Loop Hero From the team Four Quarters won the nomination " The opening of the year »On the past Ludi Awards, Where the best of the best was the readers ” Gambling " And " Canobus ".
On this occasion, we talked with Alexander Blinkh Gorreslavets , gamedemer and sound engineer Four Quarters, who spoke about cooperation with Devolver Digital, financial aspects of the development, the meaning of gamjemes and reviews of the audience, a sense of praying for players and much more!
Remember how the idea of Loop Hero was born? And how difficult it was to convey it to the team, and then to the publisher?
We in the team from time to time share ideas and tell what is on the mind. And once our artist Dmitry Karimov He proposed to create a game with indirect management, where there is only one circle on which the hero walks. From time to time we will put obstacles in his way, but he will be able to cope with them himself. It was about the whole idea – one of 20 ideas that evening.
It immediately seemed interesting, but nothing happened. We forgot about her. And four months later we participated in Ludum Dare , International Indie-IGR competition, and there the concept surfaced with the very man who walks in a circle. And we begin to build a world around him from anything. We thought: "Oh, it suits, sounds easy, and we made games and more complicated".
We started doing this and completely failed, did nothing. That is, we did, but he did not work. We made a circle, made some things, but it was difficult to program all this in such a short time. But we liked the idea, we began to develop it, and so Loop Hero appeared.
And how did you come with this idea to the publisher?
With the publisher, and with all the other people, it was more difficult than with the team. Because explaining in a simple way it is not very easy, and even if you show the trailer, it is not clear what kind of game. We approached the publisher with a pitchdok, where there was a description of the game, our plans, as well as a video with gameplay and a trailer that showed a cut of the game – what will be approximately in the final version.
And, most importantly, we had a demo. After Ludum Dare, we continued to modify it, and then we freely laid it out in the group VKontakte And they wrote: "Hay, guys who want, play and write us reviews". This was the first time Loop Hero suddenly shot because we received several hundred reviews. We have a small group, and it was very unexpected.
We received a lot of feedback and began to modify what is. Because of this, a very polished demo turned out, which the publisher immediately liked. This is superpomogos to us. The publisher was enough to play – and they understood everything. The most important thing is to play.
And you advise it to all beginner developers?
Certainly. First, write a competent nickname. Secondly, you need a video, because the publisher comes a lot of applications, and watch the video is the fastest. And thirdly, you must have a build, of course. Because everything is fine in words, but it is advisable to have a build.
Devolver Digital was the only publisher that you came to, or you sent fan?
This was the only publisher. We had some proposals that came while we laid out the game. But we chose exactly Devolver. I wanted to try with them. Because they are crazy enough to take up this and start actively promoting it in their style. We sent only to them and discussed everything only with them.
It is comfortable to work with them?
Maximum. For all the time we worked somewhere with five publishers. And Devolver at the top of the top – from our experience for sure. There are no problems with them. What are they at conferences, they are in work. Funny guys, but very responsible and diligent.
That is Devolver They promoted the game on The Game Awards, this is their merit? How did it work out with The Game Awards?
On The Game Awards – Yes. I did not particularly go into details, these were their agreements with Jeff Kili. It was the premiere show of the game. Before that there was a demo, but it was still at the stage of planning the game. And directly to the big audience, the first show was on The Game Awards. A lot of premieres are shown on the Preshow, and Loop Hero has become one of them.
The situation after showing on The Game Awards?
No, absolutely has not changed. Probably because it was in the middle of work. The game was shown in December 2020, three months before the release. It was a period of active treasury, so all emotional joys were pushed into the background. We worked all day, watched The Game Awards in the evening, went to bed, and the next morning we started working.
In addition, due to the non-standard of the game, we did not receive a big response. Everyone looked at the trailer and such: "Well, it is not clear what it is". With a large coverage of people, we did not get a lot of feedback, so it was not so much. It was nice and funny. But there was no particular holiday.
Do such large presentations tear out strongly from the workflow?
By the way, yes. I was engaged in these videos. From the side of Devolver there were specialists who mounted all this and imagined how it would be. And I was engaged in sound and details of installation. And yes, it was quite torn off. The first video, in my opinion, had 20 versions.
There were moments with voice acting, the videos were voiced by the voice of Doseone, this is a famous musician and a good guy. We listened again after time, drove away, and he rewritten five different voice acting options. I wrote music. Yes, it was very erased from the process. But it was worth it, because it is important to present the game beautifully – it is important, it must be devoted to this.
In an interview, you said that you did not get from Devolver Money for Development?
Yes.
Tell us how a similar contract is arranged then and what you live in such moments?
We had a “marketing option” when you make a game regardless of the publisher, and it does not affect it in any way. On the part of the publisher you need public games for different platforms, so as not to do this, and its promotion, marketing. That is, you do not receive money for development, but the publisher does not interfere in your development process.
When we worked with publishers, we always had just such an option, and it is very convenient. You do not depend on anyone, do not give the right to the game, for example, but you will not get any money for development. For someone it is bad. But we have this not the first game. We had and have a game on Steam Please, Don’t Touch Anything (And Please, Don’t Touch Anything 3D ) who came out back in 2015. And we live with money from this game, so we did not need an additional budget that the publisher could provide. He proposed, but we did not need it.
That is, they get their percentage, you are your percentage, and there is a percentage for stores?
Yes, everything is true.
And how much interest you have left?
The store takes 30%. This is a standard royalti. There are special conditions there, but they are for big guys. In general, if you do not take money for development, you get a larger percentage as a developer than a publisher who is engaged only in marketing.
Many people think about developing games, and it takes a lot of time. There is a question to quit work … You are doing the game, and what percentage you have? More or less than 50%if you have everything well?
If not about look hero, because this is a separate story, we had some experience. If you do not take money, and you need a publisher for marketing and publishing purposes, this will cost you at least 20% of sales after deducting a store. That is, the store subtracts, you accept the balance in 100%, and at least 20% of this is taken by the publisher. Although a more realistic number – 30%. And I don’t know why, but if it is a domestic publisher, then they usually want 50%. But you should think about it. In general, from 25% to 35%.
If you want to get money for development, a slightly different story begins. You can stay within these percent, but then the publisher will subtract this amount from future sales of the game. You can agree in different ways that at least some money goes to you, but, in fact, you take the bail, and then sit without this money after the sale of the game.
And the third option – when you simply receive money for development, the publisher does not directly compensate for them, but he either receives the right to the game, or affects the development, or receives a greater percentage than you.
It can already be over 60%, sometimes 70%. And sometimes all at once: the rights to the game, and a greater percentage, and affects the development. But you need to agree on this, because publishers are very different. And it is advisable in such cases, especially if you are inexperienced, make the newsletter as many publishers as possible to compare the proposed conditions.
If you take money to develop, what amounts can be discussed?
It depends very much on the publisher. For the year of development, I remember the story, in the case of one domestic publisher 300 thousand rubles appeared. But it was a team where there seemed to be three. You can estimate. This is a little money, if you count, especially for large cities. Apparently, the team had some savings, plus agreed. But these are not very favorable conditions.
For the same game, more conscientious or Western publishers, who have other prices, can allocate 50 thousand dollars for the year of development. This is real without any space projects. This is a completely normal amount.
If you are more experienced, you already have some games, the amounts can fly to the ceiling-from 500 thousand dollars. But this is if you have some kind of proven game that has at least 5,000 reviews on Steam, and you have potential. That is, this is no longer for beginners. Either in rare cases when something outstanding is being prepared.
There were stories when publishers bought out projects from each other, covering the development. Very different stories can be. But in principle, getting money for development is not so difficult if you have a quality product.
And preferably with demo.
Certainly. It is necessary to pump eloquence on “10 out of 10”, so that you will give something without demos.
So if there is an idea, understanding and a team, then everything can be done ..
Yes, but in fact it is very difficult to achieve so that everything does not fall apart even after at least six months. In fact, when it comes to implementation, it becomes not so easy.
Remember your first games? How they survived what they did?
We worked at different works in parallel. More precisely, two still studied at universities, two worked. I worked. And the same please, Don’t Touch Anything, I finished sitting at the cashier in a computer game store and all kinds of toys. In general, somehow survived.
And we were in no hurry to earn at the first games, at first we did for ourselves, did not put it out anywhere, stuffed their hand and gained experience. Because as a rule the first few games are bad. While you have no experience and you do not know how to distribute your strength, it’s hard to do something good.
Ludum Dare helped us a lot in this – as soon as we started to participate there, an understanding of the development process appeared. On Ludum Dare, you need to make a more or less ready -made, but small game in three days. And this is the whole development process, compressed up to three days: from pre -production, when you think about what you will do, until the development and final release and polishing of the game. This is a very cool experience, I advise everyone.
And literally on the second Ludum Dare we got please, Don’t Touch Anything, although before that, in my opinion, we could not really collect anything for a year and a half.
And such gamjems really help a lot?
Yes. Gamjems primarily inspire you to make at least some game. Usually the project is growing very quickly: you have an idea, but let's add RPG elements there, but let's be a change of day and night there … You have no boundaries, and this "begins" Stalker 3 ". But as soon as you participate in gamjams, you have a framework and you begin to set more realistic goals. And when there are realistic goals, you get a small one, but the game. Firstly, this is a very cool experience. And secondly, it will be easier to expand it than to initially make a large project.
Here is such advice to beginner teams-it is better to do something small first, and then expand the game than to immediately try to bite off a piece.
How hard it was to release Loop Hero on Nintendo Switch?
Pretty hard. But it depends on the game itself. If you initially have a platformer with a look and control under the joystick, then probably it will not be very difficult for you. But for PC-oriented games, as in ours, where control was carried out only by the mouse and the interface was designed for a large screen, it turned out to be quite problematic to adapt it to the joystick and a small screen. There were other features of Switch. We thought the port would take little time, but in the end it took four months.
And also at Nintendo There is such an unpleasant feature that any patches for your game come out for a very long time. We had a problem: when the game was poured, an error occurred, and the player of the game was one pixel higher than needed. Because of this, the players on Switch had an annoying white line that corrupted his eyes. We saw this from the first day, immediately sent a patch, but Nintendo took it three weeks. And all three weeks we have fallen asleep with this white line, as it annoyed ..
We could not do anything, Nintendo so slowly produces patches. This must be taken into account. If you will port the game, try to immediately make it as polished as possible, because the patches will come out for a very long time. If there is something critical there, it will affect your game very badly.
And taking into account what was transferred to the gamepad, PlayStation and Xbox is as follows?
Maybe. We try not to give someone completely to porting and refinement. We participate, as in the port on Switch. We plan to continue to actively control the whole thing. In the meantime, we are busy updating the main look Hero.
Updating with a new character?
Yes.
Regarding Switch. You controlled the porting process, that is, you turned to someone on the port?
Devolver has their own partners, teams for localization, porting, testing … By the way, testing is also a large aspect that Devolver was engaged in. It is very useful to test games before going out. The last year will not let you lie – there were so many problematic games on the release. It is very useful. But they also have portion teams that helped us.
What does the help process in the port look like?
These are guys with girlfriends who know the general points of the platforms in which they specialize, and some internal points. For example, Nintendo has a list of technical rules that should be implemented. That is, the buttons are "to make on Switch and release", unfortunately, there is no. This must be done, and this takes away much more strength than many people think.
They even wrote to us in the comments: “How can I make a port for so long?". But in fact it is really long. If you want to do something well, it takes time. Even porting an absolutely finished game. And the teams mainly help, they are engaged in management, but in our case, we ourselves completely made management for the joystick. I don't know how Sony And Xbox , But Nintendo has many non -obvious things that are not intuitive for third -party developers.
How you work with players' reviews? And how it is worth or not to give advice to the developers?
Yes, Fidbek helped us super -lifting us. He helped at the very beginning, when we only prepared a demo for the publishing house. People who played, wrote that it is not so that it doesn’t work, that it is useless, and we corrected it. On the basis of this, we polished the demo for the publishing house. It was a huge step, and without this feedback she would not have come out so good. And it is not known what would happen next.
The second important step was when the Steam festival was held in the game, where indie developers could upload their demos, and Loop Hero participated there. We had a almost ready version of the game, because the release was a month and a half in a month. And suddenly we attracted great attention.
We watched streams and passes on YouTube, there were many pages with discussions on Steam. And when a lot of third -party people began to play, we began to notice things that need to be improved or fixed.
For example, Stamina’s systems for the hero were not a month before the release, until we watched streams from the Demok festival. And they saw that something should be done at the speed of the attack, because it turns any build into a destruction machine. It was impossible to remove it, because it is fun, and you cannot leave in the same form, because it is too broken mechanics. We came up with her some small counterweight. And only thanks to the feedback from people.
In addition, villages were placed literally everywhere on the road. They really did not have any pronounced negative effect. And they were simply placed so that half of the road was in the villages. We noticed that we need some kind of counterweight, and then robbers were invented and introduced-in less than a week. Therefore, the feedback is supervised, we always look at him. And after the release, we also corrected many things based on streams and reviews of people.
And something large was corrected?
These two large things. That is, the root gameplay was changed before the release is simply on the basis of the feedback. In general, the best way to test your game is to take a person who has not seen the game before, turn it on, plant it and silently watch it plays.
You will learn about your game a lot of new ones when you see how an unfamiliar person with a game without hints try to figure it out. Everyone should do this with their game during development. It is very useful.
U Loop Hero is a fairly high entrance threshold. She has an original idea, but you also refused tips on cards and combinations of cards. Why did you go along this way? How gamers reacted to this? And do you regret this decision?
Firstly, the entry threshold is high not because of complexity, but because of the understanding what kind of game is. This is a special threshold, because if a person launches, for example, a shooter, he already represents 80 percent of what will be in the game: shoot the left mouse button, jump on a gap and so on.
When some original game, the threshold of the entrance is to understand how to manage it, what is happening here. It is, but we tried to reduce it by making training at the beginning, and all the mechanics are opened gradually. On the first passages there is no approximately, maybe 80% of all the mechanic of the game. We tried to reduce this effect so as not to dump everything that is on the player.
As for the cards, it was a conscious decision. All Tiles have a description – what Tyl himself does. And their combinations are hidden mechanics that is not indicated in the game. And the player himself should open it.
I believe that the game should not drive the player by the handle, showing with arrows, where and what to do. It was a conscious decision, and we do not regret it at all. As the release of the game showed, people like this. Therefore, we did everything right, everything is fine.
Earlier in an interview, you said that the complexity and development in Loop Hero you tuned almost manually. What does it mean and what this process looked like?
It was the difficulty that we have no reference for the game. We could not see how it was done somewhere else. Some common things, how the inventory was done, we could see in Diablo or somewhere else. But how to configure the difficulty when you yourself build enemies and buildings around the hero? We simply did not have a reference, so everything went on the empirical way. Balance setting up is a subtle matter that is difficult to learn specifically, but due to experience you can feel what and where to do.
We ourselves played a lot in Loop Hero and, starting small, added new mechanics, rubbed them to each other and watched how it is. We had a presentation in our heads, how to be approximately. That is, it should not be too difficult and so on. But when all this is layered on all mechanics, enemies and objects, a comprehensive thing is obtained, which, perhaps, we could not repeat. But in the case of Loop Hero it worked.
We literally verified everything in the dials, constantly changed, played, tried again, changed again … And this process lasted a long time after the release, when we released patches and ruled something, and now about the same scheme is working with the renewal.
Do you still play in Loop Hero? Is it possible to return to the game after you developed it?
You can jokingly say that it is. But in general, after the release, I was strongly undermined from the very idea of Loop Hero launch. Because plus or minus a year and a half is your whole life. Take any game, and if you play it every day, it will be very bored. Loop Hero was the same, but then a couple of months passed. Firstly, it was necessary to return and test new things that we added, enemies.
Due to the features of gameplay, you easily return to Loop Hero. She is cool. And it is interesting to play it even when you know everything.
ENT and peace Loop Hero turned out to be very interesting and unusual. Are you going to develop them further?
Firstly, thanks. I always rejoice when someone celebrates ENT. In my opinion, an encyclopedia with lore stories of enemies is one of the best parts of the game. We have some ideas, how can this be developed plot. Because the world turned out to be cool, and it is very flexible to add something new. Because there is nothing, everything has died, you can add something new.
Now I can't say anything specific. But there are ideas.
And ENT is the merit of Dmitry Karimov. He came up with a lot of what is there, and most of the dialogs he also wrote. In general, the ENT was written in a reactive way: at first we had a game with Ludum Dare, where a little man went in the dark. And Dmitry, looking at this, realized that in fact the whole world is forgotten, and the hero recalls him. And it was constantly named by such a string.
And trying to answer some questions that arose on the basis of gameplay, Dmitry developed ENT. And then we worked the rest of the team, inventing stories in the encyclopedia. Work on Lor is my favorite part of the development. It was very interesting.
How and on what do you write sound? And how to make a sound so that it does not hesitate?
Firstly, I write on Fruity look, just on a computer. I have a MIDI keyboard, I also often use a guitar, but for Loop Hero it did not fit stylistically for the game graphics.
How to do it so that you don't get tired? You can answer corny: "Make a variety of to sound differently". But in fact it will not help. This is the skill that has been developed for years. Because, as a rule, we made all the games with some repetitive gameplay, when nothing happens on the screen. For example, we have an Arctic station where everything that happens on the screen is barely traveling a snowmobile. And we must somehow make this music.
I am not a supporter of an embossed approach when music is some kind of noise, light tunes, which are now very popular in AAA. I love when the soundtrack is bright, but at the same time fits what is happening on the screen. I myself asked myself this question with Loop Hero, because the sessions are long and not divided into any fragments. That is, it is impossible, as in arcades, to write a track for each level.
When your game goes for a long time, for example, 30 minutes, it is not broken, and we came to the fact that these will be different tracks, but they are not tied to levels. As if you are driving in the car and turn on the album. There are nine tracks, and they should sound differently, but harmonize among themselves. My response to repetitiveness was that the tracks themselves should fit the atmosphere of the game as much as possible.
I didn’t have a goal for the track itself to sound good, even if it sounds a little strange, but that the music conveys the atmosphere of the game as much as possible and what emotions the player experiences.
And it worked because the main feature of the soundtrack was to fit as much as possible, under what was happening. This was my main task – to get into the atmosphere of the game.
What was quite difficult, because the atmosphere of the game is quite strange: it is not directly gothic, but not fantasy, there is an apocalypse, but it is not so gloomy. Therefore, I eventually came to something like Halloween motifs that generally convey a gloomy mood.
And a big problem was that I did not want an audiovisual dissonance: when the game is pixel, but the orchestra sounds. Sometimes it works, but as a rule, pixel graphics implies some Chiptune Sound. I did not quite try to migrate in this and sometimes diversified, but in general it was a restriction in which it was still necessary to meet so that the soundtrack itself would not only fit the atmosphere, but also by visual.
In what language the dialogs were originally written?
In Russian. And this was a big problem later, because Devolver, like any Western publisher, had 99 percent no translation from Russian to English. And this is important, because it is desirable that the translator translates into his language. And the team that Devolver was usually translated from English into Russian, and not vice versa.
Therefore, we had problems with English translation on the release. Some nuances, mistakes like the fact that the phrase that sounded normally in Russian and had a fragrance, in English either sounded incorrectly, or did not convey the meaning. We had big problems with this. And then we still studied the English text for a very long time, having digged up 40 40 words.
Therefore, often even Russian games are made in English initially.
Yes. If you have a global release, in a good way you need to do it.
But then the Russian version may look worse.
Or they write: “You have a Russian game, but there is no Russian voice acting! How could you?". In fact, it's hard to do, you need to choose one thing. We chose Russian, but then it brought us a lot of problems.
How the pandemic changed your company?
We, apparently, prepared in advance for the pandemic, because we had been working on the remote for seven years. Therefore, the pandemic itself did not hit the working process, everything remained in the same way, we sat at home and called up. But, of course, the pandemic cannot but touch you, and at the personal level this brought many bad things that influenced the development. The remote man does not save from the consequences of coronavirus.
What bug or funny incident is most remembered?
There is a cool bug that has become part of the game. At a very early stage, when we received a feedback from our VK group, someone noticed that a mucus suddenly appeared in a battle-on a cage where it was not. That is, an empty cage, a hero goes, and he faces a slug. We are asked: “This is a bug or chip?".
And the player who found this could not explain to us how it happened. We are with this person who helped us a lot (zenusoid, thank you! ), began to look and found out that if you delete the card at the moment when it creates the enemy, that is, when the enemy comes out, the enemy himself is also removed, but not quite. Its ID changes to zero, to a target that is not in the game. But for some reason it works. And he just changes to the first one that came across, and this is a mucus.
It has amazed us very much. And we decided that it was not just a mucus. This is the mucus that appears from the cosmos. We made a cosmic slug! And this bug is part of the game. And now you can find in the encyclopedia of the cosmic slug, which has its own model, its sounds and features. And, in fact, this bug is now part of the Laura and part of the game.
If you could return to the past and change something in the development that it would be?
Probably, with localization, they would have worked in advance. When someone talks about development, the moment with localization does not even flash against the background. Everyone just forgets about her, and when the time comes, they somehow do hastily. But this is a very important part, and it would be worth it to pay more attention in advance.
The same with testing. We had several waves of testing the game, and we thought that it was perfectly polished. But when you play your game a hundred times more people than you expected, then any bug will be found much faster. And people began to find bugs that we could not even think about. After the release, a wave of bug-posts fell upon us. Only a few of them were significant, but in general there were many of them. And this made our two programmers pretty gray in a few weeks after the release.
And the third, the most important thing – it was not necessary to release the game immediately on Mac and Linux. We had experience with this with Please, Don’t Touch Anything, and it seemed to us that nothing complicated. But in fact, we had to do this at least a month later, because approximately half or most of the bugs was for MacOS and Linux. But at the same time, the number of users of this and that was about 1%. And the amount of work that all this brought us was absolutely irrational from this point of view.
Therefore, if you release your game, release first just for Windows, and then add the rest of the platform in calm mode and pace.
Launch on Linux should somehow help with the work of the game on Steam Deck? And something about Steam Deck is heard?
In general, Valve sends Steam Deck, but we did not take Steam Deck because we sent only one Steam Fresh Bet sister sites Deck in one hand. And there are four of us, and we are in different cities. I don't want to fight because of him. Therefore, we just refused.
In my opinion, Linux support itself is not very important. Because Steam Deck picks up any games, and Linux does not support so many games in Steam. At the same time, Steam conduct internal testing of games on Steam Deck, and Loop Hero works there, everything is fine.
You like Steam Deck too?
Yes, this is a cool thing. PC 2 finally came out, waited!
Outer Wilds
What do you think about NFT and blockchain in relation to gaming?
Personally, it seems to me that this has little to do with gaming. If we consider this as an additional earnings of developers – yes, of course. But this in a good way should not be related to the games themselves. And given the trends of recent years, attempts to maximum revenue and earnings from everything that can be, NFT is more likely to be disturbing concerns. Because in the hands of effective managers this will turn into hellish donate mechanics. Therefore, mostly more concerns about this.
What did you play in 2021? And was there time for games?
In 2021 I finally passed Outer Wilds, it's just a wonderful game. She is super -fucked, I advise everyone. And is mandatory for passage to those who love research and space! And finally got to Disco Elysium, I read the entire wall of the text and was very pleased. These are two magnificent games.
I would like to say thanks to everyone who voted for us and who liked the game. Last year was crazy, and we are glad if someone has brightened up this terrible year.
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