Tech Over Tea - Crazy Taxi Meets Simpsons Hit & Run | Royal Reign Studios

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

Today we have Royal Reign Studios the developers of Castle Cab on the podcast a mix of Crazy Taxi and Simpsons Hit & Run with an indestructible horse.Wishlist the game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3755770/Castle_Cab/==========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==========Website: https://radiobush.com/Twitter: https://x.com/RadiobushYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/radiobush==========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 always your host, Brodie Robinson. We are back for another post-Avcon recording, and today we have the... Are you developer, game director? Studio director. Studio director, okay. Studio director from Royal Rain Studios, the developers of Castle Cab, a crazy taxi-inspired party game that I honestly had a lot of fun with the Avcon.

I thought it was really chaotic. And yeah, I decided to bring you on and talk about it. How about you introduce yourself and then introduce the game. We'll go from there. Yeah, you pretty much summed it up pretty well. Yeah, I'm Jacob. I'm studio director, Royal Rain. We're making our game Castle Cab.

And yeah, like you said, it's pretty much a Simpshit and Run inspired. A lot of wacky stuff, sort of free roam, multiplayer. It was just good fun. Yeah, I, it, you know, There's always, like, I find that party games are one of those things where there's always, it's one of the things that's really easy to show off at a con, right? Like, when you have a story game, when you have, like, a turn-based RPG, all of these, like, might be great games, but a con setting may not necessarily be the best place

to demonstrate it and get people to really engage with it, right? Like, if you have a game where there's music and it's supposed to be, like, a very atmospheric, and all of these things, like, a con setting is just really not going to show the game in the best light. Yeah, we actually have like the sort of an opposite problem at times because we're so con ready that when people want more, it's like, well, we can't really show it at a con. Like, we've got a whole story mode in development and we should be finished by the end of this month with that. But we can't really show that off at a con because, like, you're going to.

seeing we had like little kids running up and the people drop in and out so we can go from one player to four player so it's sort of hard to have that at a con right right right so I do have the trailer playing right now for it I do have a lot of audio listeners as well so for anyone who's just listening can you explain the general idea of the gameplay like what you're actually doing what you are and how this sort of all plays out so so you in the game you play as a indestructible horse. We've made it indestructible just because it's fun who likes dying to things. And there's a lot to it.

We have different game modes and stuff, but there's a huge overarching story where you pretty much run your own little taxi business. It's all medieval settings. As you slowly help the villages, you sort of grow in notoriety. you get enlisted by I think they got some wizards that sort of ask for your help so then you end up helping them to sort of then overthrow a kingdom because they want to ban magic and of course the wizards don't like that without giving away too many spoilers there's the sort of consequences for doing that

and maybe the wizards aren't as good as they seem so there's that huge narrative part when it comes to gameplay it's very like sort of free roam sandbox you sort of do what you want everything's destructible so you can make your own

shortcuts basically and so we also have like your different game modes which is your party side so we're trying to balance the fine line between going party game because we don't want to be just a party game

but then we also don't want to be just a single play sort of game and we've made sure that all the story stuff is all co-op so it's not just a story game as well right yeah a problem a lot of party games end up having is you need you need people to play a party game right like if you don't have online multiplayer which i don't think you guys have no because we're very limited because we're building for switch so like online stuff for switch is really hard to sort of work around especially when you're dealing with like a younger audience Okay, yeah. I definitely do want to get into the switchporting stuff a bit later. Because I've had devs who've wanted to do console porting and wanted to do switchporting,

and they realize it's a big challenge to do so. So I definitely, I definitely want to get into that. But I think you make a good point there about, like, online's hard, like, even just without switch. Online is just hard to begin with. But the problem a lot of party games have is because you need people and, you know, especially, you know, after the past couple of years, a lot of people don't meet up as much. People are, it's starting to shift back, right? I've been seeing a lot of board game shops open, which is really cool. That wasn't a thing before. There's board game shops everywhere, like card games, all of this stuff.

So people are actually like trying again, which is cool. I like that. But it's hard to get people together for a party game. So having some sort of ability to play the game without that. And, you know, you look at like a. Like, I look back at games that I really enjoyed as a kid, like the Need for Speed games, for example. There is a whole single player campaign, and you can just have, like, that's really fun. But there's also that additional, hey, you want to, like, race your friends, you want to do this arcade stuff as well.

Like, that's also there. So there's both of those things you can, like, appeal to. And, of course, you can look at, you know, games like, obviously games like smash, right? where there is that whole like single player element you can play against the the uh play against the CPUs but then the main thing people are kind of there for is that like party that like you know challenging your friend sort of thing yeah exactly it's exactly that um it was also tricky as well like as an indie we're targeting that and it's sort of like oh maybe you shouldn't do that as an indie like pick a lane kind of thing right right right we're like no we can we can do both

like I don't see why not simple I say simple but like a game yeah like smash gross it's a fighting game you got your single player stuff as well as your multiplayer stuff like you said so we sort of trying to go for that same thing so how many people are working on the game um at one point that's it's tricky so we have like contractors right um so like yeah the artists will sort of finish their pieces up and they're sort of done with the same like the the music and stuff they'll just sort of do their piece and they're done um but i think in total there's maybe that like 10 people that so we can work on the team okay that's a surprisingly large team actually like there's i i i've seen projects that have like one guy working on it and it's like really cool i've seen projects where it's like i don't even

know like how like they like how they managed to like even get how many people together to work on something especially when you know it's one thing when you're in a when it's like an established studio that has like a big resume of games and it's like oh we like but having so there's 10 like is that 10 core people or 10 people in total 10 people in total right so like I said contractors like right right right and artists might come in once a week and just work on one something what would you say is like the core yeah the core the core team there the core it's probably four of us okay um borderline like there'd be two of us that are sort of like full time the other two guys are like part-time sort of casual and then yeah everyone else is just

yeah contractor really how long has it been a work in progress for um I think it's like a year and a half going on to to two years almost right so it's a lot um there's a lot of um like because we've played tested it like ridiculously like we've been to so many events and stuff so it's like that constant sort of iteration that constant polish um so yeah there's There's a lot there. What cons have you taken it to? Sorry? What cons have you taken it to?

Oh, okay. Big list. Okay. We got Sage, which is here in essay. Then you got Avcon, Supernova, Ozcomicon, and that's local and interstate as well. We go to some funny ones. We got one coming up this weekend. Sorry, next weekend.

Science Alive. which is it's amazing for us but it's not like a game related thing it's more of like a oh it's like a science fair sort of deal yeah yeah for us we went last year

we're the only video game there so we got no competition and we're just sworn by bus loads of kids coming in every day so it's perfect for us that's interesting that you would even like want to have a I guess they do I'm seeing their demo play out here

and I guess they've had some like Sim racing stuff there in prior years so I guess it's still STEM related in the sense Yeah, yeah So that's interesting though Because it's not like a game focus thing Yeah What was the

So I was going to say what was the The reason to go and do that Was it just more eyes in the game? So we Play testing Yeah, fair enough And there's a few other core things So we use it to set

milestones as well. So for every event we go to, it's a new build. We make sure all the bugs are fixed from the previous one. We got new stuff in it. Let's test it this time. So we get that sort of value out of it. And also because we've been to so many, we can go to one and like meet someone there. Three events later, we'll have people come up and be like, oh yeah, I saw you at this thing. The game's changed so much since then. So it's that sort of just, I don't know, genuine sort of growth, which is good too. Right, right. So we're going through the list. of cons. You're probably going to miss something, almost certainly, if you've said there's a lot of them. Yeah, there's definitely more. We've even gone to other ones like, I think there's

Careers Expo, which is like an odd one, but like it's good to just show off the game. We are, we're going, oh, there's a couple coming up that I can't talk about. Understandable. But really big ones in Germany. You've basically just said it. Yeah, yeah. Don't keep talking. I said it without saying it. But yeah, we're off to there.

We also got another one called Pixel Expo, I think, in Perth in September. Oh, and then we're back off to the big ones as well. So we've got Pax. And we've been to Pax. This will be our third year coming, which is like the big one. And then South by in Sydney as well after that. Jeez, okay. Yeah.

Really busy with that. When... How many people do you try to send to a con? Like, is it like usually one or two people? What do you go? Try the two. We go the two just because it's hard for everyone to sort of be able to get time and do it. Other events, like, especially if they're local, we try and get the whole team.

Because it is a good morale booster. They can sort of see their work in action. and they can see the kids and stuff enjoying it. So it's just good for them. So it's really good overall. Right. Yeah, especially the local ones are considerably easier, right? It's like, oh, you've got to go into Adelaide.

Most of the cons now are at the showground. So it's like, you know, it's pretty easy to get there. Good parking. If you don't drive, there's the train station right there. So it's a day out, but it's like not, you know, you've got to go on a plane, you've got to get a hotel and all this big mess. Yeah, it's quite a bit. In that as well, like so being the guy in charge, I think I'd do the annoying hard work stuff there.

So we had another expo in Melbourne. It was TGX, just called The Game Expo. Oh, yes, yes. That one's pretty big. So he went there for one weekend, and then the weekend after that, it was Supernova. So I had two back-to-back weekends in Melbourne. But I drove back and forth each time. So I drove down for the one weekend, drove back, then drove back again and drove back.

Right, right. Yeah, it's a lot of work. Yeah, that does sound like a bit of a bit of work there. I've spoken to someone earlier. To be fair, in his case, it's a solo dev project where he found that, yes, going to the cons was really valuable, it was really good for the playtesting. But also, it was something that was eating up. a lot of time to go to each of these places to ensure the builds are good because you want to, you don't want to make major changes to a build you're going to show at a con. You want to focus on polishing things that you know are going to be fine. So do you, yeah. Oh, God damn it, Discord. Sorry, Discord decided to die for a second. I can, I can't hear you right now. Give me a second. I need to stop using Discord for doing these calls.

I really need to stop doing it. I've had this consistent issue where I just disconnect from a call, but you can, like, still hear me when I'm in the call. It's really dumb. Any, yeah, but I can't hear you, so, yeah. So you're saying about going to cons, interesting. Yeah. um so yeah a lot of um a lot of indies sort of don't think it's worth their time

um but it's you have to have a game plan when you're doing it right um so we like we're well prepared we've been to so many we know the whole the whole drill we can get up set up in 10 minutes whereas i've seen other guys spend a whole day trying to set up which i just don't get um but for us as well like it's easy if you're not showing it off and you're not holding yourself accountable it's easy to sort of not get enough work done um like by having that setting it as a milestone and like forcing ourselves to have certain deadlines for things it sort of just makes sure we're progressing properly right right so it's like we know we're going to show it off at this show it's like we want to have a new build by then we have to get it done by then it's

It's like a, it's a, like a, a clear motivation point. It's a clear, clear line. It's not like, it's not full release or anything like that, but it's like a deadline we have to meet. Yeah, exactly. It just sets clear milestones. And then if people are going to events thinking that's going to help wish lists and stuff, it's, it really doesn't help. Like that conversion rate's just sort of not there, which sort of sucks.

But like, there's a lot of other things you can get out of going to cons and expo stuff. So we still go. Because like I said, yeah, it's good for team morale, sets good milestones, amazing feedback. Like, it's so much better to watch people who haven't played the game because you can actually watch and see what they do. Right. Yeah, it's just so much more value to it, which I think people don't take, like they don't take full advantage of. And then on top of that, you're networking as well. You can meet so many different people.

You meet other local. Going to different types of expos as well. Like I said, we're going off the sites alive. We can see different kinds of people that aren't, like, in this industry, but they might be adjacent. And you can find funding and stuff through there as well. Right. The networking thing is a really interesting one,

especially with, like, the local Adelaide people. Every time I find a new dev, I add them on Discord, and I look at the mutual friends as, like, 15 mutual friends. It's a good, good night. Yeah, it's a really, like, tight-knit community here in Atlanta. It's really good. And because there's a few, like, they do once a month or something. We all catch up.

So, like, I remember going there early on and not knowing anyone. But now I go there. I know so many people and they all know me. Right. And then you know you're sort of doing well when people know you and you have no idea who they are. So it's something that's going well. Yep, yep.

Yeah, the thing with playtest with new eyes, that's really important because and it's not just like a it's not just with game development with general software development as well like UI designers run into this problem really often where you will design something that

makes sense for you, make sense for the team and you understand how it all fits together but it doesn't necessarily make sense as someone who is looking at it from the outside because they're going to come at it from a different perspective they don't have you know hundreds of hours looking at that system knowing exactly how it fits together

knowing the shortcomings it has and how to overcome them you can start like sort of unintentionally overlooking issues because you're so used to the system you're looking at and there's only so many times you can you know play test it amongst the team

play tested amongst your friends and partners play tested amongst your kids like there comes a point where it's like okay yes it's still useful to get them to try out new features and new areas you might add new maps and new game mode but getting a complete fresh look at it

is going to show things that you never even realized either were a problem or even just a good thing that you maybe want to like emphasize more. Yeah, exactly. Even like with some of our level design we can figure out areas like we go to events nobody goes to those areas. Why is that?

Have we not designed it well enough? Have we not, like, sort of showing them that you can go over there or you can do these? So it's just things like that, which you can pick up. So I guess we can get right into, like, what, no, you know, probably should talk about the game modes first when we get into the feedback. So you mentioned there's a story mode that's a work in progress. But as what's in the game right now and what was showing off, I'm assuming you haven't done another concept.

since AvCon. That was the last time the game was shown off, yes? It was like three weeks ago. Yeah, yeah, no, no, we might have. So, no, I haven't done a con, but I have taken the game to, it was like a local primary school.

They had like a little career expo thing. So I showed the game there. Okay, that's really cool. So I assume even though you did show it off again, maybe there was like a new build for that. It's not like a major difference, right? Like, you guys didn't like crunch some crazy new version of the game that has a bunch of things that weren't in the Avcon Build.

Yeah, the Avcon Builds probably closest to what, yeah. Yeah, it would have just been like tiny tweaks and fixes. Right, any bugs you might have noticed, things like that, yeah. Yeah. There was a bug that did come up during that where I think there was a way to, like, attach way too many hats onto you, and it like caused the game to freak out, if I remember correctly during my play testing? Yeah, we fixed that immediately.

So that was in the build at the school. We fixed that. We pretty much feel like intense shame whenever something goes wrong, so we fix it immediately. If it's like a level design thing, then we can tweak or whatever. But yeah, if it's a bug like that,

we're like how and why. Yeah, I think one of the people I was playing with got soft locked into the menu or something like that. And I think it was related to that issue. or maybe it was something else like that it's a few weeks ago at this point I don't fully remember what the deal was but I know there was some sort of like weird menu soft lock

So that's the other good as well With those cons or like semi good Because kids will just come up and just spam random buttons Like we as gamers know not to press Like the giant Xbox button kind of But the kids will just start spamming that And I think that connected to the PC We'll open up Steam and do a few other funky things

Okay, cool, great. But yeah, so I think that that hat bug, I think that had something to do with the keyboard joining. And we had to press the keyboard to exit Steam because some kid would have opened Steam or something like that. Right, right. Yeah, yeah. Little fun parts. So what game modes are currently in the game as of the latest build? The latest build, so we've got, well, what you would have seen?

So there's like a delivery system, like in the free roam mode. Yeah, it's like you pick up passengers and take into an area. Yeah, yeah. With the, what we show at the cons, like there's no time or anything on there. Yeah, yeah. We've decided we're just going to put the timer back in because it sort of adds some sort of urgency. Right.

Connected the, so with that, you're meant to earn some gold when you do it. That was disabled for the con, but we're just going to keep that in for the cons going forward. other game modes so we've got one like we're almost finished the racing system we're just sort of polishing up some of the checkpoints and stuff

we've got so it's like a track with like an arcade racing sort of you get from point to point to point and maybe the lap system something like that pretty much so we got both so we got like a point to point as well as a lap system and it's tricky because that also ties into

the quests right um so with what we're doing with the the game modes they're also spin-offs off the quest right so like um some are just fetch quests um but others are like um destroy x amount of things so doing that we've got a game mode where it's who can destroy the most things within the time limit um as well as yeah the races we are working on one uh where it's sort of like a capture the flag Yeah, that was in the Avcom build, I'm pretty sure. Or something similar. There was a mode that I played where you would grab a passenger

and then the other people would try to chase you and try to get the passenger off of you. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that one's in. Sorry, I forget because it's all over the place. Yeah, yeah, no, that one was in, yeah. So you're fighting over the one package, you've got to deliver, you get points for stealing them, and you get points for picking them up and dropping them off.

So that's in there. We're doing some sort of spin-offs from that. So there'll be like an infected sort of one. So the longer you hold on to like the passenger, you're going to lose points until you fail. And then you can go pass it over to other players and make them sort of lose. I'm trying to think I'll have to talk of my head. We've got because we've got boss battles in the quest.

So that's going to tie into. Um, we're still sort of naming it, but it's sort of like a sumo wrestling kind of one where you just have to knock each other in the ring. Oh, okay. Okay. So, yeah, I'm not sure if you did too much combat when you played it, but you can, if you run into, run into each other head on, you can sort of knock each other back. Um, then also you can spin and destroy each other's carts.

Yeah, I do remember that. Yeah, yeah. So we're sort of doing that. Um, we're working on implementing another like charge ability. which we have given to the pigs like little knights on pigs they actually now sit there and build up a charge and ram you and send you flying I can't remember if that was in the Avcon build or not

I can't recall yeah I don't know yeah now we're doing like a spin off for that for the mini game so those are all pretty much close to being done we will definitely have the quest we'll have the side quest done next weekend for the um for science alive and planning to have the races like the

mini game modes in there as well for um trying what the other mini game modes are because we have i think there's 12 minigames oh wow okay it is bloated because of just rule sets so that some of them are just inverse rule so like one would be the longer you hold onto something the more points you get and then the inverse is like the longer you hold onto it the more points you lose Sure, sure. Like, it is fluffed up a little bit. They're still interesting sort of ways to play the game. So, yeah, I'm trying to think of the top of my head,

but now I'm being on the spot, I'm like, oh, I can't remember. You did mention the bosses. I'm very confused what that is and how that works. So there's some boss fights in the game. They sort of act like, Sort of like the old sort of Mario boss fights. I know one of them, I think it could be either a king or some possessed horse. I can't remember.

It's the designer. He's doing his thing. But yeah, he'll float up in the air and shoot at you, like shoot sort of magic fireballs. You got to run around, destroy these little crystals. And then that'll sort of break his shield. He'll fall down to the ground. Then you've got to run up and sort of attack him. and do that like three times to defeat him

so this is sort of like little simple boss fights like that that does sound fun that does sound yeah and you were saying that so all like the boss fights those you can do with other people as well or is that part of the story? Yeah yeah so the whole story mode

is meant to be like either like in a co-op sort of mode right right so I guess maybe some of those will become easier as well like say if you're doing like a certain destroy go here here and here you could all just split up or something um but like that's sort of what we want to do we want it to be so like kids and parents can play together because i got a five-year-old um and some of those kids games are just horrible but they're not fun right so i want it to be fun for like everyone to play um like he has fun playing it i have fun playing it um all the events we go to

have like the kids would play and like maybe the mum will stand back and we're like no no you have come play too um so then like they'll try it and they have no idea how to play a game or what a controller is um but we've sort of made it simple enough and fun enough that they can get the hang of it really quick um even we've had a way like maybe there's like a young couple and one of them doesn't know how to play games and then suddenly they're playing with each other it's good so that's what that's what we're aiming for we want to be a fun game but simple as well Yeah, I, I think, obviously, I've been playing games since I've, what, six, something like that, and 27 now. So it's kind of hard for me to think of how a game feels for somebody who is not someone who plays games a lot.

But at least from what I can see, and from the way it played to me, it does, it's a very simple way. Like, it's a very simple control scheme. Like, you're not, you're not worrying about a bunch of different things. You don't have, like, you could go and say, do we want to have, like, a, like, Mario Kart, where you have a power-up system where you have weapons as well. You could add something like that, but is that going to add too much complexity to it? Is that something, like, it would be cool. And, you know, I could imagine, like, oh, we're going to, like, attach rockets to the, the,

um, horse, things like that. But it's like, do, is that too much a complex? at that point, right? Yeah. So we are actually working on those as well because we are thinking of doing like pickups and stuff, especially for some like the battle kind of modes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like way of sort of I'm in Ring and like how are we going to do.

But we do have, so we actually do have like a full, well you might have seen the horse customization stuff. Yes, yes, yes. There's also like another one for that where it's actually all like your stats as well. so you can increase your speed your destruction your health and all that stuff but we learned early on when we would play test like at expos and stuff nobody would know where to go for that so then we were forcing people to do it at the start of the game and then that was way too much like people hated that like people just wanted to skip through it so now we're just trying to find that right balance of like

how do we ease them into it sort of thing right and keeping it simple and I think something like Mario Carts actually does it pretty well where I think like they've got all the stats and stuff but they keep it simple but it's also fairly balanced no matter what if you pick all the worst options you can still play okay right right right um yeah and do you start playing in like online lobbies where everyone is sweating in Mario card and they're picking better characters like yeah yeah um but we're also going for like um how much did you ever play like the first like Spiro trilogy or Yes. I

On the original games I only played the second one but I have gone back and played the Reignited trilogy. Yeah, yeah. So the controls and they're actually very simple. It's like the you got your fire breath and your charge basically and like your jump and stuff. So we want to keep it as

simple as that as well because then it's like the controls are simple but there's so much you can do with that. Right. And then I think with that then as well like then anyone can sort of master it as well. There's little tricks and puzzles you can do. And you know, it's got to be either one of those two.

Like, inspire, I think, what you got, the fire breath. And you realize there's some enemies that've got that weird metal thing so, like, the fire doesn't work. So you've got to change. We're sort of wanting to keep it like that as well. Yeah, I think it's, for a game like this, it's really healthy to have a very low skill floor, where it's very easy to pick up the game.

Like, again, going to something like Smash, it is very easy to understand the basics of Smash and how to do, you know, even just basic sort of combos. Most people playing Smash don't even realize there's a guard, right? Like, it's a very low skill floor, but the skill ceiling for people that do start sweating at the game is like really high. And you can actually, like, if you want to start doing that, you can do like really cool stuff. But you don't have to. Like, there's still a fun base.

line there that it's still an enjoyable game. Like, Mario Kart, it's another prime example, right? Nintendo Games do this really well, where Mario Kart is very easy to play. You joined an online lobby, and no one's going in a straight line. And like, what the hell is happening? Yeah, I know that exactly. And that's what we're sort of really trying to replicate, like, within a little indie studio on a small budget. right um but we so like um did you meet logan by any chance um maybe he's like the lead programmer

very possible very possible anyway like him and i we play the game a lot obviously because we got a play test um sure sure we we do some really sweaty moves like we know where certain spawns are we know like if you can back flip off of a certain thing um there's certain enemies that you can sort of get knocked back by, but if you run into them on purpose, you'll jump over a roof and you can run away from someone. So, like, there's a lot there. You can be really cheeky and really silly with it. Like, I was playing with, I think, some kids the other day, and, like, they wanted me to show them some moves. So we've got this shark in the, in the ocean that will knock you back to the mainland. So I'd got them to follow me out into the ocean. I got knocked back, and then

so I was able to drop off the passenger before they had a chance, because I went flying. so there's little sort of things like that which they add a lot of depth so you can on surface level it's fine it's easy but then if you want to get real competitive and real sweaty with your friends there's so much you can do as well right right no that's super cool that that is that is really cool um so going back to the i do want to talk more about the idea of like how you could add items in because you're saying it's like a thing you're thinking about doing not entirely sure. What's sort of the idea there

that's kind of been floating around? How would you like to approach and what issues do you possibly have? Because we want to add a little bit more because at the moment it could either just be like a spin to win you just spin around and destroy things.

Like with the capture the flag and that basically is what it is you get behind someone, you use the catch up mechanic which is good as a catcher mechanic that kind of needs to be there and then you spin and then you get it and then you just like zoom off and hopefully they don't catch up to you yeah yeah so we want to add a little bit more more to that um that's like how do we do that how do we

balance it does someone then just camp all the spawn points for those items and get the best items do we force them like can they hold onto the item or can they they have to use it in me those are like all the sort of questions we got to think about and then also implement and play test things as well like maybe a shield or something maybe projectiles or something as soon as we start adding all those things oh what about this case what about this case

how does it work with like at these events we always know there's like one annoying little kid the other kid how do we balance that out so the other kids still have fun right right so yeah so the items are just tricky that we need to think of I think it may be like a shield or something

or maybe you can have an item if you don't have a passenger or you don't have another objective or something maybe that will force them to have like only be a bit more smart with how they do things Right I think back on It's a bit dark of a tone

But have you played Jack X It's a I know of it Okay okay Combite Racing game on the PS2 From the Jack and Xer series It's really fun and, like, being, like, you know, it's like a, you know, it's like a, you know, it's like a darker take on the O'Mara Cup, basically, effectively is what it is, but being out of, like, completely change up how the match was going if you get a, if you get a combo going or get a good set of items, like, that's, that's, like, really cool because someone could, otherwise, you know, can kind of get really far ahead, like, with the, with the cap to the flag,

If you get too far ahead, it's not really, yes, there's a catch-up mechanism, but there's not really a good way to turn that around, especially if they know the map already. Yeah. So with what we currently have, when the new, like, sport, like something the one you played was as a passenger, the new passenger will spawn closer to whoever's got the lowest score.

Right. But we don't say that. So, like, people might not know. And then it could also be tricky as well. If you all still close together, it would still spawn close to everyone. So that's where it's sort of tricky. Right, right, right. Yeah, it's sort of tricky.

Like, how do we balance that kind of stuff? And I don't think it's like one easy solution. There's so many different little things and edge cases and stuff you've got to consider. I think this is one of those cases where taking it to so many cons is so beneficial. because if you have an idea about, okay, let's just demo a couple of items. Let's say we have a shield, projectiles, boost, things like that. Let's just a basic set of items. You can have a simple test build, take it to a con.

If it doesn't work, if people don't like the idea, like you play test, you're testing it so much, so many cons with so many different people that you can get feedback on that really quickly and see if you're going in the wrong direction or not. not exactly that's the whole point of those cons um yeah i think we might try and work on those soon as well um yeah our biggest thing though it's going to be these quests because everyone's they enjoy like the small arcade part to it and they will just sort of mark it off as a party game and that's all there is right so we really need to now show wait no there's all this other

like we're more the party game the party stuff is just for for cons to get someone in playing it quick. Right, right. So I do want to talk about this story mode that's a work in progress. I guess where do we begin with it? What do we say on the story mode? Well, like, a few things. So the point of having a story mode is just to add more value.

Party games can be pretty much, like, their lifespan's really short sometimes. Like, because as you said, you need other people to play. Yeah, and you'll pull it out at like a party. once a year maybe yeah yeah and on like couch co-op on steam is basically dead like we wouldn't have anything um so this adds a little bit more value um but then also we're thinking like some families just have the one child now as well if any so like it would be hard for them to play a party game by themselves so it just adds more value it's a little bit more in-depth stuff um maybe it builds a bit more of following or something there um got some interesting characters i'm not

I'm sure you might have seen some of the artwork. We've got some of those wizards and a bunch of different chickens and stuff. Is in the folder you sent me? Yeah, there'd be like cutouts and stuff, like all on the splash screen and whatnot. Ah, let's see. The cab. Okay, no. Oh, yeah, yeah, okay.

Here, this works. Cool. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Just adding those things sort of adds a little bit more value. So, like, if people do like the game, then there's just more for them to like. Rather than just showing them, okay, that's all there is. There's more to it.

So what is the, I guess, what is the direction you want to take with the story mode? I assume you want to sort of, the way that I would look at this is like a real weird and wacky story. Like you, that doesn't really take itself that seriously. Like, that's the way that I would personally want to approach that. But I don't know what I thought you have here. Yeah, that's exactly what I're doing. So, like, the people are talking to. horse that doesn't talk it just stares at them and they have full conversations with it like

it's so it's stupid um like you would have said we've got a fart button like it's it's a silly game um and with that it's then it just sort of goes just to the ridiculous like why would a horse overthrow a kingdom right um like that's sort of the direction it's just sort of this ridiculous larger than life kind of absurdist kind of stuff just I do want to give you an idea

just because I think it would be funny if you do want to have some fun with just something you could do right at the end with him that are overthrowing the kingdom there's a picture from FF15 of Nocta sitting in the throne I think some sort of

some sort of picture of the horse on a throne would be very amusing. Yeah, there is, so there's a whole throne room that we've actually already done. That's like one of the arenas that we have as well. As well as I think one of the awards that you get for winning is like an actual proper crown. So yeah, yeah, we've got something like that in mind. Right, right. So yeah, expect that.

Expect something's just so stupid. So, I don't know what you want to say about the story that you don't want to, like, you know, I'm sure you don't want to give away too much about it, but what is, what do you, okay, what is the sort of, I guess what, what, what's, what objectives are you achieving through the story? Is it going to be, like, miniature versions of the, like, the party game mode where you're competing against the CPU? Like, what is... So it's a hybrid. Think more, do you ever play Simpsons hit and run? Yes. By any chance? Absolutely. So, yeah, like that.

There's some little side missions, which are just silly collectibles and you interact with the people and stuff. And then you got your core storyline. We have, I know for some of the side missions, we got these horse culture. There's just little robe guys with horse masks. they'll give you different missions that sort of then help upgrade your horse and your stats and stuff like that and also get rid of your wanted level. Wanted level, okay. Yeah, so that we have, it's not a wanted level, it's a dishonor.

Right, right, yes, it's similar to like the GTA one. You got your five stars, the more stars you get, the more pigs that come after you. Right, right. We can pretend that we're doing some social commentary on knights, cops, pigs, whatever. Then I think when you get to five star, yeah, this giant boar comes at you as well. So it just sort of increases. Right, so that's the tank. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, it's a tank, basically, big tanky boar. Yeah, it's, I think part of the story is what you sort of discover why the horse is indestructible, why is the horse sentient. That sort of just plays into the deep law with the, the, the, the, but we keep it very surface level where it's just so absurd and stupid so you cut out a couple of times there um can you still

it might be discord um noise cancellation that's cutting you out there okay all good now uh yeah yeah can you just repeat what you're saying that it was uh oh sorry I was been rambling

um no no um yeah no so you um where was I at um yeah you sort of discover why you're an indestructible horse like sort of the deep law behind that why you're a sentient horse

why do people talk to you like you sort of uncover that but surface level it's very absurdist humor just sort of silliness really Is this the first game the team has done? First major one

We've done lots of small stuff we've got some mobile games right um we got one called do do dodgers which okay right right why we're so immature i guess um it's just an infant it's it's it's a game jam it was mocking those sort of ads that you see on youtube um oh my god are that yeah okay i yeah yeah yeah no it literally is one of those fake ad games it's it is like surprisingly fun though you're just a little poo in the sewer So you can see where our humor is at. We got really five-year-old humor, I guess.

We've got another one called Flamongo. That's going to be horrible to look up. But that you just plays a little fireball and you just grow bigger and bigger as you destroy more things. With that, you get attacked by firemen until the Giga-Chad fireman comes out and tries to put you out.

Right, right. So we go for really silly stuff Yeah, those are all small things Like little game jam projects we might do in a Yeah, this is like the big Big one that we're working on That's really cool Like I like yes, it's it's dumb fun

But I appreciate the fact that you're just Like It's a fun game right? Like it's not trying to be serious And there's absolutely a place for more games that are just trying to be, trying to just be a good time, right? There's nothing wrong with a game that's super serious.

That's totally fine. But not every game has to be. That there's absolutely a place to just, you know, this game would be right at home alongside, like on the PS2, alongside, you know, Simuthan Hidden Run and other games like that where a lot of devs back then

were being a lot more experimental. And that experimental sort of nature has now moved out of those, like, really big studios now into the indie space. And I think with, like, there's, with how easy it has become to start doing game development, it's allowed all the people to experiment with really just random cool ideas. And we're sort of in this, I guess, a lot of people are calling it as like golden era of like double A and indie games. Like, and we're seeing a lot of these games sort of get a lot of attention because of it. yeah yeah which is great to see it's really hard to get there though

yeah it's the potential and opportunities there which is really good so I want to talk a bit about the um the art style so the the art is like very it's very cartooned it's very it's simple yeah yeah I guess it's good to put it um there's a few reasons for that I think the biggest one would just be the limitations for Switch. But then also just like going for that sort of silly cartoon style, just that's nice, I think.

Like it's not too hard on the artists. And like, our artists are really challenging. Like they can make some stuff. And here I am getting them to make like the little mountains of poo or something. Right, right. And keep a low poly. So, yeah. And there's also a really big difference between low,

and low style. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, getting an artist through that. But also just cartooning. I think it works better for kids. We can keep all the colors bright and colorful and nice. So, yeah. Yeah, the idea of, I think what really stands out when you notice,

I don't know how to really phrase it, but there's cohesion in the art style that, When, even if something is low poly or like lower resolution, whatever term you want to use for it, when there is a clear intent behind that and it all fits together, you can, it's very easy to tell even if you're not someone that has any sort of art background. You look at it and you're like, okay, all of this makes sense to be together. It's really tricky to do as well. Like you can sort of just whack things together

But if they don't match each other That can be a tricky thing as well I think we've managed to do all right I managed to keep it cartoony enough Yeah that that cartooniness also gives you the freedom to Again do really weird and wacky things You don't have to like you can have Characters that are designed in like a

Yeah I guess like You're like perfectly round heads And it's just like they look our body proportions are all over the place yeah they're just like intentionally looking kind of weird I'll just got to

I'll be one second sorry I'm so sorry about that no no you're all good you're good I had a full battery on my laptop and it's like I'll duck into the quiet room and then yeah it's just dead right

so we're talking a bit about the art style talking about it being like very cartoony and that allowing you to just kind of get away with doing a lot of just weird, dumb things that like wouldn't really make sense in anything. I think the best example that people always bring up is with like South Park. South Park having that very cutout, very cartoony art style, they get away with doing things that you would not be able to get away with in most other styles.

And it's just like, you know, you see these paper cutouts doing things to each other. And it's just like, yeah, but it's like, you know, it all, it'll make sense together. It allows you to do it. It allows you to get away with doing so much, so it's just random, just in some cases, awful things. So we, we sort of do some of that actually in the game. So I'm not sure if you killed any of those pigs, but when you do, they explode into bacon bits. I don't think I noticed that. Oh, yeah.

So we've got, yeah, you killed them. they explode into like a big explosion of bacon bits. Other things like the cow, when you knock them over, they sort of milk themselves and just shoot little bits of milk. Right. And then when you do kill them, they explode into like a big puddle of milk. So yeah,

they'd probably be a bit graphic if it was in a realistic art style, but in the cartoon one, it's fine. Right. Knowing that's there, it gives me, I can kind of imagine how dumb the story's going to get then. if that's sort of the approach you're already taken with those little things. Oh, yeah, yeah. And there's the other thing we're trying to do as well is add detail to those little things

because I remember being a little kid, I wouldn't actually play some of the games. I would just run around in the level. Like I remember playing spire and might not do some of the missions. I were just running around, frolicing sort of thing and just jumping in the water. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then like watching my own kid play. Like, he might just do stuff like that as well, where he, he doesn't want to do the story or the mission

like I think we're playing Lego Lego Marvel or something and he didn't want to do the mission he just wanted to fly around the city so like we've got that in our game they can just sort of run around and do what they want yeah I guess

that does make sense I think back to I think the first game I actually played was a Spira game now think about it I think it was Spire Into the Dragonfly which is not a good game it's one of it's very buggy I don't even remember how bad the game was

but looking back on videos if you were talking about it the game was horribly buggy there were so like just basic things would break it but even so it was really cool to just be able to like glide around the map and like one of the first areas there's like a bunch of rice fields

and there's water there and you can like go through the water and it's just like you know when it's when it's something when you're really young, a lot of sort of simple things will keep you entertained, just because you don't really have that many experiences, right? Like, once you've, once you've played games for 21 years, right? It's a bit harder for water to keep you engaged. Like, the first time I saw a UE5

tech demo, and it was someone walking through the snow, and it was like, realistic snow piles, like, wow, that's cool. And then I see 10 other games deal. It was like, ah, okay, yeah, I don't anymore. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Maybe I say just that wonder, that first experience that we don't have now that we're older. Mm.

I still think there are games that can absolutely, like, grab your attention, but there's just, I think the difference is there's so many, first of there's so many games now. So there's just, it's hard to find those gems.

Yeah. But there's still games that are absolutely incredible. finished Expedition 33 not that long ago and that game like that it it's the first RPG that really got my attention since I played like persona five or when I played final fantasy 10 for the first time right like there are still games out there that are absolutely incredible but I don't isn't like 30 games that uploaders esteem a day or some some crazy number like that's ridiculous much series I'm sure a lot of it is just like shovelware but still like there's so much out there like even my own like steam libraries and

stuff i haven't completed enough of it i used to be the kind of person who would buy games during steam sales just to buy games i was like i'll play this at some point it's like i've i don't know what percentage of my steam library i haven't even downloaded ever that's the same so yeah that's why we're we have more of focus on our console builds because yeah steams not going to do it for us i reckon Mm-hmm. So I do want to talk a bit about the, um, so is it just Switch or other consoles? So it's all the other consoles, um, but Switch, um, like being the most limiting on hardware. If we get it working on Switch, we get it working.

Right, right, right, right. So in some of our earlier test fields, um, we were having some trouble with the Switch, um, but we got the game running better on my mobile phone. That's how tricky it is to work with. So, I guess for, if you wanted to release a game on Switch, like, where do you even, like, where do you even begin with that? So there's a lot of, lots of back and forth, I think, with Nintendo. We had a pretty smooth application process, I guess. But it is just back and forth, like, you submit the application, they'll review it.

then they'll ask you to send some more stuff and then they'll review that then you sign some things and back and forth then yeah you eventually get put into their developer portal and then you have access to all their stuff through there and then you can get your dev kit and whatnot and is the other platforms in process or switch is the first one's going to happen the other ones are in process um like that's all there we're working on that um But we might stagger the release. So all the focus is on the switch build at the moment. But we do have all the stuff for Xbox and PlayStation.

So, yeah, they're in the works. Let's just get it on Switch first and get on anything. So was that a plan to be on the Switch from the very beginning? Yeah, yeah. So that's part of why we have that really simplified control scheme as well. Because I think, yeah, one you would have played, it didn't have the free camera. It would have just been a locked on camera.

And that's because on Switch, you've got the JoyCon, which has only got the one stick. So if you're sharing the two Joycoin, two joycons here. Yeah, you only have one stick. Yeah, it's always, that was always the plan. Like the art style and everything, just good on Switch. But in hindsight, doing a four-player open world game on Switch is very stupid.

So with that being the case, like how much time has been okay I assume the core focus is just getting the game into a finish state and then the porting happens after that like what how does that process sort of happen no so

it has to be considered the entire time a lot of indies forget about that and then it comes to porting time and it's a huge mess and it's like they have to make the game all over again right Um, so we, we just sort of look at like what the limitations, like what are our requirements for putting it on Switch. Um, so it could be even things like, um, I think Switch has a file size for your game. So you have to factor all of those things in. Um, and then, yeah, we just keep making test builds for Switch as well. Just make sure we're on the right track. Um, because if you're not optimizing it as you go, you're sort of shooting yourself in the foot. Right. Right. So that one I, I, Because you, you know, it's not a release Switch game. I assume that one's quite a bit harder to do playtesting of.

Like, it's kind of just going to be of the, with like the devs of the, and like close frame. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, like, the game, the game works perfectly fine, like, on PC and stuff. So we take that for playtesting. And it's the same game. But, yeah, when we test it on Switch builds,

it's just for performance, really. we're doing stress tests and whatnot on it. Has that been mostly fine? Have there been things that you guys thought were going to be a good idea? And then you realize you put it on the switch and it's like, ah, that was actually a bad way to do that. Pretty much the whole game. So we're actually pretty good with a lot of the optimization.

Because we are like both Logan and I, who are like, you know, charge of it all we're both programmers so we're coming from that programmer mindset um for the most part we're doing all the right things um but there's lots of little quirks that unity just doesn't tell you or show you um there's a lot of hidden stuff so we actually got a specialist to help us um who we met i think in melbourne but turns out he lived here in adela oh um so yeah so yeah his name's victor he's really good um he works i think he's working for playside So yeah, he helped us. He was like, oh, these are a few little tricks that you can do.

Unity does this. So, yeah, that was really helpful. He sort of helped us sort of streamline our chunking process. For any way, you might be unclear. Can you explain chunking? So sort of where the player is, the chunking will just sort of, it's almost like a distance. Things that are off in the distance won't be rendered and stuff like that.

which we already had a simplified version like we already knew that we knew rendering only see what the player can see sort of thing but there's a lot of back-end stuff that unity still does which if you had no idea there's nothing you could do like um so he showed us all these little workarounds um you can override a lot of the unity stuff because the unity sort of by default isn't great with certain things um so he showed us it's all these little tricks and stuff, so that's a lot more optimized. So things aren't running, aren't being called. They're not being stored or anything while they're not needed.

And that just makes, yeah, the optimization much better. I would assume that having that split screen there creates a further issues for ensuring things are, not too many things are being loaded than just having a single-air game. Absolutely. It's horrible. Because you could be then looking from any angle. In most single player games, you can, yeah, cut off things that the player can't see. There's lots of little tricks as well. Like you can go into a tunnel.

So then suddenly everything outside that tunnel is not loaded because you can't see it. Yeah, yeah. With ours, four players. One could be on any side of the map. And then you have to pretty much show the entire map. So, yeah, so we're really just sort of like crunching and pinching every little bit of performance we can. So it could just be like a tree in the distance. And Unity's waiting for it to detect if somebody hits it or not.

So it's just sort of turning off those sort of little things there. So like there's a lot to it. Yeah. You mentioned game tricks. It was kind of a running joke when the PS5 first came out that every game from a AAA studio had some sort of like small crevice that you would climb through. and that's just, like, they're like, oh, the PS5 loads everything seamlessly. Like, no, that's a load screen.

Right? You can just, like, show a little bit of, like, LOD in the distance, and then you just load everything in as they're going through that gap. Or any time you see an elevator, that's a load screen. Oh, yeah. I think it was, oh, was it, like, Tony Hawk, yeah, Tony Hawk's American Wasteland or something. And this huge advertising campaign that was, like, the first game without screen And yeah, you would just go down an alleyway where everything was like blocked off and that's the loading screen.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or you'd get into a car and it would drive you to your location. Like, it was a loading screen. And there's nothing wrong with doing that, right? Like, it's much better to have that then. I remember, oh, God, I remember, I played Skyrim on the PS3. Oh, my God, that is one of the worst ways to play that game. It's so hard, yeah.

Yeah, because it had, I think, out of 5,400 RPM. hard drive out of the box. Even with an SSD, the game didn't load fast, though. So I think sometimes you would see two-minute load streams. And their stuff wasn't well optimized in some parts as well. So, like, yeah. It's been an interesting journey, like doing this to my stuff. So we're actually trying to push and, like, pivot to offering it as a service to other studios.

so we've got a few like local studios that we're doing that for as well as a couple in Melbourne we've just done a few builds of their switch game or a few switch builds of their game and giving them a report and what needs to be fixed and stuff okay that's cool yeah I guess it does like once you have that experience I guess you got to you can use something else right like you don't you have to use it on your own game yeah yeah exactly plus it's also like like you said there's so many games being loaded to steam everywhere every day. It's an extremely competitive market. So it's like, well, how can we still be in this industry that like survive? Because it's one thing to like make a nice game and

a piece of art, but you need to make money to support your studio, pay your, pay your employees and stuff. So that's one way we think we probably can go about it. Well, I don't know how much you are, you kind of can say on this, but like you have, you know, four. poor people and then there's 10 people to work on the game. The question there is like, how is the funding for the game happened? And I don't know what you can and can't say and stuff that like, you know, what can you say? Yeah, so I can say quite a bit. Like, I'm the boss basically.

But it's tricky. So beforehand, like, I had a little bit of money. So I'll just sort of put my money into it. But not much. in total maybe i've put in 14 grand um which is pretty small in the grand scheme of things the we do have an investor who's going to oh sorry i don't know if i can say how much um but it's a small a small issue yeah sorry you as soon you said you had an investor it cut out oh okay maybe it's a sign um yeah no so i don't know if i can say how much um

understand yeah you don't need to say exactly that it's not it's in a production sense it's not huge numbers but for someone with no money it's a decent enough number it's going to pay for everyone um like i said everyone's more on a contract so they like our artists will do the artwork we're not paying them hourly rates or anything like that um also like i'm not paying myself anything at the moment i'm just sort of living off of what i got um i am working as a teacher as well so I'm at AI teaching programming so like I can sort of funnel that money into into this right right for anyone who's not in Australia that's the Academy of Interactive Entertainment so yeah I teach the cert classes there um this yeah four nights a week I do the programming

cert class um so anything I make from that just sort of then funnels off into into the studio right right um so that's sort of how we're surviving it's a bit it's a bit rough right um but it'll be it'll be okay it's a lot of square equity the plan is we release and hopefully make enough money then pay everything back so yeah so by release what is the like what scope you're trying to hit like how much do you want to have in the game what is there currently and what's still there to do? So I think pretty much all the art and assets are basically done. So we're going to wrap up like pretty much now.

I think it's probably like the last month we'll have that. Level design should be pretty much done. The big one, yeah, is testing these quests at the end of this month. Depending how that goes, I'm expecting us to have to do like some fixes and tweaks and a lot of adjustments there so that could be a few more months. Yeah, as for like the full game, we're going to have, like,

we aim to do the full story mode. That'll have like, yeah, the whole narrative, but also a ton of side quests. And then using those mechanics, we also will then have all of us. So we're looking for, yeah, I think it was 12 mini games

as well as the full co-op story. So we should run, we should have it all done, hopefully. What were these, you mentioned the quest a couple of times. I don't know if you talked about that and I'm just forgetting, but what would the quest entail? So you've got different ones. You side mission, so one would be, yeah, for the...

There's a whole bunch of different ones. Discord, man, I hate Discord so much. You cut out immediately as you're going to say what the quest was. So there's a side one, well, one of the side ones. is with the cultists, little guys with robes and horse masks. Each sort of quest you do for them will unlock your upgrades for your horse and cart. There's other just like little quirky ones. So I think one, there's two farmers who arrive.

One's got an apple farm, one's got a pear farm. So you just keep destroying each one and they think it's the other farmer and not you. so is it just silly little missions like that really with the demo at Avcon there was like a lot of cosmetics available I assume those are all of those going to just be available or those be things you unlock as you play throughout the game

yeah unlock as you play through the game there is a few more which I don't think we had shown Avcon yeah it's pretty much you unlock them from doing certain achievements or certain quests and stuff there's also some different because like there was a lot of cosmetics right yeah I assume that like I would assume that for the sake of testing

you had them enabled rather than just those always being there yeah yeah that's what we're doing like because it's more fun like who wants to try and unlock stuff in an event right right right stuff um yeah there's a few other things but like on that um yeah you got your horse and that's got your different colors yeah

your patterns. So there's like a few different things there. We've also got like different shiny colors and stuff. Like I think you finish the game. You get your gold in so you can just play as a gold horse. You had your cart as well, as well as the wheel. So you can change all of them. And you can change all the colors on them.

So like, yeah, there's a lot to unlock and to do sort of thing. I remember, I don't remember who said it, but in the mode that was being shown Avcon most of the time it was just running the free room mode and some was saying there was a bunch of objectives in that mode that you know because it had been running throughout the day people had just been doing those like achievements or something um yeah what so what does that actually do in that free room mode besides just free room so um so yeah you have all those achievements um there's a lot of different ones so there's like destroy x amount of thing um finding certain locations um like finding unique

NPCs, collecting, I think there's like some different like golden apples and the golden carrots and stuff. I think there's other ones for like how far you travel. There's a whole bunch of different things to do. And then I think they're also like in different tiers as well. So it could be like smash your first gravestone and smash your 100th one or something. There's like heaps of stuff like that. also like in the proper game you can earn gold by doing those sort of side missions and

side quests and then use that gold to unlock your different cosmetics and stuff like that right so it'd be like there's like a gold shop and you can just buy whatever deep things that you want to buy yeah yeah we're also we're toying with the idea so there's different areas which are sort of i know gated off right um in the the Avcon demo, like, it was just completely open. We're toying with the idea of having them locked and you've got to sort of pay the guard or something. Which you could probably do in the free row mode as you earn enough money and whatnot. Now that adds an issue because there's a lot of ways to jump around.

Yeah. We're well aware of that and we're sort of like, well, maybe who cares if they're creating. let them be creative, let them get in, let them break it, let them jump over things. If you wanted to do something, if you wanted to actually make that part of the game, in the GTA games, when you go to one of the older ones especially, when you go to one of the islands you're not supposed to go to yet, they immediately give you maxed out wanted level. So you could have some sort of interaction there if you do avoid the guard to get in there.

Yeah, yeah. we were thinking of doing something like that. We do have, like, part of the missions, that is a thing where, like, you'll just get your five-star wanted level and they all come at you. So we were considering something like that. There's a whole bunch of other tricks as well we could do. There could also be other things. So I'm not sure if you saw any of the portals around in the game.

I don't know. Maybe not. Yeah. There's portals in the game. Sure. Okay. Um, we could always just have them sort of disabled. And once you do a certain thing, maybe you enable it that.

So, but the portal's just act as shortcuts, really. Right, right, right. So you've mentioned the, like, the map, the world. You mentioned there's, you've had issues of people not going into certain areas and trying to address that. How big is the map itself? Is there multiple maps? Like, the map we played at Avcon, is that the only one or is there other ones? So that's the only one.

We had like plans and ideas for doing more, but then that's sort of just the scope would just get bigger and bigger. So we're like, we'll just keep it to the one map. The one map itself actually isn't that big. We've just made it feel really big. Right. We sort of, we took inspiration from stuff like Spiro and Simpson's Hit and Run. There's like a big plateau and a few mountain stuff in the way. So it sort of forces you go around.

Right. So it makes it feel bigger than what it is. Right. And there's the ocean between two of them as well. Yeah. Oh, there's a couple rivers. Yeah, river or whatever it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it sort of makes it feel bigger as well. And then we've also done, I think in one of the areas like the graveyard and swamp area, we change the lighting as you enter that area. So it becomes very distinct. And it just feels like you're going into, well, you aren't going to a different area. But like it makes them match. feel bigger because there's so many different things going on in the map. Right, right.

Even, I think one of the areas, like we've put only sort of like palm trees and they're not anywhere. Discord, oh my God, we're having so much Discord problems today. Give me a second. I'll join the callback again. Oh, my God. Discord. Discord.

Okay, sorry, I really need to do something about this. It's actually gotten really bad now. Yes, so swamp, changing lighting, going to areas. Palm trees, palm trees, the last thing you said. Yeah, so making each little area seem like a lot more distinct from the other areas. also makes the game like the map feel bigger because you feel like you're going to all these different areas but I can't remember the actual measurements

but the island itself is actually really small and like you can cross the whole map really quickly in like I think less than 30 seconds or something okay right sure it definitely didn't feel like that yeah I know that's that's a good thing because like we're trying to make it feel bigger than what it actually is but yeah it's actually

not that big. Now, we're hoping with that as well, then people can sort of remember the map and they can remember, oh, this area. Right. Sort of like, like, a GTA, you remember certain roads and certain places. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Right, okay. Yeah, that does make a lot of sense.

I, I also think what helps is some of the areas are quite dense, like the town settlement area. Like, it's very easy to get, especially, like, playing for the first time. It's very easy to get sort of lost within that area and kind of like go in a circle within there, which I guess does kind of also make it feel a bit bigger as well. Yeah, that's perfect. That's good feedback because, yeah, that's exactly what I'm trying to do. And just by like, yeah, the way we have certain things, like, yeah, with that plateaued area, it sort of breaks up some of the towns. And even like the distinct, so you've got your farmlands and you got your, I think there was that sunflower field and then you got your big built-in town.

Yeah, yeah, it works. People sort of get lost. We've got roads that sort of loop back on themselves so people can think it's bigger than what it actually is. Yeah, there is the mini-map. So if you look at that, you know, can navigate your way out of there. But I, you know, especially when you get into some of the chaotic segments and you haven't really played that much, it obviously,

I want to get experience with the game, right? As you're saying, people will start to learn paths and layouts and things like that. But you're never going to, like, you're never going to get away from that, right? Like, people always learn the game. But that's a good thing, right? Goes back to that whole, like, low-skill floor, but a high-skill ceiling. That first time you play it, it's very easy to... The control's very easy to understand.

It's very easy to, like, navigate around. But once you've played it a bunch of times, then you start having an idea of, okay, I can... If I go through this route, I might be able to jump over this building and get to this section of it easier. and all of these little things, which, like, I think really cool. I think it's really cool to have to, like, have put thought into the idea that people are going to want to sort of optimize how they get around and not necessarily design either for or against that, but in a way that's going to allow it to happen.

Yeah, yeah. That's exactly what we're going for. it's really hard to nail so like we've been just iterating constantly but like I feel like we're getting there and you've talked a couple of times about like Simpsons hit and run being an inspiration for the game and I think in that way that does really apply as well like you very quickly in that game start to learn how to get back to the Simpsons house how to get to various other points of interest on the map and you start to learn little shortcuts to jump over things that, you know, may not be the first idea to get there, but it works and it's quicker.

And it's just kind of fun to do. It's exactly that. Like, we, I looked a lot at a lot of the, the maps because, yeah, a lot of them are actually just loops. It's just a track. It's actually not a huge, convoluted land. So I think we sort of nailed it pretty well with our little island where it is bigger than what it, or it feels bigger than what it actually is. So I do want to... And then, like, we've got shortcuts and stuff too, so...

So obviously that was an inspiration, but what do you find were other inspirations for the game? Even things that might not necessarily be, like, obvious inspirations, where it's like, oh, like, this is art style, like, it might, like, something entirely different that... Have you found inspired the game? Because I've always... Every time I ask this question, I always get... Oh, here are, like, the things are, like, obvious inspirations, and then it's some random thing, like, that has not what how how does what are you even saying and there's usually some good explanation for it yeah i'll i'll tease you i'll do the ones which are sort of obvious and then i'll give you the

special ones so the obvious ones we went from myro cart just because it's at the market we want to go for the controls everyone knows the control that was a huge inspiration um things like yeah simpson's hit and run um a little bit of crazy taxi um gta as well because we're trying to make a kid's GTA, simplicity things like Spiro, the music and stuff, sort of banjo-kazque as well, and also with the streamer. So that sort of thing. The more unique ones, because Logan and I, we play different games, I play a lot of elder scrolls online.

So a lot of the customization system comes from that because on there you can die your different armor slots and stuff like that. like there's a lot of customization um and i love customization so i'm like we're going to have that so that's why i think even on your ties you can change the trim you change the center and like there's so much you can do um for a lot of the ui stuff Logan plays a lot of Genshin impact so so achievements and stuff like that it's like this weird hybrid between elder scrolls online and Genshin impact just those sort of things so those are probably the two weirder I have not played Olds Girls Online myself

I did use to play a lot of RuneScape So I've definitely had that MMO fix before And with the whole like coloring your gear I did play a lot of Final Fantasy 14 Which has that same sort of system And in the latest expansion they introduced a way to Apply two dyes to your gear So you can have more customization

It's nowhere near as much customization as some games out there But it's something that they very much appreciate And, yeah, Genshin, we're not doing... No, I'm not going to play another gotcha game. I've done that too many times in my life. Yeah, no, I haven't even played it. He's the one that does it, and if I need anything, I'll ask him. He would just send me screenshots of like, oh, what about this sort of pop-up style?

Or even like the quest tracker and stuff like that. It's like a weird hybrid between, yeah, Genshin and are able to scrolls online. Maybe this is a bit of a tougher question, but... Hopefully not. Why is this the kind of game that you wanted to do? It's a mix. So it started off, I think, yeah, it was like a student project thing. And I, like, I made the whole.

At AIU at university? Yeah, at AIE, yeah. So I made a demo just in two days and whacked it together. And like, it was actually okay. it was fun um but then yeah later on i just sort of expanded on it and i just wanted a fun game um like i said i played with my son i think we i went to play the bluey game um i didn't know that it's horrible it doesn't make sense it makes sense why yeah bluey game let's see it's a horrible horrible game um so i was like i want to play a fun game um and like there's still lots of fun games

out there but it wasn't the one that was sort of scratching the itch I had I was like, we'll just just make it instead, make it funny, make it silly through the kids' GTA thing. I'm trying Oh, here we go. I was trying to find the game. Most of it seems to

just be a bluey episode. It's like we have a, it's like bluey episode and then like a minute of gameplay and then go back to the bluey episode. Because I guess, you know, for kids that are really obsessed with Louie, I guess it, it's probably something that, like, yeah, I get it, right.

Yeah, but a lot of, like, a lot of other kids games, it's all, like, even, like, kids mobiles games and stuff, like, oh, they're horrible. They're just terrible games. And kids aren't stupid, like, they just haven't learned certain things yet, but I remember being, like, tiny, like, yeah, five or even younger playing games. Like, you learn, you, you have fun with it. Yeah. And as soon as you just sort of treat.

the kids like they're stupid, then you sort of lose that sort of fun to it. Yeah, like I, I think the first game that I played where it genuinely had some level of complexity to it is Underground 2. I don't remember how old I was when I played it, but Need for Speed Underground 2 is, it's a really good game. Like, it's not like a game that you, you know, it's like, oh, you played it as a kid, it's not actually that good. No, it's like genuinely one of the best need to be games has ever been made,

and people will still argue out which one's the best. Like, either that or like most wanted. Maybe the pro street people come out sometimes. They want to get bullied. Anyway. But, yeah, there is definitely that problem with kids game, where it's like, this is, it's made to be a kids game, right?

Like, it's not that, like, the intention is to be, four kids and only four kids. And when there are games now, like, you know, there's Fortnite, right? There's, I've got younger nieces and nephews that are really big on Roblox. And Roblox has, it's got garbage games, of course. But there are some actually really, like really good games on Roblox as well.

And I, like, when you're in a space where there's that and things that are like that much more engaging unless you're a you know something like bluey can get away with doing that because it's bluey it's like yeah like bluey is you know you know how people now will look but if if you're in like you how are you you're four okay okay so you're a bit older than me then but there's going to be like there's going to be shows that you would have watched the kid where everyone you're around your age also saw as a kid um like you can talk to anyone who's 34 and is like, oh, I, I saw that show.

We, like, we have this, like, shared sort of, shared sort of knowledge. Oh, it's the Simpsons. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, Simpsons is going to apply for a lot of people, though. It's weird when it doesn't. Yeah. It's funny, yeah. I guess for, like, kids now, Simpsons isn't anywhere near as popular as it used to be.

Yeah, because I didn't have that six o'clock time slot and you watch that before the news or something like that. Right, right. But, like, for people that on my age, like, you know, think back. on the early Pokemon seasons, Bayblade, things like that. And Bluey is going to be that series that people who are like, you know, eight to 10 now, they're going to think back when they're like in their 20s, like everyone they knew watched Bluey. And, you know, when it's that much of a cultural phenomenon,

you can get away with having a game that's not really that good, right? Yeah, yeah. Which is true. It's disappointing, but true. To be glad, I think back on, the movie tie-in and cartoon tie-in games I had a kid and you know there's movie tie-in games especially there's some there's some rough ones out there

think back on most of the Harry Potter games and a lot of other things like that like most of the Spider-Man games or Superman games were not great either they've got these weird like charm to it as well though which is weird because I remember playing I think it was like a Tarzan game which I loved And there's like a, I think a Hercules, like for the Disney's Hercules one, I love one.

But like, I don't know, you could critique it and they're not good. Yeah, yeah. Like certain controls and stuff or just a whole bunch of things just aren't great. But there's just something like, I don't know, good about it. And I'm hoping we can sort of capture that same thing where like we're not doing anything amazing, breaking, make GTA numbers or anything like that. and just something enough that some kids somewhere is going to have nostalgic memories of it just like they would a shitty moody tie-in game I think you should name a bit higher than shitty movie tie-in game

I think you've got something a lot better than that but like I see what you're going for there like you want to have something where like you want to make a game that is not just here's a throwaway kids game it is something that is something that you can like genuinely have fun with and it's not just it's not just there for the sake of keeping the kid entertained yeah exactly and like the kid's not just going to forget about it it's going to be one that they sort of remember fondly hopefully i think um like going back to other examples there's one for games um there's one called a dog's life which i played as a kid

I love. Yeah. It wasn't a huge financial success. But I'm pretty sure like anyone that played it loved it. And you basically, yeah, just run around as a do very simple stuff. So we sort of want to try and do something like that where it's just wholesome sort of fun, but also silly. I know in that game you can do a poo, then pick up your poo and throw out of people. But I don't think that was the game play. I think it's just something that you can do. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I can definitely, um, I can definitely, uh, very quickly tell your sense of humor, and it kind of makes sense with some of the prior stuff that, uh, well, some of the stuff you already said and, like, the, the, the previous game he talked about. So it's just childish pot of humor, I guess. It's funny. So, I guess, where do we go from here? We've talked about, actually, you know what, I, we kind of entirely skip, past this. I don't know how we skip past it. What is the response that you got from AvCon? I guess what's the general response you've gotten from a lot of previous cons? And how is that changed over the time that the project's been worked on? So, like, Afcon was amazing. Without, I don't know, sounding too douchey or anything, like a lot of the cons we go

you get a lot of soon you started talking shit about other cons no it's all good like we always get good feedback people love it like kids love it it's almost like crack to them which is great I wish I could our game is like crack

I wish I could capture that like capture their faces just so I could show to like publishers or like other investors there's something here they like it um with and they like they always come back which is good as well because like there's so many different and they come back to our game um so like it's it's great i love that um early on like obviously we just learned certain things like okay maybe they don't place or don't do that place

um even earlier still like we quickly learned that kids can't move two sticks at once like a camera a movement so like that was early early on we fixed that real quick um But I know, yeah, everything we get back from events and expos is amazing. Like, people love the game. It's good fun. I think the biggest thing is they just want more, like, they want to play more and do more. So, yeah, it's a matter of doing that. But like grants and investors and stuff like that, that's a whole other thing.

I think we sort of get looked down for doing like a kids game or something because we're not doing some sort of pretentious. art piece or something. Right, right. That's probably just me being salty. No, I get what you're saying there, right? Like, you've got a clear vision for a fun game, and it's nothing wrong with the art PC games, but I have seen what a lot of... Some of the games I've seen get grant funding.

Like, this is a cool game, but, like, there are other... There are other cool games that are, like, not just, not just the, the artsy sort of trying to give, like, a very, a very particular kind of message, a very, like, how, I don't, I don't even know a good way to say it, like. I know what you mean. Like, they're just sort of, like, artistic statement pieces or something like that. And with those, like, for me, like, they're not fun most of the time, like, some of them are, but, like, a lot of them are just fun. And, like, what's the market? Like, the market, it's a very niche demographic they're sort of catering to. Whereas, I just want to have fun.

Like, I want whoever's playing it to have fun. Like, laugh, be happy. I don't want you to think, like, turn your brain off and just have fun. Yeah, I think that... I think with everything that I've seen from the game so far, like, that's very clearly the goal in mind. And it's very clear when you... It's very clear when a... either an individual dev or a studio has a clear vision for the game and a clear direction

rather than just we don't really know what we're like we've got like a general idea of a game we're trying to do but we don't really have a core driving principle yeah yeah that's that's right I think our principles just is it fun everything we add and do we just have to ask is it fun and if it's not we don't bother so i don't want to make anything tedious i hate i hate grinding games and stuff now like i don't know if it's just because i'm old and don't have time for stuff but you hate grinding and you talked about playing an mMO yeah oh i'm addicted fair understandable i've been playing that one for 10 years we've done 11 now okay you're you've got your one vice and it's like i i refuse to pick up another one of these yeah yeah

Yeah, that's why I can't go back and play RuneScape again. Like, I played the game for seven years. No, I'm good. You know, you know, as soon as you play it again, you're hooked. Yeah, yeah. But I try and, like, allocate time. So if I do have another game, I'll just do my dailies on a year, so, and then I'll play the other game. Right, right.

but yeah the um fun like have you ever have you ever seen that um there's an interview with um game new when half-life two was being either released or not long after release where he talked about fun was sort of one of the driving factors for half-life two and within the studio they had to they had to come up with an idea of what what does fun mean like How do we define fun? If you've not seen it, it's a really... Even just that part of the interview is like... It's really telling for what Valve...

Like, how Half-Life 2 became such a good game and what they used to drive their developments. Like, oh, why are the barrels red? Does it... Is there a reason why they should be? No. But like, it's something that sort of very clearly indicates that. Like other things in the game, like, does this thing really make, does this make sense in a realistic context?

No, but I'm also playing a video game, and I don't care if it's realistic. I care. Yeah. Does this create an engaging, an engaging system? Yeah, yeah. We do a lot of that in like a weird hybrid sense sometimes. Like, like our roads are obviously bigger than what an actual road would be because you need to navigate a horse and cart and everything. and the controls aren't tight controls.

They're pretty loose. So, like, yeah, that's what we do with some of that. We just sort of make it accessible kind of thing. And saying that as well, we also look at things. I'm just probably critical of some of the designers. They might put something, like, say, they got some test dummies, and then for some reason, why would you do that? If, like, if the soldiers are fighting, it should be low grass, not tall grass.

or like if this is a pathway why is there like giant tree in the road or something like those things are sort of critique and be like it's got to be a bit more realistic like if it's near the shore it should be sand not vibrant grass or whatever

right right it's it's there is a place for realism to create like a coherent world right like you wouldn't put a you wouldn't put like an oak tree on the beach like this doesn't really make any sense there

that that environment you know the palm tree coconut tree sort of deal like that that fits a lot more with the vibe

you're going and there if you have it from this like the go like the the get-go

that there is going to be like these weird like things placed in weird locations and it's consistently done weirdly like that can also work

but if something feels out of place where everything else it makes sense why it's like this but one thing is just a little bit off, that one thing is going to immediately grab your attention.

Yeah. And the other thing as well is, like, we'll do a whole bunch of things that people don't notice, but it's just a thing, like, it's a feel. Like, they can't articulate it or find what it is, but, like, I think other people, like, the juice or like, you just do small things that they won't know, but it makes a big difference with or without it. So, without it, they would say, oh, something's not quite right, but then, you just do small things. not quite right but then with it it feels much better and they just don't know what it is but

it could just be something small that we've changed like either on the UI or even just on the road suddenly we've defined a bit more like a dirt between the road and the grass. It just adds that little bit of polish which they wouldn't pick out like if asked but like subconsciously like they they know right right right that can get a little bit you can go a little bit too far with that right where you start polishing things that only someone who is, you know, either pixel peeping or they are like one of the other game devs is going to notice. And like it's good to have the idea of polish in mind, but it can also be something that it can take away from things that are more substantial changes.

And, you know, again, like you're saying, with slightly moving the border of the road, right? Like, yes, but that's also something you can. can you can sort of mess with until the end of time. That's why I think these, like the expos and events act as like reality checks. So like what do people actually see? What do they actually notice? Right. So like, yeah, certain areas we spend all this time on and they don't even see it.

Well, we're stupid for any of that time audit. And then other things that we like the player goes to and looks at, then yeah, sure, we might add a little bit more detail there. and like other little things as well when when they notice then it's like oh wow and it's like that little extra moment they're like oh there's actually a lot more here than surface level like there's a bit more um I think that adds value to it as well yeah finding that balance is is tricky right yeah I think back on like PS2 racing games back before we had this ability to make hyper realistic everything crazy super realistic a lot of

A lot of those games would do a lot of fakery, a lot of trickery with backgrounds, especially if there were crowds, you would, if you, you know, slowly crept up to the crowd, you go back to look at the old Mario Kart games, a lot of times it's just a 2D cutout, and they're just like, it's like a looping 2D sprite, and that's basically all it's there. Yeah, no, I notice, so those are the things like I used to notice as a kid. I'd sort of just wander around and look at that stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you're playing the game, like, properly...

you don't notice it's fine. Yeah. But then if you sort of just, yeah, wandering around. And that's the other thing, because we got that sort of free roam aspect to it, we need to, like, I feel like we should make it much better than what it is in certain spots. Like, actually add those little bits of polish. Yeah, even like more recent games, I think on, like, um, Tokyo Extreme Race of 2025, if you, you're supposed to be going down the highways 400 kilometers an hour.

but if you go slowly and you look at some of the buildings you're like ah you guys haven't made a game in the past 20 years i think you've actually just taken the PS2 model and put it into this game yeah yeah but then like say if you were to slow down and seen it being really good you're like oh wow yeah yeah yeah so that's what i want to sort of try and capture as well just like oh wow this actually that's pretty cool I think having that simple art style makes that a lot easier than having something

Well even if it's just There's like different levels of Simple cartoony art style And having that like low poly Like it Obviously it's still a lot of work for the artist But it's still something where You can

You can do that polish Without it being something that is Going to take way too much time To make adjustments to Exactly yeah So it's just little things as well Just like maybe on the back of a building or down alleyway or something Put a little surprise there

And that sort of like ties in with the achievements as well Because like some of the collect rules we put in spots Where we then want them to look at this little bit of extra detail We've added by behind a rock or something They've driven past a thousand times or whatever But they go behind it And oh wow there's something here that's kind of cool And I guess if you set up that

That sort of expectation that there's going to be hidden things in some of these locations it does encourage people to go and explore if they are the kind of person who does want to try to you know, do all the achievements, collect everything. You're going to have people that kind of

ignore a lot of that stuff but that's what you're always going to have for the people who are engaged in like who do want to do all that collection having a way to keep them engaged and not just there's a lot of games that have a lot of collectibles and it's kind of just

it kind of just feels like a checklist, right? Yeah, yeah. Like, I think on the Assassin's Creed games where it's like, oh, go to tower, go to next tower, and everything is on the map, there's objective markers everywhere, and it's like, okay, I don't care anymore. Because that's where it's tedious,

and that's where we always say that, like, is it fun? Like, we need to make sure, is it fun. Yeah, it is, so. Oh, we think it is. So earlier you said there was one map And I assume the story is going to take place on that map as well Yeah, yeah

Okay, okay There is So there's some little areas which like aren't on the map So you've got like your sort of castle interior As well as this big sort of boat Like small zones outside of the main map Yeah, yeah And they're like sort of like an instance sort of things

like one of the boss battles or something or one of the mini-game mode. But for the most part, everything's on that one map. Depending on how well we go, we do have lots of ideas for other maps, but we just wanted to keep it within scope. We would have loved to have done more of like a thematic one, like a volcano, like a volcanic one and like an ice one.

So I know who knows, maybe we do some add-ons or D.L.C. or something if we're like. Well, I was going to say, would you be, assuming the game, well, would you be interested in whether it be either that or another game in that same sort of universe, would you be interested in sort of expanding upon that? Or is the team kind of done with this idea and wants to move on to something else? I'm not sure, it's a bit of a mix. I think we all want to keep going on with it and like do more. But it's all just dependent as well.

I think, so like Logan, who's like the lead program, like we all sort of do like game jam to do something different um i don't think we've gotten sick of castle cab yet i think we still we still like it um i was talking some devs who are like four years into the project and they're like yeah i i really want i really want to release this i guess a year and a half you still got a bit of that like a bit of that excitement there yeah no i know so many other people that have like released their games they're done with it they want to it to be done. But I think we've got a lot of potential here. And like it is fun. We can do a lot of silly stuff with it. We got like a huge library of assets and everything. So like I'd

like to just expand upon that. But we'll see. We'll see how this goes. If it's a huge flop, then that's unfortunate. If it does well, then yeah, we've got plenty to do plenty to, yeah, expand on. Would you want to do add-ons for this game? Like let's just say it does well. Would you want to do add-ons for this game or do you want to make a sequel to the game and then expand upon the systems in ways that wouldn't really fit into the game you already have? A few different. I think we'd try and do both. Like we'd do a couple add-ons, like maybe add a couple islands. But we also want to try and be, like we're not doing like heavy monetization or anything. Sure, sure. Pumping out DLC. Like, who knows if we just do it as a free

add on or whatnot, we'll see. It all depends on how much money we made from this. So for the most part, just add on to this. Maybe after like, because we're building for Switch, once that sort of dies off and then everyone has a Switch 2, then maybe we'll do, I know, Castle Cap 2 or something. We do have a running joke in the studio where we've got these sequels. or sequel names.

I think we've got 20 of them. And they're just horrible, horrible versions of all the Fast and the Furious franchise names. Uh-huh. So, yeah, just tons of like, one of them, I think, was like Castle Cab Origins, the first ride. Like all these stupid names. Yeah, so there's potential there. We'll see. We'll see where it goes.

when you when you mentioned that I immediately thought of did have you seen the trailer for the Pac-Man Metroidvania game no no yeah there's a pack there's like a hyper-serious

Pac-Man Metroidvania game it's like really dark you like it's like I guess it's supposed to be the origin story of Pac-Man I don't know why it exists it's an official game I don't know why it was made

but it does exist sounds good though when you talk about like you know the first ride the origin like that that's what I thought I'm like you entirely change the art style you go like hyper realistic

horse and just do something done like that we we do have a hyper realistic horse skin which like we're not We're not going to put in the game, but like we just have it there just being silly. I do think something like that would be fun as like some secret thing you could find. Like a little Easter egg or something. Yeah, yeah.

Like it's not an achievement that you have listed. It's just some, you've got to do some weird convoluted set of, you never expect anyone to actually find it. It's just like some stupid convoluted set of instructions. Yeah. I'd be so keen for that. I'd love to do that. Maybe I'll convince Logan to do it. If you get some random free time to do it.

I was looking at the system requirements for the game, and I did notice that I don't know if this is actually the case. You have a SteamOS build listed here. Yeah, so our tech artist has a Steam deck, and he has the game right of the deck. So, yeah. And also the system requirements on a theme deck. Well, yeah, the Steam deck's just much better than a Switch.

So, like, it's, yeah. Yeah, I do have my Steam deck sitting right there. Awesome. Back on my shelf. And I am a Linux user myself. Yeah, there we go. I was running over my cable. I don't, I'm not really someone who cares

Oh my, I ran over the cable, like, whatever, whatever, I'll fix it later Um, there's this like weird men There was this mentality in the Linux world at one point Whereas like, we, there was this idea like no tucks, no bucks If a game doesn't have a native Linux build, then, you know, people aren't going to buy it But ever since Valve's done a lot of work, like with the seam deck and with like Proton and all this stuff to make Windows games just work on Linux. That's kind of gone away.

But it is always still neat when I see, when I do see like an actual native build available there as well. So, like, it's tricky because even, like, other ones like Mac and stuff, like they don't really get as many game releases. Right, right. We figure what the heck we, we're doing Switch. We might as well just do everything. Right.

Um, and on that, like, we've done Android builds as well. Um, we haven't, do you have Android controls for it or is just like, can, can we make it happen? So I was just being stupid and put it up my phone. Um, and then I did like a Bluetooth with the Xbox controller. Um, but the plan later on down the road also just through the, like a single player version. Um, and since we got the, the simple joycon controls. easy with the on-screen controls for a phone. But that's, that's just us being ambitious, we'll do that. We'll do that later.

Right, right, right. But I can easily see, like, a kid sitting there with their iPad playing the game. Yeah, and if you can get it running on the Switch, like, the Switch, like, the Switch, at this point is pretty underpowered compared to, like, modern phones. Oh, it's underpowered when it released. Yeah, but, Nintendo's never really been the, like, the, Nintendo's never really been the, studio to make the most powerful console. They've always focused on, like all of their first party games

always focused on what can we do with the limited hardware and they've always wanted to, they wanted to make the console interesting itself, not the fact that it can do crazy graphics. Yeah, but they've always been smart with that.

Like, I, like, yeah, good on them. Like, I really like it. They also, I think they do it because at least the, the hardware's tested, it's been out for a while. And then it also makes it a bit cheaper. which I respect as well and then

it's forcing us to optimize and do better the whole game I think at the moment it's less than 600 meg like that's tiny you compare it to like some of the other games that kind of stuff like they're

not optimise at all the file sizes are like stupid like hundreds of gigs or whatever I think you can fit the hold up let me just double check I think you can fit the game on a DVD Storage limit Let's see

No, no, you definitely can fill a DVD Can you feel a CD? Hold up. CD storage limit. Just bet 700 meg. 700 meg storage limit on a CD. So we could put it on there. Awesome.

But that's where like the limitations with the switch has, like, forced us to, like, do better. Yeah, having that idea of switch development in mind from the start, I guess it allows you to sort of focus your optimization and ensure that something... Ensure that the game actually runs well on basically anything. I did notice, like, the system spects you've listed. I don't know if these are, like, actual specs, you've gone and tested old stuff,

or it's just, like, it'll probably work on something really old. I think the ones we put on there were the computers we are using in the office for like my worst sort of computers in the office. Someone's running your Haswell system? Okay, sure. I'm pretty sure what, I think it's like the 960s as well. Yeah, it's like an I7-4790 and a 960, which I think the 4790 has got to be like a 15-year-old CPU. It's horrible

And I'm pretty sure it could run on even worse stuff To be honest That's how we've sort of crunched it And optimised it So I'm hoping that Like this would just be proof That like look at what we've done Like a four player split screen open world game

That size, that optimise Let us help other Indies optimize their stuff At Avcom What was it running on then? I assume you weren't running it on like minimal specs then We're running on my laptop, which I'm not sure actually what it is. I'm trying to see if there's anything on here that I can look at. No stickers?

Yeah, that's what I'm looking for the stickers. I'm like, no, there's nothing good here. But my laptop is like a gaming laptop, I guess. How long ago do you buy it? How long ago do you get that? Maybe two, three years ago, I reckon. Yeah, okay. Okay, okay, yeah. So it's a pretty, pretty recent gaming laptop.

Yeah, yeah. Which is much best in the specs listed. But like the specs listed we have in the office and we play it on. Like in four street, uh, full play co-op? Yeah, yeah. Wow. Okay. Yeah. It's fine. Like we've played it on my phone and everything.

It's, it's really well optimized. Well, that's definitely good to hear. that is a I always like hearing a game actually runs well that's a nice change of pace from some of the

games that I run across hmm well that's where it's going weird so like now that we've got this like sort of like hyper focus on optimization we pick up all these little issues

like everywhere we look like we look at any other game for like oh I can see a ton of problems already where they haven't done that like yeah well I think it's been a fun

a fun talk for anyone who wants to check out well I guess there's no demo or anything yet is there going to be a demo that comes out or you're just going to wait till I need a triple check with our marketing team so we do like I try and update the each page with the demo I need to figure out how steam is with demos and like how that ties into like the yeah we need to announce it all that kind of stuff but if Anybody, like, even just emails or contacts us, I'll just send them a free demo. Like, I just send us, like, the current build.

Like, I'm pretty easy with it. Okay, sure. Yeah. If anyone wants to follow along with the game, do you guys have a Discord or anything? Yeah, we got a Discord. I am not good with Discord. Is all of it listed on the Steam page?

Or on the website? Hopefully. Hopefully. Hopefully. I don't know. I palm it off to other people to do. Okay, fair enough, fair enough. The Discord Castle Cab, I'm pretty sure it would be on the Steam page.

Otherwise, I can send you all the details. See what's on the website. It's on the website. Go to the website. It's on the website. Good, good. Yay. Yeah, maybe mention that to someone.

Chuck the Discord link on that one. Yeah. Because you've got Blue Sky, Instagram, TikTok, X, and the website listed here, but not the Discord. All right, I'll get that sorted. We do have a link tree as well, which has all of that other stuff on there. Anything else you want to mention about the game? I assume you don't want to give any sort of predictions on when it might be done. Probably not, because I just had a meeting with the investors the other day telling him we're going to delay it.

understandable understandable but definitely definitely next year we're going to the plan is early next year like q1 um for switch and pc um and then we'll stagger out xbox and playstation depending on development time um and then we'll do all the other ones as well sort of in that time leading up before q4 christmas time we'll do a heavy push um i think we're also planning to do a lot of marketing around like a parody of GTA is they're the big guys next year. So we'll sort of do some parody trailers and whatnot, try and do that. Because no one else is going to release when GTA releases. Sure, sure.

We'll see. I assume you're going to be at some cons before it releases. Yeah, yeah, like everyone. So we've got what, Gamescom next month. We've got, yeah, the Pixel 1 in Perth in September. We got G-CAP and Pax in October in Melbourne. We've got... I assume we're going to do Sage again next year?

Sorry? I assume you're going to do Sage again next year? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll be there. And then there's always, I think, what the playbacks and unwinds that they do here, at Game Plus, we're always here. So, yeah. Awesome.

20. So if anyone's in, well, mostly, mostly in Adelaide, but if you're at some of the other ones, you'll get a chance to play it, hopefully. There's always, at least at Avcon, there was a crowd there the entire time. So I imagine it's probably pretty similar at the other ones. I hope so.

Pax Pax is always good. We're always busy at Pax. So, yeah, in Melbourne. So it'll be our first time in Sydney, first time in Perth, first time in Cologne, Germany, so we'll see. Awesome. So anything else you want to mention, or is that pretty much it? I think that's pretty much it.

Just if you could wish list us, even if you're not going to get it on Steam would be amazing. It just helps us sort of promote that there is potential publishers might help us and give us some money. Awesome. Okay, my main channel is Brodie Robertson. I do Linux videos there six-ish days a week. I sometimes stream there as well, so check that out. I've got the gaming channel, Brodion Games. I probably, I don't know, maybe I've finished Kazan the first berserker in split fiction.

If I have, I know we're playing Metal Gear Solid, I don't know what the other slot will be. So check it out, and I don't know, it'll be something. If you're watching the video version, this, you can find the audio version on basically every podcast platform. There is an RSS feed as well. On Spotify, we have a video. if you like Spotify video for some reason and if you want to see the video version not on Spotify, it is on YouTube

at Tech Over Tea. How do you want to sign us off? What do you want to say? I am not prepared for any of that. No one is. Yeah, if you could please wish list Castle Cab that would be amazing. Like I said, even if you plan to get it on the other platforms, it still helps

to wish list it for us. Awesome.