When we were working on Breath of Death VII way back at the start of 2010, the goal was simple – Make a real game. I’ve desperately wanted to make an RPG ever since I first played Dragon Warrior back in Elementary School and spent many a day drawing up maps & creating stories to games that would never be made. Though I had briefly tried to make a mini-RPG before as a teenager (the laughably bad Rainbow Despair), I abandoned my dream of making an RPG in college to try to get a “real job.” Many years passed and I realized my earlier decision to not make games had been stupid, decided to make Breath of Death VII, and talked Bill Stiernberg into teaming up with me even though I didn’t have much in the way of a development resume (a couple text-based XBLIGs being the highlights). Since we were both pretty new to game development at that time, we decided early on that we’d pare the RPG genre down to its bare fundamentals, keep the length short, add some jokes, remove the more annoying bits of old-school RPGs, and call it a day. I remember how excited I was when we managed to get character successfully walking through a map or get the battle system working, which might not seem like much, but hey, they were big milestones for me. In the end, we made the game in 3 months, people seemed to like it and it paved the way for bigger & better things.
Funny enough, Cthulhu Saves the World’s initial goal was “Make a quick game in a couple months that’ll make more money so that we can make the big ambitious game that we really want” but we liked the idea for Cthulhu Saves the World so much that it went from a small funding project and turned into a project we were really passionate about. Cthulhu Saves the World ended up taking us about three times as long as Breath of Death VII (and then a few more month to port to PC & add some extra features) – a far cry from a game that we initially thought we’d be able to do in 2 months. From Cthulhu Saves the World, we learned the dangers of not using your time wisely – we ended up spending large amounts of time trying to get certain things to work that in the end we could have used much more effectively elsewhere.
With Precipice of Darkness 3, our goal was to try out several experimental gameplay ideas. The vast majority of these ideas eventually got scrapped but what ended up staying worked well (specifically the new MP system). With Precipice of Darkness 3, we learned that the more innovative the idea, the earlier you need to test it, because an idea that sounds great on paper can end up having unforseen negative consequences where you’re not expecting.
With Precipice of Darkness 4, our goal was to focus on content creation. This worked out well – despite taking less time to make than the 3rd game, the 4th game is a drastically larger game. With Precipice of Darkness 4, we learned that making our engine & routines efficient was even more important than adding new features – all of the cool features in the world don’t matter if they take too much time to develop content for them.
And of course, with each game, we also had the goal of improving our visuals. I think we’ve succeeded on this account – BoDVII looks reminiscent of an 8-bit game, CSTW of an early 16-bit game, and Precipice 3 & 4 look like mid-to-late generation 16-bit games.
So with Cosmic Star Heroine, what is our goal? Part of it is to see just how far we can push 16-bit conventions, but a much larger part of it is something much more selfish – to finally create that “perfect” game for me. Like I’m sure many of you, I always have this vague idea at the back of my head that there’s a perfect RPG just waiting for me to play it, but I haven’t found it yet. Chances are it hasn’t even been made yet. And though I’d love for somebody else to make that game so I could play it and be completely surprised, when you get down to it, the most likely way to get your own perfect game is to go out and make it yourself. That’s not to say that we weren’t excited for each of our ideas before – I LOVE EVERY SINGLE ONE OF OUR GAMES! – but there was always this feeling at the back of my head that we weren’t up to the challenge of working on one of my dream projects and that we should save them for when we were more experienced and could really do them justice. Well, that time has come. It’s time to start pulling out all the stops. It’s time to stop being afraid that we’re not good enough. It’s time to give it our all. It’s time to make Cosmic Star Heroine.
And when Cosmic Star Heroine is finished, it’ll be time to make the next amazing “perfect” game.
I hope you thoroughly enjoy making this game. I know that I am looking forward to it if it is on consoles. I just can’t play games on pc other than World of Warcraft, which is boring as can be, but friends. I hope you are doing the game in such a way that you can get full exposure across multiple platforms instead of just trying to stick to one. I own every console save Vita, and with the recently announced price drop on both hardware and memory, I may get one next year sometime, but for now I am xbox 360, ps3, nintendo ds and 3ds, and this holiday I will have a Wii U. I will admit one thing though, I hope your games are always on big screen machines. The charm of your games come through the sprites being made larger than life, so to say.
” I’ve desperately wanted to make an RPG ever since I first played Dragon Warrior back in Elementary School and spent many a day drawing up maps & creating stories to games that would never be made.”
This was exactly the same for me. Here’s something messed up: one of these games that I made I titled “Dark Fantasy.” It sounded cool. Well, my teacher in elementary school found the folder for it, read the title, and opened right up to the section on monsters. I got to see the guidance counselor, because he thought it was literally about my “Dark Fantasy.”
I literally gave a talk on this exact thing at Casual Connect in 2012 (and a few other times in between): http://dwlt.net/blog/2012/08/03/casual-connect-2012-and-selfish-creativity/
Really looking forward to seeing the new game!
Thank you so much for all the insight that you give out for free, it feels like I’m reading Zeboyd company secrets sometimes!
Keep up the great work!
You guys are an inspiration to those just starting the slog to the end of that first game!
You have my Day 1 Purchase on Vita 🙂
Ultimately, I think this is why I like playing your games so much. It seems like each of your projects is reaching for an ideal, trying for your version perfection, which is very close in line with my own version. When I read your breakdowns of what does and doesn’t work in the genre, what you do or don’t like about specific titles, it’s like reading the critiques that I’ve made of RPGs and games in general over the years.
Thank you for continuing to make the games you like to play. Lead by example, be the change we want to see in the world, be the content we want to see in the updates.
By the way, I really wish that more people would be selfish and make the games they wanted to make. The lack of selfishness is partially to blame for the lack of variety in AAA games. If developers made fewer games that pandered to certain types of players, then I have a feeling that players would be more willing to go outside of their comfort zones to try new things. It’s too easy to just play it safe as a gamer, because there’re plenty of games that’re similar enough to what you know you like that it simply isn’t necessary to go out on a limb and try something new.
How old were you when you actually started working seriously on video game development? Interestingly, I have similar motivations in that I want to create my “dream game” (although that goal has now expanded to include several “dream games”), and I realize that it’s doubtful that anyone else will ever make it. I’ve decided that I’ll end up relying on procedural generation for the surprise factor, as part of my concern in eventually creating games is that I want to enjoy them, and part of that enjoyment comes from the surprises.