WEBVTT
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[SPEAKER_04]: sifter.com.au
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think I'll always be making adventure games because it's kind of where I came from as a developer as well.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Crawl was fun because it was like right, we wrote like, I don't know, two hundred tiny little like two cents and snippets of like love crafty kind of heavy handed love crafty purple pro stuff, which is definitely evident in the driftor as well.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The very purple pro stuff.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, most of the, most of the inspirations were film and novels and stuff, so not so much games.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But very much got into just like going to the second bookshop and like finding really cheesy looking, like finding the cheesiest cover for a thriller and like just reading through it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And usually, yeah, very lucky pulp fiction kind of stuff.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Hello and welcome to LightMap from Sifter, our video game industry interview show.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Gianni Giovanni, those pixel masters at Melbourne's Powerhoof are back.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The gritty and very Australian one-in-click adventure the Drifter is a topic for today and Dave Lloyd is my guest.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Before we jump into that, here's what's been making the news on walks through Sifter's weekly news podcast.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Let's go.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Join the Sifter Community on Discord at sifter.com.au forward slash discord.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So now if you're of a certain vintage and I am pointing click adventure games at some of the most interesting titles you could play at the time I have really fond memories.
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[SPEAKER_01]: spending hours collecting or a calcum to get that final good end ending.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis flipping burgers in sci-fi space quest for and many, many more.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And the Germans still aimlessly in love with the genre.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So when I say the drifter is one of the best new entries into the format, I mean it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Dave Lloyd is part of Powerhoof and was last on the show back in, for any eighteen, which if you're counting is seven years ago now.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm thrilled to welcome you back to the show.
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[SPEAKER_01]: David, welcome back to Lightmap.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, thanks.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, really happy to be here.
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[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Now, take us into the world of the drifter.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I've given a little bit of a tease.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But how would you explain what this game is?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So the drifter's pulpit venture thriller.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of like a fast-paced take on the point and click genre.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's about this guy, Mick Carter, who jumps a boxcar back to his hometown.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And he witnesses a violent murder.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then is chased by high tech soldiers and thrown in a reservoir of drown.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And
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[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, that's just the start of his problems because he finds himself alive again seconds before his death and he's got a escape and basically solve his own murder.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it's a lot of out of the frying pan into the fire kind of situations and trying to really try to really kind of amp up the what's considered like a slower pace genre usually the point-click genre.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, sort of
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[SPEAKER_00]: make it a bit of a roller coaster throw ride.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There are definitely some tense moments where you feel the clock ticking down on you and I'm really curious about sort of balancing that sort of feeling because obviously you've got people who are very familiar with how these games are sort of being played and they have a big experience with that but also how do you mix it up for people who may not be as familiar.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a fun kind of balance of strike.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think I think what sort of inspired us to make it was a little jam game jam we did where we we tried these sort of high pressure moments where you kind of got I guess a chain of puzzle sort of threads and so one one little puzzle thing leads to another like you you can't reach something that you can reach a broom and you knock over the broom and and like then need that lets you reach the thing that's just at a reach and you know
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[SPEAKER_00]: But also things where like, you know, you might have the character who's like in some die-apparel and they've only feels like they've got seconds to live.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so you're trying to sort of get yourself out of the situation.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And there might not be much you can do in that situation.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You might only have one sort of instinct you can interact with.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But like you have a string of those together and it kind of makes it feel like, makes it feel like you've kind of got this sort of flow to it, you know, and sort of this tense
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[SPEAKER_00]: uh, tense flow to it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, it's, it's, it was something which um, which we tried out in a game jam and it seemed to work really well and was surprising.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's yeah, that made us want to like try and do that as a, so the full kind of longer adventure game.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And um, it's pretty interesting because I think about some of those older games because like death and, and losing, you know, your place and all that stuff was always a big part of it, right?
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[SPEAKER_01]: I remember the in-screen of space quest for seeing hundreds of times, it varied different ways.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It was very,
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[SPEAKER_01]: enjoyable to see a lot of different ones, but I guess the friction of that was often you had to go back to your manuals, save file and all of those sorts of bits and pieces.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So what I find, and I'm curious for you to talk a bit more about this, is you know, how those modern design elements have kind of infiltrated or I guess coming to the design of this game versus the genre tropes.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like the modern style, I don't know.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The modern style is very much avoiding, avoiding anything that will kill the player unfairly and make them reload a save game, usually.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but with losing that, you kind of lose a bit of that tension that you had in some of the really old sort of Sierra games that constantly killed you like without any warning.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, so this is trying to get a balance between the player knowing
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[SPEAKER_00]: knowing where there's a bit of danger and getting that tension.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But also when they do die, it's kind of built into the story.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not trying to kind of throw up a big game over screen and make you click a bunch of UI buttons because I feel like that sort of takes you out of the story a lot.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like incorporating it in and having this character that's sort of jumping back in time and they remember that they've died and that's kind of part of the tension and the horror of the game as well.
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[SPEAKER_00]: and part of the story and what, like, this mystery you're trying to solve.
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[SPEAKER_01]: One thing I found really interesting is that you, in order to do this, the game, you kind of built that sort of platform for pointing click adventure, the power quest that you've got there.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And can you talk me about how, like, in terms of the timelines, what came first, did you build that?
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[SPEAKER_01]: And then said, let's do a jam game and kind of go, or how did that kind of come about?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, I could definitely had that sort of in the in the works earlier.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'd like I got my start making adventure games or games at all.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In like early two thousands with this other other tool called adventure games studio that people are still using today, but I've been using Unity and stuff.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so I really wanted to see if I could make something that felt as easy to use as adventure games studio or something.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I could just like chuck a bunch of dialogue in and have characters walking around and doing stuff.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so I started power quest in, I think, twenty fifteen, like I'd, I'd, when we started power off in, in, thousand twenty-thirty, but yeah, I'd always wanted to do adventure games.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I want to use the power of unity.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I sort of started working on this.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This tool kind of in the background kind of as a hobby almost as a side sort of project.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But then because there was these adventure game adventure game games that were coming up.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was like, oh, that's a good opportunity to try and make something with it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that's when I made this little game peridium, which was a horror game and the first horror game I tried making.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that was the idea, the one that sort of sparked the idea of trying to make a full, full-fledged thriller adventure game.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so Power Quest has been really fun to work on alongside, making the game as well, just having other people use it's really fun.
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[SPEAKER_00]: and sort of having that kind of community building as well.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, so that's been a really positive part of developing the drifter, even though it might have maybe slowed it down compared to just using something that was already made.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You're building the boat as you're sailing along, it kind of sounds like, yeah, that's right, yeah for sure.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious as well from, you know, when did it sort of, we've talked to you a few times over the years at Pax, you've shown the game off a number of times now.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And as that was sort of building over time, I'm curious.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Um, you know, how the game has sort of changed over those sort of years since we first saw the game being displayed.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was funny.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like so we kind of started it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think I kind of started working on the twenty eighteen, but we're still working on other games.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And in in twenty nineteen, we first showed it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think about very early like we we had an opportunity to do a steam.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Um, the very first team next first of all, steam or kind of what was called had a different name.
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[SPEAKER_00]: and we didn't want to pass that up so quickly through together this demo and put some art in it and that was the chapter one kind of thing but the rest of it was so sketchy like I barely had anything else at that point and so so that was very early time to have a demo like usually would wait a lot longer but yeah that that first demo like the story and the things that happened in that demo really haven't changed that much because that was that was always psyched going to be chapter one so really it's been
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[SPEAKER_00]: just building the rest of the game that comes after that whole time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm really interested because I've seen some of the design documentation for some of those older games and like what is building out a scenario in an adventure game actually look like to you.
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[SPEAKER_01]: What how do you start?
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[SPEAKER_01]: How do you kind of work out exactly what you're going to do in each of the level and all the interactions?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a it's a it's a century process like to personally I do a lot of free writing to just come up with just random ideas and plot ideas and puzzle ideas and bits of dialogue and things like that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's a tool we could called puzzle dependency charts where you kind of float flow chart of like the where you know you get where the player needs to end up you know for this the plot to kind of move forward and then when they're starting and kind of put in different things that happen different items that might get different obstacles that might come up and then you sort of draw this flow chart of like okay they're going to need to pick up a screwdriver from somewhere where could that be
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[SPEAKER_00]: and they've got to have that before they can do this next bit where they need the screwdriver.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, you build this complicated chart and then it all sort of comes out and then comes back into Colis's back into one sort of node where the next interesting cool plot point thing happens.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like going back and forth between sort of writing stuff and doing those charts and then moving around nodes in there and then trying to distill that into a sort of almost a walkthrough slash to do list of what has to go in the game.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But there's a lot of staring to the base and trying to work out, oh my god, how is this all going to hold together?
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[SPEAKER_00]: That happens in between.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I've done a lot of little, yeah, the little game jam adventure game sort of things, which are, you know, they're like an hour or less of a play time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so I, I've got a handle on how to do this, but then trying to actually make that into a longer game, like seven plus hours.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I thought, I, yeah, that's just, you know, do that seven times and you've got seven hours, but it's like the complexity just explodes out with the longer it gets.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And every character's suddenly got to have a bit of an arc and they're going to be multiple subplots for it to hold together.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And man, it did my head in trying to work it all out.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You've done a good job because it's very, very interesting.
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[SPEAKER_01]: What I also love as well, like, you know,
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[SPEAKER_01]: With adventure games, there's always other interactions you can get, which aren't your ideal interaction you want to do to solve the puzzle.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And how do you kind of say, okay, well, that one is just going to be like an off-hand comment, and this one's going to be something funny and actually an actual interaction.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think it's something that with the way I write stuff, I guess it just flows out pretty naturally, like what would the character say about this?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes it comes a bit more of a thing, like a little off-hand comment, early on, like there's a point where there's this sort of
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[SPEAKER_00]: The characters using this device and it shocks them like gives them the electric shock when they try and use it and then that was just an off-hand comment I thought would be just like dryly amusing at the time and then that became kind of more of like fundamental to the actual story or to the climax of the game and things like that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So things like that that just yes, sometimes it's just really random like and it feels natural for that to like a little comment early on to come up again later.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So just yeah, just works out that way.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And other things are very, very planned from the start.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And there's stuff that I plan for the start to be like the big climax of the game, which then because it's sort of, yeah, I don't know, it just doesn't really feel like it's got much backing because it's just not what the character would have done or not how the sort of plot sort of ended up flowing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I was definitely very responsive as I was writing it to work out what would feel right in the story.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But what I really like is, in terms of the writing, it feels very Australian, which I am a huge fan of.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm curious about, you know, is to keep out the setting and setting it in Australia with the least Australian and Kiwi characters and all of you international people as well.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Like why did you want to set it there?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Because you could literally put it anywhere in the world.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And why was that important to you?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Initially, so this come back to this early game game, game, cool prudium, where I wanted to
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was the first time I tried to do a serious game that wasn't a comedy.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I kind of wanted to try and see how I can make it feel grounded and not just some weird dumb story, I'd just made up in a few days.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And one of those things was like, OK, maybe if I give the main character in Australian accent,
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[SPEAKER_00]: It'll, it'll make it feel like they're from a real place as opposed to just generic American or something where I don't really have the subtlety and the nuance of like being, if it's American accent, like I wouldn't have, yeah, I wouldn't be able to say, oh, they're from this town and this is the sort of way they talk and the very specific things that they would do.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas, yeah, if it's an Australian, I know that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I can kind of give it that grounding.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, that was really happy with that, the way it worked and out in our friend Adrian Vaughan, who voices the character.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like I was always going to work with him.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so that was a big part of thinking of what would be a good character to do with that voice that Adrian does and sort of gravely Australian.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so the idea of this sort of drift, a sort of walking into town,
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[SPEAKER_00]: down his luck, but very sort of practical kind of guy, I think.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's yeah, that's where that kind of initial idea came about, and then it was all about how to make things difficult for him.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I really shouldn't get involved, but hey, so... Right.
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[SPEAKER_02]: What are you doing down here?
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[SPEAKER_03]: I right for the herald.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I really want to find out what it's like out here for you, homeless.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You, homeless.
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[SPEAKER_02]: God help me.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, look.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not homeless.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So great.
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[SPEAKER_03]: That's great.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So how long have you been staying out here, Mr. Carter?
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm not staying out here.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Jesus, will you put that thing away?
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[SPEAKER_03]: Sorry.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Sorry, just a few questions.
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[SPEAKER_02]: No.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Look, Angela was it?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Go home to your warm bed.
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[SPEAKER_02]: No one here has any reason to talk to you.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I know that, I'm not stupid.
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[SPEAKER_02]: She thrust her hand into her pocket, pulls out a hotel-sized bottle of rum.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Got a whole bunch?
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[SPEAKER_03]: You look like you could do something to drink?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
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[SPEAKER_02]: About a sensitive as I'd expect from a rich city kid.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Well, what do you want?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Nothing.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Just quit with the presumptuous attitude.
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[SPEAKER_02]: These are people, not your high school project.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I'm twenty-four, and you're one to talk, patronising asshole.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Whatever.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It gets pretty difficult for him.
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[SPEAKER_01]: What I also love is there's some little characters in there which are just cool references to other stuff.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's a detective character called D.I.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Harra and he's dressed like the boss of Zuko and he calls everyone boss as he walks around.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I love that just little things in there that kind of really connect it to this broader stuff there.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This game feels like I've a scale that is bigger than anything else.
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[SPEAKER_01]: you've done, it's got voice acting, it's got multiple different bits and pieces along the story driven game.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In terms of the scale of building that as a team, because you're only pretty small, right?
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[SPEAKER_01]: What was I'd like as a challenge to actually get this to finish line?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Hmm, yeah, I mean, that's a big part of what I took six years.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I kind of built it apart from the very first demo section.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I sort of built it by myself.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The first few years, so basically making it all playable with a placeholder art, and so I could get, so it could basically have a draft, like a writing a novel, do a first draft, and then go back and sort of add,
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[SPEAKER_00]: I had all the things like for shadowing and stuff that when I once figured out what the plot would ever mean and the little character arcs and adding a little bit like that to reinforce the themes and all that stuff.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I did all that before I got full production kind of stuff involved so that I wasn't getting all this stuff added and then deciding to change it all.
16:46.766 --> 16:52.551
[SPEAKER_00]: So that kind of meant a took longer, but it was a lot more doable in terms of the size of the team.
16:53.732 --> 17:01.860
[SPEAKER_00]: And then yeah, it was just sort of ramping up to full sort of full production was sort of getting a few more artists on board and sort of replacing that a bit by bit.
17:02.921 --> 17:06.324
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd never done things like voice casting and stuff.
17:06.925 --> 17:15.533
[SPEAKER_00]: I've done recording voices, but it's always just been with friends or a couple of other people in their game jam that are just very casually doing it.
17:15.553 --> 17:20.237
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I didn't even know a casting director was a thing, but that was something that was super helpful.
17:20.397 --> 17:21.198
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, oh yeah, cool.
17:21.218 --> 17:22.720
[SPEAKER_00]: There's someone who will help with that stuff.
17:24.758 --> 17:26.919
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, like, I was a lot to figure out.
17:28.319 --> 17:32.540
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, it was a journey for sure.
17:33.000 --> 17:36.941
[SPEAKER_01]: When the credits rolled as well, I was interested to say, like, you know, so much of this has your hand on it.
17:37.141 --> 17:40.102
[SPEAKER_01]: Including the writing, which I thought was like actually very funny and clever.
17:40.122 --> 17:46.584
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm curious about your learning experience of doing like writing a game with that scale, like what do you think?
17:47.004 --> 17:51.405
[SPEAKER_01]: If you cast your mind back to when you first started to, to what you, uh, at now that it's out.
17:52.065 --> 17:54.617
[SPEAKER_01]: ready to roll food for players to experience.
17:55.377 --> 18:16.487
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I really enjoyed when I guess the first couple of years working on it when it was just, well, yeah, first probably the first half of the development was doing a lot of the writing and that was, I was really getting, I was really enjoying deep diving into like what this whole writing thing is about because it went away deeper than I imagined.
18:16.607 --> 18:21.749
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought it was just like, oh, you know, you just, you write and like there's some tips that you might find or whatever, but
18:23.290 --> 18:25.331
[SPEAKER_00]: but really just sort of right as well as you can kind of think.
18:25.651 --> 18:45.198
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, no, I got right into listening to podcasts about writing and reading books about it and about the so many aspects to it, dialogue and character and plot and yeah, man, there's there's every little part of writing has has so there's so much depth to it and so it was quite inspiring as well.
18:47.459 --> 19:08.255
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, listen to a podcast on my community or something or go for a walk in listening to a podcast about writing, just getting me excited about putting these sort of principles into practice and seeing how I could flesh the dialogue out in the characters and yeah, I found that really inspiring listening to other writers and the whole list talk about their approach and like the little tricks they use and and the do's and don't it's kind of stuff.
19:08.856 --> 19:11.098
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's quite cool and I really
19:12.038 --> 19:13.039
[SPEAKER_01]: You came to do it again.
19:14.180 --> 19:19.824
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what I'm curious about because obviously the games that you've made have been kind of like, you know, there was obviously narrative in the games you've made.
19:19.864 --> 19:23.007
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Carlos had a storyline written through it and all of those sorts of things.
19:23.047 --> 19:26.650
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm curious, is this the sort of thing that you're interested in doing more of?
19:26.970 --> 19:27.570
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, for sure.
19:27.670 --> 19:27.871
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
19:28.371 --> 19:32.935
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I'll always be making adventure games because it's kind of where I came from as a developer as well.
19:33.435 --> 19:41.121
[SPEAKER_00]: Carl was fun because it was like right, we wrote like, I know, two hundred tiny little like two cents and snippets of like,
19:43.159 --> 19:49.021
[SPEAKER_00]: love crafty kind of heavy handed love crafty purple pro stuff which is definitely evident in the drifter as well.
19:49.041 --> 19:58.485
[SPEAKER_00]: They're very purple pro stuff and it's what I like about reading a lot of thrillers and stuff that where they get very Florida like sort of like that stuff.
20:00.185 --> 20:08.889
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I was something I've always, I've always made these adventure games and I've always loved storytelling through a game as well.
20:10.177 --> 20:17.289
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's always been part of what I enjoy about playing games as well, like playing for the story even if it's doing or something like, I want to see what happens, you know?
20:18.652 --> 20:23.861
[SPEAKER_00]: And so yeah, it's always been a story telling medium for me and that's kind of what keeps me motivated.
20:24.713 --> 20:26.034
[SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, lots of stories.
20:26.094 --> 20:33.359
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to keep telling the games, but hopefully I can tell them a bit faster than you know, six years, because I'll run out of life before I get enough of that.
20:33.579 --> 20:35.600
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we want to get you back on the podcast again at some point.
20:35.620 --> 20:50.069
[SPEAKER_01]: So, can you tell me a bit about some of those influences, because you mentioned obviously you had some sort of like, you know, craft influences there, but you know, I'm curious about the things that you wanted to bring into this world, things that were inspiring to the story that you wanted to tell.
20:50.340 --> 21:06.765
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, most of the inspirations were film and novels and stuff, so not so much games, but very much got into just going to the second bookshop and finding really cheesy looking, like finding the cheesiest cover for a thriller and just reading through it.
21:07.085 --> 21:10.166
[SPEAKER_00]: And usually, yeah, very shlucky, pulp fiction kind of stuff.
21:11.006 --> 21:17.008
[SPEAKER_00]: And then lots of B movies, like thrillers and horror movies, especially seventies stuff.
21:19.280 --> 21:21.401
[SPEAKER_00]: Just but yeah, I just really enjoyed that stuff.
21:22.162 --> 21:23.202
[SPEAKER_01]: Give us some examples, Dave.
21:23.222 --> 21:25.124
[SPEAKER_01]: You've got to tell us which ones you've looked at.
21:25.304 --> 21:34.589
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to hear your pile of shave the biggest good good sort of influences or things like and drama the strain and like Michael Grant and stuff like Los World as well.
21:34.609 --> 21:37.871
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I think the way he crafts like layers on
21:39.081 --> 21:43.865
[SPEAKER_00]: attention, so there's like, you're in a lab, but also there's a nuke which is set to explode.
21:45.326 --> 21:51.872
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a disease which is like come out so they can't escape without triggering the explosion that's going to blow them all up.
21:51.952 --> 21:54.574
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, like, how are they going to get out of this situation?
21:55.274 --> 21:57.196
[SPEAKER_00]: But also the text realist stuff there is really awesome.
21:58.577 --> 22:05.943
[SPEAKER_00]: There's big gear, like, I guess, Croninburg movies and John Carpenter stuff with the soundtrack especially.
22:08.547 --> 22:10.988
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's how to think of the particular ones.
22:13.909 --> 22:26.114
[SPEAKER_00]: That like Robin Cook writes these really super cheesy medical thrillers, which are they like going to all this very specific detail about like this operating theory and what this surgeon's doing.
22:26.674 --> 22:35.737
[SPEAKER_00]: And then something goes wrong in, you know, that kind of thing, which I just really like because they're just so very like that there's like twenty of what thirty of them, you know, but they're all really
22:36.264 --> 22:41.227
[SPEAKER_00]: They're kind of almost the same, but like over the top thrillery stuff.
22:41.367 --> 22:41.987
[SPEAKER_00]: That's really fun.
22:42.548 --> 22:50.812
[SPEAKER_00]: I just wouldn't think medical thriller would be a thing, but... Yeah, there's just so many, well, there's so many thriller genres, like some genres that, like, that's what I like about it.
22:50.853 --> 22:57.757
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just like such a specific thing of, like, over the top medical descriptions of everything, and then it's also a thriller.
22:59.818 --> 23:00.778
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
23:02.239 --> 23:02.819
[SPEAKER_00]: What else are good?
23:02.880 --> 23:04.240
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, oh man, there's so much stuff.
23:05.691 --> 23:08.532
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like, yeah, so I guess another one like Matthew Riley.
23:10.233 --> 23:14.695
[SPEAKER_00]: I station was like one which was was just classic growing up in Australia book to read.
23:14.715 --> 23:24.260
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, it's like so over the top how much like how out of the frying pan into the fire, it is like, you know, they just like there's a grenade and then they jump out.
23:24.580 --> 23:26.060
[SPEAKER_00]: like, throw the green away and they jump out.
23:26.080 --> 23:30.482
[SPEAKER_00]: But now I'm like, kill the whales like, grab their leg and they're getting sucked undone.
23:30.522 --> 23:32.602
[SPEAKER_00]: So they like escape the kill the whale and kick away from it.
23:32.842 --> 23:35.503
[SPEAKER_00]: But on the underwater and now they're under an ice sheet and they can't get out.
23:35.523 --> 23:36.243
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's a submarine.
23:36.263 --> 23:37.944
[SPEAKER_00]: So they swim into the torpedo tube.
23:37.984 --> 23:39.844
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, but then the baddies have got them.
23:39.964 --> 23:41.885
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're like, just like the whole looks like that.
23:41.945 --> 23:46.546
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that was how we can pose in like, okay, how do I get that kind of pace, you know?
23:47.026 --> 23:50.768
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the drift idea seems pretty chilled in comparison really if you get some of that like that way.
23:52.863 --> 23:55.624
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's one of those games that I think is really interesting.
23:55.644 --> 23:59.927
[SPEAKER_01]: And what I'm curious about, because obviously, you've got this grounding in the adventure game culture.
24:00.107 --> 24:09.051
[SPEAKER_01]: And that it's one of these genres that I'd say that in, there's been a few recent lines, like, because the gold noddle and things like that have come out, which have sort of been breakout here.
24:09.071 --> 24:15.715
[SPEAKER_01]: But the genre itself has kind of been, you know, it's become a sub-genre now, it's a niche sort of thing.
24:15.755 --> 24:21.478
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm curious about what you know about that particular community that you really appreciate and,
24:22.728 --> 24:29.133
[SPEAKER_01]: what sort of games you're making, is this for someone who is more of a general audience or is it for those die hearts?
24:29.794 --> 24:32.916
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'd definitely like to break out of the niche.
24:32.996 --> 24:41.143
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess one thing that I find really, really pleasing is when there's someone who says they don't play those games and they play the demo and they're really excited about it.
24:41.623 --> 24:43.625
[SPEAKER_00]: That's really satisfying, because it's a genre I really love.
24:43.885 --> 24:48.449
[SPEAKER_00]: I play a heap of it and the community I'm part of as well.
24:50.250 --> 24:58.292
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, that's something I would be definitely really, really like it when it comes to a new audience and they go, oh, these games are kind of a bit uncool.
24:58.352 --> 25:04.734
[SPEAKER_00]: Like seeing as a bit uncool and kind of clunky and old-fashioned when people like kind of get what's good about them, you know?
25:04.754 --> 25:10.136
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because there's a lot that adventure games can do that other games kind of can't.
25:10.376 --> 25:13.717
[SPEAKER_00]: Like in terms of narrative and storytelling, which I think are really cool.
25:13.937 --> 25:14.297
[SPEAKER_01]: Like what?
25:15.789 --> 25:39.426
[SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, one of the things they do really well is that the interplay between story and gameplay, like the gameplay and the point in click, everything you examine or interact with can be part of a sort of part of the story, like you can click on a door and the character can tell you about that this door is a bit like the door.
25:39.846 --> 25:42.428
[SPEAKER_00]: My grandma had a house when we were growing up.
25:43.609 --> 25:46.010
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, it was flimsy and always creaked or something.
25:46.030 --> 25:48.111
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, that just tells you a bit about the character or something.
25:48.452 --> 25:57.056
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's a silly, silly kind of example, but like, in most games, you can have a bit of environmental storytelling and you can kind of get that, but you can't get it so direct.
25:58.056 --> 26:05.460
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, with every kind of, everything you examine and click on and every little interaction, there's, it's basically a cut scene.
26:05.480 --> 26:08.682
[SPEAKER_00]: So the cut scenes in the game, which tells the story are kind of,
26:10.003 --> 26:17.486
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they're much more intertwined with the gameplay, and so most games you have the gameplay, and then you have the cutscenes of very separate things.
26:17.926 --> 26:26.370
[SPEAKER_00]: So you have a section of, you know, twenty minutes of gameplay, and then a two minute cutscene, and then another twenty minutes of gameplay, and so you get these two things happening at odds with each other a lot more.
26:26.692 --> 26:46.815
[SPEAKER_01]: I also really like that often you can get like much more internal dialogue that you would not normally get in other genres like there's a few examples I can think of which you know there is a bit of that like control is one of those ones that kind of comes to mind where there's a lot of that sort of back and forth but it's something that feels you know typical of the of the genre to hear the player actually think to themselves about certain things or talk to themselves about certain things and that
26:47.057 --> 26:49.801
[SPEAKER_01]: That line often blows a little bit, which is kind of cool in a fun way.
26:50.461 --> 26:50.902
[SPEAKER_00]: It comes out.
26:50.962 --> 27:03.758
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that comes out with the interface as well, like because the mouse cursor is almost an analog to the characters that internal thoughts, like you scan the mouse over the room and you sort of, it's like the character's looking around and thinking about what they could do and how they could interact.
27:04.319 --> 27:07.600
[SPEAKER_00]: That was an interesting, yeah, interesting thing to think about making it as well.
27:07.740 --> 27:14.922
[SPEAKER_00]: And having the narrator as fun as you know, you can do the unreliable narrator kind of stuff where like, are they really seeing what they're saying they're saying?
27:14.942 --> 27:15.882
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's sort of stuff.
27:16.002 --> 27:23.745
[SPEAKER_01]: It's interesting, actually, because I did want to ask you about the mouse cursor as a way of interacting, but this game actually plays incredibly well on a controller.
27:24.185 --> 27:30.067
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm curious about sort of designing adventure games for controller interaction, because I remember
27:31.843 --> 27:35.407
[SPEAKER_01]: They used to be the thing about pixel hunting for literally the right thing you did to click on.
27:35.627 --> 27:37.088
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was never that enjoyable.
27:37.489 --> 27:39.471
[SPEAKER_01]: But it was part of the way that we used to play.
27:39.511 --> 27:43.935
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm curious because this kind of takes away that element you really have got kind of a ring.
27:44.388 --> 27:47.629
[SPEAKER_01]: and that you kind of using to interact with different objects.
27:47.649 --> 27:48.910
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you tell me more about designing that?
27:49.090 --> 28:05.756
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so similarly to what I was like, yeah, talking about, I wanted it to be kind of character centric, so you kind of, the idea I had was you pivot, you know, what the character kind of looks around with the right stick, and that's kind of coming from the way the player standing on screen.
28:05.776 --> 28:06.836
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's this radio off menu.
28:07.477 --> 28:08.257
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, it was the same thing.
28:08.277 --> 28:12.539
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like, it should be what the character can look around at and see and think about in the room.
28:13.279 --> 28:13.479
[SPEAKER_00]: And then
28:14.019 --> 28:25.005
[SPEAKER_00]: So you have this sort of two phases to interaction where one way you're sort of hovering the cursor or like using this radio menu to look around and then the other way to sidetracked.
28:26.065 --> 28:34.790
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, it was definitely coming from thinking about how the cursor actually really works in terms of mapping the character's thoughts and stuff into the game.
28:35.591 --> 28:37.892
[SPEAKER_00]: Because yeah, it was something I really wanted to try and solve.
28:39.083 --> 28:42.624
[SPEAKER_00]: because controlling a cursor with an analog stick is not that fun.
28:43.545 --> 28:52.968
[SPEAKER_00]: But then when all the interactions are just like walk up to an object and press the button, feel like it loses that thoughtful process, I guess.
28:53.808 --> 28:54.348
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
28:54.809 --> 29:00.331
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, there's many opportunities in the game as well where you're actually having to move around and see what actually pops up nearby.
29:00.571 --> 29:04.432
[SPEAKER_01]: So you still have a bit of that sort of search and find aspect of actually doing that within
29:05.159 --> 29:05.719
[SPEAKER_01]: within the game.
29:06.440 --> 29:13.223
[SPEAKER_01]: Quite a few instances where I died because I hadn't wasn't quite of the right spot when I did or ran out of time with my little timers.
29:13.243 --> 29:17.965
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we're just fun and kind of frustrating it to say, you know, like, oh, this is the good old days.
29:17.985 --> 29:18.965
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the good old days.
29:19.025 --> 29:28.930
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, the game is so close to launch now and I'm really curious because the team that you, a part of PowerHoof, kind of have a couple of different projects on the go.
29:29.630 --> 29:33.512
[SPEAKER_01]: What are you working on at the moment now that the drift will soon be in people's hands?
29:34.043 --> 29:36.685
[SPEAKER_00]: Or Sylvie Drift for a little bit more.
29:37.766 --> 29:40.809
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I'm going to work on switch point and stuff after this as well.
29:41.429 --> 29:43.251
[SPEAKER_00]: Bione's kind of got this project for Chuck.
29:43.391 --> 29:47.474
[SPEAKER_00]: I've forced him to have on the backburner while he's been helping me on the drifter called Asad knife.
29:47.934 --> 29:50.897
[SPEAKER_00]: And so he's like, yes, still planning to do a vector work here on that.
29:51.597 --> 29:52.418
[SPEAKER_00]: It's his pet project.
29:53.099 --> 29:54.160
[SPEAKER_00]: I love got some more stuff.
29:54.260 --> 29:58.223
[SPEAKER_00]: Like this this other adventure game called the Toe William, which I'm still going to do the final chapter for.
29:58.723 --> 30:01.906
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I'll probably I want to package that up and put that on steam as well.
30:02.686 --> 30:04.306
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's kind of the immediate future.
30:04.887 --> 30:28.052
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we've got so many things you want to do and the drifters have been taking up all that, all that headspace for a while, but yeah, so Barney's really keen to get back working on Asadnaif, he's been, he's got lots of ideas, lots of ideas for that game that things you can try but he's also kind of, he's built it up to have like heaps of stuff in it and they sort of try to narrow it down to like what it's actually going to finally be as well.
30:29.087 --> 30:35.174
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, are you thinking that potentially you might get it to switch to and use a bit of that mouse functionality and get the best of both worlds?
30:35.514 --> 30:49.629
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like so it's it's all running on switch and play bones which for yeah, and I've got to actually get a switch to dev kit and get that mouse stuff happening as well because I just make so much sense like I've definitely developed and designed it to be played handheld and and work really nicely with control and stuff but
30:50.335 --> 30:52.196
[SPEAKER_00]: I just make so much sense like, hey, it's going to mouse now.
30:52.276 --> 30:53.157
[SPEAKER_00]: Awesome.
30:53.237 --> 30:56.418
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's make it so you can switch and play however you want.
30:58.299 --> 31:03.242
[SPEAKER_01]: Dave, if you have to line the clock back to the very beginning, what's the thing that you wish you knew right at the very start?
31:03.712 --> 31:06.513
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think if I told, if I knew right at the start, then it would take this long.
31:06.633 --> 31:09.174
[SPEAKER_00]: I just wouldn't have done it, so I probably shouldn't tell myself that.
31:09.194 --> 31:14.095
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll keep that secret because that was something that killed me on this project as hell on everything to.
31:15.576 --> 31:17.837
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I'm very happy with how it ended up.
31:17.877 --> 31:21.398
[SPEAKER_00]: There's not much I'd change in terms of, like,
31:22.241 --> 31:24.824
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, things are not happy with the project or anything like that.
31:25.024 --> 31:28.127
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was actually pretty smooth of just everything took a long time.
31:28.588 --> 31:36.195
[SPEAKER_00]: Like there's nothing that where we had to chuck things away or like there was a big disaster and we lost a lot of time for any particular reason.
31:36.215 --> 31:38.278
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just like just a lot of work, you know.
31:39.659 --> 31:41.500
[SPEAKER_01]: It's only a couple of you in PowerHoof.
31:42.340 --> 31:49.202
[SPEAKER_01]: The Drifter, it'll be out on the seventeenth of July on Steam, and as you heard there coming to Switch later this year, Dave, it's a pleasure.
31:49.622 --> 31:51.403
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's not make it seven years before the next one.
31:51.423 --> 31:53.223
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll try not to.
31:55.264 --> 31:59.425
[SPEAKER_04]: You're listening to LightMap, interesting conversations with video game creators.
32:03.487 --> 32:05.547
[SPEAKER_01]: This has been LightMap's Sifties Interview podcast.
32:05.567 --> 32:07.488
[SPEAKER_01]: Sift is produced by Carl Paletto.
32:07.932 --> 32:17.538
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're on a bartholome as Kat Jarn, Naomi Jackson, Adam Christo and Chris Button, Mitch Lowes, Senior Producer who added to this episode of my name is Gianni Giovanni and I am Sifties Executive Producer.
32:17.819 --> 32:21.141
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks to audio and technical Australia and Apple for their support of Sifter.
32:21.401 --> 32:24.063
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, if you liked the shows that we have, give us a rating or review.
32:24.083 --> 32:26.024
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really important on your favourite podcast player.
32:26.064 --> 32:27.145
[SPEAKER_01]: It helps me to find the show.
32:27.524 --> 32:33.929
[SPEAKER_01]: They're searching through for stuff and they see something that's made of five stars, which, you know, you can give it any star rating, but you might want to give it to five stars.
32:34.629 --> 32:35.850
[SPEAKER_01]: That really helps people find the show.
32:36.290 --> 32:43.155
[SPEAKER_01]: The other thing you should do is make sure you check out Sifter on our website, sifter.com.au, we're putting up reviews and other podcasts all the time up there.
32:43.175 --> 32:53.142
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you like Australian look at the way that games are made and how we talk about them, make sure you go there or find us at Sifter HQ on all of your favorite social media.
32:53.562 --> 32:56.845
[SPEAKER_01]: That's all the time we have for this episode until next time, have fun.
00:00.394 --> 00:01.744
[SPEAKER_04]: sifter.com.au
00:02.923 --> 00:07.125
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I'll always be making adventure games because it's kind of where I came from as a developer as well.
00:07.605 --> 00:23.211
[SPEAKER_00]: Crawl was fun because it was like right, we wrote like, I don't know, two hundred tiny little like two cents and snippets of like love crafty kind of heavy handed love crafty purple pro stuff, which is definitely evident in the driftor as well.
00:24.192 --> 00:25.392
[SPEAKER_00]: The very purple pro stuff.
00:26.452 --> 00:32.495
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, most of the, most of the inspirations were film and novels and stuff, so not so much games.
00:33.035 --> 00:42.871
[SPEAKER_00]: But very much got into just like going to the second bookshop and like finding really cheesy looking, like finding the cheesiest cover for a thriller and like just reading through it.
00:43.192 --> 00:46.217
[SPEAKER_00]: And usually, yeah, very lucky pulp fiction kind of stuff.
00:50.065 --> 00:54.246
[SPEAKER_01]: Hello and welcome to LightMap from Sifter, our video game industry interview show.
00:54.406 --> 00:58.086
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Gianni Giovanni, those pixel masters at Melbourne's Powerhoof are back.
00:58.447 --> 01:04.968
[SPEAKER_01]: The gritty and very Australian one-in-click adventure the Drifter is a topic for today and Dave Lloyd is my guest.
01:05.188 --> 01:09.289
[SPEAKER_01]: Before we jump into that, here's what's been making the news on walks through Sifter's weekly news podcast.
01:09.449 --> 01:09.869
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's go.
01:11.109 --> 01:16.930
[SPEAKER_04]: Join the Sifter Community on Discord at sifter.com.au forward slash discord.
01:30.544 --> 01:39.783
[SPEAKER_01]: So now if you're of a certain vintage and I am pointing click adventure games at some of the most interesting titles you could play at the time I have really fond memories.
01:40.230 --> 01:43.952
[SPEAKER_01]: spending hours collecting or a calcum to get that final good end ending.
01:44.232 --> 01:48.995
[SPEAKER_01]: The Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis flipping burgers in sci-fi space quest for and many, many more.
01:49.335 --> 01:53.037
[SPEAKER_01]: And the Germans still aimlessly in love with the genre.
01:53.057 --> 01:57.480
[SPEAKER_01]: So when I say the drifter is one of the best new entries into the format, I mean it.
01:57.780 --> 02:03.163
[SPEAKER_01]: Dave Lloyd is part of Powerhoof and was last on the show back in, for any eighteen, which if you're counting is seven years ago now.
02:04.123 --> 02:05.644
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm thrilled to welcome you back to the show.
02:05.764 --> 02:07.445
[SPEAKER_01]: David, welcome back to Lightmap.
02:07.841 --> 02:08.221
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, thanks.
02:08.461 --> 02:09.341
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, really happy to be here.
02:09.881 --> 02:10.181
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
02:10.242 --> 02:13.182
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, take us into the world of the drifter.
02:13.202 --> 02:14.582
[SPEAKER_01]: I've given a little bit of a tease.
02:15.083 --> 02:16.583
[SPEAKER_01]: But how would you explain what this game is?
02:17.143 --> 02:17.383
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
02:17.423 --> 02:19.823
[SPEAKER_00]: So the drifter's pulpit venture thriller.
02:20.484 --> 02:23.804
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of like a fast-paced take on the point and click genre.
02:24.084 --> 02:28.545
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about this guy, Mick Carter, who jumps a boxcar back to his hometown.
02:29.826 --> 02:31.586
[SPEAKER_00]: And he witnesses a violent murder.
02:31.606 --> 02:35.787
[SPEAKER_00]: And then is chased by high tech soldiers and thrown in a reservoir of drown.
02:36.547 --> 02:36.647
[SPEAKER_00]: And
02:37.711 --> 02:45.576
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, that's just the start of his problems because he finds himself alive again seconds before his death and he's got a escape and basically solve his own murder.
02:45.596 --> 02:57.783
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it's a lot of out of the frying pan into the fire kind of situations and trying to really try to really kind of amp up the what's considered like a slower pace genre usually the point-click genre.
02:58.543 --> 02:59.364
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, sort of
03:00.443 --> 03:02.024
[SPEAKER_00]: make it a bit of a roller coaster throw ride.
03:02.384 --> 03:21.503
[SPEAKER_01]: There are definitely some tense moments where you feel the clock ticking down on you and I'm really curious about sort of balancing that sort of feeling because obviously you've got people who are very familiar with how these games are sort of being played and they have a big experience with that but also how do you mix it up for people who may not be as familiar.
03:22.098 --> 03:24.859
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a fun kind of balance of strike.
03:25.339 --> 03:46.965
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I think what sort of inspired us to make it was a little jam game jam we did where we we tried these sort of high pressure moments where you kind of got I guess a chain of puzzle sort of threads and so one one little puzzle thing leads to another like you you can't reach something that you can reach a broom and you knock over the broom and and like then need that lets you reach the thing that's just at a reach and you know
03:48.205 --> 03:54.287
[SPEAKER_00]: But also things where like, you know, you might have the character who's like in some die-apparel and they've only feels like they've got seconds to live.
03:54.707 --> 03:57.308
[SPEAKER_00]: And so you're trying to sort of get yourself out of the situation.
03:57.388 --> 04:00.389
[SPEAKER_00]: And there might not be much you can do in that situation.
04:00.409 --> 04:02.389
[SPEAKER_00]: You might only have one sort of instinct you can interact with.
04:02.949 --> 04:12.192
[SPEAKER_00]: But like you have a string of those together and it kind of makes it feel like, makes it feel like you've kind of got this sort of flow to it, you know, and sort of this tense
04:13.072 --> 04:13.912
[SPEAKER_00]: uh, tense flow to it.
04:14.453 --> 04:19.875
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, it's, it's, it was something which um, which we tried out in a game jam and it seemed to work really well and was surprising.
04:19.895 --> 04:24.578
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's yeah, that made us want to like try and do that as a, so the full kind of longer adventure game.
04:25.378 --> 04:33.162
[SPEAKER_01]: And um, it's pretty interesting because I think about some of those older games because like death and, and losing, you know, your place and all that stuff was always a big part of it, right?
04:33.502 --> 04:37.864
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember the in-screen of space quest for seeing hundreds of times, it varied different ways.
04:37.884 --> 04:38.244
[SPEAKER_01]: It was very,
04:38.704 --> 04:46.912
[SPEAKER_01]: enjoyable to see a lot of different ones, but I guess the friction of that was often you had to go back to your manuals, save file and all of those sorts of bits and pieces.
04:46.932 --> 04:56.722
[SPEAKER_01]: So what I find, and I'm curious for you to talk a bit more about this, is you know, how those modern design elements have kind of infiltrated or I guess coming to the design of this game versus the genre tropes.
04:57.111 --> 04:59.592
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like the modern style, I don't know.
04:59.912 --> 05:06.953
[SPEAKER_00]: The modern style is very much avoiding, avoiding anything that will kill the player unfairly and make them reload a save game, usually.
05:06.973 --> 05:19.296
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but with losing that, you kind of lose a bit of that tension that you had in some of the really old sort of Sierra games that constantly killed you like without any warning.
05:19.316 --> 05:25.497
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, so this is trying to get a balance between the player knowing
05:26.157 --> 05:28.659
[SPEAKER_00]: knowing where there's a bit of danger and getting that tension.
05:29.460 --> 05:32.142
[SPEAKER_00]: But also when they do die, it's kind of built into the story.
05:32.162 --> 05:41.830
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not trying to kind of throw up a big game over screen and make you click a bunch of UI buttons because I feel like that sort of takes you out of the story a lot.
05:41.910 --> 05:52.599
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like incorporating it in and having this character that's sort of jumping back in time and they remember that they've died and that's kind of part of the tension and the horror of the game as well.
05:54.060 --> 05:56.623
[SPEAKER_00]: and part of the story and what, like, this mystery you're trying to solve.
05:57.224 --> 06:04.572
[SPEAKER_01]: One thing I found really interesting is that you, in order to do this, the game, you kind of built that sort of platform for pointing click adventure, the power quest that you've got there.
06:04.932 --> 06:09.077
[SPEAKER_01]: And can you talk me about how, like, in terms of the timelines, what came first, did you build that?
06:09.257 --> 06:12.841
[SPEAKER_01]: And then said, let's do a jam game and kind of go, or how did that kind of come about?
06:13.076 --> 06:16.317
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, I could definitely had that sort of in the in the works earlier.
06:17.097 --> 06:21.418
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd like I got my start making adventure games or games at all.
06:21.578 --> 06:30.619
[SPEAKER_00]: In like early two thousands with this other other tool called adventure games studio that people are still using today, but I've been using Unity and stuff.
06:30.859 --> 06:36.160
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I really wanted to see if I could make something that felt as easy to use as adventure games studio or something.
06:36.180 --> 06:40.341
[SPEAKER_00]: I could just like chuck a bunch of dialogue in and have characters walking around and doing stuff.
06:40.997 --> 06:51.199
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so I started power quest in, I think, twenty fifteen, like I'd, I'd, when we started power off in, in, thousand twenty-thirty, but yeah, I'd always wanted to do adventure games.
06:51.820 --> 06:53.121
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I want to use the power of unity.
06:53.141 --> 06:55.943
[SPEAKER_00]: So I sort of started working on this.
06:56.383 --> 07:00.406
[SPEAKER_00]: This tool kind of in the background kind of as a hobby almost as a side sort of project.
07:01.306 --> 07:06.009
[SPEAKER_00]: But then because there was these adventure game adventure game games that were coming up.
07:06.649 --> 07:09.151
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like, oh, that's a good opportunity to try and make something with it.
07:09.852 --> 07:14.835
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's when I made this little game peridium, which was a horror game and the first horror game I tried making.
07:16.278 --> 07:21.504
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was the idea, the one that sort of sparked the idea of trying to make a full, full-fledged thriller adventure game.
07:22.945 --> 07:29.893
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so Power Quest has been really fun to work on alongside, making the game as well, just having other people use it's really fun.
07:31.052 --> 07:32.952
[SPEAKER_00]: and sort of having that kind of community building as well.
07:33.953 --> 07:41.994
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, so that's been a really positive part of developing the drifter, even though it might have maybe slowed it down compared to just using something that was already made.
07:42.574 --> 07:47.795
[SPEAKER_01]: You're building the boat as you're sailing along, it kind of sounds like, yeah, that's right, yeah for sure.
07:47.915 --> 07:55.677
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious as well from, you know, when did it sort of, we've talked to you a few times over the years at Pax, you've shown the game off a number of times now.
07:55.737 --> 07:58.237
[SPEAKER_01]: And as that was sort of building over time, I'm curious.
07:58.837 --> 08:04.639
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, you know, how the game has sort of changed over those sort of years since we first saw the game being displayed.
08:05.239 --> 08:05.860
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was funny.
08:05.920 --> 08:07.860
[SPEAKER_00]: Like so we kind of started it.
08:07.880 --> 08:11.202
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I kind of started working on the twenty eighteen, but we're still working on other games.
08:11.922 --> 08:14.063
[SPEAKER_00]: And in in twenty nineteen, we first showed it.
08:14.103 --> 08:18.204
[SPEAKER_00]: I think about very early like we we had an opportunity to do a steam.
08:18.584 --> 08:23.366
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, the very first team next first of all, steam or kind of what was called had a different name.
08:23.974 --> 08:52.342
[SPEAKER_00]: and we didn't want to pass that up so quickly through together this demo and put some art in it and that was the chapter one kind of thing but the rest of it was so sketchy like I barely had anything else at that point and so so that was very early time to have a demo like usually would wait a lot longer but yeah that that first demo like the story and the things that happened in that demo really haven't changed that much because that was that was always psyched going to be chapter one so really it's been
08:52.818 --> 08:55.199
[SPEAKER_00]: just building the rest of the game that comes after that whole time.
08:56.339 --> 09:05.661
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm really interested because I've seen some of the design documentation for some of those older games and like what is building out a scenario in an adventure game actually look like to you.
09:05.681 --> 09:07.482
[SPEAKER_01]: What how do you start?
09:07.522 --> 09:10.942
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you kind of work out exactly what you're going to do in each of the level and all the interactions?
09:10.962 --> 09:22.125
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a it's a it's a century process like to personally I do a lot of free writing to just come up with just random ideas and plot ideas and puzzle ideas and bits of dialogue and things like that.
09:23.941 --> 09:49.058
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's a tool we could called puzzle dependency charts where you kind of float flow chart of like the where you know you get where the player needs to end up you know for this the plot to kind of move forward and then when they're starting and kind of put in different things that happen different items that might get different obstacles that might come up and then you sort of draw this flow chart of like okay they're going to need to pick up a screwdriver from somewhere where could that be
09:49.568 --> 09:52.629
[SPEAKER_00]: and they've got to have that before they can do this next bit where they need the screwdriver.
09:52.649 --> 10:01.771
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, you build this complicated chart and then it all sort of comes out and then comes back into Colis's back into one sort of node where the next interesting cool plot point thing happens.
10:02.791 --> 10:16.915
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like going back and forth between sort of writing stuff and doing those charts and then moving around nodes in there and then trying to distill that into a sort of almost a walkthrough slash to do list of what has to go in the game.
10:18.796 --> 10:24.160
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's a lot of staring to the base and trying to work out, oh my god, how is this all going to hold together?
10:24.540 --> 10:25.761
[SPEAKER_00]: That happens in between.
10:27.162 --> 10:35.547
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've done a lot of little, yeah, the little game jam adventure game sort of things, which are, you know, they're like an hour or less of a play time.
10:35.987 --> 10:43.412
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I, I've got a handle on how to do this, but then trying to actually make that into a longer game, like seven plus hours.
10:45.104 --> 10:52.672
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought, I, yeah, that's just, you know, do that seven times and you've got seven hours, but it's like the complexity just explodes out with the longer it gets.
10:52.772 --> 10:57.957
[SPEAKER_00]: And every character's suddenly got to have a bit of an arc and they're going to be multiple subplots for it to hold together.
10:58.838 --> 11:01.140
[SPEAKER_00]: And man, it did my head in trying to work it all out.
11:03.082 --> 11:04.864
[SPEAKER_01]: You've done a good job because it's very, very interesting.
11:04.884 --> 11:06.366
[SPEAKER_01]: What I also love as well, like, you know,
11:07.410 --> 11:13.113
[SPEAKER_01]: With adventure games, there's always other interactions you can get, which aren't your ideal interaction you want to do to solve the puzzle.
11:13.653 --> 11:20.136
[SPEAKER_01]: And how do you kind of say, okay, well, that one is just going to be like an off-hand comment, and this one's going to be something funny and actually an actual interaction.
11:20.716 --> 11:28.040
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think it's something that with the way I write stuff, I guess it just flows out pretty naturally, like what would the character say about this?
11:28.800 --> 11:34.823
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes it comes a bit more of a thing, like a little off-hand comment, early on, like there's a point where there's this sort of
11:35.808 --> 11:51.495
[SPEAKER_00]: The characters using this device and it shocks them like gives them the electric shock when they try and use it and then that was just an off-hand comment I thought would be just like dryly amusing at the time and then that became kind of more of like fundamental to the actual story or to the climax of the game and things like that.
11:52.436 --> 12:02.020
[SPEAKER_00]: So things like that that just yes, sometimes it's just really random like and it feels natural for that to like a little comment early on to come up again later.
12:02.080 --> 12:03.821
[SPEAKER_00]: So just yeah, just works out that way.
12:04.242 --> 12:06.362
[SPEAKER_00]: And other things are very, very planned from the start.
12:07.003 --> 12:21.806
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's stuff that I plan for the start to be like the big climax of the game, which then because it's sort of, yeah, I don't know, it just doesn't really feel like it's got much backing because it's just not what the character would have done or not how the sort of plot sort of ended up flowing.
12:22.686 --> 12:28.287
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was definitely very responsive as I was writing it to work out what would feel right in the story.
12:28.987 --> 12:34.752
[SPEAKER_01]: But what I really like is, in terms of the writing, it feels very Australian, which I am a huge fan of.
12:34.832 --> 12:42.778
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm curious about, you know, is to keep out the setting and setting it in Australia with the least Australian and Kiwi characters and all of you international people as well.
12:43.098 --> 12:44.599
[SPEAKER_01]: Like why did you want to set it there?
12:44.640 --> 12:46.421
[SPEAKER_01]: Because you could literally put it anywhere in the world.
12:46.461 --> 12:47.522
[SPEAKER_01]: And why was that important to you?
12:47.942 --> 12:54.547
[SPEAKER_00]: Initially, so this come back to this early game game, game, cool prudium, where I wanted to
12:55.542 --> 12:58.966
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the first time I tried to do a serious game that wasn't a comedy.
12:59.346 --> 13:05.994
[SPEAKER_00]: And I kind of wanted to try and see how I can make it feel grounded and not just some weird dumb story, I'd just made up in a few days.
13:07.396 --> 13:11.521
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of those things was like, OK, maybe if I give the main character in Australian accent,
13:13.138 --> 13:32.167
[SPEAKER_00]: It'll, it'll make it feel like they're from a real place as opposed to just generic American or something where I don't really have the subtlety and the nuance of like being, if it's American accent, like I wouldn't have, yeah, I wouldn't be able to say, oh, they're from this town and this is the sort of way they talk and the very specific things that they would do.
13:32.848 --> 13:35.009
[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas, yeah, if it's an Australian, I know that.
13:35.389 --> 13:36.629
[SPEAKER_00]: I can kind of give it that grounding.
13:37.990 --> 13:42.832
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, that was really happy with that, the way it worked and out in our friend Adrian Vaughan, who voices the character.
13:44.612 --> 13:45.733
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I was always going to work with him.
13:46.513 --> 13:54.676
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that was a big part of thinking of what would be a good character to do with that voice that Adrian does and sort of gravely Australian.
13:55.296 --> 14:00.638
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the idea of this sort of drift, a sort of walking into town,
14:02.083 --> 14:04.904
[SPEAKER_00]: down his luck, but very sort of practical kind of guy, I think.
14:05.625 --> 14:12.507
[SPEAKER_00]: That's yeah, that's where that kind of initial idea came about, and then it was all about how to make things difficult for him.
14:13.928 --> 14:18.850
[SPEAKER_02]: I really shouldn't get involved, but hey, so... Right.
14:19.831 --> 14:21.051
[SPEAKER_02]: What are you doing down here?
14:21.411 --> 14:22.452
[SPEAKER_03]: I right for the herald.
14:22.612 --> 14:26.133
[SPEAKER_03]: I really want to find out what it's like out here for you, homeless.
14:26.593 --> 14:27.894
[SPEAKER_02]: You, homeless.
14:28.674 --> 14:29.555
[SPEAKER_02]: God help me.
14:30.628 --> 14:31.188
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, look.
14:31.468 --> 14:32.349
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not homeless.
14:32.669 --> 14:33.509
[SPEAKER_03]: So great.
14:33.549 --> 14:34.389
[SPEAKER_03]: That's great.
14:34.709 --> 14:38.730
[SPEAKER_03]: So how long have you been staying out here, Mr. Carter?
14:39.131 --> 14:40.371
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm not staying out here.
14:40.851 --> 14:42.231
[SPEAKER_02]: Jesus, will you put that thing away?
14:42.632 --> 14:43.032
[SPEAKER_03]: Sorry.
14:43.572 --> 14:45.312
[SPEAKER_03]: Sorry, just a few questions.
14:45.812 --> 14:46.093
[SPEAKER_02]: No.
14:48.693 --> 14:49.994
[SPEAKER_02]: Look, Angela was it?
14:50.534 --> 14:51.774
[SPEAKER_02]: Go home to your warm bed.
14:52.234 --> 14:54.375
[SPEAKER_02]: No one here has any reason to talk to you.
14:54.914 --> 14:56.435
[SPEAKER_03]: I know that, I'm not stupid.
14:56.775 --> 15:01.057
[SPEAKER_02]: She thrust her hand into her pocket, pulls out a hotel-sized bottle of rum.
15:01.477 --> 15:02.357
[SPEAKER_03]: Got a whole bunch?
15:02.838 --> 15:04.338
[SPEAKER_03]: You look like you could do something to drink?
15:05.019 --> 15:05.399
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
15:05.939 --> 15:08.840
[SPEAKER_02]: About a sensitive as I'd expect from a rich city kid.
15:09.180 --> 15:10.441
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, what do you want?
15:10.881 --> 15:11.221
[SPEAKER_02]: Nothing.
15:11.661 --> 15:13.422
[SPEAKER_02]: Just quit with the presumptuous attitude.
15:13.882 --> 15:16.203
[SPEAKER_02]: These are people, not your high school project.
15:16.604 --> 15:20.725
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm twenty-four, and you're one to talk, patronising asshole.
15:21.306 --> 15:21.706
[SPEAKER_02]: Whatever.
15:22.896 --> 15:23.977
[SPEAKER_01]: It gets pretty difficult for him.
15:24.117 --> 15:28.741
[SPEAKER_01]: What I also love is there's some little characters in there which are just cool references to other stuff.
15:29.882 --> 15:31.644
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a detective character called D.I.
15:31.824 --> 15:37.128
[SPEAKER_01]: Harra and he's dressed like the boss of Zuko and he calls everyone boss as he walks around.
15:37.208 --> 15:43.914
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that just little things in there that kind of really connect it to this broader stuff there.
15:43.934 --> 15:47.998
[SPEAKER_01]: This game feels like I've a scale that is bigger than anything else.
15:48.378 --> 15:52.705
[SPEAKER_01]: you've done, it's got voice acting, it's got multiple different bits and pieces along the story driven game.
15:53.145 --> 15:57.632
[SPEAKER_01]: In terms of the scale of building that as a team, because you're only pretty small, right?
15:58.434 --> 16:02.300
[SPEAKER_01]: What was I'd like as a challenge to actually get this to finish line?
16:02.857 --> 16:06.419
[SPEAKER_00]: Hmm, yeah, I mean, that's a big part of what I took six years.
16:07.920 --> 16:10.902
[SPEAKER_00]: So I kind of built it apart from the very first demo section.
16:10.922 --> 16:12.403
[SPEAKER_00]: I sort of built it by myself.
16:13.244 --> 16:24.331
[SPEAKER_00]: The first few years, so basically making it all playable with a placeholder art, and so I could get, so it could basically have a draft, like a writing a novel, do a first draft, and then go back and sort of add,
16:26.012 --> 16:36.899
[SPEAKER_00]: I had all the things like for shadowing and stuff that when I once figured out what the plot would ever mean and the little character arcs and adding a little bit like that to reinforce the themes and all that stuff.
16:37.279 --> 16:45.385
[SPEAKER_00]: So I did all that before I got full production kind of stuff involved so that I wasn't getting all this stuff added and then deciding to change it all.
16:46.766 --> 16:52.551
[SPEAKER_00]: So that kind of meant a took longer, but it was a lot more doable in terms of the size of the team.
16:53.732 --> 17:01.860
[SPEAKER_00]: And then yeah, it was just sort of ramping up to full sort of full production was sort of getting a few more artists on board and sort of replacing that a bit by bit.
17:02.921 --> 17:06.324
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd never done things like voice casting and stuff.
17:06.925 --> 17:15.533
[SPEAKER_00]: I've done recording voices, but it's always just been with friends or a couple of other people in their game jam that are just very casually doing it.
17:15.553 --> 17:20.237
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I didn't even know a casting director was a thing, but that was something that was super helpful.
17:20.397 --> 17:21.198
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, oh yeah, cool.
17:21.218 --> 17:22.720
[SPEAKER_00]: There's someone who will help with that stuff.
17:24.758 --> 17:26.919
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, like, I was a lot to figure out.
17:28.319 --> 17:32.540
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, it was a journey for sure.
17:33.000 --> 17:36.941
[SPEAKER_01]: When the credits rolled as well, I was interested to say, like, you know, so much of this has your hand on it.
17:37.141 --> 17:40.102
[SPEAKER_01]: Including the writing, which I thought was like actually very funny and clever.
17:40.122 --> 17:46.584
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm curious about your learning experience of doing like writing a game with that scale, like what do you think?
17:47.004 --> 17:51.405
[SPEAKER_01]: If you cast your mind back to when you first started to, to what you, uh, at now that it's out.
17:52.065 --> 17:54.617
[SPEAKER_01]: ready to roll food for players to experience.
17:55.377 --> 18:16.487
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I really enjoyed when I guess the first couple of years working on it when it was just, well, yeah, first probably the first half of the development was doing a lot of the writing and that was, I was really getting, I was really enjoying deep diving into like what this whole writing thing is about because it went away deeper than I imagined.
18:16.607 --> 18:21.749
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought it was just like, oh, you know, you just, you write and like there's some tips that you might find or whatever, but
18:23.290 --> 18:25.331
[SPEAKER_00]: but really just sort of right as well as you can kind of think.
18:25.651 --> 18:45.198
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, no, I got right into listening to podcasts about writing and reading books about it and about the so many aspects to it, dialogue and character and plot and yeah, man, there's there's every little part of writing has has so there's so much depth to it and so it was quite inspiring as well.
18:47.459 --> 19:08.255
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, listen to a podcast on my community or something or go for a walk in listening to a podcast about writing, just getting me excited about putting these sort of principles into practice and seeing how I could flesh the dialogue out in the characters and yeah, I found that really inspiring listening to other writers and the whole list talk about their approach and like the little tricks they use and and the do's and don't it's kind of stuff.
19:08.856 --> 19:11.098
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's quite cool and I really
19:12.038 --> 19:13.039
[SPEAKER_01]: You came to do it again.
19:14.180 --> 19:19.824
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what I'm curious about because obviously the games that you've made have been kind of like, you know, there was obviously narrative in the games you've made.
19:19.864 --> 19:23.007
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Carlos had a storyline written through it and all of those sorts of things.
19:23.047 --> 19:26.650
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm curious, is this the sort of thing that you're interested in doing more of?
19:26.970 --> 19:27.570
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, for sure.
19:27.670 --> 19:27.871
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
19:28.371 --> 19:32.935
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I'll always be making adventure games because it's kind of where I came from as a developer as well.
19:33.435 --> 19:41.121
[SPEAKER_00]: Carl was fun because it was like right, we wrote like, I know, two hundred tiny little like two cents and snippets of like,
19:43.159 --> 19:49.021
[SPEAKER_00]: love crafty kind of heavy handed love crafty purple pro stuff which is definitely evident in the drifter as well.
19:49.041 --> 19:58.485
[SPEAKER_00]: They're very purple pro stuff and it's what I like about reading a lot of thrillers and stuff that where they get very Florida like sort of like that stuff.
20:00.185 --> 20:08.889
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I was something I've always, I've always made these adventure games and I've always loved storytelling through a game as well.
20:10.177 --> 20:17.289
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's always been part of what I enjoy about playing games as well, like playing for the story even if it's doing or something like, I want to see what happens, you know?
20:18.652 --> 20:23.861
[SPEAKER_00]: And so yeah, it's always been a story telling medium for me and that's kind of what keeps me motivated.
20:24.713 --> 20:26.034
[SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, lots of stories.
20:26.094 --> 20:33.359
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to keep telling the games, but hopefully I can tell them a bit faster than you know, six years, because I'll run out of life before I get enough of that.
20:33.579 --> 20:35.600
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we want to get you back on the podcast again at some point.
20:35.620 --> 20:50.069
[SPEAKER_01]: So, can you tell me a bit about some of those influences, because you mentioned obviously you had some sort of like, you know, craft influences there, but you know, I'm curious about the things that you wanted to bring into this world, things that were inspiring to the story that you wanted to tell.
20:50.340 --> 21:06.765
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, most of the inspirations were film and novels and stuff, so not so much games, but very much got into just going to the second bookshop and finding really cheesy looking, like finding the cheesiest cover for a thriller and just reading through it.
21:07.085 --> 21:10.166
[SPEAKER_00]: And usually, yeah, very shlucky, pulp fiction kind of stuff.
21:11.006 --> 21:17.008
[SPEAKER_00]: And then lots of B movies, like thrillers and horror movies, especially seventies stuff.
21:19.280 --> 21:21.401
[SPEAKER_00]: Just but yeah, I just really enjoyed that stuff.
21:22.162 --> 21:23.202
[SPEAKER_01]: Give us some examples, Dave.
21:23.222 --> 21:25.124
[SPEAKER_01]: You've got to tell us which ones you've looked at.
21:25.304 --> 21:34.589
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to hear your pile of shave the biggest good good sort of influences or things like and drama the strain and like Michael Grant and stuff like Los World as well.
21:34.609 --> 21:37.871
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I think the way he crafts like layers on
21:39.081 --> 21:43.865
[SPEAKER_00]: attention, so there's like, you're in a lab, but also there's a nuke which is set to explode.
21:45.326 --> 21:51.872
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a disease which is like come out so they can't escape without triggering the explosion that's going to blow them all up.
21:51.952 --> 21:54.574
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, like, how are they going to get out of this situation?
21:55.274 --> 21:57.196
[SPEAKER_00]: But also the text realist stuff there is really awesome.
21:58.577 --> 22:05.943
[SPEAKER_00]: There's big gear, like, I guess, Croninburg movies and John Carpenter stuff with the soundtrack especially.
22:08.547 --> 22:10.988
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's how to think of the particular ones.
22:13.909 --> 22:26.114
[SPEAKER_00]: That like Robin Cook writes these really super cheesy medical thrillers, which are they like going to all this very specific detail about like this operating theory and what this surgeon's doing.
22:26.674 --> 22:35.737
[SPEAKER_00]: And then something goes wrong in, you know, that kind of thing, which I just really like because they're just so very like that there's like twenty of what thirty of them, you know, but they're all really
22:36.264 --> 22:41.227
[SPEAKER_00]: They're kind of almost the same, but like over the top thrillery stuff.
22:41.367 --> 22:41.987
[SPEAKER_00]: That's really fun.
22:42.548 --> 22:50.812
[SPEAKER_00]: I just wouldn't think medical thriller would be a thing, but... Yeah, there's just so many, well, there's so many thriller genres, like some genres that, like, that's what I like about it.
22:50.853 --> 22:57.757
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just like such a specific thing of, like, over the top medical descriptions of everything, and then it's also a thriller.
22:59.818 --> 23:00.778
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What else are good?
23:02.880 --> 23:04.240
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, oh man, there's so much stuff.
23:05.691 --> 23:08.532
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like, yeah, so I guess another one like Matthew Riley.
23:10.233 --> 23:14.695
[SPEAKER_00]: I station was like one which was was just classic growing up in Australia book to read.
23:14.715 --> 23:24.260
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, it's like so over the top how much like how out of the frying pan into the fire, it is like, you know, they just like there's a grenade and then they jump out.
23:24.580 --> 23:26.060
[SPEAKER_00]: like, throw the green away and they jump out.
23:26.080 --> 23:30.482
[SPEAKER_00]: But now I'm like, kill the whales like, grab their leg and they're getting sucked undone.
23:30.522 --> 23:32.602
[SPEAKER_00]: So they like escape the kill the whale and kick away from it.
23:32.842 --> 23:35.503
[SPEAKER_00]: But on the underwater and now they're under an ice sheet and they can't get out.
23:35.523 --> 23:36.243
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's a submarine.
23:36.263 --> 23:37.944
[SPEAKER_00]: So they swim into the torpedo tube.
23:37.984 --> 23:39.844
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, but then the baddies have got them.
23:39.964 --> 23:41.885
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're like, just like the whole looks like that.
23:41.945 --> 23:46.546
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that was how we can pose in like, okay, how do I get that kind of pace, you know?
23:47.026 --> 23:50.768
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the drift idea seems pretty chilled in comparison really if you get some of that like that way.
23:52.863 --> 23:55.624
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's one of those games that I think is really interesting.
23:55.644 --> 23:59.927
[SPEAKER_01]: And what I'm curious about, because obviously, you've got this grounding in the adventure game culture.
24:00.107 --> 24:09.051
[SPEAKER_01]: And that it's one of these genres that I'd say that in, there's been a few recent lines, like, because the gold noddle and things like that have come out, which have sort of been breakout here.
24:09.071 --> 24:15.715
[SPEAKER_01]: But the genre itself has kind of been, you know, it's become a sub-genre now, it's a niche sort of thing.
24:15.755 --> 24:21.478
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm curious about what you know about that particular community that you really appreciate and,
24:22.728 --> 24:29.133
[SPEAKER_01]: what sort of games you're making, is this for someone who is more of a general audience or is it for those die hearts?
24:29.794 --> 24:32.916
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'd definitely like to break out of the niche.
24:32.996 --> 24:41.143
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess one thing that I find really, really pleasing is when there's someone who says they don't play those games and they play the demo and they're really excited about it.
24:41.623 --> 24:43.625
[SPEAKER_00]: That's really satisfying, because it's a genre I really love.
24:43.885 --> 24:48.449
[SPEAKER_00]: I play a heap of it and the community I'm part of as well.
24:50.250 --> 24:58.292
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, that's something I would be definitely really, really like it when it comes to a new audience and they go, oh, these games are kind of a bit uncool.
24:58.352 --> 25:04.734
[SPEAKER_00]: Like seeing as a bit uncool and kind of clunky and old-fashioned when people like kind of get what's good about them, you know?
25:04.754 --> 25:10.136
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because there's a lot that adventure games can do that other games kind of can't.
25:10.376 --> 25:13.717
[SPEAKER_00]: Like in terms of narrative and storytelling, which I think are really cool.
25:13.937 --> 25:14.297
[SPEAKER_01]: Like what?
25:15.789 --> 25:39.426
[SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, one of the things they do really well is that the interplay between story and gameplay, like the gameplay and the point in click, everything you examine or interact with can be part of a sort of part of the story, like you can click on a door and the character can tell you about that this door is a bit like the door.
25:39.846 --> 25:42.428
[SPEAKER_00]: My grandma had a house when we were growing up.
25:43.609 --> 25:46.010
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, it was flimsy and always creaked or something.
25:46.030 --> 25:48.111
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, that just tells you a bit about the character or something.
25:48.452 --> 25:57.056
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's a silly, silly kind of example, but like, in most games, you can have a bit of environmental storytelling and you can kind of get that, but you can't get it so direct.
25:58.056 --> 26:05.460
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, with every kind of, everything you examine and click on and every little interaction, there's, it's basically a cut scene.
26:05.480 --> 26:08.682
[SPEAKER_00]: So the cut scenes in the game, which tells the story are kind of,
26:10.003 --> 26:17.486
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they're much more intertwined with the gameplay, and so most games you have the gameplay, and then you have the cutscenes of very separate things.
26:17.926 --> 26:26.370
[SPEAKER_00]: So you have a section of, you know, twenty minutes of gameplay, and then a two minute cutscene, and then another twenty minutes of gameplay, and so you get these two things happening at odds with each other a lot more.
26:26.692 --> 26:46.815
[SPEAKER_01]: I also really like that often you can get like much more internal dialogue that you would not normally get in other genres like there's a few examples I can think of which you know there is a bit of that like control is one of those ones that kind of comes to mind where there's a lot of that sort of back and forth but it's something that feels you know typical of the of the genre to hear the player actually think to themselves about certain things or talk to themselves about certain things and that
26:47.057 --> 26:49.801
[SPEAKER_01]: That line often blows a little bit, which is kind of cool in a fun way.
26:50.461 --> 26:50.902
[SPEAKER_00]: It comes out.
26:50.962 --> 27:03.758
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that comes out with the interface as well, like because the mouse cursor is almost an analog to the characters that internal thoughts, like you scan the mouse over the room and you sort of, it's like the character's looking around and thinking about what they could do and how they could interact.
27:04.319 --> 27:07.600
[SPEAKER_00]: That was an interesting, yeah, interesting thing to think about making it as well.
27:07.740 --> 27:14.922
[SPEAKER_00]: And having the narrator as fun as you know, you can do the unreliable narrator kind of stuff where like, are they really seeing what they're saying they're saying?
27:14.942 --> 27:15.882
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's sort of stuff.
27:16.002 --> 27:23.745
[SPEAKER_01]: It's interesting, actually, because I did want to ask you about the mouse cursor as a way of interacting, but this game actually plays incredibly well on a controller.
27:24.185 --> 27:30.067
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm curious about sort of designing adventure games for controller interaction, because I remember
27:31.843 --> 27:35.407
[SPEAKER_01]: They used to be the thing about pixel hunting for literally the right thing you did to click on.
27:35.627 --> 27:37.088
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was never that enjoyable.
27:37.489 --> 27:39.471
[SPEAKER_01]: But it was part of the way that we used to play.
27:39.511 --> 27:43.935
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm curious because this kind of takes away that element you really have got kind of a ring.
27:44.388 --> 27:47.629
[SPEAKER_01]: and that you kind of using to interact with different objects.
27:47.649 --> 27:48.910
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you tell me more about designing that?
27:49.090 --> 28:05.756
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so similarly to what I was like, yeah, talking about, I wanted it to be kind of character centric, so you kind of, the idea I had was you pivot, you know, what the character kind of looks around with the right stick, and that's kind of coming from the way the player standing on screen.
28:05.776 --> 28:06.836
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's this radio off menu.
28:07.477 --> 28:08.257
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, it was the same thing.
28:08.277 --> 28:12.539
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like, it should be what the character can look around at and see and think about in the room.
28:13.279 --> 28:13.479
[SPEAKER_00]: And then
28:14.019 --> 28:25.005
[SPEAKER_00]: So you have this sort of two phases to interaction where one way you're sort of hovering the cursor or like using this radio menu to look around and then the other way to sidetracked.
28:26.065 --> 28:34.790
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, it was definitely coming from thinking about how the cursor actually really works in terms of mapping the character's thoughts and stuff into the game.
28:35.591 --> 28:37.892
[SPEAKER_00]: Because yeah, it was something I really wanted to try and solve.
28:39.083 --> 28:42.624
[SPEAKER_00]: because controlling a cursor with an analog stick is not that fun.
28:43.545 --> 28:52.968
[SPEAKER_00]: But then when all the interactions are just like walk up to an object and press the button, feel like it loses that thoughtful process, I guess.
28:53.808 --> 28:54.348
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
28:54.809 --> 29:00.331
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, there's many opportunities in the game as well where you're actually having to move around and see what actually pops up nearby.
29:00.571 --> 29:04.432
[SPEAKER_01]: So you still have a bit of that sort of search and find aspect of actually doing that within
29:05.159 --> 29:05.719
[SPEAKER_01]: within the game.
29:06.440 --> 29:13.223
[SPEAKER_01]: Quite a few instances where I died because I hadn't wasn't quite of the right spot when I did or ran out of time with my little timers.
29:13.243 --> 29:17.965
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we're just fun and kind of frustrating it to say, you know, like, oh, this is the good old days.
29:17.985 --> 29:18.965
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the good old days.
29:19.025 --> 29:28.930
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, the game is so close to launch now and I'm really curious because the team that you, a part of PowerHoof, kind of have a couple of different projects on the go.
29:29.630 --> 29:33.512
[SPEAKER_01]: What are you working on at the moment now that the drift will soon be in people's hands?
29:34.043 --> 29:36.685
[SPEAKER_00]: Or Sylvie Drift for a little bit more.
29:37.766 --> 29:40.809
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I'm going to work on switch point and stuff after this as well.
29:41.429 --> 29:43.251
[SPEAKER_00]: Bione's kind of got this project for Chuck.
29:43.391 --> 29:47.474
[SPEAKER_00]: I've forced him to have on the backburner while he's been helping me on the drifter called Asad knife.
29:47.934 --> 29:50.897
[SPEAKER_00]: And so he's like, yes, still planning to do a vector work here on that.
29:51.597 --> 29:52.418
[SPEAKER_00]: It's his pet project.
29:53.099 --> 29:54.160
[SPEAKER_00]: I love got some more stuff.
29:54.260 --> 29:58.223
[SPEAKER_00]: Like this this other adventure game called the Toe William, which I'm still going to do the final chapter for.
29:58.723 --> 30:01.906
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I'll probably I want to package that up and put that on steam as well.
30:02.686 --> 30:04.306
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's kind of the immediate future.
30:04.887 --> 30:28.052
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we've got so many things you want to do and the drifters have been taking up all that, all that headspace for a while, but yeah, so Barney's really keen to get back working on Asadnaif, he's been, he's got lots of ideas, lots of ideas for that game that things you can try but he's also kind of, he's built it up to have like heaps of stuff in it and they sort of try to narrow it down to like what it's actually going to finally be as well.
30:29.087 --> 30:35.174
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, are you thinking that potentially you might get it to switch to and use a bit of that mouse functionality and get the best of both worlds?
30:35.514 --> 30:49.629
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like so it's it's all running on switch and play bones which for yeah, and I've got to actually get a switch to dev kit and get that mouse stuff happening as well because I just make so much sense like I've definitely developed and designed it to be played handheld and and work really nicely with control and stuff but
30:50.335 --> 30:52.196
[SPEAKER_00]: I just make so much sense like, hey, it's going to mouse now.
30:52.276 --> 30:53.157
[SPEAKER_00]: Awesome.
30:53.237 --> 30:56.418
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's make it so you can switch and play however you want.
30:58.299 --> 31:03.242
[SPEAKER_01]: Dave, if you have to line the clock back to the very beginning, what's the thing that you wish you knew right at the very start?
31:03.712 --> 31:06.513
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think if I told, if I knew right at the start, then it would take this long.
31:06.633 --> 31:09.174
[SPEAKER_00]: I just wouldn't have done it, so I probably shouldn't tell myself that.
31:09.194 --> 31:14.095
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll keep that secret because that was something that killed me on this project as hell on everything to.
31:15.576 --> 31:17.837
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I'm very happy with how it ended up.
31:17.877 --> 31:21.398
[SPEAKER_00]: There's not much I'd change in terms of, like,
31:22.241 --> 31:24.824
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, things are not happy with the project or anything like that.
31:25.024 --> 31:28.127
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was actually pretty smooth of just everything took a long time.
31:28.588 --> 31:36.195
[SPEAKER_00]: Like there's nothing that where we had to chuck things away or like there was a big disaster and we lost a lot of time for any particular reason.
31:36.215 --> 31:38.278
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just like just a lot of work, you know.
31:39.659 --> 31:41.500
[SPEAKER_01]: It's only a couple of you in PowerHoof.
31:42.340 --> 31:49.202
[SPEAKER_01]: The Drifter, it'll be out on the seventeenth of July on Steam, and as you heard there coming to Switch later this year, Dave, it's a pleasure.
31:49.622 --> 31:51.403
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's not make it seven years before the next one.
31:51.423 --> 31:53.223
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll try not to.
31:55.264 --> 31:59.425
[SPEAKER_04]: You're listening to LightMap, interesting conversations with video game creators.
32:03.487 --> 32:05.547
[SPEAKER_01]: This has been LightMap's Sifties Interview podcast.
32:05.567 --> 32:07.488
[SPEAKER_01]: Sift is produced by Carl Paletto.
32:07.932 --> 32:17.538
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're on a bartholome as Kat Jarn, Naomi Jackson, Adam Christo and Chris Button, Mitch Lowes, Senior Producer who added to this episode of my name is Gianni Giovanni and I am Sifties Executive Producer.
32:17.819 --> 32:21.141
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks to audio and technical Australia and Apple for their support of Sifter.
32:21.401 --> 32:24.063
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, if you liked the shows that we have, give us a rating or review.
32:24.083 --> 32:26.024
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really important on your favourite podcast player.
32:26.064 --> 32:27.145
[SPEAKER_01]: It helps me to find the show.
32:27.524 --> 32:33.929
[SPEAKER_01]: They're searching through for stuff and they see something that's made of five stars, which, you know, you can give it any star rating, but you might want to give it to five stars.
32:34.629 --> 32:35.850
[SPEAKER_01]: That really helps people find the show.
32:36.290 --> 32:43.155
[SPEAKER_01]: The other thing you should do is make sure you check out Sifter on our website, sifter.com.au, we're putting up reviews and other podcasts all the time up there.
32:43.175 --> 32:53.142
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you like Australian look at the way that games are made and how we talk about them, make sure you go there or find us at Sifter HQ on all of your favorite social media.
32:53.562 --> 32:56.845
[SPEAKER_01]: That's all the time we have for this episode until next time, have fun.
