-
Hey everyone!
I am Dominik Schön, game designer and programmer at kaleidoscube - we just released our first game ever. It's called "A Juggler's Tale" and is about marionettes and their relationship to their puppet master. We worked on this game as students for four years - and can't believe it's finally out!
***
A Juggler's Tale on Playstation Store
Official Playstation Launch Trailer on Youtube
***
I'm here to answer questions today about the game itself and bringing it to PS5 🙂 Of course, I'm also happy to take questions about our student-dev journey, how it was like to found a game studio, indie development in general, etc...
A big thanks to
for hosting this AMA for us! Looking forward to it.
I will be online here for the next 3h, but questions asked later I will of course answer as well - after I have slept off 😉
-
What's the trophy list like? Are there any missables?
ID: her9pg4 -
What was the most difficult part of making the game?
ID: heqwsk3Great question, but also a very tricky one.
We were 4 people developing the game, and I think everyone would answer this differently. I, for my part, had a hard time designing puzzles that are challenging. I'm not the hardcore game myself, and so the puzzles were always pretty easy to solve.
Then, on the other hand, I think just sticking with one game and actually developing it for over 4 years was also pretty hard. We took our breaks to get a clear mind and to do other stuff, but sometimes you just want to work on something new!
ID: herg3goGreat answer!
-
It looks really good, definitely buying soon. How long would you say the game is?
ID: heqx5b3The game should take you between 2 and 3 hours to finish 🙂 As the game tells the story of a theater play, we wanted to have a play length that you also could finish in one evening - like visiting a real theater.
ID: heqxs47Nice, I'll definitely enjoy that evening then. Thanks for answering and good luck with the game!
-
Congrats on the game. How did your development change from PS4 to PS5? Also did you work elsewhere while working on the game or did you do this full time ?
ID: heqxxqiThanks for your question! We developed the game in the Unreal Engine 4 - and since we had no experience with bringing a game to console AT ALL, nothing changed for us when developing for PS4 and PS5. The only thing different was the implementation of the new, fancy PS5 activities - but other then that, we could use the same base version of the game, increase the resolution and FPS and had a blast playing the game on PS5 🙂
No, besides our studies and working on the game, we did not work on anything else.
ID: heqy4mkThat’s awesome guys. Hope the game does well all the very best. I will check this game out on PS5. Cheers.
-
How did the idea of making a game of these characteristics come up? And congratulations for the awesome game
ID: her0hbeWe were in the second year of our studies and started with a three month project phase. We know we wanted to develop a small narrative game (with a narrator) and loved games like "Little Nightmares", "Inside" but also "The Stanley Parable". Doing a game with string puppets seemed like the perfect connection, as the character actually would show a visible connection to the narrator - and so his role becomes more important in a very visual way.
Well, we did not finish the game in that three month project phase... but we fell in love with the game idea. And here we are!
Posting the answer from above 🙂
-
I've seen the trailer before coming to reddit. It got me interested. I like this kind of estetics. I may pick it up 🙂 Don't have any question, just wanted to congratulate 🙂
-
First, thanks for posting here. Your game had flown under my radar but the premise and trailer have really piqued my interest!
I’m curious, did the PS3 game The Puppeteer serve as an influence at all for your game? As student developers how did you balance looking to outside influences vs. creating your own style?
ID: heqz1aoHa! New that question would be coming up!
Actually, we were really shocked when half a year in development someone told us about the "Puppeteer" game on PS3. We hadn't heard of it until then... it somehow slipped under our radar. But we were quite lucky that there aren't that many similarities. Good for us 😀
I like your style question a lot: We took inspiration from various great concept artists online (for example Mikael Gustaffson is to mention) but I also often found myself in museums taking pictures of traditional paintings because I liked the mood and atmosphere in those. The ocean scene from the trailer for example has it's visual inspiration from a painting in a small church in Northern Germany.
ID: her6ud0That is super interesting insight into the creative process. Thank you! I just purchased the game and can’t wait to dive in.
-
What we're your teams inspirations for making this game and did you have to make some tough changes to the have that had to happen?
ID: her0d2pWe were in the second year of our studies and started with a three month project phase. We know we wanted to develop a small narrative game (with a narrator) and loved games like "Little Nightmares", "Inside" but also "The Stanley Parable". Doing a game with string puppets seemed like the perfect connection, as the character actually would show a visible connection to the narrator - and so his role becomes more important in a very visual way.
Well, we did not finish the game in that three month project phase... but we fell in love with the game idea. And here we are!
-
Odd question but did you develop the game in a agile type way using Jira with daily stand ups etc? How was working remotely?
ID: hera1vsWe are a really small team (just 4 people) and this is our first game, so unfortunately we didn't have that great of a production plan. We mainly used Google Sheets for Task Tracking - working remotely due to Covid worked quite well since the project itself was always hosted on a SVN server online. But we definitely enjoyed moving back into our office!
-
I can't wait to play this game! but I noticed something, Could you please tell me why no platinum trophy ?
ID: her9j0uUh yes - glad you mention that.
The game is quite short - 2 to 3 hours. I don't know that much about trophies, but I think platinum is for games with bigger scope. If we would have included a platinum trophy in our game, all the other ones would have had to be gold trophies I believe. We didn't feel comfortable with that...ID: hera34oI see, Thank you 🙂
-
How is working in UE4/UE5? I don't know the first thing about making video games but i'd be lying if I said I wasn't interested.
ID: herpuvfHa! Maybe you should give it a try! I worked with Unity before developing this game, so it was my first time working with Unreal. Unreal is quite a beast to start with - it can be pretty overwhelming. A lot of features that you don't need and basically can turn off, haha. But especially for working with the console version, I think doing it with Unreal was a really good choice! They have really good support for porting which helped us a lot.
Also, the animation system in Unreal is top-notch!
-
why a giant spider?
-sincerely an arachnophobe
ID: her44edSorry!! It appears only once 😀
ID: her4e29okay cool game looks good
-
This might sound somehow but... Why should I get your game? What is the strongest point you think would make someone play this game and where did you take inspiration from?
ID: her1fmmAll good 🙂 I think you should get our game if you want to play a game with an interesting story that is not that hard gameplay wise, want to dive into a colorful and deep atmosphere and spent an evening living in that little world. 🙂
There is also a pretty big meta level in the whole game - who is controlling the string puppet? That is a big part of the story, so if you find something like that interesting, go for it!
ID: her3gbuThank you for the response and sorry if I came off as rude, that wasn't the intention by any means. Your game sounds indeed very intriguing, I might give it a shot this weekend as I don't have anything atm to play. Congratulations on the release btw!!:)
-
Maybe a weird question, given where we are, but I've always wondered...as an indie dev, is it worth developing for PS4/PS5? By and large, it seems like the community here mostly cares about the big AAA 3rd-person action-adventure games, and not so much about indies (with the exception of breakout hits like Hades). Combine that with a lack of any sort of "discovery queue" on the PS store to recommend indies people might like, and it seems brutal to even get noticed without the marketing money of a big studio. Is that the reality, or is there a bigger market for small indies on PS than it seems?
ID: her1r3dI would love to give you an answer to that. But - honestly - I am here to find that out. This is our first game, so we have no idea what to expect from it (financially). I hope it works out for our recently founded studio - but we have to see that in the coming months (and years).
ID: herexohI am glad you have made your game here. Switch is also a good idea as well.
ID: her66zxThanks for the honest answer - I hope it's a success for you guys (and good call on the AMA to help get the word out)! Viel Glück!
-
How did you come up with the right music for you the game?
-
Dis the game make use of the dual sense controller?
ID: herkq25No, unfortunately nothing special going on with the controller 🙁
-
What about physical release?
ID: herj8qrAs indies, phyiscal releases are really hard to do. You need a lot of budget to preorder all of the discs, to put them in stores, etc. It's just too big of a risk. But maybe - if the game gets received well, we can make a limited, phyiscal collectors edition. Would love to!
-
Game looks awesome, I have no question that hasn’t been asked though. Thanks for the post, will be picking it up tonight!
-
What engine did you use to make the game ? And why you chose one over the other ?
ID: herpwpuHa! Maybe you should give it a try! I worked with Unity before developing this game, so it was my first time working with Unreal. Unreal is quite a beast to start with - it can be pretty overwhelming. A lot of features that you don't need and basically can turn off, haha. But especially for working with the console version, I think doing it with Unreal was a really good choice! They have really good support for porting which helped us a lot.
Also, the animation system in Unreal is top-notch!
Quoting an answer from above 🙂
-
Did you utilize the Dualsense!?!?
-
The visuals look amazing. I’m impressed with the detail especially of everything in the background as well as the autumn leaves
-
Will the game have subtitles in PT-BR? I know its extra work, but as a Brazilian that would be great. Congrats for the release. o/
ID: herpzvvIt does have subtitles in PT-BR! Have a great time playing it!
-
Beautiful. Definitely want to check it out.
What role did each of the 4 developers play in the development of the game?
-
There are a lot of cheaper and smaller games that have platinum trophies - is there a reason yours doesn't?
(I should say because of this AMA I've decided to pick it up but it'll be in a few days once I've got Deathloop out the way!)
引用元:https://www.reddit.com/r/PS5/comments/py04tj/hi_im_dominik_from_a_jugglers_tale_a_game_about/
It's a good mixture between progression trophies (finishing chapter X), and optional trophies / easter eggs etc.