With the release of Bytebond just around the corner on September 18, we’re buzzing with excitement and gratitude for all the support you’ve shown us.
To celebrate, we’ve gathered your questions from social media and Discord, and today, our development team is here to answer them! We hope this Q&A gives you a peek behind the scenes and helps you get to know the small, but passionate team bringing Bytebond to life 😊
🤖 How did it all start?
It all started in 2021 as a group project on Lodz University of Technology in Poland. We started working together as a small team as a part of our studies. Little did we know that our little side project will soon turn into a full-blown game.
🤖 How many people actually work on developing the game?
Our core team consists of 7 people. They constantly work on developing and improving the game, but we also collaborated with a few awesome freelancers to create the UI, art and music. And of course there is also the amazing Anshar Publishing and Anshar Studios team helping us along the way ❤️
🤖 What inspired the concept for Bytebond?
I think the first impulse was to create a couch co-op game just because we really like this genre and thought there isn’t enough of them out there. Apart from this, Portal and Transistor were our main inspirations.
🤖 For how long have you been developing Bytebond?
The first prototype was created in April 2021, since then more regular development started in the September of the same year and lasted ever since. As the game was created entirely in our free time after work, the development was slow, but consistent 💪
🤖 Did you encounter any challenges while developing the game? How did you overcome them?
There were many challenges, just like with any big project, but to pinpoint the biggest ones: network multiplayer and difficulty balance.
When starting the project, we didn’t assume that networking would be necessary, and back then no one in our team was capable of writing netcode. Learning how to write a networked game while retrofitting existing mechanics with multiplayer support was the biggest challenge our team faced.
The difficulty is always a very hard factor in puzzle games. If the game is too easy, it becomes boring, if it’s too hard, it becomes frustrating. And the margin for error is much thinner than in other game genres. We did a lot of playtesting sessions to determine the right balance for the puzzles and iterated on every level design to maximize the chance of hitting the difficulty curve just right for most players.
🤖 What’s your favorite location in Bytebond?
My answer would be totally different in earlier development, but after last months I've become deeply attached to CPU, Motherboard and Credits, as that's where a lot of love was put in!
🤖 What’s your favourite enemy design?
The other person I play with 😈 There is no greater enemy than the hardships of collaboration. But on a serious note - the jumping guy is a very unique concept, and we really like how he turned out.
🤖 What's up with those old PCs? I thought we were inside the computer
They are just an infinite recursion loop, nothing to see here 👀
🤖 Can you share any behind-the-scenes art or concept sketches?
We didn’t really have much in terms of concept art, as our team is small and has no concept artist, but I can show you some screenshots of the game in its early stages!
🤖 How do you test and balance new updates before releasing them?
We first send the build to playtesters and gather the feedback, then the designers decide which changes are the most important and the rest of the team gets to implementing them.
🤖 What’s the funniest bug or glitch you’ve encountered during development?
Don't even ask how that happened…
🤖 Why are there animals inside the computer?
We wanted to show the PC as a kind of ecosystem with its own fauna. This is our way of interpreting what happens in the silicon and how the “bugs” are created 😁
🤖 What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned while working on Bytebond?
That making a game from start to finish is extremely hard, but also very fun and rewarding. And that there is no better feeling than watching someone play your game and genuinely enjoy it. Also, that last months of development can change sooo much in how the game looks!
🤖 What advice would you give to someone who wants to get into game development?
Persistence, passion and lots of critical thinking are the most important. Gamedev is hard even if it doesn’t seem like it at first, and you must have lots of motivation to keep moving forward. But if you do, the sky is the limit, and you can find lots of fulfillment in it.
Thank you so much for joining us and for sending in your fantastic questions!
Stay tuned for more updates as we count down to launch day—September 18!
Until next time
Bleep & Bloop OUT! ⚡
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