End Game Studios Talks About their First Original DS Game, Fractured Soul

Grant from End Game Studios talks about their first original DS game, Fractured Soul

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/endgame-studios-gdc-2010-interview.mp3

Or listen to it here…

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Show Notes:
Interviewer: I’m here at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco and with me today is a special guest. How about you introduce yourself?

Grant: I’m Grant Davies from End Game Studios, and we’re based in Melbourne, Australia.

Interviewer: What kind of games do you work on?

Grant: We mainly work on DS games, hand-held games. So, that’s been our background for the last few years.

Interviewer: What DS game are you working on now?

Grant: We are working on our first original DS game. It’s called Fractured Soul. It’s a classic platform game except with one unique twist. It’s played on both screens of the DS at the same time.

Interviewer: The way it’s set up then is that each screen has a different kind of physical property, or can you explain it a little more to give a sense of the benefits of using two screens?

Grant: Sure. There are five different worlds, and in each of those worlds we have something unique going on in one of the screens. For example, one world might be under water. One of the screens is under water while the other screen is kind of your more controlled default level. For example, in the underwater world you move slower but you can jump higher and you fall slow as well. So, you’ve got to take that into account when you’re switching between the two screens.

Interviewer: So, there are benefits to switching between the two screens, based on the physical properties of that specific environment.

Grant: Exactly. Another example is in the final world. We really change it up on the players, and we have the other screen with anti-gravity. So, when you’re switching screens, your gravity is changing as well.

Interviewer: What inspired this game?

Grant: I think when we first saw the DS we really thought about how we could utilize the two screens in an interesting way. You know, a lot of games just put the map of a hug down there, and we thought wouldn’t it be cool if we could actually use both screens for game play. So, that’s where the idea came from.

Interviewer: What were some of the challenges as you were designing the game and developing it?

Grant: The big challenge for us was level design because we had never seen anything that’s using the two screens in this kind of way before and try to figure out interesting ways to keep using those two screens to spread the game play across them. That was something that was a huge challenge for us to keep it fresh for the players.

Interviewer: So, how did you do that? How did you test that and what was the iteration process to actually get that to work because if you have one screen where it’s kind of like–they can just go through the whole level without having to swap to another screen or the second screen and vice versa. Then, it doesn’t leverage the game play you’re trying for.

Grant: That’s right. That’s an excellent point, and that’s something we spent a lot of time iterating over is finding the best way that we could do this that was the most fun and that it wasn’t just a gimmick for the players to move between the two screens. We wanted to make sure that the geometry was the same on both screens.

Interviewer: By geometry, what do you mean?

Grant: I mean, like the ground that they’re walking on…

Interviewer: OK. Gotcha.

Grant: …is the same on both screens so that there might be a platform missing on one screen or platforms are spread across both screens, but the basic layout of the level is still the same. So, the players don’t get confused and, as you said, they don’t skip half a level.

Interviewer: Yeah. When did you get the realization on exactly what the best design principles for designing these types of levels would be?

Grant: That’s evolved over time. For some things we knew right away that we were onto something, and then for other things, for example, the combat is something that we’ve gone back and forth and iterated on numerous times before we finally settled on the best way for it. That’s something that only really happened quite recently. But, like I said, for the platformy stuff it was immediately obvious that we were onto something good.

Interviewer: For the battling, what were some of the issues or challenges that you encountered, and does it relate to having the two screens or was it something else that caused the issue?

Grant: No, it was definitely the two screens. And like you said before, we were concerned that, maybe, the player would just battle on one screen and then they wouldn’t…

Interviewer: So, they would miss the bosses on the other screen or some of the other enemies on the other screen.

Grant: That’s right. It might reduce the usage of screens which we didn’t want to. We wanted to make sure the players were always screen switching because that’s kind of the interesting part of our game. So, we had to figure out how we could get the player to switch screens and keep it interesting for them.

Interviewer: OK. What was the final solution? How do you do that? You know, how do you figure out the right balance, and do you require that the players have to battle all the items on both screens?

Grant: Yeah. It was kind of a triple phased solution, really. We came up with a few different ways of handling it. One is, of course, the old solution of locked combat rooms. So, the player has to kill everything inside. Another solution is making sure that they have to dodge the bullets, so making sure that there’s no way for them to jump the bullets or dodge the bullets. They have to switch screens to get out of the way of the bullets, so that kind of forces them to fight on both screens.

But the other thing is there are some kinds of combat where we don’t force them to battle across both screens. They can just take one screen if it’s easier and why not; that’s so easy to switch screens with the mechanics and that works.

Interviewer: Did you do play testing while you were doing all this, or was it mainly just testing within the team?

Grant: It was a bit of both. We certainly did a lot of testing within the team, but we also took it to other people and even other developers got into it hands-on. I mean, this is a game that I think most Australian developers are familiar with, simply because we’ve showed them and we’ve gotten into the studio and had them play around with it and give us feedback. So, it’s been very useful to do that.

Interviewer: What would you say then are the top three things that your team did that actually allowed you to successfully complete this game and do it well?

Grant: I think probably the main thing, I think, for us was getting the right feel of the game, the right mood. Originally, we had a completely idea for how the game should work in terms of the characters in the level. So, I think we’ve got something that’s real interesting and it fits the dual screen. It’s a very mature and a deep story line which is something you don’t see on DS. So that, I think, sets us apart from what other DS games are doing as well.

I think splitting up the game play between the platforming and the shooting levels is something that works quite well, so we make sure the switching mechanic is not just in platforming. And it’s not just one thing that works in one way. It works multiple ways across different game play.

Interviewer: OK. Can you talk about the story more? Were there any challenges with the story, or is that pretty much straightforward story design there, the story design?

Grant: Actually, there were a lot of problems with the story which is kind of funny because you can argue that you shouldn’t spend that much time on a DS story, but we’re big fans of the DS. We wanted to do something special with it, not just game play but a story as well. So, we’ve done something that deals with character’s mortality which is something we haven’t really seen on the DS, I don’t think before.

I mean, we’ve seen it on other platforms before, but we haven’t told this kind of story on DS ever before. I hope the players will appreciate it. We certainly spent a lot of time going over the story, iterating, making sure that it worked for all the different worlds that we wanted to put in and making sure that it was an interesting and cohesive story that will keep the players guessing.

Interviewer: Were there any multiplayer elements that you were thinking about putting into this?

Grant: We did consider that. At the moment that’s beyond the scope of this project. But potentially down the track we’ll look at sequels or perhaps another title.

Interviewer: So, now you’re also considering an iPhone game. Can you talk about that more, or what can you say about that?

Grant: We’ve just actually finished our first original iPhone product. It’s a music making game. We’re calling it Rockin’ DJ and it’s a really casual, high level music making game that people can just drag and drop from samples. We’ve got over 300 sample loops in there, 10 seconds each. There are 15 genres and they can just drag and drop those samples and try to track on YouTube with one button. It’s something that people can idle away 10 minutes and make a track and maybe share with their friends.

Interviewer: How do you go from that DS game which is more platformer, more traditional stuff to this kind of, you know, more casual game? And how did you handle the transition, or do you think that’s something that’s expected of studios now?

Grant: Oh yeah. I think it’s definitely expected of studios, particularly hand-held studios like ours. Our background is DS and that’s meant very cool hard core games which Fractured Soul fits into. But with the emergence of platforms like iPhone, it’s a different audience. People are expecting those games that then can idle away 10 minutes, half an hour rather than sit down and play for eight hours.

Interviewer: Where do you see now the future of mobile games going since you’re doing DS, you’re doing iPhone? Where do you feel it’s going?

Grant: That’s a really good question. Obviously, we’re excited about DSI and we’ve got a concept in place for that which, again, is something very innovative that makes use of the DSI in a unique way. I’m curious to see where Andrew goes, and I’m also very curious to see what happens with iPhone and iPad. You know, it’s funny that the iPhone market just seems to be changing week to week. More people are getting out of it, so I was curious to see where that goes.

Interviewer: You don’t think everything is just going to go onto these SmartPhones. All the game development is not going to move to SmartPhones because that seems like a lot larger base than DS.

Grant: I don’t see that happening in the short term, at least. I think there’s still a place for the hard core gamers playing on their PS3s or even DSs and PSPs. I think there’s still a big market there, and that’s still doing quite well. So I don’t see that changing in the near future.

Interviewer: Thank you very much.

Grant: Thank you.