12 minute read
When We Made
Bonfire Peaks
actually look at you. And even with that little bit of work, with the help of the animation and really smart designers and engineers, with everybody working together, you could tell from the very beginning that she was a character that people would really gravitate toward.”
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Quill really becomes a fully fleshed out character with the help of the game’s strong world-building. As an interloper in Quill’s world, the player experiences it not through her eyes, but as an observer watching as she lives her life in her familiar setting. It’s a strangely intimate feeling, and one which gives way to joint apprehension as both the player and Quill enter new, unfamiliar areas.
“When you go through Mousetown and you see Quill run through there and you see that she has a hometown, the feeling of her leaving it, of that town maybe being in danger, gives you more of a bond,” Alderson says. “If that part was left out, you wouldn’t feel like there was much to fight for. Everything that we’ve done, the mood settings, taking Quill from one area to the next and letting you rest and take in this environment… It’s all supposed to exaggerate and accentuate that mood that you’re feeling. It all ties back into how you are connecting with Quill and her world.”
SAME QUESTION EIGHT WAYS
Collaboration was key during the development of
Chris Wallace gets behind the scenes of Bonfire Peaks. A contemplative, sombre puzzle game that pulls inspiration from the Beach Boys, because of course it does.
Moss, not just within the team itself, but with the help of external playtesters. People were often brought in to feedback on the game and asked questions about their experience – even if most of these questions were Bonfire Peaks, from developer Corey Martin, is a game that manages to be simultaneously meditative and immensely taxing. The game’s narrative, such as it is, follows the actually very similar. adventures of a solitary man climbing a mountain, “External playtests were mostly about ‘Okay, how do burning all of his worldly possessions as he goes. people feel when they play? Do they like it or not like it?’,” There’s no dialogue, no exposition, no context. Alderson explains. “At the end of playtest we would ask Just put everything you own into a box and watch the same question eight different ways. The question it burn. is really ‘What didn’t you like?’, but we would ask it It turns out that our protagonist, prior to differently: ‘What pulled you out of the experience? What whatever emotional breakdown prompted him took you out of the headset? If there’s one thing you to seek refuge in the flames, was something of could change what would it be? If you had two weeks to a materialist. Any player wanting to finish all of finish the game, what would be the thing that you’d fix?’ Bonfire Peak’s puzzles (of which there are over “Those help bring a playtester into their comfort zone, 200) will have to do a lot of burning. because no one wants to play something that people put They’ll have to be quite a bit brighter than I am too – Each of the game’s hundreds of puzzles tasks you with burning a single box of your own possessions, and they’re increasingly unforgiving as the game goes on. Most puzzles can theoretically be finished in under a minute, though in reality I spent much of my time staring at Bonfire Peak’s gorgeous Voxel graphics, overburdened with possessions that I couldn’t quite figure out how to get rid of. Throwing them into the sea in frustration isn’t a valid solution, it turns out.
SACRIFICES MUST BE MADE
The game’s hands-off approach to its own narrative eases the pressure off a little. A player may get stuck trying to navigate their possessions through implausibly narrow spaces, but they certainly won’t be turned away by a dense, impenetrable story. Bonfire Peaks is more evocative of a particular emotion or an idea, rather than a specific story about a specific character. “Bonfire Peaks started as part of the Ludum Dare game jam,” Corey Martin explains to us, “the theme was ‘Sacrifices Must Be Made.’ I had gotten used to making these character-based 3D puzzle games, and wanted to make one focused on climbing. The theme then inspired carrying something for the sake of sacrificing it, and I got a few solid puzzles out of it. From there, it took a Corey Martin, developer while for it to really start taking shape.”
Left: The game follows a man as he slowly burns all his worldly possessions
That theme of sacrifice goes some way to explaining the artistic intention behind Bonfire Peaks. While its lack of a traditional narrative may upset the more obsessive lore nerds among us, it’s a game that leaves itself open to interpretation – meaning any number of different things to different people.
“The short answer [behind the limited narrative] is just to limit scope,” explains Martin. “You can only make so many games in one lifetime, and should probably only spend so much time on a weird puzzle game about burning stuff.
“For me, cutting a traditional narrative is an easy choice, it’s not even a compromise. In my opinion, storytelling is not really a strength of the medium of games, or what excites me most about it. I like the ambiguity of communicating through mood and imagery, and letting every player’s interpretation be valid. I’ve heard a lot of diverse and contradictory opinions and guesses of what the game is about, and I love that.”
Following the initial game jam in November 2018, Martin worked away at Bonfire Peaks for three years – with the help of voxel artists Mari K and Zach Soares, as well as Alan Hazelden (of Draknek & Friends) who helped to effectively double the game’s level count.
PUZZLE PLANS
While the game was certainly a group effort (with too many names to list here), Bonfire Peaks’ core design philosophy speaks to Martin’s approach to puzzle game Below: Some of the puzzles are simpler than others, but they can get head-scratchingly difficult to solve
Above: There’s always plenty to do, should you get stuck on a particular puzzle, with each bonfire representing a puzzle to be solved design, which he lays out for us. “First, you should earn and maintain the player’s trust (in you as a designer, that solutions will be intuitive, that you aren’t wasting their time, etc). Second, there’s elegance in minimalism, don’t make things bigger or more complicated than they need to be.
“Third, build a system that leads to emergent puzzles. When you’ve made a rich system, it feels like you’re finding puzzles rather than creating them and that’s way easier. You should also aim for a ratio of as few elements as possible : as much depth as possible.
“Finally, verbalize the idea for each puzzle, literally put it into words. If it’s hard to talk about, it probably isn’t a very focused idea. I don’t think there’s one correct way to approach this stuff, but that’s more or less how I do it.”
Martin’s “puzzles-first” approach means that while Bonfire Peaks is certainly challenging, there’s always another puzzle to play should you ever get stuck. It stands out as an effective way to ensure players aren’t turned away by the game’s steep difficulty. That or I’m dumb, who’s to say?
“You’re not dumb, it’s supposed to be hard!” says Martin, totally unprompted. “A lot of people that play and struggle will feel ‘I’m bad at this game,’ but you’re supposed to get stuck, that’s the intended experience. The hope is that you’ll feel the puzzle solutions are charming enough to warrant the difficulty.
“I think the most significant thing we did to ease frustration is to avoid bottlenecking progress on a single puzzle. There’s always a handful of puzzles available at any point, and you only need to beat a portion of them to move forward, so I think that freedom to curate your experience at least relieves some of the aggravation.”
SAUSAGE ROLL
Bonfire Peaks pulls inspiration from all sorts of places – Some more surprising than others, as Martin explains:
“From a game design perspective, many people have rightly identified the game Stephen’s Sausage Roll as a direct influence. Also the games of Draknek & Friends had a huge impact on me, above all A Good Snowman is Hard to Build and A Monster’s Expedition. I was playtesting AME throughout Bonfire Peaks’ development and it was really inspiring in a bunch of ways.
“Outside of games, Ari Aster’s movies were on my mind a lot, especially Midsommar. I was listening to a lot of the Beach Boys, Dionne Warwick and Carole King, among others. Those are the first things that come to mind.”
In Bonfire Peaks, you may stay for the puzzles, but what first grabbed your attention is likely the game’s beautiful use of the voxel art style. It’s a style that, until recently, has been more closely associated with more cutesy affairs – rather than the quiet, sombre aesthetic of Bonfire Peaks.
“Yeah! I think that’s slowly changing, with games like Teardown and Cloudpunk. I hope there’ll be more and more ‘mature’ voxel art games in the coming years. There’s such a broad range of moods and styles within pixel art, and I feel there’s the same potential for voxel art. I’m excited to see where it goes.”
While Martin had help at various stages of the project, the “development team” is largely just Martin working alone in his apartment, alongside his regular day job. “Very indie stuff,” he explains. No matter how good the game (and Bonfire Peaks is certainly an exceptional accomplishment), that kind of work over three years can take a toll.
“Honestly, the latter half of development was kind of a slog,” Martin notes. “I think because I was lying to myself the whole time about how much further I had left to go, so it basically felt like I was “finishing the game” for half of its development. There were still some joyful moments in there, but a lot of anxiety and exhaustion as well.”
The game released in September this year to a warm critical reception, with particular praise heaped on Bonfire Peaks’ contemplative tone. Which is a pretty big achievement for a game most commonly compared to Stephen’s Sausage Roll, a game about rolling sausages (though it is, admittedly, also exceptional). But how has this matched up with Martin’s expectations for the game? “Sales have been very modest, but it’s a super niche game, so that mostly aligned with my expectations” notes Martin. “The press coverage and player feedback definitely exceeded my expectations. After working on this for so long (by my standards, at least), it really feels great to see people enjoying and connecting with the game.”
A Swift Spotlight: Nequinox
Propelled by its debut work on AAA title Crackdown 3, Nequinox is making a name for itself straight out of the gate after just celebrating its 3rd anniversary. With the prospect of several new co-development partners on the horizon, and the potential of its own IP development becoming a very real possibility, it’s a studio that is laying the foundations to become a major player within the industry, and is already the go-to studio for technical challenges and AAA codevelopment and porting.
Aardvark Swift caught up with Matt Knott, development director at Nequinox, in the light of the studio’s recent successes, to discuss how the company has bolstered their continued growth, and where their upward trajectory will take them.
Breaking away from Sumo Digital and bringing with it many years of technical expertise, the studio was founded by industry veteran Stephen Robinson alongside his son, Anthony Robinson. “The company was created out of love for games,” says Matt. “We were set up to really push the boundaries of video game technology for all of our co-dev studio partners.”
Since their fruitful beginnings, the studio has only continued to shift from strength to strength, augmenting their arsenal of talented developers from 6 to 21 within the last year, and bringing aboard several new co-development partners. Matt Knott credits three fundamentals to the studio’s sustained success.
“Firstly we’re a partner focused on engineering - this is not all that common in the industry; with many co-dev studios split between art, engineering and production.” Matt continues, “Secondly, we have a very specific way in which we build relationships with our co-dev partners; we make sure it’s absolutely the right time when we start working with them, we have a clear vision of their project and the resources to back it.
“Finally, and most importantly, we build teams with other studios. We assimilate into those other studios seamlessly; that’s not to say that we don’t have Nequinox DNA, which is absolutely vital, but we hone in on finding ways to best support and understand our co-devs in the games that they want to make, providing them with the best advice, resources and people for their project.”
To provide their co-development partners with the optimal team for the task, Nequinox has first had to get the best talent through their doors at their Manchesterbased studio, and as development director, Matt is tasked with just that. However, it’s not just a candidate’s skillset that Matt takes into account. “We search for people with the right values and the right attitude; skills can be taught. There’s no doubt that skillful individuals are pivotal to success, but equally, finding people with the right values is more important than ever. In some cases, we’re getting to know people through a screen - we have to work harder than ever to build that trust and relationship, so ensuring developers fit our values and culture is vital”. Working alongside Associate Producer Hannah Williamson, Matt creates, develops and supports these teams, whilst instilling the overarching company values. “We are a small company, but we already have a champion for EDI (Hannah) - it couldn’t be more relevant right now. It’s vitally important that our team knows that they’re part of an inclusive, equal and diverse culture. We’ve been very clear as a company that this needs to be part of our DNA from the beginning.”
With a core team now in place, Nequinox is now exploring the future direction of the company. “We’re going to continue to build a reputation, as well as building capability and capacity into the studio. Co-dev and porting is where we are at right now (Autumn 2021), we’ve bought on one co-dev partner in May 2021 and we’re about to bring on another. But every studio has the ambition of making their own games and that’s something we are seriously looking at.” Matt Knott, Development Director, Nequinox
You can listen to Aardvark Swift’s full conversation with Nequinox’s Matt Knott through the Aardvark Swift Podcast, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, third-party apps, as well as the aswift.com website.