Dev on air - "The Design and Creative Processes Behind Rainworld" w/ Joar Jakobsson

okay i think we're live cool so hi guys and welcome to our monthly appointment with devon air i'm gabriela from igda turin and

uh today we have a really really special guest our first international guest jory jacobson if you want to introduce yourself yes hello my name is

and i am the main programmer uh on rain world video game from yeah not only not only programming right

you also did a bunch of other stuff yes we're a very small team so uh we we all did a bunch of stuff and i did like the programming and the art and the

animation and the uh yeah i'm trying to think what else did i do that pretty much covers it yeah i i think i think you

you did a lot of stuff on the game so for those who aren't uh you know uh that that don't know rainwood i think we can show uh the the launch trailer

just to give an idea to people of uh what's what reynold word is about so i'm just gonna play the trailer you are alone in a cruel world

you must fight for survival against a strange ecosystem and vicious predators you are trapped in an endless cycle

of death rebirth and death now on nintendo switch with dangerous new gameplay modes

and local multiplayer endless beauty endless danger endless death endless rain

rain world cool that was the trailer cool and uh i think i'm gonna play sorry what

i said a lot of slug cats dying uh i'm gonna i'm gonna just play uh a speed run to have uh some gameplay that to accomplish in our talk this is a speedrun by lime mine

so thanks to him or her i don't know really but i'm just gonna roll some gameplay but no volume yeah that sounds awesome the speedrunners are incredibly yeah yeah we're gonna get to that

actually because that's that's really interesting so the first thing uh i want to ask you about is um you know every aspect of the game

every aspect of rainwork from the technology you use uh from the world building to uh gameplay aspects and narration to israeli

everything is absolutely uh well connected to one another so what was your creative process what was uh your design process to to create something

like that uh yeah so that's actually a very interesting point because when we made the game we didn't really have this big

world building interconnected thing in mind we thought of it as a mood piece that was the word we used in between ourselves the entire time so like

i don't know a mood piece movie for example would be just like a short film that just sort of sets an atmosphere or something like that or like it's it's not like really an

involved thing it's just a little thing that has a very intense atmosphere and that's what we try to do and so i think that's sort of the core of the project like the mood

we knew very very early we made some mock-ups and screenshots and stuff of this little creature and the gray rained down environments and then

everything was built from there so that's that's sort of the core of it and then all of this story and all of these creatures

and did you have some references from i don't know for game play or for art hmm yeah i mean i started i started

making wayne grove when i was like 22 something like that so i think my my influences were probably the indie games of when i was a teenager so that that would

be like cave story and lyle in cube sector and that that sort of stuff oh yeah yeah yeah i can i can actually i can actually see that in uh

i mean it kind of is reflected in uh uh the cohesion between uh the elements of the game yeah i guess i really like those games too so probably it's one of the reasons i like the framework too

it's crazy to me how i've never really seen anyone notice it but the the wall region in rain world is an homage to the wall region in cave story right

right i don't i don't know if people have noticed but it was intended that way that's that's cool that's really cool yeah i never thought about it actually but it makes sense it makes a

lot of sense so regarding that um where i mean um when did you become aware that you were making something that

unique i mean it's it's kind of crazy because even today there are no games that work like rainwear does

i think it was sort of a two-step two-step process the first one was where we we had this running joke james my colleague and i between us when we were developing

the game where we said like the joke was like why has never why has no one ever done this before yeah in sort of a sarcastic voice

and the idea why has no one ever done this before and the implicated answer to the question is because it's extremely troublesome and it causes you

immense amounts of pain and suffering so i think i think in that regard we knew kind of that we were doing something that was a little bit

different because we ran into problems all the time with the dynamic ecosystem etc uh but i mean like technical problems or

more i like design problems what kind of problems yeah technical problems and design problems in the sense of like runaway effects if you follow

like uh you you have these creatures and they interact and then like those interactions will just sort of spin out of control in one direction or the other because also

everything i mean even if you don't see it stuff is still going on in the world right yeah uh that's sort of the the premise behind the game right there's this big

simulated world this big simulated ecosystem where everything is sort of acting on its own so it's not like it's not like uh several video games where it's like

you enter a room and the enemies activate as you enter the world rather everything is just sort of boiling i i honestly think that one of the reason that

nobody has ever done something like that it that it really requires some parallel thinking because it it really is different from

how i mean uh i've studied uh game design for for three years basically and uh it's it really is a way a new way of looking at things and it it takes a lot of skill to do

that and probably a different point of view and also maybe a different background that you have hmm yeah i i don't know i i would say it takes a lot of skill to do it

uh well right and i think there are actually differing opinions on whether or not we did it well in rain world like as as a pleasant nice game experience

i don't think it's incredibly successful but it's in my opinion it's successful and i'm very happy about it as sort of a showcase of how a system like this can

work yeah yeah and it is i mean i think it it is successful in the way that it still has an active player base an active

uh i mean an active community of mothers of speedrunners so i mean uh yes absolutely absolutely like people people have found it very

interesting and that's like that's absolutely amazing to us but also everyone everyone that loves the game is also very much aware that it can be very frustrating at times yeah right yeah

yeah that's true and um about that so you took a big risk i guess by by doing something like this and uh so do you did you fear at any

time that the game was too hard to understand for players and uh i mean something like that did you feel like it was too hard to get into in

a way uh so that sort of that sort of brings me back a little bit to the previous question like when did you understand that you made something that wasn't very

common right because i had very little of those fears and uh fears and uh moments of caution while developing

it i was just doing the thing and then when it was released and we got the reviews that's when i realized like oh okay this is actually maybe not like

games are mostly right um so uh kind of not i guess i was i was like blissfully ignorant

and very confident in not really knowing uh how games usually work and what's out there and how how people would connect to the system that's really cool

so what about the scope of the game like um for when did you decide uh how big is what it was going to be uh i don't think

we ever really decided on that uh james my colleague he's he's extremely

productive at sort of uh making content he's he's uh a machine he has like crank it out and he did that

and he made he made this huge sprawling world and then we sort of get stopped when we had enough is how i would describe it we stopped when we had

more than enough maybe [Music] and that's that's cool and um about uh the difficulty of the game and how hard it is uh

um i'm i'm actually really curious about uh if you think that uh making the game more accessible would somehow ruin the experience or or

something like that yeah that's an interesting question i think one thing that's very important to point out which also relates back to my previous answer right

is that when making the game nowhere ever did i think of it as making a difficult game i never had did i did the idea crossed my mind that i was making a difficult

game and then when the game was released uh that sort of became very much its identity right and now it's like uh i don't know maybe

it even has one of those tags on steam like difficult or something like that yeah i guess but that's never how i thought of it i thought of it as like a simulation and

what was most important to me was the idea that the player is just another creature there's like there's no special cases for the player the player is treated by the world in the same way

as every other creature is created by the world um so yeah this was not intended as a difficult game it was it was just

intended at the same as the simulation experience and if it was less difficult that would be perfectly fine but i would

the the one thing i would like to preserve is the simulation experience right where it's like uh it's not a world that revolves around the player but instead it's a world that the player is

introduced to and the player is just uh treated the same way as all the other creatures like no no special exceptions no special tweet so does that answer the question yeah

yeah it does it really does so you maybe i mean you think that everything there is gamey we can say comes after uh the simulation

and and uh how the world works it's just a consequence yeah exactly like okay we thought that we sort of didn't set out to make

a game first and foremost it was more like here's this world and you have to eat and you have to sleep and that game mechanics sort of arise from that right that's that's cool that's uh that's a

really i mean that's a really different process from what you would usually do i guess so i think i think that that's that's really good so about uh

since we're talking about the design of the game uh one thing that i really want to ask you i'm really personally curious about it is the reason the reason the reasoning behind the the

karma system and the cycles uh because um i mean it it seems weird for the kind of game it is

this is a controversial topic right the controversial topic so the karma system uh basically what we wanted to do was we wanted to create a

survival game i guess where you're and we wanted this experience of like living in a shelter and going out and finding food and then going back to the shelter uh what we noticed when we when we

started started making this world and like connecting it up was that the default way to play that everyone including ourselves would play

if we were allowed to was just to sort of set the direction and just like sprint into the world you just go as far as you can right yeah um

so their rain timer is 10 minutes or whatever and it just becomes a race like go go go as far as you can and you just go like deep into some territory which you're not ready for

and you're like lucky if you just die and respawn back where you were and if you're unlucky you managed to find the same point and now you're stuck deep in somewhere that you're not

ready for so the karma system was basically this idea where like okay what do the player want they want to see more environments they want to see more

content what do an animal want an animal want to eat food and survive and the chroma system was intended to tie the

player character the animals motivation together with the player's motivation because basically what the karma system is saying right is if you don't eat and sleep and survive

then you don't get to see the next region so it sort of collapses these two things together in a quite brutal way and i'm aware that many people

have differing opinions about it it kind of is a way to test the players skills uh so i mean it is really punishing but it's a

way of saying like uh you can go to this new area if you have the skill to do it so so yeah uh yeah that's the intention right it's like

if once you're in a region you need to first prove that you're able to survive in that region for a couple of cycles before you're allowed into the next region and also the intention was we never

wanted a situation where it's like okay i didn't get where i wanted to go or i didn't do what i wanted to do so i might as well die and you just jump off a cliff

because we we didn't feel that's like uh then then you're not inhabiting the player character right when you're doing that so we created this system where like whatever happens you

always want to survive that's your first priority and it became quite punishing yes okay so so okay you you were

like you wanted to give to the players the perspective of of the animal and to obtain like a a complete immersion i guess yeah exactly i think it always becomes

weird when the player character's motivation and the player's motivation drift apart right so the player character wants one thing but the player wants to just jump the player character

off the closest cliff because they want to die and reset to their latest spawn or whatever that sort of doesn't make sense and in rain world it was very important for us that you always

felt like you're in the player character and the karma system is there to [Music] actually punish death because you're

you're never supposed to want to die and that did become a punishing system indeed but i think i think i hope it was somewhat successful at doing that

thing it's about to do yeah one thing that uh since i replayed the game recently to prepare for this talk i guess and one thing i really tend to do is

uh to restart the game a bunch like to uh just to to you know since i know i can get there in this time yeah in these many yeah

yeah i do that a lot i guess yeah and that's that's the sort of stuff right that we kind of tried to uh kind of try to dissuade but we couldn't

catch all of the cases right so there's still a little bit of that in there somewhere but i think at least at least saves coming is a little bit difficult in rain world

right yeah yeah it really is so i mean from from what i

i mean from what you can see from the steam reviews and uh you know the general consensus of the community

is that people you usually love the game put like even hundreds of hours into it and then there's people that

just like you know uh start playing and drop the game after 10 minutes 20 minutes because of how hard it is and i guess it's kind of uh i mean you have to get used to the

movement too because of how different is from the usual stuff we we play and uh yeah yeah so uh regarding

the movement what i want to ask is all the advanced movement techniques and stuff you can do with the zlat are those intended or

are those like a result of how the physics work in the game uh it's a little bit of both right like some some things are very much intendedly put

in there so you have this you have this thing for example where you can jump and if you tap jump exactly when you're on top of a horizontal pole this lug cat will do

like a little ninja jump on the pole stuff like that and that's very much me going in there like if else what's the x

coordinate what's the y coordinates like making that happen but then on the other hand there's also just the physics engine uh doing its thing so it varies

yes it's very very simple little physics engine that i brought that's really cool i would have no idea how to do that you can check out the tig source red there's actually

there's actually an instruction there for how to do it cool and um so yeah since we're i mean let's talk a

little bit about the word and the creature and uh and so on uh one thing that i'm really curious about is uh since you you described the

artificial intelligence of the game as emergent uh because because i mean it it takes decision based of the

environment of what the player is doing so how do you balance a system like that uh with much difficulty and this this sort of

comes into the thing where uh this this comes into the thing we talked about earlier right where like uh why aren't people doing this this is one of the reasons like it

becomes it becomes very very difficult to balance a system where all the creatures interact with all the creatures and the creatures can go wherever they want etc

etc i think i think a lot of it came down to james's basically i did the programming and james created the world so james

placed the creatures in the world and decided where they would spawn kind of and i did their ai so it was sort of a joint effort between us there but

yes that's very much one of the one of the most difficult thing about building a system did you i mean were you actually prepared for

the task or i mean it took you by surprise during development that it was that hard i wasn't prepared for any of it i had

never made a video game before and i was a graphic design student and i was winging it the entire time i think that's probably part of why it

worked because i didn't understand that it shouldn't okay okay yeah so you you have that kind of approach i mean that's cool and how did you approach programming by

the way it's it's a really weird i mean working with artists uh it seems like two really different decent words

uh so i mean it's i'm really curious about how did you get into programming and the reasoning behind that so i would say i'm sort of coming at

programming from an artist's perspective right because uh i was never i was never really interested in programming by itself or creating efficient solutions etc etc

i was always interested in expressing art ideas and then programming was just a tool to make that happen

so it's it very much started from like uh all of rain world started with a little player creature uh that has been called a slug cat on

the inter uh and the entire game started with me as like hmm wouldn't it be fun if you had this soft little creature and i made it and i tuned the parameters

and i placed it in the little world made of boxes and from that the rest of the game grew but all of the all of the programming

comes from an art oriented perspective if you get me i i get you and i'm i'm kind of jealous

but not only that i mean [Music] i mean i'm a programmer and i i still have no idea how you could do off the stuff that's in the game

honestly from a programming point of view it's really crazy how you managed to get into something like procedural animation that it was i mean in the game came out i mean you

started working in 2011 right yeah i think the very very first prototype was probably started

about then yeah and why so i mean procedural animation are becoming more of a standard now but back then it was really something

new so how how did you how did you find them how did you research them and put them into your game um yeah so i think once again the answer

is sort of similar as to what i said earlier it's not really that i set out to do procedural animation uh i wasn't really aware that procedural

animation was a thing it was maurya's okay here's the creature how do i put the leg on it and then i figure out a way to put the leg on it

it needs arms how do i do that it makes sense that the arm is a sprite and it rotates to a position that is the hand and the hand moves around this way or that so

uh it is procedural animation but it was never really it was never really intended as such i guess it was just more

my way of getting graphics on the screen and that's really cool because i mean the the final effect of the final look of the game is something uh that it's

absolutely unique to rainwood and i guess you can achieve something like that only if you have that kind of perspective which is great yeah i think always

it's always interesting when people come at the stuff like this from a little bit of a different angle right like one of my favorite games is dwarf fortress for example

and that's very much not like a person or a game development studio sitting down and figuring out how to make this game and how to design it and what will it look like etc it's just

it's just a person with a computer getting started and getting in there right and i i i really like that approach and i really like

uh the stuff that oftentimes comes out of that approach so i tried to do that myself yeah so you you just put one brick at a time

i guess which is great but uh maybe some of the problems you can face later is that i don't know uh something about the scope or something that maybe

you met you made a lot of time ago that doesn't work anymore something like that so it does it's pros and cons i guess

yeah very much like uh it's it's very it's very easy to build sort of a not very robust like ramshackle system if you just start

right if you if you plan out your process better you get a way more solid system and i think there's a lot to say for that uh absolutely but i think the the sort of creative

joy that comes out of just getting started and then going is definitely worth something and even though it's more difficult it's oftentimes possible to go in later and

try to like structure it up a little so i guess what i would say to people is just like don't be scared of starting your thing immediately

that i think that's very important just do it that's that's a really good advice yeah i mean it's kind of hard to do maybe in

in this new indie landscape which is becoming bigger and bigger but yeah absolutely yeah it is but i think i think there's probably something

because today there are so many indie games so it's difficult to stand out right but i actually think that if you just get started with your weird idea you will probably stand out

more than if you try to plan extremely meticulously and like try to meet the demand or something like that because i think

uh no i think i was going to say the same thing you were basically people are interested in those weird and unique ideas and those will always stand out against the wrath yeah i guess maybe games made in that

way i mean in a more planned out way can sometimes become like soulless maybe and you feel that by playing them yeah there's a risk of something like

that right but on the other hand they can also become infinitely more competent than [Laughter] so so there's pros and cons to both for

sure well i guess it's really similar to having a kind of naive and sort of in the approach to cinema it's it's really really close to that

too like yeah just do it just do so yeah i agree that's so

are you still working that way uh yeah i mean yeah i would i would say i am like uh it's just me

at my computer like doing stuff so yeah to a degree it's i think it's a little bit difficult though to you you can never do that the first time again

if you get me so that that is a difference like i think your first kind of project will always be the most naive and just sort of uh

just sort of throwing yourself at it with abandon that you can do because the next time around you will all you will be more experienced and that will change it a little bit so

but i try to channel that yeah yeah yeah i mean i'm really curious about uh what you're gonna do in the future but we're gonna talk about a little bit

later and and one thing that i really want to ask you is um i mean you have uh these characters in these games we

have uh the scavenger there are maybe maybe the the best example of how the ai works of what the ai can do in the game

and uh the thing that i want to ask you is how do they make decisions because they seem to have a really i mean a really good understanding of their surrounding or

even their relationship with the cut because you can uh you can be friends with them and so how do i do in from a technical point of view how do they

decide what's best uh yeah the scavengers were a big project that took me like two months or something just doing the scavengers uh their their decision-making process

is the same as every other creature in the game and that is a pretty simple approach basically where the ai in the game is constructed out of modules and each module will track a specific

behavior so a module will be for example a fleeing module okay and what a fleeing module will do is it will track all the dangerous

creatures that the creature is aware of where those dangerous creatures are and then it will track an urgency parameter like how

much do i feel i need to flee in this very moment which is just a floating point a number between zero and one and all the other

modules work the same way they they track a little bit of data about what they are doing like maybe there's a hunting module for example it tracks all the creatures that are

nearby that might be potential prey and then it has an urgency parameter which is

how much do i want to go into hunt mode and e right and then say creature has like five of these modules basically what

the the ai does is it just compares urgency of all of them and then it picks the one that is most urgent and it goes into that behavior

with a little bit of bias towards staying in the same behavior as where it currently is so you don't get like flicker where it goes like back forth backwards

back forth uh between two different behaviors that's basically it then there's a little bit of i think there's a little bit of waiting as well like these

urgencies like some behaviors their urgency is weighted a little bit higher than others because maybe for example fleeing should be a higher priority than eating

right because you can't eat if you're already dead so you you bump up the urgency score of fleeing with like a fact and that's that's basically it

so it's just one urgency score per each module and then it does whatever behavior corresponds to the highest okay that was quite technical but i hope it answers the question yeah

i i was actually looking for a technical answer that that's great uh and regarding that um i mean so uh i i i mean

since the game doesn't have really something that i mean when i'm designing the ai from a code point of view i guess i i usually look at references and look

what the other games ai are doing but uh you really didn't have that when you were making the game

so uh i mean how do you approach like you approach something like that by saying i guess um i really need this

behavior and uh so you you really thought about it like um how a creature would uh behave i guess

something like that yeah uh once again it comes down to the simulation aspect of the game right like that as is perhaps a little bit evident

sometimes the goal behind the creatures and how they behave isn't really what would be the most fun gameplay experience it's rather what would make sense for this creature how can it get

food how can it keep itself alive etc set for us and that's where i started so if you have a small little squishy creature then obviously it needs to be able to flee

from other creatures so that goes in there if you have a big hunting creature obviously it needs to be able to look for and track and hunt other creatures so

that may be good and then i kept it kind of modular i had these modules i talked about earlier and actually the same module could be used for many different creatures so every creature that would hunt

anything could just employ the hunting module and then that sort of giant generalized things a little bit

okay i'm gonna ask you uh we have some questions from chat the first one is is there any relation and inspiration between the concept of

this game and the finnish book uh the moomins and the great flood the characters designs reminds me of zlatan also the rain thing yeah

all right yeah i mean i'm i'm swedish and the moomin books are actually written in swedish originally they are from finland but they are written in swedish and i grew up on those books so it would

not be surprising if i if i was influenced by that not at all it's not it's not like a direct influence it's not that i tried to do that book or something like that but

it's definitely part of my repertoire yes so uh about the rain thing um did it become a part of the game

as the game grew or was it something that was there from the beginning it was not there from the beginning but it was there very early okay uh so in the very very

beginning it was just the slug cat character in like a room made of boxes jumping around and me trying to figure out what the game should be and at first i thought maybe it was like

a multiplayer party game where you would run to each other's nests and steal nuts from each other i think was the original idea and then it sort of went through a couple of iterations and then i had

the idea what if the game is rain world and it's these gray environments that are very rained down and everything is eroded and

i set the title and that's uh that's like say half a year into uh working on the project and that's what we went with

with that's what it became another small technical question before into before going into more fun stuff um when does light cut is on a screen so

the the word is still active and uh stuff still happens in the world and uh i want to uh to ask i mean uh

do the ai still know where zlatka is at all times or what are they doing when zlatan isn't on screen no they don't and this is very very

this was a very important point for me when developing the game uh because this was exactly the sort of thing i did not want in this game where the enemy is just always tracking

the player always pathfinding towards the player the enemy only exists to be an obstacle for the player the creatures in the game they once they see

each other the first time then they start tracking each other and when they see each other they update the position where they think the other creature is when they don't see the other creature

they just sort of imagine kind of there's like a little abstracted point that moves along the corridors where they think the other creature might have gone

if you understand so if if a creature sees another creature like glittering down a hole then it doesn't see it anymore but in inside its head it's this little

imagined rep representation of where it thinks the other creature is and that little representation will sort of go down and follow the hole

and then even branch out if there's uh a crossroads and go a different area and this system is the same for when other creatures track

other creatures and when other creatures track the slug cat no creature in the game has any idea that the slug cat is controlled by a human being like they to them the slag cat is

literally just another creature uh like all the other and that that was very much an important point so when you don't see them they just do what they do

and when you see them they keep doing that and the way they hunt you is the exact same way they hunt other non-player that's that's that's really cool i mean

it's kind of um i mean again it's it's really something that uh you need a kind of a different perspective to to think about something like that but

but i i mean that's a really cool approach and uh yeah so we have some other question from the chat

uh first of all uh what do you think are the skills that an illustrator should have to explore the industry

uh i mean i can i can only sort of come from my own angle right and i was a teenager i was drawing a lot i was considering becoming an illustrator and

then i took graphic design at university and did a lot of illustrations so i think in a way you could say that i am an illustrator

become a game developer and my approach was that i just decided to not be scared of the computery part of it

right i was like how hard can it be to make something move around how hard can you see to make some pixels uh change colors and then i could sort of use my

illustrator uh skills to make video games uh so that's that's sort of one part right or one approach you are an illustrator and you become a video game maker

that is a little bit programmer a little bit illustrator a little bit between uh the other the other idea that you commonly see right is that you

become a video game artist you go into a game development studio and you work on art assets so not programming but art assets

and for doing that i have never really done that but i've done a little bit of similar stuff because i make my own artists right for my own programmer

so for that i would say like have a little bit of an idea about how stuff works like what is in uv map how does a texture

map onto a uv map on a 3d model what is a normal map how does it work stuff like that i think would be very very beneficial and also

knowing how to sort of break your artwork down so not only drawing full like very rendered very pretty pictures but also being able to draw like a gravel texture that is

repeating but it looks pretty in context because that's where it's going to end up so basically probably yeah so

basically you i mean people should really have a basic understanding of what all the competencies are i mean even if you're an artist if you're

making video games it's really important uh to have an idea of how texture works how the engine works in a way i guess i mean i should say i have never worked

for a video game studio that has an art department in the programming department so i don't know but but i would i would

i would absolutely say that it would definitely not be not useful to know a little bit about physical aspects as well if you're an if you're an illustrator an artist

wanting to get into and i think honestly if you're an illustrator uh i think a good place to start would be to learn to do a little bit of 3d modeling right because then

you basically learn everything about uv maps and vertices etc would so maybe maybe that's my tip

pick up blender yeah blender is the best 3d program and it's free and open source it absolutely is um

another question is how you should deal with co-workers with different backgrounds and skills and ideas and how do you understand each other about what should be done so i don't know if

it really is the the right question for you since uh i mean your team is really small but yeah yeah our team is very very small

we were four people working on the game but me and my colleague james we were like uh working full time for the entire and we occasionally we had slightly

different perspectives but and occasionally there was a little bit of a disagreement about one mechanic or one little thing or another but we sort of sorted it out and i think we did that because

we had the we had a very common vision we we knew what we wanted the project and that helped so much

and like there would be literally months without ever discussing anything at all because we both just knew what we wanted really i would i would i would go out on a limb

and say yes there would definitely be like a two month period of no of no bickering occasionally

because we i think i think the way it worked was we had very different things we did on the project so it was not we were not on in each other's hair all the time but at the same time we had a

very very common idea but what we wanted the project to be and uh also it was not always two months between back rain occasionally there was measuring every

day but if you have the same if you have the same end goal i think yeah but i guess the end can be different from the vision so

that can you know sometimes yeah some problems so you you really have that you i think so like i can't i can't look into his mind right but it always felt

like whenever we were discussing something we were sort of yes yes that way that way that's our that's how we're doing so yeah um i i don't think i'm the person really to speak on how to deal

with colleagues necessarily because i only have like this one working relationship and that is exceptionally smooth

compared to everything i've heard about how other so have have a small team and get along with them

yeah i mean i'm an advocate for for small teams too so i really think that's that's the way to go to to keep our aquarium vision and do something

uh that's different i mean we we really have some some examples uh a game that i really see sometimes be being compared to

ringword is hollow knight uh which i like i guess it is kind of similar in the way uh i mean in the way that everything is

connected to one another and now everything talks in a way to to you to other elements of the game and uh yeah so i think you were kind of a

predecessor of of the of really great games that came after and uh that's amazing i don't know i wouldn't say that hollow knight is so

similar to rain world i would say hollow knight is uh sort of the ultimate of the metroidvania genre in my

day yeah yeah do you consider rainwood on metroidvania uh not really right because very much a part of the metroidvania is getting the upgrades

that allow you to move further in the rain where there are no upgrades really so it's sort of a metrovania adjacent game yeah because about the map work i guess

you have these what about how the map works it's kind of similar yeah but that's just the big map that you can move around right yeah so yeah i don't know it's an

interesting question now i mean i mean i i didn't mean that the game was similar to all of knight from you know a design point of view it is similar in the way that every element

of allonite is connected like the the generation and uh you have this kind of silent narration

that's uh yes a little bit and you have that in rainwear too and uh yeah that's that's definitely true i

i think uh hollow knight hollow knight to me is a difficult comparison because hollow knight is so incredibly smooth and pleasant [Laughter]

rain world is like this really really frustrating obnoxious experience but yeah i can see i can see the parallel there for sure yeah i wouldn't describe it as a as

obnoxious it's i mean it's something different that you have to get into but it it really works when when you connect to the game

and uh at best it's pretty cool but at its worst it's very very frustrating it's it's it's highs and lows with the rain world yeah yeah but in my opinion that's true

but if you um want to compare to the life of a creature it kind of works i guess since high solos are a staple for

every creature yeah i that's that's our intention right that it should sort of be a metaphor for natural life absolutely yeah

it really works from that point of view so um regarding the community since the game has a really active and uh alive community of

modders and speedrunners uh what do you think are the the key factors that uh the main rain world to have

such a life community oh wow i i really don't know uh i felt like it could have gone either way like i felt like there could have been just

crickets or or a like this right like this is absolutely amazing so i mean so many people like it and so many people are engaged

with it and like building up all night etc and i'm blown away by that and i don't know why uh one thing that's very interesting to me

is that in the game right we have these characters that are called the iterators and they are a huge computer and they are sort of prompted or represented by this little

it's almost like a hand puppet right it's like a little puppet on an arm and i i i put that in there and there's two of them and i've seen since how people have made

like entire sprawling universes and casts of like their own original iterator characters

and that's it never in the world would i have been able to uh predict that that that's that that's absolutely that's true but i mean in the lore

it is i mean it is into the the fact that a lot of these iterators exist so i guess yeah yeah definitely but it's just so it's just such an obscure thing like the

game is enormous and in two little rooms there's like this tiny little pixel character that has little dot eyes and the fact that people have been able

to take that and run with it and like do all these amazing creative things that really blows my mind they they are they are like no

more visually uh complex than like the super mario mushroom or something like that right there is a little little blob with two little dot

and people really went i mean i think one of the best moment uh in in the game for me one of the moment that worked best

is actually when you um when you meet the first iterator for for the first time because yeah which is moon uh yeah so i i guess it really works

because uh it's the first thing you're not scared of and it it really

it really it's you when like dislike at um when you when you exit there's like it keeps keeps looking at at moon and that's oh

yeah it's true it's sort of the first friendly encounter you have really or the first the first sort of kinship encounter you have in the game and yeah it's true maybe

maybe that struck an emotional chord would be yeah yeah i mean it really i don't know if it's intentional i guess it is of course but uh it really worked for me

that that's really really powerful moment of the game and i think also it's a lot james's music

in that room it's very sort of emotional and effective so yeah that's really height yeah yeah yeah and uh i mean the lore is great too it's

actually really really well written i think [Music] and uh that's that's a really important aspect that you kind of don't expect but i guess

something that really works in the game is how i mean there are a lot of little uh i mean touches here and there like for example

how um how the player i mean i dislike it when you open them up it's i mean it's this luck at remembering the map it's not like

a map and that's closing it yeah and even that and also for example the fact that you don't have an inventory you i mean you can store things in your

stomach and that's it that's really clever yeah you have a one slot inventory bring everything very much like down to uh

i don't know like sometimes in games i feel like it's sort of spiraling away into this super abstract experience where it's like you have inventories and it's a

grid and you have a map and there's the map controls and there's like a bunch of buttons and with rain world it was really important to me

to sort of bring it back to uh i wanted it to almost be like a simulation of atoms like the stuff you see on the screen it is all matter the stuff you see on the screen

it is all there and like this rock you hold in your hand it's a rock and it's in your hand and occupying your hand if you if you sort of understand what i'm trying to say

here like less abstraction and numbers and menus and more just like a simulation of a world where everything is

a physical presence and that's that's sort of where those designers decisions come from and uh talking about um game dev in general right

and what do you think i mean we talked about this a little bit before but uh you have a really peculiar approach of heart of programming

and and even design so um do you think that this approach is applicable in modern indie team and i mean

i mean i guess what are your advices for for an indie team and our audiences of a lot of young gamers that want to

start and get started [Music] so i do think that the approach we have taken

and the way we work in the way i work i do not think it would work well in a larger team that's probably pretty much all i can say about that

because i do think uh the way the way we work and the way we work together and separately it's very much sort of a you just

know where what you want the game to be and you just work there yourself and then we sort of like check in with each other and stuff etc uh i don't think it would work if you

had a sort of hierarchy where you have one person that's in charge of directing the game or whatever and then

so i think i think this approach uh which is a little bit more experimental and a little bit more like just do it etc etc you

probably need a smaller team for that uh that i think i'm fairly confident to say um yeah was there a second part to the

question or am i that's that's that's actually a pretty good answer we have another question from chat uh is there some content that

was removed from the final game because you found out that it was too difficult or too frustrating [Laughter]

okay i'm trying to think and i think brightly the answer might actually be no everything difficult and frustrating we

ever made is still in the game to torment you nothing nothing was curated nothing was cut all of the horror is there for you to

experience when you when you fire up rain world there there were things that were

made and then cut but not really not really for the reason of being too difficult if that answers the question and

uh so what's your favorite creature that you made [Music] so right now i'm looking at the lantern mice on the on the stream right and i really

like the lantern mice i think they are a good uh i think they're a good break from all the horrible stuff because they're sort of like whimsical right they're a little moomin

they have a little bit of a moomin or a ghibli feel to them they they're a little like they're soft and a little bit alien but still

and yeah i i really i really like the lantern mice and for my for my favorite awful creature it would be the maggot spitting

spider yeah that that i think is the worst one let's oh yeah i i had a lot of fun with the vultures like they switch

from being like a monkey that climbs with arms to like a bird i had a lot of fun with that that's that's really cool and also the fact that you can steal the mask and all that it's really it's really

cool thank you thank you so um another question we have is does the grapple worm have

two tongues start to tongues uh no the answer to that question is no the grapple worm has one tongue and it is like a hollowed-out

little tube that sits on top of that tongue and actually if you look at it when it's sort of going across its tongue the outer layer of it is moving in the opposite direction

because it's like rolling into itself in order to roll across i hope that

okay that's cool that's amazing that you mean that you have such a deep understanding well i guess uh you made uh and i'm

really curious about that uh how did you approach creature design uh so always since i was a little kid i've been sort of drawing strange little creatures so

that's very much sort of my mode of operation i draw strange creatures and with rainworld i sort of went at it like that right and i

had a lot of fun with this idea of a world that has had previously been like super mechanized and all the creatures are like they they have these sort of

biomechanical aspects or like bio-engineered aspects to them and like maybe maybe they once served some sort of mechanical purpose in this huge machine

whatever and yeah i sort of went with it also rain world creatures are inspired by graffiti a little bit

like uh graffiti designs oftentimes you know in graffiti you have this tag like the big the big writing and then you have like some weird little characters sitting next to it or something like

that and i drew inspiration from that yeah i remember like the first logo of the game being a kind of graffiti-like yeah

and i think in the final version of the game that's a little bit more subtle but i hope it's still there like the vibe is there yeah yeah it is i mean you can still see a lot of graffiti

and art uh during the whole game and uh did you have when you created the creatures for the various um you know areas of the

world uh did you have a food chain in mind uh yeah i mean a little bit right but it's not it's not like i sat down to design something that would be

nutritionally viable or whatever right it's not it's not intended to be like a very very scientific food chain where nutrition comes from

the sun and goes into all of these organisms it's just it's just like sort of a different fun fairy tale environment where it's like oh what if there were

little mice and what if there was like a big black lizard that ate them [Music] i mean it works it works really really

good i mean it gives me the idea of having a really well thought out food chain in the game and i don't know that's i mean the the design of the game works really well

with that and uh um another question we have is uh what are your thoughts on all the incredible rainwork mods are there

any that particularly stand out to you oh yeah they're amazing like uh i've honestly been i've honestly been completely blown away and

to me i think what really stands out to me is like uh the people who just make their own region and they have custom art assets look

much better than what we could make and they have like they make their own creatures that fit into the uh into the world and have

working ai and all of this and from what i understanding do this stuff with some incredibly uh compared to just having the the c sharp project in visual studio their

tools are incredibly limited they have to go in there like edit and recompile and edit and recompile and that is incredibly impressive to me i can't i can't even imagine because it

was it was super hard to do when you had the source code and when you had written the source code yourself so i can't even imagine what uh it would be to like make a new

creature yeah it is really it it really means that the game is uh really liked and well understood at least by you know by some

people that are really that really yeah yeah and that's awesome that's absolutely real yeah that's that's i mean that's something that cannot be said for

most games and i think it's what makes rainworth really special and um another thing since i mean we're closing down uh but um

so if you have some questions in the chat please uh i mean type them now and uh one one thing that i want to ask you is uh can you tell us

a little bit about what you're working on and what can we expect from video call for the future

uh yes i can't really tell you much i'm sorry to say but i can tell you that if it's three-dimensional it's a it's a 3d game

uh i think i think you've seen as much and [Music] and yeah it's quite different from rain world i think it's safe to say and i think you can already see that from the

little uh the little but the most important thing is can we expect something that that's as crazy and as different as rainwood

or is it like more canonic i mean i i i hope it will be interesting in its own way right maybe maybe it won't be interesting in exactly the same way that

swain world is but hopefully it will instead be interesting in other ways uh i think james my colleague and i and the team were

interested in like exploring exploring some other stuff and like seeing seeing what else is uh

possible and what else fun to do and we're very excited about it and we can't wait to show it off yeah and we can't wait to see it really i'm really curious about it

thank you so much yeah it's it's it's exciting we we've had a lot of fun with it so far but i don't know how much more

it will all be yeah we mean we'll find out in due time so guys if there's any new question how big is

uh is this lot cut uh so this is an interesting question and i've seen a lot of uh this discussion about this

and some person has said like it's it's it's twice as large as the human person like that i don't know how to react to that i think uh

it's it's very much the point like early on when we made a game we actually put some sort of doors and like industrial catwalks with railings and stuff like that into the game

uh like human objects right and then you saw the slug get next to those and it just felt sort of weird because it like brought everything into this human reality where you

could very much tell how big everything was etcetera etcetera so we very deliberately went away from that and we used only art assets that are these weird abstract

right it looks sort of like something industrial but it looks like nothing from the real world necessarily and that is to keep it ambiguous because this is a world this is another

world and how big the sluggett is compared to a human is not really relevant because there are no humans what's relevant is how big is it compared to a lizard how big is this

like compared to a fat fly right yeah yeah it only has a relative size to the other creatures in the world

that's my answer that's cool that that's really interesting actually and we have a little bit of a technical question when black cuts is swinging around and

bouncing on poles is the balance physically simulated or is it animated uh it is physically stimulated so the way selected works is that it's

basically composed of two different chunks i call in the code i call them chunks so they are two different

points that each have a position and the velocity and the slug cat is composed of its lower body and its upper body and

when this locket is in standing up mode then basically what i do is the upper chunk is pulled upwards and the lower chunk is pulled down that makes the slider like wants to wipe

itself but other than that the physics engine is free to do its thing okay okay that makes a lot of sense and it's still really really cool to know

and to to be able to have an in-depth look at something like that at least from my point of view but i hope uh i mean everything we talked about was

interesting for our listeners too of course and i do hope yeah yeah i mean you've been great you you answered really

some really in-depth stuff and thank you for having me thank you thank you for for accepting them for being our first international guest

come to italy when all this pandemic stuff is over yeah i definitely will try to travel a bit more once this is over it's been it's been very boring for everyone in the world i

think i hope i hope it's over sooner rather than that's cool and uh so thank you guys for

listening and uh please join our discord you can find it uh in the description of the channel and we are on twitter and facebook and

instagram too and join the discord and if you want you can even subscribe to the chapter and

have a lot of benefits in the future so we will also ask uh more talks uh the the next few ones are gonna be in italian

probably but we definitely gonna have some uh international speakers too soon so please stay tuned and yeah is there something else you wanna you

wanna say your no i think that's it for from me very honored to be here and thank you for having me thank you thank you