With INDIE INTERVIEWS, I talk to the game developers hanging here on Cohost to learn more about new games you might love.
The term "puzzle game" is a weird one. It can mean so many things! Are you playing with perception like in Viewfinder and Antichamber? Are you pushing boxes like in Sokoban? And don't even get me started on Tetris. Recently, I discovered a new subgenre that I hadn't played before: puzzle games where enemies chase you down. I talked to @mauve about his passion project Addlemoth and its inspirations.
You can play Addlemoth on itch.io
You can wishlist Defender's Quest 2 on Steam
Introduce yourself for everyone here on Cohost! Who are you?
I go by mauve, and I've been in the indie gaming scene for years doing this and that. I was a programmer on fighting game Them's Fightin' Herds for a couple years previously, and currently I'm working as a designer on upcoming tower defense game Defender's Quest 2. Once upon a time I also worked on fan translations for Touhou games, and Linux ports for Nyu Media, but that's long in the past now.
My interests are all over the place, but I'm really passionate about design, and I have been self-teaching myself pixel art and Japanese for years as well. Always happy to talk about whatever though.
Is there a project you're working on currently? Tell us about it!
Addlemoth's my main personal passion project. It's a turn-based puzzle game with a combat focus, with gameplay inspired by a long-running series known as DROD. The basic idea is that, rather than being a block pusher, the 'blocks' chase and make you move around instead.
It honestly started out as a project for me to have something to apply my pixel art practice to and, well, it kind of got a little out of hand. When I started with that, I went with JRPG-styled aesthetics since they seemed straightforward enough and something I was familiar with, and that bled over into the gameplay and scenario writing.
Over time, it's something that has become quite personal to me, over time, and I hope to be able to dedicate more time to getting it finished.
I've done everything on it, except audio because it turns out that I am quite terrible at it! @heavyviper is handling that and I couldn't be happier with his work. Check them out! ( https://heavyviper.bandcamp.com/ )
How did you find yourself first getting into game development?
I'm one of those people that simply has to know how and why things work. It's not enough to know that they work, I have a deep need to dig in and figure it out. This naturally led to me taking games I was playing and then trying to work out how they did what they did, from graphics to gameplay, and it just kinda spiraled out of control from there.
Wasn't really any more complicated than that. The more I made, the deeper I went, and the more I knew there was to learn about. Unfortunately this did kind of lead to me becoming the adage "If you teach a game developer how to make an engine, they won't make anything else," something I've been trying to unlearn for years.
You have experience both for working on your own projects and on programming for someone else's. What would you say are the pros and cons to each setup?
On your own projects, you have to focus on the big picture. You're managing the project, you're designing what goes in, you're writing the scripts, you're writing the code, etc etc. It lets you build more cohesively, but it can be really overwhelming when choosing what to do.
Working with a team lets you focus on a single sort of task, like design or programming, at exclusion to everything else. This can mean you'll be blocked by other people for who that's their work, but you can also help them move forwards, so it balances out. The goal of being a team member is to be a force multiplier for everyone, not just yourself.
Can you explain what DROD is for all of us? I just found its website and it seems like a delightful artifact from the previous era of the internet. And it seems like they're still putting out games too?
DROD is a long-running series originally created by Erik Hermansen, where you play a guy named Beethro with a Really Big Sword fighting roaches and other dungeon infestations. The big concept of the game was that your sword takes up a separate tile, and you could spin it around you one rotation by pressing left or right, leading to ever more elaborate ways of fighting creatures and overcoming environmental traps and hazards.
I found it really interesting, and still do, because it was very much the opposite of most puzzle games; which, at the time, felt like they tended to lean towards being Sokoban-likes or Match 3-esque games primarily.
The series has gone on a long time, always adding more and more to it, and the latest entry, The Second Sky, is one of the most mechanically dense puzzle games ever made, and I don't think that's an exaggeration. Highly recommended, but if you're new to the series you should probably start with Gunthro and the Epic Blunder, since it's meant to be an entry outside of story continuity that's more accessible.
They're all on Steam these days, too, and are absolutely worth checking out if the genre feels interesting.
6. I had a great time with the Addlemoth browser demo! I have no experience with DROD or any other games like it but I found it really fun. How do you go about designing a puzzle for a game like that? Do you have an "intended solution" in mind?
Glad you enjoyed it! Always happy to hear feedback.
I tend to start from either how I feel the player should move, or with a pair of mechanics and focusing on one or two interactions. Once I lay that out and it feels interesting enough to me, I start iterating on making it more difficult for the player to perform the task in question. So, yeah, I do start from the solution, but it tends to drift away from that as I start adding more elements to make it more difficult to discern what the solution even is.
The most important thing for me, for this game, is that the puzzles are individually distinctive and interesting to the player, encouraging them to do something new each time, rather than being difficult. In a couple cases I even realized the alternate paths were more interesting, so I shifted over to those. It's a process, and I throw out as much as I make.
Any advice for aspiring indie devs out there?
Remember that development is a marathon, not a sprint. Any path you take to get there is viable, just keep working at it.
And always keep asking questions. Why am I doing this or that, what does this add or remove? Etc etc.
Lastly, are there any indie games out there you've been playing recently? Any favorites to shout-out?
From the Cerebral Puzzle Showcase a week or two ago on Steam, I really really liked Paquerette Down the Bunburrows ( https://store.steampowered.com/app/1628610/ ). Highly recommended.
Life's left me really busy and preoccupied, so I haven't been playing much else this year. Got caught up on some Zachtronics games, like Opus Magnum. Also really liked Supplice, a boomer shooter in the gzdoom engine.
I would like to shout out my friend Eniko ( https://cohost.org/eniko ) over at Kitsune Games, making the upcoming platformer Kitsune Tails.
Thanks so much for chatting, mauve! For everyone else, you can play Addlemoth for FREE over on itch.io. You can also wishlist Defender's Quest 2 on Steam! And don't forget to follow @mauve if you'd like. Have fun, and see you next time!