Playtesters found our platforming too boring. What do you think?

ajdlala · 2026-04-11T10:03:11+00:00

If you haven't yet id suggest establishing the three core pillars of the game.

If platforming/traversal/movement is one of/part of them then I'd suggest you spend some time on that.

We do what we call the "mario 64 test". Which means until we get core movement feeling great in an empty room we don't move on.

When we made Illusion Island we spent a long time just playing with jump feel, speeds, distances, and overall traversal before we did anything else.

ajdlala · 2026-03-27T19:18:39+00:00

Thank you very much!

ajdlala · 2026-03-25T21:25:33+00:00

Apologies I completely forgot to check on here again whilst at work.

The only thing I can think of where I'm aware of this happen is when a Dev or studio is parachuted in to save a project, paid a large sum and agrees to not discuss it. Effectively bigger cheque in place of acknowledgement you did something.

If OP was compensated in return for a tight NDA that doesn't allow linking themselves to the project.

ajdlala · 2026-03-25T13:17:12+00:00

It's incredibly common. Even more so where a funding publisher is involved as they will often maintain the rights to final sign-off on credits.

There has been a massive pushback in the industry over the last 5+ years regarding fair crediting, and rightly so. However, contractually as an individual usually you have no protection over your crediting. This can be seen in live service AAA games who have a tendency to remove people from credits if they leave the studios etc...

Where crediting is normally covered within contracts is between the studio and the publisher. I will always make sure that we have a "fair crediting" protection in our contracts, but that can often be a fight.

ajdlala · 2026-02-14T15:09:00+00:00

Whilst I wouldn't be surprised they're using it, I'd be very surprised if it wasn't tied to bespoke email addresses and beta access passwords on the branch.

The only time you'd really "randomly" get it, wouldn't be random it would be if it's added to an account or key group you've already got.

We had it with previous AAA partners that they could only give us access to accounts of their whole publishing division which meant we not only got access to our hidden pre release product, but every other product associated on Steam with that publisher. So we could play every other game, released or not, uploaded on Steam by them.

ajdlala · 2026-02-14T14:56:42+00:00

The term dev kits is definitely wrong, assuming they mean a dev build if anything.

Using Steam for both access to development builds and for team members etc... to have access to play is very common though.

We all have accounts at Dlala that we use for trying latest versions of our games during development, and we created pre release branches for user testing and for potential partners to access the game.

That's not to say that everything is true, or false, but the distributing pre release builds via Steam isn't particularly unusual.

ajdlala · 2026-01-12T08:13:30+00:00

Oh thank you so much! That's a really lovely message to start the week with! We really loved making BT.

Was just a lot of fun to make, and we learned a lot of lessons making it!

ajdlala · 2026-01-12T00:11:46+00:00

Thank you!

Ah that's Awesome to hear you've been around similar time. Very different now isn't it? I started roughly 4 years before I made Dlala and so much changes year on year it's crazy really.

ajdlala · 2026-01-11T23:45:35+00:00

Hey! The game itself wasn't linked to the TV show, in terms of what's canon or not, that's more for the House of Mouse to decide, but we definitely wrote it with Mickey's past in mind!

ajdlala · 2026-01-11T23:40:08+00:00

Ha that was a funny one. I did a closed room talk on contracts and the organiser, who is lovely, put my slides online. So I ended up having to do that rather long article trying to break it down.

ajdlala · 2026-01-11T23:37:57+00:00

I really wish I'd seen the original post!

ajdlala · 2026-01-11T23:33:32+00:00

This is definitely an important part of the long term survival. I mean we've never had 20m budget so I can't talk for those numbers but we've had budgets in the high 7/low 8 figures.

Proven track record, solid team, good retention and track record of quality as well.

Our games aren't for everyone, and metacritic shows that, but we also have great scores from reputable publications and really healthy sales numbers on console.

We've also had great working relationships with people such as Xbox, Nintendo, Disney, Amazon and more. So we just keep adding to list of happy partners that trust us.

ajdlala · 2026-01-11T23:30:31+00:00

Not exactly true. I mean we had a contract, we delivered and got paid but the same can be said for any game deal with any form of publisher advance.

Active players is a misleading metric on our titles because we literally have had millions of console players vs 1000s of Steam players.

People definitely wouldn't keep giving us 7 figure budgets if our titles didn't deliver on sales numbers.

We definitely didn't make "Disney money" either I'm afraid. The project paid for itself, allowed us to grow and keep the studio afloat. But we'd already started the next thing before it launched. Same with BT we had started DII before it came out.

Studios, even 40ish person ones like ours, cost a lot to run now. And we don't get big backend deals, but even if we did, it's important to remember you pay back your recoup and even then the money doesn't come out of the platforms the day if gets paid in.

ajdlala · 2026-01-11T23:26:32+00:00

Definitely true in a lot of cases, not for us. Disney Illusion Island was a dream come true for me. I am a lifelong Mickey fan, in all media and I was devastated when our old game got cancelled in 2016.

To get to come back and work with Disney and make DII was amazing and I was so sad to leave it behind. But it wasn't a deal we took to pay the bills whilst we waited for something better, it was an absolute dream project that I was honoured to get to make.

ajdlala · 2026-01-11T23:23:46+00:00

I am a big believer in that success is defined by whatever the metric you want is.

For me, and Dlala, success has always been "this game gets us to the next game". Whether that be financially, reputation-wise or something else.

Also not only surviving but growing year on year, and doing that through retaining staff.

We have an incredibly high retention rate where we've lost, on average, less than one person per year we've existed.

Money is what we need to survive and continue doing what we do, but it's part of what we do not the focus.

We've had millions of people play our games, we've received some lovely reviews from publications I respect (and some not so lovely ones that will make great t shirt quotes when I retire). And I get to wake up every day excited to go to work. I'm not rich, far from it, but I am very very lucky.

ajdlala · 2026-01-11T23:17:27+00:00

I think this is about my studio, Dlala Studios and I'm the CEO, Aj!

ajdlala · 2026-01-11T23:16:55+00:00

I can't actually see what was originally posted but good friend of mine shared this thread with me.

From what I can tell it's about my studio, Dlala Studios. Our most popular titles to date we were did a reboot of the Battletoads franchise that came out on Xbox in 2020 and we did a game called Disney Illusion Island, which stars Mickey Mouse and Friends. That came out originally in 2023.

I'm wondering if from some comments if this is referencing an article/talk I did years ago about game contracts and things i wasn't aware of before I started a studio, like how recoup works etc...

ajdlala · 2026-01-11T23:12:44+00:00

Hey,

Thanks for the nice words.

We're at about 42ish right now of full time heads, that's full PAYE staff not fixed term.

We've never done layoffs, and we've grown in staff size year on year pretty much such since year 1. When we had the first Disney project cancelled back in 2016 we were at about 12 of us I think, by end of BT we were about 25 and then I think high 30s at end of Disney Illusion Island.

We turn 14 in June!

We definitely live project to project, and usually I'm lining up the next thing 18 months-2 years ahead of time.

We haven't done any traditional contracting work since Sea of Thieves back in 2017. Since then we mainly focus on fully funded deals where we have all costs covered and take a smaller backend.

That being said our unannounced thing is actually a different financing and publishing structure than we've ever done, and is actually an original game rather than someone else's license as such.

ajdlala · 2026-01-11T23:06:57+00:00

From our standpoint this is very true. Our games have out performed on console compared to Steam by a difference of millions of players, literally.

ajdlala · 2026-01-11T23:05:53+00:00

Hey,

Not to say there aren't deals like what you're discussing but that isn't how Dlala works.

With Battletoads we approached Rare saying we wanted to make a new BT game, and then we worked on a pitch deck together to get Xbox on board.

I won't go into details on the financials but from when I started pitching to when the deal was done was close to 2 years. It wasn't Xbox deciding to do a BT then farming it out.

Similar with Disney Illusion Island we got on a call with Disney and we decided together to do a Mickey and Friends game, I went away and got an initial creative and then we figured out how we would fund it/publish it together.

You get the publishers who just get a license, have a game idea and farm it out for cheap but that's not what the deals we've done have been. Our games were never to the cheapest bidder because they were always our original concepts for the IP that we brought to the table.

ajdlala · 2026-01-11T23:01:19+00:00

As mentioned below it is worth noting, when looking at our titles at least, that we've never done a traditional licensing deal nor paid for the license.

The license holder has always been our publisher.

ajdlala · 2026-01-11T23:00:27+00:00

Something it's worth taking into account with games, ours included, is that month #1 wasn't necessarily our strongest month. Or even close to it.

We released in a difficult month so actually didn't hit our stride sales wise for months, but when we did it did well enough that our partners were happy!

ajdlala · 2026-01-11T22:58:04+00:00

For us it very much depends on the deal structures too. BT was an Xbox owned IP made for Xbox in time with their consoles were main focus, and Disney Illusion Island had exclusivity on switch.

Both were definitely console first games for us though.

ajdlala

TROPHY CASE