Transcript

0:59:59,700 --> 1:00:05,700 Rob: We don't really, it doesn't really bother us much, and I think that you know now that we have the means to develop the game and finish it,

1:00:05,700 --> 1:00:11,700 we're just really happy to do that and let the game speak for itself.

1:00:11,700 --> 1:00:18,700 If people still think it's a Pokemon clone by the time that it's come out, then okay, fair enough, but I don't think that's gonna be the case at all.

1:00:18,700 --> 1:00:20,700 Andrew: Yeah.

1:00:19,700 --> 1:00:23,700 Charlie: Yeah definitely, it's certainly aiming to be something different from what we've seen so far.

1:00:23,700 --> 1:00:25,700 Andrew: Mm-hmm.

1:00:23,700 --> 1:00:25,700 Rob: Oh yeah.

1:00:25,700 --> 1:00:29,700 Charlie: Obviously they would've been your initial audience, but we're you planning to expand, is there anyone else

1:00:29,700 --> 1:00:37,700 are there any other genres that you'd like to see take an interest in the game? I know Dark Souls has been mentioned, as well as Breath of the Wild.

1:00:37,700 --> 1:00:49,700 Rob: Sure, um, well with the permadeath being a pretty core mechanic to the game I think people who enjoy rogue-lites, or games like Dark Souls,

1:00:49,700 --> 1:00:53,700 I think that this definitely has some appeal there, too.

1:00:53,700 --> 1:01:05,700 and anyone who's a fan of open world RPG's like Skyrim or Horizon Zero Dawn, I think that there's a lot that the game has to offer there too.

1:01:05,700 --> 1:01:19,700 Andrew: And like more exploration focused games, sort of like Breath of the Wild I guess you could still classify as an exploration focused sort of game.

1:01:19,700 --> 1:01:25,700 Charlie: Definitely. So I know Breath of the Wild has been mentioned a lot, cause of the open world setting inspiration,

1:01:25,700 --> 1:01:34,700 but is there any other media that you think has been a great influence in Kindred Fates that people might not know about? Whether it's books or movies, music.

1:01:34,700 --> 1:01:40,700 Andrew: Oh, tons. Just so much. Yeah.

1:01:40,700 --> 1:01:42,700 Charlie: Is there any particular big one?

1:01:41,700 --> 1:01:43,700 Andrew: There's so many big ones.

1:01:43,700 --> 1:01:47,700 Rob: There's a couple big ones. Tori, I know this was a question you were really excited for.

1:01:47,700 --> 1:01:50,700 Tori: I was... and now I am blanking.

1:01:50,700 --> 1:01:52,700 Andrew & Rob: Oh no!

1:01:51,700 --> 1:01:53,700 Crank: We're sorry.

1:01:52,700 --> 1:02:12,700 Tori: That's okay. It's just there are so many things that when I think about it, just the volume of other works that make a small in this, it's really hard to just...

1:02:12,700 --> 1:02:24,700 Andrew: So, I will go ahead and, since she is having a bit of block right now, I will go ahead and list off some of the first few that me and Rob thought about, which was, this one's really niche,

1:02:24,700 --> 1:02:43,700 the Xerg campaign for starcraft 2 had a mechanic in it, as you progressed, that your units could have branching evolutions. So each unit you got, you got the base unit after you completed whatever quest,

1:02:43,700 --> 1:03:00,700 and then a certain ways in you would get a little sort of mini quest, I guess you could say, that gave you control over a group of one type of evolution and a group of another type of evolution.

1:03:00,700 --> 1:03:15,700 So that way you got to try them both out, and then you made your pick on which one you wanted. And I thought that was one of the coolest things I had ever seen, because, you know, the whole thing of evolution is absolutely fascinating to me,

1:03:15,700 --> 1:03:32,700 and the fact that you can build player choice into that to revolve around your playstyle, I thought was just so cool. So that was sort of where that came from, partly. And you know there's, we've said Guild Wars 2 earlier.

1:03:32,700 --> 1:03:53,700 I think it was a question I got on the Q and A channel a while ago about Vistas, so we've, I don't wanna, of course, promise anything about that, but it's definitely something we're thinking about. Something like that, because me and Rob loved the Vista system.

1:03:53,700 --> 1:04:13,700 Rob: Yeah. As far as, you know, other creative works, things like movies, TV shows, books, I think I can safely say for all three of us, or at the very least Tori and I, that Neon Genesis Evangeleon was a big inspiration for some of the that.

1:04:13,700 --> 1:04:15,700 Charlie: That's a big title.

1:04:14,700 --> 1:04:31,700 Rob: Oh yeah. Huge fans of the series and of that movies, so yeah, that's a big one. Also, ugh, I had another one...

1:04:31,700 --> 1:04:33,700 Andrew: X-Comm

1:04:33,700 --> 1:04:49,700 Tori: I remembered one of my big ones. It's still another video game, but I feel like we were definitely inspired by Undertale, it's one of my favorite games. So there are a lot of different aspects of that,

1:04:49,700 --> 1:05:02,700 I probably won't get too into detail. And you can tell from Final Hope message part one and part two, that were planning on having dialogue kinda similar.

1:05:02,700 --> 1:05:04,700 Crank: Your gonna have a bad time.

1:05:04,700 --> 1:05:06,700 Tori: Yeah.

1:05:04,700 --> 1:05:09,700 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's pretty safe that, you know, you might have a bad time.

1:05:09,700 --> 1:05:11,700 Tori: You might.

1:05:11,700 --> 1:05:15,700 Charlie: I can definitely see it, now that you mention it, those moral choices and breaking the law and stuff.

1:05:15,700 --> 1:05:17,700 Tori: Exactly, yeah.

1:05:17,700 --> 1:05:22,700 Charlie: Also, checking back on the Discord, it looks like we've had someone who may have found the IRL map of Hinterlock.

1:05:22,700 --> 1:05:24,700 Andrew: Oh boy, that was fast.

1:05:23,700 --> 1:05:36,700 Crank: WinterSolstice we think has actually found your little easter egg. It's in the main chat, but I think you were right about the twenty minutes. Fair play. Fair play to the Discord, guys.

1:05:36,700 --> 1:05:40,700 Andrew: Oh, yep, look. WinterSolstice. Yep. Yep.

1:05:40,700 --> 1:05:42,700 Tori: Yeah, well done.

1:05:41,700 --> 1:05:43,700 Andrew: Yep, he did it. Congratulations.

1:05:43,700 --> 1:05:48,700 Crank: Well done Winter, thank you for that.

1:05:48,700 --> 1:05:56,700 Andrew: As you ca. see, we've take a few sort of minor changes, but the general shape of it is pretty similar, yeah.

1:05:56,700 --> 1:05:59,700 Charlie: Yeah, that looks pretty awesome. It's nice to see a map that's accurately represented, but still be unique.

1:05:59,700 --> 1:06:02,700 Andrew: Yeah.

1:06:02,700 --> 1:06:16,700 Tori: Oh, we're very excited about that or at least, speaking for myself, I am very excited about that. I'm something of a botany nerd. We're probably gonna talk about this later, but I'm to excited about it.

1:06:16,700 --> 1:06:35,700 I'm doing research on the area to have regionally accurate plants. Everything in there already also is, I mean, maybe not the grass. You cant do too much with that. All of the trees, all of the flowers, they're accurate.

1:06:35,700 --> 1:6:39,700 Charlie: Oh, wow. So you've actually gone as far as researching the individual flora and fauna?

1:06:39,700 --> 1:06:41,700 Tori: Yep.

1:06:40,700 --> 1:06:43,700 Rob: Very much, yes.

1:06:43,700 --> 1:06:57,700 Andrew: It was, we were wanting to take inspiration off of a real world map. That was sort of in the beginning what we were planning on doing. We were looking for a very long time, we were looking all over the place.

1:06:57,700 --> 1:07:24,700 At the fjords of Norway, we were looking at Iceland, we were looking at the Faroe Islands. We were looking everywhere. We started looking in Austria, Switzerland kinda alps area, and we found that and we thought it was so cool that it had a lake on either side and a river connecting it.

1:07:24,700 --> 1:07:26,700 Rob: There's mountains that, like, inter~

1:07:26,700 --> 1:07:37,700 Andrew: Yeah, tons of mountains and this beautiful little flat valley that just sits right there, right super level. What a perfect place to build a city.

1:07:37,700 --> 1:07:45,700 Rob: It really just felt like it ought to be a video game map when you looked at it, so we decided we should go with it.

1:07:45,700 --> 1:07:49,700 Charlie: Definitely, and Switzerland itself is absolutely beautiful.

1:07:49,700 --> 1:07:51,700 Rob: Oh yeah.

1:07:51,700 --> 1:07:58,700 Charlie: I know that there was mentions of you guys potentially even visiting Switzerland to do your own hands on study. Is that still going to be a thing?

1:07:58,700 --> 1:08:05,700 Andrew: Yeah. Hopefully. Not any time soon probably.

1:08:05,700 --> 1:08:07,700 Tori: Yeah.

1:08:05,700 --> 1:08:19,700 Andrew: But it's something we'd really like to do, to get a better feel of the area itself. Cause it's one thing to take inspiration from a place, but then if you actually go there, and you walk around yourself,

1:08:19,700 --> 1:08:38,700 and get a feeling for how big it actually is, and sort of what it actually feels like to be there, and what everything actually looks like. I'm sure it would actually be more than a good place for inspiration.

1:08:38,700 --> 1:08:45,700 Charlie: Yeah, definitely. And like people have said before, the region that you chose and the environments, they provide so much for so many different aspects.

1:08:45,700 --> 1:08:56,700 Volcanoes can be hidden inside snowy mountains, you can have beautiful underground caverns. Caves have been mentioned as a thing as well, haven't they?

1:08:56,700 --> 1:08:58,700 Andrew: Have they? Caves?

1:08:58,700 --> 1:09:00,700 Rob: Yeah. Yeah, you can expect caves.

1:08:59,700 --> 1:09:06,700 Andrew: Wow. Thanks for informing the rest of the team, Rob.

1:09:06,700 --> 1:09:08,700 Charlie: Have people questioned about the biomes before in the Discord?

1:09:08,700 --> 1:09:10,700 Andrew: Yeah, I'm sure he's told us, I just forgot.

1:09:10,700 --> 1:09:15,700 Crank: We're getting a lot of biome chat. Everyone wants all the biomes.

1:09:15,700 --> 1:09:18,700 Charlie: Not just biomes. People are thirsty for all the information on all the game, on everything.

1:09:18,700 --> 1:09:23,700 Andrew: I saw mushroom forests. I don't know about that one.

1:09:23,700 --> 1:09:25,700 Crank: It's a bit too Minecrafty, I think.

1:09:25,700 --> 1:09:28,700 Andrew: Yeah, I don't know how it would fit.

1:09:28,700 --> 1:90:33,700 Charlie: It's interesting, but it gives me a fantasy vibe. Crystals or mushrooms.

1:09:33,700 --> 1:09:35,700 Rob:Uh huh.

1:09:33,700 --> 1:09:35,700 Andrew: Yeah.

1:09:34,700 --> 1:09:36,700 Tori: Oh yeah.

1:09:35,700 --> 1:09:44,700 Charlie: So going back to the game itself a bit more. When it comes to character customization, we saw a very brief bit of it on the Kickstarter page,

1:09:44,700 --> 1:09:52,700 but do you plan to work on a really detailed system, or will it be set options or sliders? Can you give us any more information?

1:09:52,700 --> 1:10:09,700 Rob: Yeah. I'm actually really glad that this is a question, because it's something I've wanted to discuss a little bit more and haven't really had a great opportunity for it. We were a bit limited with how much we were able to show on the Kickstarter page itself.

1:10:09,700 --> 1:10:26,700 A lot of what we were able to show there, in terms of the gifs and the footage, was limited to what was the right choice for the Kickstarter. Unfortunately, as opposed to what let us show off all of the information that we wanted to with that,

1:10:26,700 --> 1:10:41,700 and character customization in particular is something that we had to cut more footage from than we really wanted to. The big limiting factors, one being the length of the video.

1:10:41,700 --> 1:10:55,700 The original trailer was like nine minutes long and we had to cut it down to like 3:30. And then, on the page itself, Kickstarter has certain expectations for what makes a Kickstarter page pretty,

1:10:55,700 --> 1:11:03,700 so that you can get selected to be a project that they love, which, you know, really helps out the campaign a lot. We never managed to hit that unfortunately.

1:11:03,700,700 --> 1:11:05,700 Andrew: Somehow.

1:11:04,700,700 --> 1:11:21,700 Rob:But yeah, that's why there was only, like, one gif and why it only had as much as it did. So in any case, the thought right now is that we'll be adding sliders that give you different set options.

1:11:21,700 --> 1:11:39,700 We're exploring a couple different methods of going about character creation. The implementation that we're looking at right now could allow us to create really any NPC in the game, kinda by moving these different options around.

1:11:39,700 --> 1:11:55,700 For the time being, we're thinking that they'll all be set options. So, like, you might choose between one and twenty different hairstyles or different hats or pants or shirts or shoes. Whatever. Different eyes.

1:11:55,700 --> 1:12:13,700 We plan to get somewhat granular with it, so you'll be able to change, you know, hair color, eye color. Maybe different noses and mouths, but we probably won't have sliders for things like, well I wanna move the nose a little higher on the face.

1:12:13,700 --> 1:12:15,700 Crank: Kind of reminds me of ARK's customization.

1:12:14,700 --> 1:12:21,700 Andrew:No. No. No. You're not going to be able to make Mr. Thick Legs.

1:12:21,700 --> 1:12:25,700 Rob: Yeah, that's kinda what we're hoping to avoid.

1:12:25,700 --> 1:12:27,700 Crank: Good choice, good choice.

1:12:26,700 --> 1:12:28,700 Andrew: Yeah.

1:12:26,700 --> 1:12:30,700 Rob: Yeah. Lot's of options, still.

1:12:30,700 --> 1:12:36,700 Andrew: It's worth mentioning that one of Rob's biggest pet peeves for games, especially open world games,

1:12:36,700 --> 1:12:51,700 is when you can pick between one of two faces and one of three different outfits and everyone looks exactly the same. So, we are going to be very much trying to avoid that.

1:12:51,700 --> 1:12:55,700 Tori: He'll spend hours... He literally spends hours designing his custom characters.

1:12:55,700 --> 1:13:00,700 Andrew: I'm sure half of his steam hours are spent in that one customization screen.

1:13:00,700 --> 1:13:02,700 Rob: I've become a bit known for this, actually.

1:13:02,700 --> 1:13:07,700 Andrew: Oh yeah.

1:13:07,700 --> 1:13:09,700 Charlie: I mean, I'm guilty of doing the same, so I can't really say much.

1:13:09,700 --> 1:13:17,700 Andrew: Yeah, not that it's a bad thing, he just, you know, maybe he should just get on to the game, maybe, you know, just...

1:13:16,700 --> 1:13:18,700 Rob: Maybe.

1:13:16,700 --> 1:13:27,700 Charlie: Oh yeah, definitely. I mean, we've done it before. Craig is the opposite of me, so Crank will be down with going with whatever default the game gives him, as opposed to Mr. Thick Legs. And I'll spend more than half an hour customizing.

1:13:27,700 --> 1:13:34,700 Andrew: Yeah, just hit randomize until it spits out something, you know... eh, it's good enough.

1:13:34,700 --> 1:13:44,700 Charlie: It's interesting that the NPC styles will be an option as well, because we have seen before, I think, that during some of the PVP footage one of the characters was designed as one of the NPC's we've seen so far.

1:13:44,700 --> 1:13:48,700 Rob: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

1:13:48,700 --> 1:13:52,700 Charlie: So does this mean that you'll be able to dress up as your favorite NPC and run around?

1:13:52,700 --> 1:14:08,700 Rob: That's the thought, right now, that all of those pieces of clothing and hairstyles will still be accessible to the player. You might need to go to a specific shop, or maybe you need to go to a specific shop at a certain time of day,

1:14:08,700 --> 1:14:21,700 or maybe it's a quest it em that you can only get from this place. But for all those things, yeah, we'd like to make those available to the player, too. There may be some exceptions, like with unique... well not unique NPC's.

1:14:21,700 --> 1:14:36,700 There might be some story NPC's that have some unique clothing or possibly hair styles on them. Although, for the clothing at the very least, there's always sort of the option that you could just kill them and take their stuff.

1:14:36,700 --> 1:14:38,700 Charlie: Oh, gosh.

1:14:36,700 --> 1:14:38,700 Andrew: Wow. Wow.

1:14:37,700 --> 1:14:40,700 Rob: If you're into that sort of thing.

1:14:40,700 --> 1:14:46,700 Charlie: I mean, I was going to ask if there was going to be any representation of the devs in the game as NPC's, but I kind of don't want to now that I've heard you talk about killing them.

1:14:46,700 --> 1:15:01,700 Andrew: No, we will. We will find a way to put ourselves in the game. I think we have a whole, like, list of things, like different ideas to just subtly kind of slip ourselves in the game.

1:15:01,700 --> 1:15:16,700 Rob: We'll all have our own sort of piece that we put in. Whether or not they're, like, specifically NPC's is still sort of deciding on. We don't wanna get to, you know self inserty.

1:15:16,700 --> 1:15:19,700 Andrew: There's gonna be some reference, or something similar, yeah.

1:15:19,700 --> 1:15:24,700 Rob: Oh yeah, for sure. We'll all put our own personal mark somewhere.

1:15:24,700 --> 1:15:30,700 Charlie: I mean, now that you've mentioned it, there will be someone who tries to basically kill the NPC Rob and steal their appearance now, unfortunately.

1:15:30,700 --> 1:15:32,700 Rob: Oh, sure.

1:15:30,700 --> 1:15:32,700 Charlie: Hope you guys are aware.

1:15:32,700 --> 1:15:34,700 Tori: Bring it on.

1:15:33,700 --> 1:15:36,700 Rob: We fully expect that.

1:15:36,700 --> 1:15:40,700 Charlie: That'd be interesting to see you could run around as one of the devs. Never seen that before.

1:15:40,700 --> 1:15:52,700 Andrew: I seem to have made people upset with the 'no Mr. Thick Legs' comment. Apparently everyone is refunding their pledge now that they can't make human bowling ball.

1:15:52,700 --> 1:15:56,700 Rob: Fair enough, fair enough. More power to you.

1:15:56,700 --> 1:15:58,700 Charlie: I'll just have an NPC bowling ball, it's fine.

1:15:58,700 --> 1:16:03,700 Crank: Steal Rob's beard is the main comment we got.

1:16:03,700 --> 1:16:12,700 Andrew: Oh. I don't know if you can, I don't know if we'll include taking their face. That might be a bit too much.

1:16:12,700 --> 1:16:15,700 Crank: Sorry guys, you can't have his beard, or his mustache.

1:16:15,700 --> 1:16:17,700 Andrew: Yeah.

1:16:17,700 --> 1:16:19,700 Tori: At least not on your face.

1:16:18,700 --> 1:16:21,700 Andrew: Yeah, we~ Yeah...

1:16:21,700 --> 1:16:28,700 Charlie: So as of now in the game, what's the most difficult you plan on making any item to get, whether it's clothing, cosmetics?

1:16:28,700 --> 1:16:39,700 Will you have to go to new game plus for anything? I know someone mentioned Mechid's Royal Crown, how common will that be? Although I believe that's a Kickstarter exclusive, is it?

1:16:39,700 --> 1:16:57,700 Rob: Yeah. So, for the Royal Crown, that's the only time we'll be offering that or really any item quite like that. We won't be limiting any cosmetics or features of the game in that way ever again.

1:16:57,700 --> 1:17:09,700 Andrew: It's worth mentioning that we did not like the process of the Royal Crown. That's not something that we liked to do, and not really something that we intend on doing in the future...

1:17:09,700 --> 1:17:13,700 Rob: I was adamantly against that.

1:17:13,700 --> 1:17:18,700 Charlie: It's hard because you don't want to exclude people, but at the end of the day you want to give people an incentive to back.

1:17:18,700 --> 1:17:20,700 Andrew: Exactly. Exactly.

1:17:20,700 --> 1:17:27,700 Rob: It was a very tricky line to walk, and I'm really grateful that we don't have to walk that line anymore.

1:17:27,700 --> 1:17:30,700 Andrew: It's all about the precedent you're setting for the future, right?

1:17:30,700 --> 1:17:32,700 Rob: Yeah.

1:17:32,700 --> 1:17:36,700 Charlie: Well at least you're smashing stretch goals and everything you don't have to worry about trying to psh more for that again.

1:17:36,700 --> 1:17:38,700 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah.

1:17:38,700 --> 1:17:57,700 Rob: Yeah, for sure, but I guess to answer the rest of that question, the hardest sort of items to get from the game. Those would probably come from the end game raids, and yeah, there'll be things that are not necessarily exclusive to new game plus,

1:17:57,700 --> 1:18:09,700 but at the very least you'll be much more likely to start encountering them in new game plus. And that's part of the incentive of playing that mode.

1:18:09,700 --> 1:18:15,700 Charlie: So similarly to how it was mentioned before how certain Kinfolks or phantoms will be a bit more common on new game plus?

1:18:15,700 --> 1:18:18,700 Rob: That's right.

1:18:18,700 --> 1:18:27,700 Andrew: Yeah, and I'm pretty sure that we'll have easter eggs, you know, somewhere. So there might be like an easter egg cosmetic or something.

1:18:27,700 --> 1:18:30,700 Charlie: Everyone loves easter eggs, so I think that'd be a great thing.

1:18:30,700 --> 1:18:36,700 Andrew: We are huge fans of easter eggs, so there will be definitely a few in the game.

1:18:36,700 --> 1:18:41,700 Crank: A lot of love for new game plus at the moment in the chat, as well.

1:18:41,700 --> 1:18:45,700 Charlie: A few people didn't seem to realize that we were doing new game plus, so do you want to tell us a bit more about that?

1:18:45,700 --> 1:19:02,700 Rob: Oh, sure. Yeah, so after you complete the game's main story you'll have the option to head into new game plus. The way that that works is you'll be sort of transported into the very early stages of the games story.

1:19:02,700 --> 1:19:20,700 Not necessarily the very, very beginning, but pretty close to it. And the game will continue from there. You'll get to keep the Kinfolk that you've made bonds with, but apart from that all of your progress will be reset.

1:19:20,700 --> 1:19:34,700 The game will be at a higher difficulty level, and it will get progressively more difficult every time that you choose to do new game plus again. You don't have to choose to do new game plus.

1:19:34,700 --> 1:19:48,700 You could, you know, at any point complete the game's story and decide that that is the world you would like to stay in, and yeah you're welcome to do that. Every time you do go up a level in new game plus,

1:19:48,700 --> 1:20:01,700 things like rare Kinfolk will spawn more frequently, Phantom Kinfolk will become more common... You know, different cosmetics, those would get more common as well.

1:20:01,700 --> 1:20:15,700 So all of the things that were harder to get become slightly, slightly easier to get each time, but of course everything gets harder each time as well, so it's up to you.

1:20:15,700 --> 1:20:20,700 Charlie: Yeah, definitely. As you said, there's multiple endings. That's a great way to actually explore them.

1:20:20,700 --> 1:20:22,700 Rob: Uh huh.

1:20:22,700 --> 1:20:31,700 Andrew: Somebody says "does that mean that any crimes you committed go away?" That line of thinking has me a bit concerned.

1:20:31,700 --> 1:20:34,700 Crank: Thank you, Aidanta.

1:20:34,700 --> 1:20:37,700 Rob: These are the natural consequences of the world we create, I suppose.

1:20:37,700 --> 1:20:47,700 Andrew: Yeah... Just committing, like oh, well, I beat the main story, so let me just rack up as much crime as I can and then just leave it all behind.

1:20:47,700 --> 1:20:58,700 Rob: Luckily, you know, all of your... I imagine just about anything you would accomplish with that crime would sort of be reset as well, since you're really only keeping your bonds.

1:20:58,700 --> 1:21:00,700 Andrew: They just wanna watch the world burn.

1:21:00,700 --> 1:21:02,700 Rob: Wow.

1:21:02,700 --> 1:21:07,700 Charlie: Cause it was mentioned before that the Kinfolk that you bond with, they're the only things that you keep when you go to new game plus, aren't they?

1:21:07,700 --> 1:21:10,700 Rob: Mm hmm.

1:21:10,700 --> 1:21:19,700 Charlie: And we have another joke comment from Bubble Glutt. "A shrine where someone left a mysterious beard, that for some reason people worship."

1:21:19,700 --> 1:21:26,700 Andrew: You know, it wouldn't be the first time our community has worshiped some random object.

1:21:26,700 --> 1:21:28,700 Rob: This is very true.

1:21:27,700 --> 1:21:31,700 Crank: Pretzels, Shovelbutt, what else?

1:21:31,700 --> 1:21:33,700 Rob: I did egg that one on a bit, tough.

1:21:32,700 --> 1:21:34,700 Andrew: Yeah that might be our fault.

1:21:33,700 --> 1:21:36,700 Rob: Yeah, the pretzel. That's on us.

1:21:36,700 --> 1:21:39,700 Charlie: Speaking of "wouldn't be the first time," Andrew...

1:21:39,700 --> 1:21:42,700 Andrew: Oh no.

1:21:42,700 --> 1:21:56,700 Charlie: We've actually got a question specifically for you. Someone mentioned in the discord before, "Imagine someone finding a clown suit in your house, then having to explain that your customers made you do it."

1:21:56,700 --> 1:22:01,700 And you responded with, "Well that wouldn't be the first time something has happened to me like this."

1:22:01,700 --> 1:22:04,700 Crank: Can you elaborate, please?

1:22:04,700 --> 1:22:07,700 Andrew: I mean, do I have to? Because clearly this is a very normal situation.

1:22:07,700 --> 1:22:09,700 Rob: You definitely do.

1:22:08,700 --> 1:22:24,700 Andrew: Yeah, so, when I was in high school I was, like, really big into theater, so it's pretty safe to say that I had plenty of just strange things in my possession that, you know, given context were completely normal,

1:22:24,700 --> 1:22:39,700 but you know, who has like three different versions of a creepy Ronald Reagan mask just laying around? And just the weirdest props occasionally, like, you know, here's a decapitated sock puppet.

1:22:39,700 --> 1:22:52,700 You know, you end up getting numb to it, but then your parents walk in your room and they're like "Alright, what is this? Please explain to me what this is," and you're like "uhhhh..."

1:22:52,700 --> 1:22:55,700 Charlie: How long have we got?

1:22:55,700 --> 1:22:57,700 Andrew: Yeah, pretty much.

1:22:57,700 --> 1:23:09,700 Charlie: And would there be any plans, I know it's been mentioned before, but people want these clown suits in the game. Whether it's an NPC as a clown on the top of Mount Everest in the game.

1:23:09,700 --> 1:23:16,700 Rob: We'll have to... Do you think it's in the budget? Can we work that in?

1:23:16,700 --> 1:23:18,700 Andrew: I don't know, man...

1:23:17,700 --> 1:23:24,700 Rob: We'll have several extended meetings on this topic I think.

1:23:24,700 --> 1:23:26,700 Tori: Yes.

1:23:25,700 --> 1:23:36,700 Andrew: I mean, that might just be what we have to do for our self inserts. Just two clowns on top of a mountain, just launching an app.

1:23:36,700 --> 1:23:44,700 Charlie: Awesome. When it comes to the gameplay aspects and mechanics, what do you expect to be putting most of your focus on, now that everything's starting?

1:23:44,700 --> 1:24:02,700 Rob: Oh, sure. Well this is a pretty easy one actually. For the next, I don't know, probably until the end of the year, the heaviest focus will be on the online multiplayer components,

1:24:02,700 --> 1:24:22,700 because those are just the pieces that are required to get the alpha combat arena up and running. That'll be things like fine tuning action combat to the point where it's comfortably playable online, having a small roster of character's to choose between, and battle with,

1:24:22,700 --> 1:24:41,700 and if we're lucky, if we can manage to find the time to squeeze it in, then hopefully even an AI to sort of practice against as well. The current AI is okay, but we know we can do a lot better with it, so we'll be improving that as part of development as well.

1:24:41,700 --> 1:24:43,700 Andrew: Yeah.

1:24:42,700 --> 1:24:49,700 Charlie: Yeah, definitely. I imagine if you're going for a more mature game you'll really want a more difficult game than what we're probably used to at this point, I'm guessing.

1:24:49,700 --> 1:24:51,700 Andrew: Yeah.

1:24:49,700 --> 1:24:51,700 Rob: Mm hmm.

1:24:51,700 --> 1:24:53,700 Andrew: One of our~

1:24:52,700 --> 1:24:54,700 Rob: That's the whole point of...

1:24:53,700 --> 1:24:55,700 Andrew: Huh? What's the~

1:24:54,700 --> 1:24:56,700 Rob: I was just saying...

1:24:55,700 --> 1:25:15,700 Andrew: Huhhh... Could you please stop interrupting me?.. Yeah so one of our original design philosophies that we picked up really early on was how to make a game difficult but not punishing, and that there's a difference between punishing, which is not fun,

1:25:15,700--> 1:25:31,700 and difficult, which can be fun. That has been a focus of ours in design for a long time. Of how to make it difficult but still fun and not just brutally punishing, to the point that it's just like why even try.

1:25:31,700 --> 1:25:34,700 Rob: Yeah, for sure.

1:25:34,700 --> 1:25:42,700 Charlie: Yeah, definitely. Speaking of the philosophies that you've got for the game, we know that you set out to take aspects from games you love, like Pokemon or Breath of the Wild,

1:25:42,700 --> 1:25:55,700 but how has your mentality changed since you started development. Are there any new ideals that you've picked up, or any that you'd still like to adhere to while you're designing kindred fates.

1:25:55,700 --> 1:25:57,700 Andrew: Oh absolutely.

1:25:57,700 --> 1:26:15,700 Rob: I would say that happens, I mean, somewhat frequently still, and one of the hardest parts about developing a game that your, like really really passionate for, is trying to sort of keep a lid on that.

1:26:15,700 --> 1:26:33,700 And that's not to say not to spoil those things, but really to not take that too far. We want to be our own game, we want Kindred Fates to stand on its own, and so there's a tricky sort of line to walk

1:26:33,700 --> 1:26:54,700 between coming up with new ideas that push the genre forward and are innovative and interesting and still keeping things that are familiar and what people expect from the genre. Sort of the first experiment that we'll be testing like that is, you know,

1:26:54,700 --> 1:27:14,700 types as a playstyle instead of the super effective and not very effective that we're all really used to. We want that to be skill based instead of hard number based, and so right now we just need to see if that's possible,

1:27:14,700 --> 1:27:28,700 see if in a full roster of characters, or at least a small roster of characters that we can use as a test bed. Is that feasible? Is that fun? Do people enjoy that? How do we go about doing that?

1:27:28,700 --> 1:27:47,700 There's definitely lot's of new ideas that we still think about and go 'oh that would be really cool,' but we try to kind of temper that and not expand it beyond what's familiar to people, I suppose.

1:27:47,700 --> 1:28:02,700 Andrew: And to go off of what you said with the whole we're gonna try this out and if it doesn't work it doesn't work, the whole making every single Kinfolk competitively viable.

1:28:02,700 --> 1:28:12,700 That is something that we would love to do, but we totally recognize that it might not be possible, but we sure are going to try.

1:28:12,700 --> 1:28:14,700 Tori: It's a huge roster.

1:28:14,700 --> 1:28:16,700 Andrew: It is. We have a very large roster.

1:28:14,700 --> 1:28:19,700 Rob: 160 some characters.

1:28:19,700 --> 1:28:23,700 Charlie: No matter the game, a meta tends to form anyway, so it's gonna be difficult.

1:28:23,700 --> 1:28:25,700 Andrew: Yeah.

1:28:23,700 --> 1:28:39,700 Rob: Of course, of course. With our, I guess the philosophy that we're taking on that is as we're designing the passive abilities of every creature, as we're designing the move pools that every character has access to,

1:28:39,700 --> 1:28:53,700 as we're designing new characters, and going okay here are the types of characters we have already, and here's sort of some playstyles we're missing. We always try to think of, okay, what is the niche that this character can fill,

1:28:53,700 --> 1:29:07,700 what can this Kinfolk can do that no one else can, and how can we make them the best in the game at that. So that everyone has something that they're~

1:29:07,700 --> 1:29:09,700 Andrew: A purpose.

1:29:08,700 --> 1:29:23,000 Rob: Right, right. They're competitively viable somehow. That if you want to run this strategy or something, then you know that there is this character and they're the best at it. That's not to say that you couldn't use them for something else,

1:29:23,000 --> 1:29:35,700 because we wanna give you the ability to change around your moves or abilities, or just how you play the character in general. And maybe you discover new ways to play them more. You pair them with this other character

1:29:35,700 --> 1:29:51,700 and now there's this completely unorthodox way to play Awburn that we as the developers had never thought of, but still works. That's kind of what we're going for, we'll see how it pans out.

1:29:51,700 --> 1:30:00,700 If not, the there's always what people are sort of used to and has proven to be fun and effective anyway.