We held our first ever ask me anything (AMA) with Slawa Deisling, Co-Founder of indie developers Behind the Stone over on our Discord server. The questions were so great I decided to put them up here for you to read. So here is our Behind the Stone interview.

Could you give us an introduction of the history of Behind the Stone and what you do there? -Adam

Hey folks – I’m Slawa Deisling, I’m the Co-Founder/Programmer at Behind The Stone, we’re a small indie team from Hamburg/Germany. Our core team only consists of me and art director Monika. For Sir Eatsalot we had some additional help from two programmers and some other artists, Music/SFX were completely outsourced. But those additional freelancers didn’t work fulltime, so the bulk of the game was done by Monika and myself. Behind The Stone was founded when I met Monika while studying computer science, she studied intermedia design, and I asked if she’d like to develop games.

What drove you to create the character of Sir Eatsalot?– Bunnsie

There wasn’t a specific drive for this character. I remembered that once I wanted to make a comic about a chubby knight. In chemistry class I drew two circles- a head and a belly and called that “Sir Eatsalot”.

Since I suck at drawing that comic never came to life. But then the game did!

How much food can Sir Eatsalot eat?- Thom

Uh, I don’t know. There is a point where he is sated, there has to be. Maybe we will find out in a potential sequel, but that’s yeeeeears away.

I am guessing you used Unity to create the game. Was it easy to port it to Switch? What was the biggest hurdle?- Darth Stridious

Yes, we used Unity. And yeah, it was surprisingly easy to port it to the Switch. I guess it wasn’t that difficult because Nintend Switch is, (strictly technically speaking) the more powerful console in terms of specs (CPU, GPU) which means, by default our game performed better. We optimized the shit out of Sir Eatsalot for the Vita, we did everything we could with our knowledge back then. Our goal was to have a fluent 60FPS experience on the Vita, but we just couldn’t do it. It’s running 30FPS, although there is a specific spot in the game where it even drops to like 24/25…and it drives me nuts

But with the Switch. Boom. 60 FPS, without any need to change.

The “difficult” things to change were the Input and the whole SaveLoad-System. Every platform has their own internal way of doing things and you HAVE to use these systems. So to answer which was the easier platform: Switch, but of course this experience is kinda skewed since the bulk of production was already done and we didn’t have to change tons of stuff.

As a Developer, what would you like to see Nintendo do to make it easier for Indie devs?- Darth Stridious

Hmmm…tough one, the overall experience was pretty great. Their documentation for developers is great, the whole process is centralised. Only thing: eShop. An overhaul for the eShop that would benefit players and devs. There is almost no visibility for smaller games so a better/flexible search, with better filters.

Did Sir Eatsalot come first in terms of the actual game, or did gameplay and then Sir Eatsalot?- Bunnsie

Kinda mixed. It was very clear for us that we start with a simple 2D platformer, in order to gain experience. We had NONE before Sir Eatsalot. Monika and I and to be frank none of other freelancers created a game before. With that in mind I think it turned out pretty great

When did you decide you wanted to port the game over to Switch?- Adam

The moment we got the info that Nintendo allowed Handheld Mode only games.

Were you/ are you worried at all that some customers might be put off the game because it can only be played in handheld mode?- Adam

Yeah, there are already some users put off by that and of course it is sad, but of course I do understand that, I mean, folks bought the Switch for the option to be played however they like.

Is there anything about the development process you found harder than others? Specifically for the Switch but in general, too.

Since I’m also the PR/Marketing/Business-dev person, I have to deal with all this business/legal stuff and I hate it.

Specifically for the Switch. Hm. Well I’m also the main responsible person to dive into the Developer-Forums and Documentation. You know, now it’s funny, but if you encounter a bug while developing the game and you get a cryptic error code, and look that up in the documentation and the documentation links only to a JAPANESE documentation and then you translate the error message and it says: “This is an error” in english you will go mad (This has been fixed though, since I reported this nonsense).

As an indie developer, what are some of the joys and pitfalls? What was it like working with a publisher for the development of the Vita version?- Bunnsie

The joys are of course to be able to do “whatever” you want. Putting it in quotation marks because at the end you can’t do whatever you want, because you probably don’t have the budget for truly doing whatever you’d like to. But you have complete creative control and that’s the deciding factor for us. As for the indie publisher, I guess you’re refering to eastasiasoft.

They only publish the game in Asia/Japan, we completely self-publish in North America and Europe, which means eastasiasoft didn’t fund us. They took over distribution and marketing in Japan. And from the perspective of a western developer this is the way to go: we don’t know anything about the asian market and have to have trust in the capabilities of eastasiasoft. But I annoyed their Managing Director lots of times with different question regarding the submission process back then for the Vita, so they were a big help.

What was it like seeing a physical copy of your game?And are there plans for a physical Switch version?- Adam

Absolutely awesome. This was one dream coming true. Releasing a game for a Nintendo console was another dream coming true. Getting a physical release for a Nintendo console would be the trifecta…or triforce (DID YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE!?)

Was there any challenges in working with more people than just yourselves? What was it like organizing the work effort between you all?- Bunnsie

Yes, that was indeed a challenge. Tackling a commercial project, although Sir Eatsalot seems like a “small” game, it was still a huge undertaking for us. I mean, as mentioned before, we didn’t have real experience. Sure, we did some prototypes altogether, but none of us developed a complete game from start to finished and released it. Biggest challenge was reconciling the artists. All of them had a different way to draw, so Monika quickly learned that we need guidelines and created a so called “art bible”

That’s really interesting. As Monika was the art lead did she come up with the character designs and then give them to the artists to draw? Or did the various artists all come up with the quirky characters in the game?- Adam

Both. Monika created Sir Eatsalot, Hysterica, the Black Knight, the major characters, but NPCs and all the creatures were done by the others. We gave them some information what we’d like: this creature lives in this level, it needs to be related to something like a croissant and is maybe a dog? And then the artists scribbled away and showed us first drafts.

If you were to make another game what genre would you be most interested in trying to create 2D or 3D, Pixels etc?- Thom

This sounds like we’d stop making games!

We’re already about to start our next project. Generally speaking we will stay in the 2D space. We LOVE 2D. Especially frame by frame animations. And yeah, this is (business wise speaking) stupid as hell, because it’s super time-consuming which means it’s really expensive to do. But yeah, I guess we dumb, we want to do that, because we adore this style and want to cater to players who also love it, since we honestly believe that you can do soooo many cool things in 2D then in 3D, at least art style-wise.

If Nintendo came to you to make an indie game with one of their IPs, which would you choose and why?

Pokémon. I have a love/hate relationship with these games and I would like to create a version of it I would like to play.

Who besides Sir Eatsalot was your favorite character to create? Or the team’s favorite character, if you know that?- Bunnsie

I really loved the Black Knight.

(For the team) I think that’s the old administrator lady of the Chocolate Grotto, Kyarameru.

Is there anything you would particularly change about the development of Sir Eatsalot if you could go back?- Bunnsie

Oh boy, yes. Some systems we created are really tight and I’m proud how we set them up. Others are fragile as hell… I don’t want to get too technical, but the way levels are loaded and structured internally aren’t that optimal. This would be the first thing I’d change.

So to round off the questions. Where can we find out more about Sir Eatsalot?- Adam

Here’s our official presskit, all information you’d like to get about the game are listed there. Videos, Screenshots, Features etc.

Here’s our Nintendo eshop page and you can follow us on Twitter or join our Discord server.

Great thanks so much for joining us Slawa, we hope you had a good time!- Adam

Of course, great questions folks, thanks for having me

And if you should get the game, please share some screens/videos on Twitter and tag us, our Twitter Handle is @BehindTheStoneS.

That was our first ever developer AMA on the Switch Indie Fix Discord server. I plan to run at least one per month, so if you’d like some one-on-one time with indie devs come and join!

What did you think of our Behind the Stone interview? Will you be picking up Sir Eatsalot? Have you already picked it up? Let us know over on Twitter or come and say hello on the SIF Discord server.

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