Hey there, friends,
We hope you're safe and well as we somehow barrel into September in the most bizarre year imaginable. Today, we wanted to answer a few more questions we've received from the community regarding working from home, and our pretty unique situation as a husband-and-wife development team.
Remember, if you'd like to ask us any questions yourself, about Rip Them Off or anything else Lozange Lab related, feel free to start a discussion with us in our Steam Community Hub: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1295860
Let's answer some questions, shall we?
It’s been a tough year for everyone, but for game developers worldwide, the process of creating games has been made more challenging with work-from-home and lockdown orders. As a small indie team, how has 2020 been for you, and how has it affected development of Rip Them Off?
Since we started Lozange Lab around 5 years ago we’ve been working from home, side-by-side. Our office is right here in our apartment!
To switch between work and homelife, after a day of work we would usually go out to have a drink, see a friend, or go for a walk. This was very limited during the lockdown, and of course we missed those relaxing moments. Those moments were really what was making us take a break and call it a day, so sometimes it was hard to stop working all the time. We had the feeling of being locked in the office, and working longer hours is often inefficient.
Lockdown may have led us to have a more cynical tone in Rip Them Off, it was a little bit more light-hearted at the beginning. It still is now though, but just in a more peculiar tongue-in-cheek way.
Also, making a game where customers visit shops when it's very regulated these days, makes us think about lockdown itself. We really start to wonder at what point people’s wellbeing matters more than the economy.
What’s one thing you miss about developing a game pre-lockdown?
We usually take the opportunity to make some kind of play test of our upcoming games during video game conventions. It's very informative to watch people play your game, their reaction, what they like or dislike or don't get at first sight. It's also nice to be able to directly talk to our players. Once the convention’s finished, we debrief and eventually fine tune parts of the game based on their feedback.
This year's conferences were all cancelled, at least in their physical form, so unfortunately it was not possible to run such play tests with many players. For Rip Them Off, we ran a private, closed beta test with a very limited number of players but it wasn’t as informative as a public playtest.
To balance this we decided to run a public closed beta test in August and launched a call for testers. We received a huge number of responses, beyond all our expectations, and were able to run a very interesting test with many testers. We were blown away by their reactions and their very detailed reports. They really enjoyed the game and went very specific into what they'd like us to improve.
Having a Discord server now (we’d love for you to join us! : https://discord.gg/U4bv5WA) allowed us to discuss directly with our beta testers. We even had them test an early version of a feature we're working on for the first major update of the game after its release!
Lozange Lab is a husband and wife development team, that’s really cool! What’s it like developing games with your partner?
We met at a computer science university, our dream was to make games together. We worked in big IT companies for a few years, each of us in a different company first but during the last few years we were even able to work together in the same company. Then we decided to make our dream come true, and created Lozange Lab to make games together. Although not all aspects of having your own company are cool, making games together is super cool!
What are the three best things about developing a game with your partner?
As "birds of a feather stick together", we don't have radically different points of view, no fundamental disagreements, so it's easier to find consensus when we do not agree on something during game conception. It also helps to have the same kind of humour when you go for a satirical tone in the game!
When we watch a movie, read a book, play a game, or anything that can be used as a source of inspiration, if it gives us an idea about a funny game mechanics or an original concept we can immediately discuss it and share our point of view.
Personal agendas are taken into account in the development planning, we can totally decide a last-minute change based on a personal event which may not be possible in a standard development setup.
Thank you for joining us in our second Q&A as we approach Rip Them Off's release on PC, Mac, and Linux this September 24th, right here on Steam. Please do give the game a wishlist using the button below, it's truly an enormous help in reaching new players:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1295860/Rip_Them_Off/
Thank you, and as always, stay safe.
Mat and Ava x
Be sure to follow us on your favourite social media platforms to stay up-to-date on everything Rip Them Off as we approach the exciting launch on September 24th:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Lozange_Lab
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LozangeLab/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lozange.lab/
Imgur: https://imgur.com/user/LozangeLab
...and please do join us on Discord so that we can chat directly: https://discord.gg/U4bv5WA