Rilem

Jun

2024

Sea Sniffers

Suddenly and out of nowhere a steam page has appeared for Sea Sniffers! Go and wishlist it now! HERE ON STEAM

What is this game anyway? It's a fishing rpg with a casual approach. I've long wanted to make such a game. Something that just offers a relaxing experience with low stakes. I haven't been talking about it a lot though. I remember shouting Mighty Goose from the mountain tops! There are multiple reasons for that, one of them being that Mighty Goose was also a cry for freedom. I was stuck in my job and needed an outlet.

One of the other reasons for being more quiet about the development of Sea Sniffers, is that life has thrown me a curveball. One of my dearest loved ones has passed away this year. The time leading up to this event has been an absolute hell. I can't describe it any other way than that. During that time I have lost my passion to create. Literally months went by when I didn't have the drive to do anything. Things are pretty okay right now, but I have had some perspective changes. Work is not the most important thing in the world. Leading to...

Whatever happened to Mighty Goose 2? PixelBasher? Simply put, they are on hold. I have to be honest with myself. I was trying to do too much. Doing 10 projects at the same time is a classic indie dev meme. It's not healthy! I'm still figuring this out though. Let's just say I'm re-evaluating my work-life balance.

But enough about that, let's talk about Sea Sniffers.

origins

Sea Sniffers started because of a gamedev contest. I believe somewhere in 2022 Bandai Namco started an indie collective known as GYAAR Studio. And the end of the year they hosted a contest with actual funding prizes. Because I was lurking on the Dutch Game Dev Slack, I caught wind of this contest. It was a bit late in the contest though, so we had to do a little game jam in order to submit something. We may have had a small success with Mighty Goose, but still the prospect of $$$ got us worked up like hyperactive hamsters. If you've been struggling with money in any point in your life you might know the feeling. We took a concept from my old itch page, Bob & Dob. The fishing game. What if we turned that into a full blown fishing rpg? That became the pitch for Sea Sniffers.

So we actually won one of the prizes! Funding wow! Ofc this means also checking in with the GYAAR team, doing milestone meetings etc. Now you could say we are locked in on Sea Sniffers.

Ambitions for the game

We want to make a fishing game where the game world is more than just 'the fishing screen'. So we are making a fishing game where you can move your boat, dock it, step out, go into shops, talk to people, etc. There are stories to be told here. Fishing is an adventure!

The fishing aspect itself is more like an exploration game. Because in Sea Sniffers, you directly control the lure so to speak. Your pet seal is cast into the water, after which you assume control. Yes you can catch fish, but the focus is discovery, and journeying into the deep unknown.

What is a Sea Sniffer?

Sea Sniffers are individuals who work together with trained animals to explore the sea, do research and help with preservation of natural habitats. Kind of like what a park ranger does for national state parks! Sea Sniffers also help local inhabitants out with any sea related problems. If there is a crab infestation on a seaweed farm, a Sea Sniffer might be called out to see what can be done.

In this game the player takes control of a young Sea Sniffer that is just starting out. Eventually you'll be entrusted to solve a big mystery! Ofc, the newbie gets the biggest and most exciting job. That makes total sense in game-land. 😉

The game is now on Steam. We can start harvesting wishlists. This is important. For the concept know as 'the algorithm'!

With Twitter changing to X I have noticed my reach has roughly halved. I'm not the only one that noticed. It sucks to see we are at the mercy of algorithms! It has sparked some thoughts on how I should have diversified my presence online. I'm only really active on X and I think that needs to change. Not sure how to proceed here yet, because all that social media takes time. I guess that's one of the reasons I started getting some output on this blog again, just to get that part of the brain active again. A bit of a tangent this, but it does affect the success of Sea Sniffers, and future games!

Keep your eyes out for more Sea Sniffers and more Blastmode content! For more info about Sea Sniffers, please check out the Steam page or the Sea Sniffers website!

Feb

2023

MG Postmortem: Mighty Mode

Hey all! In my previous articles I mentioned I was working on Mighty Goose 2. During the process of designing the game I’m constantly looking at the first game and analyzing it’s components. While I’m reflecting on the first game, I might as well split that process up into postmortem-esque articles! This is one of them and today’s topic is ‘mighty mode’!

Mighty Mode

Game design lesson: When you let people play your game, they will always do things you wouldn’t expect. This also works the other way around!

I’m often caught off guard by this, and confronted by the fact I do not playtest enough. For Mighty Goose the feature where this became most apparent to me was ‘Mighty Mode’.

Mighty Mode is sort of like an invincibility mode that lasts for a short duration. The idea behind this is that when players are in a pinch, they can power through it by activating Mighty Mode. Whilst in Mighty Mode, all attacks are supercharged. Meaning, you can blast your way through most encounters in the game. It only lasts for a short while, so it doesn’t trivialize the game as a whole.

In terms of balance and flavor I’m pretty happy with the mechanic. It was inspired by the ‘Devil Trigger’ in DMC (and also ‘Super Saiyan’ from Dragon Ball). It lets you feel super cool, but not too long. So it stays special! It allows ‘better’ players to do speedrun-esque cool stuff and it helps weaker players to defeat harder encounters.

One of the fun details of mighty mode is that you can extend the duration of it by killing or hitting enemies. Making good use of the extra power is rewarded by just a little bit of extra time spent in this super mode.

However, looking through various playthroughs you can see some players just not even discovering this power until very late in the game. Something is going wrong here. This is such a shame, as it’s one of the coolest things in Mighty Goose!

Why are players missing this? I can think of a few reasons. Let’s analyze:

In the first level there is a short ‘tutorial’ popup in place which explains the mechanic.
It’s a wall of text though, so some people just skip that entirely!
The first level has several of these popups. People just want to get into the action (popup fatigue).
There is a lot going on in Mighty Goose. The moment Mighty Mode is introduced, some players are just really focused on staying alive and shooting.
More experienced players of the genre are more accustomed to the level of sensory input and just ‘get it’.
When the player can activate the power, the UI displays a full bar with an input icon for the shoulder buttons. This could be more explicit, can use a sound effect, etc.
In rare cases some players don’t have a full Mighty Meter when the tutorial popup shows up. This is a disaster🤦‍♂️
In summary: the game was sloppy in teaching the player.

How to do this better?

When outlined in a list like this, it becomes easy to think of ways to do better. Just using some common sense:

Don’t dump all mechanics on the player at once.
Show > Tell. Practical Example: if there is a wall jump to explain, first show another NPC doing it.
Give players a safe environment to learn (avoid sensory overload).
Funnel the player through learning your mechanic (this means they must learn/perform/master it to proceed)*

*Personal opinion: As an experienced gamer I’m always annoyed when I have to go through one of these ‘tutorial funnels’. You instantly recognize when you fall into one, because you’ll be trapped. Trapped until you learn the thing. Often I think these are too long. The worst is when there is some nagging sidekick talking you through it. Designers want to make sure players leave their little tutorial area with some level of skill mastery. This always completely pulls me out of a game universe! Okay, old man is done yelling at cloud.

To be fair, the tutorial popups were added at a late stage. Originally the game had no tutorials at all. They were required though. Without them, some players were completely lost. For a next installment I think some more elegant tutorials are required in the design from the start. At least we know what not to do!

Mighty Mode 2

Mighty mode will make its return in MG2, but it’s hard to say how we’ll introduce it. Currently I’m still in a wild brainstorming phase where I’m just throwing down ideas in an unstructured style. Slowly but steadily a game structure is beginning to take shape!

I’m playing around with the idea of not giving the player mighty mode at the start and having it be something you need to unlock. In this version concept it would also play a major part in the story of the game.

Of course, since MG2 will be a lot more melee focused, mighty mode might also influence movement and combo's? You'll have to wait and see.

If there's one thing I know is, I'll start playtesting these mechanics early and often. People need to get it.

Dec

2022

Mighty Goose 2

Wait, more Mighty Goose?

At first, I had some reservations about the idea of doing a second Mighty Goose game. I'll be honest; after working on the Waterworld DLC, I had pretty much burned myself out. It's safe to say it took a lot of effort to "just add one level" than anticipated. Making more Mighty Goose wasn't particularly appealing at the time. I had my fill! So I finally took a holiday, basically a break from game development.

But as time passed, I kept thinking about that stupid goose. Other game concepts were also on my mind, of course. But the honks in my head remained. Even though Mighty Goose doesn't really emphasize storytelling, the characters have a certain charm to them that I think connects with a lot of players, young and old. Could a sequel be fun to work on?

Improvements needed

Mighty Goose has some shortcomings that prevent it from being a truly outstanding title, as I mentioned in my previous article: In terms of mechanics, it's just a Metal Slug clone with a few extras. Although that is not necessarily a bad thing, there is hardly any replay value. As a result, the game is over very quickly.

Can we make a second Mighty Goose that addresses the problems with the first one and is truly fantastic? I am certain that it is possible.

Mighty Goose 2 should aim to improve on a few things after considering the shortcomings of the first game:

Invent a gameplay hook that stays interesting throughout the game.
Make sure the game has replayability

An extra challenge

For Mighty Goose we are faced with an extra challenge though. The concept of a goose with a gun is no longer new. The concept has lost it’s surprise factor. It may sound like a too simple analysis, but it’s absolutely true.

"I've played Mighty Goose 1, so I know exactly what to expect from Mighty Goose 2." - This is absolutely how some people will approach the idea of a sequel. If a trailer and screenshots seem to confirm this thought, It might make them less curious to check out the game!

We need to approach Mighty Goose from a different angle in order to surprise people and pique their curiosity once more. So let's update the list we just created:

Approach Mighty Goose from a new angle.
Invent a gameplay hook that stays interesting throughout the game.
Make sure the game has enough replayability

Solution: copy Nintendo

Those first two points of our quest log are somewhat related. The different angle will probably serve as an excuse for a key gameplay element that the game can be designed around. One company that is very good at this is Nintendo.

Kirby: but with 3 allies, but yarn
Mario: but with a water backpack, or a controllable hat
Zelda: but with a flute, mask, boat, wolf, train, open world, open world but with flying

These key gameplay elements actually look pretty simple? When Nintendo executes one of these mechanics, it's flawless of course. But still, on the surface the concepts are pretty simple.

YARRR space pirate goose

Which direction is best for Mighty Goose, then? Surely it can't be that hard to think of something fresh for our feathered friend. The answers to questions like these can often be found in my sketchbook (or my digital sketchbook, the iPad).

What if Mighty Goose is a bad guy? was one of the first ideas I had. A space pirate, perhaps. He would probably be "evil" in the same sense that Robin Hood is; he would steal from the wealthy, but he wouldn't go around killing people at random. There was some effort put into that idea. Even some mockups were created.

Goose + sword

Maybe guns are the problem. So I present, goose with sword! In a medieval fantasy setting! The time period of the game will be so far in the past that it almost seems like a fairy tale. Our mighty goose is now a monster hunter rather than a bounty hunter. The game switches mechanically from pure shooting to a more melee-focused experience.

With this setting in place, we can do something fun. Mighty Goose can unlock classes, which is very typical of fantasy RPG games. These classes alter the goose's appearance, and he gains a range of abilities that can be used for monster hunting as well as overcoming environmental challenges.

The overall experience starts to stray a little from pure arcade action and develops more RPG-like traits. This also affects the way the levels and progression are built, which I think is for the better.

I want to keep the action aspect front and center, though. It's what makes Mighty Goose mighty. I don't even know how this will exactly play out yet; looking at the current status of prototyping and the design documents, it might very well turn out to be a weird game. But I feel there are lots of opportunities here to make a game filled with charm. The passion is back, I am very excited!

Of course, I actually already have a bit more material than is shown in today's blog post. But you're going to have to wait a bit to see. If you've kept an eye on my Twitter account you might have already seen a certain alchemist goose running around. Regarding the Patreon posts, they are so difficult to schedule. It's difficult to predict when I'll have something interesting to say. So I think I'll just go with the flow. When it feels right, I type one. While this post was mostly about the aforementioned 'angle', the next Mighty Goose post will most likely be about the unique hook. I'm kind of still working on that hook to be honest, so it may take a while before posting about that particular subject 😉

To the Patreon supporters: Thank you so much for sticking with me through a long period of writing absolutely nothing. You are my patrons. I recently looked up the definition: a patron is a supporter who actively invests in your transformation to become the best person you can be. Now that is pretty magical. Instead of commissioning an artist and receiving something "physical" in return, a patron invests in the growth of an individual. Because they believe in your potential. I'm humbled, thank you for your confidence. I will do my utmost best for you! While we are on that topic, I just updated the blastmode hall of fame. I have one more animated patron left to do still, but we're getting there!

Nov

2022

Let’s talk Mighty Goose

Let’s talk about Mighty Goose

(This is a mirror post from Patreon)

Hey all, it’s been ages since I wrote anything on Patreon. Sorry for that! For a long time I wanted write a post, but simply didn’t know what to write about. Creative energy wasn't flowing so to speak. I want to get back into the habit of writing posts and the best way of doing that is just doing it I guess. So, lets catch up. Currently I’m working on a few things.

PixelBasher (just ongoing updates)
Job (random illustration works and some frontend dev)
A new Mighty Goose project
A new game which we shall label as ‘Game 3’ for now

This pretty much fills my weeks and weekends completely. I find I have to take special care to find some for myself and relationships in this all. When the sun sets I try to step away from the computer and I try to plan excursions together with my wife. You know, to actually leave the house haha. Last summer I actually went on a holiday for the first time in ages, man what a recharge that was.

About that project list, let's zoom in on games. Specifically MIGHTY GOOSE. To make a long story short, I want to make another goose game. If you’ve been lured to this article by this pretty mockup. That’s actually not what the game is going to look like! I have something else in mind for Mighty Goose 2. Below you’ll find a short write-up on why that is.

A critical look at Mighty Goose

Whenever I think of starting a new project, one of the main goals I always have in mind is blowing people away with the presentation. The things you see, the things you hear, how it the game reacts to input, etc. As an artist I tend to focus on those things. You could say that for me, presentation is the most important aspect of the game.

One of my weaknesses as a designer is I tend to use presentation as a tool to hide flaws. This is a great skill to have of course, games will always need some of that. But the risk is to become lazy, and abuse that power.

Mighty Goose at the core is a very simple run and gun game. The formula is tried an tested. As long as I make it look, sound and feel awesome, people will perceive the game as awesome. This is 100% true, up to a certain point.

Mechanically Mighty Goose doesn’t really have a unique hook (or a gimmick if you prefer). If you look through the visuals, at some point the gameplay ultimately becomes stale.

Luckily the game is short, so for most players this never becomes apparent. The different flavors of enemies bring a decent variation to the gameplay. So for most, it’s just a fun Kirby-esque game to blast through and forget afterwards. However for some players, the game becomes boring faster. Maybe even before getting to the final boss. This is of course a shame.

Metal Sloog

For the design of Mighty Goose I took Metal Slug as a base template. A true arcade game. The only true purpose of this game is to eat your credits! So it was safe to say it was pretty hard. I wanted Mighty Goose to be accessible though. At the end of the day I want my games to be fun for many types of players. So I implemented several features to help struggling players. Heck, the game even straight up defeats the final boss for you if you die enough times during the fight!

All this accessibility means the game is over quite quick. If you are a ‘good gamer’ you’ll probably beat the game without extras within 3 hours. For me personally (i.e. ‘old’ guy with job, multiple projects, a family, etc.), I really welcome games that I can beat in a few sessions. But for most players, that just doesn’t fly.

Even when comparing the game to Metal Slug 3 with an average time to beat at 1,5 hours, there is a definite expectation of players to get more game for the amount of money they have spent. I definitely understand that angle. This is the entire reason we made the Waterworld ‘DLC’ free! However if I where to do it all again I’d definitely spend more time designing replayability features.

Sequel?

So yeah we made an arcade game. With arcade style replayability. Still, for an arcade game it was a great success in my book. It started out right here on Patreon, as a stupid joke goal. It turned out to be a real game! On Game Pass and even in a Limited Run box.

Personally I had an awesome time creating the game. There's a certain lighthearted fun about Mighty Goose that matches extremely well with my soul. The game was received well and I've even been asked a few times if there will be a sequel. It fills me with joy that people enjoyed the game in such a way that they'd ask that. Awesome! The characters, not only the goose, seem to have appeal. So yeah, I've been thinking about a sequel and have been experimenting with ideas for a while now.

If Blastmode were to make a Mighty Goose 2, it would need to be different from the first title. Making exactly the same type of game, but better; Would probably end up being too much of the same. Which is not only bad for the player, but also bad for the artist making it. That wouldn't give creative satisfaction. What warrants the creation of a new goose game? Finding the answer is is a real challenge. But I think we're getting somewhere.

I've been posting hints on twitter. Will there be a Mighty Goose 2? What will it look like? I’ll talk a bit about that in the next Patreon article 😉

Thanks for your support and thanks for reading. Hope you have a great day!

Nov

2021

Finishing Mighty Goose

I soon felt a knot forming in my stomach as I tested the game. I had missed a sentence… Or rather, I had prefilled all of the languages for that sentence with English. So the localization wasn’t complete after all. So I sent the localization document back again to Playism. Playism hires individual linguists to translate each language, so each of them will have to take a look again. That will probably take another week. It’s not a huge problem, but at times like this I curse my own sloppiness!

Looking at the previous post I noticed that the date was Juli. Testing, fixing issues and localization. These are the things that make even a ‘small’ content update seem like a big undertaking. We kind of moved past the ‘indie’ style of just making something, shouting ‘YOLO!’ and pressing the release button. This can be annoying, even trivial stuff can take long. But yeah I am that sloppy indie guy. So having those checks in place is definitely a good thing.

Waterworld

But yes, the waterworld mission is as good as done. Just waiting for that dang localization, and yes we’ll have to get that tested after implementing it. So we’ll have to be patient just a bit longer.

The Mighty Goose content update will basically be a new mission which takes place on a water themed world, planet Ceto. It’s a fairly big mission, clocking at ~30 minutes of playtime. Since it focuses on a new villain, we had to make sure to implement some storytelling segments in the level. I’m pretty happy with how that played out. Looking back at the main campaign I can see it would have been much better if it had several of these segments to remind the player what they are fighting for.

All in all I’m pretty happy with the content update. The boss fight at the end is a real highlight, I love how it turned out.

Wrapping up

And with all that coming out soon, I think we can finally wrap up Mighty Goose. There has been some other Mighty Goose related stuff I had been talking about adding in the future. I know I mentioned a ‘Canadian Goose’ co-op partner, a boss rush mode, and a few other ideas that seem simple on the surface. But at some point you just have to say it’s done. Looking at how long it took to just add one level, I think it’s definitely a good idea to just finish it there and take some time to work on new ideas.

I learned a lot of things about development but also a lot of things about myself and working in this setup. I plan on doing a public post-mortem post sometime in the future, describing what went well, some of the things that didn’t go well, etc.

Lately I tried to start a lot of new concepts. But every time, almost instantly, my power meter drops to a 3/10. My last long break / holiday was in 2019 and I suspect that plays a big part in this (Covid also not helping of course). I’m just dead tired, it’s pretty simple. I can’t wait to be done with Mighty Goose and just chill a bit.

Of course, I know you have to take care of yourself and strive to have a good life & work balance. But once you (and only you!) are at the helm of your own company, it becomes almost impossible not to constantly engage with it. Which leads me to the biggest downside of having a home-office; It becomes very difficult to ‘switch off’.

I have some long-term plans brewing which should hopefully fix this problem. Moving the business to an office? Try to find a house with a separate ‘work-building’? Both are very expensive options in the Netherlands.

To be honest I’m not particularly enchanted with the Netherlands anyway. Emigration might actually be an attractive option. If you’ve got any tips I’d love to hear them 😉

In any case, with the whole Covid situation I feel like it would be better to play the waiting game just a bit longer. We have been waiting for quite a while, so I guess we can wait a bit longer *sigh*.

Whoever is reading this, I hope you are holding up in these turbulent times. Stay hopeful, stay safe and try to take care of yourself! <3

Nov

2020

Flying towards the horizon

November 18, 2020

The year is nearing its end and covid is still here. Which is alright with me, I’m at home working on Mighty Goose anyway. I hope you folks are all doing fine as well, depending on where you live it may or may not affect your life a lot more. I've read some good things about vaccines lately, let's hope we can get some of that good stuff soon. 🙂

As I mentioned, the work continues. Currently I’m basically in the finishing up stages of Mighty Goose. All upgrades and secondary weapons are in. The secret/bonus content is almost done and the last companion character will soon be added to the game. Additionally I’m fleshing out a ‘new game plus’ experience which allows players to replay the game in a brutally difficult way.

So, finishing up?

Anyone who’s kept an eye on Cyberpunk 2077 knows that those finishing up stages can be quite deceiving. So I’m looking towards the future with caution, but the game is getting there! The game texts have been ‘locked in’ for translating and the testing crew from Gears for Breakfast is hunting for bugs.

Today I played the game a bit without actually trying to test something and I can honestly say I had fun. I like my own game and I’m really happy I can say that. I hope everyone else will feel so as well.

When is the game coming out? Still can't say. 2021 is all you're going to get here.

Beyond the horizon

Okay so the Mighty Goose horizon is in sight. But what's next? It's always tempting to start thinking about new projects, especially during the final stages of your current thing. And yes, there are new things on my mind. But absolutely also post-release content for Mighty Goose.

When Mighty Goose is released I'm planning on supporting the game at a 100% capacity for a while. What that means is, I'll spend all my time working on patches and post release content. What will that content look like? Currently I'm thinking of making a very unique mission. A bigger Metroidvania style mission that kind of mixes up the standard gameplay. The idea is to make Mighty Goose visit an aquatic world where a new vehicle, the submarine, plays a big role. It's just a vague idea at this point, but I really like the idea of putting the goose in some kind of semi-persistent level which has some exploration elements. It sounds rather ambitious and it might even be DLC worthy, we'll have to see. The bottom line is, I'm not done with Mighty Goose just yet 😀

Over time I'll be scaling those Mighty Goose activities down a bit and start prototyping something new. Of course I have some ideas lined up, but it's way too early to share anything.

Sea Sniffers

origins

Ambitions for the game

What is a Sea Sniffer?

Mighty Mode

What is Mighty Mode?

However...

How to do this better?

Mighty Mode 2

What do you think?

The sequel

Wait, more Mighty Goose?

Improvements needed

An extra challenge

Solution: copy Nintendo

YARRR space pirate goose

Not good enough

Goose souls!?

Goose + sword

More

Let’s talk about Mighty Goose

A critical look at Mighty Goose

Metal Sloog

Sequel?

Finishing Mighty Goose

Waterworld

Soundtrack

Wrapping up

Flying towards the horizon

A timelapse

So, finishing up?

Meanwhile in China

Beyond the horizon

In closing

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