As originally posted in the Rise VR Dev Blog
Let's talk a bit about what this post is about. This is NOT a post detailing the progress of each individual mechanic of the game from iteration to iteration or about how time and experience influenced our design decisions. This is NOT a technical post. It's more about production rather than development. These posts will come later, so if you are interested in that just be patient and I promise I'll deliver.
"What the hell is Rise?" you may ask.
Well Rise is a puzzle game in which you have a simple goal. Use emitters to generate beams that activate some sort of mechanism while finding ways around blockers.
Solving a puzzle in the first three iterations of Rise.
Solving a puzzle in the first three iterations of Rise.
That's it. Rise is that simple. It could be a mobile game and we'd be done with it in a month or two. So why did it take us 1.5 years to even start making it?
Childhood
Akin to a child the first iteration of Rise was all over the place. Absorbing everything from its environment and constantly falling on its face while performing even the simplest of tasks. Yet it was full of potential waiting to be harvested.
Rise was conceived during the "Prometheus Game Jam" organized by the National Technical University of Athens in July 2017. Even though eNVy softworks existed as a team of different individuals for about 4 years already we had just solidified our lineup and started the company. Furthermore, it was the first time all 4 of us would get a chance to work together on a game that was not commissioned by a client and were justifiably excited.
The jam was taking place in the Lavrion Technological and Cultural Park, an hour-long drive from the center of Athens. The place is a huge complex of stone buildings that reminded me of those old abandoned places you always seem to stumble upon in horror games. During the weekend only the jamers had access to the place and we were free to explore and get inspired by it. Words can not describe how much I loved the place. It was hands down the best venue I've ever jammed in; and I've jammed in a castle... in the middle of a lake... in Sweden.
Our first ever design meeting on Rise
Our first ever design meeting on Rise
Of course, all good things must come to an end. The theme was disappointing to say the least. I am not sure how that came to pass but the organizers decided that the theme for the "Prometheus Game Jam" should be, well, Prometheus...
Oh well... We work with what we have!
In Greek mythology, Prometheus was the titan that stole the fire from the Olympian Gods and gave it to humanity thus kick-starting our civilization. It is a nice myth that made something very clear to us. We had to play with fire.
A few hours of talking and doodling and we had decided on our course of action. Rise was going to be a third person puzzle exploration game set in a dark post-apocalyptic world with prominent themes of fire and sacrifice. You would solve puzzles by spreading fire to altars that would lift some environmental constraint that halted your progress. To make our world seem richer, we had the protagonist give exposition in the form of transitional audio between the puzzles.
Playing with fire.
Playing with fire.
Development went surprisingly smoothly. Despite hitting some speed bumps over arguments concerning the art style and suffering a couple of nervous breakdowns. 48 hours later and we were pretty satisfied with the result. Unfortunately, the judges weren't.
A problem I have with competitive game jams that offer monetary rewards is an artificial feeling of authority the judges often radiate. It's easy to assume that if a panel of people did not find your game worthy of any recognition, your game must be trash. If I remember correctly the jam had 3 winners and 7 honorable mentions for categories like narrative, art, innovation etc. We won nothing.
We are not sore losers but after 48 hours with almost no sleep it's easy to get depressed. "We are finally professional game developers, how bad is this thing it did not win anything? Amateurs fared better than us!" I now realize that this kind of thinking is idiotic. No panel can judge the value of a game. Not everyone will like it and that's okay. The players will always have the final say.
A few minutes before the submission deadline.
A few minutes before the submission deadline.
Of course, no game is perfect but if no one gets any feedback from the judges, winning can be worse than losing. I am of the opinion that the secret to improving a game lies in a fundamental belief that the game is flawed. After all, you can't fix that which is already perfect. In retrospect, I am happy we lost that game jam. If we won I think that the journey of Rise would end 48 hours after it began.
In any case, after suffering such a defeat we needed some time to recuperate. Now of the opinion that Rise had nothing to offer on a commercial level we retreated to our hometowns to wait out the summer.
The Teenage Years
During this iteration, Rise as most teenagers was struggling to find an identity. It had some questionable beliefs and experimented a lot. It was obsessed with space and insisted it was going to be an astronaut when it grew up.
Because of us being a business that sells primarily to corporate clients we have what we jokingly call an "exhibition-based" approach to commercial game development.
We are very extroverted when it comes to our work. We attend exhibitions, conventions, game jams, and miscellany events all the time. We are also very self-aware to the point of not wanting to show the same game over and over again, one event after another. This is why we tend to develop prototypes or updates to older prototypes just to showcase at a particular event.
Around this time we learned that the Greek government in collaboration with Nordic Game was going to sanction an international indie games expo simply named "Athens Games Festival" in October. As you can imagine we were thrilled to see what we would create this time!
Creating a new game just because an exhibition is approaching is obviously far from a perfect strategy. It has, however, some unquestionable benefits. First, there is no negotiating the deadline. There is no way around the date of an event. You are either ready or you are not. Once we get started Sunk Cost Fallacy has us going until we finish no matter the cost. (This is probably the same reason we are still trying to make Rise work after 1.5 years). This works great for prototyping but of course, you can't just crunch through the entire development process. Right, Rockstar?
Get your fans young enough and the possibilities are endless!
Get your fans young enough and the possibilities are endless!
If I've learned anything after 6 years in game development is that player feedback is key. Guess what creating prototypes and the immediately exhibiting them gets you... Yes! Feedback! Pure, raw, unadulterated feedback. If you want my advice; be brave. Find a cheap, or free exhibition somewhere near you and showcase whatever broken mess you've been working on. The results might surprise you.
We only had a week until the exhibition when we were finally done with a complicated commission. A couple of months earlier we got an Oculus Rift and did not yet get a chance to check it out in development. We decided to kill two birds with one stone.
When you have just one week to make your first ever VR game you decide to keep things as simple as possible. We removed the narration entirely, emphasized on the delivery method of the fire by having the players throw the balls of energy with their own hands and set the game in space to cut down on modeling time. A
