The Cryptmaster: The Making of a Word-Based RPG

Welcome to another episode of The Gamerheads Podcast. What happens when a laborer, linesman, and teacher decides to leap into the world of gaming? Meet Lee Williams, the creative mind behind the innovative game, The Cryptmaster. Lee joins us to share his unconventional journey and how his passion for writing set him on the path to game development. From crafting short stories to participating in game jams, Lee's story is a testament to following one's passion, regardless of twists and turns. Alongside his partner Paul, who handled the coding and artwork, Lee has crafted a unique word-based dungeon-crawling puzzle RPG that promises to captivate and challenge players.

The episode also uncovers the behind-the-scenes process of voicing the CryptMaster character. Initially intended for a professional voice actor, Lee's own voice brought flexibility and authenticity to the role, drawing inspiration from old B movies and horror icons.  

Join us for a fun and insightful episode filled with anecdotes, development tales, and the passion that drives the world of indie game development.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This episode of Gamer Heads is brought to you by Magic Mind, the healthy energy drink that will help you take your creativity to a new level. Hi, I'm Celia Schilling from Yacht Club Games. Hey, this is James from Mega Cat Studios. Hey, this is Matt aka Stormageddon from Reignite Screen Snark and the Fun and Games podcast. This is Stephanie from the Boss Rush podcast and the Boss Rush Network. Hey, this is Mark and Kion from Bonta Affold. Hey, this is Sebastian with the PronerdReportcom and the Single Player Experience Podcast. Hi, this is Chris, mike and Garrett from Daylight Basement Studio. Hey, this is BaronJ67 from Level One Gaming. Hey, this is Todd Mitchell from Code Right Play Salutations. This is Mike Carroll from Stroll Art hey, this is Jeff Moonen from Fun and Games Podcast. Hey, this is Patrick from the Backlog Odyssey. Hey, this is Rune from Runic Codes. Hi, this is Andrew from Spallata Birds. Hi, everyone. Jill Grote, here from the Indie Informer.

Speaker 1: 0:58

Hey, this is Brimstone and you're listening to Roger Reichardt on the Gamer Heads Podcast. And you're listening to Roger Reichardt on the Gamer Heads Podcast. And welcome to another episode of the Gamer Heads Podcast. My name is Roger. This week I have a very special guest. I have Lee Williams. He is a game developer and writer and one of the creative minds behind the game, Cryptmaster and the voice of the Cryptmaster, as we talked before recording here. Lee, thank you so much for joining me this week.

Speaker 2: 1:28

You're very welcome. Thank you for having me. It's lovely to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:32

Well, before we get into the game, because I have a lot of questions about the game and I really love this game but tell us about yourself how did you get into gaming and your whole journey into the world of gaming and your whole journey into the world of gaming.

Speaker 2: 1:46

I think my journey into games working in games is probably not a very common one and not an optimal route, I wouldn't say, because I did lots of other careers. First I was a labourer, a linesman for the electricity board, security guard, night security guard. Then I had a whole career in teaching. I did that for many years, special education, so I was a teacher in Asenko, and through all that, though I'd always written.

Speaker 2: 2:19

I used to write short stories mostly and have short stories published from time to time, and that was just a kind of hobby and that turned into writing bits and pieces for games as more or less a sideline. And then, um, to cut a long story short, I it. It got to the point where I could make a, a full career from it. So I did that relatively recently, just before the first lockdown I think I moved full-time really working in games. So I so I had credits in games before that for a few years, just bits and pieces of writing, and I'd made my own games. I used to make games for game jams and things, again, just on the side, just as a hobby really, and it got to the point where I was getting enough work that I thought, well, I can make a full-time career of it. So I did that a few years ago, and then we put all our energies into making Crypt Master, so that's the first big game that I've made like that.

Speaker 1: 3:19

Wow, see, that to me is like because Crypt Master is so amazing and we'll go into that in a little bit here here, but this game is so complicated and so intricate and for you to tackle this as like your first, like big game on your own, like is shocking to me, like I and but I love it. You, you guys, did such a fantastic job I should.

Speaker 2: 3:40

I should mention as well paul, who is amazing, and Paul did all the coding and the art for the game and we kind of collaboratively did the design. Paul's got heaps of experience and he's just a very talented person. I don't like praising him too much this will be the last time I praise him during this interview but he's extremely talented and so he was able to shoulder an awful lot of that. He knows what he's doing.

Speaker 1: 4:08

Oh, that's funny. Well, before we get into the questions that I have, can you give us a little bit of what Critmaster is, for those that may have not played the game before?

Speaker 2: 4:18

So Critmaster is a I think the term I used for it originally was it's a word-based dungeon, word based dungeon, crawling puzzle RPG, which is very clumsy way of putting it. But it's hard to compare it to a lot of other things when you and some of the steam reviews a lot of the time people say, oh, it's like typing of the dead meets, it's, it's. But those are kind of a bit reductive. I think sometimes, because there are a lot of different systems in it, that some of them almost shouldn't work together. But I think we've managed to get to get to bash them, bash them into shape, but it is. It's basically a fusion of a lot of different genres. So it's a word-based game and the fundamental thing behind it for us was that we didn't see it as a typing game, as in. It's not about testing the speed of your typing or that sort of thing, but it's word-based in the sense that we wanted all the interactions, all your interactions with the game world, to be through words, so whether they're typed or spoken, a single word input at a time. We wanted that as the control method, so that was the kind of heart of the game, if you like, that we would have that system in place and then the game itself kind of spirals out from there.

Speaker 2: 5:35

And once we realised we wanted words as the central mechanic, you start thinking of all sorts of other things. You've got Wheel of Fortune, crosswords, riddles, anagrams, so all of the other things you've got. You know, wheel of fortune, crosswords, riddles, anagrams, so all of the other mechanisms of the game it's, it's in within the framework of a dungeon crawler, uh, but everything is kind of to do with words. That's not. That's. That's such, you know, it's so hard to to do like an elevator pitch or something. For every time somebody asked me that question, I did, I do what I just did then and I would just waffle I don't really know, not really still not sure how to describe it if I got stuck in an elevator. I had the pitch that somebody, I'd have to break the elevator somehow or something. Chap was in there for a while oh, but.

Speaker 1: 6:24

But I think I think, like what you said there really describes it well, because it is such a unique game. It's not anything I've ever played before and that's why, like, I was so attracted to this game and and even in my review I talk about how, even after playing the game and just like, or walking away from the game because I have to do other things I'm constantly thinking about the game and I'm constantly thinking about, like, how did they do this? What about this? How do you? You know can I try this word what happens here? It's so I just, oh, I love this game so much, it's so fantastic, thank you. So part of the game that I really like about this game is the concept of, like you said, it's this traditional dungeon crawler with typing of words as your primary mechanic. What inspired that? How did you come up with that idea?

Speaker 2: 7:16

It was very. Again, I'd like to have a neat answer that it came to us in one go and it was this, but it it was really. It was quite a gradual process, I think, and one of the advantages of working like the way Paul and I do is as as a very small team and we just cut sort of bounce back and forth and it's I mean it started. If you like, I'll tell you how, how the game began, which was as a game about pirates completely different, a game about pirates Really and you were going to be on a pirate ship and you would have a pistol and you would interact with everything by shooting it. And that was the first game.

Speaker 2: 7:55

We started working on the first proper prototype we were making, and then we realised you would have other pirates coming up to talk to you to ask you things about controlling the ship.

Speaker 2: 8:04

You would have other pirates coming up to talk to you to ask you things about controlling the ship, and we realised it was also fun, not only shooting them, shooting their hat off, shooting things, but if you shot the words in this, because they would have speech bubbles and we thought, well, that's quite fun, you could shoot the word out of somebody's speech bubble to make their sentence different or to make decisions in that way, and so we had a whole system whereby you were changing the meaning of things by shooting words out of things, which was really interesting, but it wasn't fun. If I'm honest, it wasn't an awful lot of fun. In a way, we couldn't really make it fun, but we really liked the idea of doing something with words like that. So then we started going down that route and for a while we had something where you could, um, you could pick words from the environment and uh, and then reuse them. So there would be you.

Speaker 2: 8:50

You would have a scene where there's a description up top telling you about a battle between two pirate ships, and you might already have collected from another description the words big, small, wet, something like that, and you could start swapping the words around in descriptions uh, so kind of scribble, naughty sort of thing, yeah um, yeah yeah that we persisted with that for a while, we realized that pirates now wasn't the right setting.

Speaker 2: 9:14

I don't know why we've still got pirates in the game, um, but it seemed to fit the idea of a dungeon crawler, because then you could have, you could have, you could use words like you could take the word rusty off a gate and put it on somebody's sword and you'd have a rusty sword and you know. So we had combining adjectives and nouns and then really, it just just like, little step by little, step, turned into, turned into what it is, what it is now.

Speaker 1: 9:39

Wow, and in with that, then with the, with the weapons also a part of that. What were some of the challenges when you're trying to implement? So part of the game is that when you learn something new, you're talking to the Crypt Master and he talks through the word and says, oh, I'm looking at something and you have to guess what that word is, what that word is, and once you get to the word, then you get, then you get letters for the words and and then you can then guess some of the words that you have and those become your weapons or your, your techniques. What were some of the? What were some of the challenges implementing that? That? That's that mechanic.

Speaker 2: 10:19

It took a lot of balancing Once we'd finally arrived at that mechanic and that core gameplay loop. For a long time that was all we had. We didn't have a lot of the other things riddles and so on so we just had the chess. You get letters from chess, the letters go into your words, you guess the words. That was the core loop and that took it did take quite a.

Speaker 2: 10:39

It took a fair bit of balancing, especially the words, because obviously the point is that the length of the words that you use is important because that determines how many souls. For a long time though, funny enough, we didn't have, we didn't have souls, um, oh, really game. So the difficulty was simply that a longer word would take, would take you longer, would be harder to remember and would take you longer to type. So actually one of the first iterations I think we did put more emphasis on typing speed. We're thinking in it, you know it's, it's just so. A harder word is longer, but it actually doesn't. You could you know if, if you're, if, when you're typing, it doesn't make a huge amount of difference whether a word's got five letters or seven letters when you're typing it always. So it didn't really work that. So then we, when we introduced souls I remember that was a really good, a wonderful moment they just, ah, it just all clicked together, um, but yeah. So there was a lot of balance involved, certainly in making that that mechanic work.

Speaker 2: 11:39

The crit master, the 20 questions thing with the, with the chests where you ask him to do things to the item that was, that was, it was. I think it was a stroke of luck that that worked as a mini game. I've originally, if I remember rightly, we were going to do that as more or less it's just going to be like a one or two little comic moments. We just thought it was funny. It's funny you can get him to smell things and and you can tell him to do stupid things. We thought that would be a nice little comic moment. But then we actually realized, oh, this works quite well as a, as a little itself. We could probably repeat this through the game.

Speaker 1: 12:15

Yeah, yeah, I love that and that's like one of my favorite things, because you really can make the Crypt Master do some weird things like smash it, taste it, eat it. What does it feel like, what does it smell like, and the responses are just, they're spot on, like that's the other thing. Like I'm so impressed, everything I've done in the game so far, uh has gotten a response. Uh, whether it be snarky, uh, at some points, right where he, where the crypt master is like why would you say that? Right, uh, but but even like I, I think I I typed in the word crap at one point, and and and the crypt master kind of yelled at me for that.

Speaker 2: 12:51

Come on, let's hang off.

Speaker 1: 12:56

Can you talk a little bit about that mechanic and thinking through the player's choices, because it really feels like you had a lot of thought behind what some of the words could be, and I'm assuming that you see some analytics on the back end now that people have been playing it and putting in you know guesses, because like there's a lot of times where I was just guessing words and really Cryptmasters like I don't even know what that means. What is that? What does that word mean? Can you talk about mechanic? And then the second part of that question are there some? If you see the analytics, what were some of the more surprising guesses that people have put in there for words or words that they've used?

Speaker 2: 13:33

Well, we don't actually have a use analytics in it at the moment. We did during some early rounds of testing, but I don't believe we do it. But what we do a lot actually is watch stream. We watch people play it on streams. Ok, it's always and I have. I mean there's.

Speaker 2: 13:51

I know I don't think there'll be a camera, but for the record I'm holding up a piece of paper with just lots of tiny spidery writing on it, as when I watch streams I'm constantly noting down oh, they use this word. I need to add it because we've got pools of words, so all these words are synonyms for whatever, and even now's it's getting less and less. But even now when I watch a stream, I'm bound to fill half a page with little comments like that. So, um, yeah, that that it really was. It's just one of the questions we've been asked a lot since we launched quick master is did we use ai, uh, or what kind of system did we use to get those responses? But there's no AI used. It really is just kind of old-fashioned, sort of donkey work me with me, a donkey, but I just I just sat and recorded lots, lots everything we could think of, but I guess there is a system in place in I I liken it to a coin sorter which is that when the player, when you say a word to the game, when you're walking around, you input that word and the game will check first of all is there is, is this a skill word? Is this a word that has a mechanical effect in the game, like hit or something? If? If it is, it does the skill. If it's, if it's not, no, okay, it looks. Is this a word that's got a specific response for it? But there's a lot like spoke responses for words. If it is, then okay, then it goes and gets. That triggers that specific response. If not, does this word fall into one of these categories?

Speaker 2: 15:26

And then we've got a number of things. So is it food? Is it an animal? Is it a profession? Is it, um, a spooky word? Is it oh? Is it even? Is it an adjective? Is it a verb? We've got big pools like that so it detects what kind of word it is.

Speaker 2: 15:43

Then it will play a random, it will choose from a pool and it will play a random null from the crypt master which is usually associated with that type of word. So, if it's a profession, if, then he'll say oh, are you thinking of a change in career? Or something like that. And also we have the words themselves, because I spent a stupidly long amount of time, more or less just sat with a dictionary, reading out just lists and lists of words with a sort of questioning inflection. So I'd be like just lists and lists of words with a sort of questioning inflection. So I'll be like ardvark, antelope, um, like that.

Speaker 2: 16:18

And then they can be fitted into the nulls. So he'll be like doctor, are you thinking of a changing profession? And yeah, yeah, it's all spoken mirrors really. But that's, that's how you get him to play the thells. And then, if it can't detect the word at all, then there's another pool of gnolls which are just like oh, stop it, you're not making any sense. That's what I thought. So it's yeah, and it's been really pleasing and really surprising actually to see how well it works. And one of the nicest things about streams is watching people talk to the Critmaster and they just get annoyed with him yes, I know, I'm just trying to guess a word Shut up, and he does feel more sort of alive almost than I'd anticipated. So I'm quite thankful that that worked out.

Speaker 1: 17:11

Yeah, yeah, I too fell into the category of like I know it's not a word, I'm trying. Thankful that that worked out. Yeah, yeah, I too fell into the category of like. I know it's not a word, I'm trying to figure out.

Speaker 2: 17:18

I love that. I love those moments Watching people play. There's always one of the things that that again kind of fortuitous really, but I feel worked out the best is the very first interaction with the Cryptmaster when he interrupts the player. I always like watching that on streams because most players are just not expecting that. He asked them to type in something and they start typing it in and then he says, actually I don't care, it's, it's always a nice moment because you could see people like I'm supposed to be. I'm the one playing this game.

Speaker 2: 17:55

Um, and I was a bit worried at first. I I did, um, I was saying to you earlier, I think before we record. I had a moment, um, I had a couple of days of panic before we launched, thinking this isn't, nobody's going to find this funny, nobody's going to like this, and one of the things I thought was I thought people, people are going to hate him because he's so rude. He's just. Is anybody actually going to get what we're trying to do with that, or are people just going to think this is awful? I don't play a video game to have somebody just make fun of me the whole way through. But, um, but thankfully people got it in the spirit it was intended and and players seem to really enjoy that. I think, if anything, I should have made him ruder to blaze yeah he is.

Speaker 1: 18:39

I will say I love the crypt master and the fact that you know you are playing, you know, basically bad guys, right, he like resurrected these. You're kind of bad guys, yeah, uh, I, I and he's just kind of a jerk to to these, to your characters, right, I, just I, I love that so much and and invert, like inadvertently I guess, or I guess maybe advertly, I'm not sure he's rude to you too because, like you're playing these characters, right, yeah yeah, I love that so when he's, when he's saying to them why can't you figure that out?

Speaker 2: 19:13

he's? He's also saying to the player really like if, but again, it's nice that people have taken that in the spirit, isn't it? I think what helps that a lot is that the cat that the crit master himself is a buffoon. He's, he's, no better, he's no better at all. I think if he'd have been really really superior and knowledgeable yes, and, and he was just poking at you all the time, why can't you figure that out then, then I think he would have been annoying. But actually he's, he's, he's a big doofus himself. He just doesn't really, he doesn't really have a clue. So, and he's, he's pompous and overblown and he doesn't know what he's talking about. So I think that helps a lot.

Speaker 1: 19:48

You know, soften that relationship I agree, I think I think it's funny because I think, even like a lot of the characters you run into uh are all kind of buffoons in their own way, right like uh. And that's what I love about this game, because it's just, it doesn't take itself real seriously. Right, it's um, but it's fun, it is funny and, like I said before we recorded, I don't think I've laughed this hard in a long time at a game. Because of how funny it is and just how well written it is. It's such a wonderful game. I really love it.

Speaker 2: 20:22

Thank you Well that really does mean a lot. It does, yeah, Because we weren't sure how people would take it. And it's really satisfying when you work on something for years like that and then just to see people enjoying it as you hoped people would enjoy. It is the nicest feeling.

Speaker 1: 20:41

Yeah, well, talking about the Cryptmaster, because you did the voice of the Cryptmaster, so it is a fully voiced character and adds a ton of personality to the game. Can you talk a little bit about what inspired the character and the voice of the character? Uh, and maybe can you uh, we, we talked off camera about or off air, I guess, about uh, about the fact that you, uh, you weren't going to be the original crit master as well I was.

Speaker 2: 21:13

It was as I was saying to you before, off air. I was, uh, originally I just did it as I recorded it as placeholder, but I secretly quite wanted to do the character of the crypt master. So I put a bit more effort than I usually would into the placeholder and then, thankfully, paul took the bait I remember paul and he played it, uh, with his wife and got back and said actually we were quite keen on your voice for the Critmaster, which maybe we'll stick with that for now. So I was quite pleased about that because I did fancy doing it. But it wasn't the original intention and what we were thinking was we'll get I would use my voice as placeholder, then we'll get a professional voice actor to do it. Voice is placeholder, then we'll get a professional voice actor in to do it, but the the other, um, uh.

Speaker 2: 21:59

The other important thing that we soon realized was that if I was doing the voice for the crit master, we could also we could do an awful lot more with him, because otherwise to have a voice actor in you, you have to have a voice actor in, obviously for for a session, maybe a two-hour session or something. So you, they record all these lines. In the case of the cryptos, there's not only is there a huge amount of lines, as I was saying about just reading the dictionary. You know, I don't know how you could justify in terms of budget getting a professional voice actor in just to read words from a dictionary, um, and also to to make it fit and seem as if he is, because obviously a lot of the sentences are sort of bolted together out of different pieces, so the word and then the null, and then the second part of the null, and to make that work it needed a lot of tweaking, a lot of me playing it and thinking, oh, that bit that sounds wrong.

Speaker 2: 22:45

His null there doesn't match the tone of the other parts. I can just quickly rerecord that which you couldn't do. So if we'd had a voice actor unless, unless they were physically sat here next to me all the time and I could keep prodding them to do re-records of just odd words and things it would have made it. It would have made it really difficult. So having me as the writer and co-designer and doing the voice as well was was really useful. I don't think we wouldn't have been able to put in place such a sort of um reactive system. Uh, otherwise, so it worked out. I think you know quite well.

Speaker 2: 23:23

In the end, yeah, but the crit master character, the crit master himself, yeah, um, yeah, I don't really know. I think the voice the voice was something mostly I used to do with my kids a lot around the house. It's just one of those stupid voices that you sort of you know. I said, yeah, um, you know, when I'm reading like bedtime stories and things, um, I was traumatizing my children with a necromantism. But yeah, I think I think it, yeah, it's, and my, my inspiration.

Speaker 2: 24:00

For I guess, if that influence is, I'm a huge fan of old b movies, um, but both american ones or universal ones, and vincent price and that sort of thing. A lot of people pick up on vincent price as an influence and also the old uh hammer horror, amicus, british, old british um uh horror movies, and so that I love. I love that that very, that camp sort of spookiness. That that, you know, was what we were aiming for. We realized very early on, because when we were first starting to make it, when we realised we wanted it to be a dungeon crawler, we wanted it to have this kind of slightly dark vibe to it. But we quickly realised, well, we can't do it seriously because the whole mechanic of them remembering words and guessing it's too goofy, it's too funny. You couldn't make a, you couldn't keep a straight face while all those shenanigans going on. So it had to be, it had to be a little bit comic.

Speaker 2: 24:57

And that's when I think I thought that you know, the best fit for it would be that kind of very hammy camp spookiness that you associate with old B movies and that sort of thing. So yeah, that's when. That's when the character started coming together, I think. And then it just Again, I think, because I was started coming together, I think, and then it just Again, I think, because I was recording so many words, probably, and it was during lockdown and I was shut here in this little room just waffling away to myself into the microphone. Because of that, I think the character just grew in complexity. Just, he naturally developed his own personality.

Speaker 1: 25:33

A follow-up question to that, then. Based on what you just said there, do you think that this game would have been different if it wasn't for lockdown?

Speaker 2: 25:42

That's a good question. It's hard to say. I mean, a lot of the early development was sort of during the first lockdown, and I think I mean here I always feel bad saying about this because I know it wasn't the case for very many people but here I had quite a comfortable sort of lockdown. I just moved careers to focusing on video games, which is remote, so I was working. I just started working remotely from home.

Speaker 2: 26:14

Anyway, I had the kids at home, but where we live I'm out in the countryside really, so we didn't have the sort of claustrophobia that a lot of people would have, because you can go out and walk around here quite easily. Yeah, so it was actually quite a nice period for me. Again, I don't like saying that because I know that's not the case for very many people but and Paul and I were just chatting every day and just working in a little sort of Bubble really for the first phase of development, and I think it just we had a little sort of period of grace in early development where we were able to throw out a lot of ideas.

Speaker 2: 26:54

We were we had we had probably most of the good part of a year. As I say, it started with pirates and things. It went through all sorts of odd iterations. We didn't feel too pressured to lock in something too quickly, which was really really helpful for us in this instance. I think it allowed us to experiment with something a bit more unusual than we would normally maybe feel we could make.

Speaker 1: 27:17

Yeah, yeah. One of the things that I love about this game, too, is the art style. Um, it feels very much, and I mean. Correct me if I'm wrong, it's. It feels like you both probably played some dnd in your time.

Speaker 2: 27:32

Am I, am, I am I correct in that you're not winding them up there, no, no, no, you're quite right to say that yeah. Yeah, we both have. We're both keen uh role players and um. I I very rarely get the chance to nowadays. When I was uh younger I used to a lot, but I don't. Most of most of my friends who were into um, dnd and um. I used to do a lot of tabletop war gamingaming as well. Most of them have moved off the island where I live, so I don't get the chance to do an awful lot nowadays. Paul does more than I do, I think.

Speaker 2: 28:07

But yeah, we're both very familiar with D&D and a lot of, as you've rightly picked up on, a lot of the influences of the art style were old D&D manuals, fighting fantasy, game books. I used to be hugely into. They were a big influence. So we wanted the art style. It was an early choice. We said we'd like it to capture some of the mood of you know, yeah, I guess for you know, sort of for us a nostalgic mood, things that we also remembered from our kind of formative years. So, um, things like, yeah, like game books, dnd, old school dungeon crawlers, uh, the influences, most of the influences, are quite retro, quite nostalgic, I think yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:56

but the thing I love about it too and I put this in my review is that it feels like almost like a dnd, but it's homebrew dnd, right, especially with the the art style, because it feels like uh, not that I was ever the artist, like the art that you have, but I mean I would take pen, right, black pen, and like draw my little pictures on my notebooks when I was a kid, right, and that's what it feels like to me. It feels very homebrew, it feels very like something that you would put together for your friends, and that's what I love about this art style as well.

Speaker 2: 29:28

Right, thank you. Yeah, that's really nice to hear, because we did want it to have some of that sort of feeling to it that it was yeah, it's like a as you say. Yeah, it's like a as you say. Yeah, it's like it like it's like a dnd campaign that you do for your friends with kind of just, you know, uh, I wouldn't say winging it exactly. It makes us sound very unprofessional, but, but, you know, but not caring too much about the, yeah, you know, the main, the main thing is that you're having fun and you know you're trying to. Yes, I think that was, I think that was probably the. That was probably one of the, the key sort of.

Speaker 2: 30:06

To call it a philosophy is probably a bit grand. I don't think we ever, we ever thought this is our design philosophy. But one of the things I think we had both had in mind while we were making it was that we, above everything else, we wanted it. We just want it. We just want the player to be having fun. So at each moment you think, is the player going to be enjoying this moment? Are they having fun? Is there something that could be said or done here that would entertain the player in some way. So it is almost like like being a dm and coming up with a campaign for your players and thinking I just want, I want funny moments, I want weird things to happen, I just want enough things to be keeping them engaged and and make sure they're having fun.

Speaker 2: 30:43

Um, yeah, so I think, and I think, yeah, a lot of the development of crit master was like that and a lot of it would just be me or paul thinking of things to like to amuse the other one, to think wouldn't it be funny? Wouldn't it be funny if the crit master said this at this moment, if he led you into doing this and then told you off for it? Uh, that sort of thing? Wouldn't it be funny if one of the chests turned out to be a mimic and it would just jump, yes, just jump out. Yes, that was a very late addition, that was.

Speaker 1: 31:12

That was just okay, almost went without mimics oh, yeah, that that surprised me and it surprised me. But then at the moment I was like this shouldn't surprise me at the same time, right like that. That's what I loved about it, because it felt like again, very dnd, you have gelatinous cubes. Obviously you don't call them gelatinous cubes, but you have the other blocks for copyright reasons yes, exactly. Oh, I loved that so much. It was so good, so good.

Speaker 2: 31:40

But the mimics I think the mimics were. That's an example of us watching streams, because I think when the demo came out, we were watching people in streams and quite often people would see a chest and they would approach it a bit warily and they would be saying it's a mimic really. I reckon this is a mimic and it never was really in the game, but we thought, oh, that's, that's interesting, that people are half, some people are expecting that. So we just thought, well, we should, we should do that. We missed a trick there.

Speaker 1: 32:04

We'll put in a minute now and then oh, wow, that's that, wow, that's, that's cool, that's awesome. Um, since the release of the crypt, master, you've likely received a lot of feedback, either from players or critics. Uh, what were? Were there there any review pieces? Or, I guess, feedback from players that surprised you the most.

Speaker 2: 32:27

Yeah, we've had lots of, lots of feedback sort of right across the spectrum and we've been making a lot of changes already since since release to sort of try and, um, you know, accommodate some a lot of it's around difficulty. Again, we've been very thankful that we've not we've had a relatively sort of bug not free, but it's bug light um release it's gone fairly well in terms of that um yeah but we've been fixing one or two bits, the the feedback that has.

Speaker 2: 33:01

Uh, one of the pieces of feedback that surprised us the most, probably, is how people, how much people, seem to have enjoyed the card game. There's a card game in there, yes, um, yeah, whatever, I love that game watching I've. I've only really got into it this is a weird thing, to admit. I've only really got into it since I've been watching people, since I've been watching streamers play it and I've realised, well, it's actually quite good, it's actually quite well balanced. The credit for that is mostly Paul's. We kind of came up with it together, but he's the one responsible really for all the balancing of whatever and he's done a great job.

Speaker 2: 33:46

It's a really enjoyable little minigame and it was only intended to be um, I think there's a sort of running joke that an rpg. We always. We said, well, if we're going to make an rpg, it should have fishing and cards in it. So we put fishing and cards in just for that reason really, and we thought it would just be a nice little activity for players to do a change of pace. But we, we saw it originally as being just a fairly throwaway activity. But it's, it's, it worked out. It worked out really well. We ended up building pool, ended up building a lot more complexity into it than we'd we'd envisaged at the start, and that's been nice to see players, players reacting, reacting well to that.

Speaker 1: 34:19

Yeah, I really players reacting, reacting well to that. Yeah, I really love that game and, in fact, a lot of characters. I'll just come up. Let's want to play a game of whatever, because it's so, so unique and so fun. And uh, yeah, it's it's.

Speaker 2: 34:30

And beating the crypt master at it is really fun he's quite, he's not too hard, he's the yeah, he's he doesn't like it yeah uh, what has been the most rewarding part of developing crit master for you?

Speaker 2: 34:51

um, I think I mean that I have to say the the. You know I've worked on a lot of different games before, but this has been one of the most rewarding. Just the process of developing it it's been a really, really fun one to make. It's one of the nice things about a very small team Paul and I and Sir Asher who did the music, and Kat and Sina and the wonderful people from Acapara who arranged all the voices and so on. We've been a fairly small team and a lot of the actual design process has just been me and Paul sort of bouncing off each other and it's just been. It's been a really fun process. We've just.

Speaker 2: 35:32

The nice thing about that about a very small team, is that you can just do what you want. Team is that you, you can just, you can do what you want. Frankly, we've just we've just sort of had free reign and akapara. The publishers have been great in trusting us to just yep, just go ahead, and once they'd seen the demo and they, they decided yet we want this. They were just yeah, we trust you to go ahead and do it us. You know, tell us what you need when you need it, but otherwise just go for it. So it's, it's. So. It's been lovely really the process of making Critmaster. Yeah, it's just been a lot of fun Nice.

Speaker 1: 36:09

I have one last question for you. Yeah, of course. What do you think the Critmaster would say about being interviewed on the Gamer Heads podcast?

Speaker 2: 36:18

He wouldn't. I don't think he'd be impressed. I don't think I don't mean this in a rude way, but he's not. He's nothing much impresses him. I think he would. Just you know what the whole GamerHeads now you'll be ridiculous. It sounds. That sounds awful. I think he'd just be very yeah, very cutting. I don't think. I think he'd just be very cutting. I don't think. I think you'd struggle to get him on here to start with, and then, if you did, I think you'd flip a table within a minute and be there like ridiculous.

Speaker 2: 36:52

I have to stop him from swearing, sometimes in my head. Sometimes when I do lines the first time he's quite sweary, the crit master. And then I have to go back and do a clean edit oh my gosh, I love that so much.

Speaker 1: 37:11

Oh, that is so great. Uh lee, uh. Where I know people can find uh this game on steam, because it's on Steam right now. Where can people follow you? And also, where can people follow Cryptmaster on social media?

Speaker 2: 37:26

On social media. It's at the Cryptmaster on Twitter. Paul and I are both on Twitter as well. I'm at Williams W-I y u m s. I don't post much. That's very interesting, though, if I'm honest personally, um but the crit master is quite active on social media, though he he he read a passage from twilight uh, yeah to celebrate getting to 400 reviews and my wife, my wife, heard me recording it.

Speaker 2: 38:02

She said are you, are you recording a passage from twilight in the crit master's voice? And I said yeah. She said did somebody ask you to do that? No, she despairs of me sometimes. She doesn't want to know anymore. Really, five minutes, just get on with it.

Speaker 1: 38:23

Oh, I love that so much. Lee, thank you so much for being on the show. This was such fun and I really appreciate our chat it was.

Speaker 1: 38:31

It was lovely talking to you and thanks so much for for having me on absolutely, I'd love to have you come back on whenever you guys come up with new ideas, a new game. Uh, you're always welcome to come back on the show. Even the crypt master is welcome to come on the show. Even though he may be rude to me, he's always welcome on the show thank you and appreciate that.

Speaker 2: 38:49

No, thank you very much.

Speaker 1: 38:50

Well, I'd love to and listeners, please go check out the game. Uh, as I said you can. You can check out a review on our site at gamerheadspodcastcom. I gave the game an a plus because I absolutely love it. It's on my short list as one of the game of the year for gamer heads, so go check that out and uh, and then go to steam. Buy the game. It's a fantastic game, uh. With that, everybody, stay safe and game on and we'll talk to you next week. Bye.