Nauticrawl is both immersive and minimalist, leaving much to the imagination. Where did this idea come from?

As a kid I used to tape together big boxes, leftovers from stuff my parents bought, in order to build imaginary submarines big enough so I could fit in there.

I do remember vividly that feeling of being in the cabin, the whole world outside left to my imagination.

Once you had the idea and prototype, was there any element you’d been dreading to implement?

I love dungeon crawlers, and cockpit sims, so the game concept started as an equal part mix of machine simulation and turn based crawling, and surprisingly it made a lot of sense.

I had all the classic roguelike elements right there in the cabin: the top-down map went into the radar, the log went into a monitor, and a world that is fully simulated but only experienced through these symbolic and textual representations.

This part is tricky to balance when the two genres are put together, but I have solid points of reference from both these type of games, so it feels rather safe to implement.

What didn’t click though, was how to move from one stage to another, I just didn’t want to break the horizontal land exploration with the verticality of classic crawlers, like going up a tower or down in a dungeon.

So, a dreadful element to implement, I’m experiencing that right now, as I’ve decided that the player will explore self-contained islands. In order to go from one to the next, the player needs to gain control of another part of the vehicle, turning the Nauticrawl into a sort of flying zeppelin balloon.

Basically, progressing to the next stage has become part of the gameplay, and that really leaves me without many points of reference from other games, so there’s a lot of experimenting right now and big time anxiety! 8)

You worked a lot with animators, yet there’s little animations in your game. What led to that choice?

I’m super passionate about animation, I’ve dedicated most of my career to helping animators with tools and rigs, mostly because I did find out I wasn’t a very good animator, but luckily I did enjoy problem solving!

The problem I had to solve in order to make a game on my own, was how to stay in my comfort zone and avoid having to do assets I was not that good at making…and that’s why in Nauticrawl you are stuck in a cockpit!

You made the decision of adding no tutorial. How do you intend to soft-guide players without hand-holding?

Fun fact, when I decided to not have any tutorial, I thought I was cutting away work and being smart while doing so. I was wrong!

It’s been so much more work to actually leave the right breadcrumbs here and there, avoid excessive frustration, giving the right amount of data through the system screens in order to allow the player to actually study the machine’s behavior.

The main issue when avoiding hand-holding is being tangled in your own knowledge, at some point I had no distance anymore to see what was understandable and what wasn’t.

On the bright side, it’s still fun watching new testers die while trying to figure out the machine!

What’s your favorite thing in your game so far?

The tiny porthole, frustratingly too high to see the outside world, so I have to imagine what’s out there.

You’re now full-time on Nauticrawl: how do you schedule your days, and do you have any advice for aspiring developers?

I don’t really schedule my work-days, I’m just constantly aware that when I’m not working, no one is making my game. It’s not the nicest feeling, especially when it’s summer, 35 degrees outside and everyone is at the beach!

As for people willing to make games, for the past three years I’ve been teaching Unity and Unreal Engine in a professional school, and the main thing I’ve seen among young aspiring professionals is their lack of interest for game design, so my advice is this: stop thinking about that cool 3d model, that awesome shader, that movie-like story plot. Instead, start studying what gameplay elements you like about the games you play and make prototypes upon prototypes!

As a conclusion to that coffee break, what’s the next big milestone for Nauticrawl ?

There’s still a lot to do on the flying stage, but once that is done I’ll finally focus on the narrative aspect of the game.

I’m lucky enough to have Ben Jones (aka @Polyducks on twitter) to work with me on the textual content, he’s been also making the petscii art that shows on the monitors when you dock with other characters, and he happens to be one heck of a haïku-rpg-writer as well!