Tech Over Tea - Coding, Nonstop Coding | Dillon Steyl

Episode Date: January 9, 2026

Today we have the developer of the upcoming Blood Vial on the show, we planned this back when he was getting a lot of hate for absolutely no reason a few months back but regardless the conversation I think is still interesting.==========Support The Channel==========► Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/brodierobertson► Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/BrodieRobertsonVideo► Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/3d5gykF► Other Methods: https://cointr.ee/brodierobertson==========Guest Links==========Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3648730/Blood_Vial/Twitter: https://x.com/DillonSteyl==========Support The Show==========► Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/brodierobertson► Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/BrodieRobertsonVideo► Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/3d5gykF► Other Methods: https://cointr.ee/brodierobertson=========Video Platforms==========🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBq5p-xOla8xhnrbhu8AIAg=========Audio Release=========🎵 RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/149fd51c/podcast/rss🎵 Apple Podcast:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-over-tea/id1501727953🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3IfFpfzlLo7OPsEnl4gbdM🎵 Google Podcast: https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8xNDlmZDUxYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==🎵 Anchor: https://anchor.fm/tech-over-tea==========Social Media==========🎤 Discord:https://discord.gg/PkMRVn9🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/TechOverTeaShow📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techovertea/🌐 Mastodon:https://mastodon.social/web/accounts/1093345==========Credits==========🎨 Channel Art:All my art has was created by Supercozmanhttps://twitter.com/Supercozmanhttps://www.instagram.com/supercozman_draws/DISCLOSURE: Wherever possible I use referral links, which means if you click one of the links in this video or description and make a purchase we may receive a small commission or other compensation.

Good morning, good day, and good evening. I'm as well your host, Broody Robertson. And today, we're doing another game dev one. But the way this one happened is a bit different. So a lot of the other game dev ones have had, I've been going to local cons, fine, and indie game room stuff. But this one, I saw a post that went a little bit, a little bit viral on Twitter about the game.

And, well, here's the dev. Dev of Blood File. how about you introduce yourself and we'll just go from there. Sure. My name is Dylan. I'm a software engineer, a full-time software engineer, but for fun, I like to make video games. So, you know, day of coding and then come home to do a little bit more coding. It's a good life. And yeah, I'm working on Blood Vile. It's a retro-inspired first-person shooter. And it has some people that have very controversial opinions about it. Well, I guess we can...

Maybe we should talk about what the game is, and then we can get to that. Sure, sure. Okay. Well, I guess I would like to... I like to describe it as a cross between Post-Void and Splatoon. So Post-Void is a brilliant, cheap, sort of rogue-like first-person shooter. I think it's like three US dollars, with these simple levels that are just like... It's almost like one big corridor with little twist. and turns. It's really cool and really simple. And when I played it, I guess it inspired me to think

about building smaller games. So I took that concept and I guess the key concept behind it is that your health is constantly draining. And the only way to keep it full is to kill enemies. So killing an enemy refills the health. So you have to go really, really fast. And just like keep moving, keep killing enemies. So the concept of blood vial is like 90% similar. The only difference really is that to get the health, you need to kill an enemy, they spill blood, and then you have to swim through the blood like in Splatoon. So that's pretty much the whole concept of the game. Yeah. Yeah, I thought the game looked like really cool. Like that's, obviously the inspirations are fairly obvious, you know, it's a movement game, it's a boomer shooter, like, all of these, like,

none of these are like super original ideas unto themselves, but I think the combination, like, works really well. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, I think people, um, over, like, originality is a little bit overrated, in my opinion. It might be a hot take in video games, or clearly it is a hot take. but I think the execution of an idea is infinitely more important than the idea itself Well, just at a fundamental level, right? If you think of what the biggest MMO in the world is, World of Warcraft, it's not an original game.

Like, it might be a game that now it's like sort of seen as like the thing that inspired so many other games. But when that came out, it was taking what a lot of other games before it were already doing and then sort of bringing the most polished version of that out. And a lot of Blizzard's early games were like that. Like Diablo wasn't the first ARPG, it was a very polished ARPG, or StarCraft, or Warcraft, or Overwatch when that came out. Hero shooters weren't new,

but it was a very polished take on that model. And I think taking a really good idea and sort of putting a different spin on it, but trying to do that idea in the best way possible, that in and of itself is a really cool thing. So many games that people love aren't really an original concept. They might have an original art style or some new game mechanic, but everything is built on top of other works that have been done in the past.

Yeah, 100%. I think the reality is that human beings consider, conceptualize ideas relative to the things they've seen in the past. And so whenever people see a game, they immediately think about, well, what is this similar to that I've played? You know? And so sometimes people mistake that familiarity with copying another game, especially when you just see like a 10-second clip of gameplay. And you're just like, well, okay, this is identical to this other. game. But I mean, how many first-person shooters are just doom with extra steps? You know,

it's all just, it's all just inspired by previous works. So the post that I saw it from, I have a link to it right now. It was a fairly innocuous post you made. It's just, I think it's, is that just the video that's on the Steam page? Uh, yeah, I think I actually replaced the Steam page video with that one. Right, right. Yeah. But it's just, hey, BloodVal, retro fbs, leaking health bar, like, you know, showing off the game, totally normal. But for some reason, for some reason, it, it got a lot of attention. And that's cool, right? I'm sure it's cool that the game got a lot of attention.

And I did see you post the Steam Wish list, and it's just like spiked up a bit. Yeah. But how does, I guess how does it feel to firstly have a post, because it's not the first time you've had a post game. of attention, but how does it feel that a game you've made firstly gets enough attention that people like, you know, want to give their feedback on it? But then, as well as that, what does it feel like to sort of, I guess, have people feel like you're just not really doing anything new? That it's, there's, yes, I had enough time my day to comment, but it's, it's,

not something that at least some people feel like is providing more value, I guess. Well, yeah, it's a great question. It doesn't feel great. I think the first time, for context, this is not my first game. I built games in the past, well, one particular game in the past. And a very similar thing happened there where I would post video, gameplay videos on TikTok. That one been in Spring Dash? Spring Dash. Yeah. which was originally spring and fall, and most of the people thought it was a clone of a Darnie game, Carlson.

They all just thought it was like the exact same thing. Yeah, I think people, the reality is, right, if you make a post and it has people hating on it, that's a sign in a way that you've made it, right? Like, it's easy to make a post where everyone's just, like, really supportive. Well, it's even easier to make a post, that no one cares about. Exactly.

Nobody even knows as a post. Yeah, exactly. So there's like levels to it, right? You can make a post that nobody even comments on. You make a post that you only get positive comments on. That's generally like the first step is people that either follow you already or just have like a positive feeling towards you that are commenting on it. Once you start getting negative posts, I've started to try to associate that with,

this is a good thing. Like it's reaching an audience beyond who just follow. me beyond who just cares about my projects. This is now reaching the general public, I suppose. It's escaped like game dev Twitter and gone to public Twitter. And it's gone to the gamers. And the thing about gamers is that nobody hates games more than gamers, right? So they see something that they're like, oh, this is, you know, I'm sick of this type of game. And instead of just not playing it, they have to have some negative opinion that they want to share and make very well known. So it's hard, and I have to try to let go and try not to engage too much

with these people, but it's so tempting to get into these arguments. And I don't know if you saw, actually, there's a couple of these little back and forths that I've had with various people. Let's go to the replies. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Let's see. I think my favorite one. This is a different one. This is someone complaining about it being satanic.

That's a whole other thing. I mean, yeah, my game has, you know, shooting people in the face and then swimming through their blood, and you're holding a vial of their blood. But the little pentagram on the wrist, that's just a step too far. Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. It's an odd take, I think. Okay, this is a positive one. I'm looking forward to your game, hope my shitty PC can run.

Yeah, performance is an interesting one. I've got to keep working on that. I think it will be okay, but I can't find any, like, specific ones in here. I might be able to find something afterwards, but what's an example of, like, something you talk about here? Someone said, can somebody ban Indies from using the word retro? Oh, yes, yes. That was my favorite one.

And I replied saying, I'm sorry if I offended you. And we just had like a little back and forth, but essentially what it was was this person was really sick and tired of these kinds of games. And the analogy I made was if I was sick of eating burgers, I would just stop eating burgers. I wouldn't be complaining that chefs continue to make burgers. I think the thing is, like, my view is that there's room for multiple games to exist,

even if fundamentally they're the same, because the subtle differences between them is actually what makes it interesting. I want a variety of the same type of game. Like, that's what a genre is, right? It's the same type of game with small tweaks that make them different enough that you want a bit of variety. I can understand, like,

feeling like there's too many... I don't even know where this guy's getting the idea that there's too many games in the genre. Like, yeah, there's... You definitely have your big titles, like your Ultra Kill and stuff like that. But I don't know, I don't feel like I'm hearing about a new

boomer shooter game every day. I was paying attention to the gaming space back when like Holo Night was coming out and yeah, I think you could reasonably say there is a lot of platformers at the time. There's always a lot of platforms. Platformers

are usually one of like the first projects that someone ends up making. Yeah. But I don't feel like there's that many like boomer shooters. Maybe that's just me. Maybe I'm not looking for. With you, mate. I'm honestly with you. And people go even more specific than that. People were saying there are too many post-void clones. So people recognize the draining health, which is like the key, I guess, differentiator from your standard boomer shooter. They recognize the draining health. And they go, oh, there's too many of those. And I was like, I can name maybe two or three. And there's tens of thousands of games released every year on Steam. So two or three out of ten or ten. of thousands is too many.

I don't know. Do the AIDS in Far Cry 2 count? Maybe. I don't know, man. It depends how... Sorry, malaria. So you had malaria in Far Cry 2. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, God, I haven't played Far Cry 2 in ages. That's a good game, though. Yeah, no, like, I... I don't know. I think it's cool, right? I think it's cool at the game's getting attention. And I... When you said,

getting negative attention, it feels like the game is breaking out of your regular audience. I think that's sort of a better way to interpret the idea of, you know, all publicity is good publicity. People say this as, like, just, it's just assuming that that's just always true. And it's definitely not, right?

Like, if people find out about you because, you know, they think you're a murderer, right? Like, that's generally not a good thing. But if people are seeing the game who aren't interested in the game, that means you have broken out of that audience. That means that... And this happens with uploading videos in YouTube.

And I will see this when I put a video out that does really well. Like, my core audience will say some things, maybe they have some criticism of it, and then breaks out into the next group, and maybe it's like, yeah, you know, they kind of generally vibe with it. Then if it hits like a more general tech audience,

I immediately know that's the case because the comments just turn to absolute hell and it's just nothing that's relevant to the video or it's complaining about things. And I know for a fact that these are not people that would normally be seeing what I'm doing. Yeah, exactly. So you've noticed it too. Yeah, I think it's a healthy way to try to interpret that negative attention. As long as you're getting like a mix of views, um, Although I will say that generally the people who have negative things to say are a little bit louder. They're the vocal minority.

But at the same time, like, that boosts engagement, right? So it gets shown to the people who will like it. So you talked a bit earlier about, like, wanting to do these, like, smaller sort of projects. And I think that's, like, generally a good way to approach things. because a lot of people, they will start doing a game project. Maybe it's their first game. And they want sort of too visionary with it. They've got this massive scope for a game.

They don't really know how long it's going to take to implement. They maybe don't have experience doing various parts of it. They're really sure how to approach it. Maybe they are considering doing art for the game and music for the game and doing all that stuff themselves. And suddenly a game that could have been something that maybe takes a year. is now something you're still looking at like five years from now. And you're a whole different person by then. You have a whole different understanding of what sort of game you want to make.

And I think, you know, making these smaller games if you're doing stuff by yourself, just makes a lot more sense. Yeah, I 100% agree. And that's even more so the case if you're working on it alone and part time. Right. Right. Because you just don't have the time to build the kind of thing that you want to build, right? So the other issue that you run into, like you mentioned, a five-year project, is that by the time you get to, like, two years in, all the stuff that you did in the first six months needs to be scrapped and redone.

So you're just, like, extending that whole window of opportunity, of, like, having to work on the same thing. And then the other problem is that, like, you want to take as many shots as possible. If you spend five years on a project and it doesn't go well, that's when you quit. And there's like, there's some article I read about the number of indie studios that have released one game versus two games. And it's like, it was something like, it was pulled from the Steam data. it was something like 38,000 indie studios that have released one game, and then it drops to like 5,000 or less for two, for two games. So, and this is why it happens.

It's like people work on a project for five years. They release it, and it doesn't do well. And then why would they invest another five years into their next project? There's just no reason to do it. It's really, really demotivating. So you want to assume that your game is going to make like 10 grand at most and then build a game where you would be happy with that amount of money. Yeah, I just saw a, I can't find the article,

but I see a number of Reddit posts, like why do most Steam developers only have one game? And that makes sense. And it's in many ways kind of similar in like video creation as well. I'll see people that say, oh, I want to be a YouTuber and they'll spend four months working on their first

video and five people see it. Yeah. And that's going to... Because it's their first video. Yeah, it's going to take away all of your motivation. And I get like wanting to make this big video and then there are people that they make their first video and it pops

off 100K views or first game and, you know, it's a, I don't know, it's a game like Holo Night or to any of these companies that released a massive first game. Yeah. But you can't bank on that happening. 100%.

Yeah. And I think it's especially the case when you're, if we're talking about video games, like if you're a gamer who's passionate about games and you think about what's your favorite game, it's probably going to be something like Hollow Night. It's probably going to be something big. And so if you try to build a game that's inspired by that, you know, you're just setting yourself up for failure from the get-go. And I think it's a little bit of a, I don't know if it's an ego thing or if it's just like a desire to build something great, but people will talk themselves

out of doing something because it's too much effort to build like this five-year project. Maybe they'll quit halfway through because they've just don't see an end to it. And it's because they've got themselves in this mindset where if I don't build something that's perfect, may as well not build something at all. No, absolutely. Absolutely. And I've had a number of game devs on before who have sort of realize

I want this game to be done. I've been doing this for a couple of years. Maybe they're even doing it full time for a couple of years. And they just don't want to look at it anymore. And I... I can't imagine being in a position where I'm stuck on one project for that long and just, I know it's good and I know I want it to be good, but I've just seen it inside and out for so long that I've sort of lost any,

I know what I've done, but I can't even look at it objectively anymore. Yeah, I know that feeling very well. my first game was like that. It was not too ambitious, but still took me way longer than I thought it would. And by the end, I was like, man, I just cannot wait for this to be over. And I guess the mindset shift that happened after that was like, I'm optimizing for sustainability. I don't want to build a game. I want to be someone who makes games.

And so I might need to build multiple games. it might take me, you know, another five years to actually build something that breaks out. It may never happen. And so I want to take that long-term view of, like, how can I keep this going? How can I keep my mental state happy? And the thing that is good is releasing products. Working on a game is fine, but finishing a game, that's awesome, you know. So just changing that mindset a little bit.

And when you come up with an idea, it's really like cutting that, cutting that, idea that you have down to the bare, bare minimum, like, what's the smallest possible way that I can represent this idea? That's kind of the philosophy that I'm trying to lean into. And even with Bloodfile, I think it's maybe a step. It's not far enough. Like, I haven't cut it down enough. It's still a little bit on the big side from my skill set. Right. Right. Like, what's the, what's the core mechanic that drives the game forward? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, just focusing on that, pure core mechanic and building something that's like really polished, small but polished, or even just choosing a game where the content is a little bit more emergent so that you

don't have to spend as much time building things out manually. So there's strategies you can employ to try to like bang for buck basically. How much content can I get? Like fun, replayable content can I get? from a small set of mechanics and minimal manual design and manual work. I think that's where games like vampire survivors or the recently very, very successful megabonk. Which is definitely not by Danny, not at all.

Definitely not, yeah, and there's no chance. It probably is. I saw a great video about that, but maybe we should park that conversation. But yeah, that's a great example of. like this game is just super replayable. Like the demo that came out for Megabunk was one level and like three characters, I think. But streamers would play the game like 10 times in a row just because of the build variety and the replayability. And it's like you want to try, I think for future projects, I really want to try and select games that are more like that.

You know, it's bang for buck. That's really the aim of the game. Hmm. I'm blanking on the game. There is a game that came out not long ago. you're just running through a world that's collapsing. It's a rogue-like game. Hasted.

Yes, that one. Haste is exactly the same sort of idea. Yes, yeah, it is. Yep. And I'm sure it did very well for Landfall. I mean, Landfall always makes great stuff. But yeah, it's exactly that. The fact that they went for that procedural generation and that replayability

just means you get more playtime, you get more people playing the game over and over, again, you have YouTubers and streamers who will play the game more than once. And that just makes that natural marketing way, way easier and more effective. Okay, so with Blood Vial, so the, what is the, what is the scope of this game? You said you wanted to cut it down, like, what do you, what do you want it to be when you've sort of got it already? So what I want it to be is a relatively difficult, um, rogue-like first-person shooter, or rather

a first-person shooter with very light, rogue-like elements. So all the levels are extremely simple, procedurally generated. It's basically just select a room and then place another room and place another room. It's the presets. Um, and so there'll be three different environments, um, but it's just one run through. Like the aim of the game should really be the first couple times you play it, you're just trying to beat the game. And there'll be probably like 10 to 12 levels or something like that with three different environments. So at the start, you're just trying to learn the mechanics and beat the game. And then on top of that, I'm hoping to lay out like a high score system so that you can replay it

a couple of times and have some leaderboards and perhaps some very light metaprogression. so unlocking new weapons that you select at the start of each run and the upgrades that show up between levels. So between levels, you choose an upgrade, and that's just something passive. So it might be like faster reload speed or those kinds of things. And so I'm hoping to get replayability out of firstly just learning the game and secondly trying to optimize your score. And that's really basically the exact formula that post-void followed. So I'm following in their footsteps pretty closely for like the core, the core of the game. And really the main difference is that blood system that's layered on top.

Okay. So both this game and also Spring Dash, you seem to have this interest in doing like movement-focused games. And I think that's very interesting. Just like what is it that sort of draws you to that as like a overarching mechanic? It's a good question, and I think I probably have a pretty unsatisfying answer for you, which is that it's almost entirely just coincidental. So Spring Dash happened. Spring Dash was the result of a game jam.

It was the first game jam that I ever did using the Godot game engine, and the prompt was, I think it was growth or something like that, and in my mind I went, like, plants that grow, and then the growth of the plants propel you. And so that was the Game Jam project that I built. And then I finished that game. I decided to finish that game. And then when I moved on from Spring Dash,

I was like, well, I have some experience in building movement systems. So I may as well do it again. And that's really the only reason. I think, to be honest, future projects probably won't use that same focus on movement. I think I'll probably switch things. up a little bit. The problem with these fast games is that because you move so fast, you need to make so much more content because you're just zipping through it all. So it's a bit of a downside, but it's fun to make, for sure. Do you personally play a lot of movement-style games, or does it just

happen to be because of that prompt and because of that game jam? Yeah, I mean, I did play quite a bit of like Titanfall 2 and those kinds of games. And I always liked first person shooters when I was growing up. I don't know if I really have a huge focus on movement games. I've played like a bit of ultra kill. I've played neon white. And I enjoy games like that, but I honestly don't play that many games, to be honest. Not as much as I used to. Yeah. So I don't really know exactly why. I think it was just a product of building that game jam. People seem to like the movement system. And then it's just been like a positive feedback loop since then.

I think a good movement system always just feels fun. Like, that's one of those things which always... I play a little platformers. And the first thing that always sticks out to me is how does it feel to move? And I think of a game like ORI. ORI has a phenomenal movement system with the... Absolutely. You can like angle yourself, whatever it's called.

Yeah, you know what I'm talking about, where you can just angle where you want to go and just bounce in that direction. That's a really cool system. And if you build a game just around that mechanic and nothing else, you could make a really good simple game with that. 100%. Like, right now I'm playing through Silk Song. And platforming, unless you're doing like the really end game stuff,

is not really the main focus of Holo Night and of Silk Song, but the movement is really tight. And every single area you go to is designed specifically around how that feels to play, where, oh, you can do a wall bounce on a singular wall. and sometimes you might need to do that to sort of wait for something to happen. And of course, think of games like Celeste. Celeste is the perfect example of a game where the movement is... I don't think there's anything I would change about the movement in Celeste.

It is perfect. And every level is specifically crafted around how it feels. And regardless of anything else in a game like that, moving just feels fun. Yeah, I think it's important when you're building a game to think about the action that the player is taking most often and really nail that down because that's the majority of what people are going to be doing in these types of games is just moving around. So you may as well spend time up front, especially if that's the whole focus of the game, really, really polishing it up. for Blood File, I think probably the first three to four months of development was firstly working out how the heck to do that blood system. And secondly, it was just basically an empty room and

getting that movement to feel the way that I wanted it to feel. And I think for the most part, I've gotten to the point where I'm happy with the movement. And then my playtesters seem to enjoy it quite a bit. And I think I credit that entirely to just spending a good amount of time right at the start before you get into content production, before you get into all the other croft, all the other stuff. Just make sure it feels really, really good. Yeah. Now, since the game's in first person, you can hide some things. So just a bit of game developery stuff. How do you actually handle the blood diving system? Because I can think of some dumb ways you can do it, but I don't know how you've decided to approach it.

Are you talking about the system of painting the blood and erasing the blood? Like when you can like dive in, dive into the blood move around. Right, yeah, it is pretty dumb. So the tricky part with the blood system is really like knowing when you can actually dive in. That's some compute shader nonsense. But in terms of the actual movement, it is literally just shrinking the player collider and disabling. a collision layer, so you're just really close to the ground. That's what I'm thinking. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I don't really know how else you would do it, to be honest. That seems like the most simple way to do it. Yeah. Because obviously, again, the game's in first person, so you don't have to worry about, like, you know, seeing the player model doing weird things. So you can get away with doing things. Otherwise, a game like Splatoon, you wouldn't be able. able to do, you would have to make it look convincing.

Exactly. And I think probably under the hood, they behave similarly, like manipulating how the collision shape works and then just playing a nice animation and hiding the player. That's probably all it is, but I don't know. That would be my guess. So, was that a, I heard like a... Oh, that was my chair, my apologies. Sometimes, sometimes that happens. of people like, do you ever smoke alarm? Yeah, that's exactly what I thought. Yeah, I'll try not to do that.

That's all good, it's all good. Just now that I know what it is. Yeah, yeah. If it shows up again, let me know, and I'll... We'll do. So you mentioned that Spring Dash, you felt like took too long to make. How long was that in development for?

I guess it depends how you measure it. I think in total, probably two and a half to three years. maybe maybe a bit longer. And really that, a lot of that was just like, experimenting with things. I mean, this is true of software development in general, but...

Oh, you scored? Oh, we're good. Are we good? Did I drop out for a bit there? Yeah, just a second. Okay. You're good now. You were just saying,

you were just saying, this is true in software development as well, and then you cut out. Right. Okay. Okay. Yeah, software development and game development, a lot of the time

goes to building things that never end up in the final product. Less true in software, I would say, because usually you have a bit more of an understanding of what you need to build before you build it. But with games, it's very experimental. And so you try stuff and then you delete it. So when you look at a product like Spring Dash,

If you look at it as it is now and you're like, okay, I want to clone this game and I want to build it as it is, it would not take three years. Like even a complete beginner probably would learn game dev and build the product faster than that. What it was for me was like experimenting with art styles, figuring out what I could actually achieve by myself, trying art styles that didn't work and then deleting it or trying like weapon systems that didn't work and then deleting it. and getting play testing feedback and iterating on that. So I think just as a beginner especially, that's why it was so slow. Yeah. Right, no, that makes sense.

Like, you don't really... It's because you did say this was your first project. Have you done anything at all in the past? Or was this your first actual project? It was my first playable game. Yes. What I had done in the past, I'd played with Unity and, like, made a few

tech demos almost, or I had these ambitious ideas and then realized it's been a few months and nothing's even playable yet. I've got to scrap this. But yeah, in terms of actually having something that was playable and had a complete loop, Springdash was the first. And I think going from Game Jam project to immediately like trying to build something commercial might have been a mistake. But yeah, I'm glad that I went through that process because I learned a lot. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So what made you want to jump into a game jam anyway? Because you said that was your first one as well. Yes. Yeah. What made me want to jump into the game jam was it was related to the conversations that we had earlier about being overly ambitious on games.

So the first project that I wanted to build was like a tactical rogue-like shooter with like some real proper, proper procedural generation. And it was just like, this is too much. It's too much. And so I was like, man, I'm sick of like building stuff, spending ages, building stuff and not having anything playable. And I also wanted to try the Godot game engine. So, because I'd heard good things about it. So I did a game jam that was specifically centered around Godot and it was sort of specifically marketed to people who were new to Godot in a way. and it was like, okay, just learn Godot and build a game in 10 days or something like that.

And I thought, okay, well, this is going to be a good exercise in how do I build something that's actually achievable. And that's why I wanted to do it. Okay. Well, okay, well, what was the interest in Godot then? I personally like Godot, I've done the same thing starting ambitious projects and then not A ride of passage for everyone, mate. Yeah. I've got some ideas for less ambitious things.

It's just a matter of actually sitting down. Oh, that's exciting. I'd love to hear about them, actually. If I decide to ever start them and do them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But what got you interested in Godot?

I saw a couple of YouTube videos about it. I think that's what kind of originally got me interested. And then it was, what sold me on it was just using it for a week compared to using something like Unity. Unity feels like a crane. You know, it's like this big, it can lift anything. You know, Unity and Unreal are kind of like that.

They're these big cranes that could just lift anything. But I'm just trying to pick up a branch, you know, like I don't need a crane. And Godot feels a lot more nimble and lightweight. And like the fact that the download is like 70 megabytes really gives you a clue as to how streamlined this engine is. It can run in a web browser,

which is crazy. And yet it still has the power to build, you know, for an indie developer, like anything you want to build that you could feasibly build can be done in Godot. And you could even go a step further and say there are some games

that you could build in Godot that you probably couldn't build in Unity or Unreal because it's open source. So I went to GDC and I spoke to to the developer of, I think it's called Window Kill or something like that. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, and what the developer told me was, like, I just wouldn't have been able to build this game in something like Unity or Unreal

because I needed to go into the source code and mess with how the windows, like the actual Windows work. So, yeah, I mean, that's why I like it. And ever since I started using it, I've just been absolutely sold on it. I think you can move really, really quickly in Godot. The one advantage that Indies have over AAA is being nimble, is being quick. So it makes sense to set up a tool chain that is entirely based around being quick and nimble and light. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So you are a software developer as your actual job. What is your experience like picking up GDScript? Because it's, for me, I've had a program and job in the past. it was mainly when I was at university though and I do have a software engineer and degree but I don't work in like development right now do the YouTube stuff

but as someone who actually is an active developer what was GDScript like GD script is like perfectly serviceable for building a game for the most part I do wish it had a slightly more fleshed out typing system but yeah I mean to be honest

when I started working on games I was less of like a, you know, programmer. So I started out, I have a degree in maths and a degree in comps. I started out as like an applied mathematician sort of thing. And we, we sort of wrote code very much as a means to an end. And so that's kind of how, how I got my start. And so everything I did was in Python. Oh, okay. That, yeah. Yeah, GDScript is super similar to, to Python. The only thing is that the type hinting system is not quite as mature as I'd like it to be, but it's improved quite a bit since I started working with Godot. But it's quick, and that's the important thing.

It's like super, super quick. And being able to change code while the game is running and having that be reflected is a good thing. I mean, you lose some of the benefits of having a properly compiled language, but it's still, I think, when speed is the main thing, you can make some sacrifices on like robustness and quality to be able to ship things quickly. So you said you feel like the Godot engine itself is, you know,

light and fast and all this good stuff. But like functionality was, you said you have played with unity in the past. I don't know how much experience you had. Yeah. But I guess building your first project with Godot, Did anything come up where it felt like you couldn't do this or it wasn't obvious how to do something? That's a good question.

I think potentially like the level design tools or the process of actually building a 3D environment and placing props in and stuff felt a bit clunky at times. And so I did end up downloading some add-ons for that kind of thing for like scatter-placing items. and that kind of thing. I'm not sure if Unity has built-in stuff for that. I imagine you'd probably have to download an add-on for that too. I didn't spend that much time in Unity, to be honest. And so for me, personally, there wasn't anything in Godot where I was like, this is impossible to do, and I would have to switch to another engine. It's just simply not the case. Like, the vast majority of use cases, Godot has the tools or someone else has built a plugin that can help you out with it.

Yeah, that's the nice thing with Godot because the engine is written in Godot, so extending it is also like actually relatively simple. Yeah, I mean, I haven't played around with any of that stuff yet, not too much. I've started building some light plug-ins. But there's cool stuff like GD Native or whatever other extension systems. have. I don't really know that much about it because I haven't gone too much into depth, but it does seem like it's, you know, it's got benefits. And I guess just having the engine code available to you at all times also has huge benefits. Yeah. So, I had an idea in my head,

and then I just lost it. Oh, no. Happens to the best of us. Yeah, it's, it's, I don't know why I did this. I actually scheduled two episodes today. This is my second episode I'm doing today. Oh no. How long ago was that? Did you have a date between that? Yeah, about an hour between the two, so I had food. And I was doing videos

earlier in the days. Oh, no. It's a big day for you. Yeah. Well, yeah. I'm pretty tired, too. So I might not be the chattyest. I had a five-game meeting today, so. Oh.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I like, as much as I like what I'm doing, I can respect the people who are actually getting up to do meetings at 5 in the morning. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's the downside of working with a US-based company. Ah, yeah. Yeah, okay, that'll definitely do it then.

Yeah, yeah. So do you have maybe some ideas for things you'd like to explore in the future? Some other small projects that maybe you'd like to play around with? I have rough ideas. I think what I have in my head is sort of a general vibe of the types of games that I want to build, less than concrete ideas. I mean, I probably have like dozens of concrete ideas that are not fleshed out. but I think the general sort of direction that I want ahead is like I said, the games that have

either very high replayability or you can get a lot of content out of just emergent content. So things that are a little bit more like simulationy or crafty or buildy, those sorts of things. Like if you think about, for example, like a, I don't know, like a cafe manager simulation, something like that. Those types of games, you get so much playtime out of like one environment. You know, like you have the just the cafe and you have people coming in and you're going to like make them coffee or whatever. The manual design is so small relative to how much playtime you get. So that's like one of the main criteria that I'm going to be looking at when I move on to future projects is like, yeah, how can I build a demo that has like over time?

two hours of content in a relatively quick amount of time. And therefore, the full game will have like 10 hours of content or more, but still keep the price cheap, you know, keep it, like, attainable for people, keep the investment on their side pretty low. Because I think people, especially indie developers that are unknown, people are hesitant to buy their games sometimes. So having a low price can really help. So that's roughly what I'm looking at.

you know, incremental games, simulation games, potentially more like action rogue-likey type stuff. I'm a little bit annoyed because at one point I did have an idea for like, oh, 3D vampire survivors could be cool. And I just didn't build it. And now I'm thinking, man, I could be a millionaire, but yeah, it is what it is. I don't know if I would have built it as well as Megabonk has been built.

But yeah, yeah. Well, that one also benefited from the whole, you know, feeding off of YouTube shorts. and encouraging people to get involved with it. Like, everyone knows who made the game. Like, it makes sense why the game was made the way it was made. Yeah, 100%. 100%.

And I caught wind of it sort of when it was in its demo phase, like before it went really, really crazy. And I think what really helped with it was the fact that streamers and content creators could make multiple videos of the demo and that organic reach also really catapulted the success of that game. But the YouTube shorts were also really, really well made. And I think that's an important thing for developers to try and learn,

is like how to game the algorithm a little bit and get attention. What I found helps is rage baiting in some way or summoning like Ultra Kill fans that want to tell me that I'm copying Ultra Kill. Yeah. So the kinds of games that you're sort of interested in making are those ones, that are not, like, crazy asset heavy? Yeah, exactly. I'm not an artist.

I am sort of thinking about working more closely with artists in the future. In fact, I think there's a very good chance that Bloodfile will have an artist join and build some of the environment stuff for me, just because I find making the rooms really tedious and slow. I like to be in the code and building features and functionality. So if I were to continue working alone, I would definitely be building the kinds of games where I could make very few assets or use asset packs even and just make that side of the development easier. Like just trying to keep things achievable.

With the game currently, are you making use of asset packs for it? Are you? Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. So it started out as purely entirely my, my art. Currently, the weapons are still my art, all the animations are mine. Well, the first person animations are mine. And then the enemies, I ended up going with some asset packs for some of the enemies, not all of them.

And then using a tool called Miximo for the animations. It's funny because the zombie enemy in Bloodbile, we keep coming back to Megabond, but the zombie enemy in Blood Vile is in Megabunk. It's the same asset. So, you know, we have impeccable taste, clearly. So, yeah, I think just being realistic and knowing when to use assets. The environment art is all mine, but it's using, like, creative commons, textures, downscaling it, you know, creating a vibe using assets.

I think, like, processing them in some way. so that they don't look so stock can really help. And yeah, it's a bit of an ego thing, too, of, like, developers hesitant to use it because it's like, well, does this make my game an asset flip? Or, like, I can do it myself. But I think just being pragmatic and practical is just a good, it's a good policy. Like, games are hard to make. Why make it harder than it has to be, you know?

Right. I think it's obvious when a game is an asset flip as opposed to a game is using assets, right? Like, it's totally normal for a game to, you know, a lot of games they don't make their in sound effects, right? Like, that's pretty normal because sound effects are really hard. Yeah, that's true. Sound effects and blood file are all from somewhere else. Music, I don't know about the music if you've done the music yourself, or you got that from somewhere. But that's like more approachable.

Sound is insanely difficult. That's like you need a guy for the sound. Yeah. But when a game. I don't know how to describe, but you look at a game that's an asset flip and you just know that there's something about it that feels off.

It feels like things are just cobbled together. There's not really any clear direction that it's going for. Like, I think when you make use of assets and then sort of use them intentionally, they can serve to save you a bunch of time, especially as you are sort of customising them in a way to benefit what you're trying to do.

Yeah, exactly. Like, you need to know what your limitations are and you're approaching this from like a development perspective, whereas, you know, if someone was approaching it more from an art side, they might want to do the art themselves because they feel like they have a lot more, a lot more control and input they can really make on that front. Yeah.

It's about knowing where your skills lie, right? So on your point about the asset flip thing, I think the key giveaway there is like when they've cobbled assets together and haven't made any attempt to create a cohesive style. And there's very easy things you can do to help make a game feel cohesive even with pre-existing assets, you can colorize things, or you put filters on them so that they're all using the same color palette at the very least. Just simple, simple things, and when people don't go through the effort of doing that,

that's when you know they're just trying to do an asset flip. And the thing you mentioned about, well, someone who's more artistically inclined, they might want to make the assets themselves. But in that case, they should probably consider building a game that's mechanically very simple. and using scripts that they can find on the internet. You know, if you were an artist and you wanted to build a game and you didn't have any programming skills and you weren't interested in learning programming,

then probably building like one of those room decorating games where you're just like placing cool assets into a room, sounds like a good approach. It's like not too mechanically difficult. It's like drag and drop stuff and you're building something where the art is the main focus. Well, I've spoken to someone in the past who did a pointing click. game and they had these beautiful backgrounds for every single scene and I wouldn't be able to do that. I have no artistic ability on that side, but they, like, that's where they wanted to, the, wanted to approach it from and it worked really well for them. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so knowing

what your skills are and also what you're willing to spend time upskilling on. That's what makes games so hard is like knowing where to spend your time. Um, and the fact that, it's so multidisciplinary, you know, you've got, you've got the art, you've got the UI, you've got the coding, the sound, the music. It's like 18 different jobs in one. So man, you better do something to cut that down, you know, no way your strengths are. And sure, if you want to learn more art, then, you know, you can do that. And my art skills have definitely improved, but I'm not as interested in continuing to refine them. So it gets to a point where it's like, well, I can, can scrape by and I can choose art styles that hide some of the issues with my art, which

is partly why I went for this gritty retro aesthetic and probably partly why it's so popular. You know, when you pixelate things, they don't have to be perfect anymore. So it's just being smart with those decisions, you know, being practical. Yeah, that's a really good point. Especially with the upskilling one, right? Like you're going to have to learn If you're starting to do game development No matter where you're approaching it from

You're going to have to learn something new Whether you're approaching it from the development side or the art side You're going to have to You're going to have to develop new skills And it kind of goes back to the idea of How long do you want to work on this game for? Because you can become a sound folly You can learn how to make music and program

And do amazing 3D art and that's something that's possible like there's people who've done it but at the same time what are you trying to do with the game and would you have been able to make something better if you'd spent that time focusing on what you're good at

and maybe one or two other things yeah exactly and what you nailed there when you said that was like what are you trying to do with this game what's your goal If your goal is to learn as many things as possible about game development, then sure, doing everything yourself is a really great way to do that. But if you want to build games and you want to make any money from it

or have people actually play the thing, or finish it in less than five years, then it's probably a good idea to restrict that in some way. And that might be using asset packs, it might be choosing an art style that's simple, choosing mechanics that are simple. You know, there's many, many ways to make a successful game with a sort of subset of skills required.

A good example of this is the incremental game Node Buster, which is this really juicy arcade incremental game. And the visuals are really simple. You know, it's all just geometric shapes and some nice particle effects, but the whole thing feels. so polished. And because the scope is small, because it's not like a huge volume of things, instead of going shallow on like a thousand different things, you go deep on like five things, right? So it's a really juicy game. It's got some satisfying incremental progression,

some really nice sound. And the visuals are simple, but they look good because you're able, because the visuals are simple, you can spend time polishing them up, you know? So I think, think that approach is a good one. Yeah, like, I'm thinking of all the really cool, like, small-scale games, and they all sort of do that same sort of idea. Like, the game I've had my head right now is Noita. Noita is really cool. For anyone who doesn't know about this.

Okay, this is a simple game, but it wasn't necessarily simple with how they developed it, because they apply physics to every single pixel. They had to make a custom engine to make this viable. So it looks simple, but like this was actually a really complicated project. Yeah. But it's that same idea of like going very deep into one core idea. What if we have a world where every single pixel is simulated and you make ones that do cool things to the pixels? Yeah, good luck

Well, exactly And if they had tried To layer in a bunch of other stuff On top of that Like, oh well, it's also an RPG Good luck, you know It's they had to cut a bunch of other things And keep it simple in other dimensions

But go really, really deep in that one That one singular thing that they do very well It's a good example Yeah, great game Yeah, yeah There's so many of these really cool Really cool in details out And I'm so happy with what's happened with the game development space because for a long time, you know, going from like the early 2010s up until maybe like 2016 or so, like the indie space was like growing, but it was still this like small thing that didn't really grab people's attention as much.

It'd be like one or two little games here and there. But now it seems like, at least for the past couple of years, there's been some like indie. title that people have been like, hey, this might be game of the year. Like remember, Balatro from last year? Last year? I'm pretty sure last year. Um, that's another game that's like really simple. It's, yeah. Hey, what if we have, what, what if we just go crazy hard into Rogelite for this, this dumb little card game and have the numbers go really big. People like numbers. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Belatra is another great example. And man, that, that game would made so much money and it did so, so well, it just went absolutely viral. So I'm also very

happy to see how the indie space is progressing. A lot of people are really nervous about where indie games are going. And I am a little bit nervous, too, because the saturation on Steam is so high, and I guess also with, like, AI becoming more of a thing, chances of low-quality games sort of flooding the marketplace. It does kind of worry me. I mean, even when I launched Spring Dash, like, the thing that surprised me was I actually counted the number of games that launched on the same day and it was like 60, something like that. And I was like, man, on one day, 60 games are coming out. How do you differentiate yourself? And I think it is really just a matter of, you know, being smart with the strategy. In 2024, approximately,

19,000 games came out on Steam. Yeah, yeah. And the thing, that number just continues to grow, but the number of successful games, like the number of games that own over 1,000 reviews, let's say, that has stayed relatively steady. Yeah. So you're competing with more people for the same amount of spots.

So, you know, if you want something successful, you just have to do something really, really well. And it's hard to do that when you're focusing on. 18 different things in your game rather than just three or four, you know. Yeah, no, that's a really good point. If, like, it's, it's going to be difficult to stand out, but if the game is just okay at a lot of things,

like, that works if you have an established audience, right? Like, if you're, you know, you're making, I don't know, whatever number of Assassin's Creed games have come out or Call a Duty games or pick any, Pick any AAA studio that has a $500 million marketing budget and has an established audience over the past 20 years, right? Like, you can get away with doing, you can get away with doing things that maybe are not the best design-wise

because you know people are going to buy it anyway. But you can't make that assumption in the indie space unless you are a studio that sort of is about to break out of that space, right? Like, if you're a publisher like a Devolver Digital, you're like, it's like a weird sort of mix where it's like indie games, but you have a publisher. And then, you know, if you're a studio like Super Giant, for example, they've made a number of games at this point and they have that established audience. They could probably get away with releasing a game that wasn't up to the same quality as, you know, Bastion or Hades. but if you're someone who, you know, no one's heard of,

and there's 60 other games that came out that day, like, how do you stand out there? Yeah, it's so tricky. It's so, so tricky. And I don't have, like, an answer that I think is, you know, concrete. I don't think anyone has the solution to it all. But I really think that, you know, being a game that's fun to play and fun to play multiple,

times and just does something well. It needs to do at least one thing pretty damn well for it to stand out. And also something that when people look at it, they immediately know whether that's their type of game or not. You know, it should be something that's readable and clear. Sometimes, I think it happens when you try to build a game with too many elements. You can watch a trailer for a game for an indie game that's like that and you come away thinking I don't really know what the what the game's about

I don't know what the gameplay is like it seems like I can do a hundred different things but I just don't get the core like thread of the game right and I think that's where Blood Vile has done okay

you know it's it's if you watch five seconds of blood file gameplay you get a pretty good idea of what the experience is like. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. So I think that's what's helped get, you know, those Twitter posts viral-ish. Yeah. One thing I didn't mention earlier, but I probably should have, because it is kind of relevant. Yeah. Have you seen that it's a really old post about Hollow

Night from when the dev first announced it is, yeah, okay, I'll just send you the post. you have the link for it. Because you commented it on my on my post. Yeah, I was a true if you actually had a little bit. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So for anyone who hasn't seen this, this is a post from 10 years ago. Anyone just listening? Last year,

my best friend quit his full-time job to chase his dream and make a fully fledged video game. Today he released a trailer and it looks beyond amazing. And yes, give a lot of people who are, you know, ha ha, funny, bugs, whatever, we get jokes about bugs.

But you have a lot of people here who are also saying that you should give up, like, we don't need more indie platformer games, more Metroidvania games. And, yeah, I can see what people are saying, but at the same time, I don't think you can just let people sort of, if you think you have something good and people, people, you know, are giving you positive feedback for it, I don't, I don't think you should let people hold you down just because some people don't really vibe with it. You're never going to make a game that appeals to everyone and trying to do so is going to water down your game and is going to sort of, you know, make it, try to do a bit of everything, but do it okay. Yeah, no, that's exactly right.

I think, well, that's maybe that's just a connection that I've made in your head after you said that. maybe that's actually a sign that you are focusing on doing one thing well. You know, if people are having negative things to say about it, it's because you're focusing on one thing that they just happen to not like. And as long as some people like it, then you have a chance that, you know, it will reach the right audience. And the people who like that kind of game will play it.

Yeah. Right. As long as some people like it, that's a good. Yeah, yeah. There is also the case where if you release a video like that and literally every comment is negative or 90% of comments are negative, that's probably a bad sign. I mean, I saw a Twitter post recently that was like that. I'm not sure if you saw the Tune Souls thing. Yeah. That's it. That's a great example of like, oh, there's a lot of negative, like too many negative comments on that particular video. And I think that's a sign that you have to sort of reevaluate where you're, priorities are and, you know, it doesn't mean you have to scrap everything. But yeah, you've got to listen to feedback when it's overwhelming like that. But as long as there's a mix, I think it's, it's okay. Well, I think there's also an issue where people don't know how to evaluate a game

that is very early. And let's, like, let's just see that game actually ends up being amazing in like a year from now. It very well could. But a lot of people, they'll see like a tech demo and they or like an alpha or something like that and especially with how alpha and beta have been sort of co-opted by big studios where it just been like the Battlefield 6 beta out a week before the game comes out

like no that's a demo yeah that's not a beta yeah exactly yeah but like Monster Under Wild did the same thing as well I think a lot of people don't know how to look at an early project and judge it based on what it's trying to do. Or judge it based on what it's doing, but currently lacking.

Yeah, exactly. Yep. I mean, in some of my earlier videos of Blood Vile, I remember getting lots of comments saying, the environment looks so empty and that sort of thing. And I'm like, yeah, I haven't added any props to the environment yet. I'm going to do that. Like, just wait.

I'm just sharing. the journey. And I think people are maybe, maybe they're used to being marketed at by game companies. And usually when bigger game companies release footage, they've spent a long, long time working on the game already and it's feeling polished. Indie developers, we tend to want to bring our audience on the journey a little bit more. And so that means, you know, releasing videos a couple of months or weeks into development just to get a gauge of whether people are interested. But yeah, some people are just completely incapable of like making that distinction, oh, clearly this is still a work in progress. And they focus on things that are

sort of immaterial in some way, um, rather than focusing on the core idea of what the, or the game is trying to, to achieve. Yeah, no, that's a, that's a, a good way to put it, where it's like, oh, the animations look bad or the art is not polished or maybe you're missing sound effects. Like, yeah, I know. This is a mechanic, like, demo. We're not, we're not focusing on that right now. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, or you'll show a video of, like, an enemy that doesn't have sound effects yet. And they'll be like, where are the sound? I'm like, I haven't done that yet. I'm sorry. Like, I just want to, I just want to share the process with you and try to get people invested. And that means you have to share videos of work and progress stuff.

I think maybe one way around that is to make videos that somehow communicate that more clearly, whether it's like a voiceover that sort of explains the process. Then people start to see of it less like marketing and more like a devlog or something like that. But even still, they sometimes there's just really like premature advice, you know. Yeah, devlogs are something I've been seeing a lot more of recently. I think as as devs have realized that, Some people have had these sort of breakout successes because they've had a channel that's popped off or a couple of videos that have done really well. I like the idea that people are showing more of the process because I think it also helps people want to get interested in making a game.

Because you see a game, you know, let's pick any game. You pick a, take a game like Hades, right? You look at it and it looks really polished and really incredible. But I think everybody can, anybody who like has worked on the game can tell you a month into that project, everything was a placeholder. Maybe they were using assets from the, yeah, maybe they were using assets from the previous game because it is still a Hades game. But it will look nothing like actually even playing the Hades early access, there was placeholder art all over the place. A lot of the characters just were using the same basic like hooded figure because they just hadn't done the art. yet. And I think

letting people see that really early point is like really, really good. I don't know if you've ever seen it, but there is a post from I think six or so years ago where Sandful Studio, SanFo Interactive,

the devs of Expedition 33, they were looking for voice actors and they'd posted a trailer to Reddit. And it looked nothing like it does now. At the time it was a steampunk style game um they had a ttsv voiceover in the trailer because they just didn't have a voice actor for gustav yet and it was like super early unity stuff i think they still had

some of the the basic um sorry unreal not unity um i think they were still using the unreal robot for some npses around the place and i think seeing a game that comes out that looks this amazing that some people are saying game of the year possibly, but seeing it at that early stage it shows you that you can make a game. You probably can't make a

133. You probably don't have the time for them to do that. But you can see how the game started at something that was way simpler than it is like when it releases. And things progress over time. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think it's good

to help players conceptualize that information. And indie devs in particular, we need a bit of that grace. You know, so it's a good idea to communicate that and show the process so that people understand that it is a process and that everything takes time. And I think maybe it would help gamers appreciate games a little bit more. Sometimes I feel like, you know, I love games and I love making games, but game and culture kind of annoys me sometimes because I think that gamers can be quite entitled.

And they just like, you know, I guess don't value the process that goes into it sometimes. So that annoys me. But yeah, I just get getting them to understand that the process is probably a good thing, you know, communicating that, being transparent. And it helps to, as a result of doing things like that, you do end up getting a sort of core audience that's invested in not just the game that you're making at the time, but in your journey as a developer. And, you know, I've been lucky enough to have that happen for me. Like people who playtested Spring Dash early on are still around.

They're still playtesting my games. They're still on my Discord server. Some of them are close friends of mine now, you know, so. And that only happens because you share progress early. And I think it also hopefully encourages more people to, if they have an idea to actually go and try it. Like, you may not make the game of your dream, and you may not, like, you may not be able to do something you wanted to do with it,

but I do think it's worth, if you have an idea, like, you can try to make that. Like, yeah. It's not impossible. Yeah, I don't. You can 100% do it. I particularly try to encourage people who have, have negative things to say to try making a game.

Because it's like not from like a oh, you do it then kind of perspective, but from a like genuine like, okay, well, if you have an idea that you think is truly original and unique, then I think you should commit some time to trying to build it because at the very least, you'll understand the process. And nobody who comments things like that has actually built a game. Like, I've never seen a game developer actually comment something like that on someone else's video, because they know what the process is like. And they know that even for games that they've built that were successful,

they received that hatred in the past. So I think game developers in particular, it's like this weird thing where the fans of the game care more about, like, potential copies. They're, like, more militant about defending. Nobody can copy Ultra Kill. It's like the best, you know, boomer shooter. to ever and if you do something blood related, you're copying it and that's just like tainting Ultra Kill. But then the publisher of Ultracill sees Blood Violin is like, cool, cool man, good game.

You know, or the developers of the games sometimes that people say that I'm copying, they're always like, oh, look sick, man. And I've had people actually message me and go, do you mind if I like build something that's inspired by this? And I go, yes, do it, go on. Like, I don't care. If you can execute on it, it would be a privilege to see my idea be executed by someone else. As long as you're not blatantly copying every single aspect. Like put your own little twist on it. But I mean, go on. I think people should try to create things more often.

Too often people just have ideas and they have criticisms and stuff, but they don't actually spend the time to try to build something. At least try it. Maybe you'll like it. Maybe you'll be successful. Yeah, exactly that, yeah. If you've, if you've got an idea, just, it doesn't have to be something you follow to the end. Like, if you, you can try it, like, try it out. If you like game development, stick with it. If you don't, then don't. Like, just try out a new thing. And if, if it is something you vibe with, like, I don't know, I think, I think people can feel intimidated by it. They can feel like, again, like what I was saying, where you see a completed project. and you don't know how you go from a grey cube to a fully completed game. Yeah.

Yeah, it is scary. Like, looking at the empty unity scene or the empty Godot scene, and you're like, it's just, it's, it's so bland. But just seeing that process and, like, seeing the progress. And also, I think, taking the time to record old versions of your game and look back at it, can be hugely motivating. I sometimes look back at very early blood vial footage, and I'm like, man, it's so night and day the way that it looks.

Like, I started out with just like cylinder enemies, just the same texture applied to all surfaces, and like the first person arms were just like, you know, assets that I'd found, the hand was like doing this. It was like all spread out, and the vial was just like floating on top of it. It's just like getting that concept out. and then seeing the progression and comparing the two. It's just probably one of the most, like, satisfying things as someone who builds games to see that.

Yeah. So when you first start working on something, like, how do you, like, how did you first start approaching Blood Vile? Did you have the idea beforehand and then sort of jot out some ideas on paper? Did you go right into the engine with the idea? Like, how did you approach it? So my process for Blood Vile was, I think I, it's a bit nebulous. I can't tell you exactly what came first. I think a few different things sort of happened in parallel.

The idea came at one point where I was like, I was just literally writing out lists of game ideas. And I was like, okay, well, what I'm going to try first is just combining games that I've recently played and enjoyed. and I just went through like an iteration process of like almost like column A list of games, column B list of games and just like try to match them up and see what could work. And so that's why I say it's post-void cross-splatoon because that's where the idea was born. I was like, could I make a combination of post-void and splatoon?

What would that even look like? And the whole blood system was a natural consequence of that thought process. Oh, hello. Here's the cat. That's just jumped up onto the desk. He wants attention. I did see him walking behind you. Oh, did you?

Yeah, I can see his eyes like in the like the gap under your arm there, just looking at through the gap there. That's cute. Yeah, he might jump into this little basket that I have for him. But yeah, after the idea, then it was like the technical side of just looking up how to achieve that like blood system, the liquid on top of the, on top of another texture and then being able to read those values. That in itself was a relatively complicated thing to get right at the start.

And then once I had that system working, then it was just like straight into it. I did like a vibe check, I guess you could say at the start where I was like, okay, I'm going to build the key movement, which is just the dipping. Have like a cylinder little enemy that when I shoot it, it just explodes and does the little the blood thing. And then, yeah, built like a dummy level and put some enemies in it and like went through the level and just decided whether it was fun after that point. And then it was like, okay, well, now that I've proved that it is a fun, fun thing to go through

the level, then I like focused in on that, like I said before, the movement system where it was just like an empty room for the, for the most of the part, just getting the movement right and then, you know, launched into full scale sort of content production from there. How long has the project been development for so far? So I think the, like the first technical demo I started in maybe September last year, something like that. So it's been just over a year now of extremely part-time development. And yeah, I think.

I think it's gone okay, like, in terms of the pacing. I'm relatively happy with it, and I've taken some big breaks as well, so I don't feel super burnt out on it yet. And I think what's started to slow me down was, like, having to manually make those rooms, those environments, and that's when I was thinking, oh, maybe I'll bring someone else to help do that for the last sort of portion of development. So how much would you want to be in the game? Like, how, how, how, how? many levels do you want and like, you know, like, what is, yeah, I, yeah. How much stuff. How much stuff, basically. Yeah, how much stuff. It's a, it's a great question. I'm hoping for,

um, like two hours of playtime at minimum. Um, but that will be mostly repeating the same, the same, um, process and messing with the high score system and like unlocking upgrades and and things like that. It should just be maybe like three or four weapons. I think there's like seven enemy types and like a big enough variety of rooms so that you don't get the exact same experience every single time. Right now, when you go through a level, you're like guaranteed to see the same room two or three times because it's just a proof of concept. And even in that gameplay clip that I posted, you'll see the same room twice. people thought it was a like a loop, but it isn't actually a loop. There's, um, there's the same room

twice. So, um, I really want to fix that. Like I want to get a variety of rooms in. That's the, the main focus. And while my level designer does that, I'm hoping to just iterate on the upgrades. Wait, that's not a loop. Wait, I didn't even notice it. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's literally repeated. Yeah, you'll see a cut at some point. Um, um, um, But it does look like a loop. I even got a comment saying, nice loop. And I was like, it's not a loop. I should have made it a loop because then it would be less obvious.

But anyways. Yeah, that's one of these things that does kind of stand out with a game like this. I remember playing Cold of the Lamb. And it has, it's procedurally generated layout, but it has room types. And it doesn't have enough. At least, I don't know, maybe they changed it, but when I played it, it didn't have enough room types to fill out at least one run. So you saw duplicates basically straight away. And, like, that's not bad, but if they're going to be perfect duplicates, it does feel...

Also, they definitely shouldn't be right next to each other. Like, whatever you do, they shouldn't be right next to each other. 100%. Yeah, 100% they shouldn't be right next to each other. other. And if you can get some slight variation with enemy placement and props and things like that, that can help, or mirrored version of the same room can help too. But yeah, it is, I think, the highest priority for us right now is definitely trying to get, especially in a game where the movement is like so core to the experience, having a variety of obstacles that you need to

navigate with said movement mechanics seems like a sensible thing to do. So the main reason I haven't so far is just because that's not my main skill set. I'm not good at it. I don't enjoy it as much. And I can still get a rough idea of what the gameplay experience is going to be like

without doing that. But then it gets to a point now where like right now I think most of the core functionality is fleshed out and it's like, ah, fuck now I have to do content production. Which nobody likes, but except for, I guess, 3D artists, that's their whole job. I've had people making puzzle games.

There are people who love making puzzles. True, yeah, that's true. I mean, I guess puzzle games are like that. It's almost entirely content production, right? It's just the same set of mechanics, but in like a thousand different ways. That's just not my vibe. Which is, yeah, again, comes back to why future games I really want to focus in on, like, Can I build a game that happens in one environment?

What does that look like? And it's through a variety of mechanics, and interesting mechanics, that you can do that. Yeah. Yeah. No, I hope the game goes well. Like, it seems like people are interested in it. And it looks like with the people are, you know,

caring about wishlisting it, which is always cool. It's always nice as people actually wanting, You know, wish lists don't perfectly convert into sales, but people obviously are interested in it enough to keep track of it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think what's, I guess, more than just the number of wish lists, it's like the velocity of wishlists that is inspiring for me. Spring Dash launched with about 12,000, which is pretty good, but it really didn't convert very well on that. And that's because the game, it's not great, to be honest with you. It's my first game.

It's not very good. Blood Vial right now has, I think, about 5,600 wish lists. But that's in like a six-month time period. And I think almost three, no, not 3,000, but almost like 2,000, 3,000 of those happened in the last two weeks because of that Twitter post. And since then, the daily number has been higher. So it's like it's the velocity. of wish list, it's the frequency of it, rather than having a Steam page up for two years,

you can gather wish lists, but because the velocity is slow, that kind of indicates a low interest level. Yeah, so fingers crossed, hey, I'm not expecting anything game-changing, but just, you know, something that is enough to inspire me to make the next one. Right, right, right. Yeah. Regarding, like, pricing, you kind of talked about, you want to make sure, a game's priced at a reasonable point.

When Silk Song came out, there was a lot of interesting discourse around the price they decided to go with. And a lot of people felt like the game was really cheap, and that sort of puts a weird pressure on the rest of the indie space. Yeah.

Because that game, what did they launch at? 30 Australian dollars, is that it? God, that's, is low for that game. If you think about what has that been in development for seven years or something? I mean, they did a few things where, as a developer, I'm like, I kind of don't like that. The pricing I didn't really think about. The one that I thought about was just like the sudden drop.

You know, they didn't give. And that's a great marketing strategy for them. It does mean other developers have to compensate at the last second sometimes. You know, if this big game is dropping in two weeks. well now you have to reschedule unless you're really confident yeah pricing is a good point I think in general you're right like the pressure to keep price low because of good games being cheap that's that's tricky

and I think indies in general underpriced ourselves quite frequently I've been thinking about this a lot because I of the whole friend slop thing you know the friend slop discussion Are you feeling? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. What's the climbing one? Is it just, what's the climbing one? Is it just called climb? No, it's not it. Peak. Peek. That's it, yeah. Yeah, there's an example of that. And there's the RV there yet is the other one, I think. And like, lethal company in those sorts of games. The idea that people call it like slop, because it's a low-budget cooperative game that you only play three or four times.

I just don't get that. Like, the game is like, like, $15 or something. So if you pay $15 for a game and you play it for two hours with your friends and people are like upset about that, I'm thinking, man, if I went out for beers for one night, I would spend more than that, you know? So I think just that much of one, depending where you go. Exactly, man. Or you can buy some games the same price as a cup of coffee and people are like nuts, I'm not going to. I guess because people buy so many games. and maybe the rise of like free to play games has also skewed that a little bit. But yeah, I think in general, like games are some of the cheapest form of entertainment available,

you know, especially like dollars per hour of entertainment. But yeah, it is, there is this like pressure to compete with that. I mean, post-void is a good example of like $3, $3 game. That's really, really good. And so that puts pressure on me. I'm like, God, I can't go super high. I probably can't charge 20 bucks for this game, right? Maybe I could charge 10, but people will inevitably go post-void is cheaper.

So it's a tricky thing to navigate, but I think in general, Indies underpriced ourselves because we want to get that volume of sales. So it's tricky. Yeah, a lot of creative fields kind of do this. I follow a lot of artists on Twitter, and you'll see, oh, well, I'll, I'll, do like, I don't know, someone might do like a profile picture and they're going to charge $20 for it. Like, you're going to spend like three hours on that.

You do know how much that is per hour, right? But because there's so many other people in that space and everyone else is sort of lowering prices on everyone else, it gets to the point where people are charging prices where they just, and you look at some of the work and you're like, people would pay more. but they don't feel comfortable doing so. The case of, like, Silk Song, Silk Song, they don't care. Like, they don't have to make a game.

They could do whatever. They could release Silk Song free, and it wouldn't affect them because they're set for life. Right? Yeah. But most people are not able to do that, and they price in a way that they know people are going to be interested in, but he's way lower than it should be.

Yeah, I think you're right about that. I'm pretty sure, I'm not sure if you're familiar with Chris Zucowski, the How to Market a Game guy. I didn't know the name, but I know, I know that, yes. How to Market a Game.com, yeah. One of the things that he says is that Indies continuously underpriced their games. And it's like, if you have a game that's good, have the confidence to charge a little bit more for it,

And I think there's sort of psychological break points as well, where like, I guess like the difference between $12 and $18 is not that big in the mind of the consumer. There's like these brackets, right, of pricing, like under $10 and then like $10 to $20. And you can sort of try to get to that upper level of those brackets and at least try to make. a little bit more money per copy. But I think the goal is often like volume of sales. And so the thinking is, well, if I lower the price, then people will be more willing to buy the game. And then it's volume that matters.

And I get that, I guess. But if you're going to have a cheap game, then it better have been quick for you to build it. It should have taken you six. If you're going to sell a game for five bucks, probably should have only taken you like six months of development. Like, you look at the game like vampire survivors, right? Like, that's, it's currently $7.50 Australian.

Yeah, $7.50 Australian. And mechanically, the game's very simple. Art, the game is very simple. It's also asset pack art, which a lot of people didn't know that. Yeah. But the game overall is a very simple game. and I don't know how long was spent on development for this, but I can't imagine it was a super long time.

No, probably not. Unless it was their first game, I'm not actually familiar with the developer. But yeah, I think with a game like that, and I think the other thing is also people, people value genres of games differently. And this is, this is an important point that people need to remember.

as well, because do you remember when the reboot of Prince of Persia came out? No. Okay. I don't think I ever really follow Prince of Persia. Exactly, because no one does. So, they released the game. It was a 2D Metroidvania game, and they charged 60 USD, and nobody bought the game. Yeah.

Like, the game was a good game, but you... Like, no one, like, people look at a 2D Metrovania game and they've got a price in their head. It's probably 15 to 20 US dollars, somewhere in that range. Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think things like 2D versus 3D can have an impact on that. You know, if you build a 2D platformer with 3D assets, you might actually be able to charge a little bit more for it. It's just little, like, psychological things like that.

that can make a massive, massive difference. So I think another point that I'm really sort of bullish on as I move forward is like actually doing market research is probably a good idea. And a lot of indie devs don't do that because we see things as it's an art form first and a business second. And I sort of have this thesis that it's possible to reverse that order. It's possible to think of it as a business and still keep your creative integrity. Um, mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm. Um, but some people, I guess, are scared of that idea of like, yeah. They, they're convinced that, I need to just build the game that I want to play, and if it's good, people will, will come and play it. Which I think sometimes can be true, but it's also not a bad idea to look at, okay, what games do well on average? Like, look at the median income per genre. and if you do that, you'll realize very quickly, making a 2D platformer is a bad idea.

And making a simulation game or like a crafty crafty game of some kind is probably a slightly better idea. Yeah, the, you know, the cafe simulators, the mechanic simul... Actually, that one is a real game.

A mechanic simulator is definitely real game. Yeah. There's a lot of these games where it's like, you know, you just wait for a streamer to eventually find it and then it's like it pops off for like a week yeah yeah

and a lot of these games aren't super complex to build anyway no exactly exactly and like things like incremental games for example the median income on an incremental game that's like super dead simple to build is higher than the income on a 2D platformer and people will look at these successful games and use that as the benchmark when really you should be looking at what is the median like run-of-the-mill game earning in that genre

in that space and there are some that it's just like the median income is just way way higher because the demand is there and there's not enough games in that space. I think co-op is a really good example. There was a report. I use a website called VG Insights, which they do, it's basically genre analytics, game analytics. And they did a report on like co-op earnings and co-op games typically earn like on average 40% more. So if you can simplify your game to the point where co-op becomes something that's achievable by removing some other mechanics, maybe that's a good idea. You know, do some market research. And that's what I want to do more of moving forward.

Like, see it a little bit more as a business and see if that helps. You know, it might help to, if you want to make money, maybe think about how you can make money. But in many ways, you have to make predictions about the future. And that's where things get, that's where things get really bad for, like, the really long-term projects. Because you can be a relatively fast-moving project if it takes you a year. But this is a problem that especially like MMOs have. Like if you have a 10-year MMO project, who knows what the market can look like? And there's so many games that have come out.

And they are just D.O.A because everyone has moved on. Like all of the Battle Royale games that came out post-Fortnight. Fortnite was massive. And then you saw this like trickle of them after the fact. and there's still some that sort of come out or like hero shooters after Overwatch they will start that project then and by the time that they come out

there's sort of this like a lot of people are tired of what that was what that was doing yeah yeah I think competitive multiplayer games are an example of something that's just really hard to succeed in especially as a small

team yeah you've got that chicken and egg problem of like you need a critical play account, a player base for the game to be playable. But in order to get a playable player base, you need the game to be good and playable. So it's just like this, how do you end up doing that? You can only really do it if you build something that's just a phenomenal product that goes viral instantly, or you have an existing audience.

And that's another reason to keep your development cycle short. It's like, how are you going to predict whether people are interested in your game in five years from now. It can be a good idea like when a game comes out that just does really, really well. Like vampire survivors, for example. When it came out, there were a number of games

that just sort of followed in its footsteps and changed things slightly and did phenomenally well because they were quick. 20 minutes till dawn is one example of that. The developer of that game was working on something different that they had been working on for a while. I don't know how long exactly. Yeah.

They'd been working on something different for a long time, and they were like, I'm going to just put that on pause and see if I can do a sort of fast follow-up of vampire survivors with a slight twist. I want a vampire survivor's game where I can actually aim my weapon. And they built this, and it did very well for them, you know. So staying agile and nimble and not trying to read the things, future three years in advance, you know, if you can predict that something will still be

relatively popular in six months and you can build something in that time, that seems like a good strategy. And I see what you were saying earlier about like people looking at it like a business and some people might feel weird about that where it's like, oh, you're just, you're just making a product to capitalize on a, on like a trend. And I know, like I get like people might feel weird about that, but like, if you have a project you want to build, if you can make something that capitalizes on a trend

and does well, that can put you in a position where you can go and build your game that you want to build. Right. Exactly. I think people in the app, like the mobile game space, kind of understand this like a lot more where

a lot of companies that have built these incredible games, they did start out, building these games that were very much following trends that were trying to like hop onto something as quick as possible yeah i think there's sort of an unnecessary negative connotation to the concept of following a trend in some in some ways because yeah i get that you're like not being creative and you're not creating something new you're not like inventing a new genre which is like the i guess every game developer's wet dream is to basically invent a new genre and

like change the industry but at the end of the of the day, if you're chasing a trend successfully, what you're doing is giving people what they want. That's what a trend is. It's a set of people that like a certain thing. And so if a game sells because it's a trend, it's still you're providing value. And that's, I think, what game developers like anyway, at least for me, like the thing that made me realize I wanted to make games was the first time I saw someone play a game that I had made. So after the game jam, I saw someone play what was called Spring and Fall at the time.

And like they made a video of it. And they were having fun. And I was like, man, someone else is having fun because of something I built. That's like, that's awesome. That's what I want to do. I want to keep doing that. And so if you're following a trend,

but people are having fun with your game, then, I mean, that's the whole point, isn't it? Yeah No I agree It's I don't know Like there's there's definitely

There's definitely that like I don't want to just be Making something for money And I don't know like it's I get that But as I was saying Like If you can just make something

It doesn't mean make something bad right Like that's that's not what it is. But if you can do something that you don't necessarily fully enjoy to allow yourself

to do something you can, like, you know, you might, you know, you get a job that you don't necessarily like, but you work there for a year because it pays really well,

and now you can go do something. You can pay for a deposit on a house or whatever. Like, you look at this in other parts of your life and it's a pretty normal thing. But I guess when something is artistic, there's like a different mentality with that.

Yeah, that's what it is. It's people wanting to preserve the purity of the art form. But I think there's an interesting challenge in taking something that people are actually want, you know, taking a trend and then thinking, you know, instead of working from the art side to the business side, work from the business side to the art side. You know, think about, okay, this is a genre that people like, how can I make it more impactful and interesting? You know, like, there's some interesting questions to ask that, can I make an like an incremental game, for example, which are typically very mechanics-heavy and like sort of shallow experiences? Could I make an incremental game that actually touches people or actually changes the way they think about something? That's another, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a

valid challenge in and of itself. And then at least you have a chance, a better chance of what you've built actually reaching more people in the first place, which again should be your whole goal, right? I don't think a lot of game developers enjoy making games that nobody plays. Right. Yeah. And you also mentioned if you make a game that's successful, that gives you the runway, make things that are maybe a little bit more experimental after that because you have that capital, you have the freedom to do that. So I think it's a valid strategy personally. I definitely understand the hesitation, though.

Like, I get it, and it feels wrong, like saying it out loud sometimes. Like, oh, I'm actually going to do market research. Oh, scary. I don't know why that is the case. I get it, I get it, but I think it's a, I think it's something that we have to, as indie developers, we have to try to break free from that a little bit, you know? I think when it comes to trend following though, like, you know, there's a, there's a line where you go from trend following like you have with 20 Minutes to Dawn to what you have with, you know, when our flappy bird came out, when there were all of these games that were not trend following, they were flappybird. They were the game with a different skin. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, and that's a very, that's a very important line not to cross. The reason 20 Minutes till Dawn is not a vampire survivor's clone is because, first of all, the art style, completely different, beautiful. But secondly, the gameplay is actually feels fundamentally different. If you play it, the fact that you have to like aim your weapon instead of it just happening, that's a, more like subtle difference and I guarantee you I guarantee you if this the developer of 20 Minutes till dawn posted videos of this game while it was in development they would have been flooded with comments saying this is a vampire survivor's clone that's that's a hundred percent what would have happened but when you actually play the game the experience is different the art

style is different like it it has its own style its own voice and it's it I think games like that deserve to exist you know just because it's like 90% the same as vampire survivors. Like the core DNA is the same. It's still different enough that it deserves. It deserves to exist. And I mean, people like it. People like the game.

A game I look at in a very similar way to that is, have you played nine souls? Oh, I haven't played it, but I'm familiar with it. Okay. In many ways, it feels like Hollow Knight. It has a Pogoing. system. It's got your wall jumping and double jumping and a dodge and all this stuff, but it has two big things that distinguish it. One is it's very parry focused and also

counter focused. So you will parry an enemy and you'll put like a charm on them and you make them explode do extra damage. And this combination of changes, even though mechanically it feels very similar. It plays like an entirely different game. Obviously, it looks very different as well. But this is, it's very similar in that way where it's, the DNA of the game is quite reminiscent. And I noticed it immediately upon playing the game. But once it started introducing those different mechanics, I was like, ah, I see what we're doing here. This is, this is taking something that works and doing it, doing it a different way. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And I think having a game like that where looking at it, you said you looked at it and you like immediately knew it was like going to be mostly Holonite. It's a double-edged sword. Like it hurts to hear people say this is a cheap copy of X. That hurts. But on the other hand, if it looks like something that is saying, that is. similar, then you're reaching the right audience. It's readable. They can look at the picture and go, oh, this is roughly like this other game that I enjoyed. And as long as upon playing it,

there's enough differentiating factors, then I think it's okay. Yeah. Do you have anything else you want to touch on? I don't think so. I mean, this is the main thing that I've been thinking about. So, yeah, I feel like we covered a lot of the stuff that's been floating around my head recently about copying games and the strategy. So it's been a really interesting chat. It's been awesome. Yeah, I do enjoy like going down these like random unplanned directions.

I wasn't really sure where we're going to go, but sort of getting more of that like mentality of what it means to make a game. I hope that people find it interesting and, um, got something of value out of this. Yeah, I hope so too. I really hope that, you know, maybe if it inspired one person to try to make a game or think maybe slightly differently about how to make games,

then that would be awesome. I'd be very happy to hear that. So if anyone wants to check out the game, check out your work, where can they head to? I think at the moment, just look up Blood Vile on Steam. You might get the Blood-Born Wiki,

but type in Blood Vile game and you will see it. Give it a wish list if it looks interesting. Yeah, I don't really have any other websites or anything for the game just yet. Just the Steam page is fine. I'm also on X slash Twitter so you can look up Dylan Dev,

D-I-L-O-N-D-Ev. Yeah, that's about it. Have you taken the game to any cons anywhere or do you have any plans to do so? I took it to a local a local developer showcase thing. But that's about it. I think for the most part,

those gaming conventions, they're fun, but they don't provide like a huge return on investment if you have to travel a long way. So sticking local is good and the value really comes from watching people playing. I don't really know what's available in Queensland.

I haven't gone anything up there. Yeah, there's a few little places, but most of the value was in seeing people play it in person. That was cool, like people getting engaged and yelling at the screen. God, I love that. I love seeing people engaged. Awesome. Nothing else you want to mention?

No, I think that's it, man. I think that's it. It's been a really great chat. Thank you for reaching out again and for having me on the show. Yeah, no, absolutely pleasure. If you want to come back on the future and talk about some other project you got coming up or whatever is going on? Yeah, I'll reach out if I, yeah. when I start my next thing.

But yeah, definitely keep in touch. It would be good to come back on. Yeah, yeah, absolutely pleasure meeting you. If you do, if you do happen to take it, if you want to go in a state and you happen to come to SA, let me know, I'll definitely, I go to a lot of the cons around here. I don't know if any of what you feel like doing, because we actually have, we have a couple of relatively growing cons here.

So, I don't know. Obviously Melbourne and Sydney are like the main place. Yeah, Melbourne's the big one. Yeah, Melbourne's the huge one. but yeah, I'll definitely reach out, yeah. Okay. Sounds good. Yeah, so if anyone wants to check out the game, I'll leave all that stuff linked down below.

And I guess if you have nothing else to mention, I'll do my outro. Yeah, go for it. Okay, so my main channel is Brodie Robinson. I do Linux and tech videos there six-ish days a week. I also stream there sometimes, so check that out. I've got the gaming channel that is Brody on games. Right now I'm playing through Silk Song and Yuck. Rakuzer 6. And if you're watching the video version of this, you can find the audio version on basically every podcast platform at Tech Over T. And you can find the video on YouTube, Tech of a T. How do you want to end this off? What do you want to say? Oh, mate, you caught me off guard there. I always do. I know. I never tell anyone they're doing this.

Um, wish list blood vile. Uh, wishless blood vile and make video games. Awesome.