Live Interview With the Seed of Nostalgia!

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
S s. S.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Hey everybody, Welcome back to hit Point, the JRPG News Show.
An anime new show, a niche news show, a show
where Baku and I talk about anything and everything that
catches our interest and or iire. We stream live every
single Sunday at seven pm Central eight pm Eastern. We
will be previewing some trailers, talking to an indie dev
about a pretty sweet looking upcoming game, and we'll be

(01:32):
responding to super chats at the end of the show.
But throughout the show, continue to throw any questions that
come to mind into the chat, because Baku here will
be watching and observing and putting together an amalgamation of
all of your curiosities and desires, and then we will
foist them upon our guest here. We will talk to

(01:53):
very soon, Baku.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
How are you doing today? Oh?

Speaker 3 (01:57):
Just excited to be here. Had had a chance to
watch an opera Over the week. A friend Di Vatron
over at Twitch had invited me to her live show,
so I got to witness her do what she does
during the day, like her day job, yeah, which is

(02:18):
an incredible Like boy, I like I knew you were
a professional opera singer, but live is a whole different thing.
It's just a fantastic It's a fantastic show.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
When a pro is like doing their thing, like they
just kind of transform into some somebody almost completely different, right.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
Yes, yes, absolutely, and I I was, I have no words.
It was just an incredible, incredible show. Other than that,
you know, life goes on as usual. But yeah, not
nothing to.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
Really update on. How about you, sir?

Speaker 2 (02:55):
What's oh man? Uh? This weekend was kind of fun. Actually,
I got to do a lot of the little stuff
around the house. But there was a little shortcoming of
news this weekend. I was I was gonna put together
the JPG weekly update, but things were so things were

(03:16):
so what's the word sparse? Yeah, a little bit sparse.
So I ended up just go ahead to releasing my
review of Lufia and the Rise of the Sinister Rolls.
I'm pretty excited about that. Here, I boosted your audio
just a bit there, mister Baka, Could you try talking
again here for a second?

Speaker 1 (03:35):
Yeah? Actually I saw that. I saw the video release.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
I haven't had a chance to look at it yet,
but if you guys haven't seen it yet, definitely check
it over at super Derek's YouTube channel.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yeah, this one but the other one that was a.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
Lot of fun to finally be able to put that out.
But I felt like I was a little bit backed
into a corner because I was like, I really wanted
to do a JPG weekly update and just do that because.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
That's like my my weekly thing, that's what I like
to do.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
But there was like very but but we did actually
get some last minute news to talk about, and we
will be talking about that later on today. There is
like a whole indie game fest thing that we'll be
talking a little bit about. But let's see. I think
at this point, should we introduce our guest.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yeah, actually, do you want to do that?

Speaker 3 (04:22):
And then just check real quick with with with the
folks that they can hear as all good, and then.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
We can go from there.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
Yes, Nattika's here says that it's way better, so I
think we're probably good to go.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
All right, Okay, so let's go.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Ahead and switch scenes here over and introduce our friend here,
our brand new friend, James Akaa Primitive from Primitive Pixels. James,
Welcome to the stream.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
How are you doing today? Man?

Speaker 4 (04:51):
I'm doing great, thanks a lot, super happy to be
here with you guys. I love the hit Point podcast.
And yeah, just excited sock.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Oh that's that's awesome, man, I I love it.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
I think that you might be one of the first
podcast watchers who I actually get to to interview today.
This is gonna be a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
And you'll you already already kind of know how a
lot of this goes, so, so without further ado, uh,
I'll go ahead and let's watch together. We'll just kind
of get hyped together watching the new trailer for Seed
of Nostalgia that dropped less than a week ago. And
uh and and then we'll we'll continue to just talk

(05:36):
and and figure out more about about what makes this
game tick. Because this game looks so so good. Let's uh,
let's play here any second now, No, there we go.
Oh here, I need to put him back on the screen.
Oh no, the most professional stream on all of YouTube.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
Okay, here we go. There he is. Look at this, man,
do you hear that? Ah?

Speaker 3 (06:16):
That?

Speaker 1 (06:17):
Hmm?

Speaker 2 (06:21):
God dude, this game looks so beautiful and so oh Okay,
I haven't seen this new trailer yet, so I'm like,
I will say that the hardest part of doing this
podcast is seeing all these incredible games, even talking to

(06:45):
the creator and not being able to play it.

Speaker 1 (06:48):
I know, there's no.

Speaker 3 (06:50):
I just just have everyone know that we don't have
like expressive privilege or anything. We're like, oh we get
to test. No, we're waiting, just like the rest of you.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
I love that.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
That that looks so impactful. The sound design, I can
already already hear it.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
Ah, that's a man.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
Just the the visual effects that are being applied on
top of the pixel art so nice.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
That wave like that.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
Yeah, that's so slick man, m.

Speaker 1 (07:45):
Dude, and the music is so good. Okay, this is.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
You're You're making it kind of hard for me to
hype responsibly.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
Hear James, you realize that, right.

Speaker 5 (07:58):
I deeply apologize.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
How dare you do this to us?

Speaker 4 (08:04):
It's the shame and burden that will have to carry
for the rest of my life.

Speaker 6 (08:10):
Yeah, seed of nostalgia, I do.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
Dang it, Holy cawn screen.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
Oh nope, I hang on, there we go, bring him back.

Speaker 1 (08:38):
There's James.

Speaker 5 (08:39):
Hi, I'm back, bring my man back.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
You know, one of these days, one of these days,
I will overcome that muscle memory, and it'll be on
a day where we're not interviewing anyone and it's just
gonna be all downhill.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
So uh, I first heard a little bit about this
game about a month ago or so. That's about when
I saw a trailer just kind of making the rounds
on a little on a little subreddit that that, uh,
you know, that likes to pretend they play RPGs from
time to time. So so I heard about you guys

(09:21):
on on the jerrpg subreddit, and of course I have
to poke a little fun at jerrpg sub reddit. But man,
this game not only like did it resonate with me,
but it appears to have resonated pretty broadly with a
lot of people. And and in doing so, you you
also were launching a kickstarter. Uh, not not quite yet

(09:43):
at the time that that kickstarter just happened or started
kicking off. Here about how how many days ago, four five,
six ago, six days ago? You met your goal in
in four hours and our are currently just taking victory laps.
So that's that's wild, uh at this point, At this point, everybody,

(10:07):
if you're if you're if you enjoy what you're seeing
here with with the game, like I know you are.
There is a pinned comment in the chat that you
should go follow and uh and you should also go
ahead and follow the game on Kickstarter as well. So
let's go ahead and start this this interview off in
earnest because because I can't wait anymore. That's the that's

(10:33):
the best I got.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (10:34):
So, uh, can you tell me a little bit about
Primitive Pixels and what your or rather Primitive Yeah Pixels,
and what your team's origin story is, Like how did
you guys end up or how did you end up
forming Primitive Pixels and deciding to make an indie j
RPG in the first place.

Speaker 5 (10:53):
Sure?

Speaker 4 (10:53):
Sure, So I started Primitive Pixels several years ago, I suppose,
like anything else, it kind of just started as an idea.
And I've been doing the solo dev thing on my
own pretty happily for quite a few years now, and
and I like working alone, and for me, it's no

(11:14):
problem to work all day and night. But I've wanted
to make specifically this story and this this genre of
a game for a long time. And I've made and
i've well, I've had personal projects, you know, experimenting with things,
but but I knew that to really to really deliver

(11:36):
a project at j RPG that was worth people's time
to get excited about and get invested in. I knew
that I was going to need a bit of help,
and honestly, the team, the people that I'm working with
at Permittive Pixels, it's it's really formed in a very
organic and very wholesome way. And and I'm actually really

(11:57):
proud of that. Almost everybody on my team that that's
working with me now I met because I saw them
post something on Reddit or Twitter or onto some sort
of indie game outlet, and I just thought what they
had done was really cool, or I could see that
they were super passionate about it, and and so I

(12:18):
just reach out and send them a message like hey,
I think whatever you're doing is so cool, you know,
and and just try to talk to them because I'm
genuinely interested to meet people that are passionate, especially about
indie games and about JRPGs. I just I love talking.
I love learning people's opinions and perspectives and all of
all of those first contacts basically turned into friendships and

(12:42):
and and a working relationship. For example, our composer Dima
but he goes by Mushra. He had been releasing music
packs on a website called itch dot io, and anybody
who's into, like really deep into indie games or indie
game development knows what that website is. It's essentially just

(13:05):
a platform for real indie games and for indie game developers.

Speaker 5 (13:10):
To get some assets to get the project started.

Speaker 4 (13:13):
And he had been posting music and he posted this
one pack and it was like the golden age of
JRPG music something like that, and it had like anime
characters around a campfire. So I clicked on it instantaneously
and I listened to the music and I was just
blown away. I sat there and listened to the whole

(13:35):
pack like three times through, and it had such a
Mitsuda vibe. I mean, the bass guitar was straight out
of the Super Nintendo. The synths were just brilliant and beautiful,
and it really had that atmosphere and vibe of that era,
which I've heard other composers do, but it's very rare

(13:55):
and it's very magical when they can pull that off.
It's a time machine that transports you back to a
beautiful era in video games. And so I wrote to
him and just basically praised him and embarrassed him by
flattering him too much, and we ended up talking about
Corona Cross and Corona Trigger and Mitsuda and Matsu and

(14:17):
all these composers and things, and we just became friends
really quickly. I got along with him great, and I
think it was probably only a couple days after that
where I was like, Hey, I'm going to do this
crazy thing and like launch a kickstarter next year and
I'm doing everything by myself, but I really want you
if you want to make some music for the game.
And it was an instant yes, and we've just been

(14:39):
working together ever since. And the story is basically the
same with everyone else, maybe in their own specific way.
Some of the pixel artists just post amazing art that
I just loved or I felt like was a vibe,
and I reach out and talk to them and get
to know them, and when I hear how passionate they
are about their specific realm, it's it's hard for me

(15:01):
to not want to work with them, especially when they
also have a love for for JRPGs that inspired Seed
of Nostalgia and uh. And that's just been a really
great way to build a team that that feels like
a family.

Speaker 5 (15:13):
It's been really nice.

Speaker 2 (15:14):
Oh man, that's so nice and one of the things
that I always hear every time I interview somebody who's
doing an indie dev RPG.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
Uh it is.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
I just love hearing how interconnected the community is and
it and like, I was looking through the list of
of all the different people who are kind of like
collaborating and contributing here and there, and I saw Mushra,
and I saw I saw Aaron from from Beloved Rapture,
and and I'm just like, oh man, I've recognized so
many names from this list and just people coming together. Uh,

(15:47):
you're you're gonna be working with a with a composer
who's going to guess from the Chained Echoes I believe
it was, is gonna.

Speaker 4 (15:54):
Yeah, Eddie, the composer from Chained Echoes will be will
He's actually already composed a track that you can you
can listen to on the campaign. But we are just
now a very small amount of pledges on our Kickstarter
away from being able to expand that collaboration and work
on more music, which I think anybody who's played Chain
Echoes should be responsibly hyped about that matter, because it's

(16:18):
a great, great, great composer. Yeah, great, awesome, super sweet,
really nice and we're also working with Hideki Kikuda, the
composer from Secret of Manan Trials of Mana on some
things which really just had to happen because Trials of
Mana is maybe the biggest inspiration at least in the

(16:40):
design department of the game. So I just felt like
we had to do that. And my composer Mushra, of course,
ecstatic at the opportunity, reached out to his agent, Jason
is really nice guy who works with Crescent Moon or
Crimson Moon, and just got us in touch with him,
and he was cool enough to watch our trailer and

(17:02):
give us some feedback and give us a little sweet
write up about it.

Speaker 5 (17:07):
And childhood me just freaks out at.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
That every time I think about it.

Speaker 5 (17:11):
It's just crazy.

Speaker 2 (17:13):
I believe it, and it really shows in like the
art style and you know, the musical kind of influences here.
Even the name kind of has a little I don't know,
part of part of me sees seed of nostalgia so
so in and thanks so som Secret of Mona And
I know I shouldn't be doing that mentally, but there
there might be anyways.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
Uh. I am stoked this game.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
God, I just I keep staring at the trailer and
losing my train of thought.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
It's so great. What else?

Speaker 2 (17:44):
What else are you trying to bring forward from the
golden age of RPGs? When I when I look at this,
it seems like you're really accomplishing a lot here in
evoking that vibe. And that's a comment that I read
a lot in the various reddit posts and online. And
how would what do you credit to that? How do

(18:05):
you how did you achieve that? I guess in a
way that just feels so authentic to the arrow but
also so modern, like look at those visuals overly.

Speaker 4 (18:17):
Sure that's a that's a good question. Yeah, I think
it's multi part. I think the foundation is just that
JRPG's really changed my life forever. When I first found
out about them and play them as a kid. I
will remember the first time that I beat Earthbound just
as cherished as I could remember you know, a favorite

(18:38):
family vacation or something as a kid, or or some
big event or success. It's it's stuck with me forever.
Corono Trigger and Final Fantasy six. I mean, we could
we could listen names forever, but those games were just
they were really my escape from some of the harshness
of reality, and they they opened my mind to a

(19:01):
level of storytelling and atmosphere that I just I never
knew could have been possible at that point. And I've
kept them right at my side for my entire life
and I always will. And so I think that that,
of course my childhood love, for that is what the

(19:22):
catalyst that sparked the venture of becoming a game developer
and working on a game like this. I also do
a lot of research aka playing video games, and I
have a tendency to play my favorites, especially retro games,
on a nearly yearly cycle, and and I'm always a

(19:44):
note taker. Like a lot of times, I just like
to get lost in the graphics and the mechanics and
things and just think about how they accomplished it, and
more importantly, why.

Speaker 5 (19:53):
It was fun.

Speaker 4 (19:54):
Not so much like wow, they did this technical thing,
or that artwork is beautiful, but like, why was it
specifically fun and why was it engaging?

Speaker 5 (20:01):
And I think the answer to a question.

Speaker 4 (20:03):
Like that has changed over the years as a lot
of us have grown older, and of course real life
responsibilities and things we maybe don't have the attention to
give to certain aspects of it. So I think that
finding the things in those games that inspired Seed of
Nostalgia that were genuinely fun and genuinely the foundation of

(20:27):
why those experiences were so great and take those to
eleven basically in Seeded Nostalgia as hard as I can.
So generally speaking, the story is the story and the
characters and the scenario. Pacing is absolutely the biggest pillar
in Seed of Nostalgia, and it's really the thing that
I wanted that I think is ambitious about this game.

(20:50):
That may be unexpected, but I really want to shoot
for the stars with how deep and how symbolic the
story ends up being, how far I can push the
emotional connection to the character, because that's that's my absolute
most favorite thing about the genre. I love tearing up
by the time of credits roll. That's the perfect experience

(21:11):
to me. If it feels like I'm saying goodbye to friends,
then what more could you ask for? That's deeply powerful.
And while I'm not saying that I will achieve that,
I am saying that I will work all with all
of my blood and sweat to make sure that it is.
And so that's the biggest pillar and world design I
think it's the next and telling the story just through

(21:33):
the environments and through the little dialogues and things that
you interact with there. I want the world to feel
like a like a real place.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
Ah god, yeah, you already mentioned a few of my favorites,
earth Bound being one of them, which absolutely had me
bawling by the end of it. It was my very
first RPG ever and just the dude getting stuck on
the fight against I Guess for like a month and
grinding every character to level ninety nine to still not

(22:06):
be able to take him down, and then and then
like in an act of desperation, I figured out what
the secret was the trick. Anyways, I'm not going to
spoil it any any for it than maybe already have,
but holy cow, man, like that had me just like
streaming tears and and gosh, like the best games are

(22:26):
the ones that that and almost before you want well
definitely before you want them to because you don't want
to overstay. You're welcome, you know, But but that's that's
really good to hear that you've that you've like taken
that message or that that aspect to heart. And it's
not always going to be easy to evoke that, right,
but it's it's definitely a good get a good goal
for sure. Okay, sorry, I was I was so enraptured

(22:53):
and like listening to the listening to this, I forgot
to start thinking of other questions.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
But this is this is wonderful. So yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
One thing though that I think that also kind of
stood out to me is that it doesn't look like
there's gonna be any random encounters in this game, at
least so far.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
Is that correct?

Speaker 5 (23:09):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (23:10):
So actually, with with combat and encounters, I I kind
of wanted to make a hybrid system. It's not the
first game that's done this, but it's my personal favorite
kind of picking the best aspects of every option. So
you can see encounters on the map, and there's there's

(23:31):
different types. There are encounters where it's very much just
like a traditional game you would have played on Superintendent
or or PS one or Psychic Saturn where you can
see the actual enemies or or the fight coming so
to speak, and h and those fights are very scripted,
similar to like Corona Trigger there there's going to be

(23:53):
a level of personal polish.

Speaker 5 (23:56):
To each of those.

Speaker 4 (23:57):
And then we also have a different counters, which are
the main encounters you're going to find in more like
field areas, and these are represented by a single encounter
sprite right Like right now, it's a skull flying around,
and so you can see that enemy. That enemy can
has a field of vision and if you get too close,
he's going to get pissed and he's going to try

(24:18):
and chase you.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
Right, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (24:20):
But the beauty of that is that if people want
to avoid it, they absolutely can, no problem at all.
There's not really going to be any forced grinding in
the game. Unless people are at the very end game
and trying to tackle superbosses, They're probably going to have
to grind a bit learned, sure, yeah, But the beauty

(24:42):
of that, or like why I personally like that, is
that you gives you the option to fight or not.
If you want to be sneak, you can, but you
never quite know what you're going to get by hitting
that encounter. Because that's one thing that I actually really
did like about random encounters is there was that level
of danger where you may just out of nowhere, hit
a very elite, very small percentage chance super hard encounter

(25:07):
out of nowhere or like metal Slimes in Dragon Quest,
and you're like, oh my god, I'm going to get
so many levels right now, you know, just those sort
of little surprise moments that always kind of keep you
on your feet. It's not like, oh, I see a
gremlin running around. I know I'm going to fight a
gremlin if I fight that. It's like, well, I see
an encounter and it could be one of five to
ten different enemies and combinations of them. So I like

(25:30):
that sort of hybrid system, and things that tie more
directly into the story will be scripted and you'll be
the choice to avoid them if you want to in
some cases as well, but those will have more of
a custom feel and touch, and the battles will reflect
the story that's happening. But I think for fields, I
kind of like the chance, you know, just throwing in
a nice three percent chance that you might get an

(25:52):
enemy that's five times harder than the other enemies in
that zone, but by killing them, you might get two
or three levels, or in our case of tendency points,
because we do like a skill tree leveling system out
of nowhere, so there's a you know, it's a I
like the surprise element. I'm not a fan of hitting
an encounter and every three steps. I really like to
be able to avoid them when I want to, especially

(26:13):
if I'm just trying to find an item in the
world for a quest or something. And uh and and
so we're pushing forward with that kind of that kind
of system. You can see the encounters. If you engage
with them, you're going to fight them right there on
that place on the map where you're at and and
at did you see You never know what it's going
to be.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
That's so cool. So I had a question.

Speaker 2 (26:38):
I was I was distracted again by talking to you.
Dang it, that's the curse. I'm like, I'm so wrapped up.
I'm like, oh, yeah, I need to I need to
host that shoe that is That is one of those tracks.
But it reminds me of like an Earthbound the hell
you could you could definitely tell what enemies were before
you encountered them and and and that definitely like lead

(27:01):
to possibilities or opportunities for cheesing. So that's that's also
another thing, like like I remember I would do that
in earth Bound, as like, oh, I would go see
out this specific type of enemy, but then I would
like try to avoid this other one because I knew
it would wreck.

Speaker 4 (27:13):
Me, right, like trees that catch on fire when you
beat them, Oh my.

Speaker 1 (27:18):
God, yes, exactly.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
So so being able to avoid those is is like,
I don't know, part of me feels like I'm cheating
the game design because I'm like, you know, but I'm
kind of leveraging the system against it. But I also
totally understand why, like that little mystery box kind of
opening up of the combat encounter to see what you
get is also going to be really important because like

(27:42):
if you were just hunting metal slimes because you could
see them on the map or something, then then yeah,
that would it could it could cause issues.

Speaker 4 (27:50):
And there are certain enemies that that have like their
own very specific habitat because there is a crafting system.

Speaker 5 (27:57):
In the game for equipment.

Speaker 4 (27:59):
Yeah, and I'm trying to keep that somewhat simple, but
kind of a nice side like a parallel progression system
where you know, you can go and mind metals and minerals,
and you can also try and find specific enemies to
get their parts kind of monster hunter ish, I guess.
But and then you can make special equipment with those

(28:20):
those combinations of things. You don't have to because there's
basically you can purchase items and equipment, you can craft
items and equipment, or you can find items in equipment,
and aside from very legendary cases, you can get about
the same or even more specific types of power growth
from choosing one or the other. But really it's up

(28:43):
to you. So some enemies, it's like, okay, you'll like
a smithy or a huntsman will tell you.

Speaker 5 (28:49):
Hey, those those blue basilisks.

Speaker 4 (28:51):
Are you know, behind the grotto in the corrupted forest
or something like that. So there are specific enemies where
you can kind of hyper you can focus them if
you want to.

Speaker 2 (29:01):
Yeah, okay, And how do how do you like with
so many options, how do you go about balancing those
kinds of combat encounters that that could diverge so greatly
based off of your choices and and like crafting different
equipments and and things.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
How how do you go about?

Speaker 2 (29:15):
I guess it takes a lot of gameplay balancing and
play testing, I guess.

Speaker 4 (29:20):
But it's just a ton of trial and error. There's
there's basically you can you can put growth projections, like
where you want something to be at specific levels compared
to others. You can use some pretty simple math to
figure that out, and by changing some of the variables
and percentages you can you can make that growth faster

(29:40):
or slower, but it never really gets you. And I'm
not a fan of like scaling things. I don't really
like it when the game is just constantly keeping up
with you. I understand why some games do that, but
but I really like to be able to go back
and slap some squirrels into oblivion if I'm level fifteen now,
I don't. I don't want them to also like put
me in a stretcher, you know, like that feeling of

(30:04):
power growth and progression and coming back.

Speaker 2 (30:09):
So it looks like there's also a few different like
party members that might join Attila throughout this journey. I
haven't seen like a ton of them together at any
point in these Is it kind of like a drop in,
drop out kind of system throughout the game or is
it like you acquire people or how is that going
to work?

Speaker 4 (30:28):
So all of the main characters are tied at this point.
They're all tied into the main story progression, aside from
one which we may unlock pretty soon on the Kickstarter,
which will be a little bit more of its own
self contained story with that character and that's kind of
the format I would like to go moving forward. If

(30:49):
I end up adding more characters or content in the future,
have them be standalone and then incorporate in But basically
you'll meet those party members as you progress the story.
Most of them are in order, although there are technically
two possibly three, but two of the characters you could
get in different orders depending on kind of how you.

Speaker 5 (31:11):
Move through the regions once the game opens up.

Speaker 4 (31:14):
But these these basically when you find these characters, all
of them will have something happening in their life or
the region they're in and they have a connection to it.
Pretty pretty traditional in that there's a reason when you
meet them to uh, to band together to overcome you know,

(31:35):
an issue that's shared at that moment, and then through
their personalities and connections through those missions, they they realize
that what they either share a lot of principle morals
or ideals, or in some characters cases, they just want
to get the hell out of where they're at now
and go see the world. So there's there's a lot

(31:57):
of motivations and things, but it all ties into the
story and basically for party, like how the party works,
once you have your first three characters, you're basically good
to go, and and as you unlock new ones, you
you can trade these characters in and out. There's group leveling.

(32:19):
So if you decide that you really like three characters
and you're not feeling the other ones for this part
of the game, when you decide to bring that that
other character in because they're they're really strong against that
current content, they'll be at the same level that the
rest of your party was. There's no real roadblocks with

(32:40):
or just time waste for that sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (32:42):
That is exactly where I was going to go ask next.

Speaker 4 (32:44):
Actually, and airships actually play a pretty big role in
the story about halfway In, and the airship that you
get as a party sort of becomes your your mobile
home base and kind of modeled after like the space
between time and like Corona Trigger where the other party

(33:05):
members who aren't in your group are going to just
be hanging out in that airship doing their thing, and
so it gives you a choice to go back there
and switch your party around. There's NPCs that are very
specific that you can unlock to join your airship. There's
also collectibles you can find in the world, and when
you find those collectibles. They unlock visual decorations within your airship,

(33:29):
and certain ones actually unlock rewards too.

Speaker 5 (33:33):
So but you are.

Speaker 1 (33:34):
Speaking my language, speaking.

Speaker 4 (33:39):
Like to tell me more, and so I've always really
liked the feeling that that feeling of freedom and adventure
and like ownership when you get an airship in a game,
especially when it's like you can drive it on the
world map, you can go inside of the airship and
talk to characters and have dialogue and unlocks. It's and
it's a big part of story. It's how you're going

(34:01):
to get to later areas. I just really like involving
making the concept of an airship as fun as possible
and giving it the most utility. So that's how you'll
change your party. Generally, I kind of wanted I had
I'd gone back and forth on this. I kind of
wanted for a while for people to just freely be
able to switch the party in and out whenever they

(34:22):
wanted to. But I think that it becomes harder to
make the game challenging that way, because if they can
change on a whim before any fight. I like, I
like letting people experiment and trying, but I also want
them to commit slightly when they're going out and facing
harder challenges to keep a little bit more foresight or

(34:44):
forethought into what's going to be really strong. What are
the enemy types and that dungeon like, what are they
weak to, how are they going to be trying to
manipulate my my turn order, and how can I exploit
that to my advantage? So I kind of want them,
and I'm designing the content to make all of the
characters excel or or be more challenging, depending on the content,
to try and have people try them all out and

(35:07):
see what they love.

Speaker 2 (35:09):
And it sounds like there's also a class system in
the game that if I am understanding correctly, like you
can find items like like gear weapons that can unlock classes.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
Is that correct?

Speaker 2 (35:20):
And how does that work?

Speaker 4 (35:22):
Kind of it doesn't specifically unlock other classes. Each of
the characters has a specific class in the game, And
how leveling works is upon leveling or there's also some
other ways of finding these. But every time you level,
you're going to get what's called an ascendency point, and
these points are how you level. So instead of just

(35:42):
unlocking abilities as you go, we have completely free, customizable
skill trees that are even though they look like trees,
they're more like mazes.

Speaker 5 (35:52):
You can move in.

Speaker 4 (35:52):
Any direction, including backwards, and so we're trying to design these.
If you can imagine each case, every single character class
in the game has their own unique one. Nothing is
shared between them, aside from passive nodes that maybe increase
their health or things like this, and they're broken down

(36:13):
so that the further down they go in any given path,
they specialize that class into a very very defined role. So,
for example, Leatila is a spirit blade. It's kind of
like a sword fighter who also harnesses what's called spirit
magic and eventually, like you were saying, through through specific gear,

(36:34):
cosmic magic and you if you hang on the left
side of that tree and push lower down, he's going
to become an extreme melee physical fighter. It's he's going
to unlock tons of different sword based abilities. He's going
to be able to start cracking people's arm or like
no other and putting really interesting spirit debuffs on people.

(36:58):
If he goes down the middle of the tree and
pushes further, he becomes way more of a spell caster,
and you really maximize the spirit damage and the cosmic
damage eventually including new debuffs a lot of those high
ultimate spells are really going to shift up the dynamics
of how enemies behave in battle. And if you go

(37:18):
on the right side of that tree, he becomes way
more defensive, much more tanky. He becomes more of a
defensive character. He starts getting things like strangling vine abilities
where he can paralyze and hold down enemies so they
can't act.

Speaker 5 (37:33):
And things like that.

Speaker 4 (37:35):
And like I said, you can move into direction. So
if you push down one skill tree and then you
kind of bump over to the right, you can actually
move backwards and unlock some of those sweet abilities that
you didn't want to spend the points going from the top.
So I basically just want people to have complete control
and fun to the fun of experimentation and finding those
bills that they like. And then the cherry on top

(37:57):
of that is gear towards the end of the aim
is well the best gear anyways, the legendary items that
you're going to find in like the endgame, repeatable dungeons
or the final bosses and some of the other endgame
stuff that we have planned. And these work more like sets,
where as you get more items that are matching in

(38:20):
that set, you unlock abilities and upgrades to the abilities
you already have in your class, which kind of specializes you.
So you may one set may be a sword, an accessory,
and a cloak, and that's the full set, and when
you equip all three of them, the abilities that you
had already had now change and they're ascended versions of those,

(38:41):
basically making you like a hero class version of that.
And there's multiple set options for every class. So again,
if your build is defensive, you can go for a
set that really makes you nearly invincible. And I kind
of want to let people break the game a little
bit within reason for levels that really like minmut And
the other benefit to those high end sets is when

(39:04):
you complete it and you equip all three, it actually
changes the way your character sprite looks in game. So
you get that little reward of like I am now
a more powerful elite version of the class that I
was before.

Speaker 2 (39:14):
Dude, everything that you're saying is just like I'm about
to ask, like, I'm like, is are there are there
visual changes to your character when you when you do
these sorts of things.

Speaker 1 (39:23):
I love that.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
That's just it's almost like we played the same games
growing up and it's all the same stuff almost almost as.

Speaker 3 (39:31):
If remember the days when like there's a slight like
color change to the sprite it's green, it's.

Speaker 4 (39:45):
Yes, exactly, changing links tunics and the link of the powers.

Speaker 5 (39:50):
Yeah, it was the coolest thing ever.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
So, yeah, let's shift gears a little bit because I
know that. I mean, the the gameplay is obviously a
huge component because you're, like you said, one of the
biggest things that you're concerned with is making the game fun,
and that definitely seems to be like a focus of
what we've been talking about here is just giving people

(40:15):
that positive reinforcement of doing the fun stuff. But then
one of the other big things that I know is
a big important aspect of a good RPG to you
is the story and the world. And so I wanted
to shift gears and talk a little bit about that
side of the development process. So, I mean, right now,

(40:35):
Steed nostalgia centers on the Gaya seed and this giant
tree called the verdin Thala, Is that right? So I mean,
I can think I might know someone inspiration behind it,
but I was hoping to hear from you what kind
of inspirations are you drawing from to craft this world

(40:57):
and yeah, and how how did you come to the
idea of of like a dying world and a sacred tree.

Speaker 1 (41:05):
How did you come to this?

Speaker 4 (41:07):
Well, it's actually funny with the with the world tree theme,
this was basically directly inspired by Secret of Man or Trialshman.
I always liked that that concept of a of a
tree that's the centerpiece of a world. But what I
what I wanted to do, and actually maybe the first
idea that sparked this whole story in the first place,

(41:29):
was that I wanted the the the flow of that
style of story to be played out in reverse. So
instead of your characters going through this entire adventure and
trying to make your way to a world Tree or
the Man of Holy Land or something like this to
to finish it, I wanted the main character to be

(41:49):
born on the world Tree and completely disconnected from the
rest of civilization, and for the for the beginning of
the game to be you descending that world tree down
into a world that your people have completely forgotten and
have no clue of what's happening. So it's the story

(42:10):
of Seed of Nostalgia. It's it's very hard to not
spoil when I'm explaining it okay, because because it does
focus around a lot of really big twists throughout the story.
But what I can do is kind of set the
stage for how the game opens. So in this world,

(42:32):
about a thousand years before the game takes place, the
planet is struck by two cosmic calamities. Right, two giant
supposed asteroids smash into the planet on different sides of
the world. The devastation from this basically nearly wiped out
every civilization that was anywhere near this. And after the

(42:57):
after the dust settles from this event, the people from
the coastal sides of Silvara, which is the main world
in the game, they make this pilgrimage to go basically
witness the devastation.

Speaker 5 (43:11):
And when they arrive to the scene the crator.

Speaker 4 (43:15):
Of this cataclysm that happens on Silvara, it there they
find a mass at the base of this crater, and
it's a seed like mass. And this is where Seed
starts to come into play. And so they're shocked and
and and confused and very curious. A group of warriors

(43:39):
from from this pilgrimage go down into the Creator and
approach the this mass, this living seed. When they when
they get near, they're they're visited by a glowing golden
entity which seems to be protecting this mass. And this
entity is referred to in the game as the guy

(43:59):
a Seed. And the Seed speaks in a very godlike manner,
a lot of you know, I am the beginning, I
am the nourishment of the land.

Speaker 5 (44:09):
I am I am.

Speaker 4 (44:11):
The prosperity you you've always dreamed of. And the people
felt almost overtaken by the power and influence of this entity.
They felt enthralled by it as soon as they lay
eyes on it. And one of these brave warriors walks
up to the seed and puts his hand out and
touches this mass. As soon as he does this, a

(44:34):
small sapling starts to grow out of this this strange
cosmic mass, and the Seed tells this warrior that from
this moment until the end of your life, you have
pledged your you must protect this sapling. This sapling represents
the a new aon for the world, a new era
of prosperity and natural wonder and balance and order that

(45:01):
I have come to bring you. And so this group
of warriors is kind of the foundation of Attila's backstory.
I don't again, I don't want to spoil too much.
But as time goes on, that's that sprout turns into
a towering, thousand foot tall tree that's referred to by

(45:21):
those people as Virdenthala, the word verdency meaning wild growth
and nature.

Speaker 5 (45:28):
And and those those.

Speaker 4 (45:31):
Original warriors, their lineage, their their children, and the children's
children start living on that tree, and they're known as
the Arboreans, and they form a village there called Arborea.
And as as time goes on, civilizations rebuild. Of course,
in typical fashion, the greed and ire of man take takeover,

(45:56):
and blood must be spilled across the lands. As the
civilizations start to push and encroach further and further into
each other's regions, war breaks out. Basically, the island becomes
a giant field of blood, and at a certain point,

(46:18):
two of these great kingdoms turn their eyes towards the Giocede,
trying basically making a plan to capture the power that's
held within this world tree and bend it into their
own evil plans for domination and the the the Arboreans

(46:39):
are forced to sever the link between the top of
the tree and the lands below in order because it's
the only way that they can stop them from actually
getting in there and corrupting the tree. They there's a
there's a magical basically portals that the Arboreas create called

(47:01):
port gates, which allowed them to travel from the lance
below up to the tree. And so when when these
other kingdoms came to try and steal the power, they
destroyed those port gates forever. And so for the last
one hundred years, the Arboians have had zero contacts with
the Lance below, and they have no clue what's happening there.

(47:23):
So one after those are destroyed, that's when the game starts.

Speaker 2 (47:27):
So this is all like the this is all just
like the before the game even starts talking okay exactly.

Speaker 4 (47:32):
This was a little totally comfortable saying it. Okay, no spoilers,
this right off our Kickstarter.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
Page, Okay, in this world. I was also just like,
oh my gosh, if it sounds like you've got enough
like backstory here for a prequel, I mean, well, maybe
maybe we'll talk you know, future plans later on, But dang,

(48:02):
that's that is so cool. You've definitely put some some
thought into this over the well probably several several years
at this point right, it sounds like.

Speaker 4 (48:10):
Yeah, And and the real challenge has has become not
continuing to add and write on it, but to but
to take the essence of that big story and and
shave it down to fit and make sense in this
genre and in a way that that the pacing feels good.

(48:30):
You know, I don't want things to drag on. I
don't want to have filler content. So so it's been
actually a really big challenge editing this down to like
it's very source of story, and and we're getting.

Speaker 2 (48:45):
There, kind of distilling it down, and man, the hard
part is going to be you know, it's always killing
your darlings, right. It is like you have this awesome
set piece and you're like, this has got to be
a big central part. But then you're like, oh, well,
for this makes sense. I have this like fifty hour
side story that we have to do, and it's well,
maybe maybe we save that for a second game or

(49:06):
something sometime down the line.

Speaker 4 (49:08):
That yeah, yeah, I just keep the most important and
if something just isn't that fun or and compelling, just
get rid of it.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
What's been what's been the hardest part too, I mean,
not without if you can, if you can answer this
without spoiling something. What's been the hardest thing to to
cut for you from this so far that you've had
to Is there is that even possible to ask? I
guess there's another question. Is that even possible to answer
without spoiling?

Speaker 4 (49:36):
Yeah, that's a hard one.

Speaker 5 (49:37):
I'm not sure.

Speaker 4 (49:38):
I've had to cut a lot of stuff that I
was a little bummed about, but but not really actually
I've in the end, I'm actually really happy of of
everything that's gotten sort of grinded down to its pure
form because it's, uh, it got a rid of a
lot of stuff that just wasn't really necessary, you know.
Like I think Corona Trigger is such an incredibly loved

(50:00):
and revered game because the pacing just doesn't stop. It
always feels like what you're doing is meaningful, and they
give you exactly the right amount of this amazing story
and these set pieces and these key moments, but they
don't drag it forever. I mean, you can be on
your way to a whole new, amazing story. And so
that's my goal. I I don't want people to ever

(50:21):
feel like they're just wasting time to try and get
to that next cool part, you.

Speaker 2 (50:25):
Know, Yeah, just kind of letting the letting, letting the
cool flow into the other cool part and just happy
the whole parts. That's the that's the tricky part. So yeah,
And it sounds like this game's got a very kind
of profound theme, you know, things of like life and
balance and duty and sacrifice. So how how do these

(50:47):
themes kind of manifest in the storyline? And are those
things that you're like intentionally trying to push into it
or or is it kind of like they just happen
to show up? Like, what's the what's the story writing
process ben for you?

Speaker 3 (51:00):
Here?

Speaker 4 (51:02):
Certain elements are very spec I'm very specifically trying to
put them into the story. Philosophical themes and symbolism are
things that I personally really like and I really respect
when they're done in a story. Well, things that might
make you think in a different way, see a parallel

(51:24):
to something in your own life and make you stop
for a second and question the real morality of that
or what really would be worth it in the end.
And the character's humanities how they deal with those kind
of themes And basically my plan with those things though,

(51:44):
is to really let the characters let you digest that
sort of those sort of themes through the eyes and
the personalities of the characters. I'm trying to make each
of the characters have a very well find personality and
so that you get those sort of clashing opinions and

(52:08):
clashing emotional responses to certain things, but also giving them
a chance to change that stance by the end, to
grow for better or for worse, and how they'll have
to deal with that in the end. And symbolism is
just something that I love in art in general. I

(52:28):
love when you can when you can deliver a message
without directly delivering that message, and that plays in I mean,
that's really where the word nostalgia comes into play in
the game, as marketable or you know, on the nose
as it can sound given the genre's it actually maybe

(52:52):
plays the largest role in some of the most shocking
moments of the story. And I think people are going
to be really surprised at how that my interpretation of
nostalgia is rather disturbing and unsettling in this story. And
it's not a bubbly, nice, like fond memory of things

(53:16):
in the way that you might think. And I don't
want to spoil too much on that, but but symbolism
and alternate meanings and and basically just our human ability
to think deeply about things that maybe are unsettling or confusing.
I think that's that's huge for stories. I know we

(53:37):
talked about about Xeno Gears and something that I love
about that story and that game. You know, even if
they ran out of funding and had a hard time
finishing it in the end, I just have to applaud
and be mesmerized by the ambition that the developers and
writers had in trying to bring a red deep philosophical

(54:03):
themes into such an incredible fantasy world that just felt
massive and felt historic. And I think I think that's
that's something that really is Xeno Gears really inspired me
with the story and trying to be ambitious and and
bring more of a real human dynamic to to some

(54:28):
of that.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
Yeah, well that's it sounds like you're you know, kind
of leveraging. One of my other favorite aspects of of
old school RPGs is the maybe the occasional emotional sucker
punch or gut punch just kind of one of my
one of my favorite series of of RPGs growing up
was the you know, the ter Enigma soul Blazer series,

(54:51):
and like the the punctuation points of like things that
are you think they're gonna be one way, but then
they kind of do a little and they twist the knife,
and it feels like, based on our discussions here, you're
kind of exploring some of that as well, in addition
to the bright and cheerful and colorful, but also some
of the dark. You know, every bright light casts a shadow.

Speaker 4 (55:13):
Right, absolutely, I completely agree. I think the contrast is
where a lot of that magic happens, you know, thing
like horrible, Like if you take a horrible event in
someone's life hypothetical, I don't think if their life wasn't
beautiful and filled with joy and rainbows beforehand, that that

(55:35):
event would be nearly as painful as it would if
they were used to living such a beautiful, wonderful life.
And I think this principle works in art and music too,
where an emotional shift in a song is much more
impactful if it was a direct contrast to the measure
before it and the emotion before it. And I really

(55:56):
like playing on that contrast. It's something that I that
I try to do in everything with the game.

Speaker 2 (56:02):
Man, that's so cool, Uh, so I I know that
we're already about an hour into this interview and it
just wild like time is just flying.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
It does, but but I have so many more questions show.

Speaker 3 (56:16):
We're like, I know it was going to run an
hour or more or more yeah or more.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
So sorry you were saying no, no, I just wanted
to say, like, thank you for one for for being here.
But also, uh, also, I feel like we've had a
lot of questions coming in from chat and I feel
like I've been kind of uh maybe I mean, it
is my show, but I mean kind of steal on
the spotlight here, and I feel like I feel like
maybe maybe we should give the audience a chance to

(56:44):
ask some of their burning questions.

Speaker 3 (56:47):
Yeah, we definitely had a lot of questions from the audience.
Thank you guys for being uh, you know, so involved
with this. But let's go ahead and start with this
question here.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (56:59):
This is from in do You Developer? I presumably from
someone who is very early in starting their passion indeed
development project.

Speaker 1 (57:12):
What's your best advice? Oh?

Speaker 5 (57:16):
Oh yeah, that's a good one.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (57:18):
I know, I don't know if I could pick like
one very specific thing, but if I had to, it
would be to just start immediately in whatever way it is.
If you're not marketing yet, start trying to figure out marketing,
if you're new to art, just try to go full

(57:39):
bore into that, because it's very easy, especially starting out,
to kind of get caught up in your own idea
phases and to like take a long time of just
just thinking of new things and trying all these things.
And sometimes, I mean, at least personally, when I started,

(58:00):
I really held myself back because I would spend so
much time thinking and get so caught up in it
that I wouldn't actually get into an engine and just
try those things because I would just spend too much
time with it. So I would recommend just going full bore.
I like, don't hold back in any way possible. Just
keep trying and enjoy it. And I think my other

(58:24):
piece of advice would be to talk to other devs
every chance that you can. It's really the only reason
why I've gotten as far as I can, because that
when you start out in game development, you really are
on a raft in the middle of the ocean with
no paddle, and you're staring in the horizon in every direction,
and it just feels like there's really no there's no

(58:44):
way to grasp how many different things you need to
learn just to get started. And just asking another dev
or watching a cool YouTuber tutorial series and whatever engine
you want to work on, and just get into it
and go for it. I think that's just my best.
You can only get better, you'll never get worse.

Speaker 1 (59:03):
I think that is a great advice.

Speaker 2 (59:05):
I think that mirrors a lot of whenever people ask
me about like just creative endeavors in general, like how
do I get started? It's like, well, the main thing
that separates me from from other people who haven't yet
made a YouTube channel or or gone into art or
doing something is just starting. Like that's that's also it's
just like if you don't take the first step and
commit to doing it, then it'll just never start.

Speaker 1 (59:29):
So yeah, true, you have to start something.

Speaker 3 (59:34):
I'll add to that, you know, for folks who are
just trying to start up like things in general, look
into something called like lean development. Lean development is you know,
all lean thinking. You know, it's it's really helpful. It
talks about things like getting like an MVP out and
start you know, testing and and don't don't be shy,

(59:54):
like look everyone starts somewhere, right, Yeah, so you're for
past is gonna be bad, it's gonna be ugly, it's
gonna be it's might not even.

Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
Be playable, non functional.

Speaker 3 (01:00:06):
But you've got to start somewhere and people will give
you advice and they'll give you their honest opinion, and
you know, don't be shy from those because boy, if
you think the first thing you're gonna come out is
gonna be like ultra polished and no one hates it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:20):
No, you got another thing coming, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:00:24):
General content creation, General creator feedback is just whatever raw
thing you came up with, go out to market asap
and just get feedback a sap.

Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:00:37):
You know. The other thing we were talking We have
a little conversation with all these interviews before the show start.

Speaker 1 (01:00:43):
One thing we're talking about is.

Speaker 3 (01:00:44):
Like how all the people may not understand this, but
a lot of the indie developers just like know each other,
Like yeah, like you guys won't believe Yeah, I know
it's a secret that you're hearing from now, but all
these indie deaths chances to start, they know each other, right,
And it kind of goes back to what James was saying,
like Hey, just you know, ask these questions and like

(01:01:06):
before you know it, Like you've got a couple of
like friends who've been done it, Like there's no reason
to reinvent the wheel. Like there's a lot of questions
that they also asked at some point or another and
they just know the answer and they can save you
a lot of time if you just ask.

Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
Yep, none of us all right, smart as all of us?

Speaker 4 (01:01:28):
Yeah, yeah, Like for example, I know you had Mazzy
and dress Ray from Altarium Shift.

Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
On the show before.

Speaker 4 (01:01:36):
And Matzi saved me so many headaches with running this Kickstarter.
I mean, he is such a sweet person and so helpful.
He really was my paddle in the middle of the
ocean with this. He told me everything to avoid everything,
that I should focus on the mistakes and the issues
and that really that goes for everything. And one of

(01:02:00):
the questions I do get the most, especially from Reddit
as people just asking like how did you form a team?
And like how do you find people to work with?
And like I said earlier, if you see somebody making
something that you think is awesome and you're getting excited
about it, send them a message and tell them, hey,
I am super excited about this awesome thing you posted, like,
let's chat, and more often than not, you'll you'll find

(01:02:25):
a new friend and quite possibly someone to work with,
you know, if they're not working on a project and
you both agree on how a game should be made,
or you can both get excited about it. Well, right there,
you can start working on something together, and even just
not in a team. It's it's always good to learn

(01:02:47):
things from people who have already been there and done it.

Speaker 5 (01:02:50):
It's invaluable. It's invaluable.

Speaker 1 (01:02:53):
Thank you so much for that.

Speaker 3 (01:02:54):
Yeah, it's just it's just comes to show that a
lot of this, like this space is very collaborative. It's
not like competitive.

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
Yeah, and that's exactly what reverts.

Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
That's exactly what Altarium Shift guys we're talking about too.

Speaker 3 (01:03:07):
Yeah, absolutely, and for those interviews, check out our previous
interviews the Sea. Yeah, all right, moving on, we do
have another question speaking of like you know, putting things
an engine, like what software you're currently using to develop
this game is another question that we've got.

Speaker 5 (01:03:27):
Sure, sure, I get this one.

Speaker 4 (01:03:28):
A lot and a lot of people are surprised, but
Seed of Nossage is actually built off of a modern
expanded version of the RPG Maker engine. And while what
I'm doing is not necessarily very easy to do in
that engine, you you really kind of have to break
it down and expand the engine into something else entirely.

(01:03:49):
But the beauty of that engine is that it takes
care of a lot of really boring framework things like
databases and tracking numbers and stats and things for items
working with that, and that's really the biggest reason why
I chose that engine to go with, because I've also
used good Oh and I've also use Unity, and I'm
familiar with those environments and i hate them to my core.

Speaker 5 (01:04:14):
But the tool.

Speaker 4 (01:04:18):
Itself really allows me to make this game a lot
faster than I would if I had to sit there
and stare at a visual studio see sharp script for
a very long time because it takes care of a
lot of the boring stuff that I hate, like databases.
And with my coder on my team, who is super
incredible and comes from a realm way beyond game game

(01:04:42):
coding and scripting, it has been so amazing to work
with because basically, if I need anything to be done,
I just tell them and they're like, no problem, I'll
figure it out, you know. And and so that's been
amazing and that's been a big key to using this.
But really any tool that you choose is going to

(01:05:03):
be great. The best engine is the one that you're
good at point.

Speaker 2 (01:05:06):
That's exactly where I was gonna kind of steer that
here is like you know, sometimes asking about the game engine,
it kind of feels like, oh, what kind of canvas
did you paint on? It's like, well, I mean I could, yeah,
here's what I'm using, But really you could paint on anything,
and you know, it might give you some characteristics to

(01:05:27):
start with, but after a few layers of paint, you're
not even going to notice that the canvas is there,
and it should really disappear, and it clearly does in
this case.

Speaker 5 (01:05:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:05:38):
Yeah, And that's that was actually a kind of a
big like goal for me originally deciding to use the engine,
because I really really wanted to push it to a
point where I was basically one of the only people
who was was doing and pushing and showing that you

(01:05:59):
can do anything you want want as long as you
just put enough effort and have the know how to
how to do it. And it's actually been really cool
because I've been riched out to by people that actually
work for like Gotcha Gotcha Games, who own and produce
and update that engine, and now they're talking about having

(01:06:22):
us help them make the next iteration of the engine
because I think I think this kind of thing shows that,
like people want to make compelling and beautiful, beautiful things,
and as someone who's making an engine, you should make
that as open source and easy as possible. I mean,
being able to use modern shaders and things like that
should just be native. So it's been kind of cool

(01:06:44):
talking with them and being able to give them my
perspectives on like how they realistically should bring that engine
forward and the future of it. But yeah, like we said,
at the end of the day, the best tool is
the one that you're very skilled at and the one
that lets you get the work done fastest. And that
that's going to really help with the development time too.
It's going to help us avoid development. Hell, it's going

(01:07:06):
to make it so that we can we can create
and pump out content at a much faster rate, which
is going to be cool.

Speaker 1 (01:07:14):
Yeah, and just.

Speaker 2 (01:07:15):
Yeah, getting it getting an m VP, like black Bulk
was talking about a minimum viable product that is like
and being able to prototype and play around with game mechanics.
Just being able to start that up real quickly is yeah,
cannot be understated.

Speaker 1 (01:07:30):
So that's well.

Speaker 4 (01:07:31):
And also a lot of the drawbacks that that the
older engines had aren't aren't so much an issue anymore,
like porting porting the games to consoles and everything is
not an issue at all. So yeah, it's great, it's
it's it's just fine.

Speaker 1 (01:07:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:07:48):
I think that there's a reason why we're seeing this,
like maybe reluctant to say renaissance, but like there's definitely
like an uptick in very quality indie RPG springing up
maybe the last couple of years especially, and and moving forward.
So this is a very exciting time. As we've said

(01:08:10):
many times, I think on this show, this is a
very exciting time to be in the space. Okay, so
here is another fun question for you. This is this
is more of a fun question. Where do you store
all the energy to keep up with the game the Kickstart.

Speaker 4 (01:08:29):
I was actually just talking to this, Yeah, my Discord
friends were basically forcing me to go to.

Speaker 5 (01:08:38):
Sleep last shar because the Kickstarter has come.

Speaker 4 (01:08:43):
Out like the blur of reality. Now, because there's always
a million things I should be doing and can do.
So I basically wake up at six o'clock in the
morning and kind of have quiet time checking up on
all the stuff that's happened, and then I get to work.
And if I'm not working on like the camp page itself,
I've I've been in so many meetings with publishers, manufacturers, distributors,

(01:09:09):
you name it, basically trying to trying to bring more
rewards to the to people that might want something tangible
and physical. And I don't know if you saw, but
like we were trying to kind of do things a
little bit different. So instead of doing like a standard
art book, I really wanted to bring back that nineties
players Guide vibe like a magazine exactly, and so we

(01:09:34):
kind of mashed that up. It's going to be like
a smaller form old school players guide that shows you
were all the secrets, stat sheets and and just fill
to the brim with tons of artwork. We're working with
an amazing artist named Marcel mar Muski from from France
who is paints in watercolor, like traditional Japanese watercolor, and

(01:09:57):
it's incredible because there's a texture that you get from
that that paint drying on the canvas. That's just irreplaceable.

Speaker 2 (01:10:04):
And so the art that's on our screen right here
between you and I is that artist.

Speaker 4 (01:10:09):
He's also done the artwork for Chained Echoes for Moonstone Island.
Alter m Shift worked with him, and he's really cool
because he's a huge j RPG fan too, and everything
he does is basically JRPG adjacent and stylized. So I
was really happy to work with him, and I'll be

(01:10:30):
really happy to completely fill that player's guide with tons
of character artwork and just little touches everywhere. So I
thought that was kind of a fun way to kind
of put our own spin, like our own retro spin
on it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:44):
I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:45):
I remember, like just when I one of my first
strategy guys that I had just spent way too much
time with was like a original Pokemon red and blue
guy that had like the stat blocks with like the
different like overlays of like the different stats, the art
for each Pokemon and like high resolution, and they were
all this awesome watercolor style. So it's like just taking

(01:11:06):
all the right nostalgia vibes.

Speaker 3 (01:11:09):
Here and okay, here is another question speaking of the gameplay,
and just like letting your characters power up and just
like sort of like Bulldoz, you know, opponents, potentially, would

(01:11:31):
this game be considered some kind of power fantasy or no,
this is this is really just within reason that you
can sort of take advantage of some strategies.

Speaker 4 (01:11:43):
Within reason is a good question. I basically my goal
at the end of the game is that if a
if a very normal player wants to play just through
the storyline and kind of shoot through it, beat those
main story bosses, and get to the end of the
game to where the credits roll. I want them to

(01:12:03):
be able to do that without without too much extraneous
activity or grinding or crafting. I want them to be
able to basically just kind of enjoy the game if
they want to and as they would like to, I
should say. And then with side content, with optional content,
and with endgame content, I have a lot more free

(01:12:26):
range to really ramp up.

Speaker 5 (01:12:28):
The difficulty in certain situations. I'm not a huge.

Speaker 4 (01:12:31):
Fan of just like gear or stat check difficulty though,
where it's like, hey, if you got the levels and
you got the gear, then you'll be fine. I kind
of like, I kind of like those little roadblocks to
be a little bit more strategic, so you might get
stuck and see a game overscreen because that optional mini
boss uses some sort of abilities or things that you

(01:12:54):
haven't seen before. And so the challenge is like figuring
out what they're doing that's mess you up and then
find again strategy that works against it. And I've got
a lot of people that have messaged me. Actually we've
been talking about this, I mean discord the last few
days about difficulty specifically, and and yeah, the challenge is
kind of just finding that middle ground. But the consensus

(01:13:15):
kind of seems to be that if the brutally challenging
stuff is optional, then then everybody's kind of happy because
the real hardcore players have a lot to sink their
teeth into it. And I'm a big end game guy too.
I really love when games kind of open up with
the hardest and coolest content so you can kind of

(01:13:36):
hang around for a few more extra hours before you
go fight.

Speaker 5 (01:13:39):
The lost boss. Yeah, so i.

Speaker 4 (01:13:41):
Got a lot of plans for the endgame, and and
I'm just trying to find that middle ground where where
there is plenty of challenge if you want to go
and tackle it. And a lot of that optional content
is going to require that you're spending some time making
your builds, getting your gear, and you'll get awarded for
making those good builds. So I'm not I'm not tying

(01:14:02):
it down completely.

Speaker 5 (01:14:03):
I do kind of want.

Speaker 4 (01:14:04):
To let people min max and break break it a
little bit with a few but but but within reason.
So you know, like if they get that perfect build,
they get those perfect items.

Speaker 5 (01:14:16):
Then yeah, they can be a little bit crazy if they.

Speaker 1 (01:14:18):
Want to cool. I love that.

Speaker 2 (01:14:19):
That's that's something in my RPG reviews I like to
refer to as ludicrous efficiency, and it's wonderful. I love
being able to connect systems together just to really synergize
and like throw numbers into the to the stratosphere if
I can.

Speaker 3 (01:14:36):
Yes, So so I'm glad to hear that too, because
you know, they're they're generally two kinds of like difficulty
like that I see in RPGs. There's difficulty by numbers
and stats, and then there's difficulty by mechanics. Right, yeah,
so what you're describing is difficulty by mechanics more like

(01:14:57):
like you have to you you're nogging a little bit
like what skill would work here?

Speaker 1 (01:15:04):
Like ptas five is probably.

Speaker 3 (01:15:06):
Like a great uh you know the example where like hey,
this boss is very hard unless you have this class
and the skill, and it just negates that difficulty so
that you can I mean, you still have to work
a little bit, but you got to play around with
the skills and what not to get through it.

Speaker 1 (01:15:25):
Otherwise.

Speaker 3 (01:15:25):
I mean, sure you could just buldoze this boss, but
it's going to be ten times harder. You try to
build those the boss you can.

Speaker 4 (01:15:35):
But yeah, if you want to grind thirty the holes
where you're supposed you can right through it, but you
also just grinded for that many hours.

Speaker 1 (01:15:45):
So yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (01:15:47):
Would rather spend thirty hours trying to circumnavigate the correct
direction than spend five doing just the storyline you used
to do.

Speaker 1 (01:15:55):
I know you want me to do game, but I'm
not going to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:59):
I am going to brute force my way over that
mountain rather than going around it. Yeah, even if it
takes ten times as long.

Speaker 3 (01:16:06):
I think the bosses that RPG fans remember most all
the ones that are not hard by stats. No one
remembers the one that are just difficult because they're they're
super tank and it takes ten hour to be like, No,
it's always the really.

Speaker 1 (01:16:23):
Cool, Oh that one boss.

Speaker 3 (01:16:25):
Oh, I remember, like they did this crazy thing and
then like if you use skill and then you can
negate it and then it's you know, those are the
things that we gush about so I cannot wait.

Speaker 2 (01:16:36):
Or sometimes we gush about the boss that you can
one shot because you used.

Speaker 1 (01:16:39):
A revive spell on it instead.

Speaker 3 (01:16:41):
Yes, you were never you will never forget those right,
put me out.

Speaker 5 (01:16:49):
You know, it's funny.

Speaker 1 (01:16:49):
Through RPG nerds. If you guys can't tell, right, it's funny.

Speaker 2 (01:16:53):
You should mention though, like at the end, going in
like doing all like the endgame stuff, because I feel
like there's nothing I like more to do more in
an RPG than procrastinate against saving the entire world from.

Speaker 1 (01:17:05):
Like the fate.

Speaker 5 (01:17:06):
Absolutely, I completely agree.

Speaker 2 (01:17:08):
I need to protect the world from this impending doom.
But also I'm going to go fishing in this well
so I can get the dragon sword. You know, it's
like what, who even how how does that work? It
doesn't matter, you just do it because the guide said so.

Speaker 5 (01:17:25):
Totally agree.

Speaker 4 (01:17:26):
And I think that plays into pacing directly too, because
you can't just be fighting and fighting and fighting and
you know, doing these dungeons forever. One of the best
parts about it is you do something hard and then
you get to go back to that cozy new village
with that beautiful music playing, and you got mini games
and their side quest and you could just hang out

(01:17:47):
in that region for a while.

Speaker 2 (01:17:48):
It comes back to contrast, right Yeah, and like slice
of life moments with the characters too, It's like you
can't forget about those those moments to really like the
texture of their personalities in just normal scenes.

Speaker 4 (01:18:03):
And it's a great way to bring in humor and
everything else too. And I'm a big fan of humor
in these games too. I like to take the story
very seriously, but of course humor is part of part
of the genre.

Speaker 5 (01:18:16):
It's necessary.

Speaker 2 (01:18:19):
Buck when I've been talking about this recently, where like
it feels like people have kind of forgotten how to
put humor into Well. When I say people, I think
we can say like there there's a certain Triple A
Studio kind of mentality where it's like, oh, we put
all this funding into a game, we cannot have a
sense of humor anymore, Like there's too much money to

(01:18:40):
be funny here. But like, but growing up, that was
like that was half the game was like ha ha,
here's this funny like I don't know, but what is
puff puff like Like?

Speaker 1 (01:18:54):
It's a staple.

Speaker 2 (01:18:55):
It's a staple of the genre to have some stupid
jokes that just make no sense and just kind of
make the world feel it's it's the absurdity of some
scenarios that can make a world feel even more real,
which is kind of weird to say it, right.

Speaker 5 (01:19:13):
Yeah, yeah, we were talking about Earth.

Speaker 4 (01:19:16):
I think that's a great example of that.

Speaker 1 (01:19:18):
Oh my god, yes, yeah, I.

Speaker 4 (01:19:19):
Mean almost every dialogue in that game could either make
you crack up out loud or think deeply and yeah,
the world feels real, and when you look at it,
there's no reason why that world should feel real.

Speaker 1 (01:19:33):
I know, I know.

Speaker 2 (01:19:35):
Well part of it is I grew up in that world,
I think.

Speaker 4 (01:19:37):
Yeah, I mean, yes, nineteen ninety X small town America.

Speaker 3 (01:19:42):
Well, okay, we do have some more questions. Yes, these
are probably going to be a little deeper if they're
they're wondering if there's anything that you would like to
unique that you and reading in this game that you
have just sort of always wanted to see in other

(01:20:04):
games and it just didn't But you're like, you know what,
I'm going to put this in my game.

Speaker 4 (01:20:13):
I don't know if there's one very specific thing that
I went out of my way to have.

Speaker 5 (01:20:19):
In this game.

Speaker 4 (01:20:20):
I think my process and what I did was more
of taking a look at many different things that I
liked in other games and cherry picking each of those
those elements and then bringing them together. I've never really
set out with per Pixels in general to reinvent the wheel.

(01:20:41):
I've more wanted to celebrate the things that I've loved
about games in an unashamed sort of manner. And so
I don't think that there's a very specific thing but
I but I think that I have paid put a
lot of effort into making sure that all of the
little aspect are are cohes kind of the best of

(01:21:04):
the world and cohesive together. Like we talked about earlier
about kind of smashing the mystery of a random encounter
with on map visible enemies, I mean, it's just kind
of taking the little things that I like about about
those games. And also like if you run into the
back of an enemy encounter before they see you, you
get to attack first, you know, Just like all of

(01:21:26):
these sort of little these little elements that I really
like and like forget the gameplay loop or the exploration loop,
for example, in the game. It's kind of just a
further thing from that. So I break it down into
into sections that all work. So at the at the
top level, at least fairly early in the campaign, you've
got your overworld map, and I think everybody here, of course,

(01:21:51):
we all love our pgs, and so we all love
our overworld maps.

Speaker 5 (01:21:54):
It's just a given.

Speaker 4 (01:21:56):
And so you start on this sort of abstracted, zoomed
out world to explore. And from that overworld map you
can enter regions what I call regions, and these are
more like villages or cities, you know, sort of your hubs,
and this is where you're going to get a lot
of content. But instead of nostalgia, each region, like, even

(01:22:19):
though there's an overarching story and there's quests that take
you across multiple regions, each region is also kind of
a self contained area with its own content and its
own rewards, and completing those regional rewards gets you regional
or regional goals gets your regional rewards.

Speaker 5 (01:22:40):
And so you've got villages or you've got cities, you've
got outposts, you have.

Speaker 4 (01:22:45):
Like a base camp in a forest. These are like
our hub kind of areas, very traditional all the games
have kind of done this, but then we have field
areas which are specifically attached to that region hub area.
So from the overworld map to a village, this village
might have three different paths that you can get to
from that village, maybe crossing a river and going into

(01:23:07):
a forest. Maybe you can climb down a well, and
there's an entire sewer system under this village, or there's
a mountain pass, and so these field areas are attached
to that hub and generally the quest content that you
get in that region will be accomplished within those fields.
And then to further that, within the fields are dungeons
and you can access those and play through them, and

(01:23:30):
so those field areas are where the game is kind
of open in its own contained way, and so we've
got like shrines in the fields, like many many, many
many RPGs, this will refill your health and your resources
and all that, but these also unlock fast travel points
within that field area. So if like we were talking

(01:23:52):
about Derek, sometimes it's nice to just procrastinate and waste time,
and that's kind of what I'm focusing the gameplay loop
of these regions is if you like a specific region,
you can spend more time there and there's content to expand.
And that way I didn't have to make a world map.
That's essentially you just moving over empty space texture forever
and get to these things, like the world map is

(01:24:14):
packed with the way these contents things. And then within
the region, it lets us make make any environment within
that place and give you a place to explore and
find tons of treasure and go find those dungeons. And
with the shrines, the further that you push into those fields,

(01:24:36):
you can just warp back to town, restock, change your
characters out, do whatever you need, and then warp back
and push ahead to get to that dungeon. And so
that loop is is pretty much everywhere in the game.
You go to a new region, you pick up some content,
you buy new equipment, you do some minigames, push into
the fields, and it's total exploration in the field and

(01:24:56):
just find find people, find challenge, just find secrets, just
treasure everywhere. I'm absolutely addicted to plopping treasure chests in
every hidden place I possibly can.

Speaker 5 (01:25:09):
Lot.

Speaker 4 (01:25:10):
Yeah, sometimes I go crazy. I'm like doing level design
and I get done with it. I'm like, this looks good,
and then I look and there's like thirteen treasure chests
on a single mat, and I'm like, I think I've
gone too far. I need to like maybe delete ten
of those. I know.

Speaker 2 (01:25:25):
That's the thing, like, because I know that if they're there,
then I'm going to go look for them, and that
means I'm going to find ninety five percent of them,
and then I'm just gonna be like loaded down with
all this rare loot. So it's like you got to
make sure that like they're they're strategically located and that
they won't you know, weigh overpower me.

Speaker 4 (01:25:43):
Yeah, hopefully, so, I guess to answer the question very shortly,
I never set out for one specific unique thing. I've
not been trying to reinvent the wheel. I'm just trying
to polish and and make each of the elements that
make the game as fun as possible.

Speaker 2 (01:26:00):
Yeah, no new pizza ingredients, just your favorite ingredients.

Speaker 1 (01:26:06):
You know. I credit where credits do you?

Speaker 3 (01:26:08):
For folks who want to innovate, But if they stake
their entire game on like a hinge innovation and just
neglect all the other components, you know, that's that that
typically doesn't make for a very great game. On the contrary, right,
if you focus on the fundamentals and really get them right,

(01:26:31):
it is the foundation for very powerful storytelling. So I
am happy to hear that that is the philosophy here. Okay,
so maybe not necessarily innovative, But if there is one
feature that your team is super proud of, what might
that be?

Speaker 4 (01:26:52):
Ooh, I think the combat system. I think it's something
that people are gonna have a lot of fun with,
mainly because we're layering options for strategy and all of
these kind of play into each other into the grand
scheme of things. So we're aiming for normal fights to

(01:27:13):
be fast. I don't want people to get stuck in
ten minute long random battles. So I think normal battles
if you're playing your cards right, I want you to
basically just be able to I like normal battles being
kind of your testing ground, seeing what like what can
really get the big numbers to pop up, and and
to like slowly educate you about certain dangers and statuses

(01:27:33):
and things that that can happen in the area you're at.
But it's a it's a turn order based, turn based system,
so they're the combat engine is checking every turn for
what's happening in that turn, so you can place certain
status effects or do enough damage to an enemy in

(01:27:56):
one go that you can stagger them enough to drop
them back moreltiple turn orders.

Speaker 5 (01:28:02):
There's also.

Speaker 4 (01:28:05):
Somewhat complex but actually pretty simple elemental sort of affinity
trade off where everything is kind of strong against another
and weak against another with that, and there's a lot
of a built like for example, our elementalist Alistair the
Obsidian Mage, he has a really cool set of abilities

(01:28:25):
where he can change the weather during combat. And the
cool thing about that is that weather does affect combat
if you're in an area where it's raining, Lightning damage
is amplified and also arcs to the other enemies. That
it basically takes a single target spell and it makes
it hit all enemies, and so there's different effects like that,

(01:28:46):
and so his sort of specialty is that he can
actually change the weather on the fly, thus giving himself
those extra benefits even if the weather doesn't do it.
The danger is that the enemies will take advantage of
that too, So the enemies are going to specifically harder enemies.
Mini bosses and bosses are going to try to exploit

(01:29:07):
you in every chance they get, they're going to try
to turn the battle. Basically, their goal is to stop
you from from doing anything as best that they can. Now,
certain enemies are better at that than others. Some just
stand no chance. But sure, it's it's kind of that
that that feeling where at the beginning of every turn,

(01:29:29):
you're like, you do have multiple choices to move here,
and none of them are necessarily wrong. Yeah, but if
you but if you want to, you can really exploit things.
And for me, that's fun, and it's it's a lot
of fun when the enemies are trying to exploit you too,
because they of course you're going to get mad and
then you're going to want to kill them a million

(01:29:49):
times more.

Speaker 2 (01:29:52):
So this is kind of tangentially touching on another question
or or raising another question for me. And that's that
I feel like sometimes with when it come to things
like status effects and very strategies, a lot of a
lot of games kind of sidestep the issue of like
them being pretty powerful by just not allowing bosses to
become status effected. What's what's currently your approach to balancing

(01:30:17):
status effects for those kinds of like major boss fights.

Speaker 4 (01:30:21):
Certain bosses are immune to certain status effects, but no
boss is going to be completely immune. It's an easy
way to kind of balance bosses and make them extra hard.
But I feel like if we're telling people to be
doing this stuff the whole game, like exploit and find what,
like what element this person is weak to or whatever,

(01:30:42):
and then like you get to the actual heart challenges
and it's like, forget about it. You can't do any
of that stuff. Just stuffer as they're charging their final
ultimate for the third time.

Speaker 5 (01:30:52):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:30:53):
Yeah, I think I think it's part of the fun.
And I liked that a lot about Like Corona Trigger
is a good example, well for a lot of things,
but but I loved in that game where when you
enter a new dungeon or area, the enemies are going
to show you what the boss' strategies are basically, like
they're going to show you that they're gonna use specific

(01:31:14):
elements or you have to use magic or physical, or
they're gonna shift, you know, like like in Magist, like
it's gonna shift where you can only do this type
of damage or you can only do that type of damage.
And then you get to the boss and it's that strategy,
but it's maximized and it's way harder.

Speaker 5 (01:31:30):
Now.

Speaker 4 (01:31:31):
I like that sort of just teaching through through smaller fights,
but it's it's way more fun when you can use
all of the tools at your disposal on the on
the hardest fights. So no, I'd rather just let them,
let them be exploitable.

Speaker 2 (01:31:46):
That makes a lot of sense. That's good to hear.

Speaker 4 (01:31:49):
And there's obviously very specific fights that are very tied
to the story which will be immune to certain things,
but that that's because that's how it is in the story.
And and I'll always put little little backdoor strategies for
people to try and figure out.

Speaker 1 (01:32:07):
Nice.

Speaker 3 (01:32:08):
Excellent. So I've only got two more questions. The first
one is will there be mini games? And if so,
can you tell us a little bit about them?

Speaker 4 (01:32:19):
There absolutely will be minigames. I adore minigames. I'm hoping
to have kind of unique ones in in a lot
of different regions. I'd like to try quite a few
different things right right now, there's there's one minigame that's
confirmed because of our community goals we've been running with

(01:32:41):
the Kickstarter, and that is a chicken racing mini game
that is a little more hardcore that I think people
are going to realize. It's actually based on an inside
joke from one of the first live devlogues I ever did,
where a chicken had decided to climb a tree right
outside my window and start coacawing during the stream, and

(01:33:04):
so everyone's just listening to this cacophony.

Speaker 3 (01:33:08):
Can climb trees. And I saw one on the news.
I'm like, what do you mean it's on the tree,
like what?

Speaker 4 (01:33:17):
And so we added that one that's like a mini
game that also has a little mini quest line attached
to it too, and I kind of like that, but
but I plan to I plan to have lots of
miny little mini games and diversions just in general, just
fun little things to to do and and get some rewards.
One of the first stretch goals we unlocked is a
uh is something called Abner's Traveling Slatorium, which is like

(01:33:42):
a like a traveling circus mixed with a like an
arena boss rush kind of mode. Okay and uh, and
so you'll be able to face waves of harder and
harder stuff for better rewards. And there's actually like a
betting mechanic there too, and yeah, so I mean, I'd
love to add fishing, and we've been me and the

(01:34:03):
team have been talking about fishing, but we actually would
really love to do fishing in a different way. I
can't really say how that's gonna be yet, but I've
been seeing some stuff that's been really inspiring. Like there's
another game that was actually just on Kickstarter, I think
they just finished. It's called Isle of Reveries. It's kind
of like a links Awakening style game.

Speaker 5 (01:34:25):
Yeah, and he had a fishing minigame in there. So
I saw it on his little update and I pulled
it up. And his fishing minigame is that you have
like a.

Speaker 4 (01:34:32):
Pokemon one on one battle with this fish.

Speaker 5 (01:34:37):
The artwork is so good and so funny. I just
thought it was the most unique, interesting thing I've ever
seen for a fishing mini game.

Speaker 2 (01:34:46):
I love the idea of a fishing minigame just done
off the wall. I mean, I think that really there
are many debates about what makes a game a j
RPG as as opposed from just an RPG, and and
one of those I think that people overlook is the
inclusion of a fishing minigame. I think that that is
kind of a foundational and and everything else is kind

(01:35:09):
of secondary. In fact, uh you know, little known fact
the best known best selling JRPG of all time was
Best pro Fishing. So it's true.

Speaker 3 (01:35:22):
I can't argue against facts. Actually I I'd lied. We
now have two final questions. Okay, semi final question. How
do you deal with burnouts?

Speaker 1 (01:35:37):
Sorry? I miscounted, that was my fault. How do you
do How does the team with burnouts?

Speaker 5 (01:35:42):
That's a good question.

Speaker 4 (01:35:45):
I can really only speak mainly for myself because with
the team and with people working with me, a big
thing for me is like never really never really asking
them to do some thing that I wouldn't want to
do or feel comfortable ass and they're doing in real life.
I don't I don't want them to ever feel burnout

(01:36:08):
or feel like this is something they have to do.
They're very passionate and awesome people, so they want to
do it and that's what's what's so cool about it.
And so for my structure with them, I really want
to just like offer many different projects for them to
work on and let them kind of pick and choose,
because I really truly believe if they're they're passionate about
something and having fun they're going to do a way, way,

(01:36:30):
way better job than if it's something they feel like,
oh god, I've got to I've got to make a
new UI or something, you know, and like they're not
gonna be happy about it. So as far as for them,
I just try. I'm just going to try to do
everything I can to let them be creative and do
what they want to enjoy. For myself, I'm a very
happy workaholic when it comes to developing indie games. I

(01:36:53):
don't purposely mean to, but sometimes when I get into it,
I can just sit there and do it for twelve
or fourteen hours straight without even real life it until
I realize I'm starving to death.

Speaker 2 (01:37:04):
You like, come out of the zone and you're like,
oh my god, you have a beer.

Speaker 1 (01:37:07):
Oh wait, that's how I got this, That's how it happened.

Speaker 5 (01:37:15):
But burnout is real.

Speaker 4 (01:37:17):
It's I feel like, actually, I've learned more about dealing
with burnout and keeping my mental health in order over
the last six months than I ever have. Basically since
we started really pushing for the Kickstarter and marketing and
trying to get the game out there and build a
buzz so we can do even crazier, cooler things. I

(01:37:40):
did put myself through a few phases where it was unhealthy,
very evidently unhealthy, the amount that I was working and
pushing myself. It's a bit hard for me because I
do enjoy it so much, so I can do it
without feeling like I'm I'm hurting myself. But it's not good.
I'll just say, like, what I realize is that if

(01:38:01):
you push yourself to that point where you're you're over
working so much, the quality of your work is going
to get worse. You're you're better off working six hours
and then getting a good night's sleep than working twelve hours,
and the quality of the last six is just horrible.
So I think avoiding burnout is don't set very unrealistic

(01:38:22):
goals for yourself. Don't be don't be mean on yourself.
Nothing is worth, you know, not just sacrificing your mental health,
but maybe making you give up on a project because
you just can't mentally deal with it anymore. And so
so don't don't put put two unrealistic goals on yourself.

(01:38:42):
Give yourself smaller goals that you can accomplish one at
a time, and you'll feel a lot better and just
I like to take take personal time to be reinspired
by new things. Go on a walk, or go on
a trip, or or try something new or you know whatever,
whatever lights your heart on fire and makes you feel

(01:39:02):
great and makes you feel happy or inspires you. Just
always make time to do that, even if you feel
like you need to crunch a bit, because again, the
quality of work when you're feeling inspired and you're feeling motivated,
it's going to be so much better than if you're
just feeling like you'd rather die than stare it at
the screen any longer.

Speaker 2 (01:39:21):
Say, that's some great advice. May we all manage to
find a way to internalize that at some point.

Speaker 1 (01:39:28):
I think especially for folks who are.

Speaker 3 (01:39:33):
Who are you know, very much like go gettered and
just Yeah, I had the word in my head when
I was when I was listening in, but now I
lost the word high achievers like people who are like
high achievers. You have a hard time.

Speaker 1 (01:39:52):
People are highly motivated and highly motivated individuals.

Speaker 2 (01:39:56):
I think I know the word you're trying to think of,
but I can't quite remember. I know, no, ambitious, ambitious.

Speaker 3 (01:40:05):
You have a hard time distinguishing between you know, if
you're overdoing it or not working hard enough. It's in
the back of your mind like, yeah, but I don't
want to regret this like a week from now, because
I didn't work just a little harder to get.

Speaker 1 (01:40:21):
That little bit of thing.

Speaker 3 (01:40:22):
And then you know, when when I run into that wall,
it's like, well, and I just worked a little harder before.

Speaker 1 (01:40:29):
I don't want that regret.

Speaker 3 (01:40:30):
But then you end up burning out and you don't
even realize you're burning out until you take a step back, like, WHOA, Okay,
what was I doing?

Speaker 4 (01:40:38):
Yeah, And I think that's that's dangerous too, because if
you're not you might just think, oh, I'm just so
tired because I've been working a lot. But then you
start to realize that every time you try to work
on that project, there's just like this creeping apathy setting
in because it's just you've turned it into your own
enemy basically to continue working on it. And that's the

(01:40:59):
real the real risk. The real risk is just giving
up and never getting to accomplish.

Speaker 5 (01:41:03):
What you really want to do.

Speaker 1 (01:41:04):
Yeah, absolutely take your time right.

Speaker 3 (01:41:08):
One last question, This is from my friends still Alive.
By the way, we've got a one of your developer
actually came in I think it's.

Speaker 1 (01:41:17):
Yeah, so yeah, one thing we're talking about burnout. It's like,
oh you hear that. Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:41:25):
So the last question that we've got is this, and
this is some of my friends still alive. It's a
super chiy question question for James about indie games in general.
So this is not necessarily just just yours, but anything.
Do you feel your game might not get the attention
it deserves because of the like indie game label.

Speaker 4 (01:41:47):
Mm, that's a pretty nuanced question. There's a lot going
on there because it's it's hard to quantify what the
game deserves. First of all, Yeah, I maybe previously I

(01:42:09):
would have said, yeah, indie games have a hard time
get getting out there and and and being seen and
taken seriously. But I don't know if that's really the
case as we're moving forward, because obviously there's there's a
lot of issues in the Triple A space, in corporate

(01:42:30):
gaming in general, there's a lot of kind of uncertainty
with the the studios that have led the industry for
so long, and yet indies kind of we're all just
doing our thing. I mean, for for us, it's it's
a lot more about needing to make that that passion

(01:42:53):
project than it is about needing to make sure that
the shareholders don't cut your head off next quarter. And
and so I really think that that indies games and
ani game developers and people who love indie games are
aren't that that that space of relevance is only going
to grow, especially if things continue and and now we've

(01:43:15):
got we've got a lot of people kind of investing
in that with like the Triple I Initiative and some
of these other cool things. Personally, I think actually indie
games are always going to have a very important place
in gaming and and in a big way preserving the
spirit of what made games so cool to begin with.

Speaker 2 (01:43:37):
What is this Triple I initiative that you're talking about.
I don't think I've heard that phrase before.

Speaker 4 (01:43:42):
This was some big stream that's happened earlier this week.
I noticed a Sacrificer was on there from from d RPGs.

Speaker 1 (01:43:54):
Tell me about before this show started.

Speaker 4 (01:43:58):
Yeah, it's basically a showcase for for indies that are
pushing boundaries and really kind of bending the idea of
what indie developers can do, and stuff like that is
just awesome. But I think there's always a space for indies,
and right now, from my point of view, I think

(01:44:20):
I think the indie game world is stronger than ever.

Speaker 1 (01:44:23):
I think you're absolutely right. Yeah. Uh. And even.

Speaker 2 (01:44:29):
Biosick, who Baca mentioned before, I I hope I said
that right, they basically said the same thing, that it
feels like indies are kind of getting more attention now
than ever before.

Speaker 1 (01:44:40):
And I think that.

Speaker 2 (01:44:41):
That's absolutely absolutely true. Gosh, I I know that. I personally,
for like the first five six years of just making
you know, RPG reviews, I I am ashamed to admit it,
I didn't really do a whole lot of indie coverage.

Speaker 1 (01:44:57):
And and that's that's all.

Speaker 2 (01:44:59):
That's my bad, because as soon as I started covering
more indies, I started having more fun, you know, because
they just tell often a more concise and more distilled
experience and a great story. And because they don't have
time to waste your time, they don't have the funding
to build a game that wastes your time.

Speaker 4 (01:45:20):
It can be a benefit, yeah, to like do the
most within the confines of what you're.

Speaker 5 (01:45:26):
What you're able to.

Speaker 2 (01:45:27):
Yes, yes, uh, you know, constraints are a mother of
creativity for a lot of games.

Speaker 1 (01:45:33):
Back in the day.

Speaker 2 (01:45:34):
And it's true for indies as well. And it's just
and you're able to innovate in ways and experiment in
ways that like Final Fantasy can't, like Final Fantasy has
to stakeholders. Yeah, exactly, exactly, they can't. They can't just
include a weird like Frogger style fishing mini game in

(01:45:54):
Final Fantasy like seventeen or whatever, where you have to
you know, you know, gate the fish through all the
obstacles to get I just don't. I don't know, but
but like they can't do that. They I mean, they people,
I don't know. We'll see, we'll.

Speaker 1 (01:46:12):
See what happens.

Speaker 2 (01:46:12):
But indie games figuring out the best way to make
the best fishing mini games.

Speaker 3 (01:46:18):
The thing that I was telling Derek about earlier was
called the Indie Life Expoe, and that actually earlier today
and which we'll cover later on after the show, after
the interview, Well, we'll talk a little bit about it.
There's something like forty games or if not more than that,
all indies that and they're all very like polished games

(01:46:41):
that I have to sit through and like, okay, which
one do you guys care about? Did not have to
do some investigations, but yeah, so well, we'll talk more
about those, but I will say that from like a
small content creator perspective, I think maybe that's part of
the reason why indies is getting a lot more attraction too, because, uh,

(01:47:05):
there used to be a time where if you don't
have a triple A game budget company behind you, you're
not getting that name out there, right. But with small
content creators, with you know, the Twitch just streaming these games, like,
it's not hard to get these words out there to

(01:47:27):
a lot of people who are very dedicated. And the
thing is, the people are self selected, right. It's not
like getting a microphone and the microphone out of megaphone
megaphone and just like blasting out names and just screaming
things in either but rather people are you know, very
dedicated to certain channels like our own and some of

(01:47:51):
our friends who plays g RPGs. Those fans self select.
They are GRPG fans, They are the target audience. They
are the people who are about the stuff, and they
are the people that you need to get to. So
maybe not patting ourselves on the back a little bit,
but to me part at least part of the reason
why I think indie games, I mean Obviously, we've already

(01:48:13):
talked about the fact that indie games the quality has
just gotten better over the years, and there are more
new developers all the time getting to the space showcasing
their talents.

Speaker 1 (01:48:24):
So the fact that developing is more accessible.

Speaker 3 (01:48:27):
But for us to get those words out there, you
don't need a crazy budget anymore to get the game
out there. Like, people will find you one way or another,
and they will self select the people who really care
about this stuff. They will find you if anything, which
is that's I think that's the the shift in in

(01:48:50):
in thinking, right.

Speaker 5 (01:48:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:48:52):
So definitely a great time to be alive. And it's
not like an overly crowded space either, you know, probably
because the games are literally what just Derek, just that
there's short enough that tells you an amazing story, but
not long enough to like really overstate it. Welcome, You're
moving on to the next thing and enjoin another world. Yeah,

(01:49:14):
super great time to be, uh you know in this
space now. And yeah, and that basically completes all the
questions that I have on my end, Derek, do you
have any final questions for James?

Speaker 2 (01:49:27):
Yeah, well, I mean I do have the traditional way
to close this out I feel like every time I
interview and indie, I always want to ask them like.

Speaker 1 (01:49:37):
What is? What is?

Speaker 2 (01:49:38):
What is the question I should have asked? What is
one thing that like, you came on here, you're excited
to be here and tell everybody about this thing? And
then and then I never asked the question what should
I have asked you?

Speaker 3 (01:49:49):
What is?

Speaker 4 (01:49:49):
What is?

Speaker 1 (01:49:51):
Dare you?

Speaker 5 (01:49:59):
Wow? The that's tough.

Speaker 1 (01:50:00):
That's tough.

Speaker 2 (01:50:02):
Let's just catch all to make sure I don't screw
myself over as all, don't.

Speaker 5 (01:50:06):
I don't think that there.

Speaker 4 (01:50:07):
I think we we did talk cover everything that I
that I had hoped too.

Speaker 5 (01:50:11):
Yeah, I think it's been It's been great.

Speaker 1 (01:50:13):
Awesome, are right? Well?

Speaker 2 (01:50:16):
Man, this I think has turned into our longest interview
so far.

Speaker 1 (01:50:22):
Really, I'm here for it though.

Speaker 2 (01:50:26):
I very much enjoyed that, so thank you so much
for joining us.

Speaker 1 (01:50:29):
Man, it has been a bunchsusure.

Speaker 2 (01:50:31):
I cannot wait to get hands out when when I mean,
and I know it's way too early to even ask,
but yeah, demo.

Speaker 4 (01:50:39):
Yeah, actually probably sooner than you think, because as soon
as the campaign is over and we can actually focus again,
a lot of the demo has already done. For example,
I probably made the seventy six to eighty different map
level designs for the demo areas last year already. Basically

(01:51:00):
what we need to do after the campaign is there,
there's elements of it that I want to level up
to our post kickstarter level of polish. So I want
to get our pixel artists and sprit's making updates, adding
some new environmental animations and things, just kind of bringing
that that first hour plus of the game to the

(01:51:23):
level that I want the entire game to be at,
kind of a vertical slice. But my hope is to
have that done before the end of summer, so it's
actually a possibility that we could be there pretty quickly.

Speaker 2 (01:51:34):
That's very enticing everybody. If you're not already following the
game on Steam, well make sure you do. You can
find it on Steam, you can wish list it. That's
a very good positive signal that you should be sending
to Steam right now because this game absolutely deserves it.
And also you should probably go check out the kickstarter,
which again is linked. It's it's pinned as a as

(01:51:56):
a comment here that you can go click on and
then you can throw money at the game to help
make sure that really cool things happen. I think one
of your upcoming stretch goals is hitting well. One of
one of the further away ones that's just barely been
kind of shown is that there's a a stretch goal
for console releases, which is really really cool. And I

(01:52:19):
know that that there are other things that, like, we
can't guarantee yet about potential physicals sometime down the line,
but the more money you throw at it, the more
likely that it will be. So go, go give these
guys some support, because this looks like it's.

Speaker 1 (01:52:35):
Going to be so much fun.

Speaker 3 (01:52:39):
Oh my gosh, I can't almost there for the sixty
five k golds.

Speaker 2 (01:52:46):
Oh yeah, one of those. One of those goals was
also like an animey cut scenes throughout the.

Speaker 5 (01:52:50):
Game a few days ago.

Speaker 4 (01:52:55):
I think we talked about it in the chat at
some point, But the Lunar series one of my favorite
series of all time, and so the cut scenes felt
like a mandatory addition to the story. And I've got
an awesome animation team I'm working with called nether Ties Studio,
and they're currently watching all this info on Lunar and

(01:53:16):
Grandia and all this sort of cool stuff. So it's
something I'm very excited to add, and I think it's
really going to enhance those like we were talking about earlier,
those little slice of life moments on top of just
adding a cinematic flare to some of the biggest events.
So really excited about that one.

Speaker 2 (01:53:34):
Heck yes, well, I guess on that note, since we're
talking about Lunar and Grandia Vaku I mean, James, you
are more than welcome to stick around for the if
you'd like and watch some trailers for us, or or
you can bounce whatever you Okay, cool, we'll keep you around.
You are a temporary guest of hit point O. Right, okay,

(01:53:57):
so let's go ahead and ship some gears.

Speaker 1 (01:54:01):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:54:01):
I don't even know what we're driving, but we're shifting
gears into some upcoming releases, right all right there, let.

Speaker 1 (01:54:09):
Me push the button. Did you push the button? I
did push to get it? Yep. Right, let's talk about this.

Speaker 3 (01:54:17):
Everybody knows this is coming up, but we just want
to have an opportunity to geek out with you over this.
And that is the Lunar Remastered collection. The features why
screen layout sixteen by nine, fantastic updated character portraits, rites
in hands, sounds, and graphics, English, voice acting, and more.

(01:54:38):
And this is important. If you don't like any of
those things, you can play the classic mode and you
just play the game.

Speaker 1 (01:54:44):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:54:45):
So let's take a look at their story trailer and
all right, it's a get hyped excited.

Speaker 2 (01:54:50):
Yeah, let's check it out.

Speaker 3 (01:54:53):
Speaking of you, Hey, I'm so glad that gun Hole
is willing to do stuff with these now.

Speaker 1 (01:55:00):
Oh I know, we talked.

Speaker 3 (01:55:01):
About it for like three four years. They're like, Oh,
it's gun Hole going to do? Is gun They're doing it?

Speaker 1 (01:55:07):
It has been so long.

Speaker 3 (01:55:11):
Yes, But those who don't know, gun Hole isn't exactly
known for like constant release, Like I think they bought
this i P through like another purchase of like the
parent company game since they owned i P. But gun
Hole is really about like mobile games, right, sort of like, well,
are they going to do anything with this title? And

(01:55:31):
the answer is yes, they absolutely are, thankfully.

Speaker 6 (01:55:37):
Oh it doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 (01:55:41):
Oh my gosh, I love I love these scenes.

Speaker 1 (01:55:49):
And the time has come to the animation. It's so
so nicely upskilled, like you can speed up the battle.

Speaker 4 (01:55:59):
Oh man, so good too, justice with your sword.

Speaker 2 (01:56:07):
Oh it's good voice acting. I gotta say it's different.
It's different voice acting from before.

Speaker 4 (01:56:11):
Yes, yeah, they replaced the whole Working Designs voice acting.

Speaker 5 (01:56:15):
Team, didn't they.

Speaker 2 (01:56:17):
Yeah they kind of had to. I think their hand
was forced unfortunately.

Speaker 5 (01:56:20):
But yeah, Wasteline is spreading everywhere. Yeah, from what I've
heard of the new ones are good though.

Speaker 2 (01:56:28):
Yeah, they sound really good, and I mean, honestly, nol
there's something about Naul's voice actor in the beginning.

Speaker 1 (01:56:36):
This is just kind of like a bit extreme.

Speaker 3 (01:56:44):
I need to listen to like more the voice acting,
like because I feel like I would have been fine
either ways, Like if they keep like the nineties like
two thousands kind of like janky.

Speaker 1 (01:56:55):
Voice acting, it would have been fine.

Speaker 3 (01:56:57):
Or if they do like a really polished modern day
English voice, I think I'd be equally happy.

Speaker 1 (01:57:03):
Oh no, we lost James. Yeah, that muscle memory is
never gonna that muscle memory. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:57:16):
And then next Sunday when we have no guess you're
just gonna go through the this We're like, oh.

Speaker 1 (01:57:22):
Already.

Speaker 2 (01:57:23):
But yeah, the the Lunar HD collection, the it looks
like it's just so nicely done, Like did they find
the original source for like the cells from the animation
or or did they take them from like the the
super artifacty recordings from like the PlayStation or the the

(01:57:46):
ones from uh Saturn, and then like upscale them somehow
and clean them up, Like what did they do?

Speaker 1 (01:57:54):
It's just it's clean.

Speaker 3 (01:57:55):
Probably get a better idea once we get our hands
on it and see if cells You at home can
also get this collection of the first and second game
in a bundle in April eighteenth on PS four, Xbox One,
the Switch, and PC vas Steams, So you really have
no excuse not to pick this one up.

Speaker 2 (01:58:17):
Man, I'm gonna be really interested to hear hear the
difference in the voice acting, because the at least the
very beginning of Lunar one definitely had a bit of
that like speed Racer sound like where they just have
to shove in all the words really quick in order
to like get up, but they have to say before
the cut scene ends, and it's just it's so got

(01:58:39):
it perfect. I can't remember the best friend's name that like.
It's it's at the very beginning where they introduce Alex
and then his friend shows up, who eventually becomes like
the merchant of a nearby town. But like just that
that particular scene I remember and just like going a
two thousand miles an hour with his.

Speaker 1 (01:58:57):
Voice and it's just it's it's it's great.

Speaker 2 (01:59:00):
But but yeah, I wonder how it's going to be
different now hm hmm.

Speaker 1 (01:59:04):
Yeah, it's the flavor of the time, and we relish it. Yeah,
all right, sir.

Speaker 3 (01:59:08):
And and that concludes all the upcome release just this
one game this week. But you know, I feel like
that's enough, right, that's good enough to add it to
your non never ending backlog.

Speaker 1 (01:59:19):
Right, that's right.

Speaker 3 (01:59:20):
Now we've got a couple of new games, starting with
mister Derek.

Speaker 1 (01:59:25):
Oh my gosh, guys.

Speaker 2 (01:59:26):
We've been talking about Sacrifier for some time, but now
developer Pixelated Milk have announced a release date for their
upcoming RPG Sacrificer, along with a brand new trailer that
I'm gonna go watch that right now. I don't know
about you, guys, but I'm just gonna put on this
trailer here.

Speaker 1 (01:59:46):
Let's go. You've got nowhere left or run.

Speaker 2 (01:59:49):
This game has been living rent free in my mind
for the last few years.

Speaker 1 (01:59:56):
It's for those two are it's watching now with us.

Speaker 3 (02:00:02):
There's a new track by Moultoi Sakura in this trailer
right now.

Speaker 2 (02:00:08):
To really help Antiochy.

Speaker 1 (02:00:10):
Really, what do you want us to do? I won't
lie to you. We're in a crisis. I do like
the factoray profile gameplay. Yeah, I'm ready for it again.
Did you ever play the demo when that came out?
I did not. I try to avoid demos.

Speaker 3 (02:00:27):
If I know I will play this game, I just
want like fresh everything when it comes out.

Speaker 2 (02:00:34):
I don't do that.

Speaker 3 (02:00:34):
Most is only for either I am doing like a
you know, ka thing for somebody, or if I wasn't
if I'm not sure if I'm going to play the game.

Speaker 1 (02:00:46):
Okay, So there he goes, James come back. We got back. Sorry.

Speaker 2 (02:00:52):
I keep accidentally putting James in a pocket dimension every
time we stop watching the trailer, and I it's a
good thing. I remember to pull you back before you
start to suffocate in there, because I don't know how
much oxygen is. Actually it's like it's like a bag
of holding.

Speaker 1 (02:01:04):
I think of nostalgia come out, Darren, not not before.

Speaker 2 (02:01:11):
So Sacrifire is coming out in Q one of twenty
twenty six for PCVA, Steam and Good Old Games, and
then some other modern platforms later in twenty twenty six,
So that's pretty exactly. So we don't have a release date,
but it's a window, it's a it's.

Speaker 1 (02:01:29):
A while away.

Speaker 3 (02:01:30):
Yeah yeah, so uh, the game looks pretty sick, man, I'm.

Speaker 4 (02:01:35):
Gonna cinematic and just know, like like when they did
in the early part of the trailer when they're showing
sort of like the festivities happening in that city and
it's zooming out and all of those colors.

Speaker 2 (02:01:47):
It's just wow, all of the NPCs that were on screen,
I'm like, you couldn't do that on a Super Nintendo. Yeah,
there'd be some flickering sprites on screen for sure.

Speaker 3 (02:01:59):
This is why it's a great time to be alive,
Like you get all the best stuff, you know, being
developed by people who grew up with those and are
like very intimate with what made those things great. Plus
the modern technology to really polish all the things that
they couldn't really do before but you can't do it now.

(02:02:20):
It's a great time, like all those particle effects in
Seed of Nostalgia, for instance. Yeah, but wish that stood
one that we're gonna be doing this all night, all right,
So moving on, We've got another game that we previously
talked a little bit about. But last time we looked

(02:02:41):
at it, there wasn't really any gameplay to show off of,
But now we do. The game is called Opus Prison Peak.
It is a unique adventure game published by Sirasa Game
that centers around a weary middle age photo journalist who
finds themselves stranded in an ethereal mountain realm. Why he
must use the power of photography to discover the secrets

(02:03:05):
and definance a home.

Speaker 2 (02:03:06):
I remember this one.

Speaker 1 (02:03:07):
Now. It took me a second. It's like a look
at the trailer real quick.

Speaker 2 (02:03:11):
Okay, yeah, let's let's do this using the power of photography.

Speaker 3 (02:03:16):
I sometimes I love these games where like the unique
power that these protagonists has just happens to be the
thing that saves them. Is that And that's not anything else.

Speaker 1 (02:03:28):
That's not that voice, that's not Steve Bloom. Is it sorry?

Speaker 2 (02:03:34):
Be quiet to listen to the voice act there alone.

Speaker 1 (02:03:39):
No, it's not.

Speaker 2 (02:03:39):
Okay, for a second, it's sounding kind of like Steve
Bloom for a second.

Speaker 1 (02:03:42):
It's not Oh that's what you're asking.

Speaker 3 (02:03:44):
Yeah, yeah, we were. There wasn't any like gameplay last time.
It was just a short, very.

Speaker 1 (02:03:50):
Very short teaser. Yet this time we were getting some gameplay.
The art in this is adorable. Man.

Speaker 2 (02:03:57):
Yeah, there doesn't look like it's going to be a
turn based if there's RPG fire, I don't see any combat,
but the game play.

Speaker 3 (02:04:08):
I don't think there's any combat and does one but
that's all right. But there's multiple endings that you had here.
Oh well that's tending practically an RPG right there. There
could be a fishing mini game.

Speaker 1 (02:04:24):
We don't know. Yeah, absolutely, it's like.

Speaker 5 (02:04:29):
You make it.

Speaker 3 (02:04:31):
I hope you grow up strong even when your best
isn't enough, Try to stay brave.

Speaker 2 (02:04:37):
Yeah that this game is going to make me cry,
isn't it?

Speaker 1 (02:04:40):
Yeah, this game is gonna make us cry.

Speaker 3 (02:04:41):
It looks like I could feel the tears coming out already,
I know. And that was Opus Prison Peak and it's
only on PCPs theme coming out this fall.

Speaker 2 (02:04:54):
Did you notice that I actually switched back to the
appropriate scene, this time completing the character did? Yes, I've
grown as a person. Okay, what I think? Did you
accidentally mute yourself? Because you got real quiet there, mister baku?

Speaker 1 (02:05:17):
Uh moving on up, sir? Oh okay, this connects now?

Speaker 2 (02:05:21):
Maybe by oh is James still there? Did I get disconnection.

Speaker 3 (02:05:27):
Okay, okay, okay, sorry.

Speaker 1 (02:05:29):
We had a little bit of a technical issue just now.
All right, we'll all back, all right.

Speaker 2 (02:05:34):
Well, yeah, next up, we've got a little announcement here
from developer Cold Blood Ink, who just announced a new
action RPG with a blend of horror. You did this
on purpose, You did this to me, what are you
talking about?

Speaker 1 (02:05:48):
And you love you love horror games.

Speaker 2 (02:05:51):
And life sim called never Way. This is uh gonna
be co created with Pixel artist behind Celeste.

Speaker 1 (02:05:58):
Oh. Actually I think I actually already.

Speaker 2 (02:06:01):
Did say the trailer for this, this does look really cool.
So uh yeah, let's let's check out this trailer because
it's cool.

Speaker 1 (02:06:11):
And we have horror. You love RPG. I mean so
I am a fan of Pixels. That is a fact.
You know.

Speaker 3 (02:06:20):
It kind of gives me a ghost in the vibes
slightly not long ago when we asked about like RPG
and horror games and yeah, we can't really think of.

Speaker 1 (02:06:28):
A lot of them.

Speaker 3 (02:06:30):
I mean, I think they watched the show and they
heard you and they're like, oh okay.

Speaker 1 (02:06:34):
Oh look at that fish.

Speaker 5 (02:06:37):
Yeah the art is awesome, though.

Speaker 1 (02:06:44):
It looks super bad on the artists.

Speaker 3 (02:06:46):
Uh that co created Uh sorry, is some of the
pixel artists behind Celeste.

Speaker 1 (02:06:51):
Yeah, so that explains why. Uh these look incredible.

Speaker 2 (02:06:56):
Ah, the character portraits are awesome. The uh it looks
like where there is combat. It looks super fluid and
fast paced, kinda kind of linked to the past dish
but maybe a little more maybe maybe a little more
depth to it.

Speaker 1 (02:07:12):
It's hard to tell.

Speaker 2 (02:07:13):
Look that there was dashing and stuff, rolling dodgebles, you
know what, I'm kinda I'm kind of digging it as
as a as the resident not horror fan, this is
doing a pretty poor job of scaring me away.

Speaker 1 (02:07:30):
It looks good.

Speaker 5 (02:07:31):
Yeah, that one looked awesome.

Speaker 1 (02:07:33):
Yeah, I cannot wait.

Speaker 2 (02:07:38):
Well, I mean I guess I can wait, but we
have to wait regardless because.

Speaker 1 (02:07:43):
All right now there's not really.

Speaker 2 (02:07:44):
A release they have announced it though it's being developed
from PCVA Steam.

Speaker 1 (02:07:48):
Then that's it.

Speaker 2 (02:07:49):
So keep your ears open and keep your eyes peeled
or something that sounds more like a horror phrase than
ever now I think about it.

Speaker 3 (02:07:59):
We hit two that tho, uh subscribers, Derek will finish
that one too.

Speaker 1 (02:08:05):
Oh yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 (02:08:06):
We haven't really been plugging that that stretch goal of
hours lately, have we.

Speaker 1 (02:08:11):
We have not we have not subscribed to a thousand subs.

Speaker 2 (02:08:15):
I have to go play more. Silent Hill finished the
game up the empty. I don't.

Speaker 1 (02:08:23):
I don't know. Did I sign off on that? I don't.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (02:08:26):
But okay, well, you know what. It's fine going.

Speaker 1 (02:08:28):
For the team, Derek, check one for the team.

Speaker 2 (02:08:30):
It'll never happen. I'll never play because no one's ever
subscribing to this channel again ever, who would do that?

Speaker 1 (02:08:39):
Nobody? That's all right.

Speaker 3 (02:08:43):
Uh. The final game that we have for you for
this evening, uh is fun publisher Anti Plex and developer
blast Edge Games. They'll be announcing sorry, they have announced
the worldwide release of their two D top down pixel
RPG with the new trailer that we take.

Speaker 1 (02:09:02):
A look at.

Speaker 2 (02:09:02):
Anti Plex have announced a top down.

Speaker 1 (02:09:04):
Harpee what yes, and the game is called Hike Northern Lights.

Speaker 3 (02:09:09):
We've actually talked about this game too before, but again,
very little to go off of before.

Speaker 1 (02:09:14):
But now we have things.

Speaker 2 (02:09:16):
That's some adorable pixel art.

Speaker 1 (02:09:19):
Yeah. If this is not a pretty cozy kind of.

Speaker 2 (02:09:23):
Game, all right, someone's getting murdered. This game's too cutesy.
There's gonna be blood, there's gonna beware. Yeah, there's absolutely
going to be just like massacred, like disembodied people that.

Speaker 1 (02:09:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:09:38):
But yeah, so I think this is post apocalyptic and
you are traveling the world to try to trace your
mother's footsteps. Yeah, you know, discovering the meaning of this world,
and at the end you discover the disemboweled corpse of
your mother or something like.

Speaker 1 (02:09:55):
That's that's that's how it happens.

Speaker 3 (02:09:57):
That's how they always get your version, Like if wed
let Derek develop a game, that's the ending.

Speaker 5 (02:10:04):
Yeah, I mean.

Speaker 2 (02:10:08):
It's that emotional sucker punch that I was talking about, right, Yeah, yeah, it's.

Speaker 4 (02:10:13):
A little bit of extreme, but yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:10:22):
It's not extreme. Its it's not worth doing.

Speaker 2 (02:10:24):
I mean, whenever you show me like really adorable RPGs baku,
it's it's usually because they like the point is you
like take the wrong turn. Whoopeez oh dear, oh geez okay,
So so yeah, whenever you showed me like an adorable

(02:10:47):
pixel ert RPG, it's usually accompanied by like something really
sinister and like disturbing, like, oh, here's the story about
this little girl. She's got a mushroom growing out of
her eyeball, and it's like, oh, that's so cute, but
she is also like dying. That's yeah, that's really sad
and cute.

Speaker 1 (02:11:04):
That game was so fun. What game was that again?

Speaker 3 (02:11:07):
I forgot the title of it, but it's it's she's
like the last living human and there's like a robot
that needs to try to keep her alive.

Speaker 2 (02:11:16):
Yeah, yeah, that's the yeah, yeah, yep. So see, Baku
like he likes to show me games with with these
great lovable characters and like if they like accidentally go
left instead of right, they get smashed by a piano
that gets dropped off of an empire state building, like
it's and then and and you hear them like complaining

(02:11:38):
about the pain as they die. It's like that's the
stuff that Maaku likes.

Speaker 1 (02:11:41):
It's I don't I don't get it.

Speaker 3 (02:11:45):
I don't know, man, what can I say? I have
certain tendencies. No, I think this game is just cute.
It's a cozy I think, at least for now, it's
cozy pixel action RPG. And this game will be coming
to PS five Switch and PC Vias Theme this summer, so.

Speaker 1 (02:12:08):
Pretty soon and maybe just a couple of months.

Speaker 3 (02:12:11):
And that kind of wraps it up for us as
far as games that we'll be talking about today anyways. Aside,
So you know, onto industry news and it's really just
one piece.

Speaker 2 (02:12:24):
One piece, you know, one piece, Yeah, cool, we have
some news about one piece, guys.

Speaker 3 (02:12:31):
No, one piece of news, not news of one piece. Yeah,
I apologize. And this piece of news it's about the
indeed Life Expo that I had just talked about. So
that happened today like a couple of hours ago.

Speaker 1 (02:12:48):
Oh yeah at the time.

Speaker 3 (02:12:50):
And were you there showcase of like forty ish maybe
more games. I couldn't even count how many there were, right,
And they're all super polished indie game that I have
not had time to really sit through. Like it was
like a three hours and thirty minute presentation and it
was like maybe like fifteen seconds per game.

Speaker 2 (02:13:11):
And you didn't talk about it, you didn't cover them all,
you didn't assimilate a.

Speaker 3 (02:13:14):
List of No. I covered a couple that I thought
were interesting, just to just to get you guys intrigued
with some of these indie games. But you know, it
kind of goes back to what we were saying before, like,
you know, do you not really get the the attention

(02:13:37):
because of the indie label. We have a whole showcase
that was like three and a half hours just on
indie games. There's got to be you know, there's got
to be a want for this to be delivered, right,
oh man. So it just comes to show you that
we do live in a very different time and it's

(02:13:57):
a good one. So you can also watch this three
hours of announcements on YouTube. As a matter of fact,
if you just search up Indie Live Expo. We'll have
the link later in the description if you don't want
to wait to geek out with us next week and.

Speaker 2 (02:14:15):
We can watch it right now. If we have three
hours to kill.

Speaker 1 (02:14:18):
Y'all, let's just watch three hours of this. Yeah no, no, James,
get back. People are gonna be like, what is going on? Okay, Yeah,
well we'll come.

Speaker 3 (02:14:31):
We'll talk about some of the games, some of the
highlights next week, so you guys already know what we're
gonna do next week, along with any new announcements et cetera,
et cetera coming in next week, so please look forward
to that. But if you can't wait, again, the link
is in the description. You want to check out Indie
Life Expo twenty five.

Speaker 2 (02:14:49):
All right, well, now we do have some some things
to talk about before we wind down. We have well,
we already responded to the super chat that was posted
by still Alive, Thank you again for that Still Alive,
And we have some comments from last week that we
can respond to here real quick. Uh so I'll lead
off with this one here from Freddy, who says, I'm

(02:15:10):
not a huge DK fan, but Bananza Bonanza looks really fun.
I may need to pick that one up. Yeah. I'm
also kind of not really into DK, mostly because I
don't think he's had an RPGH yet yet. That could
be a thing in the future, you never know. Yeah,

(02:15:31):
I mean, how like seriously, like you could just collect
bananas and use them to like level up, get some
you know, put them into a into a skill tree
like that would.

Speaker 1 (02:15:41):
Be pretty sick.

Speaker 6 (02:15:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:15:43):
Yeah, yeah, but you know it hasn't happened yet. Treatment yes, yes,
Super Donkey Kung ORPG there you go.

Speaker 1 (02:15:54):
RPG. Yeah, yeah, I play things have happened. You know,
you're You're not wrong. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:16:03):
A lot of games that we talk about in this
channel are not necessary games that Derek or myself may
pick up, but we look at it. We're like, hey,
this looks fun. We're going to talk about it, right,
So just just know that that's what happens, just like
d K or some other these Nintendo franchise games.

Speaker 1 (02:16:23):
Man, I know.

Speaker 2 (02:16:25):
Then we have one from Cynics thirteen who says easy
damn it, Derek, And that's a reference to when I
was talking about how you know in East they do
in fact have a less difficult mode, and I honestly

(02:16:46):
I feel like they should name it easy instead of
easy mode. But well, you know, they haven't taken my
advice on that yet, but maybe that's some point.

Speaker 1 (02:16:55):
Don't infect James with your puns there.

Speaker 3 (02:16:58):
I want to see nostalgia to be great.

Speaker 2 (02:17:05):
How how dare you, sir? I think there are plenty
of games that are both, including games like Earthbound. I'm
just I'm just saying the best games, the best games,
the best RPGs have enemy names that are in fact puns.

Speaker 1 (02:17:23):
Yeah, all right.

Speaker 2 (02:17:25):
And then we got another one here from eggs.

Speaker 1 (02:17:32):
Checks E b U s C.

Speaker 2 (02:17:36):
Who says, unless I missed it, I uh have y'all
talked about look outside, Uh this game looks fantastic. I
can see Derek enjoying it because it's one of the
best kind of horror. Lo you you son of a
son of included.

Speaker 1 (02:17:57):
It's just so Derek can read it. Thank you for
bringing that out.

Speaker 3 (02:18:00):
We had not talked about it, but now we just did.
And I'm going to send them the trailer laders.

Speaker 1 (02:18:06):
Thank you, thank you very much. Let's see.

Speaker 2 (02:18:11):
Oh and it looks like we had quite a bit
of discussion about the tariff talk during our last episode.

Speaker 3 (02:18:17):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (02:18:17):
Again, I think that was a really good discussion overall,
Baku being able to for me to actually talk to
someone who has a degree in economics and being able
to bring that expertise to the table.

Speaker 1 (02:18:29):
Four years a mound to this day.

Speaker 2 (02:18:33):
And just think that after that you would go for
your doctorate in and wife who studies. That's just yes,
quite the pivot, Quite the pivot.

Speaker 3 (02:18:40):
If you ever want, if you ever want a consultant
on wifers, just let me know. I am going to
get an agree in PhD in wifer's study. Happy to
share my insight on wifers. Two d ones, keep the
three d ones away from me.

Speaker 5 (02:18:57):
Okay, so the tariff.

Speaker 3 (02:18:58):
Talk, you know, I guess before we get to the comments. Uh,
I do appreciate the community for just like you know,
listening in for what we may have to say. It
is one of those topics that don't necessarily we don't
really have a great channel to like discuss right because
it's kind of one off, like, but it.

Speaker 2 (02:19:19):
Does affect us and everything that's going on with the
switch to right now, and God help us if it
ever affects software kinds of things like your physical collective games.
Guess what that that affects you because guess where these
things are produced, you know.

Speaker 4 (02:19:37):
So I was just talking to somebody about that Nintendo
removing sort of the middle ground cartridge memory size, so
you're you're either stuck as a developer. You're stuck using
either basically a tiny little one for very small games.

Speaker 5 (02:19:54):
Or the sixty four gigabyte.

Speaker 4 (02:19:57):
There's no middle ground options anymore. And I know some
of the publishers I've been talking to are really just
added out of loss as to what to plan for.

Speaker 5 (02:20:06):
For switch to.

Speaker 1 (02:20:07):
Can we keep producing switch one games?

Speaker 2 (02:20:09):
Maybe just keep producing switch one?

Speaker 4 (02:20:11):
And then.

Speaker 3 (02:20:14):
What I was saying about the game key cards, Yeah,
this is it the game key card, but that's a
small the really small one contains just enough information to
to you know, authorize the game as the key and
that's it I remember I said that one of the
usage is going to be for like indie developers trying

(02:20:35):
to publish games.

Speaker 2 (02:20:36):
Well, there is that, but I also don't like that
you can't put the whole thing on the I feel like,
because I said this before, that like the only real
legitimate use case for a game key card is if
you can't play the game offline anyway. But a single
player experience that does not require any form of online

(02:20:57):
connectivity should be able to be played without connecting to
a server, like.

Speaker 1 (02:21:01):
Yeah and so so.

Speaker 2 (02:21:04):
And it's frustrating to me it is that that the
the only legitimate use case for these uh is is
kind of being omitted and neglected, like the there are
there are pro consumer ways to use this and and
so far we've only seen it use and not pro

(02:21:24):
consumer ways.

Speaker 1 (02:21:27):
It's it's it's disappointing. Okay, anyways, go ahead.

Speaker 2 (02:21:30):
I don't mean to be negative, but I think you're
gonna read the next question here for UH.

Speaker 3 (02:21:36):
This is this is just a comments on the terriff.
UH this is what mclaire about and he said, thanks
for the chat on terrors. I feel like a clear
picture has been unveil for me. UH when it comes
to this topic. Glad that you were here to listen
to Ted talk over terriffs. Uh. And then another one

(02:21:57):
from Shadow King, who said, I think people need to
take a breath and wait as far as what the
tears will bring until we actually know something, Lets not
be jumping to conclusions. And by the way, this is
not like tears in general. I think what they're saying
is about because we were discussing about like price increase,

(02:22:17):
specifically on switch to cartridges. So and then to his point, like,
I do think we should just relax a little bit
and see what actually happens because we don't know like
how that will systematically change. This is true game herd,
like hard copy game prices in general. We don't have

(02:22:37):
enough evidence to say one way or another.

Speaker 2 (02:22:40):
And very recently there was an update to the situation
about you know, exceptions being made for things like phones,
tablets and computers and chips and and like, well, what
is a game card if not a chip inside of
a plastic container.

Speaker 3 (02:22:55):
Oh, I'm sorry, Derek, breaking news that has already been
walked back.

Speaker 1 (02:23:01):
Oh I know, I know it was this morning. God
has been reversed already, so so.

Speaker 3 (02:23:07):
You know, it's like plain muno. You know, you're like,
you're like reverse and then they're like reverse reverse. So yeah, sorry,
you're gonna have to reverse reverse reverse the exemption never mind,
I don't I don't make the rules.

Speaker 1 (02:23:21):
I'm not there.

Speaker 2 (02:23:24):
Wow, don't shoot the messenger. No, no, okay, I appreciate it.
Thank you for stopping me from spreading misinformation.

Speaker 1 (02:23:32):
Thank you reverse reverse reverse.

Speaker 2 (02:23:37):
I mean that's true today, but what about tomorrow?

Speaker 4 (02:23:40):
I think I should probably go otherwise my dog is
gonna beat.

Speaker 5 (02:23:43):
The hell out of me.

Speaker 2 (02:23:44):
That's all right, Well, thank you so much for joining
the show. Anyhow, Yeah, great the end, all right, Well
take care man, thanks for joining us.

Speaker 1 (02:23:52):
Thank you again.

Speaker 5 (02:23:52):
Jameson Absolute Blast.

Speaker 2 (02:23:55):
Hey, all right, thank you sir, and all right and
everybody back at home, thank you all so much for
joining us today. That is the conclusion of.

Speaker 1 (02:24:05):
Our show as well.

Speaker 2 (02:24:06):
So if you enjoyed listening to today's show, make sure
you subscribe if you haven't already here on the youtubes,
or if you're listening on various other podcasting platforms of
your of your choice, like you know, iTunes or Amazon
or Audible. I think that's the same thing. But wherever
you are giving it a like or a review is

(02:24:27):
super useful and and helps push the show to new
people and you know, achieving greater and greater heights, so
we can provide an even better platform for people like
James today who also by the way, co chigure out
that that that Kickstarter if you haven't already h and
wishless Seat of Nostalgia here on Steam as well. So sorry, Baku,

(02:24:52):
have you got any last questions or comments that you'd
like to close the show out on?

Speaker 1 (02:24:58):
Lost comments? Man?

Speaker 2 (02:25:02):
Any last wishes? Last words?

Speaker 1 (02:25:05):
Well, I guess I do have one thing.

Speaker 3 (02:25:07):
You guys like these kind of interviews with developers to
ask them some really hard hitten questions or just things
that you might not have been able to you know,
known otherwise, definitely let us know like how you guys
are liking these kind of interviews or if there are
additional developers, probably the indep varieties that you would like

(02:25:32):
to see on this show.

Speaker 1 (02:25:33):
Perhaps give us some ideas.

Speaker 3 (02:25:36):
I mean, I don't necessarily know like all the different
developers and all the different folks, so I try to
reach out to some that I feel like, you know,
they would vibe on the channel. Of course, Thank you
so much James for agreeing to come on to do
this interview in addition to all the other developers who
had been on this channel. I did get one question

(02:25:58):
earlier that I'd answer, and I do want to maybe
vocalize this one, given who had asked whether or not
this interview would be available and this live stream would
be available to watch once it's finished, and the answers yes.
As a matter of fact, all of the interviews that

(02:26:18):
we have ever had, including this one, all on the
hit Point channel.

Speaker 2 (02:26:23):
So you have to go to the a lot of them.
You have to go to the live section, which is weird.

Speaker 1 (02:26:28):
Live section, that's right.

Speaker 3 (02:26:29):
Yeah, So treat this like a VOD for live stream
and not like a video. Although I don't know should
should we ever split out just the interview part as
a video?

Speaker 1 (02:26:42):
Do you think that might be a good idea. I
don't know. I'll think about it.

Speaker 3 (02:26:46):
Yeah, let you guys, let us know if that might
make sense at all, and maybe we'll think about how
to better structure these interviews or who we might want
to invite except et cetera.

Speaker 2 (02:27:00):
Yeah, and next weekend we have another interview lined up
with Chins.

Speaker 3 (02:27:04):
Right, is that next week asked, this is the next
I think. I think it is believe this next weekend. Yeah,
so next weekend it's going to be like a mega show.
I think it's a para Derek. It's going to be. Yeah,
we have a bunch of games to talk about, and
we have another interview that we had previously scheduled, but
unfortunately we were.

Speaker 1 (02:27:25):
Not able to stuff came out through.

Speaker 3 (02:27:29):
Yeah, some stuff came out, but we'll do it for
next Sunday, So please come back and join us with
a interview with from my familiar yeah, dealing deep dive
on my familiar Yea.

Speaker 2 (02:27:43):
Take care, everybody, have a good night.

Speaker 1 (02:28:01):
Sat s

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Live Interview With the Seed of Nostalgia!

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

All Episodes

Live Interview With the Seed of Nostalgia!

New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce