Open in app

Sign in

Write

Sign in

House of Games #62 — M.O.O.D.S.

Otto Wretling
36 min readFeb 22, 2024

Join us for a high-tech emotional rollercoaster as we are visited all the way from Germany to hear all about StickyStoneStudio’s latest project; M.O.O.D.S! If you like sci-fi, robots, action, and explosions, click play and listen as our wonderful Guest Luca Lorenz guides us through this post-apocalyptic masterpiece!

Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/house-of-games/message

Chapters

00:00 Episode Intro
02:05 Getting to Know the Guest: Luzca from StickyStoneStudio
02:39 Discussing StickyStoneStudio’s Journey and Projects
04:52 M.O.O.D.S: The Game Concept and Development
12:38 M.O.O.D.S Review
43:44 What Does a Day in Luca’s Work Life Look Like?
48:15 Tips on Speaking to Publishers
50:58 Episode Outro

Your Hosts and Guest, and Their Games

Games

Other Links

Transcript

[00:00:00] Rune: Halli, hello everyone and welcome to the most robotic podcast in the world, House of Games. Today in a traditional robotic fashion, I’m joined by my host, who never misses a podcast. One might think he’s programmed to show up every week with zero emotions, Mr. Otto! If one robot wasn’t enough, let me introduce you to a glitchy, half-assed, somewhat broken robot, myself, Beep, Bop, Beep, Bop, Rune, and a very special guest, Mr. Sputnik himself from Germany, Luca! But before before any one of us start showing any signs of human emotions, let us enter this week’s episode of House of Games.

[00:00:41] Otto: Welcome to House of Games and a brand new episode. And we have a new guest, I think, probably the first guest from Germany. So, I think, without further ado, I will, as usual, let our guests introduce themselves. And, uh Well, just take the conversation from there. So first of all, Mr. Luca, please tell us who are you and what do you do?

[00:02:10] Luca Lorenz: Yeah, hello, my name is Luca, I’m here for StickyStoneStudio out of the beautiful Freiburger Barockorchester. And, I can say it, I get a base offer, take the pick first, maybe somebody know that. And I take care about the business development of the studios. And I’d be very glad to be here today and talk a little bit about you, about the studio, about the new game. And maybe a little bit about the situation for gaming studios in Germany.

[00:02:38] Otto: Cool. And, just, first of all, tell me about the studio a little bit of, when was it founded? How many people work there? some, some of the groundwork, so to speak.

[00:02:50] Luca Lorenz: Yes, of course, so StickyStoneStudio was founded, 2018. We was expanding out of a university project, but most of our partners, we was together in school and at the end making like an “Abschlussarbeit”, it’s like a final exam, and we was programming a game of it. Of course, it was a completely fail and we start to marketing that and it was not working on, but was that the idea was spread and our CEO and founder, Philip was also going to the university to study IT and found out a studio out of it, and so we are creating like, the year 2019. Our first game, it was Memorrha, it was a puzzle adventure in the style of The Witness and, yes, we are now still existing in the year 2023, and there are 13 people in the mod.

[00:03:43] Rune: where did you release that first game?

[00:03:46] Luca Lorenz: We released it on Steam on the one side, and we ported it to Switch this year, last year, and as well for mobile. And of course, depends on what date this podcast is released, we also have a PlayStation version in the retail.

[00:04:04] Rune: On the Vita as well?

[00:04:05] Otto: Cool.

[00:04:06] Luca Lorenz: And not on the Wii, but on the Sony. Sony PlayStation, we have it in retail in Germany, in the dark region. I’m unsure if our publisher also bring it in Europe, but yes, it’s very clear. It’s a indie studio, we have our own game in the retail, and it was lovely to show everybody here; this is our work.

[00:04:24] Rune: Cool. Oh, that’s really cool. So you guys have some experience releasing games. That’s, that’s something.

[00:04:32] Luca Lorenz: A little bit. I would say that the biggest major point is that we are still on the market and we try to get better and better. And so we hope with every game we bring out, we’re getting better with our job and the people have fun playing all games.

[00:04:52] Otto: And, tell me about this latest game, a little bit about, maybe, how did it start, what is it, what do you do in it, that sort of thing.

[00:05:04] Luca Lorenz: Of course. So, in the moment, since a few years, we’re working on M.O.O.D.S., M.O.O.D.S. is under action roleplay shooter, where you control an armored robot sent to destroy his fellow robots and being corrupted by synthetic emotions. So, the major point of it is that every run is unique. You have an endless combination of weapons.

[00:05:27] It’s fast-paced gameplay, and of course, it’s visual, a little bit exciting. So, you have to, you can choose between four characters in a moment, which have its own special abilities, like a shield, or as a rage mode, or can send love arrows to the enemies. And, so you need to fight against the robots in different stages.

[00:05:51] So, for example, we have a proud stage, where it’s like in the medieval style, with medieval roboters, have shields and stuff like that, different rage area, it’s a part of an old volcano, it’s the enemies making it’s a damage and have, everything have a unique impact. So every run you need to run to the statues, get different weapons, have different combinations.

[00:06:15] And normally you don’t have the same addons repeating. So it’s like, everyone is different. I mean, maybe you enjoy the game and see it a little bit. So we have like a lot of different weapon add-ins and stuff to have fun.

[00:06:33] Rune: Hmm. I’m curious, this game, the previous games, what did you say? It was a puzzle game?

[00:06:42] Luca Lorenz: It was a little puzzle adventure.

[00:06:44] Rune: Okay, so that’s quite a leap or quite a different thing here. What made you go from that, from a puzzle adventure to a sort of roguelike shooter? Like, how does that work? It’s, they’re quite different.

[00:07:00] Luca Lorenz: It’s a little bit, I would say the thing with the puzzle adventure was that our founder have this idea years ago and he’s a little bit like a mathematic nerd and try to combine the two puzzles and also bring a little bit mathematics to younger people. So he created the puzzle adventure, but after a while, we realized, yes, puzzle adventure is a very nice game and we can sell it over 30, 000 times in 20 different countries.

[00:07:31] It’s nice, but the target market is very small. So, we were thinking about making something new. It’s a bigger audience and also something what we like and what we want to do. And so getting about, to make a roguelike, getting on the double times and…

[00:07:53] Rune: Okay.

[00:07:53] Otto: Okay, so, the game so far, how long have you worked on it for and when do you plan to release it?

[00:08:01] Luca Lorenz: Yes, so we’re working around three years, a little bit more than three years on this game. we are aiming to release the early access, at, I can say, at Q2 of 2024. We’re releasing this month, the prologue demo, where people can try our game and can give us feedback because the community is very important for us to bring us back to the roots and help us creating a great game experience.

[00:08:32] And with everything is going after plan, we are planning to release the game around Q2 2025 on Steam, on PlayStation, Switch, Xbox, and maybe as well later as a mobile version.

[00:08:46] Rune: Hmm. How big is the, team? And also do you port the games yourselves, or is that gonna be outsourced?

[00:08:53] Luca Lorenz: We want to port it ourselves. So we port it on Switch with Memorrha, so we get a few experience with that. And of course we try, so we have the development kits around here, and we try to make it our own. Like we can say, we are like an, we can do everything in-house, but of course probably we need some experience from experts to bring this a little bit on track, but I believe in our team.

[00:09:19] So we’re around 13 people in the moment. So we have 13, I’m…

[00:09:26] I would love, I would love to be 30, but I believe this takes maybe another year or two before we get even 30 people.

[00:09:35] Rune: Cool. But 13 people, that’s a lot. I mean, that’s a big team.

[00:09:39] Otto: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, it’s not a solo indie.

[00:09:43] Luca Lorenz: Yes, we are indie studio officially here in Germany. I also need to say we are one of the biggest studios in South Germany and our biggest competitor is, I don’t know if you know, it’s Black Forest Games, ever heard about it?

[00:09:58] Rune: No.

[00:09:59] Otto: no.

[00:10:00] Luca Lorenz: It’s an Embracer daughter, so we get 300 people plus, but I also think they’re getting less people in the moment, because we all know gaming industry and it’s the same price, so maybe soon we are bigger than them.

[00:10:14] Rune: Huh. Cool. But how is the, so 13 people, do you, on top of your head, do you know, like how many programmers do you have? How many artists? And are they all full time employees or is it like freelancers and…?

[00:10:30] Luca Lorenz: We have, so we have four people in the IT, we have around six people in the art department, some do QA and some students mixing together and try to find a way inside of it.

[00:10:49] Rune: Wow.

[00:10:51] Otto: So, tell me about the idea for the game. What was sort of the inspiration? What made you do this specific game? And you have some sort of themes around it, a setting and so on. So is there anything that sort of got you to those specific points or what’s the inspiration?

[00:11:10] Luca Lorenz: Oh, I only can speak a little bit for myself at this point, but we all love the way of robots and mechanics. And we’re all thinking that at one point we getting robots, so we all love our science fiction movies, you get to use a robot as an assistant in your daily life. And we’re thinking a bit further than at one point.

[00:11:35] It’s possible that the humans are not on the earth anymore. So maybe we go on a boat, or maybe we fuck ourselves, but the robot will stay there. And we have just made a point that we say that the robots was alone here and after a decade of times, they’re thinking like, we miss our creators and what is special about our creators? What is special to humans and all? And they say, it’s emotions.

[00:12:02] So, because we are humans, because we have emotions, we have love, we have hate, we have all of that. And we combine it, and we can say that the rebels want to try to be like humans, so they create emotions, get corrupted, and destroy theirselves. So, this is a little bit the main plot behind our game. And we try to make a little bit of critics of society, of our own thinking, what is the way for the future, and as well as the environment, inside this game.

[00:12:38] Otto: And, as, we talked a little bit off camera, so we did actually get to play, a bit of of the game in its, current state, so I’m thinking that we could just, perhaps go through that experience and, talk about how, how it was to play it and then perhaps give some feedback if you’re open to that and…

[00:13:02] Luca Lorenz: Of course, I always say I’m very happy about all positive, positive feedback what you give to me and don’t share it with the team. But when you give them some critic, I will share it with our team because I need to say what we need is, this is not good. This is, this is, we need to make it better because in the end, this, yes…

[00:13:22] Otto: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:13:23] Luca Lorenz: The feedback; what we need.

[00:13:24] Otto: Yeah, perfect, perfect. So I think actually me and Rune is sort of different in the, how we play games a little bit, but I think we’ll get into that, but I think I’ll just start with sort of what you experience if I, if it’s okay to share that what happens when you start a game and all the way through how long I played?

[00:13:47] Rune, do you want to start, by the way, your experience of, just, give us the, the rundown. What happened when you clicked start and then, just take us on a journey from there.

[00:13:58] Rune: Yeah, so I played it today, spent maybe an hour-ish. So like I said, before we started to record, I’m home alone with, my son today, which makes it a bit harder to play as much as I wanted to.

[00:14:12] But the first thing that struck me was the start menu with all the, the sort of animations when you pull around with the mouse, that was very nice details. I loved that and, when you, for example, go down to quit game, it will be like red, the, the face of the robot goes red and I was thinking now when you talked about emotions that this maybe has something to do with it, happy emotions and angry emotions and so on. But anyway, yeah, like we talked about before, it’s a roguelike type of game. The first thing that I thought about when I started playing it was an old PlayStation 1 game called Future Cop: LAPD, which is a fantastic game on the PlayStation 1 back in the day. And I didn’t own the game, but I did play the demo over and over and over again. So it’s almost kind of like top down-ish shooting your robot with like a mech, sort of with two legs walking around shooting stuff. And as I was playing this, like, this, I thought, like, this is not the kind of games I usually play at all, but as I was playing it a little bit, I realized that this is, that I did play a game called Dead Nation on the PlayStation 3, and I also platinumed that game with my friend. so, it’s like a zombie game, but also sort of a top down twin stick shooter, so this is not really a twin stick shooter, or maybe it is if you play on console, I’m not sure.

[00:15:37] but yeah, roguelike, top down-ish shooting, I did like, what I liked was that, so I don’t know if that has to do with the robot I picked, but like, you can’t just shoot all the time, so you kind of have to aim and be a little bit more, a little bit more tactics when you, when you kill the enemies and then you always have to dash to avoid them and all that stuff to stay alive.

[00:16:00] So, even though I didn’t think I would get into this type of game at all, it did grow on me in only like, 20, 30 minutes and I could totally see the sort of a how addicting it can be and how, with the loot and how you go into these levels, shoot the enemies, kill the enemies, kill the boss and you get a treasure in the end and I like that detail, like so… Something tells me there’s what is it called? Auto-generated levels, so I don’t know if that is true or if it’s but the first boss was basically based on what, what you choose, so he will talk to you and based on what you choose there, he will get angry or not, and that will sort of change the difficulty of the boss, and I thought that was a cool touch, kicked his ass, and then I won, and after that we, we started recording, so, I guess, that’s from hitting the start button to the first boss, I did like that the game, like, I don’t know, you said it’s been out in about one year, so I’m not sure how far it is in terms of the visuals, if it’s gonna get upgraded or something like that, but I did like the fact that it was, bright colors, not, dark Diablo stuff, those types of games, when it is, this perspective and all that, I do think, these darker games tend to be, not my cup of tea.

[00:17:30] So I did really appreciate the fact that it was bright colors and daytime maybe there are night levels later on but from what I played I did enjoy that the daytime stuff the bright colors and the the tactical elements in terms of dashing and avoiding bullets. Like I said, I might sound like a noob when I’m talking about it, but I don’t play these games normally.

[00:17:53] So, to me, this was all new, basically. and one final thought I had before I hung, stopped playing was that you guys are from Germany, and there is this game called The Surge from Deck13, so that’s like a, yeah, I platinum, both, both games, The Surge 1 and 2, and I even reached out to developers and said, these games are awesome, and they said, well, I hope you look forward and they actually tweeted back and say I hope you look forward to the next game. The next game is not the type of game I liked but I do hope to go back to make The Surge 3. Point is, those games also are, I mean, Soulsborne types of games, but in the day it’s brighter daytime stuff I love that so I did really appreciate that with the M.O.D.S, that it was bright and colorful and I feel like from what we’ve talked so far you’re, you’re emphasizing to have fun.

[00:18:47] And I think that helps with that too when it’s a little bit brighter and brighter colors and so on. So I guess that’s my my take on the first 30, 40 minutes.

[00:19:02] Otto: I managed to play a little bit more, actually. So I can give my feedback as well. But first of all, Rune, I think it’s called M.O.O.D.S and not M.O.D.S, if I’m

[00:19:12] Rune: correct?

[00:19:12] Oh.

[00:19:12] Luca Lorenz: Yes, you are, you are correct. It’s M.O.O.D.S.

[00:19:14] Otto: Yes. Haha! Anyhow, so, yeah, I’ll just give my sort of, input on my experience of playing it. So, first of all, as Rune said, I really like that, there seems to be a lot of attention to detail. So the first thing that happens when you start up the game, you get to start menu, and you have this little, it looks like a TV screen almost, that’s happy or sad or angry, depending on what kind of option you hover over with your mouse.

[00:19:50] So happy if you are gonna click play, and sad if angry if you’re gonna exit and then options, I think it’s disappointed or something. Yeah, something like that so it’s a sort of funny. So you start up the game and then there’s this beautiful intro section for the lore I guess of the game sort of how we are where we are.

[00:20:12] So that’s really well made, made. Good voice acting all of that stuff, reminds me a little bit of WALL·E, I guess.

[00:20:21] Rune: Oh yeah.

[00:20:22] Otto: This, yeah, so you have, so then you wake up as, if I remember correctly, you’re just this, lone robot, which is sort of a humanoid shape. It’s sort of a, I guess two legs, something like that, arms and whatever. you walk around, you do the tutorial. There’s, it’s really responsive, controls as well, I think. so kudos on that, you go through the, the tutorial, and then you get to the sort of main stage. You get, first of all I would say also the game looks a lot, a lot like, there’s some stuff here, some references I wrote down.

[00:21:02] So Borderlands is what it reminds me of a lot, the, especially Borderlands 1, the environment and stuff. also the music and the sort of ambiance is sort of like Firefly, if you guys have seen that. Very good, can recommend it a lot. and then also there’s a Umeå-based game called Dust & Neon that, got released on Netflix, actually that, it also reminds me a lot of. So, very cool. And, so I get the sort of western, setting for the game. So is that intentional, or is it just supposed to be Scrapyard-esque?

[00:21:41] Luca Lorenz: A little bit of both, so we want to show a little bit the western style as well. I don’t know if you recognize it, but you be on the back on the mesh who is walking over the surface.

[00:21:53] Rune: Oh he has this big, big scrapyard on his back previous start was the game, and when you’re getting more and more of the in-game currency, you’re allowed to buy shops, update them, so the scrapyard’s getting less on the back.

[00:22:08] Luca Lorenz: So you have really a base building concept as well, and…

[00:22:13] Otto: Yeah.

[00:22:14] Luca Lorenz: So it’s getting cleaner over time.

[00:22:16] Rune: Hmm.

[00:22:17] Otto: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. so then at least you get to the sort of level select menu or whatever you call it. So you can upgrade some stuff there, you can choose class and choosing classes is sort of like choosing a mood, I, almost, is my feeling of it, at least.

[00:22:37] Luca Lorenz: With the characters, yeah. Yes, you can choose your own characters before you start the run as well. And as well, at the level, choose, choose a match with the saber, you can, you can, you can see, you can switch it around. And so you can plan how you run. Because you have the stages where you can get the weapons, or the new weapons, or armor.

[00:23:00] But as well, you can heal the character. So, when you play these games, you always have the problem to get enough heal. So you can plan a little bit, what did you get, that you don’t die again, because we all know, what did you do with the best weapons and armor when you ended up at the end boss with 5 HP?

[00:23:20] It’s not good.

[00:23:20] Otto: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. exactly, so you choose, different classes, and, those are, have different colors, and also, the different classes is basically, like, imagine that you have either a, a gun that shoots, slowly, but, does a lot of damage, or you have, shoot a lot, but it might be very spread out, or it might be, you know, it doesn’t, damage that much.

[00:23:49] sort of those kind of trade-offs is what I got from that, selection. I chose purple, nice color, and a good weapon. Sort of a crossbow-thingy. Very, very Boba Fett-esque, I guess. Almost, if you’ve seen Star Wars. And how you get into the stage, which is, sort of very, I would say, very lush.

[00:24:15] Very, it’s a really break, visual break from the level select screen, so it’s very park-y and it’s very green and nice, good music. and then I guess, as Rune said, I assume it is randomly generated dungeon. So you get into one room and then you have like three doors or something from that room and then you go to one of those and then eventually you get to the exit of the level. So, is it the randomly generated all of it or is it somehow determined?

[00:24:52] Luca Lorenz: Yes, it’s a random generator, but our art team and level designers fit us on it. So, it is a random generator, but we make it, I can’t say it, but we adjust it. That they have major points like doors and everything fits inside, but the rest is the random generated. So every time you start, it’s a new game, it’s a new level design. And the only thing what is repeating is that you start at the garden, and then slowly getting forward to the castle itself.

[00:25:26] Otto: Right, right. And the basic gameplay then is that you get into this level, you go into these different rooms, and then there are hostile robots, you kill them, and then eventually you get to the end of that level, and then you progress until you get to the end boss, and then you’ve completed that whole segment, or level, or what you call it and that’s sort of the cycle, at least, that I got to play.

[00:25:54] Luca Lorenz: Yes, this is like our stage. So I would say the one big point is your, we say it a little bit early in the beginning, that you have the end bosses and you have the dialogue. So it’s really, we have specialized it that you need to read it. I mean, we know the most people didn’t read it, but you can adjust it. So when you make the right answers, there, for one example, the end user says, Oh, I don’t call my extra NPCs as Nihilists, so it’s a little bit easier. But you also can say, like you fuck him up and then he sends you more with, auto tracking, auto tracking missiles to you with frozen or shockstep, so it’s getting very hard.

[00:26:39] So it depends on what you’re saying. It can be easier for us, or it can get extremely hard, only because we give the wrong answers and make him angry.

[00:26:49] Rune: So did you, how do I know, do, are there clues on what answer makes it easy, you said, or..?

[00:27:00] Luca Lorenz: we have a factbook in the background, so we can read a little bit in our storybook about it. But in the end, you need to try. It’s a trial and error, of course, where we can say in the beginning, you will die a lot of times. Then you repeat and get better. So I would say the major point, I would say it’s like, you try and you die, you buy, you advance upwards in the base, it’s getting a little bit easier.

[00:27:28] And maybe at one point you get through until the end boss, and then you say, okay, I get it with helping tools, I want to get it in vanilla style. So get rid of everything, try the first time and hope to get it through the end.

[00:27:43] Rune: Hmm, and every time I die, like I died once in the middle of the level, do I keep the stuff, for the next run? Like, like as I never played this type of game, before, so, or I can’t quite think of anything I play like, this roguelike when you keep going into dungeon. I did play Rogue, is it called Rogue Knight, maybe it’s called? A 2D-ish game. I can’t even remember if you kept the stuff after dying. But do you keep the stuff every time you die, or do I have to start over every time?

[00:28:18] Luca Lorenz: no, so the major part of roguelikes is that you die, and then you die, and then you need to start new. So we make it a little bit like a roguelite-like game, which means that you have the space building aspect. So we have three currencies, you have the currency for the run, where you can buy, have new weapons at the shop, stuff like that.

[00:28:38] You have a currency, two currencies on the top that you hold when you die. So when you kill a boss, or making one of the scamming games, you get extra currency, and with this one you can buy new NPCs in the base. You can upgrade the shops. You can buy permament weapons, which means, which means like starting with a better weapon. Starting with a level 2 weapon instead of a level 1 weapon. Stuff like that. So, but normally when you die, you die. And then you have a completely new run, new weapons, new items, new possibilities.

[00:29:13] Rune: Hm. The, this is such a noob question, but, like, so when I get these upgrades and stuff, for example when I kill the boss, I got to, I can choose one of three things. But, someone like, me who never played this type of game, like, none of it makes sense in terms of what it does to me, and, and I could sit there forever and think, which one is best, what, like, but I did notice the symbols themselves were quite helpful, or I can at least imagine later on that I, I will get used to the symbols that I know is gonna make my game play style, that, that’s gonna suit my play style.

[00:29:53] I’m not sure if I’m having a question in the end of this. I mean, I guess I’m just thinking out loud, but, but I didn’t notice that like the, so, you have like the you choose one of three things and there’s a text down there. It kind of reminds me of Pokémon cards like, playing those as a kid in English.

[00:30:10] So I didn’t even understand what it said, but eventually I, I don’t know. I just understood stuff based on the pictures and I wonder if maybe, maybe here’s a question. Like, is there any, the symbols for these upgrades and so on, are they, they’re all separated, or are they just, how should I put it, like, are they sort of separated into different genres, or is it just everything is random?

[00:30:37] So you really have to read the text to know what’s, what you’re doing, or could you potentially play the game and just, you know, sort of click on the upgrade that you know that you like, if that makes sense?

[00:30:50] Luca Lorenz: Yeah, so I would say in the beginning, it’s always good to read a little bit of text, but a lot of the time, we try to reduce our icons that you see, for example, we have like a cargo writer, like ice one, with the ice symbol. I believe people can really look at it and they see that this is the same with lightning strikes, for example, or with the long range weapon.

[00:31:15] So, there is a little bit of thing that you can look at it and you see, okay, this can make this and this and this. But, in the end, there are like millions of options how you can get the items, how you can combine them, that you need to read them and over time you can, you can answer a little bit. So, but of course, everybody has his own style on how to make the run and everybody tried to make it very similar to that, so over time you’re getting it.

[00:31:45] Rune: Hmm, cool.

[00:31:47] Otto: So, basically, you go through these sort of levels, you do all the rooms, get to the end, so you can teleport to the next segment in that level, and then you do that until you get to the boss. And then you, as you said, you sort of get to input some emotion to the boss and then depending on that you get different difficulty levels, I was not as good as I hoped to be at the game, so I always chose the one that was the least aggressive, I suppose, and then I think that made it easier for me, which was very good.

[00:32:26] Yeah, it was very interesting, and I noticed that the, the, to me at least, it seems to be a sort of an imbalance of the classes, because I felt like the purple one was a lot easier than the other ones, so I tried with, I think, the standard one, and then, was it the blue one? Don’t remember, but then I did the purple, but, the ones that are not the purple, they shoot, more frequently, but very inaccurate and doesn’t damage as much. So, is it the intention to make some classes better, or is that just a balancing thing, or what’s, your take on that?

[00:33:07] Luca Lorenz: Also, you will be a good player. This is the reason you are so good that you really get the game and get the job done. No, of course, in the end it’s a balance question and we are still adjusting it a little bit. So, you say it was the purple one. It’s the crossbow and, yeah, it’s the crossbow making a lot of damage when you hit the enemy.

[00:33:27] It is very good, but when you don’t hit him, we have a problem again. So every character has his own style and we have his different stages. So we’re starting with the proud one, going over to the rage one, getting into a third one and so far. So every character has his own, or we can say like a bonus on different stages.

[00:33:54] Not only because you get the first stage early, it doesn’t mean that the second one is also like that. So it’s go on, and so every character has plus points and minus points.

[00:34:10] Otto: Yeah, it’s very interesting and I think the purple one, at least at the current build that I played was, you could sort of like shoot from like one end of the screen to the other and then hit them in a single point, basically. One shot and boom then one enemy dead that happens sometimes at least but I felt like the, the other ones, in terms of balancing, you had to get sorta close, not to miss, and then it took maybe ten seconds to get one enemy, which is why I chose the purple one, so that was a lot better, in my opinion at least. But, yeah.

[00:34:52] Luca Lorenz: Yes, I mean you playing a version, it’s for early access and only due to you are now so good, I don’t, I’m unsure if you’ll still good when we bring it up.

[00:35:03] Otto: Alright, so here is the only frustration I had with the game when playing it. It’s very nice and very polished, but the only thing I think, but I, this might be something with me as a player rather than the game itself. It might be a type of game that’s, not suited for me as much, but so, when you do fight the boss, when you get all the way to the end of it, if you die during the boss fight, then you have to start over all from the beginning again with like nothing.

[00:35:35] So, that was sort of frustrating to me because in the beginning I, it took maybe five tries for me to get the first boss the first time and sort of figuring out which class works and which weapons works and so on. And, that, I think, for me at least, is something that sort of ticked me off a little bit.

[00:35:54] I think for me it’s sort of like, this, feeling of, I guess maybe this is, if you’re, you don’t play the, the Souls games, maybe, you are not the right target audience. I would love to hear your, opinion on that later, Luca, but I think, for me, it’s sort of this, you wanna feel like, even though you die, you sort of still have progressed in some way.

[00:36:19] So that maybe you restart one dungeon earlier than the boss or something but going back to the level selection screen makes it sort of frustrating for me or it makes like the threshold of rage quitting very low, I suppose. So, Luca, just tell us about what’s the target audience for, in terms of difficulty.

[00:36:41] Luca Lorenz: I mean, in the end, you want to make a perfect run. So you can play this game, you can get over it, and you can manage it. So maybe you can get into the next stage, you can kill the bosses, you have a nice game, it’s mixed fun, you can enjoy your expense. This is like the one side, the casual side of the game.

[00:36:58] The other side is, of course, what is the best way, the fastest way that you can get to the bosses with the most of life and armor and to get through all of the stages in a fast time. So, when you repeat this game and play over and over, you know, every enemy has his own benefits, but also his weakness, and you can play with it.

[00:37:20] And so at the end, you try to don’t lose any life because you know, hey, I get to the first five stages. It’s the first level. There are still three levels back, so you need to get over it in order. So of course, risk quitting can happen and it can be also very hard when you die because of something very stupid and you think like, why did I do that? And then you need to play it again.

[00:37:48] Otto: Yeah, yeah, interesting, and very nice. And so what do you think for the the future? So you’re releasing it during this year as I understood it, during 2024?

[00:38:01] Luca Lorenz: Yeah, so we’re going in early access in Q2, so relatively soon, and yeah.

[00:38:09] Otto: Cool. What are your expectations for the release? So I don’t think we’ve asked this of a guest before but, so do you have anything where you, what you hope to achieve, or how many copies you want to sell, or whatever goal it might be? Do you have anything, like, this is, would be the ultimate release, or this is what we want to, to do as a minimum, or what’s your thoughts there?

[00:38:33] Luca Lorenz: Yes, of course, I mean, you all see this bundle game in the last, week was, over 19 million sales copy on Steam. Of course we want to have something like that as well, but a bit if you can ask every game developer and he says like of course you want to have this.

[00:38:48] So in the end it’s always a question. So I say, you need to be on the right time. It’s the right product and the people like it or not. So we hope this game can get an audience people will enjoy it, but also of course it can be hidden on the Steam sales like the other 50 games who gets released every day and nobody heard about it. So I would say, I hope we get an audience where people can say, it’s a game, it’s fun, we like it. So this is what we want to have.

[00:39:20] Otto: How do you plan to get it from here into the hands of your customers, basically?

[00:39:25] Luca Lorenz: Yes. So on the one side I said we are a small indie studio. We have developers, we have our people. We don’t have the budget. We have an own social media company, like a social media team part of it. So we do it a little bit from ourself making stuff for TikTok, Instagram, where we can get it further or people can engage with us.

[00:39:48] On the other side we working together with Erabit, it’s a publisher who released, Brotato, if you know this game, heard about it. So, they are supporters as well, with social media, and making all of the marketing stuff. Because in the end, we are a games company, we want to do everything games, and we don’t want to spend all of the time on TikTok, on Twitter, or now X, and how this works.

[00:40:13] So we want to make games, not making the marketing stuff. There are people with a lot of expertise in marketing, so we are glad that we can give this point away to some people who have the experience and qualified and we hope as well they are bringing our product to the market and can give them the…

[00:40:32] Otto: Cool, and, what are the challenges, would you say with getting it out there or anything you have, basically take anything from programming all the way to just marketing or whatever it might be. Do you have anything that you think is, like, this is gonna be a challenge for this game or something that might be to your disadvantage?

[00:40:55] Luca Lorenz: You want to hear this challenge of the game? What are the challenges itself? So I can…

[00:41:01] Otto: So I guess the, the game, the sort of, getting the game, so I guess the end goal here is just, you know, you wanna be the new Minecraft or something, you want like 50 billion sales or something, so getting from where you are now to there, where, what is the challenges to getting there?

[00:41:20] Luca Lorenz: Okay, so when we start, you have to have an idea. So you need to create a game design and you need to bring the people together and you need to create something out of the idea. The big thing is, we are an independent studio. We don’t have a big publisher in our back who give us money and we can say here, close the doors, get out in two years with this new game.

[00:41:44] So, we need to make it a services for industry, to making projects that we can develop this game. So, we are, we want to be a full time game developer as well, but we need to pay the money, and when we have two years development time, you can imagine, it’s three years without setting one copy. So we need to make extra projects, extra jobs, you can hire more people and can develop our game.

[00:42:11] So I would say the biggest challenge is to be alive, don’t lose your goal to making games and as well developing the company development or expertise of the people with services we need to do because they’re bringing the money and that’s why we’re making the game. And at the end of it, we have a game where we say we stand behind of it.

[00:42:36] It’s our program, it’s our vision, and it’s our way to make it. And people like it or not. So, this is the end. The next challenge, so I would say. So, get the idea, bring it on the computer, bring it to the people, and say at the end, buy onto it and say this is out game. If it’s a, it’s like a genre, it’s good. If we bring it against a wall, we can say yes, it’s awful. I mean, the first thing is we’re growing over time, so we’re trying to get more people. On the other side, we get this idea two years ago. We’re all growing in two years. We have new inputs, new ideas, new ways how to handle it. So I think we released a short while ago, a video about it, where was the game at the beginning.

[00:43:22] It’s completely different right now, and we always adjust it. So, we have this construct where our game is with the base, and the inner is changing over time. So, it’s growing, and we adjust this, and as well, and the people on our team give me feedback if we want to change stuff, we do that.

[00:43:44] Otto: Yeah, and, tell us, sort of something I’m also curious is, about you in person, so what does, what does a normal day working on this game look like for you?

[00:43:59] Luca Lorenz: For me, this is, this is a good question because my job is that the people can make the game. So I need to say I make the business development. So I take care that people have the time and getting the money to create the game. So my job is bringing projects, have to talk to the publishers, having feedback with the team and bring forward our product.

[00:44:21] But the normal day in our team is, we’re sitting in this nice new, big shared office and the people talking with each other, having the morning, morning daily meeting, having a sprint meeting, having an exchange, interpreting the game. We’re creating our game.

[00:44:38] Otto: Yeah, but tell us more about that, because I think that’s a perspective we don’t get that much on this podcast. So, business development. So, tell us more about that. How is it to have, like, meetings with publishers, for example, or ensuring that everyone else can do their job, for example? If you want?

[00:44:58] Luca Lorenz: Of course, of course, meeting with publishers is very, always very special, because it’s a bad time for publishing itself, and I would say it’s a bad time for publishing as well. So did you see, did you need to say a lot of people playing games, a lot of sales, but there’s also a big competition on the market with the studios, but as well as the publishers.

[00:45:18] So in the end, you need to find somebody who says this game is fitting the portfolio. And as well, you need to say, this is the right time for it because it’s always the, they’re always the most publisher don’t ever get the answer. What do you say? Oh, this game, this doesn’t fit in our market policy in the moment, or maybe we have something similar.

[00:45:41] But in the end, I would say there’s always the game they want to have. So when you have the right product to where the people says you want it, you believe in it, this is always the point. If not, you need to find, find it, get to get them. And maybe something, adjust to that, that I would say, when you’re starting with an idea, bring it to the paper and go to a publisher.

[00:46:08] It’s much easier to convince something from your idea than to have an early finished game. Because when you have a nearly finished game, it’s already done. And you need to find somebody who says, this is the way I want it, I would do the same way and then be settled. But when you have the paper, the people says like, Oh, yes, this idea is great, but you have a complete different understanding than I do.

[00:46:35] But you give me the money so we can find something out together and we can create it. So this, this is obviously funny part at the end. Yes.

[00:46:44] Otto: Interesting. Yeah, that’s very cool, because I’ve heard, actually the exact opposite from other people. So I’ve heard, I don’t know if this depends on if you’ve made the game before, that you’ve actually published before, talking to a publisher or not, but what I’ve heard at least is that you should have sort of a completed game at least for your first time you try to get a game published with a publisher, because then you can prove that you can actually make it, and then you have some sort of track record and, and so on. But you’re saying then, to not have a finished game, but rather to do it earlier than that, so that the publisher can have their input to make it a game that they want to release, basically?

[00:47:29] Luca Lorenz: I mean, I would say, of course, you have a track record, you already make games, but when you make a new game, then you’re getting better with the idea than with the endgame because it’s like we all know when you have to finish a game and everybody loves it.

[00:47:44] So, of course, because everybody want to have a product with the sales, but in a special way that you need a publisher when you already have a product and have the expertise and have the audience, but you need a publisher.

[00:47:55] On the other side, when you don’t have it, you need to look for it because you always need something. You need to market it. You need front-end money. You need all the pieces that you will maybe not be able to do. And so it’s a little bit problematic to find this one and to combine it.

[00:48:13] Otto: Yeah. Very interesting. So, if you would give your, sort of, five cents on, what is the, the, so I guess, talking to a lot of, publisher and, I assume pitching the game, is there anything, like, if you can give tips to anyone, like, I wanna talk to publisher and, make sure our game gets published, is there anything you can think of that is, like, stuff to recommend, for example, that you should not do this or you should do that when talking to publisher, for example?

[00:48:46] Luca Lorenz: I would say, everyone has the same, his own way to do that, but what I can recommend myself, first, find the right person in, at the publisher and write them direct in email. The other thing is, maybe he says not, maybe he says this game is not fit, but he also says like, maybe the next time, your next product you can come to me. And at the end, it’s a question about the network that you have.

[00:49:09] That you have now, this is the right publisher for roguelike, like other ones, this is the publisher, you’re making, for example, a farming simulator. There are always needs, we have people or publisher are working. And when you get in touch with everybody and know the names and sent them a message and says, Hey, how are you? What do you think about this? This is, helps you a lot at the end, because never, you would never want to be like a one month before releasing the game and says, oh, I don’t have a publisher. I don’t have the money for marketing. What should I do? So this is what you always want to do. So start early, write to people, address the people, write them in the mail.

[00:49:52] Don’t write random emails to 100 publishers at once. Find publisher for the right carrier, write people directly and don’t be sad when it says like oh this is not a fit right now, maybe it’s the right fit later. Maybe the next part.

[00:50:08] There’s always the chance that somebody has the same idea like you, because you’re maybe very smart and your game is unique. But this doesn’t mean that not one of the thousands of other companies make a similar game and then they bring it out and you just say like, oh, fuck, I have this game, they make the same one.

[00:50:26] So, well, for example, I mean, there was a studio from Frankfurt this year who came out with a new role playing game. At the same time, they paid for it, so… And they’re making millions of copies. So everybody says, like, oh, we print it out right now at the same date. This is not good. But they make it. So it can be working.

[00:50:45] It also can be a problem at the end. So it’s like, I would say it’s like the look in their glass kugel, your magic ball, this is the future. I can see the future. Nobody can see the future. Nobody knows.

[00:50:58] Otto: Yeah. Alright, I think we’re approaching an hour here, so before we end the episode, Luka, please, plug everything you want to know, you want our listeners to know everything, where you, where we should send our listeners and viewers, promote anything and everything you would like. Go!

[00:51:21] Luca Lorenz: Okay. First of all, thank you very much to be here. Yes, what we’re going to address to the listeners and to the people. I hope you’re able to maybe enjoy our game and give us feedback to that. And when you’re a gaming studio, I hope you can follow your dreams. If you want to be your own game designer, never stop your idea, ever try to bring it to the end.

[00:51:42] And for the rest, I wish you a great year and I’ll see you in the next episode.

[00:51:50] Otto: Perfect, thank you so much. And, thank you so much for taking the time. It’s been a really interesting episode and I think it’s gonna be a really good game when it comes out. I think it’s really very polished and feels like a finished product to me at least. So I really look forward to and wish you the best with the release. Beyond that, thank you so much everyone for listening and watching. Please don’t forget to send in a voicemail. You can send it in a robot voice and that will make me happy. Then, what else? Leave some comments if there’s anything you wanna tell us. And, links to games and, also the game we’re talking about today is in the description.

[00:52:37] Yeah, I think that’s it. Great, yeah, see you next Wednesday. Have a good one, everyone. Bye!

Podcast
Interview
Video Game Review
Game Development
Indie Developer

--

--

Otto Wretling

Written by Otto Wretling

244 Followers

Writing about my podcast, game development, technology, language learning, and whatever else comes to my mind!

Help

Status

About

Careers

Press

Blog

Privacy

Terms

Text to speech

Teams