Hello everyone! How was the weekend? We hope you were able to have some rest and a lot of fun. As some of you may have seen in last Thursday’s announcement here on Steam, Discord, and our social media profiles, we organized a Q&A session with HaoJoy Game in our new Twitch channel. The event was hosted by Gurjiv Jaitla (@frozenbawz) and, apart from having Barry answering questions, we also had Steven Zeng from 2P Games participating in the conversation!
In this Q&A session, Barry and Steven told us all about the team behind Dust to the End, the origin of the project, its development process and the challenges they had to overcome, and finally the future of the project (and maybe other new projects?). We also talked about the gaming industry at large, and answered some questions that the viewers asked through the Twitch live chat.
As the event lasted around one hour, we’ve transcripted the whole interview down here! We hope you find all that Barry told us very interesting.
GURJIV JAITLA (2P GAMES): How did you live the full release? Was it as good as expected?
BARRY (HAOJOY GAME): After the update from March to July, it’s generally OK. In particular, it has been understood and affirmed by many players.
G: How many people have been working on it?
B: We are five people, including a producer, a game designer, two art designers, and a programmer.
G: Is it the first game you make together?
B: Yes, it’s our first one. Only two of us knew each other before founding HaoJoy Game to do something cool, and we became good friends with the rest during the development.
G: What is so attractive about developing adventures in post-apocalyptic settings? Do you devs enjoy destroying the world a little bit?
B: We wished that players could imagine the experience of starting from zero in a difficult situation like this. You know, it’s not easy to rebuild a whole civilization in such a hostile environment like the one you find in Dust to the End.
G: Did other movies or games inspired you to create Dust to the End?
B: Long story short, history itself inspires us. One day, we started talking about a famous man named Fidel Castro and the Cuban Missile Crisis. It made us think about a post-apocalyptic world and how our human beings could live in it. With a little help from other fiction works such as Mad Max and the first Fallout games, Dust to the End was born.
G: What makes Dust to the End unique compared to other strategy and management games set in a post-apocalyptic world future? Tell us something special about it!
B: In Dust to the End, players can build some industries in the city, and the supply and demand of these industries influence the output and prices of commodities. Players can arrange these industrial systems according to their own preferences. In essence, you run the economy by controlling the supply and demand.
G: I’m sure that your workflow changed a lot when the pandemic got worse, and it forced everyone to stay at home. How did this event affect your way of working?
B: It took us about four months to adapt to this new routine and figure out how to get the most out of working from home, but after that everything was smooth.
G: What are the biggest challenges/problems you faced during the development, and how did you overcome them?
B: The formulation of the art style. To be honest, we have changed at least two versions, yes, all overturned the re-established. We tried some styles and also spent more time in art design than we had first scheduled. After all, it’s a post-apocalyptic world and it was very important for us that the players could feel like they were living in that world.
G: More and more developers are encouraging themselves to launch early versions of their games, so the community can help them to test advanced features or create a balanced combat system. How did this model help you? Would you use it in your future projects?
B: In the beginning, we just built the game we wanted. This program worked very well for us because it taught us the relevance of listening to what players expect from a game like Dust to the End. It allowed us to solve many problems and try a few exciting suggestions proposed by our players, making the current version much more popular amongst our fanbase -- we gained their appreciation!
G: How much has the game changed from your first idea until now?
B: Very much! In its earliest version, the game was very demanding. For example, you had to abandon your vehicle in the middle of the desert when you ran out of fuel. Of course, this is how it works in the real world but it’s a very inconvenient solution in a game where you just try to have fun.
G: The trading system is a unique feature of the game -- it's way more complex than other turn-based sandbox strategy games with free-roaming like Battle Brothers, becoming pretty much the game’s core. Why did you decide to do that rather than focusing on combat?
B: Did you know that Dust to the End was originally a trading game? The combat system is not such critical. The first lesson we want our players to learn is that, in this world, you need to earn everything by yourself. So you may eat worms or drink some expensive but dirty water to survive. When you get more money, spend more time, you could then work as a caravan having some adventure knowing the outside world, but also make some money by trading. As the key features for us are trading and going on adventures, the old version of Dust to the End didn’t include the combat scenes you enjoy today; it worked like “Enemy show up!”, and then “you win!”, without any combat footage.
G: Trade is very dynamic in the game, with prices constantly changing according to supply and demand. From a game design point of view, how does the game tackle this in a realistic (but manageable) way?
B: Industrial system. Every city has its own industry, and players can build new ones or upgrade existing ones. Every industry has output and demand.
G: But this is not the only complex system we find in the game. Like it happens in any other society, players can establish friendly, neutral, or antagonistic relationships with other human groups. It must have been extremely complicated to perform since it has many consequences for the people living in the wastelands.
B: This is the choice we leave to players. Players will encounter many cities, gangs, and many events will be triggered. For example, if you have established a friendly relationship with civilians, you may not be able to get valuable rewards. But your team's mood will get better. Later, you will discover how important this is.
G: Are these systems also affected by events where the player doesn’t take part? Like conflicts between human settlements…
B: If the player does not participate, then these events are meaningless, so we like it when players join them and feel them. So, not now. Maybe in the future, they will.
G: On the other hand, combat has a simpler, more direct approach -- it reminds a bit of Darkest Dungeon, more so than more complex tactical, hex-based games. Why did you decide to do it that way?
B: We want the players to focus on growing their team in trading and social relationships so that they get more powerful in battle, but not overemphasizing the battle skills themselves. In most games, players can fight many enemies, just like that, without considering the context, character knowledge, and their teams. This is fun, but it's not true. We prefer to let players experience that you have no opportunity to fight against an AK with a simple knife.
G: What comes now for Dust to the End? As complex as it is, the game still has a lot of room for growth with new mechanics, locations, characters...
B: This is something we’d rather do in a brand new game. Maybe adding characters, cities, or events without further innovation could make players feel that the game is too repetitive.
G: Is there any other project in development we should know about?
B: There is! It is entirely different from Dust to the End. I can tell only two words today: simulation and real history.
G: There’s been some controversy these past days regarding the Steam Refund Policy and short games. Their policy allows players to refund games if they’ve played them for less than 2 hours, but this is a problem for short games, as some players use this to play and finish the games for free. What’s your opinion on this topic?
B: At the beginning, I agreed with that requirement very much. I thought of it as a kind of protection for players until I played FAR: Lone Sails, which is a very short game I loved it so much! I think steam should also consider protecting these excellent games.
G: What do you think could be a good solution for that? As you said, there needs to be a kind of “protection” for customers, but in this case, this is affecting a specific type of product, which are short indie games. What do you think could be done in order to cover both issues?
B: A good solution would be to use the Achievements system. There could be a condition that you cannot refund a game if you’ve gotten the achievement that indicates that you completed the game, so that this kind of dishonest player wouldn’t use this trick to complete indie short games for free.
G: What other issues do you believe that need to be improved/addressed in the indie industry?
B: I hope that many more players find their way to indie games in the future and learn to love them. And, of course, every industry has something that needs to be improved. But we are enjoying it, right?
Remember joining ourDiscord server to avoid missing our future meetings, ask other players for help and share your best moments in Dust to the End. We're helping for you there!