Hello and welcome back to Dev Game Club, a weekly podcast in which two veteran game developers look at games from the past to discuss their relevance and impact today. I'm Brett Duvill, and I'm joined, as always, by my co-host, a man who has something important to tell me at the top of the village. Tim Longo. Is it that there's more to life than what meets the eye? I do know that squares are good, but cubes are bad. Yeah.
keep keep those devil those devil squares away um we are about to start a new uh some some folks may already know what we're about to talk about but we're about to start a new and uh a new latest entry as well i believe uh in our you know latest on our timeline um in our discussions of games at this point but uh we should probably
you know, introduce the broader topic first. And that is, and I want you to kind of take the floor here, but it's let's do some indie games um so can you kind of like start with like why are we doing some indie games from your perspective you know i've been playing more of them and longer than you have um as we were talking in pre-show but i'm kind of curious like why i mean possibly it's just well i gotta fill these gaps in but uh
Yeah, no, there is a strategy to it for me. It's something that I think I probably mentioned either on air or in Discord or something from time to time. that because To say some very obvious things, I guess, because the podcast is about what it is about. And a lot of things have emerged for us over time that we didn't really expect because I don't think we really had a real plan coming into this.
Narrator, we still don't have a real plan. Yeah, we have no real macro plan, but sometimes we have tiny little mini plans like this. But yeah, some of it is a little bit, you know, like nine years later, it's maybe time. But also... Indie games in the traditional, I guess, definition of them, or especially ones that call themselves indie games, which is, you know, it can get tricky sometimes depending on in some cases where.
getting involved but um anyway um they they've always been a blind spot for me and you know obviously I know it's a blind spot and I have always felt to be honest guilt over some of the like classic indie games that I that I really should have played But also knowing that, so some of it is selfish.
And wanting to, you know, to kind of hit this topic. But the more important part of it for me suggesting it is that if this podcast is about looking at games from the past and then looking at their impact today. I don't know if there's a better category to talk about than, you know, sort of, I say classic indie games, which doesn't go back to the 80s and 90s, right? Really, I'm talking about the era where indie games were really like coined. and became more of a real sustainable business.
because of all sorts of reasons. We'll talk about digital platforms being maybe the main one. And kind of unleashing this ability for developers to not have to do things the way that... they we've always had to and a lot of the stuff we talk about on the podcast obviously every game we've talked about almost You know, some of the older ones that go way back when the industry was so tiny, it's like kind of were into games in a way. Well, there was no publishing.
model to support. I mean, from that perspective, like my first games were indie games because they were freely distributed on, you know, via, you know, the DARPA net or whatever the ARPA net, the, the pre, the precursor. of the internet um anyway continue yeah well and again like we can we can pick out even like early you know um uh will write games. So technicality as a side, I'm really talking about like the quote unquote, in earnest indie revolution.
So it felt like a blind spot. We haven't really hit. We've talked a lot about like publisher influence on games. And every time we start a new series, we talk about the publisher of that series and like what status they were in. And we try to at least our memory. And then all the guests we've had on have been in that same category.
But it felt to me like, and especially inspired by the charity event, which I brought up before, because the streamers that we've... the charity event organizers have gotten you know have played indie games we've talked about them um and uh And they have had, it's sort of now become this sort of circular influence where it's like these indie games, especially the one we're going to talk about now, have been influenced by the classic games we've talked about over the course of these nine years.
But the indie games are now almost starting to influence bigger games or more traditional games. And there's this interesting mixture now, in my opinion, from a... a day job perspective. There's been this interesting kind of meshing, if you will, going on. So yeah, it just felt like a blind spot. It felt like an important category to hit.
It is a blind spot for me, for sure, as a gamer. And a lot of that is just because I think I've always felt this pressure to stay up on the games that are in the space that I work. So, you know, the big box, you know, big, big budget kind of stuff. I do enjoy them, but, um, and it, and I've always felt like why, you know? And so I'm kind of on this, just on my, in my free time, I've been on this indie game kick. And it felt like there were some classic ones.
from the aughts and the early tens that we should play. Absolutely. And so we're going to start off by, like I said, extending beyond the sort of existing range of the podcast. into kind of the square middle of and you know one of the more public publicized games of the time because of its inclusion in the indie game uh indie game the movie documentary, which is Fez by the small company Polytron, but mostly associated with its principal designer. Phil Fish. So a little bit of a controversial.
We might get to that probably not a ton. It's not really what the podcast is about. But he was always kind of a sort of flashpoint kind of guy. you know trash talker in all kinds of forums and would you know tell tell people why x game you know was terrible and y game was terrible and you know etc etc he was he really kind of built up a very
you know, very, uh, opinion forward, uh, reputation. Um, in the meantime, he was gonna, I'm going to go off and, you know, make a game that people will really talk about. That's, you know,
what games really should be sort of guy. And, you know, I would argue that he did. I do, you know, I will, you know, put my... put my opinion on my sleeve and say i think this is one of the you know best games ever made um and you know we'll talk about why uh i'm already feeling the tug into it um Because it was a game that I, so I wasn't.
I played this in 2014 at a time when I wasn't, when I was basically recovering from burnout, frankly. And I was not, so I wasn't working. I think I was maybe about to teach. And over the summer, I was just playing a lot of games that I knew about and wanted to catch up with. And Fez was one of them. And I spent two weeks doing nothing but Fez.
And puzzling out all its many delights on my own. I'm going to look and see if I, I think I had a notebook at the time because there's a lot of like taking notes as you play. Or there can be, if you're trying to figure out and find all the cubes, which I did back then. So we shall see if I try to do that again.
I probably won't finish it in the course of the podcast because I'm playing some other things as well, but I might just keep playing it until I've done it all again. I did look. I have the... you know the platinum trophy for this one and i can't get it again unfortunately so i'm You can spiritually. I was hoping that I had actually played it on like the Xbox, like the 360, so that I could. But no, alas, I had played it on my PS.
so yeah interesting yeah yeah yeah anyway um well let's talk a little bit about uh 2012 in video games i'm gonna split it kind of in two uh two halves uh one is the the big box uh or the the big budget games that tim was talking about and the other is the the indies uh to give you a flavor kind of what was going on in the space at the time um So in the AAA space, we've got Dishonored. Halo 4, Alan Wake's American Nightmare, which we mentioned because of it.
connection to the cast. XCOM, the re... Boot, I guess you'd say, from Praxis. Mass Effect 3. Everybody loved that ending, I guess. Forza Horizon. Far Cry 3. Counter-Strike Go. Assassin's Creed 3. Borderlands 2, Diablo 3, a lot of threes and fours here. A lot of sequels. And Dragon's Dogma, which I mentioned because it's another one that has a place in my heart. Um, it was a lot of fun. And, uh, it's one of these days I'll get around to dragons dogma too.
But in the indie space, we have Journey, which is another one that might be one we consider. Any of these would be worth playing, honestly, from this list. The Walking Dead, which was hugely influential, even though it wasn't Telltale's first game, is definitely the one that broke out in a major way. FTL. which was a sort of rogue. Light, I think, would be the terminology. Spelunky, or a run-based game, I guess you could just say. Spelunky, another one that's close to my heart. Papoio.
which was a heart-rending game that I played back around the same time. Bastion, which I played on iOS on my first iPad, I believe, and Super Hexagon. um which was a terry cavanaugh uh game so uh bastion of course is by um what's their name super giant yeah uh that does uh like hades and uh transistor and so well known and they've got hades hades 2 on the horizon i guess it's in early access already so they're they're still going strong um
And Spelunky, they just came out with UFO 50. That's Derek Yu that came out this year. Popo EO, I don't know that. I think that was a one and done kind of studio. Telltale, of course, is no longer with us. That game company... For Journey, I think they're still around, but they... hyperactive. I think they had something out last year, though. Well, the Sky game, which is like this mobile social kind of game that I think is apparently doing quite well. Oh, really?
Yeah, over time, it's kind of like the slow and low kind of approach. But it's very different, I think, from the rest of their stuff. social and less mechanics i think okay um i only played it in the very when it first came out and i think it was like very bare bones But I've heard they're like devoted everything to that game because it's like a lot. yeah yeah kind of i mean their journey was also a live game uh but not not in nearly the same way um so you know it's one we can talk about
Yeah. And that one's tricky for me because it was published by Sony, right? It was, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's it. It's interesting to talk about indie games that are published, you know, by the platform holders. Yeah, they, I mean, I think they... I feel like they purchased them at some point, but I don't know if it was until after. I don't recall if it was before or after. So it would definitely be one that we'd have to research a little bit more because I just don't, I don't remember.
But anyway, yeah, so it was a good year for like you see that you see the difference in the twos and threes and fours versus the all these titles that just have a very different feeling. to each of them. Well, I think that's important. That's an important point too, because we talk about it time and time again. And to be honest, I would say we're living through it right now as well. where when the big budget... are risk averse, they fall back on
established IPs, sequels. They don't do anything that's risky. They don't spend money on anything. And so there's a vacuum that's created at that point. And this is a great year where you see Indie games step up and not be afraid to take risks. And the ones that were able to break out like Fez or what have you. you know, fill that void and can succeed in the face of Borderlands 2, you know, or whatever, Halo 4.
So, yeah, I think it's just a really, I don't know if it's being too dramatic, but sort of the democratization of being able to. make games and, and bring them to market differently than the eighties and nineties. and even early aughts to some degree, even though we might play at least one that goes back a little ways. um the the other thing that i i would note you know in these all uh all these kind of the twos and threes etc is that we were late in a console cycle in 2012 um the um
The PS3 would come out in 2013. I don't remember if the Xbox One came out in advance. PS4, rather. I don't remember where the Xbox One came out relative to that. It might have been the same. year might have been earlier yeah it might have been earlier in the year like may or something like i remember there was a whole that was there was a whole thing with the discs you know and You're going to need an always-on connection. I was at Microsoft when the Xbox One came out. When that happened.
Bit of a thing. Fiasco. Yeah. um oh actually no i i remember it didn't come out in may it was like they made their e3 announcement and people were like you're gonna do what um yeah but so the but the point being though is that you know when you are late in a uh in a cycle like this And Dishonored to some degree kind of stands out.
because it was kind of a new sort of deal for them, although it had been development for a while. You know, you are seeing lots of things that are cashing in on an engine that they've built for, you know. for the current generation of consoles, right? So you're... far cry 3 you know is i mean they probably were working off of a different another iteration of their ubisoft far cry engine but you know far cry 2 had also been on the ps3 um and the xbox three
There was Assassin's Creed 3. I'm pretty sure AC2, the whole series was on PS3. I don't recall Borderlands. That might go back to the prior generation. uh and Diablo 3 is kind of also kind of a special case because they were kind of returning to it after a while um is my recollection right because Diablo 2 goes back into the Yeah, there was a big gap there. And it was obviously 3 was the big shift to 3D. Yeah.
Sort of like a soft reboot in a way. Yeah, and consoles, right? Which was not something they had done, I don't think, at all before. So that was kind of a big swing for them. Um, and did not have the greatest launch either for that matter. Uh, yeah, the consoles I think came later, but yeah, but the launch was, yeah, they were trying to, because of Diablo two, they were trying to do.
So what had kind of enabled all this switch to Indies was a few things. One was it was a time where you could now publish. you know kind of independently on pc like It was like 100 bucks or something to pay Steam to get on the storefront. um i think they they might have still been doing approvals at the time you know and so something like the indie games festival or other um you know, sort of awards ceremony. I remember like the IGF, the independent games festival.
uh, like one of the big deals was that the award winners would go on steam. Like they would just, they were approved. Um, you know, and so that was kind of a big deal at the time. You know, all of that has, has certainly changed since, and now it's, you know, you could. I have gone to a talk at GDC where somebody explained there how they generated a billion slot machine games and automatically submitted them to stores so that they could.
optimize their game design um literally generating a whole game you know every time they wanted to turn the key uh to do that and they had automated every step of it it was wild um you know basically a b testing on a huge scale to find what resonated with people. Like they were pulling art from the internet. It was wild. I can't believe they got away with that, honestly. But digital... And lowering the barriers really, really opened the doors for this course. That goes back to...
2005 but at this point you know xbla had been a thing they had really invested heavily in this kind of smaller they microsoft had kind of invested heavily and then sony kind of followed after. And so those storefronts also became more open to smaller scale development because it was kind of a...
There was a little bit of cachet, honestly. Maybe you can speak to it kind of broadly, you know, without going into details because you were there around that time. But that's my recollection. It was like kind of a... It was kind of a thing for the console manufacturers to be like, oh, yeah, hey, we also are supporting this, you know, this kind of new. Xbox Live Arcade. Xbox Live Arcade, yeah. I was thinking specifically, but like I said, Sony followed.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, there was, what was it? I mean, one that we probably aren't going to play, but Braid. was a quote-unquote indie game as well in the movie. as well, I think. I haven't seen the indie game, the movie or whatever. Yeah, the third one is Super Meat Boy. Those are the three games. Right, right, right. Yeah. But, you know, there were these bets placed.
within the digital platform movement, you know, and I would say Xbox Live Arcade was, to my memory, and I was coming in kind of in the middle of that when I started there. You know, it was seen as a trailblazer, right? I would say at the time of like, okay, a first party, you know, even Nintendo wasn't doing a lot of it. Everyone was doing some types of games like this, but it wasn't really a big deal.
And then they had so many successes. I believe even, didn't they do a relaunch of Symphony of the Night in Xbox Live? They did, yeah. Right? So they were taking these games that were much more focused. i don't know indie slash retro even and being clever about their launches Yeah, and originally they had a small...
footprint as well, which was part of it, is that because there were limitations, right? Remember the big fiasco of you had to be a certain megabyte? Yeah, like 50 meg or something like that. It was tiny. Compared to the big budget games, it was tiny, right? You know, I think there was also kind of a... I mean, that felt like a sort of... You know, I'd almost say a defensive maneuver on the part of the console holders because it's like, hey, you big companies, you don't have to worry about.
the people who want those really big games, like this isn't going to compete, but it was also a technical. you know, issue because at the time broadband was not as well established. You know, of course that was something that Microsoft probably should have learned for the Xbox one, you know, marketing. you know that it was just kind of a it was still you know and there's still a lot of places in the united states where broadband is still not a thing um
Which is kind of horrendous to think about at this stage. But, you know, so they were actually thinking about things like that as well, which is like, you know, you can't.
um you can't expect to download you know four gigs of stuff um you know over a modem um but 50 meg you know maybe leave it running for a while you know so there were there were some you know some issues like that that could be uh you know planned and and it you know it wasn't a big hit to them for servers like the the bandwidth costs they could just kind of eat you know and not worry about as well right so that there wasn't a charge
you know, to the things that they put up there. I remember too, behind the scenes a little bit, it was a really decent deal for... developers at the time who were on Xbox Live Arcade. and the Sony equivalent because they got a pretty good deal and they got a fair amount of free publicity because Xbox was trying to push the service.
You know, and Sony, like I said, they were basically following all this stuff. I keep saying and Sony because they were kind of following the leader. And Xbox really was trailblazing. And Microsoft was really trailblazing in this area and investing in developers. So it was kind of a big deal. I mean, they were helping out.
if you came out on Xbox live, you know, in summer of arcade, right. You were going to each week, they were going to have something they were featuring. Yeah. You would be on the front page, right. Of, of Xbox live. Um, you know, that day. so it was very much a like watch you know they would announce each week and yep you'd wait for it and you know and there was always like
I forget what they called it, but I think there was always like the sort of like showcase game for the summer too. Right, yeah. They would lead in with each week and then like Braid was it for one year. After that one did so well, they started doing that every summer for a while, yeah. Summer of Arcade. Yep, it was a whole thing. And eventually they did loosen up restrictions, of course, now. digital distribution is is possible and back then it was like well are you gonna
it was a big, big deal for like these indie games to get a box release. And now it's kind of like, well, why would you do that? We've kind of flipped the, flipped the script on some things like that. But at the time it was, it was a really big deal. You know, and I think some of these games still probably got.
you know, later physical releases just kind of as a boutique thing. I know that there's a particular publisher who does physical releases, like short, you know, small runs, you know, of some of these games. I don't know if Fez ever got one or if any of the ones I mentioned got one, but it was definitely a thing for a while. Well, I did notice that there was a Switch version that came out in 2021. So I'm wondering if that got a...
A physical release? Yeah, maybe. One of the other ones we're considering playing got a physical release. I mean, it was a lot cheaper to just put it on one of those carts because the cost of goods is low. Cost of goods were also low for DVDs, you know, but... You know, the bigger thing is just, is it going to be out there in the retail channels? And that was another thing that.
you know, that the big publishers also had to kind of contend with was the still sizable power of retail, you know, and not. So this was another way that they were kind of saying, they were kind of going to retail and saying, well, we're making these small things here digitally available and only digitally available, but they're really not going to cut into Europe.
which was another thing that they had to negotiate at the time and then still you know that is switched now it's not kind of a big deal anymore you know those places are struggling um you know, or it's just a small part of a much larger business. It's something like a, you know, like a Best Buy or a Walmart. Um, if, if Best Buy is even still with us. Um, anyway.
Yeah, it is. Technically. I know the one here closed. That's why I'm kind of like, well, I don't even know. Did they all close or is it just that one? So it's just a handful or whatever. Yeah, so everything's kind of changed a lot since 2012. But it was a kind of... You know, a high point, you know, Fez was the last of those three games, I believe, to come out. And, you know, I would say the best of the three from the film.
um in my opinion but uh enough enough wearing the game on my sleeve uh or my feelings for the game on my sleeve let's let's let's start talking about the game proper you should start off because this is your first time playing. We didn't play a ton. I played less than you did because I knew I'd be able to catch up and I didn't want to get too far ahead or get too...
Yeah, I'm a little worried because I'm not generally good at these kinds of games because of the puzzly aspects. Good games, you mean? Yeah, good games, right. Yeah, sure. Okay. But so we'll see. You know, hopefully I can. I definitely have been hooked. I wanted to read the description I'm seeing here online. Fez is a two-dimensional puzzle platform game set in a three-dimensional world. That's amazing. That is like...
Huh? You know, like even that description is like, wait, why would you do that? You know? And then of course the aha moment. I'm sure everyone listening knows the aha moment, but yeah, even in your intro. So yeah, I had, I only, so I came into this game.
I was roughly understanding that you can pivot the world, but I didn't really know what that meant. I don't even think I even saw, I've never even seen a video of it, right? I've just had people kind of describe it. You, I remember when you played it back in the day. And I knew the style, right? And I knew that it was influenced by, you know, we talked about in pre-show, you know, it's got... A little Zelda, a little Mario, a little Metroid. You know, it's very Nintendo.
focused. It's got that very well-defined pixel graphic style and immediately charming as soon as you As soon as you boot it up, I would even say the audio design and music. composition from the get-go grabs you. There's this weird, which presses all my buttons, is there's this sort of this, it has obviously this sort of MIDI-esque kind of... undertones to the music and the audio design.
There's this sort of darkness with it or unsettling something isn't right, you know, from the beginning, even when you press the button to kind of like. load your game. And the three-dimensional aspect of it and the way that they have turned the concept of 3D into I was going to say like a philosophical topic. I don't know. It's not that. But anyway, you start off and you are Gomez and he is in his room.
And and then Gomez, you know, is asked to come to the top of the village, which is a kind of a vertical village. You meet this old guy. I think his name's Geezer. His name is, in fact, Geezer. And he's got an eye patch. And I think there's a story there someplace because it talks about it later.
Anyway, and he says it's time for adventure or something. I don't remember exactly what he says, but it's fairly... fairly memorable, kind of like, or not memorable in the exact, but just like he's very vague, but also... They kind of talk in a weird way, I think, intentionally. Yeah. Like they switch some of the sentence structure and stuff. But anyway, yeah, so...
He presents you with a cube that talks about, you know, like nobody in the village thinks that the world is three dimensional. And then you're given this fez that I think the fez is doing it allows you to now. you know, basically rotate this two-dimensional world on its axes, you know, four-sided basically axes to... a three-dimensional. So it's...
Blows my mind. I can't imagine what it would be like if you knew nothing about this game, which I've just spoiled it for you. So if you haven't played this game and didn't know what it did. You now know, and it's spoiled. But I kind of... Spoilers are kind of not a thing we worry about on this podcast. Yeah, yeah. But I guess, yeah, but no, that's fair. But the thing... What was another recent example of something?
Oh, there's an upcoming example that I know of a game that I'm going to start streaming that I don't know very much about, and that's Outer Wild. Oh, actually, I had a request from somebody to say, no, you need to stream that. Don't play it, stream it.
And I was like, okay, okay. I'll do, you know, because they wanted, so I don't know why I still don't know why. Like I know there's something weird about that game, but it's going to be interesting. That is a, I look forward to watching it. Um, but also it might not be great. stream material because i think there's going to be a lot of time where you're like huh now what do i do um
Because there's a lot of thinking in that game. They claim that they love watching other people play. Yeah, I think because they like to see people try to figure it out. But I bring it up only in that with Fez, you know, And it's the same thing with film or books or whatever, right? Where you're like, there is something. Like, I see dead people. Spoiler. He's dead.
That, you know, that moment is really an important moment, you know? And I kind of like wish I hadn't known that that was the case in Fez. Because as soon as you turn it, which it does happen very frequently. Yeah, it happens very quickly. In fact, the game reboots. Yeah, that's right. So good.
So it's basically you go up to the top and Geezer's like, hey, I'm going to give you this magical fez and you're going to see the way reality really is. And he puts on a hat and... the screen starts glitching out and you're like, Uh-oh. And it reboots as if you just hit the little reset button on your Nintendo.
And it just restarts and shows you the initial thing that you saw in the first place, you know, the boot up. There's like a BIOS-like type. No, there's a BIOS. Yeah, there's like a BIOS boot up, but that wasn't in the first time. This is just this time. Yeah. Very clever. as if you had rebooted your whole machine, right? But it goes straight into the game again, and now you can turn the world. suddenly you can just at the touch of the shoulder button. the world will turn.
I don't know too much about how this is achieved from a technical perspective. I remember at the time, Renaud Bedard, who was the programmer. You know, and I think contributed to the design. I think anybody who kind of worked on it did. He talked about how difficult it was to achieve this, to make it look the way it looks, which is really, it's hard to really describe because you think you'll say, well, you rotate on an axis, but it isn't like that because you don't have.
perspective yeah it's not a real it's not a real Right. It's not a 3D environment like we think of them in most games where... You know, you've got this virtual camera in a place that behaves like a camera, you know, in terms of how, you know, or your eye, like in that you see perspective. What you're presented with here is like a flat plane, like as if it's a 2D game. It's just that you can rotate that 2D game around, you know, the up axis, the up down axis.
and see the four sides. Everything is cubes. And he described it as, I guess, Trixels. It's the Trixel engine, which are like a voxel in terms of how they occupy space. But they're doing some, he's doing some pretty wild stuff to make it look as flat as it does. And in the transitions. It's clear that it's rotating, but at the same time, it's not rotating like you'd rotate just a box in a 3D modeling program. It doesn't look like that would look. It maintains its flatness.
through that rotation and that is hard to make that look consistent and sane. And to this day, I don't really understand what's being done there to make that happen. It can't be a straight orthographic. projection because when it turns it can't be like and there's parts where i'm looking at it where i'm like i sort of like i almost think i get it
like what is happening, but I just can't quite. It's, it's mind bending. It is. It's just like it, like, this is not how things should look to rotate in space.
both as you know just as a human person you know perceiving the world there's like that's not how things look like when they rotate but also me as a guy who has done some graphics programming in my history you know like goes and is like yeah that's not how the math works like so there's a lot of it's smoking yeah it's more than smoke and mirrors there's a lot of math involved to actually make it look
consistent and right and like that he could because they he built a tool to be able to author you know this content um as well and it's Yeah, it's a whole thing. Interesting. Yeah, I can't imagine how you author levels like that. I mean, because the levels already are pretty complex, and I'm sure they get even worse. Oh, yeah. Or better. Or better, yeah. They get even more.
Even cooler. Yeah, it reminds me. So a game that says probably influence, which I'm pretty confident they even mentioned in, in, let me see here in the wiki. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I have played, which was Monument Valley. Oh, of course, yeah. You know, using the kind of, like this kind of, there's a similar motif in using the. perception of the player, right? But that's a more Escher-esque
isometric kind of trickery. But it's similar to isometric games even from the past, I would say, is that truly isometric games, which we did play one being... Because it's not in perspective, like the real world, there is isometric games always give always gave me this sort of optical illusion feeling, you know, where it's like something isn't right.
But I know the math is correct, you know, because it's just lines that all line up, you know. But it's like, obviously, the environment is flat and looks very isometric and doesn't look right because it's not in perspective. So it's always like kind of breaks. It always broke my brain a little bit because it's like, yeah.
This is clearly a computer generated thing. And so I only bring that up in, I'm trying to describe, because like, for instance, if you look at the top of a tree in this game, As it turns, there's this weird warping and optical illusion that happens because it's, you know, it's kind of foreshortening the perspective as it's turning and the transitions there.
And then it becomes flat again as it finishes the transition. But the pixels even kind of look like they're bending a little bit if you pay attention because of the optical illusion. So it is, and I think that it would. If you were to sort of draw this, I guess, to put it in another context, the same way that Escher did. But anyway... Yeah, I don't even know what to say about it so far. I'm just like... You know, it's overwhelming.
One of the notes I wrote down, actually, just looking at my very long list of notes, I wrote down twice because I guess I forgot I wrote it down and then had it come to me again. This is a game that you really have to, my perception so far is that this is a game that you really have to just try. And that is, I think, a staple of puzzle games anyway, in that you're like...
This doesn't look like I'm going to be able to do this, but you just have to keep going. And eventually, if you trust the game, and because of the reputation of this game, I assume it's... people have finished it before. It is solvable, you know? Yeah. And it can be solved without help of the internet. I know sometimes you get stuck and we're doing things on a time...
you know, on a timeline. Yeah, the timeline's the biggest problem. I think, though, it's honestly worth it. I would rather you play less of it for the podcast. and experience the game. without help because the the time yeah no there's some just joyous moments when i you know connect some dots and go oh my god and i like i'm like oh my god i have to go through the whole game again Because I've just realized something and I know it's been there the whole time. And now I understand, you know.
I have like a new lens on the game that I now have to go back through the game. to like apply the lens everywhere I can think to apply it. There are moments like that in this game where I just go, oh my God, I have to go through the whole thing again, you know, and I'm happy. I'm like.
overjoyed you know that i get to go and like figure out all these things um because i've understood some key aspect of like what the you know what the i don't know what the it's it sounds so like minimal to say what the puzzle is but it's it because it's more than that it's more of like a a way of viewing the world really um
that is kind of inherent to this uh this style of design and you know the other thing too is and we maybe need to talk about this a little bit in the context of the indies you know one of the things that the indies of this time could achieve was five people, you know, some of those weren't even full time, you know, they were like, they did the animation or some artwork, whatever. And I think.
uh phil fish did a lot of the art and then people helped him with the pixel animation the animations of pixel art um you know and and renault was doing the engine work you know pretty hard you know it's a five-year development But it's not a lot of people, you know, so they could really take their time everywhere to think like, what, you know, what is, you know, what is this part of it about? And to just infuse.
an ethos throughout the whole thing. You know, and that's really hard to do. First of all, the larger teams get because it's just hard to communicate that vision. Clearly everywhere, you know, across everybody, especially nowadays when, you know, studios in multiple places. But but even back then, you know, for, you know, teams that were like 100 people, it's hard to have a consistent.
one vision across a hundred people or 200 people, or, you know, we mentioned Assassin's Creed three, a thousand people or whatever it was by the time they get to Assassin's Creed three. It's hard to have one consistent vision, but one creator, you know, one or two creators can. And that I think is. I feel like this game is almost a palimpsest of itself, of the layers that are on it. They probably did the same thing building it.
As I'm describing of like, oh, we could do this. Oh, well, we should do it every. This should be everywhere. This should be part of the fabric of the whole game. I think that's part of why it took so long. um to build it it wasn't actually the i mean sure every level had to be meticulously constructed around certain sort of rules that they had in their head and how the thing will progress um but also i think like
There are moments where they're like, oh, we should do this. Okay. But if we do that, we have to like. that's going to be a revelation that somebody is going to get at some point. And so it has to like be something they had been seeing. Then they don't realize they've been seeing, you know, that sort of thing. I'm trying to be vague, but like. talk about like the whole ethos that i think started to set these games apart because you know we'll talk about the influences but
Even though it was based on these kind of older games, they went to it, they were like, okay, yeah, but somebody already figured out the language of those games. What if we told a different kind of story? The other note I wrote down a couple of times or various versions of was just subversion. Yeah. Like there's a sense of subversion for me at least so far of like they are intentionally trying as developers, especially with influence.
they've had as gamers to subvert expectations, of course, even in the story of the game, what little there is so far. the subverting the influences that they had too which yeah we'll talk about in a second but um but uh yeah it's the to your point about like the team size and the more sort of vision focused small teams and what they are able to do. And I don't want to poke, you know, obviously we don't know. I don't know how they were funded or how they were paying the bills, so to speak.
And I don't mean to focus on budget so much, but budget, when budgets for these big games, we're talking about these big sequels. become as high as they are. The teams are so big. Obviously, this is something that I experienced many times over the years, time and time again. The concept of any creative vision that is proposed. goes through a rigorous process at these big corporations to ensure that it is the perception of the executives or perception of leadership, I'll say.
which is various people, right? That it is within the right bounds of what the money should be spent on, which is, you know, in many cases. eight digits or more. Eight, is that right? Yeah, eight digits or more. And so the concept of doing something fresh and different and unique, which I definitely have hit multiple times. is not usually greenlit. because it's just too risky. And when you're in an indie space like this, it seems like not having completely been in that space before.
That, you know, it's like, yes, you have to your point, you have fewer people to get on board. but also you have you you know you are you're you're defining the you know you're not getting an approval yes you have to eventually go out and pitch probably the playable but you probably have a playable you know and it already has proven itself blah blah blah So you kind of already passed that point of you greenlit yourself, you know, and you just have a vision and you're sticking to it, you know.
Everything else be damned and the ones that resonate with people will get published Or self-published. Or self-published, yeah. You could totally, yeah, I mean, that's another road. I mean, this one, publishing-wise, I think was, I don't even know who Trapdoor is. Oh, I think, I think that that, I should, I should have looked that up, but I think my recollection is the trap door. Oh, it was, it was founded by Ken. Schachter, Schachter, Schachter, yeah, who is also a French-Canadian.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was not. It was a small publisher, right? My point is. Very small publisher. I mean, it was sort of like, so there was also like indie. quote unquote publishing, which was really just like, we'll fill out the forms so you don't have to. And they weren't doing a lot for their... you know for the for them but that wasn't the same yeah yeah very very much not a sort of traditional publisher model um it was more like
We'll keep track of a schedule of events that we can get you into because indie events were a big deal. I mean, that's part of indie games. The movie is like being at the Penny Arcade one. I think it was like a big deal. Cause I think that's the first time it was kind of shown publicly. you know in the film like people were seeing it for the first time and he was terrified uh it was kind of a yeah it's a
That's quite a, it's quite, there's some real moments in that movie. Yeah. So I guess it did have a publisher, but like you look at the history of trap door and it's like, well, they had. two-shift games. Yeah, no, that's not... The indie publisher is another good topic related to this, too, that sometimes people would self-publish, or oftentimes they do, but sometimes there's also these... Basically, like, you know, indie publishers who help you get it.
to come to market but to go or even or even do a little um production help often as part of it too is that You know, one of the things that the, you know, the Indies weren't typically very good about was like finding, figuring out their schedule and shipping on it. So there's kind of, there was kind of also a cottage industry. producers who were not at a particular company, but were either independent or were on the publisher side and just helping with that so that the publisher would know.
this game's going to be able to come out at such and such a date, you know, so that they could be starting to put together things like, Hey, do you, you know, is there going to be a demo and start, you know, asking questions like that. So. it's a whole whole thing um but uh yeah the other the other company I saw associated with something like Bitworks or Blitworks or something like that that had actually
ported it to the PlayStation infrastructure. So that's what I'm seeing, but you're probably not because you're... think it was um you know not you didn't they didn't really have to port it for you because the xbox 360 was mostly a pc um with some specific hardware. So anyway, just worth, worth noting. Yeah. I'm looking at the, yeah. And the platforms wise, it was, it was on almost everything. Yeah. It's been everywhere. Even iOS. Not some of the more modern Xbox.
I mean, the perception might have been that it just wasn't viable there, you know, or. Or maybe it was still just on live and it just ran on those. And so it's not sort of separately published there. That could also be with the going from the 360 to one is once it's on Xbox Live. You know, it just runs, keeps running, you know, going forward might be the theory. I don't know. I don't know if you could play it on an Xbox One X or something like that these days. But anyway.
Yeah, so you went further than I did. I only got a couple of cubes because it was mostly tutorial at the beginning. And it starts to, we should probably just like wind down by talking about its influences because they're all pretty evident. Well, two of them are very evident at the very beginning. And the third, I think, becomes pretty clear by the time you look at the map to some degree, like you start to understand.
the third influence, third major influence, and they're all Nintendo titles. So you want to go ahead and tackle those? Yeah, I mean, it's, again, with, I think, a subversive lens on things. Yeah. You know, Zelda, Mario, and then eventually. Metroid, which I can imagine what you mean by that. Yeah, yeah. It's part of that, like, looking at the world with a new lens, it's just not quite the same type of lens. I notice in the inventory there's a...
Section for something called artifacts, which I assume we're going to be kind of mute mutate But the chests are very Zelda, right? Yeah, you even get a musical piece that's very like... It's not quite that, but you hear it and you're like... This person has heard the Zelda chest opening song before. There's definitely a feel there.
Yeah, and then, you know, obviously the platforming part of it. But the puzzle part of it is an interesting one because, I mean, I guess Zelda, older Zelda's had sort of puzzles, but... It's like, those are the influences, but the depth of puzzles even, and I'm sure, you know, obviously it goes further and further with this, but I can only imagine how, like I'm, I'm. unraveling the there's sort of like a a graveyard level that I guess I best I description I can there's like ghosts and stuff
The complexity of that kind of stuff is not very Nintendo or I guess Paper Mario or something like that. You know, there's other games that might have stuff like this, but I feel like they have their influences, but they also have another thing they're trying. But the fourth influence that there's actually a room someplace that I found.
Where there was like some, there was like a chalkboard or something or some sort of, no, it was like a science room, like a, like a science laboratory room. And there was a diagram on the wall that literally had the Tetris.
And it's like, oh yeah, I can see Tetris being an influence to this game in a weird way. Not directly, but the spirit of... shape language and putting things, even the language language that it seems like there's actually a language in the game that they have iconography for that looks like Tetris pieces. So, you know, it's just this concept of...
For me, I start extending it into places like, okay, they're trying to say that this two-dimensional world doesn't realize that there's three dimensions and then there's this sort of logical progression there. oh yeah, we live in three dimensions, but what is the fourth dimension? You know, that kind of, that kind of, I love that stuff, you know, where science fiction. pushes you. Yeah, I don't know. And then the whole glitching kind of thing where it's like self-aware that it's a program.
Which I'm also playing Axiom Verge, finally. Yeah, another one that has a very... You know, also pulls the, I mean, primarily Metroid in that one, but also the early Nintendo games, you know, where the sort of... And I feel like there's even Nintendo... Like there's a part of those games where the discovery...
You know, you're always like, am I discovering something that's meant to happen? You know, it's like in those early days. And this one is specifically, the Axiom Verge is specifically like. adding in glitch aesthetics i never played the sequel but i did i did play the original um yeah you're kind of it's got a tron thing going right where you're or or even like um Out of this world, which we played, right? Where you're kind of brought into the program.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a whole, yeah, that's, yeah, that was a good one too. I enjoyed that. I played that. It might've been a little later. I don't think it was. um at the at the time that i was playing a lot of this stuff but i maybe only a couple years later um and i did play it not too long after it came out um Yeah, so it's definitely, it's got... Like I said before, we want to use the language of these games that everybody understands and that they grew up playing and they loved.
And this was also true of Braid and Super Meat Boy, where they were specifically about the platforming entirely. you know, super meat boy is like, okay, what if we took, I mean, SMB, like it's clearly what it is. Right. But what if we turn, you know, turn the speed and craziness up to a million, you know, not just, not just to 11, but just like. the difficulty and like the, um, just the control, you know, that you find.
The example with Super Meat Boy feels like, you know, in a Super Mario Brothers game, you have all the abilities at the beginning. You've got to kind of figure them out, and you can do all the jumps and stuff. It can all be very precise. And it sort of says, okay, what if we did that, but at like, you know, a thousand miles an hour and...
Every time your guy died, which is going to happen all the time, you got to instantly, you know, play the level, you know, like immediately, like you just start again, you know, and in fact, the blood is often left behind from your, your, your meat. Boy. And then, of course, Braid's whole thing was, you know, designing everything around the like everything about the visual language.
And the theming of it with its time mechanic, which was the thing that it added, was going to all tie together, you know, in a way that the creator found was profound. you know fez i think is doing the same thing with this with similar um you know precedents which are you know the those sort of three classic nintendo um you know franchises and
you know, moment to moment, you don't have the sort of run and keep the speed going like you do in a Mario game. It kind of has a more methodical pace like you might think of as Zelda, or I guess to some degree, Metroid. um because you are stopping and like figuring out how you're going to get somewhere and you're turning the world around like it can't go at the pace of super mario um
But it's using a lot of the mechanics from all three and kind of the world structure. You know, when I pull back to look at the map...
I was like, oh yeah, this is like the Metroid Prime map. Not exactly, but like... you know the three-dimensional the three-dimensionality but also i mean it's it's more abstract and it's like all these cubes attached to other cubes but it also very interesting map yeah it's a cool map and it made me think of the metroid prime one and like how you know, when I was playing that game, it like, I was like, oh man, like the way, and other stuff about actually the interface generally with.
super metroid like where you could go and look at the lore in the sort of dictionary it had also kind of had that feel. So like felt, felt like it was influenced by a lot of, a lot of Nintendo stuff. And I think the Metroid stuff will become more clear as time goes by. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's. I think it's really interesting to talk about influences because, like I said at the top, the sort of case study of... how those classic games have
been able to unearth these potentially masterpieces or what have you. You seem to be a big fan of it. As far as the circular element of it, wasn't there a Mario game where you could rotate the world that came out later that was like on 3DS or something? I feel like there was a... There was a Mario game where you could... Not being a Mario fan, I don't know. Might have been on the 3DS, but where you could slip through...
Well, it was Paper Mario, right? Well, it wasn't Paper Mario, though. What was that one called? I don't think I played it. It was the one that was on the... Yeah. And you could slip back through the world. I'm trying to look it up because I don't remember. But it had like this, that kind of, the room. It kind of had the feel of like, oh, I mean, Paper Mario has that a little bit. It's puzzly.
Yeah, it was Toad. Oh, is it the Toad one? No, no. People are yelling at us. Yeah, I know. I'm not like the crazy Mario guy either. It wasn't this one. I'm looking at a list here. Anyway. There were too many Mario games. There were too many Mario games. Oh, that's for sure. Yeah. But it's just funny how that, you know, there's a, I think there's a, there's a strong chance that Fez had an influence on.
But I will say in our, in our final moments here, um, made sense that this would happen but and again sort of the way that they're rendering the world especially in the transitions that we talked about before is is what kind of breaks my brain even more because of what i'm what i'm about to talk about is There's a sense of the character position that is maintained in the world after you rotate.
which I don't think would be maybe necessarily obvious to people. Like, I don't even, it's so funny how... I guess we are doing a podcast about video games where video games are about playing them. And so describing them is never easy, but this one is almost indescribable as far as like, if you were to try to tell somebody how the game plays.
I don't know if you could really get through to them because the camera is always the camera, right? It's very two-dimensional static. And the character, I kind of did a little bit of a test last night, doesn't move. very far from the center of the screen almost ever, right? The world is what's moving. There's like a, I don't know.
Uh, there's some, there's some margin there, but it's like, as soon as you get to a certain point, you're, you're not, the world is good. The camera's going to shift with you. But when you shift, when you rotate the world, Gomez. maintains his position. Like... Like his two, his XY plotted position. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. But, but the world now has shifted. So the platform you were standing on, or no, there may not be a platform.
that you are now standing on based on where you were before because the world has shifted. But sometimes there is because you're now behind it and they actually show a silhouette of him, et cetera. But then as I anticipated, which is obviously you would do this, you can. Kind of like they actually have some really good, I think clever pixel animation with him because he can kind of like
crawl around corners sometimes and like up on ledges. Scoot around them, yeah. Yeah, and so there's still this sense of three-dimensionality. Even though it's two dimensional and like you can crawl on the side of like a vines on on a side, you know, so you're just looking at it on its side on the edge. But then if you jump. When you spin, he doesn't.
Right. Right. Yeah. Time is paused for him. So exactly. Exactly. And that is also a very critical design decision. And as soon as you know that that's, that that's work. Your mind's blown all over again. And I'm sure my mind's going to be blown many more times playing the game. But... You know, there's a sort of like a, of course, that's how it works.
And I just tested it out in one of the rooms. I jumped up and just kept spinning. And he just stays there. And then jumping and then spinning and landing on the platform that is now there because you spun it. Yeah, that wasn't there before. That's like, OK, now I'm not even sure how I can platform this game anymore because of that. So it's. Yeah, it is something else. Yeah, there will definitely be times where that comes into play where you're...
you're jumping to something that isn't there until you're in the air and you've spun the world for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I've already done it. I've already done it. Yeah. You've already done it. It happens. But like. Yeah, there's a lot to come. Once you have, yeah, and I'm sure there is, you keep alluding to all these other aha moments, but... The thing that I love about the game so far is that you can see that there's these fundamental, wherever the idea came from, Phil, whomever.
you can see that there's these fundamental concepts that they nailed and they understood very quickly, or not quickly, but they understood very purely, I'll say. Yes. And once you have those concepts- you know, so many things will come from it, right? Because there's like, of course this, and then of course that, and then of course this, and you know, um, these fundamental concepts and that's how. That's when we talk about the merger of level design and systems design and how those.
when the best games are when they work together. Yeah. Because they, and they feed off of each other. You can see, and of course, if Phil did most of both of those, maybe. Yeah, yeah, he did. Then that helps. But yeah, it is kind of a thing that seems hard to keep in your head, you know, keep it all. Yeah, I can't imagine like editing these levels. I mean, I think probably what you're doing is looking at the four.
directions simultaneously you know like you have four windows that are the four views and you're like when you're painting in one you're seeing an update everywhere um so that you actually can you know, figure out how this is going to work. You know, so that like, you know, what, what Tim is describing is like, you'll, you'll jump, you're, you're, now you're standing on a platform that is, as it turns out, it's like a,
Obviously, it's not a 2D platform. It's a 3D platform in space. It's probably a square or something like that. Not a cube, but like a square and one cube deep in a sort of Minecraft sense. And then...
So like three by three, but one deep in a Minecraft sense. And then you turn and you're still on that. But now a platform that was... not accessible to you now comes over and is next to you because you've just turned it around the axis of the world and it's like over next to you and now you can get a little bit higher.
You know, and then you turn again and now you can jump to this other thing or you can jump up to the main mass of the level or whatever. Those are the kind of things that are happening. This is for people haven't played. You know, it's like, oh, I got to this. Well, I don't have anywhere I can jump to. Well, if I rotate the world, now I can jump to this.
that in a traditional platformer is nowhere near it, but in this kind of weird... world that has uh you know been designed here you know is just a a click away uh or a you know a shoulder button away so yeah it's super super fun game i'm looking forward to uh discussing more of it um with you i do uh since we're past an hour i think we should wind down now here but i do want to read one email that we got uh which talked about our last um
Let's see here. This is from Sam. The subject is 1997. This was sent to devgameclub at gmail.com. He says, hearing Tim's experience of Interstate 76 fills me with nostalgia for a better time. Asking mom to drive me to Circuit City to get a computer game. My imagination going wild on the long ride home. Perusing the manual during a 45 minute install. The game failing to run. dozens of hours reinstalling, troubleshooting, hunting for patches. Circuit City refusing a refund due to an open box.
Those were the days, says Sam. So you kind of experienced that with our last game, unfortunately. A little bit tricky for you. Sorry. I don't know what to say other than I wish we had known. Yeah. I am still trickling a little bit in the emulation direction to see if I can unearth something there. No promises. but my motivation there is for is for interstate 76 so we'll see if i can figure any of that out um i know pc emulate beast, but...
Yeah, yeah, it is. I mean, Sam, I share those stories of other games, not Interstate 76, but, you know, those the same thing of like. there was always an anxiety to it for me too of like okay because you know they weren't they weren't cheap and and um And I knew there always was a chance that it wasn't going to work. Luckily, a lot of the bigger companies had their own customer service.
But still, it's not a fun process back then. And I was primarily a PC gamer. So, you know, those old x86 machines. getting into DOS and looking at batch files and trying trying to find a way to get the extended memory or all the memory yeah the memory was a whole thing you know what was the yeah what was that file was it any file what that was uh i remember
you know, reserving memory for certain, like allocating memory. Yeah, there was like an expanded memory mode or something like that, but you had to install essentially a driver. There was some place, like some DOS file, I felt like, where I was putting in numbers. Yeah, I think it was config.cfg. I think it was .cfg. God, it's been so long since I had to deal with that.
And actually, I didn't do a ton of that, honestly, because I kind of, you know, as I've talked about before, like I have a long gap. from like playing on like the apple 2 and mac you know the early mac um and then like and then having a 386 and like i did not you know play a lot of games in the kind of interim um of that so it's yeah i missed kind of the the worst hardest core of that stuff um you know and
You know, and I don't feel the worst for it, to be honest. Anyway, thanks for that email, Sam. Yeah, the nostalgia of times past. You can send us email, as I mentioned, as Sam did, at devgameclub at gmail.com. We're also now accepting reviews. That's new. I don't know if you know that, Tim. We're starting to accept reviews now. So if you want to do that through the iOS infrastructure or something like that, we don't really...
you know, advertise this podcast in any way. So your reviews are the only way that we let people know. And I wanted to mention again that we're on YouTube. We have tripled. tripled our listenership on YouTube. So we have three people, as far as I can tell, listening on YouTube. Congrats. Welcome. I guess it's a thing. I don't know. It came up in my feed. Did it? I was scrolling. Because I do actually watch a lot of YouTube. Oh, I don't. Yeah, I don't. For entertainment. And it came up.
That was like... Maybe not exactly the target audience. Anyway, we're also on the web at devgameclub.com and my co-host here twitches at twitch.tv slash Tim Longo Jr. with the JR at the end. If you're listening to this Wednesday when it comes out, there's a strong chance that we're doing a group Minecraft. dungeon crawl or something lost lake moors and others i think even k-on is in there mystery dip like
I don't know what they're doing in there. I haven't been in in a while and I, I should probably try to jump in before this, but yeah, I think, I think we might do some sort of like group adventure on stream tomorrow. So I hope you have a good time. I'm still paying. yeah thank you so enjoy uh and and discuss uh you know watch that or discuss it on the discord there's a link to that as well in the show notes um our intro and outro music was written and performed by kirk hamilton
Commission, my friend of the cast, Aaron Evers, and our logo, that Discord, our merch store, all by Mark Garcia. Have fun playing with your devil squares this week, and good night. Good night.