Tech Over Tea - This Father & Son Team Made A Game | Sundae Buoy

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

Today we have the father side of a father and son indie game development team on to talk about the platformer they're working on and in general just to discuss some game design concepts.==========Support The Channel==========► Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/brodierobertson► Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/BrodieRobertsonVideo► Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/3d5gykF► Other Methods: https://cointr.ee/brodierobertson==========Guest Links==========Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4325450/The_Unified/Itch: https://sundae-buoy.itch.io/renzyeYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/@SundaeBuoy==========Support The Show==========► Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/brodierobertson► Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/BrodieRobertsonVideo► Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/3d5gykF► Other Methods: https://cointr.ee/brodierobertson=========Video Platforms==========🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBq5p-xOla8xhnrbhu8AIAg=========Audio Release=========🎵 RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/149fd51c/podcast/rss🎵 Apple Podcast:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-over-tea/id1501727953🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3IfFpfzlLo7OPsEnl4gbdM🎵 Google Podcast: https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8xNDlmZDUxYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==🎵 Anchor: https://anchor.fm/tech-over-tea==========Social Media==========🎤 Discord:https://discord.gg/PkMRVn9🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/TechOverTeaShow📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techovertea/🌐 Mastodon:https://mastodon.social/web/accounts/1093345==========Credits==========🎨 Channel Art:All my art has was created by Supercozmanhttps://twitter.com/Supercozmanhttps://www.instagram.com/supercozman_draws/DISCLOSURE: Wherever possible I use referral links, which means if you click one of the links in this video or description and make a purchase we may receive a small commission or other compensation.

Good morning, good day, and good evening. I'm as always your host, Broody Robertson. And today we have, I think, no, this is not the last one postage. There's some I have that have been, like, delayed to, like, after the fringe. So, like, next month. But today we have Brad from Sunday Boy Games, who is working on the Unified, but you're not the only person working on the project. So I'll let you do your introduction and go from there.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah, my name is Brad, as mentioned. I am sort of one-half to one-third of Sunday Boy Games. And like you mentioned, my co-developer is my 11-year-old son, Jalen. Yeah, and the third member is my wife slash his mother, Donna, and she does the business stuff. So things like getting us into Sage. Otherwise, we would have just been sitting in Jalen's bedroom, building the unified, and it never would be. see the lighter day. So that's our little team and that's our dynamic. Yeah, I do the art and the music and the game design. Jayland does all the programming. So it does the business. So that's Sunday boy. Honestly, that dynamic is kind of part of the reason why I wanted to talk to you.

Like I've had people on who are like, you know, oh, we met each other at AIE game design school. We met at university. I had someone on the other week who is making a game with his housemates. But I've never had anyone on who, was like doing a family project. Yeah. And it didn't really,

it didn't really begin with that intention at all. Sunday Boy games kind of, it kind of just existed one day, I guess you would say. It wasn't like we set out to be like, let's be a little family of, you know, the Brady bunch equivalent of,

in the game dev scene. We, I have wanted to make a video game for years. And it just kind of happened that as I was tinkering away when Jalen was like four and five. He was like interested in just playing like the little concepts that I was making. And then he was, so I put him in front of some block codes, you know, apps and whatnot. And the schools are like, we don't do anything with coding at this age.

He's got to wait until he's in high school. And then I just put him on some tutorials. And he and I said, well, I'm using Game Maker Studio. I wasn't taking to the programming side of it all. It just was really hard for me to retain. probably pretty late in life to like start pivoting into that you know what i mean i work in i'm a cinematographer so i have my brain full of like camera specs and editing stuff and you know so when he took to it as well as he did um he was burning through like tutorials and stuff like

that and then i was just like do you want to do you want to like try programming like a little concept thing i'm working on and he just did it and then he just did it and then started looking like it might be something that we could actually evolve, you know what I mean? So I was like, well, let's start an Instagram just so we had somewhere to go with it. And the reason Sunday Boy was just kind of because it's hard to find unique, a unique handle these days. I was going to ask you where the name came from. That's why it's spelt weird.

So it was like, I kind of had the logo because, you know, I do the art and I kind of do like the games pixel art, but you know, like I like I like to do. I did art for like an animated series a few years ago and I did the poster for my film. So I dabble with digital art. So I had kind of drawn the little Sunday smoothie guy. And it was going to be smoothie games, but there's already like 10 of them. So so we called it Sunday boy games. And then Donna was like, you guys should, we should go into something like Sage and we were like,

I don't know about that. Like that seems like something a serious studio would do. And she was like, well, it looks like, it looks good enough to me. So yeah, she put us in and we got accepted. So all right, let's, let's become like more of a real studio, so speak. And yeah, that's kind of how it kind of just became. So Jalen joined you with like some of the early concepts. when he was fairly young.

When did this project kind of start? He started working on what is now the Unified in, I think it was October 2024. So one of the... Oh, did we DC? What happened? Oh, okay, we're good?

Yeah. You can't out from it there. Oh, did I? Sorry, I didn't notice anything. No, no, it's all good. It's all good. Looks like we're having a little bit of camera quality issue. That might be my side. I'm not sure. It's getting better. So, um, yeah, I got full internet us here. Okay, it's probably my side then. All good. Okay, just, yeah, just keep going. Uh, okay, so I think I was getting a, um, yes, in the unified,

there's two playable characters and you can switch between the two. You can only ever be one at a time. And so we started with the first character, which is Renzi. That's who. you default as he's the red guy he's the one with the helly hover for those that have seen it at sage or watched any of the clips um renzai we just had a kind of a concept called renzai i guess to take it back a little further we knew for sure we wanted to make like a two-d platformer because when jalen was really young the first game we've played together was donkey con country and it's a you know it's a two-d platformer and funnily enough like you can switch between the character to the extent that we've put into the unified, but, you know, like, that's an early thing that

we did together. And then, like, being a documentary filmmaker, I fell in love with, um, indie game of the movie when that came out. And that was huge for me because, like, seeing Super Meat Boy in development. And I was just so taken with those guys and what two, two people were able to do. And then obviously from there, you're like, I, you know, Jaylen and I completed Super Meat Boy, uh, separately. And then I found Celeste. And I, and I, and I, and I, and I, I finished that and I was like, dude, you got to play Celeste. And then he played Celeste. So for us, when it came to deciding a game to make, I just for sure, I was like,

I want to make like a narrative driven 2D platformer. And I'd love to actually develop mechanics and a game feel that can be just in the, in the same conversation as games like that. How achievable that was at the time. I had no idea. But I think because Jalen played those games so young, when we started doing the, when we started doing the game feel for like renzi the concept he would notice little things that like it that weren't programmed in little buffers and little input that like input buffers and little

you know little things that give the player more control that I guess you don't realize you have until you play a game that you don't feel it right right and I think and I think for him to be out of not only articulate it, but to affect those changes by programming, I was just like, damn, like you've got a, you've got like a real handle on this stuff. So I was like, I better try to get better at pixel art because he's, he was upping the game with what he was programming in and it was feeling better. So I don't know if you've seen the, the early Renzi concept. You can play it on. You've got it on itch, yes. It's on it's, yeah. So it looks pretty different to the unified.

It was just like white tiles. So yeah. So yeah. So it was in October that we started, October, 2020, that we started working on Renzi. And then when it started to,

I just feel like we kind of hit the ceiling on Renziah pretty quickly. If you actually play that demo, when you get about 15 or so levels in, you go to the next world and you can play as Kinsey, which is the other character. And he looks different. His sprite is different. But what we found is when we were testing that,

we were like, by the time you get to the new player, you're so used to being the other player. And then doing level design, I was like, I got some cool ideas, but you'd only be able to do this if you were a Renzi. So I just said to Jalen one day,

why don't instead of you getting like a third of the way through the game and then you unlock a new character, why don't we just make the character switchable. Right. It feels like such a big mechanical shift to do at that point where it kind of feels like you're playing a new game then. And it opened up the level design options so like significantly. Like it just felt like a flow got going after that. You know what I mean? Like

for anyone who's just listening, can you briefly explain, sorry to get you off there. Can you really explain the mechanical differences between the characters? Oh, of course. Yeah, that does make sense. Yeah. So as far as their move, their default movements go, their walk speed is the same. We took the run out. We had run, but we took the run out. They can, and so both players can walk, obviously, in other direction. You can duck, and when you duck, your jump is higher. They have a variable jump, and they can cling to the wall. They don't stick to the wall like Celeste does, and they don't slide down the wall as fast and aggressively as Super Meat Boy does. It's sort of in the middle. But they're going to. But they don't stick to the wall like Celeste does, and they don't slide down the wall as fast and aggressively as Super Meatboy does. It's sort of in the middle. But they're don't have a stamina or anything. So those parts are the same. With Renzi, the red character, when you hold the action button, he goes into a spin and that's what we call the heli hover. So if you're jumping off of a ledge, it just slows your fall to a controllable sort of hover. But that's timed, I think it's two, two and a half seconds or so, then the player will start flashing red and the controller shakes and it's, you're going to tell you, you're about to run out of hover and you have to reset.

If there's loft by like a fan or something like that, the hover actually goes up. With Kinsey, he has a dash. So it's obviously, you know, very, I mean, I know lots of games have dashes, but, you know, like that's, you know, that's Celeste's main sort of, their main sort of mechanic. So Kinsey has a dash. It works, I guess, a little differently. And the characters are, I think, a fair bit faster than like a,

if you compare it to something like Celeste. it's a, it's a little quicker, which made refining the, the player feel different, I suppose. Yeah, it feels not as much,

but I would say closer to the speed of Super Meat Boy, but with a lot more control. And obviously, Super Meat Boy, when you get good at that game, it's a very tight platformer. But it's a game where early on,

you really don't feel like you're in control of the character. Yeah. I feel like I noticed a little bit of that, from people at sage. And no one really said anything, but there was just a couple of little comments or seeing people getting used to it.

But like Super Meat Boy, if you don't have that level of, it feels squarely at first until you're doing really fast twitch motions and then you kind of need that padding in there. Otherwise, it would be uncontrollable. You know what I mean? So I guess it's like oversteer and understeer in a car.

Like it's, when you go on at a fast speed, it feels different. But yeah, so they're the two. So they're what makes the play is different. So of course, when you, and then there's rules about, like, we let the player switch like pretty quickly. Like there is a very small cool down just so that you can't kind of like infinitely fly. And I guess you can, but it would, it's like, it would be physically hard to do. I can say from my experience briefly playing the demo, you definitely can.

but it requires you know to actually do it you got a character swap because for anyone who hasn't played the demo you character swap and that resets your cool down for your dash your cool down for your fly so you can

swap character dash up swap character again hover swap back dash up swap back hover and it's once you get into a rhythm you can do it it's just kind of not intended in very tight to do so.

I feel like it's one of those things that you could do it, but the player will be like, this is more trouble than it's worth. And it doesn't really, the levels are kind of small, the rooms are kind of small. It would be easier to go about the level in the intended sort of way.

In most cases, it's kind of just okay to sort of maintain your height to wait like a timer out. That's right, yep. But when you get past the first world, I don't know if you were there. Did you see there was a guy that actually got through the whole first world and got into the second world at Sage?

I, uh, maybe. That was on the Saturday. I don't know. He came back on the Saturday. Oh, no,

I wasn't there that day. I was just there for the first day. Yeah, he, so he got through the first world, but he'd been playing so long and people were waiting to play it. So we're like, come back tomorrow and we'll boost you,

we'll jump you straight through to the second world. The mechanics changed slightly in the second world right before the player goes into the second world. They go through. So the character, characters are like clones. They're clones based on like real like, uh, warriors that would dug up from a couple of hundred years ago. And they, it's in the early 80s and they're in the science facility and they're, and they're basically, it's kind of like a, um, similar to like a

portal situation where like they're being used as experiments and they're trying to get out of this facility. So they go, there's a couple of stages through the games where they go through these mod pods and it overrides their default ability. So when you get to the second world, by default, Renzi's Hover, the gravity is inverted, so he goes up by default. Oh, okay. And his, and his stamina for the hover is doubled, and Kinsei gets a secondary dash, and he has the ability to break through certain things like wood, for example. And again, it just gives me the opportunity to create all these, like, puzzling sort of

things where you look ahead and be like, how am I going to get through here? If I break that wood, if I use that wood to stand on, then I've got safety, but I need to break through it at some point. And then you've got to, the level gets like, the levels get significantly harder when you get up to that second world. So you're given more powers, but then the game difficulty creeps up with that proportionally sort of thing. Is the plan to continue sort of expanding upon the mechanics as you go further into the game?

Or are you going to get to a point where you're going to basically have all your abilities? And that's, then you just sort of like make the, level design more complicated. Yeah, I think the plans for the for World Three, because that's only just, we've only just started building that in, the mechanics will stay the same. My thought is,

is potentially to remove some abilities later in the game rather than add. We did plan on having a third playable character in the game, but I think we're going to, that character's, that character is really important for the story. and that's the emotional beat of the story. But we're not going to have that character playable now. But I think we will have a new game plus

where that character is playable with their own mechanics. And so it says that option as well. But no, it won't change too significantly. It's that the... So with the world map in the Unified, they go from the first asset containment compound, which is the area that the scientists are trying to keep them contained within and they get through there.

And then they go into this area called the acid well. And it's just a vertical well. So they're at the bottom of this shaft that's the acid, the pumps are down and there's, it's dry for this and they take advantage of going straight up. But it's also because the, like the facilities abandoned, but like it's also that they were being used. Like the reason that the characters were created is because they,

the company is like a defense technologies company. So when you first start the game, you kind of go through the lobby and it has posters on the wall of their previous creations from the 60s and the 70s. And they're like mines and then like floating mines and then like homing little drone orb mine things that chase. And they're all still in the facility and they're the things that you have to avoid. There's no interaction. There's no other humans there. It's, you know, it's very lonely and somber in the in the ACC. So yes, I guess to answer your.

question, we probably won't continue to expand and make them just like God mode sort of thing. Sure, sure. But I kind of mean like, you know, in Celeste, for instance, you obviously have your dash and you have your wall grab. And then eventually there's like the flying sort of thing you get at some point. Oh, yep. Well, obviously you don't want to make it so you can do everything, but add in some additional, even if they're like very situational abilities where it's this you can do this thing in this specific area? Yeah, I think I like the idea of that. So like in the third world that they go to,

it's based on the first and the second world, there's, I don't know if you remember, you can switch off these lasers and they're on a timer and it basically creates a little, a little, you know, a speed run section through that. You've got to get through that bit within six seconds. Otherwise the laser's going to turn back on and you won't get through. So in the third world, the player jumps into this, onto this moving like sky cable, sky carriage that's on a cable.

But it's obstructed by this area that's under construction. But the carriage has the laser timer off it. So you've got to turn the laser off, get through these sections and then get back onto the carriage to turn the lasers off again so you can get through. So the carriage is forever going. So that's kind of the new mechanic in the third world is that there's no time to stop. whereas in the first two worlds, you go through these grueling sections and then you're like, oh my God, checkpoint, thank God.

Let me just get the sweat off my palms and then go again. In World Three, it won't stop. You'll be kind of, if the carriage keeps going and you don't keep up with it, you're toast. So, do you know what I mean? So that's how we creep it up there. But yeah, but I do like, like what you're saying with Celeste, those situational, like even the,

I think there's things that expand. and her stamina and stuff like that, you know, like you get the little, the little power up. Yeah, like the dash resets you can get. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We, we had, we had the, we had a little power pill initially in the game. But once we added Kinsay to the playable, you know, once we merged the two players, the need for that was gone because you could just switch out and kind of combo your way through it.

Like he said, sort of clutch to reset, hover and then reset back. So it was funny because, yeah, we, yeah. That was kind of the things that it changed. Like I think in the demo of Renzi on itch, they are the little power pills. And that he basically could hover infinitely until he touched a wall or the ground again. So, yeah. So we took that stuff out because, yeah, adding the second player to the main player just took us on such a pleasant little tangent that we were like,

oh, this has actually kind of made a few things redundant now. You know, so. A bit ago you mentioned sort of Jalen noticing things that are sort of important to the game design but you wouldn't necessarily immediately see it and I'm assuming you mean things like

oh buffering jump inputs where if you jump just before you touch the ground that should be treated like a jump or like coyote time if you walk off an edge you shouldn't immediately fall off the edge things like that which you can make a platform or without them but if they're not there,

they, something always feels a little bit off. It feels kind of unfair. Yeah. Yeah, it does. And we, it was big for us to make sure,

because we want to make the game difficult, but we don't want anyone to feel frustrated at the game. And, yeah, and it was things, a big one that he worked on was how the player could come off of the wall. So because,

because part of the, part of the, part of the strategy later in the game is to, like do a little like a little wall exit because if you jump off the wall, we had to make it so that you could get a decent amount of loft back off of the wall, but we also had to make it that you didn't come too far off the wall, that sort of hopping up one wall didn't feel too laborious where like you were losing too much ground. Right, right.

But a big one was how much almost, you know, you've got coyote time off of a ledge, but also having that that fair amount of coyote time off of a wall where you don't want to accidentally jump off the wall because that will send you, if you're in a narrow corridor, that will send you straight into the spikes on the other side or the acid on the other side, whatever is there. But if you just pop off and then hit jump, you know, like you've got that little bit of safety. Or another thing was if players, like on Kinsey's dash, for example, just making sure that if a player is prone to pressing the direction before they press the dash button by a few frames,

the game has you. Like, it's all good. Like, that was meant to be a dash rather than it's just a nothing and a button doesn't response. Whereas, you know, initially when you first put the programming, the coding in, it might just be, as long as you're holding dash and you press that direction, it'll go. But you want to make sure that you're covering people that press dash slightly first, press the direction slightly first, or press them both at the same time to get rid of all of

that potential frustration. but also things like how fast, you know, if you jump off of a ledge as Renzi and then you hit the heli, how fast does the upward acceleration push back against his natural gravity? And so sometimes, especially when you get to the acid well, his acceleration upwards is slightly modified because it needs to give more control. But because he's got a shorter timer in the first world, it had to be quicker. otherwise that you might jump down and hit a fan and get that loft but getting that acceleration eats into half of your time you don't go anywhere so it felt unforgiving so it was just a lot of

basically making levels and going all right we should we this is a level that we should be able to do and kind of using certain levels like you know at certain increments throughout the first world to be like okay if you can pass this level can you still pass this level and and is there a chemical imbalance there and do we need to go back and what do we change? What ripple effect has that had on some of the easier worlds? We don't want to make it too overpowered. So yeah, so those types of things. And I think we're still, I think we're definitely still in the process of doing that, especially with, you know, the dash canceling the dash and at what point and how quickly can say pulls up from a dash cancel. Those things I think are still in the works. But like,

I said, watching some like good precision platformers play the Unified at Sage, they seemed like they had a good handle on it. Maybe I'm just, I test it so much, but I know I'm just not that amazing at platformers. I've got the advantage of just, I can go into the engine and move my player to the third checkpoint because I'm like, fuck,

it's going to take me 45 minutes to get back there. So that was also, it was also good to see people, handling the players pretty well, you know what I mean? But there's always, you can always sand off the rough edges, so to speak, you know. Yeah, I think when it's your own game,

I've talked about this every single time I have a game devoid. It's actually the case with just all software. When it's your thing and you've used it so many times, it can be really easy to miss the rough edges where you think this makes, sense. It plays like it makes sense, but you've done it so many times that it's very easy to just accept the problems as just being there, but you don't acknowledge them. Yeah. And having

like a new set of eyes on a game, just on any bit of software, I think is a good way to really see the problem. I think I'm going to assume the same thing applies to like cinematography as well. If you've been working on a project for so long, you might not even even realize, like, or you might even notice any of the changes you're actually making at this point, and you might over-fixate on changes that you make that nobody else is actually going to notice. Yeah, I think it's definitely, it's definitely more, I think it's definitely a bigger hurdle in game development. Because, like you say, like we, and I think from memory, you and I maybe had spoke about this,

the onboarding part of during the Unified. Yeah, like the tutorial, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, when we got home, that, that threw me because we, I had definitely over, like made, is over assumed the right way to put it, I'd over, I'd overestimated people's ability to just sort of kind of, oh, oh, dude, are we good? I, get what we were trying to three hours.

Okay, wait. Sorry, you cut out for a bit. Can you just repeat what you were saying there? Yeah, basically when we got home from Sage, we spent like three hours going through and like color coding, like the messaging for the, you know how like in the tutorial, you know, like this is intended for this character and so the writing's in red and this is intended for this character, so the writing's in blue. And even since then, we've actually completely taken all of the abilities off until you get to

that first tutorial level. But it was so incredible to see, you know, like, you know, like just how literal you have to be with some things and how other things was totally fine to just leave it unsaid. And the mechanics will kind of lead the way. But, but yes, that was my biggest fear is that we had gotten so used to playing the game that it was going to feel horrible when people actually played it and we were just so used to it. I played a bunch of games, Sage. Your game is the one that started with breaking out of the thing at the start, yes? Not correct, yes. Okay.

Yeah, that's, that was a part where I was a little bit confused because it said the input. So you did like press an input to break the glass and then nothing happened. But it sort of wanted you to keep pressing the input. He's got to punch the glass three times to get out, but we don't say that, yeah. Right, right, right. Yeah. we didn't change that bit um because i feel like like yourself and every other gamer they're like okay i'll do it again i think at a con like it's hard because if you're sitting there in your room playing

it the screen vibrates you hear the sound of the glass crack the controller shakes and you kind of feel that and you can see that there's a crack there did you have control vibration when that happens yeah yeah there is yep maybe i just didn't notice okay so yeah so yeah so there's There are things that, like, there are things like in a public environment like that do get a little bit, you know, like the story component of it. Like people just skip through the text and stuff like that. But yeah, that was one that we debated about a fair bit. You know what I mean? Like, we're like, do we, gamers will probably get like, I'll just press it again.

And then you hear the crack and it gets louder and the crack spreads around the pod. And then you press it the third time and they finally come out. But yeah, it didn't trip. I think the main issue is. the first press, it didn't seem like there was much visual indication. I think you could do the multiple presses, but like the first time you do it, I think it needs to be kind of really obvious that something happened. Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right. I think we'll maybe like, as we ramp up, it'd be kind of cool if maybe the whole room shakes. Yeah, yeah, some

screen shakes. Yeah. Bust and particles come from the ceiling, you know. So, yeah, there are things that yeah, they're things that we're, you're so torn, you know what I mean? Because you want to, you don't want people to miss things, but you also don't want to patronize gamers when they're like, yeah, we get it, we get it.

Like, you don't have to prompt me to do everything. Right, right, right. I can see why you wouldn't want to have like, a text there saying press it again. But I think, yeah, I think having some like visual flare that something's happening,

like you were saying, having the particles happen, having a big crack, having it shake. Like that I think is stuff that looks cool and sort of gives the idea that you actually did something even though you can't see your player character yet. Yeah, it does need to have more impact. And that's the opening of the game. So it's only it's only that third smash where it really feels like, you know what I mean?

So but yeah, no, they're little things that we'll go back through and add. And yeah, there are so many little things. our list is um the list is long i i did notice the like as i was sitting there like the difference in people who knew what they were getting into as opposed to people who hadn't really played many especially like precision platformers because when i played this game it kind of just all clicked with me the character swapping was a little strange to like get my head around initially but yeah knowing that the different characters have different different abilities. That was pretty clear, like, as soon as I did so. But I did notice other people who,

especially with that first time you had to do a dash, who had no idea, like, how they could do that, didn't realize that wall grabbing was a thing to get to the ledge into the section just after that. And a bunch of little things, which, when you've played a bunch of these games, they're really obvious. Yeah. But it's sort of like... What level of assumptions do you want to make about your player? So we, well, again, we've thought long and hard about this.

And I guess the thing for us is, and it's probably very limiting to say this, but if they can't get that bit, there's no way they're even going to get out of the first world. And there's like five worlds. Do you know what I mean? Right, right. You kind of got to be,

I, every time someone came up to the booth, I would say, have you ever played Super Meat Boy or Celeste? And a lot of people said, yeah, I've finished Celeste. I'm like, all right, you'll, you'll get this. And when someone that was good at platformers played our game, people gathered around and watched.

And when someone, you could tell that someone had never really played a platform or a precision platform before. Like maybe they've played a platform, maybe they've played like Mario or something. Yeah. Like, high level Mario gameplay is really cool. But like you can finish the game, not really known how to play it. I think I noticed it more with, and it, and I, And I do feel like it was more older crowd that played the Unified.

But when there was a couple of kids that you could see that they're probably more used to a Minecraft or a Fortnite, you were just like, oh, gosh, I don't think they're familiar with some of, like, what platform players would consider just the usual sort of, the standard, the standard pace of a platformer. So that, that is hard, but how much do you, I think when your target audience is for the hardcore platformers, how much do you bastardize that to, to, to onboard? because I feel like the first, we've definitely tried to make it so, and before Sage, we'd maybe playtested with about 10 people of varying gaming skills.

And one thing for sure was that I would watch people get better at the game and they would get up to levels that they'd watch the previous person play saying, there's no way I'm going to be able to do that. And then just through going through the tutorial and the curve of like the difficulty curve in the game, they were actually doing it. And so for me to say, you've actually just gotten way better at platforming luck. And, you know, like, so that's encouraging. And obviously because you want to bring new people into the platformers, you know, into that realm. But yeah, I think the target is for better or for worse, people that want that next challenge.

They've finished Super Meatboy. They've finished Celeste. And they're looking for those games that are, which is why there's big emphasis on story because we want the player to feel really compelled. You know, like in Celeste, you kind of like, you really want to finish because you want to, you want to help Madeline get to her goal, you know what I mean? So that's what we've really tried to make sure there's some emotional, like, story beats in the game so that when you feel like giving up, on top of like a real fast for Eastbourne and very forgiving checkpoints, there are very frequent checkpoints, sorry.

You know, we're trying to make, we're trying to make sure that it's for players that want to play like a hardcore precision platformer, but we're also trying to make sure that people don't bounce off because they don't feel any reason to put themselves through something like that. You know what I mean? Right. I think at the very least, you need to make sure that players are aware of the tools they have. I don't think you need to hold their hands too much, but like a lot of,

for instance, a lot of platformers don't introduce wall grabs from the very start. That's oftentimes an ability you unlock later on. So making the player aware, that this is something you do right from the very start of the game, make them aware that character swapping is a thing and the different characters have different abilities. I think doing that is kind of enough to really get the player moving. I understand not wanting to go and hold their hand

or a couple of levels, anything like that. But for someone who, maybe this is their first position platform, or maybe they've played Celeste, but they never, like, you know, progressed too far in it. I think at the very least, knowing what you can do

is what you should be aiming for. Yeah. I think with our game, with the Unified, you learn in the second room. The only way to get out is to, you basically cling onto the wall and jump up and get the key

and then the door opens. And you also learn about the time lasers. And then we let the player sort of have that bigger room to sort of just feel around or I can jump. And then, And, you know, like, it's good to, I was really, do you know, the main thing, because then they go through the tutorial and that dash, the dash part of that tutorial was hard because you have to, when you switch to Kinsey is the harder player to be, right? So Renzi, Renzi is sort of like your daily driver, like he's the grounded player. Like he's the one that will, if you don't need to be Kinsey, it's easier to be Renzi because he just feels more.

he's easier to control. Kinsay, the blue guy with the dash, but, you know, that very first tutorial, the first level that is the tutorial that says, all right, press L2 to switch.

And then once you've switched, press this button, I think it's square on the, on a PlayStation controller, press the square button and a direction to dash. But they have to get through, you have to jump and get through that hazard to get to do that. That definitely is something.

that is harder for people to do than I thought it would be. And then before they leave the level, then they kind of go into this pit, and then they have to kind of do a duck jump. So if you duck and then press jump, it gives you like a super jump. And then you have to combine that with an upwards dash, because to get out of the level, it's the equivalent of like a 20 foot jump. So there was a few people that just struggled to make it out of there. But everyone that made it out of there, you kind of set up for what you need to do next.

But what's good about that is that's the only time text is in the game. And the very next level, you walk in and there's just a bunch of big industrial fans blowing air upwards. And if you just jump into them, you get minced. But everyone was like, oh, if I jump and then hold the heli, you hover up. Yeah, I think that is very self-explanatory. Like, a lot of, like, you know, even if you never played a game before, like even someone who's older, like you think of like Mary Poppins, right? You'd like sort of understand that idea that she would be able to hover up.

Right, right, right. It's such a trope that so many things have used that even if you've never played a game before, you can probably work that one out. Yeah. And then a few levels later where definitely where people started to, and again, such lengthy debate, when I said debate, it's me going back and forth. Jalen's a bit like, just tell me, whatever you think. I don't know.

Like that's your, that's your department. I'll code it in. But there's a bit where you, rather than just like duck jumping and then updashing, you have to use Renzi to hover, but the, but the reach of the fan ends and you're still like several feet from wet the ledges. And so that's the first time you have to combo out to Kinsei and dash up. So the way that we've tried to explain that is, I don't know if you remember that there's computers. There's a few working computers left around. the lab and you can go in and read emails and its observations that the scientists have made.

But so many people skip that again, being at a con and we're like, this is what you have to do. And if you don't read the, and the PC has particles sparkling around it and an arrow going like this to be like press up here and you can read the email. But if people don't check that, you know, it's like, what do you do? You're not going to figure it out unless you, yeah. One little thing you can do with that that a lot of games will do is highlight a keyword. Ah.

So they'll use like a different font color, different font size for whatever word is important. A lot of detective games will do this, for example. That is valid, yeah. Because sometimes, because that's actually a pretty valid, yeah, that's a very valid point because we're mixing, we do mix story beats and tutorial slash hints on those emails.

So some of those emails will be about, hey, like Greg from HR stepped on a mine and he died. Like, you know, that's kind of to be like, don't step on the minds. You will die. And the ones with the drone wings will chase you. But other ones are to do with like, we have to move subject three away from like that a da, da, because da, da, da, da. And so some of the story and some of them are hints. So that's valid because.

yeah, if you just go, oh, yeah, this is another story beat. I don't care about the story. I just want to do the platforming. Yeah, you'd miss important information, especially when you go through the mod pods. Like the upgrades are kind of written almost like lines of code. So it's probably worth highlighting. Yeah.

But it's so hard. Like, it really is. It's almost like you've been a game of your whole life. And then when you're making a game, you forget like how, you know, like in Celeste, for example. you know, very early in the game, you make a jump that you're not going to make and it's fully slows down and it says, do this. Right, right, right.

And it'll get you out of trouble. Hit this button and you'll dash out of trouble. Yeah, yeah. I love how that sequence. Yeah. I love how they've done that. You know what I mean? Because it's like, it forced the player to just go for it.

But then it kind of is like, gives you a little, little pat on the bum and it's like, there you go. This is all you needed to do. And now you know how to do that thing. But then super meatboy on the other hand, they're just like, it's all done with the level design, it's like, you'll figure it out. Right, right, right. But his mechanics pretty straightforward.

I think why some people struggled with the double, the super jump and then dash up is it hadn't been separately introduced that you can do directional dashes. Because the first dash you do is just a horizontal dash. Correct, yes. I think maybe if you had one other thing. before that that did require you to do an upwards dash, that I think would sort of alleviate that problem. Yeah, that's also valid. Yeah. Maybe like once, maybe you go through the laser, the spikes or the laser, whatever it is that kills you. And then you have to do another one that takes you upwards. And then that does a set that, that sort of solves that problem.

Yeah. And then you do the combo. Yeah. And again, that's me being so overly cautious not to take up players times with the tutorial, but you can't leave them. you can't if they bounce off because they're unsure then that's even worse isn't it like yeah no that's super valid because you do you got to go yeah that's your first dash and your second dash is like a combination yeah i guess yeah i guess the biggest thing we have to make sure we don't we iron out before we release is that yeah we don't rush the player too much and i have moved a few levels around that you know the PCs the old computers that you can read are peppered out further so you don't feel like you just oh god am i going to have to read an email every time i

go into a room. Right, right. You know, there are only a few lines, and it's like, it's a cutesy little pixelated screen thing. You know, it's not, it's not like this big, it's not like finding a book in Skyrim and being like, fuck, do I have to read this? Do you know what I mean?

It's, it's pretty, it's pretty lightweight. But yeah, that's also very valid. Right, yeah, the text is a, story and text is a very difficult one, because if you're going into a game where the expectation is you're going to be hit with a bunch of story, like you're playing a, I don't know, you're playing an RPG,

some sort, it opens with a five-minute cutscene, right? Like, that's sort of the initial expectation from that game. Like Skyrim, for example. You start Skyrim, you're in the car, you're in a cutscene, it's like three minutes long, you do the character creation, and then there's another cutscene. You know what you're getting into. But a lot of indie games,

unless they are marketing themselves as a story, visual experience, especially with platformers, you are kind of expecting basically maybe like 30 seconds to introduce like the character and then right into the action. So anytime there is this sort of law dump at any point, that does tend to act as a bounce off point, especially early on where you're not really invested in the game. And you'll see this a lot of games where you have like achievements for each section. And it's like, oh, 995% of people get to chapter one and then 50% chapter 2. there's like clearly something happening in that point where people are bouncing and that maybe it's

some games it's okay to have that happen but maybe there's a good reason that's happening and that should be resolved because players are going into it with sort of mismatched expectations yeah that's the thing that i want to i only want the story to exist because i want to people to feel that same and I guess I felt it in like playing portal I'm back yeah yeah you fully paused then yeah I need to sort out this internet connection it's been a problem for so long okay good because I'm like I got full bar

no it's 100% my side uh how how far did I get um did you I was I was I was saying about portal like when I played portal too like you know like I just want it I want the player to get out of that isolation I want the player to get out. And so, you know, the story is pretty lightweight in that.

And I think I want the game to be fun because of the platforming. But if people, I want, it's kind of like, if we make it as hard as you as we want it to be, you want to have that. It's kind of like the end. There's like this emotional sort of payoff and like this kind of like. But I do want to pepper it out very like sparsely. Like I use, do you know, millinote? it's like a it's like a trello style thing miller note is like a i used it for still standing like my film um and i made sure that all my chapters i would color code them so that when there was an informative

chapter or when there was an emotional beat i would see it visually where they are throughout the pacing and that's what i'm doing with the unified i'm like all right any any anything in yellow is that's when we explain a hint or a tutorial anything in gray is when we introduce a new mechanic and anything is in pink is a story beat. And so I try to make sure that it's not yellow, yellow, yellow. Do you know what I mean? Like I try to go like yellow, a bit of pink. There's some grey.

We haven't had any grey for a while. Let's introduce some new mechanics. And I also got a difficulty rating at the bottom of each card, which represents each level so that I can also try to balance that as well, give the player a little reprieve. Although I was listening to, was it Rupert from the R&D department? Is that his name? the R&D.

This was one of your podcasts a while. I know. I should. I'm sorry. It was probably quite a while ago, but I've just been going over. Yeah, no, it was like a year ago I had him on. He was making, you guys had a conversation there about whether or not you should, he said something about a serrated edge and should you go hard, difficult, hard, difficult, or should

you just go harder, harder, harder, or should you go hard and then completely change it up? You know, so I don't know. What's your take on that? Should it just get exponentially harder? Or do you think, if you're playing through a platformer, do you appreciate that reprieve from the brutality for a little bit? Or do you want to keep your skills sharp by always charging forward? I think when I, I think the best of look at it is when you introduce like a new,

like a new mechanic. Early on the first time you use it, it's going to feel weird. It's going to be confusing. I think by the time that you try to really start merging that with other mechanics, you should feel comfortable doing that. Yeah. Like, Celeste does a fairly good job at this where you have, you have this like ramp up and difficulty and that kind of like plateaus for a bit,

and then you get a ramp up again. And that's, it gets you kind of like used to the new things and then merging the new mechanics together before it tries to sort of, of make a more complicated interaction with those mechanics or trying to combine them in a confusing way or something else like that. Yeah. Like, do you feel like it's more rewarding? Like, what's more rewarding to be, just to be going through a section?

Like, you've just gotten good at a certain mechanic and then you're just dominating. Like, I guess there's a point where you go, all right, I've dominated for a few levels now. Throw some challenges at me. But do you think that's, do you think that's, but the plateau, that's probably. Yeah. I think that's probably this. And the plateau also gives players who are sort of falling behind on the mechanics a sort of chance to catch up. Because if it gets harder and harder and harder and harder, if someone is struggling on one level, then if they manage to get through that, then it's immediately a struggle again and immediately a struggle again. And that sort of can. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And that can kind of be a bounce off point. If you never feel like your understanding,

standing the game if you never feel like you're getting better because the barrier for good is constantly moving yeah i actually found super meat boy probably too hard like towards the end of that game like gosh that gets hard and surprisingly um the end is night like ed mcmillan's you know game after super meat boy like maybe a game or two i think it was after the binding advisor. Yes. Do we DC again? Why is it doing that?

Is this not even... The videos... I'm literally streaming the video on the Steam page. Why is it disconnecting? That doesn't even mean... How... That's not how the internet works. But though...

But it gives that game... Playing the end is night is even more... It feels even more. it's even more kind of stripped back than Super Meat Boy. And it just, it just, I take my hat off to Ed McMillan as a designer because to do all of that,

to make a game that pattern with, with those mechanics being, you know, Super Meat Boy is walk, run and jump. You know what I mean? Like, what they do in that game is mind blowing. You know what I mean?

Like, you know, it's, it's one thing to, to approach level design when you're introducing these mechanics and our characters can switch and you've got all these options. But gosh, like making a game as good as like Super Meatboy or Endis Nye,

when you've really just limited your mechanics, there's no upgrades, there's no anything like that. It's just design mastery. But Super Meat Boy gets crazy hard, crazy hard. And I feel like... Sorry, go. I was going to say, I've said it so many times in previous episodes, but limitation breeds creativity.

If you limit yourself to a specific subset of tools, you're not going to add everything. You're not going to add in all of these different movement interactions. Yeah. You have to then create interesting levels to keep the game engaging rather than just relying on new interesting interactions that make the game exciting. I haven't played this one, but judging by the trailer they have here, it plays around a lot. a lot with like visual effects and like colors and sort of creating these really visually appealing worlds. Is this?

What's this? End is nine? Yeah. Yeah. It's just it's deceptively hard. Mm-hmm. And I feel like that's the, that's the interesting thing. I feel like with Super Meat Boy, you're, you've always got the option to opt out of a few

levels and go back and I'm going to go to that warp zone. I'm going to try to get that bandage back in a world that I, because I feel like I'm the player that you were describing before. Like, I was only ever just keeping up. Right, right. And then by the time you get into that third or fourth world, I'm like, gosh, I'm not, I'm not improving as much as the game needs me to improve.

Whereas with, um, with the unified, it's, it's a linear story. You, there's no going back. There's no, and that was a big design choice that it's not a Metroidvania at all. There's no going back. There's no upgrades. At this stage, there's no bosses. There's not, you can't, there's no combat. There's no killing anything.

It's just this, you know, so that's the thing I'm thinking about now in World 2 as we've sort of finalized those levels is like, I think I need to give some plateauing in there to let the character just get really confident because we'll keep those mechanics into the next world. But yeah, it's just such a, it's a fascinating thing to consider and think about and how people and how different games go about it and how that makes the player feel and how that retains them, if that retain. them. You said there's no bosses. Would you consider something where it's sort of like the level is collapsing around you? Something is chasing you. Oh, yeah. They can't like go back.

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. So there will be there will be like set pieces like that. That's part of the roadmap for what we're doing. The reason that because I think there's a couple of people that said, oh, is there any combat? Like there's lots of dead bodies around the place. But it's meant to, but the facilities. abandoned and you're so far underground it's meant to feel it's it's meant to kind of and the music

and the way the sound design is it's meant to feel super isolating so you do actually see there is one scientist still left in the building he's the guy that started the company he's like vernell from vernell technologies he's the V that signs off to his staff and there are these observation domes that see into some of the levels so you do see that he's watching you but only on the first life of each of those levels and then the doors close and then he's gone and you don't see him again for a while. You do have a final showdown with him right at the end. But I don't think it's going to be, again, he more triggers off an environmental boss challenge, whereas you don't actually encounter directly with him because you would whip his ass.

He's just like a weedy little scientist. And by the time you get to the end, you're like this, you know, like double warrior ninja guy that's like, you know. So yeah, but they were all things, you know, for me that, you know, have you played The Messenger? That rings a bell. It's like a 2D platformer, kind of similar vibes to Shovel Night. It was the boss battles that made me bounce off of that because I was like, man,

I love this game and then I get to a boss and then I just lose interest. But I love them. Oh, yes, yes, this one. Yeah. Yeah, I see what you mean. Like, I... Again, it's about expectations, right? Yeah.

If you know this is a game that's going to be... that's going to have combat, you kind of... Like, that's something you should anticipate. But if... Yeah. If you move from platforming heavy to then a boss that doesn't really sort of require platforming, it kind of feel... off. And I think this is, a game like

Holo Night does this quite well actually. Like most of the game is very platform heavy, but the bosses feel like they're an extension of the platforming because they tend to rely on pogoing, they tend to rely on specific placements and things like that. I think that's super important.

And I think like whatever yeah, and I don't mind how it's done in Super Meatboy. And I think even Celeste is even more subtle. Like there's these sections where you're like, you know like you said escaping yeah yeah scenario whatever but yeah games like the messenger like I think what I think that I think met the messenger is

that was a pretty big influence in that I was super excited about that game because I love that aesthetic right you look at the unified and you can pretty easily see like where my influences from the art style come from and I could wait to play it and I was like this is going to be my next like super meat boy Celeste and then the messenger because I've been waiting for that game I loved shovel night but it didn't really itch that scratch for me, in the same way that Celeste and Super Meat Boy do.

And then I played the messenger and I'm like, fuck yeah, this is here. I'm enjoying this. And then you kind of got to go through this upgrade process and you got to kind of pick what you upgrade. And so then I got to remember like that I'm adding these new abilities. And then I got to do these bosses. And this boss just was,

did not feel like an extension of the, of the platforming. It was this one that required you to kind of reach extra height. It was maybe the third or so boss. And I just couldn't really get past. it and I put it down for a couple of days on the steam deck. And when I picked it up again, my save point was right outside the door for the boss. I can't go out and try any of my moves.

And I can't even remember how to control the player. And so I couldn't do it when I was on a role. So look, those guys have made a great game. Like no doubt about that. And that's just me. But, you know, I'm the one design and the unified. So I just take in, it's my personal experiences that I take in with that. I just, for me, I'm just like, I just don't want a player to feel like they lose momentum and that

they get confused about how the player reacts. So I think you're totally right. Like, the limitations is definitely great for creativity because if you, if you set that expectation and set that aside, there's not, there's no other upgrades. That's what the characters can do. That's it. We took the run out. We took the power pills out. Like, because limiting it, the, you just want the player to get more competent at the mechanics that you've given. them, you know what I mean? And I think that that's what I love in a game. And I love that the way Celeste does it. I love that they use like the environment to kind of like her skills don't really change, right? Like it's just the things around her that she interacts with. And same with

Super Meat Boy. Like he's the same all the way through. So yeah, it's, um, yeah, gosh, it's just a endless scale though. Like where, and where you land on that is where you land on it. You know what I mean, so. I think what's important is ultimately having a clear vision for the game, sort of this is what we want to do with it. And that's, that's a problem that I, I have noticed with a lot of, a lot of games that I, either devs have spoken to or just random little games I've seen crop up, where they don't really know what they are. They're sort of, they kind of feel like they're in that sort of play testing sort of stage where you're just trying out different abilities and trying out like does this work does that work and none of it really sort of

feels like a cohesive experience and once you once you have that I think it's important to stick with that I don't think it's it's a bad thing to expand it but I think as you're going through as you're like pressing through a game you should know what to expect there shouldn't me anything that feels like it's out of place. Yeah. Unless that's like the design you're signing, you're kind of going for. Like there are games where their whole point is things are out of place. But that is, again, it's the expectation the player has going through something that once you, once you have that expectation,

trying to get someone to agree to something different, anything like that is it's going to be like, okay, unless they trust you and know what to expect. If you're an established developer, you can... Yeah, I know exactly what you're saying, yeah. You can do weird things. Like, good example of a game that just came out the other day. Romeo's a dead man.

It's a Suda 51 game. Suda 51 just does... whatever. And the game can change genres 10 times, but you trust that because of the history of this person, there's going to be a good game here. Yeah, you're in good hands. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know that exactly. And like, you were talking about Super Meat Boy and Enders' night. Edward Millen, if he does something weird, you know that you can trust him to do something good.

And that's kind of like why Mugenics did really well, because it's a weird concept. You're like, I know what to expect here. I know I'm going to get something of quality. Yeah. My big one for that is the Bioshock games. Like, you know, you have those core games. I can't wait until Judas comes out because I'm like, this is going to be my jam. This will be the first time in probably ages that I'll sit down and boot up the console

and actually play from start to finish through like a story game like that. You know what I mean? Like, you know, with work and now making a game, it gets harder and harder to fit gaming in. And so I know for sure with something like that. I'll be hook line and sinker and I'll finish that. I won't play a single other game or probably work on the Unified for that matter until I finish that game because I know I'll just be locked in. But as I get older and as my time gets, you know,

like I've got two kids and, you know, like I work full time like in in a film production, I got to spend my time wisely on games. You know what I mean? And so I think that and that's probably another thing that that influenced like making a game. like this because I see Celeste and Super Meat Boy in the same vein as like a Rocket League where I can pick it up, I can play it, I can do a few rounds of Rocket League. Jalen and I usually team up and do a little tournament or something, see how far we get. I kind of want to make a similar sort of game like that, do you know what I mean?

Again, like there's no backtracking. It's a pick up and put down game. Play it after work, try to get past the next few levels, hit save and do it again in a few nights. I tried to get, I tried to do, go through, um, uh, oblivion. Again, I hadn't played it since its early release. And then over the Christmas holidays, I usually pick a game that I'm going to play over the Christmas holidays. Uh-huh, uh-huh.

Um, and this Christmas holidays, it was oblivion, the remake. And I was just like, and I really got into it. But as soon as I went back to work, I was like, man, yeah, yeah, my character stuck where I put him for the next three or four years. Do you know what I mean? like and I hate that I hate that life is like that when you get older but you know you got to you know I still love playing video games and I love video game culture so I want there to be games for me that exist still that don't demand that I spend two weeks straight just getting to know

getting established you know what I mean like so so that that I think as well is like a is part of the design sort of Bible I guess you'd call for the unified is that it's something that's not It's not going to demand too much of your time. You play it because you kind of just, you get back in a rhythm for a couple of hours. You get past a handful of levels you hit save and then you go to work. Right, right, right.

You go back on Instagram and scroll. You know what I mean? Like it's little dopamine hits, short little bursts of getting through hard levels. Right. So I think... This is the appeal of games like vampire survivors or Ball X-Pipp.

Games like that where you can sort of just do one round and then put it down and you're basically done with it for today. Yeah. Yeah, I just feel like, yeah, it's the games in which I can, that I can on board with now, just getting an hour and hour and hour. Like, you know, I'm excited to see what Rockstar do when they release Grand Theft Auto 6. I'll drive around for 20 minutes, but am I going to finish that campaign? Hell no.

Like, there's no way I could do that. It would take me five years to get through with the time I have for gaming. So, you know, it's, yeah. But it's so broad these days, isn't it? You know, like there's just, it's so broad. Gaming is so broad. And even just in our local scene, like the going to something like Sage or an Avcon or something like that, that's so broad.

Like what's just what the different game types that are there. It's super fascinating. And it's all and it's exciting to be a part of it, to be honest. Like it's, um, this is like a little side quest for me. You know what I mean? Like this is full side quest mode for me and I love it. So one thing I want to ask is like how, how does the game design kind of like work with the two of you? Like who kind of calls the shots here?

Is it a bit of sort of both you throwing out ideas? Do you have more ideas? And he has, he's kind of just like, like, he just writes the code. Like, how does this sort of work out for you two? Yeah, it's evolved. So when we first started, we moved like a big desk into Jalen's room. So the both of us could sit together. And we would because because at the start, the first few months was getting the mechanics and the game feel right.

And so Jalen was doing that. And when I say work on it, like this is maybe a couple of hours a night, maybe two or three nights a week. And it's less than that now because it's so. So I won't skip ahead. How we evolved basically is, yeah, Jalen would do all the code. And I would sit there with my tablet and draw all the pixel art. and then I got my laptop. I do the music on that, do all the sound design.

I just do the sound design in the NLE that I used for work. And we use the sound libraries. And I mix them and pitch them down and put them in reverse and mix, you know, EQ them. So that we've got unique sounds for the game. So I would just do that sitting next to him. And then by the time we kind of got to the point where we switched it from the Renzi concept to the unit to the unified. I was like, all right, we got to reskin this whole thing. we can't the art looks terrible in Rensai.

So I redrew everything and like again, limiting, you know, the limitations for the creativity, like for creativity. I decided on a color palette that I would use that was very limiting so that it had a cohesive look and feel. So that was basically when we swapped over to working on as the unified. I returned back to my office down the front of the house

and we set up a GitHub system where we can pull and push versions. and we use millinote to write. It's become very formal for a father-son relationship. I'm like, Jalen, have you checked your millinote? He's like, yeah, have you checked it? I've crossed off my list and I've given you a list. What have you done? But it's light a wait for Jalen because he's in his first year in high school.

And he works on the game maybe two to three hours a week total, whereas I work on the game like I'm just forever doing art. So I'll wait until there's a list of about four or five mechanics. that need I need him to put in. Or if I start noticing bug, he'll check the bug log every now and then. I'll be like, hey, bro, there's a few bugs. Like, bugs are piling up a bit. And he'll just quickly go in there and be like, yep, Donna.

And it's just a funny dynamic because Donna will be like, Jalen, dinner's ready. And he's like, yeah, I just squashing a couple of bugs. I'll be out in a second. And then he'll come out. And our table talk will be like, yeah, you know how you couldn't read that email twice? Like, yeah, that's all good now. Like the bond that wasn't exploding. That's all good now.

And now Donna's way more involved. So she set up the website. She set up like our pitch decks and she's had meetings with people in the industry and just. So now there's that dynamic. So yeah. Does that answer your question? It's very whatever. But we are taking it more and more serious as we go along.

So yeah. It's, but yeah, coming off the back of something like Sage, you ride that momentum for a bit or even, you know, like you're inviting me on to talk on your podcast. I'm like, oh, all right, we better, you know, I better put up some gameplay footage or I better, you know, give you some background information, like just in case you want to, you know, need to know something. And it prompts those little things kind of prompt you to be like, oh, we should do that next, you know what I mean? And just, yeah, like Donna did the Steam page. She did all of that. And that was amazing because Jail and I wouldn't have done that.

You know what I mean? Like, like we would have, but eventually. It would, yeah, we probably would have started another game idea before we did the Steam page, do you know what I mean? Because we're always like, hey, imagine this for a game. And we're like, no, no, no, let's focus on the universe. Right, right, right.

And my daughter's always like, Dad, can you guys make like a like a fierce to fathom style horror game after? And then Jaylon will be like, yeah, I'm keen to learn unity. And I'm like, guys, guys, guys, let's, let's finish the year. unified first. So yeah, that's basically kind of how we work. Yeah, Jalen only, Jalen just trust, Jalen looks to me really, Jalen's input on on the direction of the game will be kind of, nah, dad, that sucks. But if, but he does, I won't be like, hey, what do you think about this? Or, hey, this is the story I was thinking. He'd be like, yeah, I like that. But he won't really,

he doesn't seem to really kick in too many ideas on that stuff. I think he's more interested in like, okay, what will the mechanics be for that? And what will I need to code for that? And there was a case where it's like, you wanted to do something, but he kind of had to veto it was like, I don't even know where to begin to work on that as a problem.

I don't think so. Trying to think if there's been anything. I guess with a 2D game, they're probably not going to have that many cases like that. But there are definitely going to be like really complicated mechanics or things, if you like make another game after this where it will,

will be like, I don't even know. Like, it's like, you have an idea in your head and like this sounds pretty simple, but to actually program it, this is, you know, a month or two endeavor. Yeah. It's definitely, I do know what, the funny thing, I think it's probably speaking to your, your sort of take on expectations in the past. I think the thing that did really snagg, Jalen, I feel bad laughing. But he went in with the expectations that putting tech.

in the game would be like putting it in an L.A. when you're video editing. Do you know what I mean? Like he's done some video editing stuff, you know, with me having, I have cinema cameras everywhere we've got, you know, that's just what we do. Putting text in a game is not a simple matter of writing it in and dragging it on the screen where you want to have it. You've got to give it like coordinates of where it should be and how it appears. Oh my gosh. I felt bad for him when he was putting the menu together and just when the tutorial screen, because we've got it so, as the player approaches when you get within a radius it fades on the screen so it's not littering the screen but it's only there for when you and he's done it but and he was fine doing it but i think

he was like gosh this is why is this so much more complicated than it needs to be you know so putting anything into a game is oddly complicated but it has to be right because you have total control that's the only way you're going to have total control if the engine makes any assumptions for you, do you don't have control? Right, right. But I think that's, yeah, I did have an idea for like we had some. He's definitely had, he's definitely put things in where he's been like, yeah, I've put it in, but does it make the game better?

Do you know what I mean? And he really wanted to keep the run in, but I think once, again, once we merged the players, he was like, oh, no, it actually feels pretty good without the run. The player used to be able to run into like a duck and slide. I liked that, he didn't like that, but he put it in and then it was kind of weird. You know, there's a fine line between making the player overpowered. Right. And like if you're going to do that, are you actually going to have that be part of the

platforming interaction, right? And for a game like this, you kind of want everything that you can do to be something that interact with the world, right? You kind of want every ability to have a purpose. Yeah. there was very limited use cases for a run duck and slide situation. So that was one of the things where he put it in. He was like, do we need this?

Does this make the game better? And I was like, no. It just kind of makes you squarely because there's times where you need to pull up on a dime. And the way to do that would be to duck because then you'll stop. You'll pull up way quicker. Yeah. So there's just things like that. But yeah, I mean, it's been fascinating to watch him.

It's kind of like, you know, is it Neo in the Matrix? Where towards the end, he's like, I just see it now. I get it. Like when we first started, little things would hang him, he would hang up on little things. As would I on pixel art. Like, it took ages before it actually started to look like a game. And being at sage, when people like, oh, I love the art style. I was like, man, that is crazy to hear someone say that because I have iterated and iterated so many times.

I'm like, is this even look good? Like, what is? So, you know, like, we, I think we've both just sort of like slowly progressed. But when I look at Jalen, when I see what Jalen's implementing now and the speed that he's doing at, he, it's so, you know, as a dad, I'm just so proud of, like, how far he's come with it. And he got, and he comes home from school. And he's like, dad, I got accepted into, like, coding class for year seven. And then the teacher was like, although I think you've probably learned more than what you've got.

Like, I think you've already exceeded what you're going to learn. this year because I heard that you had a video game at the stage. Yeah, that's how I felt when I, my high school had a programming class and I started programming in that class, but my teacher didn't really have a programming background.

So they were kind of learning as they were going as well. And by like three weeks in me and all my friends basically were like most of the way through the class before they, like it was very quickly where they had no idea what to even

teach. Yeah. You got that young mind and then like, and that's what it was like for me. I'm like, this old dog can't learn these new tricks. Like I can learn to do some pixel art, but I can't learn how to code on this level. I'd write basic code for my prototypes and that I would come up against wall so quickly and be like, well, that's the end of that. I've taken that as far as I can go. I can't even figure out how to get the player into the fourth level. Do you know what I mean? Like it's, Right. So, so, you know, and, you know, like they say with, um, the best, you know, the best time to to learn a new language, like is when you're, you know, a toddler can learn like multiple, speak multiple languages if they have multilingual homes. And I guess it's kind of, you know,

I guess that's why they call it a programming language. And I think for him starting, because he's only ever programmed in game maker, so in, with GML. And so I think it's just, you know, like he's kind of learned how that speaks. And I used to make. make suggestions, I'll be like, is it not working because of this? And he'd be like, yeah, maybe. But now I'll get halfway through and he'll be like, Dad, hold on. And because he needs to think and he's like, don't, your, your suggestions are not going to help me now. He's gone far beyond like my understanding of, and he'll try to explain something to me. And he'll be like, never mind. Just it works now. Just trust me. And I'm like, okay. Right, right, right. Yeah. And I

accept that. I'm like, all right. Jalen's an old soul. I don't know if you chatted to Jailen, but he's like an old soul. He's very, you know, I'm probably the immature one. Like, what about this, man? How well, you should do that? And he's like, dad, is that realistic? Like, is that going to make the, you know what I mean? He's like, he's more like my wife.

Like, he's very, he's got that old soul energy. You know what I mean? He's kind of stoic for an 11 year old kid. No. No, I think having that, that sort of, how is I say? I think it's very easy to pick up a skill when you're young because you're very willing to play a, around with things, right?

You don't need to know how to do something. You don't need something to work right away. You're willing to sort of like bounce around with different things and try things out. And I'm sure you probably notice this like when you first put it in front of a computer. He like played around with things and then sort of worked it out very, very quickly. Whereas you if you're like trying to work out a new piece of software, you might like look up at tutorial how to do it and learn some things. Like you'll get there eventually, but you have like this, you've this set of things that you're good for and you can kind of expand that knowledge base to things that are similar.

But when there is something that is like very different, then it's like, it's helpful to have sort of like a more guided interaction. Whereas when you're young and you don't really know that much, everything is a new experience. So everything is something you kind of play with. Yeah, you're 100% right. Like going into something like coding at a late age, so I would have been in probably my early. 30s when I first started trying to code in Game Maker. And then I was like, oh, well, they got like the block code or whatever, it's like the visual scripting in Game Maker.

But that make, I felt like that was even harder. Like that, then you just got limitations that you're trying to get around. But I, I think I was shocked at how I was like, well, nothing I know how to do is transferable to this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I was, I started as a musician. I pivoted into filmmaking. I'm a cinematographer, editor.

and I've done a fair bit of digital art and design. Right, right, right. And so those are handy things to have to combine for making a game, but none of that at all translate into helping me understand coding. And I think the shock to the system of like, man, I really don't get this. And I gave it a good six months, because Jaylon was probably only four or five at the time. I gave it a good six months and I was like, I'm not getting better at this. I just need to just, I just need to call a spade to spade.

I'm not improving at this. And it was frustrating because I would get snagged on something that like someone like yourself that's got experience, you'd be like, oh yeah, you just need to do this. And I do the same. Like if it's, you know, a problem with, you know, with setting up a scene or a camera or like how the lighting and the exposure should be set up or whatever. It's autopilot. Granted, that's a lot easier.

But it's autopilot because I've been around it for so long. But I just wasn't getting any better. And so, yeah, when I seen Jalen take an interest in it and getting better at it, I was like, it's fascinating that he doesn't have those barriers, those mental barriers of comparison to be like, this is way harder than other stuff. Because I feel like it is way harder than other stuff, like learning an instrument and then learning how to use Logic Pro, for example, to EQ music. Like, it makes sense. But gosh, coding is like, well, here's a question. It's not intuitive. How young were you when you started messing around with music and cinematography?

Yeah, like 13. Oh, I was 13 when I learned. And I can play three or four, probably four or five instruments. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But like you said before, like, yeah, if I get a new phone or if I have to sign up to a new thing, like, you know, like I said, we have an internet expanse, you know, a range expander or whatever. when I opened that up, I plugged it in and it didn't work immediately straight out the box because it needed some set up.

And I was straight away like, this is ridiculous. How is any, this is not, this is for like a tech. And Jalen's like, dad, chill. And he just plugged it in, did a few things. And he's like, all right, it works. And so like, I've already, I'm already the old guy out in the pastures. You know what I mean? I'm like, I see it happening right in front of my eyes.

Even with the younger guys at work, like I manage a small team at work. Obviously, I'm the older, I'm the more senior of the group. But we got guys in their early 20s and I'm like, they just... Yeah, I think that actually wasn't me that time. This server does reset every so often. Now there's two of me, but that's fine. You were saying the younger guys at work, the 20-year-old guys, and then we dropped. Yeah, they're like the tech support guys, right?

Like they just know how to do stuff. They just adapt to it easier. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you got to know when to step out of the way. Do you know what I mean? Like as an older folk, you got to know when to step out of the way. All the things that I do within like our game, like that's like doing the music, doing the, you know, even like things like level design and stuff like that and art and stuff like that. These are things.

These are like accumulative skills that I feel like I don't feel like I'm at risk of losing. It's not like I have to learn new things. It's pretty lightweight stuff. it's all pretty autopilot. And so that's a good fit for me. But yeah, I think hats off to programmers, man. I'm fascinated by programmers.

I really am. Like, it's just, to me, it's like the great unknown. You know what I mean? It's like this, this mystical land that,

like I'm not in on, I'm not, you know, like, I'm not in on the joke sort of thing. Right, which is, which is,

or how to program. I'm like, man, I don't get it. Like, it's, like I get the principle of it, but I'm just intrigued by

people's ability to learn and understand things on that level. That was just the fake me that left were good. The imposter. I don't know why it keeps the old one around for so long. It's a weird bug that it's had for a while. Yeah, no, I feel the same way about art as well, though. Like, I've done a bit of music in the past.

Like, I've played around with, um, garage band, that's the Apple one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I played around with a bit of that in the past when I had, like, music class in high school. I played a bit of guitar. I'm not great at it. It's something I need to work on,

and I get, you're not great at it. But, like, digital art something I've never really, or just art in general, something I've never, at least since I was a kid, I haven't really done that much of. So, for me, it's, I don't really know where to start with something, right? But you've done digital art before, you've done cinematography. So you have this, even though pixel,

art is a different kind of art, you have some understanding of posing and of colour theory. And that knowledge, even though pixel art is a very different kind of style, it's very transferable into this new medium. Yeah. Pixel art is, pixel art was like harder than I thought it was going to be. I think for us, it was a good way to, you know, apply rules to like the world that you're building. You know, we build the rules on tile sets and stuff like that. But gosh, our characters are built on a, drawn on a 16 by 16 canvas.

And that is really limiting. And so that's the challenge. I wanted to, I wanted, when I was going through trying to make the world feel like abandoned and desolate, I had this idea. I was like, I'll put some dead rats in it. But unless they were going to be the size of the character, it just looked like dog shit scattered around. because I couldn't get any detail into it. Right.

So those little things are really difficult when it comes to pixel art, whereas if you're just doing vector-based art, because I'm not really that good at hand drawing, but I feel like I have a, I think, I guess, cinematography helps with having an eye for symmetry and knowing how things should look. And with digital art, you can massage it until it gets there, I suppose. And as long as you're really objective and honest about it,

you'll keep sort of going. It's the same with music and songwriting. Like if you want to push and keep polishing and getting it better, you can do that. But yeah, gosh, pixel art, you know, you start, when you see pixel art done really well, I just hear so many times people go, oh yeah, pixel art, that's easy.

But I feel like when you've actually tried to make an entire game out of pixel art and make a cohesive looking world. I don't know if it is easier, eh? I've done, like, it's hard having the restrictions that you have with pixel art. Again, it goes back to what I said before, the limitation breeds creativity where when you limit yourself to a small canvas like that, how do you represent the character you want to represent? And how do you differentiate different enemies and different interactions in the world?

That's not as easy as just, oh, I have to an. 156 pixels to work with. You have only that. So how do you convey that that information? Yeah. Yeah. It's hard. It's hard.

But I like, I like working. Like, I feel like the, you know, you have a few of those, um, do you call them penny dropping moments or like where,

where the creativity starts to flow again. And I feel like, I feel like picking a like an 18 color palette. I kind of picked a palette and then I, and then I kind of put my, put my little. changes onto it because I knew I'd need to add a few things for it to work. But once I got a pallet locked in and I tried quite a few palettes and it pains me to look back

on drawing things over and over again in different colours only to realize a few weeks later, like that's not working, that's clashing. Like, you know, so applying a limitation is what actually unblocked, like a creative sort of blockage, if you know what I mean, because then I was like, all right, now I know I've only got this to work with. And I think that's the same with like with music. So like when I'm doing music for the game, I set up like kind of very similar like a musical palette, an instrumental palette. And I've kept that pretty consistent throughout. I've added a few bits and pieces. But having those limitations, I feel like without them, it's just too broad and it's too broad a thing and

where do you begin? You know what I mean? So I, I think they're more of a blessing than they are of a hindrance having those limitations for sure. But yeah, but I love doing pixel art. It's almost like, like, I don't think I'm good at it. And I think like when people were complimenting the game, I definitely had imposter syndrome for that because I was like, man, I'm not an artist. But like people, quite a few people came up and said, oh, I seen this from across the room. I love the art style and I was like, you don't understand how much confidence that makes me feel like because I'm like,

gosh, does this look okay? Do you know what I mean? Right, right, right. I think the, like the world out looks really good. The one thing I would say about the pixel art is it does feel like there needs to be some transitionary animations between the movements.

Yeah, yeah. We've, yeah, I've, we've thought about that. Like when their player turns around, it just snaps to the other way. And I think in the past, like in the past, when I was talking about working on like concept stuff, because I wasn't,

because I was trying to do the programming before Jalen was old enough to help out, they're the things that I would put in. You know what I mean? I'd like, I'd do more animations and stuff like that. And I think, I think that comes down to those things where I'm like,

yeah, like there's ways that we could make it more juicy by just doing little things like that. And they are slowly, it's one of those things like you were saying before, like you get so used to the game that you forget that you haven't put certain things in. And so like,

I think it was even right before Sage. I was like, Jalen, should we mix up the jump animation? Because they do a flip. And that's just purely inspired by like Mortal Kombat. The characters are kind of inspired by the Mortal Kombat. But in Mortal Kombat,

when you jump upwards, in the old 2D ones anyway, when you jump upwards, they flip and then they kind of, if you kick, they kind of level back out. So no, in the unified, like now once they reach the apex and they start coming down, they go into a fall animation. But that wasn't even in there up until like a few days before the unified.

And I'm like, gosh, I just forgot that it wasn't in there. Do you know what I mean? And I'm like, man, we really got to draw some. I've got to draw some more character stuff because we did the characters. And then we almost immediately just moved on to the world. And the world was so hard to get to look good that now I do feel like I noticed that same thing. I'm like, now I think the players need to kind of level back up to look like. like kind of like they fit into the world a little.

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the walk animations and stuff like that are a little, like just a little rigid. But then again, I'm like, I don't even know if I could do it better because it was so hard to get it to look like that. Because there's so little to work with. Like, they're such little stumpy little characters. And I've committed to them having an outline, but they can't always have an outline. Like sometimes their limbs don't have outlines because they just can't.

it's it's really weird but i enjoy it i do enjoy it it's there's nothing more satisfying than hitting play on the sprite animator for the 500th time and finally it looks like a walk cycle because um like i feel like this with graphic design i've never done graphic design like on a professional level but like i said i've like my movie poster like you probably can't see it too in too much detail but i do the design for that stuff like i I've done on that little animator. Yeah, yeah. So, like, that sort of design.

Like, that's all just digital art drawn. Pretty easy sort of stuff. But I feel like with design, it's basically like, it's the kind of thing that you can't do with someone watching over your shoulder. Because they'll be like, do you even know what you're doing? Because it's like rubbish, rubbish, rubbish, rubbish, good. Do you know what I mean? Right, right, right. That's kind of like the iterative, you know, with film or with music.

like you can there's this linear progression of where it's getting better and improving and I just feel like with art for me anyway and especially with design and stuff like that it's just 50 attempts of something that looks terrible and is wrong and then finally the penny drops and go oh okay I got it for some reason I just can't ever get it on the first try I guess a natural artist can get it on the first first couple of tries I can't know I don't know like maybe it is it is something where If you watch someone who does like drawing, for example, you'll see them go through a bunch of iterations of that sketching before they go into that proper line art.

It's just... You're right. You see that final result. Or even with music, right? Like, you might try a bunch of different chord progressions and see, like, okay, what actually works together, what sounds good? Should I use this instrument?

Should I use that instrument? It's still something where you're, not play around with it. It's just, I guess, again, it's something where you have this experience with it. So it can be kind of hard to sort of apply that kind of thinking to other things as well. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's just one of those things for me where it's like, you know, like people that just have that inbuilt ability to like draw a body proportionally. And have you heard the, you know, heard the whole thing of like, it's so hard to draw like, hands and feet like artists can't draw hands and feet like so I'm okay at hand drawing stuff but

hands and feet like just this is a no go zone whereas like people that just kind of it's like it's kind of like a great observational comedian you know what I mean like you know those observational comedians that you're like yes how that's the most common observation everyone would have made that but I've never thought to say that out loud right right but it's so obvious to them and that what that's what makes them so good. You know what I mean? So but and again, like being at Sage and stuff like that like meeting people that were like

amazing programmers or amazing artists, you know what I mean? Like I was chatting to Dan who's the artist for End of Ember. Yeah, I've had Dan on the floor. Oh really? I got to go find that episode because I really enjoyed chatting with him. And I'm just like, man,

he's just a true artist. You know what I mean? Like he lives and breathe out. I think he does like comic books and like book illustrations and stuff like that. I'm like, I just, I just, I, I love that. Like, and I, and, and I, and, and I wonder about what that experience is like in game development when you are at like, like, you know, like, you're at the, you're at the top of your games, like, at the top of a, um, what I'm saying, you're at the pointy end of that skill set, you know what I mean? Um, and I guess like pixel art is kind of, or digital

art in general, like, definitely evens the playing field. Because it doesn't matter if I had 500 iterations, it's still, as long as the final result is possible, then I guess it doesn't matter. So it's forgiving in that nature. But I love chatting to artists and, you know, people that, people that can do it with someone watching over their shoulder, I guess you'd say. Right, right, right, right. I'm doing my art, like, on the couch while, like, there's a show playing in the background that Donna's trying to get me to watch.

And I'm like, yeah, yeah, but I got to get better at pixel art. the, so that's, that's my art time. So, which I like, I probably wouldn't have it any other way. Right. I see these people that do like live streams of their art and all like live streams of programming and it's the same way to me with programming. I don't want to have someone watching over me doing that work and because I would always like, is this the, is this the correct way to do this?

Is there a better way to do this? And then I'm not actually going to make any progress on what I'm doing. I should just finish off this iteration and then. then if I come with a better idea, then go back and do it, rather than sort of getting myself stuck on what is the most optimal way, what is the correct form to do this? Yeah. What's the biggest flex to make it look like I just knew how to do it straight away? Yeah.

No, I definitely could never do it like that. And so I have no desire to work in like, I would never want to work in like a game studio, like a, you know, like a. and I don't even know about like, you know, working in other teams, you know what I mean? Because it's just, it's just the way we do our game is just so like our way. But in saying that, I feel like just in chatting to people and over the years from, you know, like I find that with, especially with indie games and probably maybe even all the way up to your big sort of big studios, I think in games it is a bit more like that, right?

Like it does feel like it's a bit like every team's kind of got their different way of doing things. You know what I mean? And music or especially with filmmaking and stuff like that, it's a little bit more on rails, how things should be done, how they need to be done. You know, if we're putting a TV, if we're putting a TV commercial together, we've got all these delivery specs that we have to hit. And like, whereas with a game, it's just like, well, just make whatever you think. And if people like it, they'll buy it, you know, like it can go on Steam.

Obviously, there's, there's, you know, there's huge things. requirements you might have different things there for sure but do you know what I mean like the the method in which I guess to do it is um yeah I guess it is I guess it just is broad and I think that's what I like about I think that's what I discovered like in a real like it was a real pleasant surprise when I when we went to sage because sage was the first time we've been out into the like I spoke at packs a few years ago. for my documentary, but nothing to do with games. Right, right.

So when we were accepted into Sage, I was like, I had like major imposter syndrome because I was like, oh man, I don't know how to talk to other, I'm not, we don't consider ourselves game developers, do you know what I mean? But then when we get there, we're like, well, I guess like we're here with the game, so we're game developers. But I've just felt like, I had so many conversations that just fully took that out of my mind. And people were like, yeah, man, like, we've been doing this for three or four years. but yeah, we're just kind of winging it and we do this.

And they were like, you know, like had like amazing polished products and and we're really kind of killing it. And I was like, that's awesome. And I love that about the, about the community here in Adelaide. Like that was really, that was awesome. But, you know, I'm coming into it with like this, like I said, this is full side quest mode for me. And it's just an exciting little adventure that we're on.

I definitely want to like, I definitely am taking it very seriously. and we want to see the unified, like, do as best as it possibly can't reach its full potential. But I think it's, you know, you have that buffer of like, well, you know, I'm new to this and I'm okay with being new to this. I don't have to, I don't have to like come across in any other way other than, yeah, like, this is new to us and just being able to do this with my son is like such an awesome experience. So if we never did anything else, like, just doing Sage would have been like totally worth everything. Sage has just kind of kicked off some momentum for us.

And, you know, so it's all gravy, man. It's all a bonus from here. You know what I mean? So, um, I think when you're looking at other projects that are out there, it's, like, when we talk about indie games, there are very different kinds of indie games, right? Like at, at Sage, um, yeah, Blood Reeve was there. They've got like a team of 12 people, right?

Oh, wow. That's a very different kind of game. than what you're going to be able to make with two people that work on it, part-time casually, whatever, whatever time you're like a few hours a week, right? The kind of thing you're going to be able to create with that, at least in the amount of time you'd want to spend on a game like this, is going to be very, very different. And I think trying to compare yourself too much to these other projects,

which have a much larger scope, it's going to lead yourself to be disappointed. And even like comparing to games with a similar size team, right? Like you look at Hollow Night. Those guys were insane. They worked basically full time for multiple years on the first game when they had no money. Like they really dedicated themselves to that and wanted to do everything they could to like make that a reality. And then let alone Silk Song where they spent seven years.

and had like a few hundred million dollars to go through to like, who cares when the game comes out, right? So I think knowing what, I think the best thing is knowing that you're making the best game that you can and making the best, the game the best version of itself that it can be. Yeah. That's the goal, right? Like that's all the goal is, is like, let's not like, it's all about perspective for us. You know what I mean? Like, for me, the best thing about doing this is experiential. Like, that's what I get out of this.

And I don't mean that as in like I'm getting experience to put on a resume. I mean literally just the experience of doing it. Because like I said, like when I did packs for still standing, I just kind of was like, man i just want to go go to the indie game section and i just want to see what's happening there you know what i mean like i want to hang out there um and so i wanted to be around that and um so just getting to be around that is freaking awesome do you know what i mean like um i don't think i think for me if i worked i do i think that if i worked on this game full time it wouldn't be the same experience

and it wouldn't it wouldn't feel like it does to me now because do you know what I mean like I feel a very certain way about It feels like a passion project right now Yeah and I and it's and I got it in that sweet spot where like it's exciting because I do feel like there's potential for us to make it

like to make something of it like I'd like to do some more cons and I'd like to just have more experience have more experiences with it but I but I also am not like if someone said to me tomorrow if you can if you quit what you're doing now and then you work on the unified full time for the next two years and and scope it up and stuff like that I don't know if I would do it I don't know if I do it because I don't I don't think it would I don't know I don't know I don't I'm not sure why I feel like that. I just feel like I love that it's like a passion project. And I am very passionate about it.

And I just want to make it as best as it can be. But like you say, when you compare it to like other studios, that that's what they live and breathe and they're a team. And they're, I guess you would say dependent on it succeeding, right? Like that's probably the big thing as well. There's no pressure with what we're doing.

Right. You want it to succeed, but you don't need it to succeed. That's probably the most simplest bottom. line way to put at it. Like, like I said before, it's all gravy. Like everything that happens, everything positive that happens with what we're doing is just exciting. It's definitely like become a lot of work, like, on the weekend just gone. Like I pretty much did two full days on it. Like, but that's because I wanted to. But like when I get tired and I've had a big

week at work, I can just not do it because there's no publishers. There's no other, it's not like Jalen's going to be like, dad, we got to work on the game. He's happy just playing Geometry Dash or like playing Rocket League, man. Do you know what I mean? Like he's not fussed about it. But it's something I think like we just and Donna included like the three of us just come back to and we get little waves of motivation to be like, right, let's do something else. I think like, you know, we're talking a, Donna's been chatting heaps to Chad from Bad Plan and they're talking about doing Avcon and stuff like that. And I'm like, hell yeah, that'd be killer.

Let's do that. you know what I mean? So like the wheels are just sort of turning in the background and I just got to keep drawing. I've got like infinite amounts of pixel art drawings to do until this game could come out. But even if I was funded and I could hire artists, then that would change the experience. I don't know if I'd want to do. I don't want to matter. Do you know what I mean? I kind of just, I like doing the art on the couch with my little stylist. Like I enjoy that. It's kind of like therapeutic for me. So yeah, it's. It's pretty different.

It's pretty different. But I like how I like that the, that you got that option to, to do things when it's like that. I'm probably, I'm probably, I'm probably downplaying like how much I do want to, um,

like I do have this sort of little side of me that's like, what if this could be a great game? Right. You know what I mean? And like, what if I just got a, you know, so I definitely have that like,

but I think it's easy as a creative like to, it's like a safe. safety net to be like, ah, but it doesn't matter. Like if it doesn't matter. And it's not having that pressure, right? Like, so I think just clutching it there is like, it'll probably be, it'll probably get better results because I don't have that mental pressure to be like, all right, I've quit my job and I'm betting the farm on this thing.

Right, right. You know what the name? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the game would suffer for that. And then I'd be like, oh my gosh, what have I done? Whereas now it's just like, I'm so passionate about doing it and I'm so driven to do it that I think that's how I'm going. getting better results from myself anyway.

So, if that makes sense. No, I do completely agree. And I, again, like I said, I think a lot of it comes down to you. Like, you want to make the best game you can,

but at, like, at the end of the day, it's not something where if this doesn't do well, then you got to sell the house, right? Yeah, exactly. You can just have fun with it. You can play around with ideas. you don't need to micromanage every little thing of it. You can kind of just make a game that you like and you hope that other people like it as well.

Like 100%, like, you know, before we were talking about how broad do you go with onboarding? Like when there isn't really any pressure, I'm like, well, if you're not like, if you don't want to play a hardcore platformer, then maybe the unified's not for you. Do you know what I mean? Whereas if there was a big team and you're trying to get the maximum reach, then you're going to broaden it out a lot more. Do you know what I mean? And then I think like... Right, optimizing engagement and...

Yeah. When you start dealing with metrics like that, you end like quantifying fun. Yeah, exactly. Things get a little weird. I'm not even thinking about that. Yeah. You know, and when people, you know, you hear heaps of people talk about, you know,

is that genre trending at the moment? I'm like, man, I don't even know. I don't even care. Like, it doesn't matter to me. I'm just making the game that I thought would be cool because they're the games that I, I like playing and making the games kind of like become my game. Do you know what I mean?

Like that's, I haven't really played many video games since I started really seriously trying to work on the Unified because it's kind of like the game is making the game. But yeah, I feel like it's just all of those things because it's not like that with my work. And it's not like that when I did my documentary. There was a lot writing on it and I needed it to be good and I needed it to pass UC and I needed to deliver it to the publishers.

and I needed it. And honestly, when it was over and when I finished, when I released that film, oh, man, I was a wreck, hey? I was like, I needed to recover from doing it. And I don't want to make that mistake again. So that's why it's in, I think that's why it is where it is, you know what I mean? Like all the things that we're chasing as a studio are like more experiential.

And just to basically go through and smell the roses on the road to, becoming like a, like a, a studio that has a commercial game out, you know what I mean? That's basically the, like, the purpose of all this, the point of the journey. You know what I mean? And I like that. I like that. Do you feel like there's other, I'm trying to think if I'm, I feel like I did meet a few other developers like that at Sage, like, especially in our, like, we were in the

elevate section, obviously our first year at Sage and we're like a small little situation. But I met a few other guys there that are like, yeah, like, just kind of go on where the breeze takes me. I just love doing this, you know what I mean? Which, again, I didn't know if there would be people like that at Sage. But I like that everyone was like kind of blended in together and there was still a lot of common ground, whether you're a funded studio of six or you're just like, you know, having

a crack at like getting a playable game out. like, you know, it's horses for courses, I suppose, as they say. So I was going to say, I'm a fan. Like, I'm just a fan. Do you know what I mean? Like, I'm just a fan of gaming culture. So like that's my, I think if I was to turn that into it into my business, full-time business, you know, would I still be as big a fan?

It's like you've got to drip feed yourself like the things that you're nostalgic about because if you exploit them, then they're no longer nostalgic for you, you know what I mean? That's probably how I see this. But sorry, I cut you off.

No, no, it's all good. So good. You mentioned not caring about like trending genres there. I've shown this to someone else before, but in the, what, it would have been like 12 years ago now,

something like, like when a Holo Night was still in development, there was a Reddit post made by the, not lead developer, one of the friends, but I think they were on the team as well. Yeah. This was when they were quitting their full-time job to work on Holo Night.

And they had the first trailer for the game there. And a lot of the comments were like, this game will never sell. Because this was like in the middle of every, like the genre everyone was making was Metroidvania platformers. And you were getting 10 plus of them released a day. And there's no way you can make a Metroidvania platformer that's going to be exciting is going to do well.

This game looks so generic. And you look back on those comments and it's like, they had no idea what they were looking at and what this was going to become. Yeah. It's, yeah, well, that's what I mean. Like, how can you, you can only ever take anything with a grain of salt, right? Like, it's, it's, because it's so subjective and it's so, like, and gosh, it changes so, you know, like the whole friend slop trending thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. like peak or like RV there yet like Jalen and I jumped on that and we played them you know they got

they all got 14 bucks out of each of us you know what I mean so good on them but if you if if if I was to set out to try to make a game like that just for the sake of making it I'd have already lost interest because it's not something I would have ever thought to make or I've ever cared to make I love playing it I thought both of those games was super fun when we played each of those games like peak and RV there yet. We played both of those games for like a weekend each. You know what I mean? And then we're like, all right. That's done. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? Like, so, yeah, I think if you don't just make what you truly want to make, you'd end up, I feel like I would anyway end up with like sort of like this decision paralysis where I'm like, and then it would feel so

unauthentic, do you know what I mean? Yeah, it's like you don't have a vision for it. You're kind of just like, what, like, I don't even know what to do with this game. Yeah. Like, it's, it's pretty funny seeing seeing people go, oh yeah, a two-dea platform. I'm like, yeah, man, like, you don't have to tiptoe, like, don't walk on eggshells around me. Like, I'm making the exact game that I want to make, and I'm making it exactly how I want to make it. I'm not trying to open the gates up. I'm not trying to like do you know what I mean like it's just what I would want to make and if I was and if and if we finish this game and it comes out and we've got the energy to do another one which I'm sure we will I'd love to do something like a hotline Miami because I love that game you know

what I mean like I'd love to do something like in that vein and I wouldn't go looking at whether or not people have made more of them I see I was flicking through some of the next fest games and I seen there was something pretty similar like style And I was like, oh, chuck that on the wish list. You know what I mean? But I don't sit there going like, oh, man, like, you know, like, you know, I don't know. It's my daughter really likes the fears to fathom series. And now, like, there's a million of those, like, walking sim horrors, like that Koso guy,

the guy that streams all of them. He's still like a new one every day. It's crazy. So I think you just got to kind of, you know, keep your head down and just. focus on on doing what um you want to do uh when i guess when you're in a situation where it's um where you can obviously right right that's very that's very that's very that's very that's very niche advice for someone in my identical situation if you have an actual studio that's got a team and people's depending on yeah um yeah and you don't have another way of doing it don't listen to anything

I just said, but yeah. But for me, yeah, who's when you're, you know, like you have, like, I really, I really love what I do as a career. Like, I enjoy being a cinematographer and I love the guys I work with. And I love making a game with my 11 year old son. Do you know what I mean? So it's, it's, I'm in a pretty niche. I'm in a pretty like specific set of circumstances. So it's, you know, easy for me to say that, I suppose. No, I, I, I, I, I love the position you're in. Like, this is, this is just really cool. And I love the fact that, like, you actually decided, hey, he has a passion.

Let's just see where this goes, right? Like, let's just, let's get him involved in this. Let's make your game with him. And just try something out, right? Get, like, get really involved with his life and sort of try to build up that passion. Yeah, totally. And, you know, like a big part of this for me as well, I suppose, is like, You know, like from the, you know, the generation I grew up sort of in, it was very much like

when I was in school, like I was born in the 80s, when I was in school, like me wanting to be a musician when I was in high school was pretty like, there wasn't many pathways for that. My parents were like, you can't, that's not a real job. You can't do that. Anyway, I just persevered with it at all costs. My folks and I didn't see either. I moved out when I was 16 because I wanted to. to pursue that. Then they were like, you got to either have a job or da-da-da. And it was very,

like it was very kind of rigid. And I end up going, we end up getting signed and touring and like having a great little music career. And that's what got me into filmmaking. I was chatting to the DP on one of our film clips. It was being done by a company called Cojo. They're pretty big like production company. And that's and kind of, you know, so it opens up doors. And I think for with our kids, like we have a daughter as well. Like Jaylon's the youngest. We have a, a, Our daughter's nearly 14. I think it's so important to role model like doing other things than just going, all right,

I got to have a job. And my only, and my, my benchmark for success in life is what my job is. Like, I work for a company at the moment, but seven years prior to that, I run my own production company.

A couple of guys worked for me. And I think it's so important to like role model to your kids that there's, like, there's not one set way to go about things. And I think for Jalen, like, to have that experience at such a young age, like to see him get that confidence to be like,

see, like, you can do this. You can totally do this if you want to do it. And whatever doors this opens up for you, like you're going to, by the time you finished high school, you might have like two, like two commercially released games. Like two or three, like, who knows? And that might be something that you want to pursue. And like, or you, you know what I mean?

Like it just, it's just having that, I just feel like I didn't really have that when I was young. When I was 13, I wanted to start playing instruments and get into music. It was very much like, yeah, but don't, it's not a, you can't, don't take it seriously. Like, you can't, it's not a viable thing that you can do. You know what I mean? So that's a big thing for both for Donna and I as parents to try to role model to the kids. Like, if you know what you want to do, like, if you want to be a vet, be a vet, if you want to be a teacher, if you want to be a yoga instructor, do those.

things. But if you want to own a like a yoga studio, do that thing. If you want to like, own, if you want to make a little, get a little coffee van and travel to Byron, do whatever. You know what I mean? Like just be happy doing what you're doing. You can't like trick yourself into being happy. You kind of just got to do the things that, you know, you've got to have responsibilities and stuff like that. But there are, I do believe there are ways to do that if you stay true to what you love doing. And there was a time 15 years ago where I was this passionate about filmmaking and that's what I got into. And I still do love doing it.

I don't think I'd ever make another film. Maybe. I definitely wouldn't, I definitely wouldn't fund another film. I'd join as a director or something. But, you know, it's just about kind of keeping that energy going, I think, and keeping your mind open to what's possible. You know, and I think that's so, that's awesome to see for Jalen at a young age to be like, He loves video games.

He's always loved video games. And he's always loved to know how things work. And so it's sort of like opening the lid on video games. Like this is how video games work. And now he's sort of like tinkering with how video games work and just go where the road takes you. And if it's nothing, if he makes one game and that's it, so be it. You know, it might fund his, you know, he might fund his like next VR console that he wants to get or the PlayStation 6. I paid for this with the game that I made.

Whatever. That's awesome. You know what I mean? If that's all it is, that's awesome. So I think that's good for him. You know what I mean? I don't think there's anything better we can end it on besides that. Yeah.

That's the essence of life right there. So if people want to check out the game or any of the socials, where can they go? Yeah. So basically we try to put, there's no playable demo at the moment, but we do have a like the game's wish listable on Steam. Are you going to get a public demo? Yeah, I think we probably will at some point. I own two minds about it, but I think we probably will at some point.

It's definitely not a priority. I think we'll do a few more like cons and stuff like that. And I think that's like a priority at the moment. But we try to be pretty active on like on the social media sites, like I, you know, little game snippets and stuff like that. Jail and I are going to start doing a few more little devloggy kind of things. They won't be long and they won't be like super elaborate. But like we made a little behind the scenes of Sage.

It's like a little minute video. and, you know, we do a little bit more like that. So if you're interested in our story, which is, you know, a pretty casual like Father Son game dev team, they can chipping her way towards, it's almost like a social experiment as much as it is a game studio. But, yeah, Instagram, Blue Sky, Twitter, or X, TikTok, all of them. We just kind of put the same content out on all of them. And we would love a wish list if you want to chuck us a wish list.

That always helps. So, yeah. I'm not logged in on Steam? Yes, I am. there we go wishlisted. Oh, thank you. All right. I appreciate it.

But thank you so much for having me on. It was good to see you again. I really enjoyed our conversation at Sage. So yeah, it was good to hear from you afterwards. Yeah, no, it was a pleasure to have you on. I think it was a fun episode. And again, I like how passion you are about this. And even though this is like, you know, kind of like a side quest, as you're saying,

I like that this is something that you are clearly really wanting to do. Yeah. And I just like talking to people who are passionate about stuff. Yeah. Thank you. Well, you know, I like talking about this stuff. I lost my voice at the end of Sage. So, you know, just having conversations. But like I said, like, you know, you were there on the Friday was sort of one of my earlier combos. I was like, man, there's awesome people out and about. And I had lots of great conversations. So it's, yeah, it's nice to see you again. It's really nice if you to have me on their podcast. I'm a fan of your podcast. I've been going through your backlog. I'm going to go check out the Dan from Bad Plan Studios podcast. That'll be cool.

I'm a big fan of what those guys are doing. So, yeah. Do you have plans to do, you said you were thinking of doing other cons? Do you have plans to do AvCon? Yeah, absolutely. Yep, yep. Okay.

It will be there. Yep. Awesome. Nothing else you want to mention. Pretty much shouted everything out. Nah, look, I think it's just that. Like, yeah, I'd love for people to check out the Unified, have a suss of it, see if it's your cup of tea.

And if it is, follow our journey. most active on Instagram, but Instagram's, you know, it's not really the game, not big on the gaming side of things, but it is everywhere. But yeah, we're just sort of doing our thing. We're going to try to put more time into the YouTube channel, just because it's fun. You know what I mean? We might as well, I got cameras lying around everywhere. I really should document it a little more closely. So we do plan on upping it a bit there. We are getting a little bit more serious about it. Maybe this side quest could be more fun than the main quest. And who knows, maybe one day it will be the main quest, but only if it stays fun.

Okay, I guess I do my outro and then we'll sign off. Awesome. Okay, so my main channel is Brodie Robertson. I do Linux videos there six-ish days week. Sometimes I stream as well. I have got the gaming channel, Brody on Games. Right now I'm playing through Devil May Cry 5 and also Shenmoo, both very fun games. Shenmu is an experience, we'll say.

And if you're watching the video version, they should find the audio version on basically every podcast platform. that is Tech Over T. There is an RSS feed as well, so grab that. And if you want to see the video, it is on YouTube. Also, we have Spotify video if you, for some reason, like watching video on Spotify. I'll go to the final word. How do you want to sign us off? Get around it, Tech Over T. I'm a big fan. Yeah, it's a great podcast. I love what you're doing. Thanks for listening.