shortcut for it.
Um, and that that could be, you know, in heat signature it's probably like 20 hours to kind of complete the game. Um, so it's just not practical to test that yourself dozens of times. Um, so generally, yeah, you don't want to be experimental about the whole structure of the game, uh, because you won't be able to test it very often. And I added the caveat, unless that's the point of the game. If you're making, if you know the core is very, you know, tried and tested and and all you're interested in

is is experimenting with structure, which is kind of true of our next game, um, then I think it's okay. I hope it's okay. Yeah,
we're still going to have the testing problem of like I won't be able to test how this campaign feels, you know, over and over again. I'm going to have to rely on external testers for that.
Um, and we'll need a lot of them because, you know, uh, uh, when you ask a 100 people to test the game,
uh, not all of them are going to be willing to play through a 20our campaign or whatever it ends up being, um, even the ones who want to just won't get to to do that in in a decent amount of time. So, uh, you need you need a good body of testers. I think we have that now like we've we've been building up a mailing list my my whole career basically and uh we always send test builds to those folks first and we get a good response. So uh hopefully we'll have enough people to to help.
What's your sample size when you're doing alpha testing or beta testing?
Um I like to get uh like one or two thousand people in on a test uh eventually.
That's crazy. I I'll do like 20 people

because I'm afraid that like you said earlier, I'm afraid I'll I'll take way too much feedback,
right?
And change what my instincts are. You know,
your first your early tests, I think, make sense to keep them small because you at that point, you probably want to read every word that people say about it and and think about it carefully. I when I do that, I do it with developer friends and and folks who
Yeah. I know I I agree with their opinions in general and I know if they suggest something that there's something behind it. Um but when you're doing it with the public in general, you don't know anything about the people who are giving you test feedback. Like each individual data point is could could be meaningless, could be completely antithetical to what you want to make. Um and so if you have a small sample set and one of them even two of them are saying the same thing, it feels like oh my god, we got to do what they're saying or or like that must be how everyone's going to feel. And actually it might be two really anomalous data points. So yeah, we we tend to roll out with Wizards especially, we did it in waves. So uh the first we probably send keys to

like 500 people first um and then just wait and see if they hit like a game-breaking crash and just anything major in those first couple days and then if that seems okay then we send out like a thousand um and uh yeah because we want people to fill in a feedback form when they're done. Um and I find sort of 10 to 20% of testers will actually do that. So if you want 100 data points, then you need a thousand testers.
And with wizards, we also had tons of other like feedback stuff in it. So um there's analytics where we passively track, you know, how many times people are dying on a level, how many times they're hitting the rewind button, how many how long in time it's taking them, how long in turns it's taking them. And that's really interesting, too, because you can then look at how how much time per turn that they taking on a level. And that will that will tell you how like thinky it is. you know that they only took four turns, but they all spent half an hour on it. Like they really thought about those turns.
Um
so would you say that um quality a low sample size with with a quality testers? So for example like a group of 12

advisers who are game developers, that's valuable for telling you like what's really good about your game, what's really fun about the game, what works, what doesn't, whether the story works, whether it doesn't. But a larger group, a larger sample size, that's more for like giving you feedback on balance and bugs.
Yeah.
Is that true?
Um I also use the large sample size for um we always ask what's your favorite thing about the game or what's the worst thing about the game? And uh having those in two separate columns is really nice because you can just read all the good stuff at once uh if you want to. Um and then when you're ready for the bad stuff,
uh you can do that. I also asked them to rate it out of 10. Um, no matter how early we are, I just want to score out of 10, just gut feeling. What do you think? Um, so that gives us an overall like scorecard for how we're doing.
Has that been a a good mirror image of the actual data you get from Steam?
Yeah, I think it has actually. Um, uh, I mean, not you couldn't sort of translate

it directly, but um, the thing I think thing it's useful for mainly is how did we do relative to the last beta? um because it got uh we can tell if we're if we're moving in the right direction. Only once did it ever go down and that was a real depressing bet around. I knew exactly why. I knew what the problem was and it was quite easy to fix. But it was um uh it was a year after our previous beta and we got a lower overall score than the last one. I was like, "Oh god, I just spent a year making the game worse."
Do you get just really sick and nervous when you read reviews or I'm sorry, beta testing reviews? Is it a hard week? I'm very thin skinned. So, what I do is um uh obviously I can dip into the what's the best thing about the game responses. I'll read a bunch of those and just get a feel for where we we're going. Um maybe the overall impressions answer. Uh definitely the score I can look at right away and I'm excited to see what that is. But then reading their negative feedback is is pretty rough. So, what I'll usually do is I'll get my team on a call and we'll read it together so that um it just becomes a social thing. And it and sometimes if

someone's really savage, we're all just kind of like laughing at it because,
oh my god, this guy didn't like the combat, the writing, the art,
I just trash the whole thing. And if you
I don't uh I don't drink uh before noon. But when I'm doing beta testing and alpha testing, I I'll find myself like I'll have like a glass of whiskey and I'll be like, "Okay, here we go. Here we go."
Yeah. So, with uh Tactical Breach Wizards, you are currently looking at 8,000 about Okay, 9,000 reviews.
Wow.
And you're sitting at 98%.
Now, that's great.
First off, congratulations. That's insane. Like, that's absolutely insane. I think the highest I've ever gotten was Let's see here. What is Pinstripe at? And not nearly as many reviews, but uh let's see here. 89% for that game. And then Twisted Tower, the Twisted Tower demo is

currently sitting at um 90%.
Nice.
So, but then then the recent reviews for some reason they're at 84%. No idea why. I'm not going to worry about it right now. But the question is, why are you missing those two percentage points? What do you What do you think?
I I don't know because I've never read the negative reviews. I My mom has read them. uh my friend some of my team have read them uh I think uh and uh some of my friends have have dug into them but I'm like honestly when you're at 90% you don't really care what the 2% are. It's just like uh we can live with those. If I try and cater to them I'm probably going to lose some of the 98. Um
that's right. That's right. It's just people you know there I I think it's Is there any game on Steam that's 100%. That's a really important question. I don't even know
with a small enough review count. Yeah. uh my friend Greg uh Labanov um who worked on uh
he was on his podcast
Beasty Ball, right? Uh they were 100% for quite a long time. He was he was like tweeting saying, "Why are there no

negative reviews? Please someone leave a negative review because he was like genuinely wanted to hear about problems." Um
uh but I would never have dared to do that if I was 100% I would shut the [ __ ] up about it. But no, the um I'm surprised that the negative isn't bigger because it's if for no other reason than it's a comedy game and comedy is very subjective, right? People have very different senses of humor. I would bet any given standup special on Netflix, if you showed it to 100 people, probably 30 of them would dislike it, right? At least
because senses of humor are so different. I when I watch a Netflix special, I give it sort of 85% chance I'm not going to like it.
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
So, I think we got lucky. I did try and make sure that the game didn't hinge on the jokes. Like you don't if you if the joke isn't funny, it should be doing something else. Um, you know, in case someone doesn't find this funny, this at least establishes character or it sets up some narrative thing and um or it just doesn't get in the way. It doesn't feel like we spend a lot of time getting to this joke and then it falls flat. But

yeah, I'm still surprised that there weren't more people just put off by it cuz you know, people have so many hang-ups around this stuff. I've got young people in my life, nieces, nephews, uh, kids of friends, and they want to make games. They want to do what you're doing. They want to do what I'm doing, but you're you're you're killing it. You're just crushing it. And I also am really impressed by you because you haven't taken outside funding. And so, you figured out how to comp like completely do this from scratch. And that's super duper impressive. So, what do you tell these people, these young people? What's the plan? What's the framework? How do you how do you land where you've land?
Yeah. Yeah, I mean the first thing to say is like to manage expectations. The thing I did worked in 2013 and probably wouldn't work today. Like it's it's much harder day today to do what I did. Uh which is start something in your spare time, mess around with it. At the time I needed artists and composers. I put out a little video of it and and showed what I had and said, "Hey, does anyone want to work on this with me?" But but it might be free. We might not charge for it. Uh so um wasn't offering any money.

Uh but if we did charge for it, we'd do revenue share and just don't risk anything was was my strategy. Like just let's let's experiment or see where we're going. It can be risky to to go into it with teammates if you decide like a five of us are going to make a game together. I think there's so much that can go wrong there. Um uh if that's how you start, I think I
Sorry,
what can go wrong? uh people having different ideas about what the game's going to be, people being unreliable. You know, might be great friends with someone and you know that they make music or whatever and uh then only once the project starts do you realize, "Oh god, working with this person is hell." They keep changing their mind, they keep throwing their work away. A healthy professional relationship with someone who's also talented at something you're not talented at is in very rare to to find, I think. Um and and you like working with them and you still like being friends with them and and all of that. I'm very lucky to have found those people. When I started it was to find out, you know, can I do game design? I've been a critic for a while and I've been I've been trying to suppress the armchair game designer in me when I'm reviewing stuff. I'm like, okay, my job is to say whether this game is good or

not and why. There's a part of me that wants to say what they should have done instead. Like, I don't see why they didn't do it this way. Why Why isn't there a mini map in this? Why Why can't you load an early save in this? And I had all these ideas and and theories and, you know, wanted to put them to the test, but I knew I couldn't judge myself unless I built something. So, I had to learn programming to do that. I didn't want to be a programmer particularly. I just had to learn what I needed to learn to build something. And I think I'd advise anyone to do that. Even if you're an artist and you want to be an artist, like learn enough that you can build something. It doesn't have to be Game Maker or Unity. You could do like a Twine game or something. But uh there are so many different tool sets out there that you can mess around with that have good tutorials and you don't need to build something. You don't need to build a good game to test whether you can make good art for it or or or a writer. I know a lot of writers who would like to be writing for games but um haven't had an experience doing it. And uh I think you just got to make something of your own and then you'll find out whether you like doing that and and having those skills is going to be useful anyway. Like uh our programmer John Window, one of the reasons that he was appealing to me even on paper before I met him and tried working with him is

that he had made a jam game. He actually won the game jam with this this jam game flourish. And just knowing he'd been through the whole thing from start to finish was very reassuring of like, okay, this person is going to know that when you're making games sometimes you have to take shortcuts. Sometimes you have to um you got to have a a practical mindset about it. And so that's that's great. I think anyone who if you're looking to get a job at an existing studio, they are going to love that you've made something that they can play and and that you've been through the whole thing. Like this just just gives you a bit of piece of mind about a candidate that they know what making a game is is like even if it's a very small and simple thing. And then yeah, doing that is going to teach you what you have on your hands. Like am have I made something that's that stands out? Have I made something that I'm proud of? Uh do my friend are my friends excited about it? If they are excited about it then show it publicly and well show it publicly either way I think uh and see if the public get any attention. I obviously had a big head start in this as well because being a games journalist all my friends not only um were into games but also had a good handle on the industry and what's out there. And so when they told me this is something interesting like I think you should

charge money for this uh I could believe them and uh
right
take it seriously cuz that it meant something. I knew that like, okay, they're my friends and they'd be nice to me, but they wouldn't be this nice out of politeness. Like, for them to say that as a games journalist means means something. Um,
but you know, anything if you make anything that excites your friends, I think that's a good sign. Yeah. Who was I listening to the other day? He was talking about their very first game. Oh, it was um the person who made The Root Trees Are Dead. They made a bunch of games that didn't really go anywhere as part of Game Jams. And when they started showing The Root Trees are dead to people, like people would get addicted to it. They they would just uh lose themselves in it. and he'd never seen that before. And so that was when he knew he had something that he could, you know, make something of. And I think that that's a really good approach, just, you know,
would you would you finish a game if you didn't get a good response from your friends or your local circle?
Um, probably not. I've a few times I've um started on on an idea and shown it to people and just not got the enthusiasm that I that I hoped for. And what I find

is that it kills my own enthusiasm. Like my part of my enthusiasm is not just that I want to make this for myself, although I do. It's that I think people will be excited by this and then when I find out they're not going to be excited by it, then I'm like, "Okay, never mind."
Yeah. Yeah.
You've got to be pretty flexible with that stuff. There's some things I I did um there's an aspect of this next game that I pitched to some friends and uh it didn't get quite as positive a response as I thought it would um or as I hoped and they had some very uh fair issues with it and I rethought it in response to their issues um and they like the new version better but I still didn't necessarily walk away with like the the boost of enthusiasm that I uh that I want to get from showing people. Um, but with this idea in particular, I found myself still really fixated on it. It's a it's a fairly like complicated thing. It's a little bit hard to pitch. So, I'm not too put off that people haven't quite seen it yet. I haven't built anything really yet. So, that's the main thing is I'm just pitching the idea. So, there could be something wrong with a pitch. Uh, and I really want to go further with it and build enough that we can do, you know, ideally a prototype,

but if not, like a a mockup trailer where we show like here's what we would show if we had the game and see if that excites you. If something's hard to pitch, doesn't that mean that it's potentially a bad idea?
Yeah.
And I think that's another thing to say to to people starting out is is yeah, if you pitch your idea to people and they don't get it, then that might be a red flag.
Uh I'm hoping I've been through the process enough times now to sort of tell the difference between the pitch. I mean, I I've pitched it again since this these revisions to new people. I pitch a lot of GBC to friends and I got a really good response then and uh it's got a title that we're not announcing yet but um sometimes when I say a title for people they're like oh yeah awesome. Uh which is that was the tactical breach wizards you know secret weapon was um the only title we've ever done where people like get kind of what the game is from the title
just from the title. Yeah,
some people are just sold right away. This next title is not going to be as good as that. I can pretty much guarantee that.
But um it was just a question of like is there anything we can convey with a title? because it titles are very

difficult and um and most titles do not convey anything at all.
You know, I I I kind of feel like people listening right now, this is just my opinion, I feel like they should be weary of trying to prove an idea without at first trying to flesh it out because I don't know like I used to be an advocate for if your game doesn't make sense in a sentence, you probably shouldn't do it. But I tried out my own advice on my on my own games. I made a game about like a it's like a a game where you play as a dog and you have a sword and you can go and unite different breeds of dogs and and do like basically medieval warfare as dogs
and you can unite. It's a great idea. I really do. I think it's a great idea,
but and I I thought I executed it well. I just I really went for it and nobody cared. Um, I launched the demo and people are like, you know, and the

opposite seemed to happen with my other game, Twisted Tower, where it's like it's storydriven. There's not a really unique loop. There's not really a unique mechanic, but people are just really interested in the story and the atmosphere,
right?
And the execution is what made it work,
not the idea.
So, you never really know.
Once you can show something, I think vibes and art become a big part of the pitch. Like um
like if you asked me to market Gone Home, I would have been like, "Oh, [ __ ] hell. This is going to be impossible." Because
the best thing about it is like a twist basically and almost everything you can say about it would be a spoiler. And uh but it sold really well and and people were really into it because the vibe was was you know captivating.
Um and I think uh I know you had Dan on on here and Inscription is is kind of the masterclass in that. I feel like the without knowing hardly anything about it, if you just see a clip of playing that game across the table from this foresty creature in a dark and spooky cabin, uh you're just sold on that game. You're just like, "Yeah, I want to play this." I don't need to know that if it does anything clever with mechanics. And of course, Dan had a similar problem

where a lot of the what's makes that game unique is would be a huge spoiler to show anybody.
So, but but it succeeded anyway because the vibes are so good up front.
Yeah. I, you know, I used to say the idea is everything, but I don't know if that's true. I think it I think it's I've been very fascinated by two things. I'm curious what your thoughts are here. I I' I do wonder if setting is way more valuable than people realize. Um, having a really strong setting for your game can potentially carry it carry the player through mediocre gameplay.
Yeah. as long as like great settings.
Well, I could definitely do it with films.
Um films are easy to do. I'm trying to think about um I would I would say that the Bioshock universe is foundationally its foundation is setting.
Yeah.
Um but when it comes to films, The Shining is a great example. Stanley

Kubrick's The Shining where it's like any and even Stephen King the book. It's like the essence of what makes that story so good is that you're in a hotel locked up. It's surrounded by a blizzard. That's such It's an empty hotel, completely empty.
Uh back rooms games. Back rooms games are found their foundation is the setting.
Completely liinal, completely empty yellow hallways.
Yeah. I guess a lot of horror is like that where the setting is going to sell it.
Yeah. So, so I guess my point saying all that is like it's not as simple as you have a really cool hook or you have a really good clever mechanic. There's so much that goes into making a great game. And so I'm curious if you agree that you shouldn't just, especially as a new time game developer, you shouldn't just abandon an idea because your friends don't get it just yet. Would you agree with that?
Yeah, it depends how much you believe in it and how you know what that's based on. I guess I think you should be wary of getting too precious about your ideas. If you have like one idea, some

people, I think, cling to their first idea because they're scared they'll never have another one. And it's like, well, if this isn't good, then I have nothing. And I think try and reject that fear and just like consider new ideas that uh uh brainstorm new things and and throw stuff around and be adventurous because you're anywhere really as a as a designer if you're uh clinging to to your ideas that way. uh even if you're working alone, that's a bad thing, but it's especially a bad thing if you're working with other people because then you get like ego about it and and if they're attacking your idea, they're attacking you and and uh uh a lot of conflict comes from that, I think.
Do you still struggle with that?
Um I have to say I don't really have to deal with it too much because I'm I'm a bit of a design overlord, you know. I don't uh with with Wizards, we worked with with Steve Lee, who's a level designer, so there was a design collaboration there. Uh but he came on when the game was already figured out and and in fact that's one of the things he that struck him about the game was like this game's already figured out.
So we had a lot of back and forth about individual mechanics and and level design. Um

but uh when I'm coming up with the game in the early stages uh I'm usually the only designer and I I run all the stuff by the team and and if I have people on board at that point and I I want their their thoughts but no one else is trying to be a designer. You know they don't want to be designers. They they um uh don't push back. It does mean every now and then when they do push back about about something then I know to listen to them really carefully because like okay my neck out yeah
they don't speak up very much on design stuff so if they're telling me this is a bad idea that's probably serious. Yeah, I think I think being humble is is like oh man, it's like the well, it's the core. It's the core of of making a game because if you if you can't if you're not humble, you're not going to iterate effectively. You're not going to be willing to change these ideas that you were so sure about, you know. Um, but also there's another side of being a game developer where you have to be like almost

um ignorantly confident and just blaze through any insecurity and put yourself out there. You know, it's this weird I I've always felt like I'm like like kind of like um two different personalities. On one end, I'm incredibly humble. It doesn't sound like I'm humble, but I am. I'm incredibly humble on one side, which is like, tell me what's wrong with this game, like please. And I'll have people test it and I'll be incredibly insecure about it and always looking for those, you know, nitty-gritty problems that people are finding. But my other side of me is like, this is the greatest game ever. It's worth three, four years of my time, you know, and my savings to make this thing, you know. So, you're just two different personalities. There's there's a great Penny Arcade strip that I think sums up the creative feedback process. Um where I think Gabe was making like a tabletop game at the time and and uh he's saying, "Look, I' I've given this to you for for

brutal honest feedback. Please don't hold back. Give me give it to me straight. I need to hear this, you know, uh no wrong answers. Everything is is welcome." And then the last is just him saying, "Who the [ __ ] do you think you are? What have you made?"
It's so true. I have to admit that there's a little bit of that voice in me sometimes when I read feedback of just
I think I think there you know
I mean you wouldn't you look so you're funding the projects right?
Yeah.
You personally
well the company Yeah. The company gets the money and then I own the company fully so I can take money out of that you know.
So you've got to be kind of a psycho to be willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a project if not millions. You do start to feel think that way at the start of each project of like, okay, got this much money in the bank. Uh, if I keep that money, I'm really rich. If we make a game, I'm not rich. And and but we have good runway for the game.
That's right.
But luckily, uh, I don't have to make that decision. You know, you just work with what you've got, and that's that's

runway for Wizards. You know, we had a really good amount of money in the bank. It cost a lot of money. Well, not in the grand scheme of things, but um uh we got the the funds were starting to dwindle to the point of like um I need to just be a bit more careful about what I'm about big expenditures. Didn't have to sweat the small stuff still. And really, at the time we finished, we still had plenty in the bank. But I'm very very cautious about this stuff. I want to be sure because I know how bad I am estimating how long a game will take. You know, we need to be able to take four times as long as I think and still be okay.
Isn't that true? Let's end with that question and then let's wrap up here. Why is it that games do that? I I I this is a sincere question because I have friends locally who are like they're, you know, they're they they own construction companies or they're builders or they're engineers and they kind of look at me like I'm an idiot. They're like, "When's they're like, "When's the game going to get done?" And I'm like, "Uh, you know, maybe October." And then two weeks later they'll say,

"Are you still going to hit that deadline?" And I'm like, "No, no, we've got I added another quarter to the schedule."
Yeah.
Um and they look at me like I'm I'm like add or I I can't control myself. And I'm like, "No, guys. Like, this is how it is in this industry in particular. This is how it is. Why do you think that's how it is?
Why is that a universal truth?"
My best guess is that games are one of the only mediums where you are deciding on the very structure of the thing, the very like format of the thing. you know, two films can be very different, but they're both going to be some film that plays between 90 minutes and and 180 minutes and and it's going to be in two dimensions and there's going to be usually if it's live action, there's going to be actors on screen and they're going to be in sets and there might be some CGI.
The audience doesn't have an input. They can't change it.
Yeah. The audience are going to sit there or leave. The only two things they can do, right? Um whereas games, not only the games in general have player input and players can have very different experiences, but each game we make although we work within genres, we

still make bigger changes to those genres than a film makes to its to its format. You know, we call them genres, but you know, it's not thriller, action, romance. It's like first person perspective, third person perspective, strategy, you know, action. How time flows is different from game to game. In Wizards, we changed our mind about how time flows several times. And it's like that's hard to predict how long it's going to take because you don't know what's going to feel right for your game. So, we are kind of like, you know, we're making worlds and and changing the rules of those worlds in these huge ways that can have consequences on on how the player feels. And how the player feels is much more hooked into what you're building, to every nuance of it. Where a film can wash over you and you can you can enjoy a film that's maybe not your preferred genre or has some some bits that kind of are boring. And in a game it's boring and I've got to do something like you hit a bit that's that's horrible to play. You don't get past it. That's just the end of your experience. So, uh it's so much more sensitive to to people having a bad time with it that we have to be really careful with.

Let's go ahead and try and present your screen. There's a button down there that says
present. Okay. So, this is Tactical Breach Wizards, right?
Let's go. I don't even Wow, what am I looking at? So this is a um sort of custom inspector for uh our stage list which kind of holds the whole structure of the game. So pretty early on we really realized we needed a different kind of thing to a scene. Um you know our game is has Unity scenes and then it has data on disk and a stage is basically a pairing of those two things. So this is a gameplay stage. This is the intro mission of the game. And in the configuration of it, there's um the the mission here is determining what where it's going to find the information about the the actual level layout. And then the scene here is is what you'll actually see. You know, this is a piece of art basically that is uh pre-made. Um and you know, throughout the game we have we reuse background scenes a lot. Um, but obviously each

mission is unique levels, so we're loading different data into the same Unity scene. Um,
can I have you explain this one more time?
Sure.
I honestly I I'm sitting here. I'm like, is it a It's like a It's a custom scene manager kind of thing.
Yeah. Um, so it's the stage list and um each entry here is a stage. Um, and
what do you what do you mean by stage? Uh they are a custom thing we created that pairs a scene to some data. So in the case of this title card, the first title card we have um uh the scene is incredibly simple. It's just a black screen basically. Um and then the data tells it what uh what title to show. So it will be like a prefab. Um if I edit it,
it's going to link to this prefab. So it's just this is really the important data. It's just a scene and there's text prefab and it's going to load this bit of art into the scene that we're that already exists.
Um, and for title cards, it doesn't make

a lot of sense. We could have just made individual scenes, but for gameplay, it makes a lot of sense because we have a a ton of missions with all the same scene, but different level data.
So, this is just a a scriptable object.
Um, yeah, the stage list scriptable object. Gotcha. Gotcha.
Yeah. Each stage is a is a scriptable object as How long did it take you guys to build this custom scriptable object? I'm sure you can't remember, but maybe like a rough estimate.
Yeah, so this is all um our programmer John Winders department. Um I do some programming, but he's our sort of lead programmer. And this was something he kind of built as we went along. So the first version of it was very basic. I think it was just for gameplay. So just paired a gameplay scene to the the name of the folder that will have all the level files on disk. Um, and then it became really useful as it went along as the game became more of a fusion of of, you know, dialogue scenes and gameplay scenes and title scenes and uh, mission end screens. Um, to kind of make it more flexible and uh, give it, you know, allow us to make scenes that were not just level uh, gameplay and and uh,

covered all the kinds of things that we have in the game. And so it's divided into these tabs. There's four tabs here because the game has four acts. Um, that's just because it it gets unwieldy to to view it all at once. Um, but it's really nice for things like we can just drag like a dialogue scene around and just move it to where it'll appear in the game. So, this is kind of the sequence of things in the game uh will happen in this order.
Are you serious? I didn't realize it was the actual sequence. I thought it was just a way to look at your scenes basically, but
yeah. No, it's also how we build it. So, we can add Oh, I don't want to add a new act actually because that would be pretty major. But, I can add a new scene and then you just choose what type of scene you're adding.
Dude, this is so interesting. I have never seen something like this before.
Yeah, we don't really
Is this normal? Do you think this is in the game industry?
I mean, you've probably talked to more developers about that process than I have.
I I have never seen that before. Um, but there is something to be said about obviously persistent game objects from scene to scene and going from scene to

scene and ordering scenes and triggering new scenes. That's super. It's like a spiderweb. Um, and it's very messy and very complicated. There's no Unity solution that's built in currently
that helps you create that sort of hierarchy or path from scene to scene to scene. Um, so I think it's it's brilliant. I wonder I wonder if there's a tool though that's in the Unity Asset Store that allows you to do that. I don't know.
Yeah. So, uh, to add a new scene, add a new stage, uh, you can just click here and choose a type. I can make a new dialog scene or um uh title card. Perks are like when you actually spend your upgrade points and we can put those wherever we like. Um and if it's a gameplay scene, then when I add it, I've got to edit it. I uh click override here to choose the scene. And this is a list of all our scenes in the game. Dialog scenes are uh obviously like cut scenes with people talking, gameplay scenes are backgrounds. Um and I can just choose whatever scene I like. So, this means you could also load, you know, a level

into the wrong scene. Like any level in the game could appear in any tile set. And I'll show you in a minute like how our level editor kind of fills the level with art because that's all automated as well.
Yeah.
Um, and then uh that would be a new scene and uh it'll show an error for a second because it doesn't update very promptly, but I can then put that wherever I like and um uh move the campaign around. So, reordering things is really nice. This is really good for perks. Um cuz perks are where you get the upgrades. Um and we don't there is no strict hard and fast rule for when those happen in the game. We just decide when it's time to give you some upgrades. Um and we've had to tweak that a lot, you know, especially as we add new characters because the structure of the game is you start with two wizards and then eventually you get five. Um but we add those one at a time and all that time those first two keep leveling up. So, we had a problem at one point where those first two were so powerful by the end of the game that they were just uh absurdly good. So, we had to figure out how to like balance those.

Yeah. Well, that's so funny. You I was just about to mention the word balance because one of the best ways that I found to balance my game is to have everything in scriptable objects. Um, it's really hard to balance a game when you have to go into the scene and dig around and find like there's too much ammo in this crate or this enemy in this prefab need I need to adjust their health. So, I'm going to go into the actual enemy prefab and adjust the health or adjust their attack power.
Yeah.
So, it's so much easier to have it all in one g uh like manager effectively
and do the balancing in the manager.
And again, this is all built by our programmer John Reinda. And it's it's really smart. It's stuff I would never build if I didn't have a programmer because on our first game I did all the programming myself and it was very much like anything like this would just be like oh that would be nice to have but I can't build it.
Yeah.
You know what's really striking about this project Tom is this is this might sound offensive. This is like neurotic how how clean this is. I'm looking at the syntax of everything. The only thing that strikes me as as like

outside of your boundaries is that folder called Tom's experiments. But everything everything else has like really strict like s syntax and naming conventions. Um I am like and even like your scenes the way your scenes were named the conventions are very uh precise. Um can you talk a little bit about that? Are you in charge of that? Are you responsible for that sort of
um I'd say that's a a team effort. Um, I'm uh I did sometimes do like a sort of organizational overhaul if it was bothering me about where things were and uh difficulty. It's nice to hear that because to us by the end of the project, it feels like a nightmare.
It always does. It's a it's a it's a house of cards, you know, even if you've got like divine gamedev abilities, you're it's always going to feel like a house of cards, you know. But look at that. Wow. The naming conventions are so impressive. But I'm just so kind of jealous of your ability to keep things clean cuz I I I I just inevitably can't. At one point it just kind of goes to

hell for me in my projects. But this is awesome. Let me um
let me ask you a question. So your forte as a game designer or I would say a game developer is game design, right? That's your big thing is design.
Okay. You just won an award at IGF by the way. Uh what was that? Excellence in design. Was that it? Yep.
Okay. So, question because dude, I'm not a game designer. So, I'm I'm a like a story guy. I'm an atmosphere guy. I'm an art guy. Like, that's and music. Like, that's my thing. And in a way, I kind of approach making games like I do like making a film. Um, which is not the most profitable way to do things, but that's just my skill sets. You know, that's my talent. My question to you is, as somebody who is not a skilled game designer, my question to you is, is this level of organization crucial to a game with such intricate design?

Um, I don't know if it's crucial. Like, we haven't made a game like this before. Like, this is our first game was 3 hours long and and all story driven and um kind of linear. Our second game was completely procedural and kind of as long as you want it to be, but maybe 20 to 100 hours depending on sort of how how much you rinse it. And this one is like 15 hours long and it's a story-driven campaign. And we had to that was a real learning experience cuz I thought, well, we've done this before. We've done a we've done a story campaign. We know how to make a could just put things one after the other and and decide what the players experience is going to be to a large extent. But we'd never made one 15 hours long before. So, uh that's kind of why it's in these four acts. like each of these acts is about what the size of our original of our first game, Gunpoint. Um, and once you've made that much game, you kind of have to reinvent it for the next bit. So, that's when organization becomes quite uh critical and yeah, just managing the players uh power level over the course of a long campaign like this. You know, we're not we're not a true RPG. You're not earning experience by doing extra side quests or anything. Um,

we are kind of a puzzle game at times. It's a kind of puzzle tactics game. So, there are
Yeah, exactly. There are times in the campaign where we need to make sure you can do this. Like the player has to be able to do this. Otherwise, they're just stuck. They can't do anything else. The game would just end. So, we had to be very careful about knowing what the player's abilities were.
Cool. Let's go ahead and uh I want to click I can we click a play stage button? Like I kind of want to see what the art looks like in a scene. Is that possible?
Yeah, for sure. Uh let me do the first like one in the Rushwater Police Department. This is um kind of when the game starts to get going. It's there's a prologue intro mission that's buried on rails. Um and then this is still tutorially we're introducing a new wizard
but um
uh at the same time we've got to oh sorry I've changed this the
I know
I added like a dummy stage.
Oh man,
I was demonstrating that you could move it anywhere and now I can't remember where I put it.
Yeah.
Well, I'm looking at the Unity version.

We're in 2019, so it's almost like we're in a little time capsule here trying to open up a project from effectively 2019.
Yeah, I I haven't uh fired up from the editor in quite some time. This is not sort of like a the game can't run. It's like a warning. Um because uh we needed to delineate kind of, you know, this is the gameplay mission, but actually everything that comes before that mission, you know, the dialogue before it and the location card before it are kind of part of it. And when you go back and replay missions, we need to know like where do we start you from and when have you finished? So we have a system for that. And I I screwed it up by adding the extra mission number.
So let's see if this works now. Yeah. So this is in game. This is we're in a gameplay stage now, but there's a little script file to to tell it to play some dialogue at the start.
Um
once this dialogue is up, if you don't mind, let's open up it in scene view and sort if we can look around this scene and see it, you know, and compare it to the game view. I love seeing stuff like that.
Yeah. Uh, how do I get it to actually

look at the scene we're in?
I don't know. That's a good question.
Uh, let's see.
Okay. Good, good, good.
It's just wild to me how
and I hope you don't take this the wrong way because I and I said the same thing to the creator of Inscription, how unimpressive a scene looks in scene view, you know. Yeah, this is I haven't really looked at this much. Um, especially this scene. So, this is a a real credit to our artist John Roberts, uh, who did all of the art. Um, but especially you can see how much the pro processing is doing here.
Exactly. Yeah.
I was going to try and zoom in, but I can't zoom in during a a dialogue scene.
So, we've got particle emitters. We've got 3D models that to me, they don't look like assets. I mean, are are they custom?
Um, do you mean did we make them models?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. has all our own stuff.
So, would you say that this project as a whole is pretty much fully custom? There's no assets being used.

Uh, we do use some assets. Uh, I can probably just see in the project actually. There's I remember for like cloth physics, we use a plugin. Um, for some some ropes and cables, uh, we use a plugin for that. Um, and we also have a lot of like behind the scenes like uh integration um with things like Trello for like bug reporting.
Sure.
Um, we use something called flat kit which is part of our rendering style which I believe is a is a plugin and um MK Glow Freeze is like a post-processing suite. John would know more about exactly what we've used. Uh, so that might be an incomplete list but yeah we we did definitely use some third these shaders. these shaders that give this tune shading. You're saying that's a um a flat hit shader.
Yeah, I think that's that's something that John um sort of you know took took a baseline and then customized from there. Um
because it is quite a specific art style u especially like uh John and I happen to to agree on on rendering faces in the

sense that we like it a bit stylized like like to just sort of suggest you we just have the eyes and no other facial features. Um cuz as soon as you do the facial features, the character has an expression uh and quite a specific expression and then 90% of the time that's the wrong expression for what's going on. Whereas if you blank, I think the player can kind of fill it in.
Yeah. I mean, there's a lot that you can get away with as well with these isometric games, right? Um you don't have to show their faces and you don't have to show close-ups of most things, right? So, helps to helps to have that isometric camera. Oh, cool. I love that.
Oh, wow. The backgrounds are 3D.
Yeah. Yeah. So, when I'm assigning a scene file to a level, that's this is the scene file really is all this this backdrop stuff.
I see. Can you give me a the thought process of why you wouldn't just use a flat, you know, sprite like take a screenshot of it and just put it underneath?
The player can move the camera in game. So yeah like this

uh we could have done completely you know blank backgrounds just sort of you know a kind of abstract thing.
Um
but uh I yeah it took us a while to kind of decide on on the exact level of fidelity and and convincing us because obviously uh that would be the abstract end of the spectrum. The more real end of the spectrum would be to draw this building under you like you know the lower floors we just don't draw them. Um, and these other rooms that you're going to go to. Um, uh, we played around a bit with how much of those we show. We want to give you a sense of the building, the layout that you are going in this direction. Um, but at the same time, if there's detail in there, then that's distracting. Um, and I especially wanted to make sure the player knows you don't have to worry about anything that's not this room, you know. Um, the next room will be a little bit bigger than this and actually not that much bigger. Um, but uh, let me actually skip ahead a bit and get a more representative level. This is this is linear, right?
Yeah.
Yeah. You don't choose what level to do.
Okay. And no procedural generation

either.
No, we we toyed around with that for a while. Like we built a sort of prototype procedure generator, but it was going to be
um a lot of work to make it reliably fun. And we didn't really need it. Like actually part of the reason we didn't do it is um we brought on a level designer, Steve Lee,
um to help out with level design. And so he did a chunk of the campaign, but especially he did all of the optional extra missions. And having those be handdesigned is um you know, it was a lot better than doing procgen stuff. And another reason for proc not to do procgen is that this game we're quite careful about ensuring you have a good story reason to be, you know, breaking into buildings and taking out the people inside because this is a pretty hostile action you're doing. We wanted to make sure that it's always against a, you know, a powerful opponent who is is, you know, oppressing uh somebody.
Yeah. It's justified.
Yeah. And so Progend doesn't really it solves a problem that that we're not going to have, which is we're not going to want you to do a ton of gameplay

without any story. Um because all of that is is difficult to justify. That's why the optional missions we do have um they don't have story attached to them. Um, but uh they also technically take place in a dream. It's kind of like a wizard hallucination dream where you sort of like uh it's to do with uh Xan's powers. Um uh and it's a total fudge and we kind of make fun of it in the game. But um it enables us to just have a ton of missions without having to write a story for each one of them.
Exactly. Exactly.
Uh the way we make levels um is not in Unity itself, but in our own level editor. Um, and uh, this is total overkill by our artist John. He made his own custom tile set just for the level editor. Kind of looks like a sort of um, you know, a VR room or um, uh, yeah, very nice and clear. You know, it shows the orientation of of each thing. So,
wait, this is real time. Like you How did you get to this?
Uh, I just hit L. This is I'm in development mode, so you can

So impressive. Wow.
This level editor is in the game. So, uh, players can mess around with it. Um, and when you want to, uh, edit the room, you can just, uh, I can add some extra cover here, uh, like this.
And then jump straight back into the game and the art will just sort of figure it all out.
That is amazing, Tom.
So, super clutter.
Um, and yeah, making new geometry is is pretty easy, too. You can just, if this level should be bigger, we just add floor. We don't have to add the walls cuz a certain point it's just obvious where the wall should go. Like obviously you want walls separating any um any bit of the outside with the inside. Um I can add some uh windows along here. Can add some more enemies uh if I remember where to find everything. It's been a long time since I made a level.
Now do you have to use the level editor as a as the does the team have to use it? Yeah, we use this for everything.

Um,
we uh for our first game, Gunpoint, I built all the levels inside Game Maker, which is what I was using for that game.
And then at the end, I didn't know if I was going to have a level editor.
Um, so I didn't build it first in case we didn't have time. And at the end, we did have time. So, I built the level editor at the end.
And after I'd made it, I was like, this is so much nicer to use than what I've been doing for 3 years. So, I'm like, next time I'm building level editor at the start, and then I get to use it. Would you recommend someone like me, like I make I like making like story driven first-person shooter games, kind of like Bioshock type games. Would you recommend a level editor for those kind of games?
Um, yeah. I mean, I've never built those those kinds of levels. Well, I guess I did in my like modding days in school um where like we messed around a little bit with making like Quake levels and things.
Um, but it's been so long that I don't know what modern FPS level design is like. With our game, it's so the the bones are so simple. Like we want it to be big and chunky and like there's no

Yeah. You know, awkwardly shaped objects. Everything just takes up a full square meter or nothing.
So the building of the the logic is very simple. And I do remember seeing a um uh a video about Bioshock um that talked about how much of a pain in the ass it was in that game where they built and and arted a level and then they decided like for gameplay reasons the flow needed to change and you got to just move this whole
Yeah.
like change this whole corridor and all of the art and clutter you've added has to be basically deleted and then recr.
We went through that process, dude. I think we went through three different level iterations for 12 different levels.
So that's more than 30 times a level was built. And what was crazy is me and my team member Felipe, we we have this problem. We're very visual people. So we have to see a level set dressed to know if it's working. And that is such a pain because like we

would try in gray box and we just couldn't we couldn't fully realize the level and even like some even some like like game design stuff we didn't even know if the game design was good with just gray boxing. We'd have to
address it to realize if it was actually fun.
Um and I knew that was a problem because it's such an expensive way to make games. So, I'm curious with this, you know, like um are is your mentality that gray boxing and just very simple forms should be enough for you to realize whether the game is actually fun?
Yeah, I mean, we never play a level in this form. Um, we had we had at least a some kind of, you know, uh quality art tile set from the start. Sometimes it wasn't the one that we'd be using eventually for for this mission. Um, but we we're always playing with like shipping quality assets. Um, John is is incredible at uh everything he makes is ready to ship basically. We never have anything kind of rough and ready. We

definitely have times when like we don't have all the elements that we would want to put into the final game, but everything he makes looks great from the start. So,
um, uh, yeah, what I was trying to show here is that you can switch these levels between tile sets um, uh, pretty simply. So,
wow. I'll actually put this back in the police style set so you can see the normal version of this level. So this is it normally. Um
yeah,
and then if I Oh, it's crashed.
Okay, I can just get past that. Um and then yeah, I was just messing around with the black site tile set. Uh black site ops. I have to change the mission the scene as well. So although you can set the scene in in the stage editor, you can also do it from within the um uh level editor and it just has to kind of reload. But then you got the same level in a different tile set. And it's crazy how different it feels, you know?
Oh, it changes everything. The background's changed.
It feels more spacious this level, even

though it's the same geometrically. Uh just the kind of light and airy deserty feel. You can see the the background scene has all these, you know, sandbags and um military stuff. This is a kind of military installation.
Um, but I can also take us to uh let's do Kan uh Kan Street probably won't work too well because that's designed specifically for an outdoor environment which is uh trickier to you have to bear that in mind when you design the level. But for every other tile set in the game, every tile set works basically. So we're now we're going to go to Khalan with the uh the chapel who are kind of religious institution.
Whoa, cool. So again, this is gameplaywise the exact same level, but it just looks and feels completely different,
man. Well, dude, thank you so much for hanging out. This was a lot of fun. I learned a ton. Hey, what do you want in the description uh of this podcast? Anything? Any link? Uh
oh. Um yeah. Uh actually pointing people to uh like our Steam profile page. Um

and maybe our mailing list. That's I mentioned that that's where we get testers from. So, if folks want to test our next thing, that's a a good place to go.
We'll do. If you want to test Tom's next game, the link is in the description. Thank you so much, man. That was a lot of fun.
Thanks a lot.
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