Hiya! I'm bwdy, and I'm half of a two-man team that just finished our first commercial game: Hero's Spirit. It's been an experience. Let's talk about it!

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The title screen.

Ever heard of the term "development hell"? There are ways to mitigate it, something we learned along the way; but a skill set we didn't have, or even properly appreciate the need for, in the beginning. Learning the difference between starting a game and finishing one was a long and painful lesson.

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We didn't opt to go early access; in fact, because of the speedrun-friendly nature of the game, we set out to make a game that wouldn't need to be updated, so that speedruns would remain intact forever. So we set a pretty high bar that would need to be 100% complete before we can launch the game.

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Not the wisest choice, but again, life's a learning experience. And we learned a lot. Like the fact that the last 1% feels equivalent to the other 99% combined. I've heard expressions to that effect, but seeing it firsthand is something else entirely.

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The starting area.

We chose a design that we believed would be enough to mitigate any real roadblocks. We aren't artists, we're programmers, and we knew that. So we picked a style that was simple enough to handle in-house, with our stubby programmer fingers. Looked at games from the target era and tried to pick out what we liked and didn't like, and then simplify the ideas down to their most basic form.

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We wanted to do something simple, but do it really, really well. And surely that would be enough to let us burn through development of a fantastic game in no time at all, right? Well, we were half-right. We got through it alright, over the brisk pace of... about six years.

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The game's graphics data in Tile Layer Pro.

While we're on the subject of the art style, some fun trivia. The game doesn't just "look" like retro graphics, it quite literally is CHR image data. It uses 4-color palettes (which has to include transparency where needed). Implemented the format bit-by-bit, and figuring out how to get OpenGL to render it was a lot of fun. The game uses a "system" color table, per-tile palette assignments; tiles are 8x8 and get rotated and flipped as needed to make all the graphics in the game.

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While the format is already pretty tiny, it's then compressed further for storage. If it weren't for the soundtrack using a more modern format, the whole game would be extremely small in file-size (though it's still impressively small, considering; 50MB, give or take).

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Mechanical obstacles.

In my personal, admittedly biased opinion, I feel like a lot of games these days focus on strange things; like visual fidelity, monetization... and that "fun" takes a back seat to these aspects. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, it's entirely possible. But we wanted the game to be enjoyable. Addictive. Not addictive in the sense of 'please buy another loot box', but addictive in the sense of 'aww do I really have to [non-game-activity]? I'm almost done [doing the thing]!'.

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Because that's what games were to me in my early days: fascinating, engrossing, and definitely addictive. And I loved it. (And there weren't recurring costs back then :p ) Sure, going back and playing some of those games reveals that some of it was just rose-colored glasses; nostalgia is part fiction. But games are fiction, maybe we can deliver the experience as I so fondly remember it?

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A useful piece of equipment.

This led to a precursory study of feedback loops. How to create a rewarding experience, and a sense of satisfaction, but also an itch to continue. How to gate progress, but leave enough options to avoid over-frustration. How long can we sustain the loop? Polish plays a very significant role in this, something we'll talk about more momentarily.

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But the loop is pretty simple; show them an obstacle, help them understand what resources that obstacle requires to overcome. Give them freedom of choice in how to go about acquiring the resources they need. Reward them for clearing the obstacle. Show them new obstacles.

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One of many, many secret routes.

Rewards for prior knowledge, and accommodation for multiple playstyles all mesh together to create a gratifying overall experience. There are shortcuts everywhere - almost anything can be done earlier and easier if you have certain knowledge of the game beforehand. This adds replay value and a sense of satisfaction when they employ that knowledge (or find these secrets by dumb luck).

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Skill levels allow a player to choose; they can play it safe, beating the entire game while rarely ever finding themselves in harm's way. Or, there's nothing preventing them from ducking and weaving into even the latest-game areas ahead of schedule, if they have the skill and are comfortable doing so, to acquire those resources early.

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Chatting up an NPC.

Content is king. I couldn't tell you where I first heard that, but it rings true enough. More importantly, cohesion, consistency; this is where I see a few games seemingly fall short. It's not -just- the amount of content, but also how well the whole thing meshes together. But more on-topic, back in the beginning, in the 'simplest idea' stage of specification, there was only going to be one map. We created the map, slowly fleshed it out, got it sufficiently loaded with content.

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Somewhere along the way, it had become two maps: an overworld, and a castle interior map. Once those were done, I think I was the one to suggest 'what if there was a second overworld?'. Pretty sure that before we even finished the swamp, we'd added the caves. Then the lava cave, because we had this cool lava mechanic and wanted to make a map dedicated to showing it off. And before you know it, the list of maps has a scrollbar. Whoops.

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It was never really a conscious decision of 'hey let's make a whole continent/world/whatever', it just kind of... happened. Once we got so far in, it only made sense to throw a coast around the edges and turn it into its own, complete, happy little landmass. (We would later realize that we couldn't make everything line up -perfectly- but hey, it's a game where magic exists, so. We'll just roll with it. A slightly geographically impossible little worldspace.)

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Just a couple of meatballs blocking the path. Or maybe those are boulders?

We wanted to release not just a finished product, but a polished one. So that just means sanding off the rough edges, right? Nothing too crazy. And so the beta tests began. Ended up with a laundry list that was a bit more than expected, but we'll get through it. And the second beta began. Okay, this list is somehow even bigger. Then the third beta. Well now we've got this one thing that's going to involve a sweep across the entire game to address properly. And a big list.

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And this pretty much repeated over and over in what felt like an infinite cycle. And the changes were all so small that the overwhelming majority of them wouldn't have really been noticeable by themselves. But playing an old build afterwards was enlightening - seeing how far it's come is still pretty amazing. We have a bunch of old builds shelved from before the first beta - and its pretty neat to see how it both is, and isn't, the same game.

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This cycle comprised most of the seemingly endless "development hell" of this project; our first little closed beta was years ago, and we've been rolling them ever since. Each one just a couple people larger, culminating in a bit larger Steam beta just to make sure we're actually ready to go. Was it worth it? Absolutely. But also probably not, I don't really know. I love the game we ended up with, and I think that's the most important part.

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Don't get lost in the dark.

There's more to the game than meets the eye. Let's talk about the limited line of sight. It's a system that, at first impression, can be momentarily annoying. But it very quickly gets delegated to some subconscious part of the brain, and you stop noticing it. It's there because it makes the 2d space resemble a 3d one; we can't see through walls, and do not know where enemies or treasures in other rooms are psychically.

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Additionally, it adds mystery. It makes tiny maps feel huge as you explore all their nooks and crannies. And the space is well-used; you can hardly go a few tiles without encountering something of interest. It makes the world more explorable, and more rewarding to explore. It adds an element of mystery, of surprise, and with secrets spread throughout with a moderate density (including the occasional non-euclidean shenanigans), it really adds a layer to the entire experience that wouldn't be possible without it.

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But how do I reach the other side?

When I was a lot smaller (like 3' tall), I loved the NES (or just the 'Nintendo' as we called it in my household growing up). I remember my mom telling me that if I could spell it, she'd let me play. I failed that test once, made sure I'd never fail it again, and was never offered the deal a second time. But I can spell it without looking to this day.

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Spooky, scary ghostseses.

This was before I really grasped the concept of electronics, programming, or even that a human being made these games. They were just strange gray boxes that contained alternate universes I could get lost in, that were so much more interesting than my own.

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At some point I was playing the NES port of Metal Gear (hadn't played the MSX version yet to realize it was a crime against nature), and there was an area beyond a fence I could see, but not reach. I figured there had to be a way to get there. And what was beyond that? They didn't put a visible boundary, really, the walkable dirt tiles run off the screen edge, so surely there is something out there.

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But seriously, how do I reach the other side?

Those kind of areas drove me mad. (I returned via emulators and some basic RAM hacking years later to answer the question - it was actually not disappointing, iirc, you get transported to the roof of a late game building for no logical reason.)

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I wanted to recreate that curiosity, without the frustration of never knowing. So there was a deliberate effort to add several "peek areas" in the game, where you could see another area, but not reach it. But not to worry, you get to reach them later. In the event there's another child out there today who has the same mentality about it I did back then, here's to you, kid. Hope you enjoy!

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I could go on all day about the music. But I'm biased.

Capturing the feeling of games from eras past isn't purely a technical thing. And we didn't necessarily adhere to the technical stuff across the board, but enough of it to capture the look and feel. There's also the sound. More important than being 100% authentic is being enjoyable, while having the authentic feel.

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So there's a slight mix between retro and modern approaches to the sound and music; most of the instruments are authentic, comprised of low numbers of squares and triangle and noise synth channels, but with a subtle layer of magic that wouldn't have been easy to pull off on the original hardware. It took a lot of practicing with NES chip emulators to learn to create the different sounds we needed as a base layer, but it was very educational and, frankly, neat.

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Deja vu?

But it's not just the look, feel, and sound - it's the social aspects. Before the internet became ubiquitous and all-knowing, rumors abounded everywhere about games. Many of them false. Information was scarce - I remember going to Wal-Mart to read a book of hints and cheat codes, and writing all over my hands so I could smuggle that critical information out and take it home. (I didn't get an allowance, this was the best I could do at the time :p )

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(I much later learned that a "friend" would tear out the pages he needed. I think we can all agree he was a monster.)

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But it was a real wonder, what was possible (like Mew being under a truck, for just one example), and just enough of it turned out to be true (like MissingNo.)!

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I love watching TASs. So we built the tools into the game, in hopes that I'll get to see some eventually <3

Information is now ubiquitous. Secrets don't stay secret anymore, social rumors are quickly dispelled. But there is an exception, of sorts: speedruns. Having the information is only half the battle. It has to be organized, tricks have to be deciphered, reflexes and muscle memory honed. Routes get traded, optimized. New, seemingly pointless discoveries have profound impacts on world records.

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It's fascinating. I've watched both human speedruns (love you, GDQ!) and tool-assisted speedruns for at least a decade now, and they're one of my most common go-to forms of entertainment. It's only natural I'd try to cater to the speedrunning community here.

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You can also just use Tool-Assist to play the game at turbo speed. But you'll miss out on achievements that way.

The complexity of routing this game and its hundreds of items, paired with bountiful shortcuts, warps, and secrets, sequence-breakable equipment, and the fact that conscious design efforts went into low%, any%, and max% gameplay, means that speedrunning the game should stay fresh and progressive for years. Additionally, integrated tool-assist grants input recording, playback, frame-by-frame, slow-mo, fast-forward, and other utilities that tool-assisted speedrunners use to create superhuman gameplay. There are even a couple of frame-perfect input "bugs" that may be discovered one day and cut times significantly.

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Naturally, there's an in-game step, time, and death counter at completion. And whenever you think it's finally done, it's probably not; the meta seemingly never ends. Lastly, part of the reason we wanted to release it in a 'complete' state, and not an in-progress state is for the speedrunning community as well; so that their runs and TASs remain intact forever. And we will go to great lengths to preserve this to the best of our abilities, even if we end up having to patch critical bugs or something down the line.

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So close, and yet so, so far.

Speaking of completion, it's worth noting that while the game may be complete, this is just the beginning of our story, not the end. We've invested years of work, love, time, energy, effort, and a little bit of money into creating this game and bringing it to you all. And truly, our greatest hope is that it gets enjoyed. That's really all we want. To make things that people enjoy.

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But life is a learning experience- hit or miss, we'll keep creating things for people to enjoy, and can really only get better at it. We've already got ideas for where to take the game, and other projects, from here; the only thing I am willing to promise at this point is that there's definitely more to come, and I hope some of you will join us on this adventure.

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Thank you for reading this. Your time is valuable and I truly appreciate that you spent a little bit of it here with me. Please check out our game, we want you to play it; that's what all of this has been for. Play it, have fun, and we're here if you want to talk about it!

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Please check out our game, I genuinely you enjoy it. Here is our post on imgur which contains a few Steam keys for those that need them.

https://imgur.com/gallery/uV47YwY

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Happy New Year!

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Sincerely,

~ bwdy

The Binary Initiative