My name is Robert Boyd. I came up with the original concept, did the design, wrote the dialogue, and did the programming for Cthulhu Saves the World and its predecessor, Breath of Death VII: The Beginning.
As a teenager, I did a couple of small projects like a Verge RPG game that I never finished called Rainbow Despair (which I use for forum name) and a Japanese-to-English translation patch for the menus in the 16-bit Slayers RPG, but I didn’t really get into game development until many years later when Microsoft announced the XBox Live Indie Games service (XBLIG). I made a couple of text-based games there before teaming up with Bill Stiernberg to make Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World for the service.
After our XBLIG releases, we received many requests to bring our games over to the PC. We started a kickstarter campaign to raise a bit of money to port our games and to add some improvements in the process. The campaign was successful so on July 13th, we released our games on the PC via Steam and Gamersgate.
So far, the reception for our games has been fantastic on the PC so I think from this point on, we’ll make PC our lead platform.
3. Where did the idea for Cthulhu Saves the World come from?
I’m a big fan of Lovecraft, but I’m better at writing humor than horror. One day, after the release of Breath of Death VII while I was trying to come up with an idea for what to work on next, the idea of forcing Cthulhu into a good guy role came to me and stuck. Thus Cthulhu Saves the World was born.
I think the biggest lesson I learned from Cthulhu Saves the World is about feature creep. After Breath of Death VII, we were feeling very confident so we thought that we could make a drastically better game in about the same amount of time. Our initial release date estimate was 4 months, but the project ended up taking about twice that (and even longer if you count the PC port + enhancements time). With our next game, we’re trying to be more realistic about our capabilities and make a good game that improves on our previous games in various ways, while not resulting in substantially longer development times.
We don’t have incredible anime cutscenes created by Kyoto Animation, but other than that it’s pretty close. We did make a few design changes from initial conception to the actual game (for example the ending changed a few times and I went through several different insanity systems for gameplay), but that’s to be expected when developing a game.
Gordon McNeil (Composer)
When writing the music for CStW, I wanted to keep to the mantra of the game, that is, ‘retro stylings, modern sensibilities’. For example, the composition of the music has a heavy emphasis on melody, like the music of old, but employs a lot of instruments and counter-melodies, much more than the technology at the time allowed.
I tried to make I sure to hit all the marks of the genre, in as much as wanting the ‘battle’ music to be instantly recognisable as the battle music and the same goes for the town music, world map music etc. All were written with the old school JRPG fan in mind, I wanted them to instantly link CStW to their favourites from back in the day while still creating a soundtrack worthy of a genre famous for great music.
Bill Stiernberg (Artist)
To develop the art style for Cthulhu Saves the World, we wanted to develop a game that looked and felt like an early 16 game. Influential games in this regard include the 16-bit Final Fantasy games and Dragon Quest games. However, we also wanted to take a few elements a step further, and so we were a little more generous with our color palette than the old 16-bit consoles were. We also used a little more animation for character sprites than some of the games that influenced our art. The game screen resolution was something that we decided would provide an intentionally pixelated picture but still give us room to provide fairly detail sprites and environments. We wanted the result to be something that looks and feels like many of the 16 bit top-down RPGs that many of us grew up with, but give us a little room to add detail where we wanted it.
While we wanted to stay true to the somewhat maze-like dungeon design of older RPGs, the level design for Cthulhu Saves the World was meant to be more sophisticated and more interesting than our earlier title, Breath of Death VII. For one, we decided that we wanted each map to have something unique about it from the others, either mechanically or in terms of presentation. Thus, many of the game’s maps were designed with puzzles to progress, while the more basic maps were given interesting visual twists such as rain or fog. We also wanted to give the dungeons more personality, so many of the primary game dungeons feature objects, decorations, and effects in more abundance than our previous game. This also helps the player remember which path he has taken to some degree. On that note, we also added small “torches” in each map to direct the player to the exits to help with some of the larger maze-like maps. The engine also supports multiple layers, allowing us to have a single map with multiple floors and bridges. This made for some interesting map abilities, but we tried to cut down on the number of twists, turns, and bridges in the later, larger dungeons.
Piracy is obviously a problem, especially on the PC, but I don’t think intrusive DRM is the answer. The more intrusive you make your DRM, the harder pirates will work on bypassing it. I think the solution is to make it so that fans want to give you money. Price your games at bargain prices and be honest, open, and friendly with your fans so that there’s a face attached to your games – most people find it much harder to steal from a person than they do from a faceless corporation.
As for getting our games onto Steam, it wasn’t too hard, although it took quite some time. I emailed them that we were interested and shared some information about how well our games had reviewed. Several follow-up emails were sent over the course of the next few months and eventually when the game was about ready to be released, we got approved.
It’s a give and take. We’ll make a suggestion and they either agree with us or suggest something else that they think is better. In the end, it usually works out well for both parties.
We will be sending off Part 2 questions and follow-ups to some answers in the coming days. Expect to see Part 2 within the next few weeks. Thanks again to Robert, Gordon and Bill for their detailed and wonderful answers. Be sure to pick up Cthulhu Saves The World via Steam.
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