Dust Force, The Sacrifices Needed to Win the $100,000 Indie Prize

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http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/gdco-dust.mp3

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

Woodley: I’m Woodley Nye from Hit Box Games, and we made Dustforce!.

Lexie: And I’m Lexie. I am the programmer.

Interviewer: So, your game was nominated. That’s how I found you guys, for Indie Pub. Can you talk about what that contest is, and what inspired you to submit to it?

Woodley: Well, we were working on another prototype of a game, and it wasn’t really going so well. We kind of re-evaluated our position, and we found this competition. We were like, let’s set ourselves a goal and try and make the deadline for this competition. So, yeah, we made the game pretty much for this Indie Pub thing.

Interviewer: And so, what’s the game about again? And can you talk about what you do?

Woodley: Right. I’ve been calling it an acrobatic platformer because I think that kind of sums it up. You play as a janitor with a broom or just a dude with a broom, not really specifically a janitor.

I would say, Lexie, they’re a bit more like Pokemon than people, but you basically try and to get into precarious places where there’s dust all over the walls. And you try and clean everything up as thoroughly and as stylishly as you possibly can. Those are the two main things.

Interviewer: Thoroughly, I can understand. How do you determine stylishly? Is that even part of the point and game system?

Woodley: Well, yeah. You get at the end of the level you get scored on thoroughness and combo. So, if you clean up dust in sequence without a break, it adds to your combo meter, and then various effects come up and stuff. We’d like to, maybe, do something more with that, but right now it’s just pretty much like a timed combo system.

Interviewer: When I was coming up to your little booth, some guy gave you a huge compliment on just the movement and style of that and that could lend itself to the acrobatic platformer. Can you talk about why they would compliment you on that? Why would they even notice that? What did you do with the game that actually made it unique in terms of movement and stuff?

Woodley: That’s a bit of a hard one.

Lexie: I guess, like, everything we added to the game, we just did one thing at a time and made sure that single element was fun to do, I guess.

Interviewer: Well, let’s talk about the movement because that’s what people are talking about, is the controls. Can you talk about what inspired the controls, and what you had to do to actually inspire someone to make a compliment like that because I’d never heard that before.

Woodley: Well, we tried to make the characters as expressive as we possibly could without talking. And so, we wanted the movement to sort of say hello. And so, a lot of work went into the animations and just kind of making them really look free and like they were really flowing through the space. That was one of the key things. Nick Agin [sp] really inspired the controls and the game and what else? Another one?

Lexie: Smash Bros. Melee.

Woodley: Smash Bros. Melee is the biggest one, I think, because that game is just a beautiful work of art.

Interviewer: So, you were focused then on movement and just making stuff. Yeah. What was the feeling that you were trying to convey with movement in the game?

Lexie: When I started animating one of the other characters, I was thinking about how I wanted it to feel, and I came up with the term or the sentence, how a janitor would dream of moving. So, I was trying to animate him as though he was sort of flying, sort of soaring through the space and moving really elegantly and quickly.

Interviewer: What were some of the other challenges you guys faced as you were developing this? You mentioned in the pre-interview that you did it in Dream Maker, and now you’re moving to another thing. Can you talk about the development process and things that you, maybe, would have done differently?

Lexie: Sure. When we were developing the game, we didn’t have a set, we want the game to be like this. We had an idea, and we like kind of rapid iteration because I think it lends itself really well to how we work.

Woodley: Just a small, agile team and there’s no biblical design document that you’re sticking to, just kind of do what we want and try and make it fun or whatever.

Interviewer: Did you do any play testing while you were developing the game?

Woodley: That’s definitely something that we learned. We need to get more people to play the game while we’re building it because we got really good at the game, of course. By the time other people are playing it, there’s just this huge difference between how we’re playing it and how they are. And so, obviously, that’s our fault.

Lexie: Probably one of the most painful things was watching people play our game and just dying over and over again. I couldn’t think of anything worse.

Interviewer: What’s next in store for the game? Where do you guys see yourself taking the game? Do you want to release it on the Web or release it on Xbox or what?

Woodley: We’d like to get the game on Steam, and then consoles would also be highly desirable.

Interviewer: What suggestions do you guys have then for other smaller developers who are looking to get started or to want to finish a game and get things going?

Woodley: I’m sort of a big proponent of sacrificing things and just throwing yourself completely into what you want to do because I tried 9 to5s and stuff, and I really can’t do it. I just get fired because I was just thinking about games all the time. You have to sacrifice, but I think it’s worth it because games are just amazing, cool games.

Interviewer: Can you talk about… What do you mean by sacrifice? So, are you saying don’t do the day job and at night work on this? Is that what you mean, or are you talking about something else, like, just drinking a lot of Mountain Dew?

Woodley: It’s a lot to do with your circumstance, I guess. I was pretty lucky to get in the situation that led to Dustforce!. But, yeah, I don’t know. I sacrificed my social life pretty much, completely. It just became a hermit. Yeah, I don’t know.

Lexie: I worked full time while we were working on it. That was probably the hardest thing, working nine hours and then coming back to the shed, which is where we set up, this massive shed, great, great environment. Just like, it was pretty hard to do it, but in the end, towards the end of it, like in the last week kind of trying to get everything ready to go for the competition. I just hated it. I was dying and I had just no sleep. At the time I just wanted it to end. But looking back on it, it was definitely worth it.

Interviewer: So, were you guys meeting every day, or did you do it on the weekends pretty much, or how did you do it?

Lexie: We did it pretty much for four months solidly, just working on the game every afternoon where he would just sleep and I would come home from work and then we’d just work until two in the morning.

Woodley: I got onto a completely nocturnal sleep schedule when we were doing it because Lexie would work during the day. You did 9 to 5 at your job repairing computers, and then you would come straight to the shed, and we’d work until the morning, early morning. And then, he’d just wake up and go to work.

Lexie: That was insane.

Woodley: I talk about sacrificing and stuff. I really didn’t sacrifice that much compared to this guy.

Lexie: Yeah. It was pretty bad, I guess. My boss was just really lenient on me, just being a bad employee for four months or so.

Interviewer: So, what are you guys going to do so that this becomes your full-time job? What are the steps, and yeah?

Lexie: Well, we started. Just recently I just left my job, and we’re working on it full-time now. We got a guy who’s just joined the team, and he’s making the engine for us. He’s kind of the backbone of the programming. I do just game script for it, but we’ve got a little bit of self-funding. It’s pretty much what we’re going off now.

We really don’t want to sign with any developers or anything. We just want to… Publishers, yeah. We just really want to make the game how we really want. It’s kind of hard struggling along, but it’s worth it.

Interviewer: So, you have that financial pressure. How are you going to balance getting this game out because even if you just release the game you might get some sales, you might get some iteration and stuff like that versus making sure it’s artistically up to the quality you guys want

Lexie: Yeah, I don’t know. We really don’t have that much of a plan. We’re just kind of winging it right now.

Interviewer: Except for these contests, right?

Woodley: Right. In a couple hours we find out if we won this competition or not, and if we did?

Interviewer: So, they’re giving $100,000, is this to the first place, or is this split upon the different…

Woodley: Yeah. It’s like a $100,000 grand prize and then the other prizes are $1,000.

Lexie: It has six prizes, all different categories, like best style, technical excellence, staff pick, sound, game design.

Interviewer: Why do you feel you guys were even nominated? What do you guys think you were nominated for, and why do you guys feel like you’re in it?

Woodley: It’s pretty hard to say. We haven’t really been thinking. We’ve been trying not to think about it that much.

Interviewer: Sure.

Lexie: I think people just kind of connected to the sort of humor of it and, I guess, the movement. Everyone just really likes the movement, so it’s really good to have that feedback. It’s really satisfying. I’d say mostly the movement.

Interviewer: And where can people find out more about your game? Is there a dev blog or some other site where you guys… where people can visit?

Woodley: Well, our website is hitboxteam.com.

Interviewer: And that’s H-I-T-B-O-X-T-E-A-M.com.

Woodley: Yeah. Right now, it’s just a place holder, but we’re going to try to turn that into an active dev blog while we finish the game. We also have a Twitter which is Hit Box Games, and that is rarely updated.

Lexie: We’re going to try and keep more active on it and let everyone know what we go through to make this game, all the trial and errors. Just let everyone know what we’re doing the whole time and kind of get feedback.

Woodley: Yeah, definitely. It’s the side of things that we didn’t really think about at all because we were just putting all our effort into making the game. But now that we’ve had a good response, we’d like to have more of a presence online and stuff. So, we’ll be settng up a dev blog at that website.

Interviewer: Thank you very much.