Four years ago, insurance adventure multiple awards and near-universal acclaim for its creator Lucas Pope and made enough money that he could afford to take it relatively easy for a while. Still, it came at a cost: Pope was close to making that hiatus permanent, admitting to considering retirement after the game's four-year development left him burned out. Happily, he's since changed his mind; forthcoming Playdate release Mars After Midnight has rejuvenated his love of game-making, while he has another mystery project in the pipeline, too. After his appearance at this year's LudoNarraCon for an online panel about detective games, he joined us for a candid and wide-ranging chat about solo creation, design philosophies, and the magic of 1 bit art.
You've talked about potentially quitting after finishing Obra Dinn - and also that you didn't consider it 'finished'. What prompted those feelings? Was it just a case of working on a single game alone for such a long time?
It took a lot out of me, basically. Obra Dinn wasn’t really ready to be shipped when I shipped it, or I’d say it needed another six months – but I decided that if I didn’t ship it in two months, I wouldn’t be able to finish it. I was just really burnt out on that game: four and a half years is a long, long time for me.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1655216247/articles/ZkUEbj0bS1658839885412/5440880504.jpg]
Was it simply the complexity of the game that made it so time-consuming, or was there more to it than that?
One of the reasons was the follow-up pressure for Papers, Please: people had a lot of expectations and I wanted to meet those expectations. Which is fine – I’m not complaining about that, but to deal with that pressure for four and a half years was kind of just killing me. I never plan my games that well but Obra Dinn was a lot bigger and harder to put together than I expected for the first couple of years. Then when it hit me how much work it was going to be, I kind of just put my head down and did it – but that wore me down. I usually have lots of ideas for new games so I’m kind of excited about what I’m going to be working on next, and I’d gone through the cycle of being really excited about the next game I was going to work on so many times that I just got really tired of thinking about games. My wife is really the only one who lights a fire under me and says, ‘You gotta finish it’, or puts a schedule in my mind. And I basically told her that this is it: I can’t make any more games. But she knew that was really just because I was super burnt out on this one game and if I got a little time to cool off then probably I’d be fine again.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1655216247/articles/ZkUEbj0bS1658839885412/0544801504.jpg]
And now you’re making a game for Playdate. Was the chance to make something smaller particularly appealing? Or was it more about the hardware itself? It feels like a natural shift from Obra Dinn in terms of visual style, with the black-and-white display.
It was kind of a merging of those two things. One of the things I really liked about Obra Dinn that I can look back and feel good about is the art style. I really like 1bit – it introduces lots of interesting challenges for the art production and design and the visual structure. And it puts all these limitations on you, which I really like as a developer. Limitations are the best thing. So I was leaving Obra Dinn [behind] but I was still in the ‘I like 1bit’ mindspace. So when Playdate was announced, I thought, ‘This is perfect – this is exactly what I want to do’. The size of it and the portability forces you to think about smaller games. It’d be hard to play, you know, a ten-hour RPG on there, but a smaller, pick-up-and-play game works really nicely. And that would also force me to kind of chill out a little bit, not try to do another Obra Dinn.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1655216247/articles/ZkUEbj0bS1658839885412/4088810140.jpg]
It was a chance to work on something you could make more quickly, with much less pressure.
Yeah. But the other thing was, at the time, the pandemic was just kicking off, and I was spending a lot more time at home with my kids who were not in school. So I thought, 'If I'm going to be around my kids all the time, maybe I could make a game for them?' My games always have some kind of death or destruction or some kind of terrible stuff [laughs]. Why? Do they really need that stuff to be fun? And wouldn't it be great if I could make a game for them? I had shown them Obra Dinn here and there, and they liked the way it looked. And I showed them a little bit of my other games. I made a couple of these Ludum Dare games - real short weekend games that also have death and destruction in them, but they're very bite-sized. And my kids play those and enjoy those. So I thought, 'OK, why don't I intentionally add another limitation on top of the kind of restrictions I like to work under and say, OK, you can't have any blood and guts and there can't be a surprise bomber on day five or whatever?'
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1655216247/articles/ZkUEbj0bS1658839885412/1000086068.jpg]
On your development blog you immediately describe Mars After Midnight as 'a small game'. Is that largely about managing expectations?
Yeah, for sure. Everything I do is to manage expectations [laughs], because of the pressure. But still - and this is something I didn't realise when I started working on a Playdate game, I was just working on PC with a simulator; I didn't actually have the hardware. And when you get the hardware in your hands, there's a realisation that it calls for certain kinds of games. There's something about the small size and the small screen - the expectations are for a different kind of would make on PC. game than you you Mars After Midnight is kind of like an acceptance of that. And I'm trying to lean into that a little bit. When I try to think about the sort of tools I usually have for telling the story or building mechanics, a lot of those don't work on a tiny device that hold in your hand. So it's been an interesting process to figure out new ways to make the kind of game I want to make. But at the same time, there is a little bit of a cushion here because I am saying it's a small game and I'm also saying I'm making it for my kids, basically. So it will not hit the same notes that somebody who loved Papers, Please and Obra Dinn will necessarily want.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1655216247/articles/ZkUEbj0bS1658839885412/1465156008.jpg]
The action is still viewed through the player-character's eyes, though. You say on the dev blog that "apparently I can only make firstperson games" what is it about that perspective that appeals to you most?
I don’t know [laughs]. It’s really hard for me to make a game where you see your guy, basically. There’s something about firstperson that just connects me to the player better, I think. I haven’t thought about it too much, except I know that I always think in firstperson. When I’m thinking about what kind of game to make, from the interface to what the player is doing, everything is always first-person. And, you know, storywise, it makes it a lot easier to connect with the player just because you’re talking to them directly; everything is [seen] through their eyes. So in that sense, it’s a lot easier – or a lot more natural.
MISSION TO MARS In Mars After Midnight the Playdate screen acts as a viewing window that you peer through, the handheld's crank flipping open a hatch to reveal a variety of procedurally generated Martian faces. Your job is to determine which ones you let in. Pope doesn't want to give too much more away for now, but outlines a couple of ideas that immediately sprang out from the original con...
You've talked about potentially quitting after finishing Obra Dinn - and also that you didn't consider it 'finished'. What prompted those feelings? Was it just a case of working on a single game alone for such a long time?
It took a lot out of me, basically. Obra Dinn wasn’t really ready to be shipped when I shipped it, or I’d say it needed another six months – but I decided that if I didn’t ship it in two months, I wouldn’t be able to finish it. I was just really burnt out on that game: four and a half years is a long, long time for me.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1655216247/articles/ZkUEbj0bS1658839885412/5440880504.jpg]
Was it simply the complexity of the game that made it so time-consuming, or was there more to it than that?
One of the reasons was the follow-up pressure for Papers, Please: people had a lot of expectations and I wanted to meet those expectations. Which is fine – I’m not complaining about that, but to deal with that pressure for four and a half years was kind of just killing me. I never plan my games that well but Obra Dinn was a lot bigger and harder to put together than I expected for the first couple of years. Then when it hit me how much work it was going to be, I kind of just put my head down and did it – but that wore me down. I usually have lots of ideas for new games so I’m kind of excited about what I’m going to be working on next, and I’d gone through the cycle of being really excited about the next game I was going to work on so many times that I just got really tired of thinking about games. My wife is really the only one who lights a fire under me and says, ‘You gotta finish it’, or puts a schedule in my mind. And I basically told her that this is it: I can’t make any more games. But she knew that was really just because I was super burnt out on this one game and if I got a little time to cool off then probably I’d be fine again.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1655216247/articles/ZkUEbj0bS1658839885412/0544801504.jpg]
And now you’re making a game for Playdate. Was the chance to make something smaller particularly appealing? Or was it more about the hardware itself? It feels like a natural shift from Obra Dinn in terms of visual style, with the black-and-white display.
It was kind of a merging of those two things. One of the things I really liked about Obra Dinn that I can look back and feel good about is the art style. I really like 1bit – it introduces lots of interesting challenges for the art production and design and the visual structure. And it puts all these limitations on you, which I really like as a developer. Limitations are the best thing. So I was leaving Obra Dinn [behind] but I was still in the ‘I like 1bit’ mindspace. So when Playdate was announced, I thought, ‘This is perfect – this is exactly what I want to do’. The size of it and the portability forces you to think about smaller games. It’d be hard to play, you know, a ten-hour RPG on there, but a smaller, pick-up-and-play game works really nicely. And that would also force me to kind of chill out a little bit, not try to do another Obra Dinn.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1655216247/articles/ZkUEbj0bS1658839885412/4088810140.jpg]
It was a chance to work on something you could make more quickly, with much less pressure.
Yeah. But the other thing was, at the time, the pandemic was just kicking off, and I was spending a lot more time at home with my kids who were not in school. So I thought, 'If I'm going to be around my kids all the time, maybe I could make a game for them?' My games always have some kind of death or destruction or some kind of terrible stuff [laughs]. Why? Do they really need that stuff to be fun? And wouldn't it be great if I could make a game for them? I had shown them Obra Dinn here and there, and they liked the way it looked. And I showed them a little bit of my other games. I made a couple of these Ludum Dare games - real short weekend games that also have death and destruction in them, but they're very bite-sized. And my kids play those and enjoy those. So I thought, 'OK, why don't I intentionally add another limitation on top of the kind of restrictions I like to work under and say, OK, you can't have any blood and guts and there can't be a surprise bomber on day five or whatever?'
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1655216247/articles/ZkUEbj0bS1658839885412/1000086068.jpg]
On your development blog you immediately describe Mars After Midnight as 'a small game'. Is that largely about managing expectations?
Yeah, for sure. Everything I do is to manage expectations [laughs], because of the pressure. But still - and this is something I didn't realise when I started working on a Playdate game, I was just working on PC with a simulator; I didn't actually have the hardware. And when you get the hardware in your hands, there's a realisation that it calls for certain kinds of games. There's something about the small size and the small screen - the expectations are for a different kind of would make on PC. game than you you Mars After Midnight is kind of like an acceptance of that. And I'm trying to lean into that a little bit. When I try to think about the sort of tools I usually have for telling the story or building mechanics, a lot of those don't work on a tiny device that hold in your hand. So it's been an interesting process to figure out new ways to make the kind of game I want to make. But at the same time, there is a little bit of a cushion here because I am saying it's a small game and I'm also saying I'm making it for my kids, basically. So it will not hit the same notes that somebody who loved Papers, Please and Obra Dinn will necessarily want.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1655216247/articles/ZkUEbj0bS1658839885412/1465156008.jpg]
The action is still viewed through the player-character's eyes, though. You say on the dev blog that "apparently I can only make firstperson games" what is it about that perspective that appeals to you most?
I don’t know [laughs]. It’s really hard for me to make a game where you see your guy, basically. There’s something about firstperson that just connects me to the player better, I think. I haven’t thought about it too much, except I know that I always think in firstperson. When I’m thinking about what kind of game to make, from the interface to what the player is doing, everything is always first-person. And, you know, storywise, it makes it a lot easier to connect with the player just because you’re talking to them directly; everything is [seen] through their eyes. So in that sense, it’s a lot easier – or a lot more natural.
MISSION TO MARS In Mars After Midnight the Playdate screen acts as a viewing window that you peer through, the handheld's crank flipping open a hatch to reveal a variety of procedurally generated Martian faces. Your job is to determine which ones you let in. Pope doesn't want to give too much more away for now, but outlines a couple of ideas that immediately sprang out from the original con...
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Edge Uk (Digital) - 1 Issue, August 2022