Tech Over Tea - Delete The Game & Start From Scratch | Bad Plan Studios

Episode Date: July 26, 2024

Today is the first episode of our post AVCon indie game showcases, today we have Bad Plan Studios the developers of the upcoming End Of Ember, a gory roguelite game inspired by the likes of Binding of Isaac but with some interesting inclusions from games like Doom and a focus on just adding things that look horrific and cool. ==========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========== YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7d2yMy_ruM0NsVgYtl8foA Twitter: https://x.com/end_of_ember Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/endofember ==========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 Supercozman https://twitter.com/Supercozman https://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 Robertson. And today, we are back with the first of the podcast we're going to do post-AvCon with various game developers I met while I was there. Today, we have the developers of End of Ember from Bad... Is it just Bad Plan or Bad Plan Studios? Is that... Is the studio actually part of your name? It is a studio in there.

Okay, okay, sweet. I was sure that was part of your name as well. Okay, welcome Chad, Eli, and Dan from Bad Plants Studios. I guess, before we get into any of the game stuff, explain who you are, your background, and just, yeah, go from there. I can go first. Yeah, sure. My name's's Chad I'm the cat herder of Bad Plan Studios or like production director so I do like

production, business, all that sort of thing I have an academic background so I worked in universities and now in the vet sector and teaching currently my day job is teaching people how to make businesses studios, game dev studios how to make businesses uh studios game game dev studios how to how to build their business so yeah awesome uh my name is dan

oh my name is damaginnis um i'm basically the design man of like the thing i did art and stuff like that what's that it's design man your official title is that what you put in your business yeah we've got some pretty bad plan has some pretty budget titles hey it's pretty good good um art warlock art warlock i can work with that yeah and um so i just do the art and stuff like that in my you know in we've all got like our other things we do apart from this. So apart from that, I'm a co-owner of Greenlight Comics in the city. And I also am an illustrator for children's books for Scholastic. And I also run my own podcast about horror films called Terror Vision Horror Podcast.

And that's about it at the moment. And I make these games. Eli, what about you? Yeah, so I'm the programmer on the team I've just recently completed uni So yeah, I've come on the team just to originally help fix bugs And now I'm rebuilding the game from the ground up So we can have something that's a bit cleaner and more organized

Because I made a terrible game Yeah, no, you didn't make a terrible game but you did if it was terrible we wouldn't rebuild it but yeah the game's fine it's the codes that's the problem that's exactly right I mean some of my code might be the problem

too but we'll just keep that one quiet but yeah I'm essentially just doing the tech side of things and just trying my best to rebuild it at the moment. It's a three-man team. It's like business, art, tech, and that's our vibe. Three pillars. Perfect.

Yeah. It's everything you need. We don't need anyone else. Well, we do. So I guess what is the game itself? I was showing the trailer just then while you're going through that introduction yourselves but what is the game and what inspired uh what inspired it because i think it's pretty clear someone looks at it but we do have like audio listeners here if someone looks at the gameplay i think they can tell like you know the sort of games that

you guys have played before and the games that you guys like, but I want to hear it from your side. All right. Do you want me to do this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so basically I just... I don't know. So what was the question again kind of thing? What influences it?

Like what is the game and what the inspiration is. Yeah, so the inspiration is basically my life of playing games. I just like... I love games. I just, like, I love games, like growing up, I loved Doom, I loved Smash TV, and then later on in life, like, you know, when rogues and roguelikes and roguelites all came into vibe, like, I fully

got into, like, Barney of Isaac, and then I went into the Gungeon, and Nuclear Throne, and stuff like that, and I just liked them so much and i was like i just want to make someone else feel like what i'm feeling about what something i create and um but i was like but none of these are violent enough so i was like i want to like um put in that like i love comedy horror like know, like stuff like Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 and, like, all those kind of, like, fun, like, you know,

not sadistic horrors or anything like that, like fun, you know, like over-the-top funny violence with arms coming off and blood everywhere and, you know, ridiculous lines and just funny stuff like that. And I was like, I'm going to put all that stuff that I like and mush it into the game that I want to play. And I'm like, I don't have it yet, so I'm going to put all that stuff that I like and mush it into the game that I want to play. And I'm like, I don't have it yet, so I'm going to make it myself. And I started. I hadn't built a game before.

I never used Unity, really. So I just opened up Unity and just went, let's go. And that's why the coding at the moment is like a dog's breakfast because I was just learning how to code as we're going along. And so Eli's is dealing with that now. And so we're just like, let's redo it all. So what we had at Avcon was like perfect for a prototype. It's like a classic prototype.

It was like filled out enough that you could get the experience. And it was a pretty good response. I could get the experience and like and it was pretty good response i mean you played it brody seemed to well you didn't hate it enough to not want to podcast so you know uh but people like loved it and you can get that you get that vibe you get that experience it's like a market validation right so it's like what's the value proposition is the game fun right and it was like people love it um but then we looked at it and leading up to avcon it was like bugs casing bugs and they're coming up elsewhere and we're kind of like oh the code base is just bad and so so now we're into now we're into full development building it from the ground up again or elo yeah yeah so what you had at avcon was it just up to that

boss there and that would have been the end of it if someone beat that? Or did it go further from that? Because I didn't beat the boss myself, as you guys saw. No, it was just that. Like, so my goal for Avcon was to just have, like, it's basically 80, 85% of the play loop in there kind of thing. Like, you get the start, you get a slight bit of a tutorial, and then you go into, like, a run, and you get to beat a boss. And usually, and that's what I wanted for Avcom, but then in the actual game, you'd be able to go back to your hub world and do this kind of, like, vibe where you're, there's a whole other part of the game

where you're actually digging up out of hell. Because a lot of people don't know the story of the game. Yeah, we kind of jumped ahead a little bit. What is the premise of the game? Yeah, yeah, so basically, a little bit. What is the premise of the game? Yeah, yeah. So basically, so it's a top-down twin-stick roguelike shooter. You know, stuff like Gungeon and Nuclear Throne, all those ones I was saying before, Barney and Visor,

with roguelike elements and stuff. And you're a little girl named Ember, and you wake up at the start of the game, and it's your birthday. And you, through this opening level tutorial level you learn that like you've been brought up in this kind of like opulent rich like house and stuff and your parents are there and they've thrown a party but it's more for them and you find it they're like vacuous kind of like not very good parents. He gets drunk and accidentally hits you into the pool, into the side, into the edge of the pool and smashes your head and you die. And then from there you go down and you end up going accidentally getting sent to hell.

Even though you're like the nicest person in the world, you've never done anything bad. even though you're, like, the nicest person in the world. You've never done anything bad. And then from there you meet, like, this sentient chainsaw that, like, you shouldn't really be able to use, but, like, it lets you use it and you go from there. And then, like, the story unfolds with, like, you know, and there's, like, all these, like, layers to it. You know, there's, like, you know, the chainsaw's using you

for a certain reason. Like, your parents have, like, its backstory. And then you end up, like, so you end up, you're not, like, trying to escape hell. You're kind of digging deeper into hell to, like, kick Satan's ass for, like, basically stuffing up this administration of sending you to hell. But you're also, like, digging your way up out of hell through this flesh, because hell is this big, like, sentient giant creature. And, yeah, like, you're digging up through these mounds of flesh and gore and bone not to escape but to actually grab your parents

and drag them back down to hell because, like, spoilers, they originally, they're escaped demons, and that's why you can use these, like, hell weapons that no one else can use and why you can escape hell. Right, right. That's it, really. It's pretty simple. So you mentioned that Eli was the newest member,

but when did you join, Chad? And how did you get involved in this? Yes, I probably formally joined a couple or two ago. And when Dan came out and said I made a game, you should play it, I was there because he was in Game Plus which is a

co-working space in Adelaide where I work and so I played it I don't think I was even there yet Oh yeah, no, but you came to visit, that's where you got people to play it, right? Yeah, I just sent it to you because I was like, Chad, look at my game. And you're like, whoa, she's bringing this to my work.

And I'm like, what do you do? And you're like, I didn't even know. And then I went there and it just introduced, like the whole world opened up to like, there's all these people making games in Adelaide. It happened to that point I was just like some dork. Well, you had a couple of friends, a couple of dev friends. Yeah but then Dan said you know it works right? I'm like yeah it works, it's rad, it's fantastic

and lots of people enjoyed that early build, that first build and he said I think I want to do this. What do I need to do to make this a thing? And I'm like well you know probably like some form of marketing and community building is what you need to do started discord and he went okay started a discord um and i followed for a while and then it looked like we were he just kept making the game and then it looked like there was more of a role for forming a studio and actually formalizing production if you got more than one person working on it and things like that. So, yeah, that's how it worked out for me. And then Eli came on. I was going to ask, how did Eli come along?

Probably about six months ago, I got asked just to help out with some things. When it was just me? Yeah, yeah, when it was just Dan. Just to fix a few bugs and problems he was having with the game, which I managed to, I think, figure out. And then, like... And I met Eli through Game Plus, like, a workspace thing, and we just got along.

Yeah, well, maybe. But yeah, we were working next to each other, and he showed me the game while we were working on another game, and it was... Yeah, I was pretty amazed by it. And he wanted some help. So I made a decision to sort of get in there and just have a look at some things. And then probably a couple months after that, I came back sort of thing and started helping him more officially with the game and planning stuff out for Avcon and things like that.

Yeah. It was all kind of loose and fluid at the start. Yeah. Yeah. Until we just suddenly went, let's, and then it was basically Chad just emailing me going, hey, I've got this idea. Let's start a studio. Yeah, yeah.

And like me, you and Eli. And that was basically it. And I was like, okay. Yeah, yeah. Because I originally went to Game Plus to kind of find some help because I knew I didn't know what I was doing. And I knew I made this thing and I knew that there was more to do that I couldn't handle so I was

like okay let's find maybe some help and I didn't want to be a solo dev because I knew that my code was like I'd only been learning it for like 8 months like kind of thing and I was using like assets and stuff from like the asset store as in like

code chunks I started with like more mountain stuff and um but yeah now we're to the point now where that's kind of just getting in the way of what we want to do so that's why we're like cleaning it up starting from scratch and building it back up to what it was and yeah i'd recommend that for anyone if you wanted to like just quickly make it like you'll learn how to make a game get like some get any of the more mountain stuff they're so good like and But they taught me how to think. Like, the feel asset is so good. What's the feel?

Yeah, it's called feel. We're probably still going to use that. It's like for feedbacks and juice and stuff in the game. It adds a lot of, yeah, like feedback. Yeah, and I've never been taught how to make games, so I just watch YouTube videos and just, you know, how do you do this? Oh, okay, there's a YouTube video.

Just followed it, did it, move on. Everyone learns with that sometimes as well. There's so much resources online other than official places where you can learn all that sort of stuff. It's the way. It's a new way of the world. You want to learn anything. The room we're in right now, I built from watching YouTube videos.

Seriously, how to insulate a wall, how to put up a ceiling, and stuff like that. And you can do anything these days. If you just go, okay, cool, that's it. Let's go. Done. I can't remember how I did any of it, but at that time, I remember how to do it.

That's how it works. Myself, I have some formal education in programming i did a software engineering degree at uni sa um but i do think that especially if you have a goal in mind for a lot of things you can just go down focus on like the very core thing you want to do and yes it's nice to have all of those additional background things like oh you understand all of this internals of how computers function all that stuff but if all your goal is is to make a game you can get started like the tools that are available nowadays are so much better than they've ever been. It's getting easier. I'm well aware that I couldn't have done this like 10 years ago. You know what I mean?

The knowledge base probably just wasn't out there, or might have been, but it would have been hard coding. Borderline, probably Unity and stuff in Unreal 10 years ago would have been manageable, pretty close to what it is today. But before that, Unity was on JavaScript and stuff in Unreal 10 years ago would have been manageable, pretty close to what it is today. But before that, it was like Unity was on JavaScript and stuff like that. It was crazy. Yeah, everything always gets easier. But there's been a huge leap,

especially with stuff like Fortnite on the Unreal Engine and stuff like that. It's brought a lot of money into it. And yeah, as computers get better as well, it's a lot easier. AI helps too. People use that to teach them. There's all sorts of things. Yeah, the AI teaching, though yeah the scripting isn't that good as i found out yeah but you didn't get it to teach you you got it to just do it for you didn't you oh one or two things but yeah it was yeah ask i'm done you're still teaching me like i didn't know how to do it

and then i it gives you the code i'm like oh yeah i get that kind of but then you're like dude it's calling it a million times oh yeah the code go re-chain in update i don't know what that means yeah like every time you picked up money you just break the game it seems like at this point there is a number of a number of like holdovers that are causing a lot of um performance. Like when I was playing through it, there was the I don't remember what room it was I think it was one of the rooms

where the framerate dropped to like 5 FPS. Yeah man. Yeah and that's just me not knowing what I'm doing kind of thing and that's why I realised that I can't fix or optimise this stuff. It's at the time knowing what I'm doing kind of thing. And that's why I realized that I can't fix or optimize this stuff. It's at the time now that I needed to bring help in.

And I do have some programmer friends that kind of encourage me, like a group of friends who were into it. But they've always been into it kind of thing, but I've never really cared until I did all of a sudden. Right, right. But they were like just just get it out just get to start yeah and like optimization comes later someone else will optimize it yeah someone's optimizing it it's not it's mostly not the code either there's other things that

were it's like unity itself as well there was like materials for every single sprite which makes it hard to you know manage i'm sure you know all about that sort of stuff. But the more materials there are, the harder it is to draw things. Yeah, I'm learning every day. Collisions and all that sort of stuff, animations, they're all bringing it down. So it wasn't always just the coding. It was the structure of things as well. We tried with Inunity.

At the start, I didn't even realise a script could do more than one thing. I was just making a new script for every single thing I wanted to do technically you should do that anyway because there's like certain principles you follow and it makes it very even if even if it did the same thing as something else i'd just put that in you know yeah okay it doesn't matter like it is what it is like i'm not ashamed of like what i learned i'm imagining there's probably some Some reused Or remade scripts that are Slightly modified where you could have Just slightly abstracted it a bit Instead of duplicating that work

That's what I'm imagining exists right now Yeah there was We got a new project now which I started And I just brought over all the art But I'm doing all the logic and everything else again And I noticed a few things In the old stuff that was Lag stuff like lagging the game. But yeah, we had event-based stuff.

One was on trigger enter, and then one was on area entered, and it was exactly the same apart from one line. And it was just like... And then there was also the top-down stuff, which had their own version of it too. So every time I was looking at a script, I was like, oh, why isn't that one working like this one? And it was because it was a different code, but yeah.

Yeah, and like if I just wanted to make something, I'd just like make a collider, make it do it, and then if I wanted something else to happen, I'd just make another collider and then make that do it. And if I wanted something else in that same room to happen, I'd just make another collider and then make that do it. I didn't understand that you could put one thing on a collider and stuff like that i just never use the program for the room had um like six colliders on it or something i was coming out like six triggers i was coming out like an artistic way of like how because you know i

knew how to i know how to i know how to film i know how to do photoshop and that kind of stuff that was like i understood how programs worked but i just didn't understand kind of like the workflow of work. And I do now. Like I'd probably do it differently. If I started again and it would be differently, it'd still be like, oh, shit. It's always the case. Like even now I'm still learning.

Yeah, everyone learns. I've only been doing it five years. But, yeah, you had like a collider on a collider on a collider. And for every collider that's on another one, it's just going to add like another two calls. I think I had 12. So, like, it just, you know, like, gets to a point where they're all checking each other,

then they're all checking each other again in different ways and layers, and... Yeah. But my donkey game, with my bad coding, people have all, like, got erections looking at it. I mean, I still do, but, um, you should have seen in the game, like, before, probably, like, maybe, like, three or four months before Avcon.

You couldn't even get to the boss at all. Yeah, there was... But before that, you could. Yeah, Dan was showing me the boss this time, and I was like, oh, yeah, I wouldn't mind trying to get to it. And I tried playing the game so many times, I could just never get there. One of the reasons was the lag.

The other reason was the game was just really hard at that point it's gonna go back to being hard though yeah yeah that was the avcom build yeah you know we want people to finish it it's gonna get back it's gonna it's gonna get it it's gonna have a hard shift in hardness you know not like some other ones i don't know we might have a um like hell mode or something where you just get stuck with giant things. Well, there's games like Hades out there which have their progressive difficulty system where you can activate certain things. Like, oh, enemies have more health.

There's a time limit for getting through an area, things like that. You get better stuff, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So for Chad, how did you get yourself involved in just the game space in general? What made you want to get involved in that? Yeah, so I've played video games my whole life since I was a kid, since I was about four.

I played Smash TV on the arcade. And so when I first played in November, I'm like, my God, this is a twin stick shooter. There's not enough of these games out there, I remember. And I just really liked the genre but, you know, I basically spent most of my life working in universities as an educator an academic, teaching and learning and all that sort of thing, and then part way

through that I started a business because I'm like, ah, I'm going to start a business the good thing about business is anyone can start one and it's like making a game, you can make it up yourself and figure it out as you go. Right. And that business was called Game Truck Australia. It was a mobile video game arcade with four widescreen TVs and Xboxes for kids' birthday parties. So I'd rock up out the front of someone's house.

Up to 16 kids would get in the truck. They'd play Minecraft or Call of Duty or whatever. And then they'd leave and I'd drive off and that was the birthday party. And so I learned a lot about business. And do you like that you specify they leave? That's important. They do. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I did use the joke with the parents that, you know, I'd drive the truck off a cliff for the right price. But so I learned a lot about business um from from doing that and then a couple of years ago i was um you know in a contract that wasn't going so well and i was looking for work and a job came up as games producer trainer at the academy of interaction of entertainment and i went uh this is kind of a dream job to work in games and i've because i don't have any programming or art skills like i'd always thought it had been out of my out of my reach and i went ah surely i'll never get the job but i applied for it and i got the job so um so now i teach people who have finished their game development qualification how to build a studio and i teach them about about business and i'm

located in game plus and so that way I've been in the orbit of studios. I've come to realise that actually a really important thing that every studio needs is some business now. There's a lot on the business side of contracts and finance and dealing with people and dealing with their stakeholders, dealing with media, like awesome podcasters, and, you know, social media and marketing and PR and all of that sort of stuff is really super, super important for indie studios.

So it's like, oh, I'm helping. I'm having a wonderful time. Great. Yeah, from what I've heard from a lot of your students, man, you're pretty awesome at your job, so. Yeah, I pay them to say that. You taught my brother and he was just always telling me how good you were. Yeah, I tried it.

And a number of other people too that I know. That's awesome. That's awesome. You've hit on a really good point there. And this is something that exists in... So I talk a lot with people from the Linux space involving open source projects and things like that and the same thing very much exists there as well where there is a lot of developers and there's some art people but most people do not really have a good understanding of how to handle everything else they might be incredible

programmers and they might be incredible at art or incredible at music but when it comes to even just like little things like the social media stuff there is a lot of people who have absolutely no idea like what they should be doing what they shouldn't be posting how much they should be posting how how like how important is to make sure you don't go radio silent for six months and just basic things like that. Yeah, and so for me, I love this space because I'm really into leadership, broadly defined.

And I think there are lots of challenges around these things. And sometimes the challenges are known things, like what platforms are good for what, those sorts of things that you're saying but then people often have a lot of deeper challenges as well so I find that a lot of people will not be for example doing marketing or posting to social media because they don't want to put themselves out there or they don't want to be seen as you know kind of like full of themselves or self-promoting or there might be cultural stuff around that as well that in some cultures it's not it's a bit frowned upon to be self-promoting quite so much and all of that so um i really enjoy working with

people and with studios that have these kind of kind of complex or adaptive challenges and work through that stuff as well yeah and we saw that a lot at avcom so um so i did um i did a series of like quick videos tiktok videos yeah i did see those yeah with each of the studios yeah and uh and it was like you know what are three words you would use to describe your game and some people were like yep bang bang bang and some people were like oh oh what you want to video me oh hang on right kind of didn't Kind of didn't want it to happen at all, which is fine. And some people going,

oh, three words to describe my game. And it's kind of like, well, you could have your hook, you could have your elevator pitch. It shouldn't be like too hard to figure that out, but it is super challenging for a lot of people. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, one example,

I had the guys on the podcast last year, but one example who did it really well in that video was the guys from Super Bowl Pork Chicken. Yes. I don't remember who guys in the podcast last year but one example who did it really well when that video was the guys from super ball pork chicken like yes i don't remember who had in the video um who actually we're talking to um alex i think it was alex okay yes um but like straight away like everyone in that team knows exactly like what their game is who it's for why they're like why people want to play it and you know it sure it's not a game for everyone absolutely and no game is going to be but they know what the game is they have an idea for the game and they know where they want to take it i think a lot of people

struggle with i guess explaining to other people why they might like this like they might know internally like why it's good why they enjoy it why they enjoy working on it but and i guess maybe like that comes down to the imposter syndrome part as well where maybe you're like oh this is my first game especially if it's your first game where you're like oh well why would anybody like this game like why would someone want to play this when all these other games exist i get it like there are so many games out there and there's so many incredible games out there that it can be difficult to imagine what your place in that space is going to be yeah i always found it like at the start i was really comparing myself to every other game like every every other game and i was like i can't do that like you look at that look at that and in

the end you're just like you know what like some of my most favorite games are not good like you know what i mean like as in they're not triple a games like most games i want to play indie games like and when i say indie game i don't even know that really means anymore but like um yeah like i don't have to have like like, stunning 3D graphics. I just have to have a cool game that's fun to play. And, like, yeah, that's it. It's just fun. Like, explain your fun.

You know, what's good about your game? Like, this is what makes it fun. And you say those reasons, and, yeah, that's what I do. I think having a core idea about, like what what the point of your game is is important because you can get yourself in a situation where you start letting like feature creep happening uh feature creep happen where yes you have this core idea at the start but then you're like oh let's add this thing let's add this thing let's add this thing it's like you just keep getting excited by the new shiny thing and And by the end of it, your game has a million different things,

but none of it really feels polished. And that's something. Yeah, we're trying to avoid that. Yeah. Well, we do have this thing that we're putting in at the moment with the digging, which, you know. Yeah, we're at a point where it's kind of like just talking about what we want to add in, add in, add in.

But eventually we will have to cut things and see how it all fits in together and stuff like that. That's part of production. You have to like, you know, eventually we will have to cut things and see how it all fits in together and stuff like that. That's part of production. You have to, like, you know, hang out and have fun and say, what about put this in? And that's like a key part of, like, the brainstorming and the fun and, like, all that. And from those things, you always get your, you know,

your diamonds in the Roth kind of thing where you're like, oh, that's an actual good idea. Let's actually do that. Not just, like, go, what if we put a giant stiffy that comes in and sings a song? Yeah, that'd be cool. But then later on, you're like... Put that in the GDD. Yeah.

Yeah, maybe we should put that in there. It always kind of filters down. But yeah, it is a thing of just knowing to cut it off when you're like, or just go, put that in the next game. Yeah, something like that. It's good our game's so simple because it means things like that we can add in pretty quickly so like um i'm hoping anyway with things like items and stickers it'll be easy to to add more in over time so um there's not as much like creep with the scope and stuff like that

so yeah we've kind of got like what we want to do doing it And it's just building on top of that, like more of it basically. But yeah, I understand how that's blowing out. The idea of game dev is that you have this concentric development, right? So you have this core and you go like, what's the core? And so what Eli's building now is the core.

That's like the, um, the player controller, the character controller, and then enemies and then shooting them. And you do that and you make sure that's fun and then polish that really highly and then iterate and build out from that. So you don't like half-ass the core and then start building out features

because then nothing really works. Yeah, or build a boss first. That's all you do. Like start at the boss and then, oh, maybe I should make a player character. Like don't do all that. The obvious stuff. it depends on sort of what you're going with because i know some people they start entirely from like the art for example like they have this idea about like this is the style i want to have for the game and like they might not know exactly what sort of game they want to build around it but

i don't think it's necessarily bad to start that. But I think if you let it go too long without setting some ground rules on where you're trying to take this, that's when you can start to see it go in, like, just weird, uncontrolled directions. Yeah, that's where prototyping is important too. So, like, if you want to add a feature to the game, prototype it, see how it feels and stuff like that,

and you can make a decision based off that as well. So we now have the old project, the Avcon project, is over there. That's like Dan's playground. So if he wants a new feature or he wants to try out this digging thing or whatever, he can just build it, prototype it, chuck it in. It doesn't matter if it breaks things

because it's the prototype. It's that project over there and it's not going to mess with the real project that Eli's building over here. So it's nice to have that space. It's a bit of a playground or a bit of a sandbox for devs to try things out, test things and see how they feel before you then go back to planning and then plan it properly and then build it in the real project. That's the kind of approach we're taking with it. It's nice. So one thing I brought up before we started recording is the fact that you guys just...

This is something for you, Chad. The fact that you guys just don't have a website yet. Yeah. The company was only made like three weeks ago. Right, right, right. Yeah, so what we're going to do is we are very close and we're just using a site builder, basically. Right.

Because we really mostly just need a static website. Sure, yeah. It's a place that people can go and the trailer's there and it links to all your socials. But what we're actually planning on doing is using Xsolla's site builder. So Xsolla has, if you don't know, for your listeners, if they're not aware, Xsolla is a payments platform.

So they'll handle payments for games. So you publish, it's for self-publishing, self-publishing, publishing partner model. So you have a website, you sell your game, all the DRMs handled on the website, and they handle all your payments. And they take a much smaller cut than Steam, so it's more like 7% to 9% rather than the 30% that Steam will take.

But what they do is they offer all of these services because they're like, well, we want studios to make lots of money, so we're going to provide these services that makes it possible for them to make lots of money. So we're going to provide these services that makes it possible for them to make lots of money. So we're using their site builder, which means it has a little thing on there that says powered by Xsolla. And it's a fairly standard generic kind of website.

You don't even have the flexibility of a Wix or WordPress or whatever. It's kind of like a bit boring to look at or whatever, kind of modular content block that you can move around and things like that. But what that means is that, you know, if that's our website, it's a place for people to go and, you know, people can see the website there. But then also in future, if we want to, you know, promote a, or we want to have a link to a Kickstarter there,

we can do that. If we want to sell the games through there or sell pre-orders through there, we can do that. They also do a lot with merchandise. You can sell merchandise or digital DLC or digital content or digital currencies or whatever. So they're all fully set up for that. So hopefully what we'll have is we'll have a website

that then has the capacity to then become a storefront when the time is right. Right. And we also will have a Steam. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just like only release it on your website. Hey, why is no one buying our game? This is crazy. I've just set like a little table up at the front of my house

and we only sell it from there. I just have to come like physically and we also sell lemonade. Yeah. But we're super super big on privacy so we won't give you the address you only uh do direct consumer at cons so if people play the game at a con that's the only way they can get a key yeah yeah yeah so what how did the decision come about to actually go and show it off at Avcon? Because that was, is that the first time you guys had shown off the game? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. Yeah, that was the first time anyone had really ever seen it. So I was just like, and I just decided way back when Avcon came up, I think it was last Avcon, I was just there and I was like, I looked at the indie games section and I was like, oh,

there's not heaps of games here this year. I, you know, I think it was last DavCon. I was just there, and I looked at the indie games section. I was like, oh, there's not heaps of games here this year. I think I just started mine. I'm like, next year I'm going to show mine. And I just decided it, and then I got sent the information, and I applied for it way early, the day the information came out, and then just forgot about it, and then just kept on plodding along. along and then all this stuff happened and then we're like, oh, I'm showing it at Avcon. Let's get it together. It was really like kind of

just how I do everything. I just wing it. I just winged it. And then Chad came along and structured my winging. A little bit of structure to help. I mean, the other thing is that in the space in Game Plus, it's like everybody's talking about,

oh, you're going to Avcon, you're taking the game to Avcon, so it's kind of like water cooler conversation. It's the kind of zeitgeist, you know, everybody's kind of going along. Avcon's awesome because it's free. It's local for us, so you don't have to travel. It's not like travelling to Melbourne. And, you know, the cost of exhibiting at PAX, for example, is about two and a half grand, which is not that much at all.

But then you've got transport and accommodation and all that sort of stuff. And given our budget is currently zero, you know, the price is right for Avcon. And it has great traction, you know. There's a good community. There's something like 30 games there. I think it was 36 this year.

35, 36, something like that wow that's pretty good some of the games are amazing yeah, I've got if I point my camera down, I've got like a bunch of business cards along my desk here's a random one

here's Blood Reaver, that was really good that was the that was one of the good ones I've got Here's Blood Reaver. That was really good. Oh, yeah. That was the... That was one of the good ones. I got Bork Borks here as well in this little envelope they gave me. Yeah, nice one. Yeah, they even had like year nine students there from... Was it Kadena or something like that? Yeah, yeah, I did see that, yeah.

They were going crazy. There was like a little kid there. He was like 12 or whatever. Yeah, that's right. He like coded from scratch like a roguelike. Like full on like with like, you know, rooms and all the balancing and stuff like that. It was kind of like, I wish, do you know what it's called? What was it called?

Can everyone remember? I really want to say the name because I want to give him some props. But I went over there and I'm like, did you do this, man? And he's like, yeah. I'm pretty sure he built the whole engine himself. Yeah. Like it wasn't in Unity built the whole engine himself. Yeah. Like it wasn't in Unity or Unreal or Game Maker. Yeah.

And I was just like, dang. Yeah. Like, this is cool, man. It's solid and it works. Should have offered him a job. Nah. I don't have any. He'll replace me.

He can't. He wasn't a dad. We're three dads. We're all being in our company that's true so okay so what was the um the response like at avcon because i obviously i got to play it myself but how many guys did you have like how like packed was it there how uh what sort of responses did you get did you come across bugs you weren't aware of? Not really.

We did see some bugs come up that we thought we dealt with. But it was really good. And I'll speak for Dan here because I think Dan was nervous. Could you imagine Dan ever being nervous? But he was pretty nervous before AFCON because he was like, are people going to like my game? And it's like when you put on a party and it's like, I hope someone comes to my party sort of thing.

But, like, the response was awesome. You know. Yeah, we had to put a second thing up. I only ever saw one on the first day, one person sort of, like, just put the game down after, like, 30 seconds and just walk away. Everyone else seemed to try and get to the boss. We had dudes playing multiple times.

Yeah, we had people like where we reset the game physically from the folder. Like we had to close it and start again, and they still wanted to play it. We had one person do it like five or six times. I'm like, wow, just love the game. And there was like, the thing I like about this game is that, you know, from a kind of marketing and business perspective, is that it is like, it's a little bit divisive, right?

Like, you know, people will look at it, or they'll look at the trailer or whatever, and they'll go, oh, no, no thanks, not for me. It's too violent, it's too gory, it's got upside down crosses or whatever, right? And that's totally fine, because they definitely know that they don't like it. And that's right, they can walk away. But fine because they definitely know that they don't like it. And that's all right. They can walk away. But then other people are like, yes, I get it. I love it. This is amazing.

And so a lot of people were saying, well, when can I buy it? I really want to play more of this, you know, which is kind of like, oh, well, we've got to rebuild it. So it's going to be a while. It's going to be good. I actually had a friend of mine tell me that her friend in England, he wanted to play the game.

And I'm like, oh, the game's not out for another two years. But we've got people overseas who just saw her. My friend Alana, she was in front of the poster and they were like, wow, what's this game? It looks awesome. Yeah, just from posters, people were wanting to play it. It's crazy. Yeah.

And so, yeah, I mean, the other good thing was that we got pretty good traction on socials. Like, we're just starting out. So it's like, it's easy to have high growth when you've got small starting numbers. But, you know, we're up to about 450 views of the trailer now after a couple of weeks. I mean, yeah, it's not nothing kind of thing. But like, it's 450 people that have watched a trailer to something that is just nothing like no one knows what we are you know what i mean like and uh and then just from there and then you just have to get in a couple of like

you know a couple of media outlets need to like show it a bit more and suddenly it's like and then you'll just get that bang and one big media outlet will just be like, oh what's that? Oh that looks cool and they'll just share a trailer or something like that and you'll suddenly just get like, it'll all just flood in in one day and then it just rollercoasters from there. But we're really in the like this is like one week

Yeah and the good thing, actually the super exciting thing yesterday was one of my students sent me a YouTube short video and this is the first time in my life that this has ever happened good thing actually the the super exciting thing yesterday was one of my students sent me a youtube short video and this is the first time in my life that this has ever happened where someone picked it up they must have found the trailer it was um the indie brew i think is what they're called and you know i think they're just starting out as well so they're pretty small it's not like

or whatever but um they'd taken the video and they'd done like an introduction like a one one minute introduction focusing on like oh oh, this is not for kids. Look how gory it is, blah, blah, blah. And it was like, you could tell it was summarized from our press kit or from the description on YouTube or whatever. But it was the first time that I'd gone, how did these people hear about it? How did they get this? It's just like, I mean, we put it out there and someone picked it up somehow.

And it's not something I've gone, oh, hey, can we do your podcast? Hey, can you do this? Yeah. Can you cover that? It was weird. It was emergent. I didn't realize that. It was like the first time I'd seen someone else talking about our game. It used to be my game.

Now it's our game. Like, it wasn't someone I'd just shown it to. Right. And it was just like, whoa, this person's talking about my game. You know to right like and it was just like whoa this person's talking about my game you know what i mean like it was just weird like i just never experienced and i've been you know i don't know it's just a strange feeling and it was cool like and i was like oh now i gotta do more i gotta make more more game to make more people do this but i'm amped it was rad yeah no that's that's that's really cool um like it's it's always it's always nice to hear that people are

like coming across something like this because you know as i said before there are so many indie games out there there's just there's so many games out there there's i i don't even know what the number of games released on steam every day is but it's it's sorry about 35 35 35 every day yeah now a lot of those are going to be not a lot of there's a lot of assets like straight asset flips on on steam so yeah yeah but this is a it's an interesting thing in games business. When you talk about marketing, there's a kind of a subset of marketing called discoverability. So if any of you viewers are interested in games business and marketing, look up a mob called Game Discover Co.

They have a free newsletter and then they have a paid version and they have the paid version of the newsletter also gives you access to their hype chart, which is like a web scrape tool for steam with all this analysis of all steam data and pre-release metrics and things like that but even just the free uh newsletter is really good and so the key challenge here is discoverability when there's 35 games on steam coming out how do you just get in front of eyeballs right you know because it's one thing what your game is like but how do people know about your game um that's that's a huge um marketing challenge and it's one thing what your game is like, but how do people know about your game? That's a huge marketing challenge. And it's a very different type of marketing

than we've seen in traditional marketing and traditional business. So that excites me. I'm a nerd for that sort of stuff. Yeah, all the information is out there for everyone. You just have to find it and use it. It's crazy. But I love it.

Yeah, I think what you guys have done well with chad's help here is like actually starting stuff like really early not starting stuff like as like with the social media stuff not as the game's coming out like you know as you say you said two years till the game comes out i'm sure that's just like a estimation at this point considering like how much work there is to do. But even with that much time... Sorry? We hope it's two years. Best case scenario.

Well, we'll see what the state is at Avcon next year. Then you can decide whether it's two years away. It's going to be like in Grand Designs when they always say, how long do you think this house is going to build? And they're like, 18 months. And Kev's like, yes, not I.

Seven years later. But I a but i mean this is the the point of um iterative development go brody oh no it was just about that that building point like the uh the gym i go to they're putting up a new one up near where Holden's used to be. And it was supposed to be done a month ago. Oh, yeah, damn it. They were just putting the floor in. It's not done a month ago. Apparently it's going to have a swimming pool and all this other stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's not far from my place, actually. So, another one. Yeah, nice. Good old Holden's. Yeah, sad. This is not relevant to the game at all but like that is kind of like sad to me what happened to that because like i had like my my dad always worked like right near that area so i would go past there a lot like when i was younger

so now seeing it you know just nothing there like yeah yeah that's the problem. There was nothing built for years when they closed down. It's heartening. Just a parking lot. Yeah. For anyone who doesn't know what Holden's is, Holden's is like... It was the last of the local Australian car manufacturers. And it was in our state.

So it was kind of a big deal when that shut down. Yeah, but this is not related to the game at all i just wanted to bring it up now we make games yeah that's the that's the big export industry yeah yeah like it's well obviously when people think of like games that come out of south australia like obviously the first thing everyone's going to think of is like hollow knight like that i i like this is this is something that was really sad for me the first avcon i going to think of is like Hollow Knight. Like that, I, I, like, this is, this is something that was really sad for me. The first Avcon I went to was the year after they showed off. So, like that, that game started at this con, like at Avcon.

Like that was the first time they showed it off back in, I think it was 2017. So it started from that, like very, you know, know avcons it's a big con right but like it's it's not like big compared to like packs or anything like that like it's it's you know it's what we have here it's adelaide right we don't have we don't have much in adelaide you start where you start like and it's also uh games are pretty new to Avcon, so it was originally an anime convention. And it actually started as just a special interest group, like a club of the University of Adelaide, people who were into anime. And then they were like, oh, let's do a convention, and then it built from there.

But more recently, in the past few years, they've started having games, an indie games room, and kind of gone, oh, games are cool. And this year, there was lots of games. there was a tournament area a console free play like it felt a lot like PAX to me yeah they had uh they've had games there I went there about um what probably 14 years ago now and I was like no probably longer than that almost um 16 17 years ago when I was doing school and they had indie games there as well might even been the first year they did it but it was that would have been around 2009, I reckon.

They'd been doing it for a while. I can't remember where it was. I've been to every one of them. I've worked at them all. At three shops and stuff like that. But they've always had that kind of video game. I mean, it's called Anime and Video Game Convention. That's what AV stands for.

Yeah, not adult video game. I like some people see my comments for like, hey, That's what AV stands for. Yeah, not adult video. I'm like, some people see my comments were like, hey, he's going to Avacol. Like, what does AV stand for? Yeah, audio video. Now, a lot of people are like, adult video? No, not that con. It's not that kind of con. But yeah, but they definitely haven't had as big a,

or it was always anime. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they had some gaming part of it, but now it's built out. And I think it's the best, one of the best conventions in Australia. Like, I've been to all the cons that come through, and it's the one that has the most amount of free stuff to do. Like, all that gaming, one whole side of that whole convention is free.

Yeah. Like, all the indie game stuff is free. All the board game stuff is free. Like, tabletop gaming stuff is free. All the playing video game stuff is free. All the game stuff is free like tabletop gaming stuff is free all the playing video game stuff is free all the pc stuff is free all like that that is all free where a lot of the cons i go to and i'm like this is just a consumer room where you go for vendors you know what i mean like where this abcon always offers i mean they always have panels and stuff like that but they offer so much more like and um and it's not just i don't care and stuff like that, but they offered so much more. And it's not just, I don't care about signatures, like that kind of thing.

It's not really my thing. So that's kind of, they've always had the voice actors and stuff there, but it used to be like, it was kind of different. It used to be like free. You just walk up to the door and get a signature and they give you a little card and you sign it and walk off where now it's like, you know, you pay for signatures and stuff like that. But yeah, and it started in like the Adelaide Uni and it was small and there was like a tavern there and you know, you pay for signatures and stuff like that. But, yeah, and it started in, like, the Adelaide Uni,

and it was small, and there was, like, a tavern there, and you know what I mean? Like, it was rad. Like, it was so, like, and they were, like, they were fully just showing, like, bootleg anime videos in the cinema. Like, it was before all, like, there was all this streaming and stuff, so they were, like, downloading, like, from NAN or whatever it's called, like, all these like hot like fan

sub stuff that hadn't come out here yet so you could see stuff that no one had ever seen where now it's all like licensed and they can't do that kind of stuff and you know blah blah blah but it was a it was full ghetto and it was rad like you know it was just just dudes that loved anime that were just getting it out there like It was all just grass rootsy, homemade stuff. Now you look at the artist alley there that's the one now. Their game is as good as... Their merch game is as good as

any shop. It's crazy. Some of the money that was going through some of those stalls was bonkers. Yeah. My student from last year. It's an air freshener. Yeah, stuff like that. bonkers. So yeah, my student from last year... Oh yeah. It's an air freshener.

Yeah, stuff like that. My student from last year, Joe, he goes by Mangazai. He did the official art for Avcon as well. I think he pulled $6,000 on the first day.

You know, and he was just like stopping pillows and selling them. Pillows and booby mouse pads. Yeah, literally. You know those pads. Yeah, literally. You know those ones?

Yeah, yeah. The RSI? Yeah, that's the reason why you like it. That's like real money for like people and stuff. Yeah, the game has changed. Let's just say for worse or anything. I was like skeptical at first when it was going to be at the Wavell and not actually in the heart of the city,

but I think it worked out fine in the end, yeah. Yeah, you were worried, man. I think it worked out fine. My only issue is with it not being in the city, I would usually go to, like, Rundle Mall or something like that to get lunch. I think that's the only problem that it has. Yeah, the food options weren't great. And also, yeah, all the local shops and that,

usually they can say, they can ask, you have this? Oh, I i don't have it but it's just down the road at my shop if you want to go down there like do that and like you know you couldn't just like if people come from interstate would just be able to leave their hotel rooms and walk it's across the road basically like the con where they had to like take a train out of the city and just you know the convenience was really there when it was in the city for everyone. And it just kind of worked. But it also, like the exhibition center, didn't really have the capacity. In the end, the whole artist alley was spilling out into the halls. Right, right.

And I think it just got too big for it. Yeah. And I did enjoy the amount of room that was in this new one where it gets chockers, it did in the exhibition. So, pros and cons. Yeah, and I think the indie games were probably had the best of it because there were a lot of issues I did have with the screening room being right next to the main stage and right next to the eSports stage.

Like, that's just not a good spot for... They had the library right there as well um they like they also the main stage speakers they just had way too loud like when they had the um the baby beard concert on like you could hear it everywhere in that entire building yeah i um because it was like you had it was so loud in there and i i i lost my voice within the first like three hours of the first day so i was like and by the second day some people like you know i couldn't speak at all and they're coming up oh can we do that interview now like little interview just like on the spot and i just couldn't speak they put it up and i just sound like like this

frog man yeah i remember i was like thinking about my voice was hurting and i couldn't even what i was saying was ridiculous because i wasn't thinking about what i was saying i was just like oh man in my in a monologue man my voice if i put my head this way it doesn't hurt as much something like going it was yeah it's a pretty hard of it it was pretty funny yeah you were not the only one like that like half the people i spoke to especially the people who are not good at like regulating how loud they talk because you start trying to talk over the speakers it became a real problem yeah i had that within hours because i get so passionate i want to speak and talk and i want

you to hear me so i just get louder and louder because i'm trying to get over the thing and it just just stuffed me yeah yeah well i do hope they they take what happened this year and sort of adjust things around like another thing i i think kind of didn't work out is the way they did like the guest area because they had like the guest meeting all of the lines were kind of like merging into the same line so it was kind of hard to work out like what whose line was what how long was different guests like like supernova they have all the guests in one area and then like separate dedicated like um zoned off lines for it was like really easy to like see but being their first year there obviously there's going to be some like rough edges but i think i think it definitely came back a lot stronger than

last year did because last year was their first year coming back after covid um so they you know it's going to be a smaller con that year and you know it i i'm happy it survived because there's like some cons out of state that didn't survive that and because with avcon like being like volunteer run as well like it was very possible it just wasn't going to come back and it's super hard for festivals just festivals and events and businesses just full stop after after covid and with um cost of living increases and everything it's like it's a minor miracle that they made miracle that they made it work at all. So, yeah, I agree with you. Yeah.

Well, okay, let's go back to the game itself. Yeah, let's talk about the game. Yeah, the game. That's what you're here for. This is what happens sometimes. I will just go down some random tangent and it is what it is. Anyway. People love a tangent.

Honestly, I've had entire podcasts with like the entire i have brought someone on for a topic and then we don't touch the topic for about an hour and a half so it wouldn't it would not be the first time it's happened um okay so so what is going to be the like the main loop for the game so i i saw obviously that one area that i that we're able to go through but how many the main loop for the game? So I saw, obviously, that one area that we're able to go through, but how many areas are planned for the game? What's going to happen after you beat the final boss of the area, if you have that planned yet? And then what's the reason to go back through and do another run?

I'm trying to work out how much I want to give away. Yeah, don't give away too much. We don't want to give too much. Specifics. Talk about the core game loop. Just give it away. I don't care. Basically, I wanted to have like,

so you saw that. I had an opening level, which is a tutorial, which you kind of play through once. And then that will lead into a limbo stage, which turns into like the hub world kind of thing, where you can come, when you die, you'll turns into like the hub world kind of thing where you can come, when you die,

you'll come back to this hub world where, and that will be where, um, the like digging part will be. And just other stuff, which I won't reveal, um, you can go into,

do a run. And so there'll be, um, the plan at the moment is, is going to be four kind of run worlds. If, if, if we can call them that.

Um, and like I said, it's, it's, it's kind of like,, if we can call them that. And like I said, it's kind of like, it's randomly like, it's not procedure generated, it's like randomly put together, like the rooms, so you know,

it's different each time kind of thing, each run. And then, just to put it the easiest way, so you could do like a run of four, and then when you play it again, there'll be a run of five worlds, and then the next time, there'll be a run of six, kind of thing like that it again, there'll be a run of five worlds, and then the next time there'll be a run of six kind of thing,

like that kind of thing. That's very loose. And I won't tell you the actual story beats because it is kind of cool of what's going to happen. But so, yeah, around about six worlds, I suppose you call them. Or levels, yeah. Levels at the moment. That's the plan. We might go, oh, once it's all structured out,

I think we might be able to churn them out kind of thing. But I'm really meticulous about my rooms. I always like them like I end up, you know, I want to churn out a room, but I'll just like go, oh, no, I want to put a bit of effort into it at each moment and stuff like that. I don't like to just, you know, I want to put as much detail and as much movement and as much fun and as much stupidity into every room I can.

So there's a lot of planned rooms that are coming up that will come up in the game. And there's also a bunch of like kind of like quest story arcs where you meet characters and like within randomly meet them and you can like do things, do things, that kind of thing, and you can create these little branching off story arcs that leads to these other worlds within worlds. They're kind of like, I don't know the easiest way to describe it,

kind of like in Hades where they have the chaos realm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stuff like that. There's a couple of them planned. There's nightmare realms and some other ones as well. well yeah nice little secrets we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna tuck in there for people yeah but the main loop is kind of like yeah you do your run you to get further in you die you come back to your hub world you use some resources to dig up start digging up which is like your skill tree kind of within the digging part of it where

you can do your permanent unlocks and makes it easier to do your runs and then you can collect your stuff and come back to do some more digging like because you'll have like a limited resources like to dig with so you can't just dig all the way up straight away and you'll come across things that you know bones that you can't get like bones and flesh and gore that you need certain ways to get through to change to cut through it's not digging it's more like cutting and violent yeah it's like flesh and blood so you'll be covered in blood and and how do you dan dan how do you enter the uh the digging area what's the plan yeah so in the harbor when you come in there's this gigantic like pimple or zit

and it's so big it's got like corpses floating in the pus and stuff and you're like you like you can't do anything with it the whole point of hell is it's made of this creature and this creature is impervious that's why no one's been out you know you can't get through it but you get this like big big fucking pin um from like you know a drop from a boss early on and you pop this gigantic pimple and that leads you into you can go into the pimple and like you can finally start get trying to dig out where usually no one's been able to get through and you have these chat these like these like uh kind of like hell chain hell weapons that you shouldn't be able to use but you can

weapons so there's going to be things besides the chainsaw then. Yeah. So there is actually like the chainsaw, which is like, that's a character in itself, which is kind of like, yeah, it's like the guide character. You know what I mean? Like where you think it's helping you, but it's kind of like it's got its own agenda.

And that can, because that can transform. So it can basically just like morph between, you have to get these weapons, but I'm going on like, cause I've bloody loved doom. I love doom so much. Like OG doom. That yeah.

And obsessed with it. Brutal doom, doom mods and all that kind of stuff. So I'm doing the old, like I've just vision. I just want the nine weapons, like the one, two,

three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine on the keyboard, like doom.

So I'm good. So there'll be, we ought to get different weapons, but there'll be like different types of, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 on the keyboard, like Doom. So you'll be able to get different weapons, but there'll be, like, different types. As in, like, it won't just be, like, another weapon kind of thing. It'll be a different type of weapon, how it works. Like, so you'll have, like, your charge weapons or, you know, and stuff like that, like, you know, and you have your rocket launchers,

but that will be an ammo-based thing, so you can't just spawn it enough. You still have your core weapons of your chainsaw with your weird projectiles and that, but you also have these weapons on top of these weapons. Oh, so it's going to be like changing weapons during a run? Yeah. Okay, I don't think I've seen that.

I can't think of a game where i've seen that done before like in this style of game like a first person shooter yeah no no i know yes i mean another like roguelite style game like this because most of them you either it's either something like enter the gungeon where you get a weapon and then you change weapon as you go like mining is similar in that fashion or it's something like hades, Binding of Isaac is similar in that fashion. Or it's something like Hades or... I guess Dead Cells is similar in that, where you... In Dead Cells, you will get a weapon

and then you upgrade to a new weapon, you upgrade to a new weapon, so on and so forth. But then this game, like... You only have two weapons in Dead Cells. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. So, yeah, I'm trying...

I mean, I... But in Hades, you get one and you just... Still in Prototype Stage, I just want to, like, get that nine weapon thing and you have your BFG as your nine, like, you know, you'll be able to get like a gun that just wipes out existence basically.

And, um, and yeah. And I, and then I won't be like, I'm going to have the shotgun. Cause you have to have a shotgun. If you're going to hell and you love doom and you need a shotgun.

So, but that'll have, it's like, you know, it's downsides and it's upsides it'll have like it's like like the the shotgun and doom you have to you can't just fire fire fire fire where and then you'll but we'll have like more ridiculous guns but you'll have this shotgun but we already get like versions of that shotgun within that slot you know what i mean like so you

can have like you have your shotgun but then you might get, like, the better shotgun, but you can only have one shotgun. You know what I mean? Like, so you have nine weapons, but, like, different versions of those weapons, so you can get them. Yeah, and I think we're going to modify, have, like, modification items and stuff that can do crazy stuff to the ammo or the weapon

or other parts of the game. Because you saw, I don't know if you got, did you get to the mutator? Is that the thing you climb in just for the boss? Yeah, it looks like a flashlight. Yes, yes, I got there. I was confused about what I had to do when I got to that bit. Yeah, yeah.

Well, in the game, it'll be more obvious. But that will be where you can upgrade and mutate the stuff you already have. In the Avcom one, it was this quick, and it was quick and nice. It was like, you know, more power, more speed. Sure, sure. Well, that will be actually, it'll give you a list of all the upgrades that you've already got, and then you'll be able to use your hatred or the green stuff to modify your weapons that you've got.

But also the hatred is the same thing that does, like, your digging. So, you know, you've got that risk-reward kind of thing. Oh, okay. And also the melee will use the hatred. that does your digging. So you've got that risk-reward kind of thing. And also the melee will use the hatred. So the hatred is like the currency that you get from killing things. So you need your hatred to dig, but you have to go in and kill things to get your hatred. It's that.

It's the currency in a game. It's a system. It's a roguelike system everyone knows how they work but yeah so that's my thing of like using the old nine weapon doom thing i don't know if it'll work we'll see we'll see we'll see what it ends up like we could end up with the coziest game ever by the end of development cozy yeah you just never know hey yeah yeah but uh at the moment that's my dream. That's like, because everyone's like, it's not very much like Doom apart from you're in hell, but it'll get more like Doom, don't worry. My only concern with Nine Weapons is just how many things

you have to worry about then, especially if you're doing like weapon upgrades and skill trees. Like there's going to be a lot of moving parts there. And especially... That's why Eli's rebuilding it all right so it's just like you know it's it's it's it's the simp like him because he knows this now he can just build it out that it's all kind of one thing like it's just like you know you might it might be a weapon but it's just basically a sprite change in a yeah it'll be like a well

like you know building a prefab of a weapon that you can then swap out with other weapons. Yeah, but there'll be the balance and stuff like that. Yeah, the balance is where it becomes a design challenge. Yeah, I've got a good eye for that. I'm going to call it, I've got a good eye for that stuff, I think. Yeah, you do. No matter what you do, I guarantee there's going to be some sort of configuration that is completely busted.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I hope there is. A. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I hope there is. A meta build, yeah. Have you played Binding of Isaac? Have you seen it? That's fair. I want that to happen.

I want it to have breakable versions of it. And it won't matter because you'll finish it and you'll come back and the next time you play it, that won't happen. So it's not going to be like, look how OP am and like yeah great you did one run sure yeah you did it like you know what i mean like the cool thing about that is it means people will play in your game enough to figure stuff out and then other people are going to try and replicate that and go oh that looks awesome i want to get to that op build like yeah and having different ones in there and like having emergent gameplay from combining different things is awesome too.

I think we have, like, 80 or 90 items in it now that all work off of each other. And no one really thought they didn't work. You know what I mean? Like, but, yeah, and we've got plans for, like, a lot more. But it's the whole thing. Once Eli's built this thing out, I can just go crazy. You know what I mean?

I can just start doing those weapons I couldn't do before, like my cat bombs and like my goatee bombs that pull out like the ground with fingers and it sucks everything in. They just gave me an idea.

Yeah. And like those horrible things. And that is the most disgusting thing in the world, but, like, in a game, like, if you don't know what Goat's is, it doesn't mean anything. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Like, you just have to know. And then we got, we haven't even talked about, like, the horror aspect and the references

in it, and, like, the, you know, the parodies of all, like, the horror that I love, and I'm a massive horror fan, so many of the rooms and the items uh also dan loves doom in case nobody realized but uh yeah yeah it's all there and it's all and everyone's like have you thought about this you know is it gonna be this what if it doesn't balance and i don't i don't care it'll be fun i love finding breaky like builds in buying advice that don't care. It'd be fun. I love finding breaky, like builds in Binding of Isaac that don't work or like, yeah. Yeah. And like,

you'll have like the items that seem shit when you get them. You're like, this guy gave me one health. Like it pulled, it got rid of all my health and fucked me over. But then you'll get another item. It's like, when you've got one health,

yeah, heaps tough. And you're like, get it. Like, so you, you will have all those like items that seem like the shit items until and no one will ever choose them but they won't know that like if they choose it and get that one

and choose that one that like yeah it's all about that learning it's all that you know the wiki like creating the the end of enver wiki and putting all the secrets in there and then everyone can like go yeah cool check it out and that's my thing. Like that, that urge that, that, that want to like replay because you don't know what you're going to get. Yeah. I still play Bonnie by Zach and I've been playing for years now.

I play it all the time and I still play it. And then every time I play it, I'll see something I haven't seen or build. I haven't seen, or just saying that worked out or a room that's got like such a low, like fucking rate of coming up and it just comes and I've never seen it. And I don't even know what it does. builder haven't seen or just saying that worked out or a room that's got like such a low like fucking rate of coming up and it just comes and i've never seen it and i don't even know what it does and like and then you get on the wiki and you're like whoa and it's just this adventure

you take yourself on it's like what are they called jad they're like like something experiences or whatever yeah emergent gameplay yeah and all that stuff and i'm just all about that i'm also about physics and gore i'm like we're rebuilding the core system. I want to make guns go everywhere Maybe it was arms fall off and stuff. Yeah fall off now rip off Challenge we had there was that we'd use day or damage is the 2d destruction package But to manage all the gore and I think we've decided to I think I think we've decided to, I think, I hope we've decided to build it ourselves so that we can do what we really want. So, for example, the boss, you can shoot its limbs off

and those limbs can sit on the ground and flop around or, you know, whatever. So that's cool. But I think it feeds into this whole, the whole kind of cult horror culture as well, right? You know, where it's like, we've got a room that's like the Evil Dead room and we've got the Exorcist room and the Thor room

and the Alien room and all that sort of thing. And so it means that, you know, what we're hoping is that we can reach out to communities who love these things. You know, people will have collections of Evil Dead figurines and be so into that and that they'll go, oh, there's a game that pays homage

to this film and some of my favourite films. And that that's a kind of a community outreach kind of strategy as well. Yeah, the horror communities are strong, as in they are into their thing. And the VHS communities as well, because a lot of those horrors, the 80s horrors, are all VHS.

So the VHS communities, I've got a bit of part of. Shout out to Vicious Video in Adelaide. That place is great. If you love video shops, like back in the old days when you just go to video shops and hang out, there's an actual. Good old blockbuster going to rent a video game for two days and then go back and rent it for another two days until you finish it.

You can do it now. There's a video shop in the city. Oh, that's cool. I didn't know about that. Oh, dude, it's crazy. It's an actual whole video shop. Look it up right now. Can you buy VHS players from them?

You can't buy VHS players. You can buy VHSs, though. It sells VHSs. So just the videos. You can't buy the actual player because good luck trying to get a player now. Where do you be? I got one.

Yeah, I know, but you're like an internet man. Nah, they're around. They're around. They're totally around. People rebuild them now. Like, get their heads cleaned. Yeah, cool. But anyhow, I forgot what I was talking about.

Yeah, the horror aspect of it all. And the horror community. It's a strong community. And we have the Bonfire Horror Club in Adelaide, which is like uh the once a month like the palace nova cinema plays like these crazy like horror films like evil dead and hellraiser and you know like all these old ones and they just shock out it's like their biggest like cinema nights like they're getting like 300 free book tickets for these nights and having to open two cinemas

to show a movie that's like 40 years old and i yeah and the horror community is super strong there like yeah my podcast and my other podcast and my shop we always like it's like like you know sponsor it there's this little horror cabal we call it like like the vicious video and galactic video and black match candles and underground records. All those dudes are like, is this little horror cabal? And it's just like rad. And yeah, so that's a whole,

the community can tap into, which is this extra community. We have the gamers, we have the roguelite people, but now we have the horror community as well. And they're loyal with anything. They love it, man.

And I'll just see it. And I've got so many little like callbacks to horror in so many of the rooms. This is the shop itself in the game is like the shop from gremlins. just see it and i've got so many little like callbacks to horror in so many of the rooms this is the shop itself in the game is like the shop from gremlins like he buys the gremlins from and you've got like mr wing right behind the counter as he's having the movie and um but in the shop is like items from all films you've got like the evil dead knife the kandarian dagger and you've got like the reanimator thing you got the ring the videotape from the ring you've got chucky in the corner you've got a barrel from like return of the living dead you've got like the house that the model of nancy's house from nightmare

normal street three's in there that she's making and stuff like that like and i just loved drawing that and i just love like and we uh and one of the ideas one of the ideas is to then gather ideas and concepts. So we encourage people on our Discord to say, what do you think? What's your favourite horror film that you want to see something in the game from? So someone might go, oh, you know, the Arctic Station from The Thing.

Or, you know, have three dudes came to a couch sort of thing and then a monster comes out of one of them or, you know, the Winchester Mystery House was one I put on the list recently, you know. So that encourages people to go, well, what do you want to see in the game? And we'll try and make it, yeah. Yeah.

And then people have been loving that, like the guy to like me go, dude, what's a rad room from a horror film or or what's a night not even from a horror film like what's like the worst room that you could walk into because like the original idea was the rooms were oh they still are it's like people's personal hells so she's like gone into like that she's running through other people's personal hells but she can like go through them because she's got these, like, this ability where they're trapped in these rooms usually kind of thing and stuff like that.

But, like, in a lot of the rooms, they're just, like, made of skin and they've got just holes in them because, you know, people don't like that. That's that phobia, which I don't think is even a real phobia, but apparently it is. Yeah, or we'll have, like, you know, like, a room that's full of, like, spiders, you know. There's some normal ones in there as well, you know like a room that's full of like spiders you know there's there's some normal ones in there as well you don't mean like fears like fear rooms and stuff like that or just like gross ideas do you know let's have a room that like you know has a bum that poos in your face when you go in there that's happening that's actually happening and then eli's like yeah

we'll make her eyes go pink yeah yeah farts in your face gives you pink eye, and then you can't see it for a bit. Yeah, so that's kind of why. And I love, like, being immature. Like, you know. Maybe we'll have an item in the game that says, like, you get extra damage if you get pink eye or something. So you get it from that room.

But, yeah, stuff like that. Like, you know those one-off times where you get that one-off item with the best run, and you're like, oh, we've already got like bits and there's like secrets in the game. Like if you go into a room with a certain follower from like, we've got the, the phantasm balls. They're these little balls from a movie called phantasm. If you go into the room, which is from phantasm and you go through these polls, like this

character from the game appears and he gives you an item. You can only ever get like that. And so far that's not ever happened to me like i've never had that item and i've never got that room at the same time so like i don't know it works so i tested it but uh yeah yeah but like that's only with 90 items like we haven't like got that so imagine like when i'm getting like 200 and 300 items in there like yeah the randomness a million items yeah how much art you want to do what's that i said however much art you want to do well items and stuff isn't that like you know it's just an idea and it's just like you know like and then i'm like oh i could

do this this and that eli can you put that in there and he's like oh yeah cool because he knows how i think and he knows how the items work so it's just a matter of like tweaking you know that item to do that and this item affects that because I've already told him like you know I want it I want everything to be like I will affect everything so I don't just want like you know you can get health I want like you can get different sorts of health which is kind of standard but I want like stuff like you can get an item that makes like if you've got more health you got more you hurt more or if you've got less health you hurt more and stuff like that you have more damage so everything's linked to itself right so you can just make this just like anything you can just do it like stupid stuff as well like you know the more you know the

more i i can't even think of anything oh man but but, you know, if you've got, like, this weapon and this heart, you can just do, like, it'll affect this. And it wouldn't affect it usually, but the fact you've got that build, like... Yeah, like, some might be, like, the less health you have, the more damage you do is an example. That's a very simple example, but it's, like, trying to, you know, create these, like, balances with risk versus reward. You've got stuff like Nightmare Reaper, that game that I love.

Like, that stuff, I think stuff i think is like procedural weapons so you have the weapon and it procedurally just gives you the stats of the borderlands yeah yeah i was just thinking of that before i was like could we do that for this but i don't think it's too much well i'm just not much of a stats person like text dialogue where he's a couple of people ask me like what's like the percentage of damage on this weapon and i'm like i don't know like but i know what it does but like i'm not that person who when i'm playing these games i read all the stats because a lot of the time i start looking at them and i'm like oh i'm lost on what i need to do and i love the games where it's if it's green it's stronger than the one you've got right i'm all about that that's that's all i need

better done it's in there like or even better is uh is the diablo where you get auto equip if it's stronger yeah cool don't even make me have to equip it just right yeah but that that's yeah i don't want to do that but like you know i'm a simple person like i'm not a math player like i don't want to like sit there and I'm a simple person. I'm not a math player. I don't want to sit there and work out that thing. Even though I do play a lot of roguelites, which involve a lot of that, but a lot of the time it's just like, no, I can see that that's rata. I can see that's cool.

Look, it's like when they die, bugs come out of them, and they fight for me, those bugs. That's cool. I don't need to know how much those bugs hurt them. And then I'll get a thing that's like, this makes bugs stronger. I'm like, cool, I've got bugs. You you know what i mean i'm a simple man right right with simple things well i guess a game like a path of exile wouldn't appeal to you then because it's like hey you want to have a that for anyone who hasn't seen path of exile skill tree

when you first open it it is like 300 different dots and you have to work at how they connect to each other exactly what they affect then you look at a weapon stats and what each of the like abilities on it do and some of the things they sound very similar like okay well what is what is the difference between greater and more? A normal person would think they are the same thing. Yeah. That's not how it was programmed, though.

That's the problem. Yeah, and you need to be like, but I'm a massive fan of drip feeding stuff into games. I hate games where you come in and the tutorial is like, oh, da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da. Yeah. And then, like, and you go here. And to do this, you keep your finger on that and you do that. So, like, heaps of JRPGs do it. And I'm just like, just drip feed it in the story, man.

Like, limit to what I can do at the start so I learn that and then bring in something when I'm at the point where I've learned that. Right. Like, you know, kind of thing, which is kind of why I want in this game. I want to, like, not everything is going to be open to you because I don't want that. There'll be no skill tree at the very start because you can't get into it. It's a giant pimple that you can't get into.

But that'll become relevant once like, you know, I'll put that in a point of the game where I'm like, now's the time for the skill tree to come in when they're like, they're just like, I just need a little bit more.

I just can't quite get past this bit. And then suddenly that'll open up to you and you're like, they're just like, I just need a little bit more. I just can't quite get past this bit. And then suddenly that'll open up to you and you're like, yeah, man. Now let's go. But yeah, I actually downloaded Path of Exile because I was working on another game and the person was, the boss of that game was like, oh, these are the kind of games I want you to look at. And he had Path of Exile on there. I bought it and I never got past the like the start i like

i just opened it up and it started and i was like i think it was like 15 minutes and i'm like cool i'm in we're about to start we're about to start and then it started another tutorial and i was like turned it off and i've never used old tab four Old F4. Old F4. Just closed it instantly. Just throw it out the window. But yeah, that is not my thing. But I appreciate it. I'm not a person who says, I don't not like anything. You know what I mean?

Right, right. I understand that there's those people who love those games. And I love those games exist because those people need those games. And people made them because they love them and all that. And yet there are those every now and then, you just get into, like, one of them. You know what I mean? Every now and then you'll just, like, get into, like, a genre of gaming that you're not into and you'll stick with that.

Like, I play, like, gory games and Doom and that, but I love Disgaea. You know that game? I don't even know how you say it. Oh, Disgaea? Is it Disgaea? Disgaea? Disgaea.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the Tactics one? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, Disgaea. Yeah, and I don't know why. Disgaea 4 or whateverea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Tactics one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, Disgaea. Yeah, and I don't know why. Disgaea 4 or whatever, and I tried all the rest, and I didn't like any of the rest. Just that one, it melded to me.

Yeah, I had that with Baldur's Gate 3. I always just hated turn-based games, and as soon as I played this, I was like, the amount of choice is what brought me into it, and that sort of stuff, like the consequences and the different branches yeah and like x-com i don't like those kind of games but x-com like og x-com i didn't get number two is like right like because i named my characters and i never wanted them to die and i named them my friends so like shredders and my wife was in there and like i just wanted

to never let them die and like the way that you can just like you know and that's got that kind of weird skill tree thing where like you get the alien you do research on it and then that can build that and you can play it another time and like yeah i should never learn any of that last time and yeah but like there's like a rad version of every game out there that's what i'm trying to say like it doesn't matter like i don't like not like genres there is a an awesome version of every genre of game out there for me, and I just have to find them. And I've just been playing games my whole life.

You should see this shelf that's next to me here. I've kept all my consoles my entire life. I'm older. Me and Chad are the oldest people in the entire world. And my first gaming console was a ColecoVision. My parents bought it for me i didn't ask for it and like this was like i don't even know what year that was like i'd say be like early 80s maybe or late 70s no it's gonna be 70s mid 80s says mid 80s the calico

and um back then man i was like i didn't ask for it. They just bought it. And I was like, I asked them recently, how much did you pay for that Coleco? Because that started everything. They're like 700 bucks. And I was like, 700 bucks in 1985 or whatever. Do you know how much that is now? It's like a $2,000 console. And I didn't even ask for it.

I didn't even know what it was. I was like, I don't know what i was born in 78 so i was only like six or seven didn't even know what it was and they just bought it like they just thought and i go why and he goes oh they just we just thought it'd be cool and pretty much like is everything i've done since then is because of that thing it's weird and i've still got it and every I've owned every console since then that I've owned. I didn't have a Jaguar because no one had a Jaguar. There was that one place down Jetty Road that had one in it, like the game shop, and they had it on display.

Got to play Road Rash. But, yeah, I didn't have it. Now all the collectors do. Yeah. But, yeah, I've still got all my my consoles they're just sitting around doing nothing but yeah when you forgot what the question was what was it i i don't know the question was like 20 minutes ago um yeah when you were talking about um like one of the things you talked about in there was like op builds and i think a great example of this is like vampire survivors i don't know

if you ever got a chance to play that yeah man i'm all over that okay awesome um where the dev has explicitly gone out of his way to say i don't care to balance the game i know that certain builds are completely broken and will just make the game absolutely trivial it doesn't matter enjoy it if that's what you want to do, like, go ahead and do that. As long as it's not like, the only thing I don't personally like in some games is where there's only one,

like, one really good build. Right, right. Like, things like Call of Duty, for instance, where there's just a meta build and everyone's got to play that way, otherwise you just get owned. So, just, if you can make it as much, like as fun as possible. But that's the thing with that.

It's like you can't, with vampire survivors, you can choose your character and then choose your build and then make it and eventually wait for the right characters to come up and then wait for the right ones to come up and build them up and merge them together into the weapons that you want. And you can just do that every time. Nearly like where ours is like,

you just won't get that opportunity because Because you just won't get that. You don't have the opportunity to just choose what you want. Sure, you'll have your weapons that you can get, but there'll be different versions of those weapons. And you'll be getting all these other items that do all this crazy, weird stuff. And, you know, I've already got game breakers in there. They actually say it this this breaks the game the fire hose the fire hose it's just what a game where it's just you

just press it and there's like no time on the projectile so it just makes a and because it's got pushback it just pushes you back at a thousand k's an hour and it makes the game unplayable but like you can play it like that you just have to when you want to move that way you fire that way and like and then if you need to shoot something, you put yourself up against a wall and it's like. And, like, you could play the whole game like that if you wanted to. But, yeah, I want to have that kind of thing where you have to, like, change your play style because you've got a weird build.

But then you, like, you learn how to do it. And then by the end of the game of the run, you die and you come back and you don't have any more. You go back in and you'll be like, oh, I'm still used to that old build. You know what I mean? I'm still trying to still do that. I want that kind of stuff to happen. I just want that.

It might not, but it might. Yeah, a game like Hades, every run feels kind. Yes, the ability you have a different and things gonna be slightly different but if you're playing with the same weapon most of the time the runs gonna feel relatively similar it's you know be doing different damage in different amateur different things but it's ultimately still the same style I think a game that does like very

different runs every time really well I don't know if you played it is that noita um yeah man okay he was telling me about that one yeah okay so yeah that game is like um for anyone who hasn't played noita the basically the idea is you get like a wand and then you can customize the one with like different ability to the wand and every single they made a custom engine for the game because they're psychos and had a crazy idea for it where every single pixel is like a physics object in the world so you can like break off big ledges and the legs will collapse down like all explode out like it's really like wild but you can get wands in that game where you will just test it and you will die.

Because you put, you had like, oh, I'm going to have an explosion happen. And then it's going to, or I'm going to spawn some oil. I'm going to have an explosion happen. And I'm going to do this. You put it in the wrong order. And boom, dead. So there's like, there's just a run. You get to fill out your wand, but you've got slots.

But even if you just, you've got all this one, but like you got lots, but if you, even if you just, you got all this stuff, but even if you put them in different orders, it changes like that thing's like endless. But that's based on like a, an old like educational game. I can't remember what it's called.

Like, Oh, what was it called? It's like soft frost or something like that. I know the game you're talking about. The element one. Yes. Yeah.

They based that kind of all on that. So yeah. So in like Noita, there's like's like you know if you hit water with cold stuff you can freeze it and or you know or what we'll do this but yeah no it's got some hilarious things like a lake of alcohol or things like that yeah or like you'll turn into a duck but you have you don't realize that you've also like standing in a pool of liquid that hurts ducks you know there's something ridiculous that's but like yeah noises but yeah i love that kind of random and getting back to hades like hades is like pretty controllable as in like yeah you said you can choose your weapon but you can choose your boon or not your boon your um your trinket like if you're good enough in the game, everything's pretty recoverable. Yeah, but your trinkets can

dictate what your first weapon is. Naturally, the only thing to beat Hades, you just need to always start with Athena, because she's like knockback and that's the easiest way to do so. Power up on your knockback and as soon as you put knockback on your

dash and your hit, you just push everything's enemy's back stuff at them. That's the budget way to do it. But you can do that. You can plan your weapons. You can plan your builds. I still want to be able to plan my builds, but not. Are there going to be ways to influence what's going to show up in End of Ever?

Yeah, so what's going to show up in end of November? Yeah, yeah. So everything's weighted. You have weights on, like, what's coming out. But, yeah, I do want to have stuff where it gives you more of a chance to get something if you have a certain thing. So, like, say you need, like, two items to do this thing. Like, you know, maybe you are... I mean, the closest idea is, like, in Binding of Isaac, where you can get, like, three items. You can get the cat head, the cat tail, and the cat body, and it transforms you into a cat.

Where I think they've got it, like, if you get the cat head, there's a higher chance that those items will come up, the other ones in the game. Not massive, but, like, it just gives you a bit of a up kind of thing. But, yeah, it's just weighted and random kind of thing but yeah i do want to have like some logic but not much because like once people work that stuff out it's the end you know what i mean like end up gaming and there's no true random in it it's still like it's still a bit of you know but yeah i know you know what it might not work and then we'll

have people online that hate it they'll be like like, oh, it's not true random. Oh, this isn't cool. But I can't wait for those people. I love that stuff. It's like me with my daughter. I've got a new daughter. And I had a baby, I mean. And I can't wait for the stage, you know, when they're a teenager

and they hate you. Oh, yeah, yeah. And the day that my daughter says to me i hate you dad i'm gonna be like this is the best because i remember saying that to my parents and so how insignificant it actually is saying it but and oh yeah i can't wait for the like people like oh they're gonna say they hate you i'm like i'm booking on it this is gonna be the best day it'll make her so angry i'll be so happy i'll be trying not to laugh when my son does that like even now when he's having tanties or like anything like that it's

kind of like hard not to sort of like have a giggle to yourself because some of the things he's like complaining over or whatever he's just like trivial to me i remember i used to complain about video games so much i got so angry at them as a kid i used to say to my parents it's cheating like i thought the game was cheating. It was actually against me. Now it's our job to make other kids feel like that. Well, if you were playing

Street Fighter in the arcade, it actually was cheating. There are people who have gone back and broken down the logic, and those arcade games, many of them actually did just cheat because they wanted you to break they wanted you to lose at a certain round to spend more money on it oh yeah starcraft was notorious for having a cheating ai like because they just i think they

even gave them more resources or something or there's something they did that just made it so it was like harder but they just gave it more like If you're going too good, they're like, yeah, not anymore. Yeah, or just started with more of a certain resource or upgrades or something like that or made something faster just to make it harder. Love that stuff. Love it. But Chad, just before you mentioned

it's the end when people sort of meta gave it. When they know exactly the perfect run to do there i think that that like is a good point there like at some point that's going to happen like once you've had a game out for a while especially when you're not having additional content patches at that point then people are gonna start working out like okay what is the best run what is this i think i think there is still like some value there right like there's there's gonna be those people who they've played the game for you know 50 100 hours and they're like okay well i'm gonna just start re-rolling runs until i get a perfect run because you know there's people

they're gonna go for how fast can i get through this things like that like can i do this like no hit runs things like that and i think my hit runs are crazy yeah yeah there was um the craziest one to me is let's go back and get big enough for that the craziest one that i saw was um not no hit of one of the souls games but no hit of everything i think it was including sekiro and elden ring every from software game yeah yeah and if he got hit in one he had to start all the way at the start again yeah it is right i mean that stuff would be pretty easy i mean unless you're doing it live it'd be pretty easy to like he was doing it live he was doing it completely live yeah it was that's cray yeah yeah i get hit i get hit in a souls game like and nothing even hits me like i just load up and it just says you're dead to be fair from software

hitboxes are a little bit rough sometimes. Weapons are fine, but anytime there is a grab, I've streamed playing Sekiro. I went back and checked what happened with one of the grabs. There's a big monkey. It rolls around, it takes its shit and throws at you. Actually, we just... Yeah, and the shit will poison you. Anyway, not the important point.

The important point is when it does the grab, I was like, that didn't hit me. I went back and I guess however they're doing the hitboxes, if a part of the arm hits you, it'll just teleport you into the bit where you're supposed to be grabbed. So, like, you know, there are some bullshit hitboxes like that for sure. Yeah. Oh, well.

The game was cheating on you, mate. It wasn't cheating. This is how it's made. Just don't be near it. Get good. That's just how they did it. They're like, oh, let's just make it that if you touch the monkey, he grabs you.

Yeah, yeah. It's full of animations and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. All that sort of stuff, like IK. If nobody knows what that is, like rigging and stuff. Inverse comedics? Yeah, yeah. All that sort of stuff, like IK. If nobody knows what that is, like rigging and stuff. Inverse comedics? Yeah, yeah. International karate?

Yeah. That game, international karate. Yeah. Okay, so what is the state that Dan had the game in, basically? Like, what had he left you with to rewrite? Everything. But now, like, now we've started from, like, a clean slate. But before that, it was okay.

Like, for someone who didn't know what they were doing, like, it worked. We could have built a whole game out of that. It would have just been, like, incredibly frustrating and not fun at all and stuff, and it would have been hard like incredibly frustrating and not fun at all and um yeah and it would have been hard to scale up and all that sort of stuff so yeah but we still could have pushed on and i don't think that's what some people do oh they do yeah yeah because they just push through just go oh okay now we'll fix that we'll fix that we'll fix that oh that broke that just fix that and you spent a whole week doing that when you could have made something else well

i did do that and then and then the stuff i fixed it ended up breaking other stuff and then it was just like oh this is a new bug it was because of this and it was just like yeah i don't understand this top-down stuff and it's going to take you forever to learn it i'd rather just rewrite stuff myself so it's like and i want that anyway and scaling up thing uh and stuff like that's gonna be a lot easier and they're all gross like bugs they weren't even interesting cool ones they weren't like that, cool ones. They weren't, like, that cool one. Remember that boxing game where, like, the dude's, like, arms were, like, through his head and stuff?

Like, that's awesome, bug. But these were, like, if you die. A lot of them are, like, about dying and coming back. So the game worked until you died, and then you had a new run, and there'd be no UI. Yeah, no persistence. Or your health wouldn't, like, register. And so you fix that, and you didn't realize that then if you died in the next room,

that broke something else. And it was just an endless roller coaster. So Avcom was just about band-aiding it to the point where everyone could play the whole way through and all the bugs happened after that. Yeah, and then we reset it and started again. And then we just realized that let's rebuild rebuild it now it's the best point like we got the project we know what we're doing it's all there eli can just go yeah chad was saying like um we should rebuild the project we should rebuild the project i'm like i don't know man i don't know if it's and then

eventually i'm like no i'm sick of doing these buddy bugs. I want to start again. Eli was like, it's not that bad. It's all right. It's not that bad. And I'm like, oh, okay. And then we were approaching Avcon and Eli was like, oh, my God. I think we've got to rebuild. I'm like, I'm not even a programmer. A bit of me died inside.

But I was like, I understand. It needs to. And then Eli will have more personal ownership on it as well. It'll be more yours. And it's not just my game. It'll start turning into our game. And I want that. It's going to help me learn and just build a bit of a resume

and stuff like that too. And just understanding. Why do you want a resume? You're getting a new job. Yeah. Totally. That's what it's like. No, it's like, yeah, just being able to build stuff

is going to be a lot better as well. From a production perspective, the challenge, though, is that, you know, if you haven't noticed, Dan has, like, a pretty high velocity. So he has a very much a get shit done, I want to do this. Like, in the lead up to Avcon he was like you know we said like three weeks before avcon or something we won't add anything let's not add anything to the game we've just got to polish we've got to get this working yeah and then about a week later dan's

like i'll put some dialogue in and i'm like okay then two weeks later he's like i changed the dialogue system and i'm like okay so dan's like god but then again everyone said it'll work though oh let's put the boss in a work though yeah but in the end everyone's like oh let's put the boss in a new room and that's the thing that broke everything yeah yeah everyone agreed to do that and then it was like we've never like bought everything over to a new level yet and suddenly it was like nothing was you know to be fair the stuff that broke wasn't the stuff he bought in but it was funny like even on the day, like Saturday morning of Avcon, you're like,

I did a new build this morning. I've added this stuff in. We're like, I did from the morning of Fridays, you know, bump in from the morning to the start of Avcon. I've seen like one day I did 35 builds. Like I was building it at Avcon.

I was like fixing it. Nah, it doesn't work. because all the stuff as well you it was only breaking in the build it wasn't breaking in the editor so that's what we worked out real fixes and stuff and then that fix didn't work so it would start again and do another the producer dies when that happens but the the thing is that we have like so dan's got high velocity get stuff done put things out wants to keep things going and wants to move forward. But by the nature of it, like the building the systems

and the programming takes a little bit longer and it takes a long time to build a foundation before you can see any outcome. So Dan's like, get it done, do this, do this. And Eli kind of needs space and time to kind of do it properly. So that's kind of my job is to, well, hopefully, I'm good at this, help them figure out each other's perspectives a little bit and, you know, give Dan, I think the thing that Dan needs is, like,

to be able to be free to go and, like, draw 200 rooms or do, you know, do the thing that he wants to do to feel like he's, like, making progress and all of that, but then also to give Eli the space and time to build the systems. Yeah, yeah. Right, right. I just want to go ham on the systems without having to worry about anything getting changed or anything just yet.

You went ham this week. Like, the day you got back from Avcon, he basically started the project and we're already at the point. I started the project last week. I just didn't tell anyone. Oh. It was just like. Basically, like, we've already got the character in there.

We've already got the character controller, the weapons moving around. And it's all from scratch. Well, it's 2D, so it's pretty simple. But it's, yeah, it's... But it's only got... The game itself has 10 elements, and you've done one of them already.

As in blocks, enemy, projectiles, weapons, health, levels health levels rooms and stuff like that and you've already done like one of them and then because that like you know your character controller moves over to all the enemies and stuff like that now because you're using all that together well i didn't and like you know he's like he's just thought about it and i didn't think about anything because i just appreciate it yep that's why i get paid the big bucks, mate. You get paid 10 times what anyone else does. True. Very true. 10 times of zero.

Yeah. Yeah, that's it. 10 times of zero. Well, look, hopefully that number can go up from zero if things keep going well and you guys actually eventually get to a point where you feel ready to release a game. I'm sure that's going to be an interesting time as well

when things are getting close to ready. You're like, okay, well, do we want to release it now and add things later? Or do we want to keep going and then do a release when more things are done we've got a plan we're not just like you know we've got we're not just like you know holding our dicks and looking at sky i can't remember but yeah yeah we um we so we've got the at the moment we're in the stage of building the game obviously but we're also like building a community

the first one to build a community community community community community then we're going to go into probably like the demo like i'm not trying to remember this is right so just stop me if i'm wrong chad so we're going to go into like the demo next after that so get the demo done and start sending that out to like the streamers and stuff like that get eyes on it as much as possible build more community with that the community like that then start and then i get the oh i think and then the steam page in there like so start your steam page and like get your steam page like wishlist vibes like coming so there and then your demo goes out and that's where your wishlist comes in to probably do another trailer which is like more aimed at like you know wishlist on steam so you get build that build that build build it. And then once we get a certain amount of wish lists,

like, then we start thinking about, like, bringing out the game on Steam and doing the thing. So it's like this structure of what we want to do to get the maximum oomph. Yeah, maximum impact. Impact into the world. So it's not just like, next we're going to do this. It's like, this is all

Chad's plan. I was going to say, was there a plan before Chad was there? Was that? Was there a plan before Chad? Yeah, there was a plan of like, I remember a player come up to me and go people go, what do you want to do with this game? And I would look at them and go, uh-oh. He said that to me multiple times and I was like

you know, this could be a game, right? You know, is people going to like this, and he didn't believe me. Even going up to Avcon, he didn't believe that people would like it. I didn't believe. I just like... You were just skeptical. I'm just a realist. I understand that all these games come out every day.

We can't be like, we're going to make millions of dollars, or we're going to sell a thousand. You know what I mean? I'm just always like, no, no, no. We get happy about that stuff when it happens. We don't rely on it. We don't assume it's going to sell 1,000. You know what I mean? I'm just always like, no, no, no. We get happy about that stuff when it happens. We don't rely on it. We don't assume it's going to happen. It's not always like, no, no. It'll be fine.

We'll be happy if people like it at this point. It's about creativity too. I'm just happy to have fun and make this game and make something really fun. If it's successful, that's just a bonus. Yeah, we're really lucky. We're all in situations where we can just work on this game and make something really fun. And if it's successful, that's just a bonus. Yeah, we're really lucky. We're all in situations where we can just work on this game and just have fun.

And I'm not into the corporate world. I run another business. I don't need business. Chad's all about business, but I don't want anything to do with the business part of it. I don't want to do tax. I don't want to do any of that stuff. I just want to make things, and he just wants to do tax. I don't want to do any of that stuff. And I just want to make things.

And he just wants to program things. And I just want to fill out forms. Love it. Give me forms. So, like, we're all just fine. All three of us are doing exactly what we want. And, like, you know, there's no pressure for us to, like, we don't want an interest in a publisher.

If a publisher wants to come to us, fine. Like, my thing is, like, if I'm not a publisher chaser, because if your game's good enough, a publisher will If a publisher wants to come to us, fine. My thing is, I'm not a publisher chaser, because if your game's good enough, a publisher will come to you. They'll find out. If you've got enough hype behind your game and it's going well, they'll come to you. There is no point in publisher chasing

because it just means you're not ready or your game's not good enough for them to care about. I don't mean that by me being a dickhead. I don't actually know the actual industry, but that's just my opinion. That's how I think. I'm just like, if the game's good enough, the publisher will come to me, and then I'll say no.

It's similar to sports players with managers and stuff. If you're good enough, a manager will find you and stuff like that. Yeah, and skating. Kids always go, I want to get sponsored, I want to get sponsored, I want to get sponsored. If you're out there and skating and you're good, you'll get sponsored. A sponsor will come up to you and stuff like that yeah and skating like if like kids always go i want to get sponsored i want to get sponsored i'm sponsored if you're out there and skating and you're good you'll get sponsored a sponsor will come up to you go like dude ride for our company i mean i used to do a lot of skateboarding stuff you can see some boards maybe in the back dance on everything

but uh the weird thing about the industry and publishers and things like that is that to be interesting to publishers you need to you need to have a whole bunch of market validation already you need a big community you need good numbers you need a good build and all of that sort of stuff and only then once you've proved that you're going to be successful will the publisher come in because they're so risk averse will they publish it come in and then back you. And by the time you've proved that you're going to be successful, you're already going to be successful,

so you don't need a publisher by then. So there's this kind of catch-22 around it, which makes it a really weird space, I think. Yeah, business. It's better nowadays. The business factory. It's not that thing. Publish publishers used to have all the pool they used to have all the everything when there was like when the only way you could buy a game well yeah when when you wanted to publish a game and you would actually need to

print discs like yeah yeah publisher and all that they had the pool because they could do like so the book industry we have like you have to get them printed and you have to make them you have to have the outlay of all that money just make the product and that's where the publishers came in and helped you but now it's like you don't need that like it's all digital you upload it to steam so the publisher is like it's not you need to cite they still have a real cool thing like they have their they have their like communities they have their like marketing push they have all that but like if you're not like mega company a lot of them are just like they'll do the minimalist amount of work for you kind of thing because they have like you know we got a whole dude on marketing for your game and like yeah they're marketing 40 other games

you got like 30 days in like the month they got 40 games they're doing. So they get one day to do your game in marketing a month. And I'm like, yeah, great. I can do that like all day. So we can do it all. We're actually reading that book. Should we talk about the book? Yeah, Vlad. Vlad.

What's his last name? Ahlet. Yeah. So there's like nine, ten steps to game dev, that book that I read. And it's just bonkers good. It just basically shows you how to do everything. And's just like cool. I'm glad I'm Jeff I mean, we don't know it's good yet till we actually like released again

This guy like it could be completely wrong starts the book with going. I bought out a game It had like 75,000, you know wish list on stay it went rad. It was my first game I ever did This is all the stuff. I wish i knew when i was doing it and all the stuff that i've learned that like and it's just like it's basically broken down into every part of what you have to do and it's just like i mean we're not going to do everything textbook from it but like it's it's crazy the the way it makes you think it's so much better he doesn't and he doesn't teach it in that way where it's like, do this, do this, do this. It's more of like a broad brush stroke of like, you need to get this and that.

And he says like, why this didn't work, why I dealt with this person or this publisher and that didn't work because of these reasons. And then you're getting like Devolver doing like GDC talks and the talks like called, why you don't need a fucking publisher and digital Devolver did that talk. And I'm going to say, yeah, but it's,

it's, it's quite a thing. Like it's just, it's just a different time now. And it doesn't work for everyone. Like it wouldn't work for AAA, which I don't even understand AAA anymore. They just publish themselves generally companies like EA.

Yeah. Well, anymore they just polish themselves generally companies like ea yeah you know like well most of their spending nowadays is on marketing and you have like hundred million dollar marketing budgets like crazy numb like i i think the problem with a lot of triple a games is that a lot of them focus on things that don't matter like how many times you've seen a trailer for a game and they'll talk for five minutes about like the facial rigging it's like can you tell me what the game is like what i don't care how the faces look or the how the how the water physics work like or how in the how in the industry of a non a game trailer that doesn't show the game is

normal yeah these days you show like a video like and that's like a type of trailer i'm like that's not what i want this is what i really like that's not what i want yeah this is what i really like about um path of exile i brought this up before like they are so confident in their game that their trailer is here is 10 minutes of gameplay enjoy yeah there's a few there's a lot of games to do that yeah yeah and it's a great way to do it because like you yeah you pretty much filter out your audience straight away. They're going to be like, oh, I want to look at this. Yeah, yeah.

Because that's what I like, that look of that game. I had that issue recently with the Xbox showcase where like 90% of the games were just trailers of not even gameplay. I'm like, I want to see this game getting played. I don't want to see like another video. What are they called? Like full motion video trailers or whatever? Yeah, like Fable was one, and it was like you didn't see any gameplay. Yeah, it's just a teaser. Yeah, yeah.

We know what this game's about. Just show us gameplay. We don't need you to sell it to us. But it would have worked in like, it does work in the AAA studios as in like, it's like a film. It's like a film teaser trailer kind of thing, and they're using that mentality of like getting the hype and like, you know,

I can destroy. Well, yeah. If you're making like, if you're making an eldest girl six, like just saying I'm making eldest girl six is going to be enough to get attention. Like GTA six.

Like that's enough. Like you can just say that, Hey, look, no gameplay, nothing. It's happening. GTA six doesn't even need a trailer.

Yeah. You're right. And it's like the amount of times they just put like a little hint or something on their website and everyone just went crazy for like a year and a half and got angry because the trailer didn't come out. Yeah they just have to put like they just have to tell people what font they're going to use and the

internet blows up. Yeah Wow what fonts in Silksong? I mean everything gets leaked these days anyway, like especially things like Call of Duty, like Nintendo, some of their stuff gets leaked too. Well, you know, depending on who you ask, it's a leak.

Some people argue, hey, maybe, you know, some companies potentially release stuff and pretend they didn't release it, so, you know. Oh, they're definitely that. Like, there's so many books I've read. Well, they just didn't release it. They're definitely that. There's so many books I've read. It's a strategic way to get something out there. What's the new Black Ops?

Black Ops 7 or something like that? We're all supposed to be shocked they're making another Call of Duty Black Ops game? Three years time, you'll be doing the same thing again. Shooting people. What are you guys Targeting as the

Release platforms for end of November You mentioned Steam, are you going to aim for Like consoles Or anything else? Maybe eventually, I mean the idea is You know, game devs are hard To start with, so even starting With one platform is challenging and all the

work around that so the plan is um yeah just steam pc um probably do like a parallel self-publishing route um you know on website and stuff like that uh and then you know if if it goes well then then we think about porting um and that's when you know you get a porthouse or a publisher or something like that to help with porting um so yeah i think one of the one of the things i see a lot of is a lot of indie um industry saying oh you know we're going to publish on three or four different platforms because you know we're widening our our target you know our target market or whatever but the technical even just the technical challenge around that is really huge yeah just create more work yeah that's what i've always thought like just do just do steam and if it works on steam it'll work everywhere else so you just like not

it won't work necessarily on other things because you've got things like uh hardware you got to consider but yes not not work i mean as in like the concept like if lots of people buy it on steam you're like cool people like this i'd have not waste the time like if lots of people buy it on steam you're like cool people like this i'd not waste the time to try and get it to work on a switch or try and get it to work and trying to get a dev kit and do all that stuff and if the game you never even like get like you never finish it what's the point of even doing that it's all about that demand right i think pub g was a good example they were just on pc for so long and then now they're on like everything including phones i think um anyone play that anymore uh a lot of people do still yeah yeah yeah i love these old communities of games that are still people but like i'm in the doom one

but there's still like the people that play like they should do a doom everything you know what i mean like every old like and you're like oh my god there's still a whole group of people and like stuff like there's still people out there playing quake lobbies what's that there's still active quake lobbies that exist yeah exactly quake there's like people pulling into ultima 4 still and shit like like king's quest 5 like community and i'm like rad like any sierra game there's still people who are fully into them but i'm just like i love that like so your game can live forever and that's why i think these days like games like they don't have to be the best graphics anymore you just have to have a a cool style and a cool look because people still play the old games because it's the game they like it wasn't just the graphic the wheel

is definitely turning in terms of what people are in games. You're getting more gameplay-based stuff rather than just the ultimate graphics. Yeah. I think style is a lot more important than graphical fidelity because, yes, graphical fidelity is impressive, but we're at the point now where AAA games are basically photorealistic. And, you know, they look... we're at the point now where AAA games are basically photorealistic. And, you know, they look... Yeah, yeah.

But, like, I'll go back and play a game like, I don't know, Kingdom Hearts 1. It was, like, 2002, 2003. It, you know, graphically, the number of polygons in each model is low. But it looks really good. Or, i don't know um rayman you go back and play like one of the ps1 rayman games they still look they'll look good incredible yeah or you go back and play like i don't know super mario 64 like yes it's it's obviously dated in the number of polygons but like you look at that game and you still think this looks good because

They knew what they were doing with a style They weren't trying to chase the best of the best graphics because that's best the best graphic is something that always is going to make Your game look dated like as like five years from now ten years from now What the best was at that point is no longer the best like we get better lighting like nowadays we're doing like ray tracing like all games that were best the best a couple of years ago now that we have this ray traced light we can have you know perfect mirrors and all of this stuff they they look old in comparison but a game that aims for a style is going to be timeless if it has a good style. And also, like, nostalgia is so powerful that if you're playing, like, a game,

like, say Mario 64, again, like, when you're playing it now, you're not playing it now. You're playing it at the time you played it the first time, and that's why you're so into it. So you accept the graphics, you accept the gameplay because you've gone back to that exact time and you realize how good it was for the time and that's when you're playing it you're not playing it now because if a lot of these games if they did come out now like people just wouldn't care about them or they might some of these cases i didn't actually play

a lot of like a lot of games when i was young because i got like one game a year um i've gone back and played some of these games that people like hey this was incredible when I was young, cause I got like one game a year. Um, I've gone back and played some of these games that people like, Hey, this was incredible when I was young. And many of them still do look really good. Like obviously they look dated and maybe some of the mechanics they had were a bit over the time, but yeah,

many of them. But they're always like, but you're going back to that, but you, even in your mindset, you're going back and thinking, Oh, this is a Batman, man. Imagine how good this would in your mindset, you're going back and thinking, oh, this is Batman.

Man, imagine how good this would have been back then. This is rad. And even if you didn't play it, you still understand when it was from. And you go back to that time and you're like, man, if I played this back then, this would have been sick. And it's sick now and I love it. But it's ever GoldenEye. Everyone loves GoldenEye and I never got into it.

Oh, really? Yeah, it's weird because I hated the 64 controllers. Yeah, it wasn't the best. Accessibility was terrible. Yeah, you would have been terrible. Yeah, of course. With the older, getting under that middle button, it's impossible for you.

I could get under it, yeah. Getting under things. In case you don't know what we're talking about and you're listening, Eli doesn't have any arms. Is it silent? That's why I'm wearing an Arm Day shirt, by the way. Arm Day shirt on that says Arm Day. How good is that?

But yeah, Eli, did you want to talk about that, Eli? No, I'm alright. Fair enough. It's not going to make my arms grow back, so it's all good. But it makes the playing with that 64 controller, like, yeah,

they were definitely not good. Who designed that thing, eh? We never had one anyway. We had a PS1 on an Xbox. That's perfect. Yeah, it wasn't. I still had to learn, but yeah. I'm going to have to play Halo.

Before we end it off, because we're coming up to the two-hour mark, what is one game that each of you played that you feel like, you know, really is important for what's being done with this game? If you can think of one game on top of your head like what game would you say it's like uh doom doom 2016 my favorite game of all time um just the the vibe and the energy you know the um it's the only game i've

played that um like gets my heart pounding and just hypes me up and gets the adrenaline going it doesn't quite happen within november but it's got the same spirit same i will you know oh yeah yeah the same kind of you know through you we're doing what we're doing and we know what we're trying to do and we are nailing it really well so that's it for me all right um well apart from doom um i think mine is like yeah i i originally made started this because like i saw and was playing and wanted to emulate the feelings i was getting when i was playing bonnie visor i just wanted to create this endless game loop thing that i just like just was interested in every time i played it and i that how it just made me feel and i just kept like going trying to show my wife and she was so uninterested and i just went well i'm you know

i just want to make my own thing and yeah i think bionic was out in that but yeah doom still my doom doom doom doom yeah so um i wasn't that into doom or anything like that but i recently i played domekeeper which was i thought the loop was really cool on that um just uh just uh sort of like digging and then coming back upgrading and stuff like that was was um really cool for me i want to try and get that same feeling um hades was the same just that they were doing the loop and then dying and then returning upgrading so you can get further um and all that sort of stuff and the little secrets they had along the way

were pretty influential for me. So we got Doom, Binding of Isaac and Hades? Yeah. Domekeeper. Domekeeper is probably more fresh in my mind because I played that recently. I just felt like the core loop was really

refined. Domekeeper is dope. I don't think I've played that one. I just felt like the core loot was really refined. Dome Keeper's Dome. I don't think I've played that one. Oh, get into it. It's so fun. It's pretty addictive. Yeah, until the dragons come along and you can't destroy them and it's just like you die and you have to upgrade your dome, get your artillery cannon.

It is currently 50% off on Steam, so if you want to buy it, go do that. It's a great game. Okay, well, where can people find out about the game? Where can they go to? I know you guys don't know the website yet, so... Have we got a business card here?

Yeah, I mean, probably YouTube is the best to see the trailer, because the trailer is the best thing. It's a minute long. Great trailer. Dan knows what he's doing. And on the YouTube page, there's a link to our Discord. So YouTube for the trailer, and then Discord is the place we're trying to gather people.

We'll be sharing builds. We'll be, you know, asking people to vote on what gross boss Dan's going to draw next. You know, ideas for rooms, enemies. Actually, we've had a couple of people since Avcon do some fan art which is like super cool

so that's like that's good so yeah YouTube and then Discord but we're also on Facebook and all that's linked on like the YouTube all that's, yep oh yeah there's a link through here Dan does some live streams too And all that's linked on, like, the YouTube? All that, yep. The link's on there.

Oh, yeah, there's a link through here, yep. Dan does some live streams too where he's doing a bit of drawing or art for the game. Yeah, we're going to get better at that, though. We learned about stages the other day. Like, there's a stage to do it on Discord. I didn't know. I was enjoying, like, the chat, the voice chat.

Right, right, right. But, yeah, yeah. But, yeah, it's kind of, yeah. I think, yeah, yeah, Discord is definitely our best way to, like, right. But, yeah, yeah. But, yeah, it's kind of, yeah. I think, yeah, yeah, Discord is definitely our best way to, like, follow us. If you want to follow and support us and, like, know what's happening and be part of it and, you know, get an opportunity to get your idea in the game or, like, be at the front lines of it all happening, that is, like, your best bet.

And the community on there is, like, quite active. Like, every time I check it,'s like people have commented and talking about stuff and we've got some really cool yeah fan art and like buddy mike towns made like an end of ember game on game boy like after playing on avcon you guys look i did a version on game boy and like i yeah you coded all that up and like that was awesome and i just like obsessed now we're trying to get that into the game somehow you just can't get like i mean we're games into unity we might be able to at least record it as a video and just put it on the tv in a room that's true but um yeah i was just like yeah i'm pretty shocked with how well

the community's going but yeah we've got a a QR code that goes straight to our Discord, which is our main advertising thing, which is out on the pink card you've got there. Yeah, you won't be able to see it, but yeah, I can put it on the screen or something. Yeah, put it on the screen. Put it all over the screen. But yeah, that's our main thing at the moment, like just trying to get the community going and nurturing it and it's like a cheer pet

from Sonic Adventure. Like a Tamagotchi. Yeah. Do you guys remember, like, the pocket stations? Did you ever have one of them? Pocket station. Were you PlayStation people? Wait here. Keep talking.

I was going to ask. Oh. Yeah, Dan does this regularly where he just disappears and just grabs some random retro. Years ago, you remember PlayStation, right? Sure, yes. OG PlayStation. They had their memory cards.

Yes. Around about that time, I went to Japan, and it was at the time, do you remember Japan was like really technically above us? But now we're kind of leveled out. The world's become a lot smaller. I wouldn't say leveled out. There's still a lot of companies that use fax machines. Well, now

it's almost shifted. They were still into flip phones for years. They had a thing there called a pocket station, and I got one. This is it here. Basically, this is a PlayStation memory card. You can see you open it up. And you pop it in as your memory card.

You save your game on it, and you take it out. And the save game would put a game onto this. Oh, that's cool. And you play the game. It'll be this little game. And when you finished it and you popped it back in, there'd be, like, a new item play the game. It'd be this little game. And when you finished it and you popped it back in, there'd be like a new item in the game that you could only get by finishing the Pocket Station game.

That's cool. And what's crazy about it is all our PlayStation games had the Pocket Station functionality in it, but it was never advertised. So I could just plug this in and the things would go on to here. And they're all on there but no one ever knew they were around and it's my favorite one of my favorite things i've ever got it's kind of like the dreamcast did the same thing you know there's a playstation did it like right at the

start of the very playstation one and i can't remember why i started talking about this i don't know we're talking about tamagotchis oh yeah tamagotchis you want to do show and tell i've got i've got something here not as cool cool as that. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'll keep talking. So, uh... Steam Deck here. Oh, Steam Deck. Oh, what?

How'd you get that? Hmm? How did you import it? No, I was actually sent one. This was a review unit that Valve sent me. Ooh. Nice. Is it good?

Yes. Yes, it is. I've been playing a lot of retro games on it. It's very, very fun. It's a bit heavy. Sure. It takes a little bit to get used to, but I'm so annoyed they still don't...

There have been so many Australian YouTubers that have got sent them, but they still don't sell them here. I don't understand it. Yeah, I know. What's the point? I don't understand why Steam's like crazy in the fact that

you can't get a Valve Index here still. Is that true? Is that still true? You can't buy Valve Indexes here. They won't send it to this place. It seems like you can now.

Maybe this is... Oh, no, this is an international version. This is someone who's imported it. Really? I thought you could. Huh. But I wanted to buy it just from them, because it would be the easiest way.

But yeah, it didn't. But in the end, it didn't have to, because the MetaQuest 3 came out. I love it. But yeah, if you want... When end of Em in the end, didn't have to, because the MetaQuest 3 came out, and I love it. But yeah, if you want to, when end of Ember's ready, if you want to play it on a device, and you want to play it handheld, hey look, you can play it on a Steam Deck. Assuming the game is somewhat optimised

and doesn't run at 3 FPS still. It's a 2D game, I should be fine. Well, you should be, but I did play it on Amazon. Let's not mention other platforms right now. Yeah. Don't scare Eli.

Well, as long as you don't do anything really, really dumb, you can play it on Linux without any issue. It'll just work, hopefully. Things have gotten a lot better doing gaming on Linux, so most games just work now without really any input from the developer, which is nice. Yeah. I mean, it should. It's just a computer with a gamepad attached the developer which is nice yeah i mean it's it should it's just a computer with a gamepad attached to it you know what i mean like it should work

in theory yeah but um yeah we're gonna we're gonna end this off dan before you ran off and grab something you mentioned that you had a podcast earlier so if you want to mention where people can find that oh yeah so it's it's called terror vision horror podcast it's on like spotify you know when you find podcasts um if your podcast thing of choice just search for terror vision which is one word horror podcast you have to write horror podcast is like there's other terror vision ones um you know it's like green and pink and it says terror vision yeah and that's up so check that out. Or come to my shop, which is Greenlight Comics at shop4parkarcade. I know I said my old address.

Yeah, you might even see him working on the game in his shop. Maybe. And if you're not in Adelaide, they have a great online store. Yeah, we have an online store as well. Greenlightcomics.com. Maybe. Don't know. It looks like it's.com. I don't think it's.au.

Judging what came up on Google, I think it's.com I don't think it's.au judging what came up on google I think it's.com yeah anything else you guys want to direct people to or is that every link you want to mention no that's everything awesome okay as for my stuff my main channel is Brody Robertson I do Linux

videos there six days a week check it out see what's over there. I don't know what'll be out. This will be out in a couple of weeks. I've got my gaming channel, Brody on Games. I'm probably still playing through Devil May Cry 4 and maybe also Metal Wolf Chaos XD. It's really stupid.

You play as the president of the United States who pilots a mech, who's trying to save America. Perfect. Yes. And the podcast, you're listening to this. You'll find the audio. If you're watching this on YouTube, you'll find the audio version on YouTube.

You'll find the audio. I've done this 200 times. I still can't do my outro. You'll find the audio version on any podcast platform, Spotify, RSS feed. There's all of that fun stuff. If you want to see the video, you can find it on YouTube at tech over tea. I'll give you guys the final word.

What do you want to say? How do you want to end us off? Yeah. It's not discord end of Ember. And I would say, yeah, just look out, join the discord and get rad.

You want to say bye? See you guys later. Thanks, Brody.