Hey Rovers! 👋 Today, we're excited to introduce you to the first of our new series of posts around our indie game, titled Dev Dog Diaries!
Recently, Team17 & Observer Interactive sat down together to film several Developer Interviews with the team from Observer Interactive working on Good Boy! We also filmed with lots of furry friends... some of which are the dogs that you'll meet as Rovers in our indie game. 🐶
In our first interview, we sat down with Kenan & Pippin to discuss the origins of Good Boy, seeing the development of the game go from Prototype to Beta, how it feels to have real dog's personalities as Rovers in the game, and much much more!
"I'm Kenan Wilsher, the Creative Director on Good Boy at Observer Interactive, and this is Pippin!
Pippins, a pugapoo, which is a bit of a mix. Pippin is now not long ago turned one! She's a right little ball of energy and she's my best mate."
"It's a bit devastating having to make a game about how much you love dogs and then, you're not able to have a dog myself through circumstances!
Good Boy is the only Rover in the game that isn't tied to any of the the development team's dogs. So that's sort of really good for players, that might not have dogs themselves or that do have dogs, and they want to sort of imprint their dog onto Good Boy.
We have this relationship between Good Boy and the Human in the game and the Humans, this androgynous character. Good Boy doesn't have the same memories like all the other Rovers do on the planet, so you can really sort of imprint that relationship between yourself being the Human and Good Boy being your dog on this distant planet."
"We always knew that the concept for the narrative of how these two meet was two lost souls meet when they both need each other the most, because that seemed to be the narrative that was universal with so many of the staff (at Observer Interactive) when they have met their dogs.
I think that's why the relationship between them (Good Boy and The Human) from the start sort of really just naturally gels well."
"Yeah, it's fantastic to see. Especially because I have such a hand in helping to do that, as well! The process of getting all the development team to create bios for their dogs, to help sort of inform the art, the animations, and the narrative has been really, really exciting.
One of my personal contributions to the actual development is that I made all the Rovers, in 3D. It was nice to translate the concept art that was created into a 3D model and then pass off to the animators so they can animate them and bring them to life."
"For me personally, the best moment is being able to show the first sort of renders the 3D characters to all the development team, because it's their dog brought to life in a rover.
And again, it's like this metanarrative that the LAIKA Programme exists within the game that allows people to immortalize their dogs, but now all the development team get to immortalize their dogs as the Rovers in the game. It's a really lovely experience!"
"Yeah, there's a lot! Pikmin was one of the biggest ones. A lot of the narrative stuff stems from a lot of the games that you'd see, like Animal Crossing for example with the relationships that you form with the villagers in the game.
Then like small loops in the game, like capturing creatures and then researching them for points to upgrade your chassis and upgade your tools. That's something obviously a lot to DREDGE for close inspiration for.
So there's sort of like an amalgamation of different games that have really nice loops or bits of gameplay mechanics that we thought that would be nice, but what if you did it like this?"
"To me, it means more than just the game because it was an opportunity for me to bring all my friends together to make something that we all love and spend time with my friends and the dogs."
If you want to hear more of Kenan's interview, the full episode is now live on YouTube here!
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Good Boy is coming soon to Steam and you can wishlist our heartwarming Petroidvania game now! 👇