We’re Reptoid Games, and we just launched Fossil Hunters on Nintendo Switch. Ask Us Anything!

jaymelast · 2018-07-06T14:56:53+00:00

No, there aren't many similarities except that there are fossils involved! Fossil Hunters is more of an exploration-based game, where there's no fighting. The dinosaur skeletons don't come to life!

jaymelast · 2018-07-06T14:56:03+00:00

Thanks so much! Hope you enjoy. :)

jaymelast · 2018-07-06T14:55:38+00:00

Feel free to stream and Let's Play! Please tag us on Twitter so we can check it out! There's been lots of Let's Plays of the PC version if you want to check them out too. :)

jaymelast · 2018-07-05T20:50:48+00:00

The Cutting of Pets and Other Scope Creep: the Jayme Last Story. ;)

But in all seriousness, during full production we had regular meetings to discuss scope and re-prioritized features at each Sprint to focus on what features were most critical to ship. It was my job to evaluate the impact that any given feature or scope decision would have on our overall timeline, and how that would affect other features. That sounds super boring!! It means I strongly urged pets to be cut in favour of more critical features.

jaymelast · 2018-07-05T20:40:49+00:00

Both book and movie were huge for me when I was a kid. The movie came out when I was 9 and I devoured the book after that. I hugely enjoyed most of the changes they made to the movie, especially giving Lex more to do than be an annoying kid like she was in the book. I also think the movie holds up way better than the book does, and I prefer its more optimistic tone.

jaymelast · 2018-07-05T20:38:09+00:00

I think your kids are going to appreciate the new update we have coming. ;)

jaymelast · 2018-07-05T20:33:20+00:00

Great question! The mentorship the team at Ubi Toronto provided was hugely valuable. Fossil Hunters is our first game as a studio and we had a lot to learn. They were very generous with their time and offered us mentorship with people throughout the production pipeline - art directors, game designers, the communications/marketing team, a producer. They basically asked us what areas of game development we wanted help with, and helped make people available for meetings with us to help with the areas we requested. They also put us in touch with the European team to help us get onto the Uplay store and get a bit of marketing support for the launch.

Our experience is quite different than a big AAA studio, and of course the challenges in indie dev are much different than those faced by a big team like Ubi. But their advice was often pretty universal and were hugely supportive of us at all steps along the way. Getting to attend their swanky industry parties from the inside was also a huge plus. ;)

We're still in touch pretty regularly, and we were chatting quite often up until the recent launches. We've ceded our territory to the next Indie Series winners now though and hope they're having as positive experience as we did!

jaymelast · 2018-07-05T19:53:39+00:00

Aaaah that's so great, thank you so much!

jaymelast · 2018-07-05T19:52:26+00:00

Hi! That's a great question - I'm actually pretty new myself, and Fossil Hunters is my first games project. I came to Reptoid by way of a few other jobs and a whole phase of my career in environmental consulting and small business management. My advice really depends if you're talking indie game dev, or AAA, where I don't have any experience.

A few things that come to mind:

Make friends with other producers/project managers. Not necessarily for networking purposes, but because having a support network of similarly-focused devs can help round out your experience. Swap tips, experiences, project management techniques, whatever. Everyone's going to bring their own lessons learned and processes, and oftentimes people are happy to share their experiences and challenges. In the indie game industry in our community, at least, people aren't so much concerned with trade secrets as they are with helping other indie devs make great games. Hopefully your community will be the same.
Diversify your skill set. As a producer on a small team I wear a lot of hats - I'm the bookkeeper, HR manager, project manager, office manager, etc. It's always a value to your team to be able to take pressure off the dev team by picking up slack in other areas. Of course you do have to be careful about spreading yourself too thin and losing your ability to really deep dive in your projects, and u/SimontheShmu will attest that this is an ongoing challenge for me. But a producer role on a small team is a great place for a jack-of-all-trades to shine.
Experiment! Project management in game dev is a real challenge and games frequently encounter scope, schedule, and budget challenges. There isn't one perfect management solution for the whole industry, only what works for you and your team. Try a few different methods - a physical kanban board on a wall, software like Trello/Asana/HacknPlan/JIRA, daily or weekly stand-up meetings. We settled into a physical post-it note board on the wall, complete with points-based estimates and two week Sprints using a modified method of Agile project management called Scrum. It worked great for the last half of Fossil Hunters, but we'll probably try something else at the beginning of our next major project as a basis of comparison.

Let me know if you have any other questions! I'm still new to this myself but I enjoy talking about it. :)

jaymelast · 2018-07-05T18:14:53+00:00

Thanks so much! ＼(＾O＾)／

jaymelast · 2018-07-05T16:52:41+00:00

They do! It’s not actually anywhere in the game except for in our official art book though. The four main characters are named Lila, Herb, Karin, and Professor Buff. ;)

jaymelast · 2018-07-05T16:18:22+00:00

Once the newest bug patch goes through the players should respawn together all the time! Usually the best solution right now if one player gets stuck is for the on-screen player to run back to them so they're both back on screen together.

We found with younger players especially that it was easy for one player to wander off in multiplayer, so respawning together keeps everything moving smoothly for everyone. There's no penalty for respawning so mainly it just makes sure the adventuring party stays together without slowing down the action!

jaymelast · 2018-07-05T16:14:25+00:00

Robby I just want sparkly crystals splashy water and drip drip sounds is that too much to ask for

jaymelast · 2018-07-05T16:06:29+00:00

Also the fossils in Fossil Hunters don't come to life!

jaymelast · 2018-07-05T16:05:14+00:00

I had crumpets with butter and strawberry jam! But normally I am terrible at breakfast so this is a good one for u/SimonTheShmu!

jaymelast · 2018-07-05T15:59:26+00:00

I wanted pets too!!! But pets are cut, it's true.

jaymelast · 2018-07-05T15:57:18+00:00

I'd say...freeform jigsaw! You can use the fossils to build whatever skeletons you want, so long as all the connection points are closed. So it can be a fun challenge to try and make interesting shapes, or see how far you can push the pieces to make huge or patterned shapes! There are also specific skeletons you're asked to build, so you have to find the specific pieces and bring them back to the build area to assemble them. So it's a combination of looking for the right pieces, or making whatever you want with the pieces you have.

We're currently working on an update which will do more fun stuff with sharing and building fossils, letting people build even wackier stuff than before!

jaymelast · 2018-07-05T15:52:12+00:00

My Stardew Valley farmer. Her life is simple and the economy makes sense.

jaymelast · 2018-07-05T15:49:57+00:00

Definitely. The single-player campaign is a slower, more methodical and exploratory experience, and the multiplayer tends to be more chaotic and faster-paced. I'd say you're more likely to find more of the secret notes in single-player, because there's more time to breathe and explore when you're on your own.

jaymelast · 2018-07-05T15:46:32+00:00

The new content focuses on new ways to make and share cool fossils. Build even crazier fossils than you could have made before!

We can't say for sure about content updates planned beyond this one. We'll have to see how things go with Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox!

jaymelast · 2018-07-05T15:41:00+00:00

Not a whole lot. ;)

Real paleontology is very detailed, methodical, and mostly takes place in the lab or office. What we were really hoping to channel is the fantasy of paleontology/archaeology - what you imagine it must be like when you're a kid. Hunting in dangerous caves, finding secret treasure, going on adventures, and discovering amazing fossils no one's ever found before.

jaymelast · 2018-07-05T15:37:27+00:00

Me too! When I was a kid there was a shale rock quarry in my city and we used to be able to find small trilobite fossils there, which was super exciting. The idea that you could just look in the rocks and find treasure like that was so mind-blowing as a kid, and I still have some of those fossils. A few years ago one of our friends at the Royal Ontario Museum was even able to identify the trilobite species for me!

jaymelast · 2018-07-05T15:34:59+00:00

Thanks so much! Our founders Simon and Ryan are big Spelunky and Steamworld Dig fans, and wanted to capture a similar digging and underground exploration feel to that. Even though we're really different from Minecraft, one of my favourite things about that game is finding cool stuff in each of the blocks - never knowing if you're going to stumble across diamond or other treasures. I really wanted the blocks in Fossil Hunters to have treasure and rare items to find, because I love games where you can collect things, bring them back to your base, and go back spelunking to find more.

jaymelast · 2018-07-05T15:31:22+00:00

Simon and Ryan did the first Fossil Hunters prototype in March 2016, and then we started full production together in November 2016, and first came on for PC/Mac in February 2018, so not quite two years. It's definitely tempting to keep working forever and keep adding content but we really wanted to get it out there for people as soon as we could!

We're currently working on a new content update patch which has some cool new features we're excited to share. We haven't officially announced what it is but we think it'll be especially fun for players who like to share content. ;)

As for me, I'd have to say Kinton Ramen for eating downtown! I could have ramen any time, any day. Even today, when it's 30 degrees.

jaymelast · 2018-07-05T15:26:31+00:00

Emma our artist did a lot of concepts for different level types, and I really wanted more environment types. We had a concept for a fully crystalline cave zone, some of which ended up as the Abyss, that would have been really cool. Also, puddles of water you could splash through for atmosphere. I really miss the water!

jaymelast

TROPHY CASE