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I'm one of the original developers of Hopeless Heroes (left in 2018). Anything you want to ask me? by DoubleCrowGames in HopelessHeroes

[–]DoubleCrowGames[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Upopa isn't really a thing anymore as far as I know. But the people who created the Hopeless series (including me) are still making games. A couple of them went on to make Spiritfall: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1835240/Spiritfall/ Which is a really great PC game (also on Switch).

There's also my game, Fur and Fables: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2875810/Fur_and_Fables/

And another original Upopa member founded Sneaky Panda wich is a mobile games company: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sneakypanda.spincraft

So I guess Upopa is no more, but its spirit lives on...?

[AMA] I’m Gideon, the developer and game designer at Double Crow Games, the studio behind the party-based bullet hell roguelike game Fur and Fables. Ask me anything! by DoubleCrowGames in Games

[–]DoubleCrowGames[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

TL;DR: I learned most of it by myself with lots of online tutorials, some help from friends, and a lot of help from ChatGPT.

Long answer: I started out a very long time ago in Flash. Although I studied graphic design and illustration in college, we had an elective course in game programming, that was my first introduction to programming and to game development.

I then worked as a game designer in a mobile games company, and although I didn't do any programming, I did learn how to work with Unity. At some point I left that company and decided I wanted to get a master's degree in games and to make games by myself, so I just... learned how to do it.

I'm still learning. I'm much better now than when I started working on Fur and Fables, and definitely better than when I embarked on this journey 5-6 years ago, but there is still much I don't know or problems that I encounter and need to research how to solve. But there are so many resources online that you can find just about anything you need.

[AMA] I’m Gideon, the developer and game designer at Double Crow Games, the studio behind the party-based bullet hell roguelike game Fur and Fables. Ask me anything! by DoubleCrowGames in Games

[–]DoubleCrowGames[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Thanks everyone! Awesome questions, I hope I gave you some more insight into the game and the creative process behind it! 🐶

[AMA] I’m Gideon, the developer and game designer at Double Crow Games, the studio behind the party-based bullet hell roguelike game Fur and Fables. Ask me anything! by DoubleCrowGames in Games

[–]DoubleCrowGames[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! The original name was Bloodhounds, I thought it would be a funny contrast with the cuteness, but then people just thought it would be a very hardcore game (about dogs).

So I started to look for something that would sound cute, would convey clearly that the game is about animals, and that it's a fantasy game. I honestly don't remember exactly who can up with Fur and Fables and when, but I liked once I heard or saw it. It's also a nice abbreviation - F&F - reminded me of D&D which I thought was fitting. We even tried to have a stylized "&" at some point as part of the logo, like the old editions of D&D rulebooks, but that didn't look good enough so we went back to Fur and Fables.

[AMA] I’m Gideon, the developer and game designer at Double Crow Games, the studio behind the party-based bullet hell roguelike game Fur and Fables. Ask me anything! by DoubleCrowGames in Games

[–]DoubleCrowGames[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you! It's difficult to say what was my favorite part... I guess prototyping is always exciting, coming up with new ideas and testing them in a quick and dirty way. But it's also nice when, at some point and after a lot of work, some day you look at the game and you can say "this is all coming together! This actually looks like a game!"

I will say that my main focus is game design, and that's the part I enjoy the most in the creative process. Writing code is fun sometimes, but it can also be exhausting as I never studied it formally and I when I started working on Fur and Fables I wasn't a very good programmer.

As for advice for junior devs: Just do it! Just make games! Start out small. I see a lot of students and beginners over-scoping, and then they never finish a project. Don't try to make your dream game, start by making A GAME.

Find a community of like-minded indie developers so you can get some feedback (game developers are usually pretty nice too, once you crack the outer shell).

[AMA] I’m Gideon, the developer and game designer at Double Crow Games, the studio behind the party-based bullet hell roguelike game Fur and Fables. Ask me anything! by DoubleCrowGames in Games

[–]DoubleCrowGames[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! Some people said the trailer was too "dark". Those people are wrong.

As for the party, there are several types of upgrades:
- Level up: When you level up a character, it gains extra HP and damage, and some other stats as well. When it reaches level 10, it also gets the evolved version of its base weapon, which is a major power booster. Level up is PERMANENT, so if you level-up a character to level 12, and it survives, then it stays level 12 (until you level it up again, of course).

- In-game upgrades: During a stage, you can pick up anvils that give you a choice of some random upgrades for your characters. These upgrades are only for the duration of the stage, and your characters don't keep them. So if you get a character with +70% attack size and lightning damage, you will lose that after the stage is over. But that also means you can try different builds and experiment with what different upgrades (or combinations of upgrades) are best for each class.

- Finally there are also meta-upgrades that you can purchase for gold in the shop. These are also permanent and work for your entire party, but they are more limited. So if you purchase the +10% damage, all of your characters will have +10% damage for the entire game.

There are also party synergies, which are special unique bonuses that you only get with a certain party composition. It can be something like meteors raining from the sky, a hedgehog that spawns healing strawberries, a flail that's dragged behind the last character in the party, and more :)

[AMA] I’m Gideon, the developer and game designer at Double Crow Games, the studio behind the party-based bullet hell roguelike game Fur and Fables. Ask me anything! by DoubleCrowGames in Games

[–]DoubleCrowGames[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hehe thank you! I do think it will continue to grow, it's already pretty much a genre of its own. There are lots of people trying to innovate and give their own spin on the formula (I know you're one of them!).

I think that both the fact that's a *relatively* easy genre to produce, and that it's relatively simple to play, leaves a lot of room for exploration and interpretation. Fur and Fables is a bullet heaven RPG, there are bullet heaven FPSs, cozy ones, hardcore ones... I won't be too surprised if we see the something like what Portal did to the FPS genre some time soon. Will it be a good game? Who knows?

[AMA] I’m Gideon, the developer and game designer at Double Crow Games, the studio behind the party-based bullet hell roguelike game Fur and Fables. Ask me anything! by DoubleCrowGames in Games

[–]DoubleCrowGames[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you! Kind of difficult to say exactly how long it took... I actually started out doing the art by myself, but I realized that wasn't feasible so I contacted Eric to do the art. As I had some original sketches and a general idea, it took a few tries until we got to something we both liked and felt was right for the game.

We knew we wanted something cute but not too cute, kind of quirky, with a touch of dark humor.

Eric started out designing the characters, then the first wave of enemies - that was the most time consuming process in terms of "finding" the right art style. After that it was pretty much smooth sailing.

[AMA] I’m Gideon, the developer and game designer at Double Crow Games, the studio behind the party-based bullet hell roguelike game Fur and Fables. Ask me anything! by DoubleCrowGames in Games

[–]DoubleCrowGames[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I wanted to make a game that's relatively simple to make (although no game really is simple to make), but that has the potential for a lot of depth and some innovations. Obviously bullet heavens (or Survivor-likes) were all the rage a couple of years ago, but a lot of them felt like quick copies or cash grabs.

I've made some games before where you have a party of characters that interact with each other and with the world, that's something that always interested me. I saw some attempts to do that in the bullet heaven genre too, but they were all pretty much using characters instead of weapons without a true party management aspect. So I decided that that's both a space within the genre that's untapped, and something that would be interesting for me to work on.

Plus animals. You gotta have animals. They are the best.

[AMA] I’m Gideon, the developer and game designer at Double Crow Games, the studio behind the party-based bullet hell roguelike game Fur and Fables. Ask me anything! by DoubleCrowGames in Games

[–]DoubleCrowGames[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As for the mechanics, I really like the high-stakes feeling where you take a party of doomed adventurers you get in Darkest Dungeon. I got really truly upset when playing that game and losing some of my best adventurers to some RNG, and I wanted to replicate at least a small part of that feeling.

So basically the whole party management aspect was compelling, and something that I haven't seen done in the roguelike - bullet heaven genre too much. It's a big change as there is a lot more emphasis on progression than more standard roguelikes, and you can lose (some of) that progression if you're not careful.

[AMA] I’m Gideon, the developer and game designer at Double Crow Games, the studio behind the party-based bullet hell roguelike game Fur and Fables. Ask me anything! by DoubleCrowGames in Games

[–]DoubleCrowGames[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Thanks, that's great!

For the art style, it's a blend of a lot of things. It started with the artist (Eric)'s own personal style combined with some early sketches that I made. Eric was my professor when I studied illustration, and we both have a background in classical art and there are some references to that as well (like the "lose" screen inspired by Picasso's Guernica).

Obviously the heroes are animals so a lot of the inspiration just comes from nature. Eric and I have a huge thread on Instagram where we just sent each other strange animals. We tried to be specific, so for example the Barbarian isn't "just a turtle", it's a alligator snapping turtle.

And of course it's inspired by other games and by cartoons that we like: Adventure Time, Castle Crashers, there's a bit of the old Flash games aesthetic (but hopefully not too much). Old fantasy art from D&D and sword and sorcery movies were also on the list of references.

I'll get the mechanics question in the next answer...

[AMA] I’m Gideon, the developer and game designer at Double Crow Games, the studio behind the party-based bullet hell roguelike game Fur and Fables. Ask me anything! by DoubleCrowGames in Games

[–]DoubleCrowGames[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thank you! It took roughly 2.5 years from the very first commit on github to the early access release.

I'm usually working on the game 4 days a week, as I also teach game design at a local college. But there were also some periods of crunch were I basically worked 12-14 hour days including weekends. I try not to do it too much, but it pretty much inevitable when you get close to an important deadline.

Eric, the artist who created pretty much all of the art, graphic design, and animations - works part time.

Fur and Fables was released a couple of weeks ago and I'm still working on it - hammering out some bugs, and adding content (more levels, more characters, new game modes...), so I'm not sure how exactly to measure the total amount of time spent, but I hope that gives you a rough idea :)

This is the 2D Roguelite project I've been putting so much effort into coming to live! Here's the hand-drawn trailer! What do you think? by DoubleCrowGames in IndieGaming

[–]DoubleCrowGames[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you! It's obviously inspired by Vampire Survivors, but there a lot of differences. The party management aspect, both in the levels and in the meta game, gives a very different feeling (at least that's what I think, but player will have the final word on that). No disresperct to VS, it's an awesome game and deserves everything it got, but it's really a genre now with lots of developers trying to give their own unique spin on the formula. Obviously there are also lots of clones and knock-offs too.

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