The Design Behind Retrograde, 2009 IGF Finalist

Matt, from 24 Caret Games, talks about developing the game Retrograde

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/retrograde-podcast.mp3

Or listen to it here…

[wp_youtube]oU9Okng-Eog[/wp_youtube]

Show Notes:
Interviewer: I’m here at the IGF Main Competition. With me is a special guest. How about you introduce yourself?

Matt: Hi, my name is Matt Gilgenbach. I’m one of the two members of 24 Caret Games.

Interviewer: What game did you make?

Matt: We made Retrograde.

Interviewer: And what’s the game about?

Matt: It’s a new and unique twist on the rhythm game genre. It’s framed as a reverse space shooter where you play Rick Rocket, super galaxy hero extraordinaire, and you’ve just defeated an evil alien armada. Unfortunately, all the explosions from the destruction cause massive damage to the space time continuum and now time is flowing in reverse.

Because of this, you are playing the shooter in reverse and you are supposed to undo what you previously did. So, it actually plays as more of a rhythm game because you have to get in the right position in order to shoot or absorb your shots which is all timed to the music as well as dodging enemy fire to prevent the creation of paradises.

Interviewer: You guys have a guitar to interact with it? What inspired that?

Matt: Basically, the original inspiration for the game was we were working on a different idea, and my co-worker said, “Hey, it would be really neat if you could play the game in reverse because we had a debug mode which allowed us to back up time in order to tune particular sections of the game”. He was like, that’s really cool. I’d like to see that in a game, but I’d also like to see it interactive.

That game idea, we ended up not running with but when I went back to the drawing board to think of cool game ideas, I revisited that idea, and I said, “Well, how could we structure a game that would play in reverse?”

And so, I came up with the idea of a rhythm game because fundamentally when you are doing it in reverse and you’re matching something that previously happened, you don’t want to give too many options. You have to position your ship in 3D space and match up exactly.

I thought the constraints of a rhythm game would be good because you’re matching the rhythm of the music as well we can constrain it to a certain number of lanes in order to match the horizontal position and still have the space shooter feel.

And so, when I thought about having horizontal lanes I immediately thought of Guitar Hero and all those games like Guitar Praise and Rock Band because basically it’s a certain number of lanes and what lane you’re pressing is determined by the fret button.

I thought it would be really cool. Everyone already has these guitar peripherals. We could totally make that an option for playing the game.

Interviewer: Can you talk about the development process and design process? How did you tweak it? How did you make sure the game play was fun and kept staying fun and stuff like that?

Matt: So, basically, the secret [interrupted by another interviewer] Can you, maybe, start over? I forgot the question.

Interviewer: Oh, yeah, yeah. I was just asking how you do the game design and how do you make sure it’s still fun as you’re innovating and experimenting and stuff?

Matt: Basically, my main thing is testing, testing and testing. A lot of times I do sort of focus tests, mini focus tests. It’s not a very formal process, but I send it to friends who are particularly bad at rhythm games.

Interviewer: Sure.

Matt: And I say, “Can you still play this?” because one of the design goals is to create a game that everyone can play and everyone can enjoy regardless of their skill level. Having people of all skill levels playing the game constantly has really been a key technique for us to constantly refine and improve the design of the game.

As well, I personally play the game over and over and over, and it really helps. This may sound kind of silly, but I’m not very good at games and I think that really helps me as a game designer because I’m playing it like a newbe.

I’m playing it like the person who it really doesn’t click immediately. And so, I have a perspective to say, “Oh, this bothered me” or “This can be a little easier. I can make it a little friendlier” whereas a lot of experienced game programmers and game designers are the pro gamers.

I’ve known game designers who come from pro gaming. They come from winning Street Fighter Tournaments and stuff, but the problem is they are playing at a different level than the average user whereas I’m probably better than the average user which is something that I try and keep in mind as well, especially because I’ve been playing this game over the course of development. So, I’m finally getting pretty good at it, but I always try and take a step back.

Another thing I like to do is try it with a different control scheme. So, we support a lot of different control schemes and so I try a different control scheme, one that I’m not used to. That allows me to take a step back and start over as a beginner again.

These are sort of the main techniques I use to balance it really to have a fun experience because I think too often people approach game design and say we’re trying to challenge the player. But, really the goal should be we’re trying to entertain the player. Challenge, of course, is part of that, but the main thing is we don’t want any frustration, anything that really impedes their enjoyment of the game.

Interviewer: You worked with another person. Can you talk about working in a team and some of the benefits or drawbacks?

Matt: Well, I’m very fortunate to work with the most amazing programmer I’ve ever worked with in my entire career, Justin Wilder. And also, I’ve been very fortunate to work with him for pretty much the duration of my career. We worked together at Heavy Iron, and then I went to High Impact, and then he joined me at High Impact.

And then, I finally persuaded him to try our own game development company, and so he’s amazingly talented. I have been very fortunate to be able to partner with him at 24 Caret Games.

Working with him has become sort of second nature just because I’ve been able to work with him for so long. As well, we have very clearly defined roles at 24 Caret Games. Although we’re both programmers and he’s an amazing play game programmer and I do the game play programming here. He does the engine programming, and I’m an OK engine programmer.

He makes all the engine decisions, and I make all the game play decisions. Obviously, we listen to each other and work together very closely, but the fact that we’re both focused on disparate areas of the game has really helped us in terms of collaboration.

Interviewer: What’s next for your studio?

Matt: Well, we are only about half finished with the game, so we want to put the finishing touches on that. We’re hoping to get the game out this year. We’re hoping to do the Xbox Live PlayStation network and any other platforms that want us.

Interviewer: Are you going to do PC, too?

Matt: Maybe, it all depends on who we’re dealing with. Certainly, that’s an option because we’re already running on PC. There’s one worry for a small studio. It is with PC development it requires a lot of testing to get it to run on everyone’s varied hardware configuration. It’s always difficult when you don’t have an array of PC hardware to test it on to release a really stable and well polished game that will run well on everyone’s computer.

So, that’s sort of a worry that we have when looking at the PC marketplace, but certainly we’re looking at ways to deal with that as well.

Interviewer: Great. Where can people find out more information about the game?

Matt: We have a website for the game at retrogradegame.com. And so, we post regularly new videos, updates and various things.

Interviewer: Do you do blog posts and video posting of your development progress?

Matt: I’d love to. I haven’t had the time.

Interviewer: Sure.

Matt: We work a little bit on our 24 Caret website, but we’re pretty bad at updating that. We also have a Facebook page so you can become a fan of 24 Caret Games. We try and keep updated with all of the latest happenings.

Interviewer: That’s all I needed. Thank you very much.