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House of Games #69 — Dynasthir Review

Otto Wretling
55 min readMay 5, 2024

Tune in as Mireneye and Ulfgang tell us all about Dynasthir, a game over a decade in the making with all its ups and downs while Otto and Rune talk about their impressions from playing it first-hand!

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

Chapters

00:00 Episode Intro
00:31 Episode Starts
01:22 Ulfgang Introduction
02:15 Mireneye Introduction
03:59 The History of Dynasthir
06:53 How Ulfgang Got Involved
09:19 What Is Dynasthir?
12:46 Dynasthir Review Starts
01:09:21 Episode Outro

Your Hosts and Guests, and Their Games

Chapters

00:00 Episode Intro
00:31 Episode Starts
01:22 Ulfgang Introduction
02:15 Mireneye Introduction
03:59 The History of Dynasthir
06:53 How Ulfgang Got Involved
09:19 What Is Dynasthir?
12:46 Dynasthir Review Starts
01:09:21 Episode Outro

Your Hosts and Guests, and Their Games

Games and Game Companies

Transcript

[00:00:00] Episode Intro

[00:00:00] Rune: Halli, hello everyone, and welcome to the most mysterious podcast in the realm, House of Games. I’m your co-host and pawn, Rune, joined by my almighty lord, Otto!

[00:00:09] But, that’s not enough this time around, ladies and gentlemen, because we’re also joined by Ulfgang, the stalwart warrior whose might is unmatched, and Mireneye, a sage whose wisdom lights our path through the Dynasthir’s darker secrets. Without further ado, let’s embark on today’s journey into the heart of House of Games.

[00:00:31]

[00:00:31] Episode Starts

[00:00:31] Otto: Welcome everyone to this week’s episode of house of Games and as not usual, but, now finally we have another two guests on this, podcast. And this has been an episode where I think [00:01:00] we’ve been looking forward to a lot, and unfortunately delayed a bit. But now, finally we’re here. We’re ready to make history, so I think without further ado I’ll give the word to my guests, and I’m thinking Ulfgang since it’s your first time on the podcast, would you like to start and just introduce yourself and tell us who you are?

[00:01:22] Ulfgang Introduction

[00:01:22] Ulfgang: Uh, hello, I’m Ulfgang for the purposes of this podcast I’m a game developer. For the purposes of life, I do many other things, which I’m not sure we need to go into now for this but I, I co-developed Dynasthir with Mireneye over here and, it’s a jolly old time and sometimes it’s not a jolly old time, but we make it work. yeah. I make games and I love them and I hate the industry. That’s about all you need to know about me.

[00:01:57] Rune: Oh, interesting.

[00:01:59] Mireneye: Man, you [00:02:00] become so good at summarizing those things. It’s like, I make games, I love playing games, I hate the industry.

[00:02:10] Rune: I recognize, I can feel that too. I think there’s, there’s, something to that.

[00:02:15] Mireneye Introduction

[00:02:15] Mireneye: My name is Mireneye, the original source of, of this mysterious game that we’re making, the obscure Dynasthir, the world that is dying, sort of, game and, yeah, fire spinner, game developer, adventurer, right now, I think, I think digital nomad probably is the best explanation for my current situation.

[00:02:49] Bit trendy, so I’m not like the like matcha sort of like sitting on a resort somewhere sort of digital nomad, not yet, but I do [00:03:00] drink matcha. So there’s that.

[00:03:02] Rune: Oh, nice.

[00:03:04] Mireneye: Yeah.

[00:03:04] Otto: Cool, and I’m thinking, just, again for our, if there are any new listeners who haven’t heard the first episode, even though it’s highly recommended, so, could you just, give us a, brief, like helicopter pitch or elevator pitch, I think, or a helicopter view of, Dynasthir, the whole project. Maybe a little bit from, from start to where we are and what it is, basically.

[00:03:29] Mireneye: Yeah, I, I’ve answered this a lot of times and Ulfgang’s been with me for all of the like public time for Dynasthir basically like from the time that we started showing it off. So how about I fill in some of the like just before and then I, I think maybe he can do the rest if he wants to.

[00:03:51] Ulfgang: I’m all in on the helicopter pitch. Let’s go.

[00:03:54] Mireneye: Gotta helicopter all over this place.

[00:03:59] The History of Dynasthir

[00:03:59] Mireneye: Alright, [00:04:00] so, so in 2011 I started writing lore and story that was supposed to be for, a friend and me playing a roleplaying game in English and I was like, I’m just gonna knock it out over the weekend.

[00:04:16] That was, what, 11 years ago? No, no, no, wait. 2011. It’s 20, oh my god.

[00:04:26] It’s so long ago.

[00:04:28] So anyways anyways, so, I fell in love with that world. Kept writing. We never had that role playing session. Someday maybe we will.

[00:04:38] So, so that’s, that that’s that was like the early part and then I went down and did a few other things, mainly like, just getting some, my feet wet in game development. I was hanging out with a project that was called Salt Mountain. I wanted to do like a eastern type Soulslike and I learned some Unity stuff [00:05:00] and then I learned that I didn’t like Unity. and then I was like, nah, you know what? I need something that feels more intuitive to me. And I had been looking at Unreal Engine before and I was waiting for them to do the, they were doing like a big, like UI overhaul thing.

[00:05:17] And I was like, I’m going to try to get into it once they’ve done that. And so I got in on that around 2014. Those, those are like the big moments and then, you know, that’s when I’m like, I’m going to sit down and actually do Dynasthir, Dynasthir as how I imagine it to be, I, I made something in RPG maker as well that was a part of the world. That does exist out there somewhere floating around on the interwebs. But yeah, that’s sort of like those years leading up to that part. And then there are some like gap years here where I’m still keeping things a little bit of a secret. Ulfgang is off doing other things, I believe, right at that point.

[00:05:59] [00:06:00] And then, I bring the game to, Arctic Game, not the jam, it’s, it’s, it’s Arctic Game Pitch. I don’t remember which year.

[00:06:12] Otto: Right.

[00:06:14] Mireneye: And the judges are like, Whoa, this is really cool and, we win a part of the competition, or like two parts of the competition, we win part of that competition and, got to show off the game at Arctic Game, what is it? No. Nordsken. Nordsken.

[00:06:31] Otto: Right.

[00:06:33] Mireneye: Those are the broad strokes of it.

[00:06:35] After that I, remember this one day I was just showing off like the screenshots I believe or like videos? Silly things, so early to, to Ulfgang and that’s I think where he can take off like what his perspective on this is.

[00:06:53] How Ulfgang Got Involved

[00:06:53] Ulfgang: And that’s when I said, I’m in and the rest is history. Not yet, I guess still [00:07:00] being told right now.

[00:07:02] Otto: Yeah.

[00:07:04] Ulfgang: Yeah, so that’s when I joined this wacky, inflatable arm tube game. This is a part of the story that I used to share, like, as a, like, I don’t know, with joy, but now I’m just kind of over it. Because game dev is so much more than that.

[00:07:25] And I’ve learned that especially in the last few years. but when I joined the project, you know, he sent me a, basically a vertical slice. and, and as excited as I was, I went back to him with a list of here’s everything that sucks about this and these need to change.

[00:07:48] If I don’t think I told him if I’m, if I’m to work on this, but I was basically thinking that to myself and he went and changed all those things and the game felt better and [00:08:00] I just started working on it.

[00:08:02] This is not a slight on his capability as a dev. Absolutely not. He fucking does wonderful things, mind blowing things, even. He’s not only the best, the only technical artist I know, but the best one. Yeah, I don’t know, it’s kind of a blur after that for a few years, to be honest.

[00:08:26] Otto: So it’s a productive blur then after that, I guess.

[00:08:31] Ulfgang: It’s, it’s a lot of stuff happening in my life, personal life.

[00:08:36] Otto: Hmm, right.

[00:08:37] Ulfgang: At one point I moved to Sweden a couple of years ago for us to like, work on the game together and finish it off and boy, that’s a fucking odyssey for another time. That’s for sure. Odyssey is a good fucking word for it.

[00:08:53] …but basically we spent the pandemic together. Yeah. We spent the pandemic together trying to work on the [00:09:00] game, dealt with some people that really stagnated the development of the game and that part sucked. But now we’re, you know, back on our individual journeys, I guess, and we’re still working on the game and it’s going great. As for the actual game, which is what you asked us, for a pitch of the game.

[00:09:18] Otto: Yes.

[00:09:19] What Is Dynasthir?

[00:09:19] Ulfgang: Helicopter pitch being, we’re all over here, over LA, as you can see in our fancy helicopter and down there you can see Dynasthir, this, incredible action game, with, lots of exploration, like, like a lot, a lot of exploration. Exploration that will confuse you sometimes as some people have managed to find nothing in the demo of all the things that are there and I can’t wait if one of you is that kind of person.

[00:09:50] Mireneye: That’s gonna be so funny.

[00:09:52] Ulfgang: That’s gonna be hilarious.

[00:09:54] It’s psychedelic. It’s dark fantasy. It’s, as I [00:10:00] said, filled with exploration. That’s one of the pillars of the game, is exploration. It’s inspired by crazy shell like Demon’s Souls and Dragon’s Dogma and Morrowind and you’ll see the giant mushrooms and be like, yeah, there it is, that’s Morrowind and I fucking love working on this game. And I’m probably gonna cry when I have to stop working on this game. But that might also be a bit of Stockholm Syndrome, because I’ve been doing this for six years. Probably seven at this point.

[00:10:27] Mireneye: It’s a, relatable feelings.

[00:10:31] Ulfgang: It’s, it’s got adrenaline, because we hate stamina, which is basically a heat meter, as some, some gamers, good old gamers know it to be. You play the game well, you, you know, you do your perfect dodges, you do your parries, you do your, your attacks, without getting hit and that adrenaline bar is going to go up. And then you use that to unleash what we call skills which you learn by playing the game from enemies from various [00:11:00] places in the world you’ll go around and and discover things for yourself and learn, your character I guess learns in a way as you learn about the world and you get to learn about the character, too.

[00:11:11] Yeah, I’ll leave it there.

[00:11:15] Mireneye: I guess a lot, some of our designs, are almost like, it’s like we’re trying to hit this like nice balance of like, yeah, it’s the player learning, but also like, yeah, one to one, not one to one, but like close to one to one representation of the character in the game learning as well.

[00:11:38] Rune: Can you repeat that, explain that more? Like, for a, a moron?

[00:11:43] Mireneye: Yeah, so, you can think of this as being like intrinsic and extrinsic, right? So you can think of it as being like something that the character learns about in the game, and that’s one level of like, learning….

[00:11:56] Rune: Can we, can we make that even more moron-ish? You [00:12:00] use two words I don’t know and then you talk about a character. Are you talking about the player or the character that I’m playing in the game? And he’s learning and I’m still controlling him? Like make it even simpler.

[00:12:13] Mireneye: Okay, so, knowledge on the level of the character that you’re controlling and knowledge on the level of who you are, I would say, so…

[00:12:30] Otto: Who you are, meaning the character who they are, or you, the player?

[00:12:35] Mireneye: Who I am as a, as a…

[00:12:37] Rune: Welcome to House of Games where Otto and I are like autistically thinking of things from such a programming point of view.

[00:12:45] Otto: Yes.

[00:12:46] Dynasthir Review Starts

[00:12:46] Ulfgang: Yeah, I would say let’s approach it this way, oh, camera, there we go. if it, there we go. Let’s approach it this way, I want to hear what your guys experience has been with the demo so far at least, and what you guys learned about the [00:13:00] game and about yourselves playing it.

[00:13:02] Otto: Exactly, yeah, Rune, do you wanna go first? I have a bunch of notes, so, do you wanna, wanna start?

[00:13:08] Ulfgang: Rip into us. Go nuts.

[00:13:11] Mireneye: R.I.P.

[00:13:11] Rune: Let’s see…

[00:13:14] Ulfgang: This game sucks.

[00:13:15] Rune: I wasn’t quite sure how we were gonna approach this with feedback and so on but in my notes, what I wrote, the first couple of notes is, I want to go through these things, and I know these, I mean I make games, I know these are things that are changeable and will probably come later on but or it’s cause I’m not a PC gamer and I just don’t know how to play games on PC, but I noticed there’s no mouse cursors, cursor, so it was really hard to tell where I’m at in the start menu and I was looking at this purple and white clouds and that was a bit difficult. I didn’t quite get that at first but I played this game before because you were here before [00:14:00] and talked about the game, but that was still a thing that I thought was difficult to see where I was at in the menus. So that’s the first thing that happens in the game so I still think that should be more clear where I’m at.

[00:14:13] Ulfgang: To that I would like to say, I’m putting an open call to any programmers that would like to briefly join the project and help us with some shit that we’ve been hitting our head against for years. Thanks.

[00:14:23] Mireneye: Yeah, that’s some silly like Unreal Engine specifics that’s like, Ugh I really just want to get past those things, like…

[00:14:32] Ulfgang: Please, anybody, any programmer out there.

[00:14:37] Mireneye: Slightly outside of my reach of comfort in what I’m working on.

[00:14:41] Rune: Yeah, but I also noticed that the UI it seems to be aimed towards PlayStation 5 controllers and I was playing first on my Steam Deck. I mean, I assume you guys haven’t made it sort of playable on Steam Decks, I mean from a dev kit perspective, but it still works. So [00:15:00] that’s cool and it, it, it, it runs much smoother this time around both on the Steam Deck and my PC. So that’s, that was amazing to see the, the, performance, improvements, so that was really cool.

[00:15:14] Mireneye: I’m like immediately so interested because I didn’t know you were running it on Steam Deck. Because I just know we made gradual improvements, but we haven’t had testing on Steam Deck on this version yet. So that’s so exciting to me.

[00:15:25] Rune: I was gonna show you, but of course this bastard dies every time I start it. Right before we started recording, I wanted to show you.

[00:15:33] Ulfgang: Your Steam Deck is dying, why do you persist?

[00:15:35] Rune: Well, it was running on the Steam Deck and it was fine. I think it was maybe easier to play on the Steam Deck, because I’m a console gamer at heart and I also noticed these, PlayStation 5 symbols, or PlayStation, symbols. So that was a little bit easier to get my hang on the controller.

[00:15:53] Mireneye: That’s something I haven’t thought about, but we have both of the different glyphs or like, you know, we [00:16:00] swap between, you know, the keyboard and the controller glyphs and it never really dawned on me that, like, probably Steam Deck is considered a controller, so it would use those glyphs. It’s just, like, this thing that, like, never popped into my head, but that makes perfect sense.

[00:16:19] Rune: So, are you telling me if I play on the PC it would automatically change the UI to PC?

[00:16:25] Mireneye: If you connect a controller or like just, enable it, the game should swap automatically.

[00:16:32] Rune: Okay, alright.

[00:16:33] Ulfgang: Yeah, so we have keyboard and mouse and gamepad, but so far we don’t yet have different, button UIs. So, you know, Xbox, PlayStation. We have PlayStation, but we still need to add Xbox and I guess Steam Deck, Nintendo, all that stuff.

[00:16:51] Rune: But as a console gamer or a gamer in general, you know where the buttons are if you see the PlayStation ones or well, I suppose the Nintendo and xbox ones are super [00:17:00] confusing because A and B swaps every time. It’s a mess to play on a Steam Deck and a Switch, but…

[00:17:06] Mireneye: We’ll see exactly how we approach it at the end of the day. there’s, there’s, there’s some good ideas floating in- internally of how, what we’re going to do with this.

[00:17:18] Rune: Well, on next on my list, I don’t know if I said this in the chat before it started, but I had family relatives coming over to Japan. So I haven’t had time to play it like, you know, yesterday or today before we record this. So I’m looking at my notes from last week. But, I wrote also, and I remember this of course super hard to know the controller where to do I change the weapons, how do I equip them. So I’m not sure when you say that the UI stuff should change when I go between controller or keyboard. I can’t really see that or maybe it’s because I played on the Steam Deck that it wouldn’t update the way because I had no idea how to equip anything, so that was it. But you know, [00:18:00] eventually I got around it and I figured it out, but maybe just the clearer ways to, how to control it, but again, I am not a PC gamer, so it’s just anything PC is confusing to me. That was another thing I had there.

[00:18:18] Ulfgang: Yeah, So I guess the UI updates, but the messages in world haven’t updated.

[00:18:22] Mireneye: Oh yeah, because we do have the tutorial messages that are in, at the start that probably needs to have…

[00:18:28] Ulfgang: Yeah, yeah.

[00:18:28] Mireneye: …update properly.

[00:18:31] Ulfgang: We need to look into that.

[00:18:32] Rune: Maybe go to settings and I can sort of see the controller. I don’t know, but I mean, this is something I struggle with when I make my own games, because when you make the game you know how to play it and then I had to sort of figure out and think like how would someone play my game and that’s really hard. It feels like it’s such a simple thing to do, but it’s fucking hard to to show off how to play a game for someone who never played it.

[00:18:56] Mireneye: I think UI is the like single most thing we iterate [00:19:00] on, I think the most right now. Like it’s the, it’s the thing that like keeps coming back and being like, just, a little bit more, just a little bit more, just a little bit more. And that’s always just a little bit more. And it’s, it’s both, it’s, it’s interesting, what people, the sort of quality of our people hold it to at this point, it’s like, yeah, they just want it to be very AAA at this point in terms of like, just like everything needs to go bleep, bloop, everything needs to highlight, everything needs to blah, blah and like all the settings, you’ve got to have like exactly all the settings that people expect. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s so interesting.

[00:19:39] Rune: I do agree with that, that it’s sort of, we’re sort of leaning into this sort of standardization in how people, how games should be played and so on and I disagree with, I think it shouldn’t be like that. I think every game should just do what they want to do, but, I know people have this thing where the X button, for example, on a PlayStation controller, that’s where you jump no [00:20:00] matter what.

[00:20:00] And I think it is Metroid on the Nintendo Switch and the, whatever the bottom button is on the Switch, I think it’s the B button. You don’t jump on that, alright, but you would expect that’s not what’s happening and I some people think there should be standards on those things. I, I don’t think that should be a standard. I think you should do whatever you feel is great. maybe option to change the controller, but that’s it’s it sounds like such a simple thing to do, but I know that’s really hard but nonetheless like uh in the start menu or somewhere where I can just see the controller and then these sort of arrows to every button. at least that’s how I try to solve it in my games. Like, in the settings you can see the controller if you need to. but I, yeah, so that’s, a quick and simple way. But then again, this is a quite complex game, so I don’t quite know how you would do that with a controller.

[00:20:52] Anyway, that was just some of the the input I had there on the controller. so I, I found it a bit difficult to get [00:21:00] going because I couldn’t figure out how to equip my sword and get through the first those planks in the first cave.

[00:21:07] Otto: The first boss, the planks.

[00:21:10] Rune: The first boss is the plank.

[00:21:11] Mireneye: We should like just put a health bar on those planks and show like a health, like the boss health bar.

[00:21:18] Ulfgang: Boss fight music.

[00:21:20] Mireneye: Yeah.

[00:21:21] Rune: Well…

[00:21:21] Ulfgang: You take too long, it actually comes to life and…

[00:21:24] Rune: Yeah. It does.

[00:21:28] Yeah, but but I talk about the menus a little bit more, I do like the, I think I said this before as well, the, the tiny animations that takes place when you swap go through the menus, that’s a nice touch. That’s something I, I even want a copy in my to my game when I played, like I like these tiny little touches.

[00:21:46] Ulfgang: You can message me anytime and ask.

[00:21:48] Rune: Did you make those things or…? And the, and you drew them as well or is it…?

[00:21:53] Cool. Yeah, I really like it, you go to settings and it, the cogs are changing a little bit or skills and you see this [00:22:00] bicep flexing. Those were nice touches. Really cool.

[00:22:03] Mireneye: I think, I think, the, the, the original version of that, he knocked out in like a day and then, we put them in and then like, I think this is like the second or third version of them. And they, they, they’ve stayed quite similar, but I bet behind the scenes Ulfgang has thought about them a lot.

[00:22:21] Ulfgang: Yeah, it’s the second version of those specific ones in the, in the top of the menu.

[00:22:27] Mireneye: It’s still crazy, that they’ve been like that for, for such a long time. Like, everything else has changed so much, it’s just, yeah.

[00:22:35] Ulfgang: They didn’t need changing. Yeah.

[00:22:36] Mireneye: They persisted, while other things died.

[00:22:40] Rune: But it’s a small details like that I, I, really enjoy and, but yeah, that, that’s sort of, my first notes here. Otto, do you want to go through something first before I get into the world and, the sort of the, the great and the bad about the world itself? Do you have any small, [00:23:00] what did you guys say? We were going to rip you a new one or whatever with our feedback.

[00:23:03] Ulfgang: Rip into us.

[00:23:04] Rune: Yeah. Do you have any more…?

[00:23:06] Otto: Yes.

[00:23:07] Yeah, yeah, I have some smaller notes as well. I think also I, agree that, as you said, Rune, it’s probably a small fix, but in the beginning, it seems like the tutorial text assumes a controller and there’s no instructions for mouse and keyboard, so I think that’s just a minor thing.

[00:23:29] So then also something that would be interesting, I think, is to have, I don’t know if there is such an option, but I couldn’t find it, but at least subtitles for dialogue, because that, you know, in part helps with the clarity of what is being said, and also something that I think would be really useful is who is talking, because sometimes I would hear somebody talk, but I had no idea where the voice was coming from if it was this character, or that character, or sometimes it was a [00:24:00] character, and I had no idea where the person was.

[00:24:04] Rune: And one quick thing here, how to talk to people? I never figured that out.

[00:24:08] Otto: Yes, that’s number two on that. So, it’s actually F to talk to somebody, I found. But there should be a little prompt press F to talk or something. That would be useful. Or I don’t know if it was F, I, I, changed the controllers a little bit, so it might have been some other character.

[00:24:27] Rune: But to be fair on what Mireneye said, “Marmalade” said about, not having like a standard sort of thing for all games, because I, to, to press F to talk for example, that will be something that I don’t want in my games. ’Cause I, I, I don’t know, I, there’s just something about that that makes it feel so mainstream, on the nose, a little bit too much.

[00:24:49] But, but then how you would solve it, I have no clue. Maybe, I don’t know, like a symbol, maybe a talk… I don’t know how to solve it, but I feel like in [00:25:00] this world that would sort of ruin it, but at the same time it might be fucking important. So, you know how to talk to people, I don’t know the solve.

[00:25:09] Ulfgang: I mean, I still hate that triangle thing we put in, you know, that we got a little triangle prompt when you can interact with certain things.

[00:25:18] Otto: Hmm.

[00:25:18] Ulfgang: I hate it.

[00:25:22] Mireneye: There’s a meta commentary here that like, the overall interactions with things in the world of Dynasthir is a little bit more important than interacting with characters for dialogue and yeah, yeah. So like there’s absolutely important dialogue, don’t get me wrong about that, but there’s some meta commentary here because we have interaction button for things, but we don’t have them for people.

[00:25:48] So there’s, there’s that. Yeah, like if we would add more interaction parts, I think maybe just add them to everything and not everything wants to talk to you.[00:26:00]

[00:26:01] Otto: Yeah, well, I, I think, the point being, regardless if you want to do everything samey, as Rune usually says, or if you want to do it more uniquely, the point being, I think, is that the UX should guide the player to how do you proceed in the game. For example, you want to talk to this character, and regardless of how you do it, if you have some sort of symbol or whatever it is, the player should be able to know, in my mind at least, how do they do what they want to do.

[00:26:34] One really great example of that, that you actually did, that I was really impressed by, was in the beginning section there is a, some kind of cliffside with a chest or something on top of it with some loot, and then there is a salamander climbing up on the cliffside. And then for some reason, that prompted me to think like, oh, maybe I can climb that, and lo and behold, that turned out to be the case. So that’s [00:27:00] a great example of where you didn’t have to have a prompt, press F to climb or something, but you actually instructed the player, me in that case, on how to do something without telling them explicitly.

[00:27:13] So, you know, maybe if there’s something to be done there, but that’s the sort of thing I think being asked.

[00:27:21] Rune: But the F button, is that the action button? Like, is that for everything because in that case, okay. Well, maybe in my case I, couldn’t figure out what button to press.

[00:27:31] Ulfgang: To go into gamedev mode here for a second, I can see an NPC early on, beckoning you like, Hey, come here. Hey get over here because let me, lemme talk you lemme talk to you about the gabagoo and then you go to him and you gotta figure out how to interact with him so you just press all your buttons and then once you do it, you do it once you know how to do it.

[00:27:53] Boom. Done. Ship it.

[00:27:56] Mireneye: That’s good stuff.

[00:27:58] Just out of curiosity, Rune, did [00:28:00] you figure out how to climb things?

[00:28:02] Rune: No, I, when you said you can climb, do you mean like like in Zelda kind of climbing, or…?

[00:28:09] Mireneye: Zelda, but like you have specific places you can climb.

[00:28:14] Rune: But there’s like, okay, so there’s like an actual climbing animation for that as well. You’re not just talking…

[00:28:19] Mireneye: Yeah.

[00:28:20] Rune: …about just jumping up. Okay, cool.

[00:28:22] Mireneye: Yeah.

[00:28:23] So that’s that. This is, to me, that’s exciting to me it’s super exciting that one of you picked that up and one of you like just sort of missed out on that part of the game entirely. It’s, where, that’s where this game thrives, I feel.

[00:28:37] Ulfgang: Yeah.

[00:28:37] Rune: Yeah, I think that’s I I really appreciate those things. I always talk about that on this podcast these things that people can miss, I, are even better.

[00:28:48] Otto: And I think one small nitpick, or, actually I would, before I do that, I will also give you praise on, on something that I thought was really amazing. So, finally now I [00:29:00] got to play the computer, the game on my good computer. Last time I tried to do it on my laptop and that didn’t really go as, as I thought.

[00:29:08] But, this time I played it and I thought it was really responsive. And especially the controls are super responsive for the character. So, that’s something that not even AAA, AAA games achieve always. Kudos to that, really, really well done.

[00:29:28] And one thing I think it’s probably just a bug, but sometimes, I, there was some enemies that sort of were stuck in a, sort of a state where they just looked in a certain direction, and you could basically kill them without them even reacting, because…

[00:29:50] Ulfgang: The deepest lore.

[00:29:52] Otto: Yeah, they’re just vegetables.

[00:29:55] Rune: Well, actually, I had the same thing and just [00:30:00] liking souls games or whatever and then playing this game and I did pick up on, like, there’s a lot of lore here. I don’t know all the lore, but I can tell there’s a lot of lore going on here.

[00:30:09] When I did that, like hitting these enemies, I just thought maybe, my mind ran to some sort of, they’re like these peaceful monks that just don’t want to fight, and they’d rather just die, that was how I was thinking about it. So I didn’t think it was a bug, but maybe it is a bug.

[00:30:28] Ulfgang: We’re just not going to tell you. I love that you both had that experience.

[00:30:31] Otto: I, I’m I, gonna guess it’s a bug because when you go close enough, then they start attacking you and, you know, doing the usual stuff.

[00:30:40] Mireneye: Have you heard of personal space?

[00:30:41] Otto: It’s just…

[00:30:42] Mireneye: Like, some people get really agitated when you do that. That’s when you break monk mode.

[00:30:48] Ulfgang: Personal space.

[00:30:50] Mireneye: We, we actually, we went through or I went through the project recently and I changed the, the interaction boxes for, for basically all the characters [00:31:00] we have, because I started thinking about the interaction boxes as personal space, like the inverse of personal space.

[00:31:06] So it’s like, Oh, you can talk to this character from further away because he like, technically he’s like, okay you to communicate at that distance. This is a funny thought. I don’t know if I, if I like this thought or, and if it’s gonna be in the game, but like…

[00:31:21] Otto: Well, I think that’s, it’s a great idea, but the thing where it might fail in execution, I think, is the same with UX that we talked about earlier that, that could be a great idea, but if it’s not communicated that, you know, Oh, this character is gonna be responsive on a longer distance. If there’s nothing telling the, the, user, then they might think that it is a bug, for example, that, you know, you can talk to this character, but you can’t talk to this character, and the only difference is difference, but they don’t think about it.

[00:31:57] Ulfgang: Yeah, I agree. That’s something to think about.

[00:31:59] Rune: And I [00:32:00] was thinking also based on the game you wouldn’t think that people have personal spaces and so on, like, when you said that, it sort of reminded me of my own game, which is all about social class and stuff like that, and based on who you talk to, they might say more or less. But that’s also a part of the core of the game, interacting with people, but this game, I would say, is, well, you said it yourself, that the story is more told through the world and not necessarily through, NPCs, so then, like Otto said, that would probably come across as a bug or just confusing if, if there is this personal space thing for NPCs. And, like no one would think about that, but if someone was told it, it would be like, Oh, okay, well, that’s pretty cool.

[00:32:44] Otto: But, here’s, on the top of my head, here’s a couple of ways that you could solve it. For example, you could have the more, more, I don’t know, extroverted people, maybe shouting at you from a longer distance when they see you, or something like that. You could have something like, [00:33:00] the characters you’re able to talk to is highlighted somehow, maybe have some, you know, cloud or something in their background or something.

[00:33:10] Yeah, or something like that. You have sort of a highlight that, oh, now if you press F or whatever then there’s an interaction. You talked about having a triangle or something and then maybe that could appear when it’s possible to talk to a character or something, just prompting the user that now it’s possible, because otherwise it’s impossible to know even if you know that that functionality is in there.

[00:33:36] Rune: I, I’m thinking what you, like you said, Ulfgang, that you’re a game developer but you hate the industry. I feel like this is a perfect example of where, art or, let’s say you want personal spaces for people. And that’s a cool idea, I like that, but it’s just next to impossible to make that work [00:34:00] in, for a gamer who we would never expect that. So then this sort of corporate bullshittery comes in where you sort of have to tell people with a triangle UI pop up or something that you can talk now and so on. This is the clash between art and corporatism in, in the gaming industry. I hate that shit. I really do. It’s It sucks, but it’s I feel like it’s just the way it has to be like you can’t always have it your way. You have to sort of give in to the corporateness to make sure the game works or to make it clear or whatever, but yeah, that’s just an idea my thoughts.

[00:34:38] Ulfgang: Yeah, I agree. I also want to say that, like, I’ve been thinking actively about that mechanic now of personal space. It’s like, yeah, that’s absolutely doable if you think about it early on in the project. At this point no, but I think there’s many good ways to do that in, in a game, when you think about that from the beginning, like, [00:35:00] when a character is open to interacting with you, they just turn to you, right? Like, let’s say someone’s standing, you’re walking up to someone, and their personal space is bigger, and they’re facing away from you, and you’ve entered their personal space, and they just, they just like turn in your direction, and then you can interact with them, I guess. I guess we can do already something like that in Dynasthir with head tracking, right?

[00:35:29] Like, we have animals that like, when you’re close to them, they just like track you with their, they look at you right? We haven’t put that yet in for people, so that could be related to it.

[00:35:38] Mireneye: Technically, we have all the parts there.

[00:35:40] Ulfgang: Yeah, exactly. It’s just not, we didn’t flip the switch on it.

[00:35:44] Otto: Exactly. So I guess that will be a little bit like, I, I don’t know, Rune if this is gonna tick you off, but since there are they are AAA games, but that is a little bit like the Elder Scrolls games, that the, the characters around you usually greet you and stuff.

[00:35:59] [00:36:00] Just sort of, yeah, to to, to let you know that you can speak to them, I suppose.

[00:36:07] To me, I don’t think it’s that much giving in to corporate whatever ness, but rather than, that you sort of adapt it to how human psychology works.

[00:36:20] Rune: Oh yeah, but that, no, that, that that works. I feel that that’s probably a good middle ground there.

[00:36:27] ’Cause now that you say it, I’m thinking that a lot, hello there and then it’s I feel like I can talk to that person.

[00:36:33] Mireneye: Here’s a thing that can add to this. Is that like an idea that necessarily came from a corporation, is it like inherently bad by itself, I think. It’s, it’s just the landscape that these ideas can create over time, I think that becomes a problematic, like, of course there’s good ideas in like different places.

[00:36:54] Ulfgang: Well, I would say good ideas have come from people that are artists that are working inside a corporation.

[00:36:59] Rune: Yeah, [00:37:00] yeah, I buy that. What I meant was just that sometimes the artisticness can’t really be told the way you want it because it just doesn’t work. But what you just said now, Otto, that makes perfect sense.

[00:37:11] I didn’t think about that, but that makes perfect sense, and that’s like a good marriage between corporateness ness and artisticness ness. But maybe the artists thought about that. That would be cool if people said, hey, and then that’s all the art piece part of it, but it could have also been that someone said like this is fucking confusing and I don’t know who I can talk to and then someone said well we have to make sure it’s more the player understands these things and then that idea came from that.

[00:37:40] Mireneye: To be fair, I think every interactable character does say hey when you enter their sight range, I think.

[00:37:49] Otto: Yeah.

[00:37:49] Ulfgang: With head tracking, there you go.

[00:37:51] Rune: but I don’t understand like, it was a bit confusing though when I talked to someone like do I press next or how much is the…

[00:37:59] But I do play a [00:38:00] lot of soulsborne games. I, I think that if I keep talking there’s a new dialogue being triggered the next time around. Is that how it works behind the scenes or am I just imagining this?

[00:38:11] Mireneye: You’re pretty much right, I would say.

[00:38:14] Rune: Okay That’s cool.

[00:38:18] Ulfgang: I do want to add that, this is for like everybody, players, game developers, more for game developers but everybody, the thing about UX, it’s how consistent you are with it, so yeah, it’s good to have familiarity for your players to some extent, at least on how to basically control the game, but you have enough freedom to, when a player starts playing the game for the first time, they have a period of time where they’re learning the rules of the world, right? I guess that’s world building in a way, but not quite for this specific thing.

[00:38:54] So you’re learning like, okay, how far can I fall before I die from fall damage? Is there [00:39:00] fall damage? You know, how do I interact with things? You know, do I hail people like in Dragon’s Dogma 2 or talk to them and that’s two separate things that I can do and they both have different, like each game has the freedom to build its own consistent rules on how to interact with things and that’s good and that should take, you should take advantage of that because that’s, that’s super good. You can make your world unique or your game more unique as long as you keep it consistent throughout.

[00:39:28] Otto: Yeah, well, Rune, do you wanna go into the more, big picture things about the game?

[00:39:36] Rune: Speaking of world.

[00:39:37] Yeah, well, last time we talked, you said it was not quite like a Software game, but I kept feeling like it is and now, Ulfgang, you said, you know, it’s an adventure action game and so on. So, I’m thinking how I’m gonna approach my next point of [00:40:00] this, is, well, I can’t stop see the similarities, like, and I’m a big Souls fan, but what I do, ah, but what I do love about the Souls games are the tight, detailed, rich environment.

[00:40:16] This game feels more like a big and more empty. It feels a little bit more MMO and what I’ve wrote in my notes is that the distances are so far so that, like I, I wrote here, like if I could sort of grab the entire game and make it a third like just squeeze everything in to a third of what it is the distances to each thing would feel quicker and tighter.

[00:40:43] But that, again, is the sort of Soulsborne player in me who likes these tight environments. I did play Elden Ring, which is much bigger, but, I was not a big of a fan of that game as the other games because I do like the the details and the tightness and [00:41:00] so on. Now, It’s an adventure, so I do understand that the distances must be important at some point and I will come to a point later on in, in this little, monologue where that really worked for me and that was also when I got sort of hooked as well so that’s it’s kind of weird that the thing I don’t really like is the thing that hooked me in the end, but, I gave an example here, so I went up to the mines and then I looked to my left and there’s like a campfire and some benches, and then I ran over there and there’s nothing there but to get over there it took like let’s say five seconds like running slowly over there look around nothing and then I run back to the to the train track that goes into the mines.

[00:41:45] So that for example would just be if it was just tighter so I could just quickly go in there and look if I can find anything nothing here I can go that would have felt much better.

[00:41:54] Another one is, I, I went to, I went out [00:42:00] through two, two big gates and then I kept running and running and running and then I met a NPC woman coming towards me but this path here was so long and it took me, and I didn’t quite understand, well, this is how I, when I played whatever game, like, the sort of one you just keep running, like, I don’t understand the point of it. It just, like, takes forever to get somewhere. However, the twist here is that I kept running and running and running and up a slope, I look to my right, and then I, I figure I can jump up on these cliffs.

[00:42:34] I go there and then I see a man coming with a torch, running. At this point I had to leave, the house in, in the real world, so I, I quit playing the game, but, that thing right there and this is what I talked about before about the lore and the mystery of the game, which I really think works really works great. That thing, because, because I had been going forever and nothing happened, and then I see this dude coming out [00:43:00] with a torch, that worked really well, because something happened, and then I got really curious, where did it come from, what was he doing? is he running away from someone? Or is he, yeah, I still don’t know the answer to the question, what that guy was doing. I’m sure you guys know who I’m talking about maybe. But that that worked really well.

[00:43:23] Mireneye: It’s gotta be Bill in accounting.

[00:43:26] Rune: Bill in accounting?

[00:43:27] Mireneye: Yeah. Like that’s the, yeah. Yeah.

[00:43:33] Ulfgang: He was trying to tell you about how you can save 15 percent on insurance. We’re also a hundred percent fucking with you and not gonna tell you what that was.

[00:43:41] Rune: Yeah, but I want to go back to him though. If I figured out how to save the game and that was also one of my my previous things too I’m, not quite sure if I figured that out because I kept playing on the Steam Deck and then next time I played on the PC and then I played on Steam Deck again, and I had to keep going from the start.

[00:43:57] But anyway, so [00:44:00] big vast environments works when this things happens but, sometimes, for example, the village, it feels like it’s just maybe ten times bigger than it has to be.

[00:44:11] It could just be squeezed together to make it easily accessible. Like I said, it sort of feels like I’m playing an MMO all alone. So make those areas tighter. That would be, how I would enjoy, enjoy the game more. But of course, yeah, like I said, when it comes to FromSoftware games, I like in tighter environments.

[00:44:34] Mireneye: Let me ask you this about like just the starting environment in general, if you describe this place in one word, would you say that it’s a bit lonely?

[00:44:44] Rune: Yeah.

[00:44:46] Mireneye: Perfect.

[00:44:52] Ulfgang: That’s, I actually wanna talk about a, a bit about what you said, cause I find it fascinating. And I think about this shit quite a lot. [00:45:00] I feel to do good exploration, you need, you need to fuck with people’s expectations, because the moment people have locked in, into whatever I go, this is what I find. You’ve kinda like took the joy out of it, right? And, I love Elden Ring, great game. Shoutout to the “Elden Ring — Defuckenated” mod, fixes everything I didn’t like about it. It’s great. But, after a while, in Elden Ring, I again, I’m not I don’t mean to talk shit about Elden Ring, I’m just making a comment about the world because I also didn’t, like you, I didn’t quite like just the vastness of it, but I didn’t like it specifically for this reason is after a while, everywhere I went I would find a basement to go into, enemies to fight maybe a chest with a weapon in it or like like [00:46:00] it’s always like, whenever I was going, I was going to fight someone and very rarely there will be someone to talk to but they kind of just took all those people and put them in a, in a base and they’re safe and sound and you don’t need to worry about it.

[00:46:14] And, the best parts were definitely, in Elden Ring, yeah, the, the legacy dungeons, right? The, the big castle, the basement of the big castle where it’s all like quiet and you have those bats sleeping and like, you keep looking around and you find a fucking, Ulcerated Tree Spirit, fuck those guys, but that was the first one I found, right? and I was like, Oh my God, what the fuck is this?

[00:46:37] And I killed that and then you go deeper and you find more stuff and it’s all quiet and there’s nothing extra. All right, that’s fantastic because it’s something different. So you gotta fuck with expectations, you can’t have that every corner you turn has something amazing in it, right? And you have to balance that thing of like it might be empty. There [00:47:00] might be someone, there might be something there might be who knows what.

[00:47:03] Otto: Yeah. So, yeah, I totally agree, that’s a great philosophy and I think that can make for a really fantastic game. The only thing again, I think, that’s important in this case is to make it clear to the user that this is the intention. Because that’s, that might not always be clear, because to somebody it might be feel like if it’s a big empty world, they might get into the lore and they understand it and all of that.

[00:47:34] But somebody else, like me or Rune, maybe, maybe we just think that you haven’t implemented the stuff that’s supposed to be there yet, or something.

[00:47:42] Ulfgang: There’s an amount that for sure.

[00:47:44] Otto: Yeah.

[00:47:45] Ulfgang: The demo map, there’s very little left that isn’t implemented.

[00:47:48] Otto: Of course, of course. But, you know, if it’s supposed to be empty and lonely and whatever, whatever else it is, then I guess I would say, I would recommend that to give [00:48:00] the, the, player some tool of discovering that that is the intention and it’s not just, it’s not filler content it, that is the actual content, however you would, would do that either through dialogue or, I don’t know, environmental storytelling or whatever you want, but…

[00:48:21] Ulfgang: Yeah, it’s a good point to think about, and I will think about it. I’m thinking about it right now. There’s also the thing of, even when you show intention to someone in a conversation, for example, there’s still, some people are going to misinterpret it, right?

[00:48:37] So, there’s a degree of, you gotta let your player fuck up, and you gotta let your player think their thought, their own thoughts on your game. Because otherwise it feels like the game is shoveling what it’s trying to tell you down your throat, and then it becomes preachy, right? Then it becomes, what’s the word, where it’s like, philosophy and wisdom that isn’t, [00:49:00] it’s, pretentious, right? It’s like, oh, look at the thing I made and understand it specifically for what it is. And it’s like, how about you let me think for myself for a little bit and just breathe in what there is there and make my own decision. And yeah, maybe later on I find lore and I’m like, oh, oh, that’s cool. And every time a game has done that for me or to me, I always remember it.

[00:49:23] Otto: Yeah.

[00:49:24] Ulfgang: It’s like, Oh, I didn’t, I didn’t figure that out by myself. That’s fantastic. That’s that someone else did and I get to enjoy that now with new context, new nuance. I get to see the world again in a way of that game.

[00:49:39] Mireneye: Yeah, there’s something to be said here as well for, like, this is the first town you get to, right? So there’s something to be said for here that like, we could have been designing things with in mind that like, Oh, We have some tight spaces, design spaces for like the first hour and then like easing people into the, [00:50:00] you know, some other lonely place to where they, the point is the loneliness, you know, for, you know, capturing the player a little bit more in that sense.

[00:50:11] That’s something, that’s something like, like we could have done. I’d like to, I’d like to believe that this has its own point as well on the other spectrum. So like, and it does make it stand out, but how to make that in a way that people resonate with where that, those feelings that we want to, to translate to the player, that is always an ongoing, process, I would say.

[00:50:41] Ulfgang: Sure. yeah, 100% And yeah, we gotta always hit the balance. We can’t like go one way or the other too much.

[00:50:47] Mireneye: Yeah, should a designer go for always what the player expects or the journey they sort of want to take the player on? So we have a specific journey, well, we have a very broad [00:51:00] specific journey, let’s call it. And, and, and this certainly has its place in that journey and I’d like to hone down on what makes that unique, rather than copying, say, what a Souls game would be doing, where it’s like, it’s a tightly, the, it’s a tight, small space that communicates a specific soulslike design and gameplay.

[00:51:22] So we have our own gameplay parts to communicate, and we have our own sort of, broad direction.

[00:51:29] Ulfgang: Exactly what you were saying Rune, earlier.

[00:51:32] Rune: It’s, I feel like, I sort of, made that point in a way where, like I sort of painted a picture of that I got annoyed with the distances but then that guy would have you know, torch came out of nowhere and that really I don’t think that would have worked if it only took me three minutes to get there. Now it took me 10 minutes and that’s almost to the point where oh, where the fuck am I going? What am I going to do? And then that happened and I think like I said that that [00:52:00] had a really good effect but because I’m a soulsborne player, I reckon my brother would really like this way more than I do, because he can this would definitely resonate with him. But like I said, I can’t stop seeing the, the similarities with a Souls game. And I think that is messing with my experience because then I’m just expecting things in a different way. And I can’t help the fact that I, expect things to be a little bit quicker.

[00:52:27] Ulfgang: No, it’s not your fault.

[00:52:29] Rune: Nah, so I, I think that now that you guys sort of gave your point of view, it totally makes sense and yeah, you’re probably right that you should hone in on this because I do think that that would I mean in this day and age you want to make something unique and this is the unique part for sure one of the uniqueness of the game, so give in to the souls players like myself, but yeah.

[00:52:56] Ulfgang: We’re not going to give you the damn buttom prompts.

[00:52:58] Rune: Sorry?

[00:52:59] Ulfgang: We’re not going [00:53:00] to give you the damn button prompts.

[00:53:03] Rune: I, yeah, but it you got good points there. I wanted to say too about some positives about the environments. The, the sparks that were raining in the village, that was really cool.

[00:53:17] I thought that was, I’m not sure what the lore is that there but I assume they have something to do with it’s maybe a mining village and some shit happened and I don’t know why it was sparks raining, but I thought that was pretty cool. Yeah.

[00:53:36] Ulfgang: So nice that everybody has different names for it.

[00:53:40] Mireneye: Rain spark.

[00:53:44] Ulfgang: Fire rain and a bunch of other ones.

[00:53:48] Otto: To add to that, the environment I think was very well done. It’s, there’s a lot of different biomes as I saw it, a lot of different, different [00:54:00] looking places. There’s a lot of, you know, visually appealing things to see. So really kudos to that. There seems to be some sort of day night cycle and some sort of weather system. So that’s really cool, you know, after dying at some point, going back the same way, it’s a different weather, and, or, time of day, and then you realize it just looks completely different than the feeling you get. It’s different. So for replayability, if not else, it’s really, really well done.

[00:54:35] Ulfgang: Yeah, even after so many years of making this game, the weather has not gotten boring to us. Just keeps things fresh.

[00:54:43] Mireneye: It takes so much time to look at through the environments in different conditions.

[00:54:49] Ulfgang: Yep. Heheheheheh.

[00:54:52] Otto: Yeah, I can imagine.

[00:54:54] Something on the combat system, I, I don’t know if I did it, sort of, [00:55:00] if you could call it cheating or something, but I realized there was this, one NPC, that, I don’t know if Rune spoke to this person, but at least I noticed an NPC in the beginning of the game where you could trade your beginner sword for what looked sort of like a viking fidget spinner or something and it was sort of a boomerang thing, so you could throw it and it came back to you every time.

[00:55:26] So that was my favorite weapon. You’ll see it in the background footage of this episode, but I use it all the time for every enemy, every boss, fuckin loved it. Nothing, turned out to be better than that, so, great design, really love it, I think it could be really a part of your sort of unique, you know, you’re associated with, this is, sort of like the Triforce for Zelda and, and, so on.

[00:55:52] Rune: But did it make it too easy? Did it make it too easy though, Otto, or did [00:56:00] you still die? Like I, tried, I went into this place and then I met a boss in a lake ish, she, or he was really fast and I got my ass handed to me like, two hits, maybe?

[00:56:16] Otto: Mmm. Interesting. To me I still died a bunch of times, you know, because it’s, it makes it easier that you can sort of chicken out and just throw it at them and then run away and then also it works that it throws the direction the camera is looking, so you can run away and throw it back at them, which was really, I thought it was really fun to do.

[00:56:41] Mireneye: The skill ceiling of managing that the boomerang is kind of high because you can do a lot of interesting things with it.

[00:56:50] Otto: Hmm, interesting. Yeah, I, I really loved it, so, but I did die a couple of times, especially since you also have those enemies who shoot [00:57:00] arrows at you, so then it doesn’t help that much to have the boomerang, because then they will probably be more accurate and, kill you faster. So there is a lot of times where it’s not the best weapon, I think, but I, did it out of laziness, perhaps.

[00:57:19] Ulfgang: Hey, it’s a valid play style, otherwise it wouldn’t be in there.

[00:57:23] Otto: Yeah, I really loved it.

[00:57:28] Yeah, some, some other things related to UX, I know we come back to this topic a lot, but I think it goes into the, point that Rune mentioned as well, with saving, for example. So, as I found out how to save, I think it was actually due to some other thing, Mireneye told me, at a previous point before playing the game, when I played it with my potato computer how to save the game, so I learned it through there.

[00:57:59] But [00:58:00] basically there are these shrines that have this, sort of, play box music, so you go into there and then you rest, and that, sort of, lets you save and there, there also, I don’t know if it’s the intention to be, a bit mysteric, mysterious or not, but, I would feel that the menu there was, sort of overwhelming because you have the skill tree something that was just this enormous thing and then you have a lot of other options that I didn’t really figure out what they do, so the only thing I used it for was resting, which is healing and then saving, but nothing else.

[00:58:41] So that would, that’s something that’s really, seems like an interesting concept, but I don’t know how it works.

[00:58:47] Ulfgang: Yep, and that’s part of it.

[00:58:50] Otto: Interesting.

[00:58:52] Ulfgang: We have toyed with the idea of making it more like, just in a way, like telling you what it does, but it just kind of ruins it. [00:59:00]

[00:59:02] Mireneye: There are a few, menu options in there that, that just like having a blurb of what the thing, like, for instance, like the list of skills that we have that you can use, like just like having picture videos, something like some, something that I like have a tool tips, some part of it, not necessarily whatever button does, but like some of the sub menu stuff.

[00:59:24] Ulfgang: All I can say is I’ve made that art for that menu as like visually telling as I could have without like just ruining it out. So I think as you play the game, you might see elements in those menus that you will find elsewhere in the game and maybe you put two and two together and you know, kind of organically figured it out or, you know, just look it up on the newest IGN article when the game comes out.

[00:59:49] Otto: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[00:59:50] Mireneye: This leads very much into a point that I don’t know if I made this point the last time we spoke, but, way that I’ve described the game to people [01:00:00] lately a lot is that it’s playing this game should be like a communication with a world that is dying. Something that’s dying is inherently, like, broken, right? So, but not by saying that, I don’t mean bugs and shit, I mean, like, by the sign broken in a very specific way.

[01:00:18] Ulfgang: No, that would be Starfield.

[01:00:21] Rune: Oh, damn.

[01:00:21] Mireneye: Damn.

[01:00:24] Ulfgang: As opposed to Elden Ring, I don’t hold back on Bethesda.

[01:00:30] Mireneye: In those words, when you encounter something in the world that is, you know, mysterious to you or that doesn’t quite make sense at first, I think we do best where we commu-, where we, like you say, like you want really Otto where you communicate things to the player.

[01:00:47] Yes. We, I think we do that a lot, but we communicate over the course of time and, over almost meditation on the game. It’s like you, though that time that [01:01:00] you spend like walking from place to place, if we can incite the question of like, oh, while I’m still walking, like what was that thing back there?

[01:01:08] What was the weird menu options? Maybe I should check that out next time like when I get to it, and then like you have something in your inventory that maybe points you to what some of the mystery of that is like over time, unraveling those things, and that also recontextualizes the world that you experience.

[01:01:26] So for instance in one of my playthrough, I can get through Wilden, which is the starting town. I can get through the town in seconds, probably, well, maybe not seconds, maybe like a minute, right? And because I’ve, I’ve, I’ve come to realizations that make the journey through that place much faster. Even like just getting through some of the interesting points in that place.

[01:01:51] And that’s because of things that I learned in the game and things that I found in the game. So recontextualizing play space is something I think we [01:02:00] play with a lot over the course of your time and you’re learning things about the world.

[01:02:08] Rune: We’re closing in on one hour, are we gonna keep this to one hour or…? Otto?

[01:02:14] Otto: Yeah, I think we’ll keep it a bit longer, I guess.

[01:02:17] Rune: Okay, I wanna, I wanna say, I don’t know how to say this without sounding harsh. so what you just said, Mireneye, I love that. This, I really do dig that kind of shit. The way you talk about the game and you came to the realization that it is this messaging a dying world that’s not what you said last time and this is something I experienced myself with my game that what the game is, is no longer what I set out to be, it’s sort of, or I guess it has become what I, it was supposed to be, but I messaged it wrong before, so I do like this idea that, I mean it sounds so artistic and [01:03:00] so, mwah, but, so here’s the harsh part, you do realize that, right, that how you talk about the game is so, like, like a, a, a normal smock, schmuck is not gonna get it. Like, I don’t even get it. I just under, I just know that I love it. I, I love what you’re talking about, but I still don’t get it. Do you know what I mean? I, I feel like it’s such, yeah, yeah, and I feel like it’s such a, I always talk about this with Otto, like, nowadays there’s so many games, so you need to find your niche or like your, your little, cult of people who like what you’re doing. And I feel like that’s what you guys are doing and I do really appreciate that and love that because that’s I think that’s very important in this super samey industry where everything is look the fucking same and plays the same and so on so that’s really cool but I do wonder if you guys know that and like because when you do this niche thing that also means it, it’s [01:04:00] probably gonna be unless you know, it’s not gonna be Elden Ring. It’s not gonna be this super game, but I do think it’s gonna be the perfect game to maybe fewer people like do you guys ever think like that or…?

[01:04:15] Ulfgang: Absolutely.

[01:04:16] Rune: Ah, that’s cool. No, I, mean I, I’ve…

[01:04:19] Mireneye: I also think a lot about the, like, the, the golden scenario of that, which is where people go, Oh, Demon’s Souls is just a niche little game, right? Because that was like, literally like its inception.

[01:04:34] Rune: Yeah.

[01:04:35] Mireneye: Right?

[01:04:36] Rune: That’s a good point. Yeah.

[01:04:38] Mireneye: Even, was it Shuhei Yoshida who was like, was like, yeah, this isn’t going to go well. Like yeah, like wasn’t going to release it the, in the, in the U.S. or whatever. So it’s so interesting to me, because that perception can also change over time. So there’s this golden scenario where like, once people understand the [01:05:00] design and people get into it and start talking about that, then, you know, it becomes, it takes a life of its own in that sense. That’s the golden scenario. I’m not saying that that’s necessarily where we’ll go, with Dynasthir. I, I, I, I understand that we’re starting niche. I also understand that we are touching on some, some points in this game, I think, sort of vibe wise, that hopefully when the game is released is the perfect time for type of creative vibe that the world is in.

[01:05:35] Rune: Mm, good point, yeah.

[01:05:37] Mireneye: I feel what you were saying about, about it being niche and it absolutely is for a, like, if you take, like, one step back, you’re like, yeah, that’s a niche game, like it has a specific audience to start with. I don’t think that necessarily needs to be true for its entire lifetime.

[01:05:56] Ulfgang: Yeah. I mean, games get saw, seen in different lights as time passes. [01:06:00] But yeah, I would say that’s definitely the golden scenario, like Mireneye said, but I would say, personally, I feel we’re already in the golden scenario of we’re just doing this out of our own hearts. Like, I’m, I’m not doing this for a niche or a target audience or whatever shit like that. I’m just doing this cause I like doing this and I feel with, with this game, we’re just putting ourselves and our own hearts into, into, into this creation. I want to say, make it sound less mopey, like…

[01:06:38] Otto: But yeah, I totally get it. That it’s sort of a…

[01:06:41] Ulfgang: Yeah, like we’re, doing it in a way, like this is truth, right? God, that sounds so pretentious.

[01:06:49] Otto: Yeah, yeah, but sort of like, it doesn’t matter if it becomes a smash hit or….

[01:06:53] Ulfgang: Yeah, like I’m doing this from the heart, period. And some people are going to resonate with that and [01:07:00] fantastic. If we can just make a game that people sit down with and play and have a good time and, you know years from now can look back at it and be like that was pretty good. That was pretty fun, that’s fantastic. That’s, that’s the golden scenario and I feel that’s already going to happen. Like there’s gonna be at least one motherfucker out there who’s gonna love the game and think about it years from now, it’s gonna be at least one.

[01:07:25] Rune: Yeah, but I think those are the games that will survive long, long term.

[01:07:33] Ulfgang: Yeah, and if we fuck it up, we’re gonna learn from it, right? If this fucks up and we’re completely wrong and turns out, you know, none of it resonates with anybody somehow it’s not the last game we’re going to make, so…

[01:07:48] Mireneye: I have a hard time actually seeing a very, like even just a very dark scenario where like, not very dark, but, but even like just 10 years down the line, someone picks up the, like, like, like the [01:08:00] game for $1 on Steam or something and then like plays it and it’s like gets into it and then makes like a video essay or some shit about it and it’s like, because, like, at some point, all of those, like, games that are getting released, they end up in some sort of, like, digital, what is it called, like, what is it called? Used games bin, but not quite used, but, like, they’re over there.

[01:08:26] And people can make content about these old games for years and years and years and years, and I feel like, just, you know, I feel like it would be impossible that nobody’s gonna pick it up at some point and be like, what is this thing? And then start to unravel it for everyone else, Right? I think, I feel like that’s almost inevitable.

[01:08:46] Rune: That’s also a nice place to be in when even 10 years from now if someone picks it up and just falls in love with it and do all this content on it. I mean, that must just feel amazing. So that’s cool, yeah. [01:09:00]

[01:09:00] Ulfgang: Who knows how many games in will be by 10 years? Not necessarily Dynasthir, but us like as developers and look ourselves looking back at it and be like, damn, we would do that differently, or, you know, like, here’s what we would improve all that stuff because yeah, it’s not going to be the Elden Ring, of course it’s not. Elden Ring wasn’t the first game from Softmade.

[01:09:21] Episode Outro

[01:09:21] Otto: Yeah, yeah of course, but, I think, on that note, I think we should start wrapping up the episode. But before we do that, I would like to give you the opportunity to just, pitch the game and, anything else you want, so, for example, where can you wishlist the game? Do you have any Discord communities they should join? Do you have anything else they should know? So please just go ahead and give us all you got.

[01:09:51] Ulfgang: I want to talk about going through Wilden in seconds, because we have a speedrun competition coming up for the demo, [01:10:00] and you can read about it below, hopefully.

[01:10:04] And there’s prizes, there’s fun times, you can request access on Steam, the same place where you wishlist it. We already have quite the number of people who requested it. We’re going to, we’re going to make an announcement when we reaches particular number we would like to reach. Yeah, wishlist it, check out the trailer, it’s on the Steam page. It’s on YouTube. If you check it out on YouTube, please show it to other people as well If you like, it, listen, If you don’t like it, I don’t I’m not asking anything from you. Just have a good day but if you do like it, show it to your friends, be like, hey, look at this dope shit. Yeah, join the Discord because you, you two are in the Discord so you know what’s up, we like to, we like to Waluigi party in there sometimes and there’s a there’s a lot of, devs in there and there’s a lot of, a lot of cool stuff. It’s quiet sometimes sometimes it’s not you know, the more the merrier so join that up and I [01:11:00] think that’s everything I can think of. What about you Mireneye?

[01:11:04] Mireneye: You summarized most of it quite, quite well. We do also have a, a page on itch, just for the game itself. So if you have like some, some, some strong dislike for, for Steam, you can always just go there and check out the same thing, trailer screenshots, things like that. Another thing that I want to mention is that we are really now only starting to get marketing material stuff out there, like in terms of like just continuously every week trying to post something, we’re in the, like the starting trenches of that, I would say.

[01:11:46] So now, if ever it’s time for people to like, join in on that, because like, we’re only going to ramp up until I guess the game is released. [01:12:00] That is the idea.

[01:12:03] Otto: So when is that, by the way?

[01:12:04] Mireneye: When is that? Everyone wants to know. Everyone wants to know.

[01:12:07] Ulfgang: You’ll find out soon enough.

[01:12:10] Mireneye: I, I will say, I think I said this the last time that we talked as well, where the demo covers chapter zero, basically all of it, except for like, obviously there are characters we don’t want to have in chapter zero that will be in the final full game to not like lead you on something that it doesn’t exist in the demo and then there’s a few like events and things that take course over the course of the entire game that pertain to the area of the demos that’s not in the demo either. But aside from that, well, I’m going to say what it is now, it’s chapter one, we rebranded because it was confusing having chapter zero, one, two, three, because it makes so much sense for a programmer, but saying chapter, but starting to like count chapters for people, I have to explain it every [01:13:00] time.

[01:13:01] So like it’s chapter one is the demo. So we have four chapters that we’re making for the game and we are working on chapter two right now, which is one of the bigger ones because it requires most of the world to be done and then chapter three is pretty straightforward, and chapter four is, is another, like, kind of big chapter. I mean, it is the end of the game, so…

[01:13:29] Ulfgang: The finale.

[01:13:30] Mireneye: The finale, so it does, like, that, systematically, like, everything we’ve built, over the course of the chapters, we like keep testing it and seeing how everything works together. So like, I expect chapter four to be like the most exciting one in terms of like, just the, well, maybe not exciting one. The one that will put the most mechanics to test, let’s say.

[01:13:56] Ulfgang: It’ll be fun to make [01:14:00] and we’re closer to it than we’ve ever been, so that’s exciting.

[01:14:02] Otto: Just as a last thing, before we end the episode, so, would you just like to give us your elevator pitch for the game? So, why should you get it, why, what people should like it, or, whatever you can to make people, experience this amazing game.

[01:14:22] Ulfgang: If you like walking in video games, like really like walking like turning 10 minutes of running into like 30 minutes of walking, get this game, evidently.

[01:14:31] I know people like this, I know you’re out there motherfuckers. If you resonate with anything in this conversation, you’re probably gonna resonate with the game. I could just do that bombastic helicopter pitch again, but what’s the point? I already did it once. Yeah, check it out. You can check out I mean, just saying, you could probably request access and not necessarily participate in the speedrun and just [01:15:00] play the game. Play the demo. Just saying. We ain’t going to, we ain’t going to do nothing about it. But if you do like it, come by, come by the Discord. If you don’t like it, come by the Discord, and if you’re, if you passionately don’t like it and have things to say, come by the Discord and give us your feedback because rest assured we wouldn’t be able to do it as well as we did without people’s feedback.

[01:15:27] It’s important every step of the way and we appreciate it deeply.

[01:15:31] Otto: Cool!

[01:15:33] Mireneye: This is going to be more of like a final word than perhaps the pitch for the, for, for the game by itself, but one thing that I wanted to bring on this podcast that we actually didn’t really, we touched upon it a little bit, but I wanted to, to just communicate outwards a little bit was really, a bit of a blurb or design blurb about like just, designing a dying world.

[01:15:59] And like [01:16:00] I said, like the part about communicating, you know, communi- communication with a dying world. What do where do I want to take this? Because I I’m trying to summarize lots of different thoughts that I was having. Right. There is a sort of larger narrative, obviously, that goes on in everything in our everyday lives.

[01:16:26] Things come, things pass, recently, around December, my, my mother and my father passed away, sort of like similar times during the course of this project, I have had the death of my pet hamster. I’ve had two relationships go to hell. Actually it’s more, it’s close to three. Like, yeah, it’s three relationships go to the bin.

[01:16:50] This project has survived all of those things. My grandmother also, oh, yeah, grandmother, mother’s side also passed away like, some years [01:17:00] ago and my friend Björne, and all of those things, they feed into the world creatively in a way where, like the tagline, the world is dying, will you persist, right?

[01:17:18] All of these people that has passed away feeds into the overall thing about the communication with the dying world and what that means to you as a player. It’s, I don’t want to leave that on the sad note here. What I want to say is, is that I think that if you’ve, if you’ve experienced like loss in the last year, if you’ve experienced hardships, I think there is a, there’s an underlying narrative in Dynasthir that is meant to, it’s meant to resonate with the world as it is today, as it will be probably when this is released, [01:18:00] probably more true now than ever and I really would like for people to experience that and think about that.

[01:18:10] Rune: It’s very dark and sad, but, damn, it’s, it’s also you said, a dying world. That’s, that’s a unique, spin to the whole, to anything else I’ve ever played, I think. Yeah, that’s…

[01:18:36] Mireneye: Yeah, I think there’s a lot of apocalyptic worlds and there’s like a lot of like, the ones where things are, you know, going to shit in that sense, right? I think there’s lots of those out there. But here it’s very core, I would say. Together with the exploration and the wonder, because some part of you keeps the world [01:19:00] alive by exploring it.

[01:19:01] Otto: Yeah, really sorry to hear all of that, I, really commend you for, for soldiering on, with this project, if not else, as well as with life.

[01:19:15] Mireneye: Let’s say it like this, you may be sorry, but also let’s be a bit excited that what, when they passed on, they left something inside of me that I want to communicate creatively to the world.

[01:19:32] Otto: Yeah, beautiful thought and I think with that, I think we’ll, we’ll wrap up the episode, but, as I said earlier, it’s a fantastic game. It’s, really fascinating. It’s, It’s as you pointed out a very unique experience, so I would recommend anyone to try it out and, see what you think and with that, thank you so much for taking the time [01:20:00] to be on this podcast and, and talking about it.

[01:20:03] Yeah, absolutely and, thank you Rune for being my amazing co-host and, we’ll see you next week. Bye, bye!

[01:20:10] Ulfgang: See ya. [01:21:00]

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Otto Wretling

Written by Otto Wretling

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

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