The Design Behind Ruben and Lullaby…

The Design Behind the IPhone Game, Ruben and Lullaby

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

Or listen to it here…

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Show Notes:
Interviewer: I’m here at the IGF Mobile Competition with today’s special guest. How about you introduce yourself?

Erik: My name is Eric Loyer, the developer of Ruben and Lullaby.

Interviewer: What’s the game about?

Erik: It’s a relationship game. You are basically controlling two characters that are in love. They are having their first fight on a park bench and through touch and gesture controls you can shape how they’re feeling and determine whether they break up or stay together.

Interviewer: What inspired the game?

Erik: I’ve been working for a long time on ideas about how to tell stories with music and with a motion-based interface, so when the iPhone came out it was a perfect combination of elements to try and do a project like this.

Interviewer: How long did it take to develop such a game on the iPhone?

Erik: I had been working for about five or six months, and I had only done flash development really before that so I had to learn all the SDK elements from scratch.

Interviewer: How was developing on the iPhone? Is that challenging coming from a Flash background, or was it easy?

Erik: It was pretty challenging because at that time there was very little information out there. I think now it’s probably a lot easier. We’re starting to see blog posts where people specifically target how you move from flash to Objective-C, so it’s a lot easier now, I think.

Interviewer: You know, when you were developing this, were you inclined to try and get it out as soon as possible because of all the hype and all the rush?

Erik: Yeah, definitely we were trying to get it out as soon as I could without compromising quality and trying to learn things as I went along.

Interviewer: What would you say you learned? What are the things that you learned the most that actually helped you finish the game?

Erik: Definitely, I figured out how to deal with visual elements and also sound. Sound is a big part of it. There’s a dynamic jazz soundtrack that goes along with the game, so figuring out how to get things to play in sync and how to time out correctly, that was a big part of the development.

Interviewer: When you submitted it, it got released and what happened. How did you promote the game?

Erik: So, I have an email list already from past projects, web projects, so I kind of blasted it up there and ended up getting some coverage at MSNBC.com, Game Set Watch and I made sure to call them on it and some other nice coverage, and then we’re getting a bump here at the show, of course.

Interviewer: Are you doing anything else to market the game?

Erik: I’m basically trying to exploit, talking to other press outlets here. There’s always new outlets and new ways to promote the title. I’m just trying to stay on top of that and doing the updates.

Interviewer: Do you guys have a pay app and a free app, or is it just a pay app?

Erik: We just have pay because the paid is kind of the smallest mini game in itself, so doing a free version just doesn’t really make sense. Perhaps, when we get a few updates under our belt we’ll do a free one so that you can kind of get a taste of it.

Interviewer: What’s next in store for your studio? Are you guys going to do flash games or iPhone games?

Erik: I think we’re definitely going to keep on the iPhone attack just because the unique controls let us do some story telling stuff. So, we’re going to expand on this concept: comics, music and motion type interface with story telling.

Interviewer: Awesome. Is there a website that people can visit to find out more about the games?

Erik: Yes, you go to opertoon.com. It’s o-p-e-r-t-o-o-n.com and you’ll find out all about it.

Interviewer: Thank you very much.