Games worth discovering

Developer Daniel Carmichael Talks Shop About Ship Of Fools {Transcript}

3K View2023-01-05

Arlyeon

Hey there, folks, and welcome to Crit Hit interviews. I'm Arlyeon and we're here today with Daniel Carmichael of FIKA productions, the lead game developer for the recently released roguelite. Ship of Fools.

For those not in the know, it’s a seafaring rogue-lite, that tasks players with protecting a boat as they swim into the heart of an apocalyptic storm, fending of waves of enemies with paddles and cannons - and ideally a friend, given the game is co-op oriented. (Though) it can be tackled solo. Anyways, let’s give the floor to the developer.

Daniel

Hey, guys, hey, earlier. Thanks for having me. Really glad to be here. I mean, it's a pleasure to have you here.

Arlyeon

Before we get into the nitty gritty on all the questions I have about the game, and there are so many questions I have about the game. A big part of what I like to do to start these off is to ask about the people behind the game to find out a bit more about what led them down their journey as an indie game dev. So I mean, to start things off, I guess the simple thing would be, just tell us a bit about yourself.

Daniel

Yeah, so my name is Daniel, I'm 28 years old. And I'm from Quebec City. And I'm a co founder of FIKA productions, and I am the Lead Gameplay developer on Ship of Fools. I studied software engineering at university, and I'm a big gamer. I play games all my life. And I actually just received my new gaming PC, A little treat for myself. After the release of the game, I decided to give myself a little gift.

Arlyeon

Which speaking of that, actually, like what is your favorite genre of gaming since you said, you're like a big gamer, or even your favorite game?

Daniel

Yeah, I'm obviously a big fan of roguelikes. And the binding of isaac would be my favorite game, I think also, Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. Those were two big games that stuck with me over the years. And then the binding of Isaac was actually quite a bit. Quite a big inspiration for Ship Of Fools. Ha.

Arlyeon

So here's a question, then. How did that lead to you getting into game development? To Ship of Fools? Like I know, FIKA Productions has done other projects before, but like, how did you get into game development?

Daniel

Yeah, so it's quite a story. It it tells a lot about my personal life story, if you want to hear it. Be glad to tell you. Actually, games have been a big part of my life for many reasons. At the age of 15 years old, my life changed completely. After I had this accident that made me paralyzed from the chest down. Oh, yeah. And since then, I live in a wheelchair. And I spent the whole year when I was 15 years old, at the hospital and in rehab, trying to relearn how to live, literally. And that is when I grasped the true magic behind gaming. Yeah, while in the rehab, I was with some roommates, and then many other children who also had big accidents. One of them was completely burnt, even his face was completely burned. And one other was his leg crushed in a in a snowmobile accident. And we all had our big things going on. And then the thing that's struck me was, no matter how heavy and life changing each our condition was, we were always happy while playing games together. Games, made the pain go away and united us in a way that made it possible to, for each of us to go through the hardships of life with a positive attitude, no matter how hard it looked. And reflecting on that day, a couple of years later, I I realized that one day, I would love to contribute in making games that bring people together to face the challenge of life. And I hope that's what Ship Of Fools will bring at some point for some people.

Arlyeon

How did that transition into you Learning / getting into game development itself?

Daniel

Yeah. So after my accident, stuff like that, I, I went to university in software engineering. That's where I met, Antoine and I got one. So we really bonded, then we were always working together for homeworks. And stuff like that, actually had one was the guy who was paid by the university to move my chair around. So he actually was paid to be my friend. So that was quite a quite fun. We had every classes together. And then we really made some some great friends. And we knew that at some point in the future, we wanted to work together, the three of us, and we always had this business sense inside of us. And we participated in some activities, like 48 hours to start a business kind of activities or our studies. Yeah, so that was quite quite fun. And we wanted to start something at some point. And then at the end of our degree, we decided to start pick up productions with the goal in mind to make games. And for that day, we also knew that we needed some artists because we were developers, and programmers. So where we reached out to our friends, who are doing their studies in art than in animations. And then with the five the five of us, we decided to start our business and see where it would lead us.

Arlyeon

So, what's the origin of your studios name?

Daniel

So FIKA is actually a Swedish saying that means to have a coffee Break. Yeah, so do this. Yes. And then during our studies outward is spent a semester in Sweden. And they came back with the idea of FIKA in mind. Because in Swedish companies, it's quite a ritual to take the FIKA every day, and to have a time to stop thinking about work to bring people together around a coffee or pastries, and also to break a Hierarchy. So when the boss would, like, have a coffee with the janitor, and, you know, the . . .

Arlyeon

The flat hierarchy just brings everyone together into like a peerage.

Daniel

Yeah, exactly. And that really inspired us because this is what we want as a company, who puts people first?

Arlyeon

Yeah, no, I really dig that conceptually - So here's my big question, then what was like the large hurdles of being the lead developer across all of these various contracts across? Just what was the big hurdle of juggling all of this together?

Daniel

It's always a challenge. To deal with the resources we have. In the beginning, we have very little resources, we had only a few people and we were making concepts and their game prototypes. And then we were pitching those to publishers to see if they were interested in stuff. So it was juggling with- I was juggling pretty much with ideas and concepts and trying to put up a game together. And actually, when we started making the game, though, no one in the team had any experience in Game Dev at all. So I was trying to learn unity, the engine was doing animations, but it didn't have any experience in game animation. So we were building our pipeline or work at our work pipeline to put every thing together. So in the beginning, we had very little, but in the end, then, the challenge was to we had many resorts, but what was lacking was time. And I it's always hard to deal with deadlines with the publisher, or try to make shortcuts to make sure the game is the best it can be with the time we have. A big epic struggle for me personally in is that one, and I lead the dev team, but I'm also part of the game design team. So there's always so much I want to include in the game, but so little time to do it, though.

Arlyeon

What did you start off as your projects in FIKA? Because it didn't quite start out with gaming, as I recall.

Daniel

Yeah. So if you use our website, you've seen that we've done some little side projects in our beginnings. So it's, it's quite a challenge to start in gaming, base business to start a game studio, actually, because you don't make any money until either you find a publisher or you release again. So there's quite a long period of time, where it's quite impossible to make any money with by only making games. So we started by doing little contracts here and there, in that in animations, and also in mobile development. We were all software engineer, so we could, you could make some websites and mobile applications, things like that. So we've, we've done a lot of small contracts to build up the company, while and always having in mind that the big goal is to work release again. So and throughout the years, we are we've built a small team that was working on the game. And then as time goes on, more people joined that team. And we build ship of fools with that. So in the end of Ship Of Fools development, every one of the company was working on Ship Of Fools. But in the beginning, it was only like one or two people, while the other would work contracts.

Arlyeon

That's cool, though. So it's like that at the heart of the company was the idea for this game. But you were doing all these things to make sure that you could independently continue to produce it.

Daniel

Yes, exactly.

Arlyeon

So conceptually, what was the hardest challenge making Ship of Fools then at least for what you were trying to achieve?

Daniel

Yeah, so I'm a big challenge, I would say is was managing a balance between passion and feasibility. And I'll always be the first to say that, I'm not going to sleep until this feature is over, or overwork and burn myself to make sure that everything I want gets into the game. But in in real life, it's not sustainable. It's it's our first game as a studio. And it's our first game for every one of us. So we really wanted to make to make it count and make it really great. But when you're making a passion project, it's really easy to go overboard and burn yourself. So that was a quite a big challenge for us, for many people on the team. And I in the future, we'll definitely try to make our games in a more healthy way. And that's the goal of Fika as a whole.

Arlyeon

So this is more of a smaller question, but was there anything whether it was like a game or even a piece of media that influenced the artistic style you ended up using for the game?

Daniel

Yes, so the start is quite quite nice. I would say cheaper foods and definitely was inspired by Don't Starve. We really liked the idea of a 3d environment in which to add to the characters and props. So that was that was quite an inspiration. And yeah, I don't know if you realize it, but The game is fully 3d, even though our characters are enthralling, and 2D, the whole environment is 3D and the engine is running 3d printed and stuff like that. But it looks 2D from the outside. It's really neat, actually.

Arlyeon

So, shifting gears to mechanics, there's a lot of things that myself and other people who've been playing the game are curious about. Specifically, are there more additions due to the hub such as gaining access to lighthouse, for instance?

Daniel

Yeah, so let me just say that there is a locked door at the bottom of the lighthouse. That might not be for nothing. So we, we didn't have time, actually to complete this portion for the release. But the next step of the game is going into the lighthouse and see what's going on there. So I can't say too much at the moment, because nothing has been disclosed yet. But you can expect to, at some point be able to enter the lighthouse.

Arlyeon

Which actually leads into my next question, what sort of plans do you have insofar as increasing replayability? Currently, if you beat the game, it's generally only going to get easier from there as you'll be able to farm like the meta resource tentacles to get more bonuses. But there isn't any complicating factors. So what sort of plans do you have for deeper dives into the seas insofar as difficulty? And will there potentially be alternative areas, bosses or other sort of items to Look forward to?

Daniel

Yeah, so um, I can't reveal too much for the moment. But we definitely read every every EA reviews and criticism we receive, and that the main complaint we have with the game right now is that, as you said, it only gets easier. And then the challenge and replayability of the game is quite a bit lacking at the moment. But that's what we are currently working on. The game will definitely get more challenging with future updates. And I wouldn't say that I am currently really inspired by how games such as the monster train, and Hades tackled this game design challenge.

Arlyeon

So, we've mentioned this a few times now, sort of what's in the works. And, I've seen mentions of a roadmap. Do you have any idea over what length of time the roadmap will encompass? And how much different will the game be as you progress further through the goals on that list?

Daniel

Actually, the roadmap? I can't really say anything about this currently. Because it's not. It's not done yet. It's not over, we're not settled on the roadmap that we're ready to show.

Arlyeon

Fair enough. Do you have it is there like a rough timeline for when people can expect to have an idea of like what's coming up

Daniel

Expect news on this in early 2023. So we will, we will talk about this a lot in our Discord and publicly at the beginning of next year, to let people know where we are going with this.

Arlyeon

Alright. So, Last question, Do you have any plans for accessibility features such as minimizing flashes for epileptic folks? Things like that?

Daniel

Yeah. So um, as you might imagine, I'm quite a fan of accessibility features. Because, you know, I'm in a wheelchair, though. So currently, there's no accessibility feature in the game. But I really want to push to a to make sure we have something for everyone to make sure everyone can play our game. One thing that was requested though, is the arachnophobia mode. Where because we have some spiders in the first sector, and some people don't like them. So maybe we will add them over to their switch to when we switch their sprite to something else.

Arlyeon

I don't know. googly eyes.

Daniel

Yeah, googly eyes, that would be quite funny.

Arlyeon

Anyways- I’d like to say thank you for answering my questions.

Daniel

Yeah. Thanks, it was a really great pleasure to be on board with you with this interview. And then, thanks for reaching out. It's always great to talk with talk your passion with another passionate gamer.I really wish to continue with great content to come for many years to come. Expect expect great things coming in for Ship Of Fools in 2023.

***

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