Interview with Scott Hall of Orange Thief
Playdate Unofficial: Hi, Scott (Hall, game developer at Orange Thief)! We played all your games in a row this week. All made in Pulp! What drew you to Pulp? And will you ever make an SDK game?
Scott Hall of Orange Thief: Hello and thank you for making the time to play my games! I actually started out using Pulp by necessity as it was released to the public before the SDK. I had always intended to move on to the full SDK once it became available but instead I fell in love with the Pulp ecosystem. It's a very fun almost Mario Maker like interface that is quick and easy to play around with and I appreciate that a lot. My day job is in software development so it's nice that making games in Pulp in my free time doesn't feel like work! Pulp is of course very limited compared to the SDK but I find that to be part of the fun. Playdate as a whole has an ethos of limitations encouraging creativity and that is especially true in Pulp. That said I won't rule out ever making a game with the SDK in the future!
PU: You draw from history a lot for your games, whether its Greek mythology or ancient math problems (or maybe even just old Game Boy games). How do you decide what game to make next? Any notable ideas that didn’t work out?
SH: Ideas and inspiration can come from anywhere but I'll happily admit to a general interest in history. Sometimes a game concept will start out with an idea for a particular theme but other times I'll have a gameplay mechanic and then find the right setting to match. You mention Greek Mythology for instance in reference to Daedalus Versus Minotaur. That game came about from me first making the maze exploration core of the game and then looking for a theme to apply to it. The Labyrinth of Greek myth is probably the most famous maze there is so it's not the most novel of settings, but I think it works well casting a maze builder, Daedalus, against another player trapped in the maze, the Minotaur. Having that strong resonance between gameplay and theme really helps make a game feel like a complete and singular experience.
When it comes to deciding what game to make next it's really just about starting lots of ideas and seeing which clicks. Motivation is definitely the most important thing in finishing a game and I have far more unfinished projects than finished. I don't think that's a bad thing! As a hobbyist and solo game developer I have the luxury of choice in how I spend my time and there is every chance I will revisit some of those previous ideas in the future. Of course sometimes what I imagine to be a good idea isn't actually fun when I build it out but that's all part of being a game dev!
PU: I played through Unawakening while going through Resonant Tale again. What is it about Link’s Awakening in particular that resonates so strongly with you? (Kinda loved it, btw.)
SH: Resonates, I see what you did there! Link's Awakening has been one of my favourite games since a young age when I first played Link's Awakening DX on my Game Boy Color and I have replayed it many times and in many forms since. I could talk a lot about the game but if I were to try and summarise what I love it would be the idiosyncrasy of its world and characters. It's a game that doesn't take itself too seriously and yet also affects genuine emotion, and it packs it all into an incredibly tight and compelling adventure. I'm very happy to hear you enjoyed playing Unawakening and I think that game probably answers this question for me better than I can! I very much made it as a personal tribute to Link's Awakening and what it means to me. Of course Resonant Tale is also greatly influenced by Link's Awakening, although I'd like to think it manages to stand alone and distinct as its own thing. I make the games I want to play and it's always amazing when they find an audience beyond myself!
PU: Nothing like open-world adventure game Lolife has ever really been attempted on the Playdate before, and you made it with an in-browser game engine. Where do you go from here, and what were some of the challenges of getting it to fit both on the Playdate and within Pulp’s limitations?
SH: I think there is a common association between open world games and large games. There are no large open world games on Playdate because the time and resources needed to create one make it untenable for a solo dev or small team making a game for a niche indie console. I describe Lolife as a retro open world to pitch it similarly to games like Hydlide from which I drew a lot of inspiration. It's an open world in design as you are free to explore almost the entire game world almost immediately, but that open world is small and dense, not large and empty. That's really the guiding principle I had to keep in mind to get Lolife made as I sought to keep the world small but full rather than scope creep myself into a project I would never be able to finish. I chose to put an emphasis on multiple playthroughs that reward player agency in their choice of approach so the size and replayability of the game comes from that angle instead of any one playthrough taking more than a couple of hours. Primarily making an open world game as a solo dev is a design challenge, not a technical challenge. There were certainly plenty of technical challenges in making Lolife in Pulp, like scripting the various enemy behaviours while keeping the game performant, but in terms of the size of the game it is well within the scope of what Pulp is capable of. The art style that heavily favours readability for example uses significantly less tiles than I used in Resonant Tale. If the game feels like it might be pushing limitations because of its open world and variety of things to discover I'll consider that a success!
PU: You seem really good at collaboration when making your games, even if it’s “just” on the music/sound effects front. What appeals to you about making games with someone you’ve maybe never even met before vs. just doing everything yourself/your own way?
SH: I've been very lucky to collaborate with some very talented people, especially when it comes to music. Being able to bounce ideas off someone and to simply have someone else playing a game throughout development is incredibly valuable and that goes double when they are looking at it from a different artistic perspective. Games are a multi-discipline medium so when there's an idea of how a player should feel at a certain point in the game, there's a gameplay angle to consider, but also the art and the music and all sorts of things that feed back into one another. With Resonant Tale I knew from early on that music would be a big part of that game's identity and I knew I wouldn't be able to do it justice on my own. Looking back, finding Rupert [Cole] at just the right time to get him onboard was one of those incredibly fortuitous coincidences and I can't now imagine the game without his soundtrack. It's a similar story with Lolife, where I reached out to James Gameboy after playing Initial Daydream and greatly appreciating its classic RPG sound. I knew I wanted something similar for Lolife and again that collaboration has been vital to settling on the game's core identity. There's a pessimism and a melancholy throughout the game and that comes through nowhere better than through the music. Doing things yourself is certainly rewarding and liberating in having that creative control but I'll always value some amount of collaboration, especially in those areas like music where I know there are people a lot more talented than myself!
PU: That’s all for now, thank you for your time! And also thank you for Resonant Tale, in particular. It’s one of those games that I think everyone that has a Playdate should try. Can’t wait to see what you come up with next!
SH: Hearing things like that is what motivates me to keep making games, so thank you!
[Banner above is by Toad, who also makes Playdate games like Reel-istic Fishing and Digscovery!]