Folks, welcome back! The Tidekeeper team is pleased to announce that we had a lot of fun brainstorming over the last two weeks, and we are excitedly continuing development.
While we're working on our next update we want to release to you all, we thought it'd be fun to do some interviews with our developers to get a little insight into making a game!
Today, we are meeting Lawrence, the designer behind Tidekeeper. But, we'll let him talk about all that. Take it away!
----------------------
Kylie: Hey there! My name is Kylie, and I'm the producer for Tidekeeper. Today, I'm talking with Lawrence. Could you please give us an intro into who you are and what you do for the Tidekeeper team?
Lawrence: Sure! I'm Lawrence, one of the Game Designers at Simcoach Games. I'm the primary designer on Tidekeeper, and also contribute to narrative, writing, and audio aspects.
Kylie: Thank you, thank you! And let's talk Tidekeeper. What is your elevator pitch? How would you describe the game in a sentence or two for anyone unfamiliar with the concept?
Lawrence: I would say Tidekeeper is a strategic adventure game with an emphasis on scheduling and time management skills in a nautical atmospheric world (lots of buzzwords there, haha). Tidekeeper aims to teach these important life skills implicitly through core mechanics and experimentation.
Kylie: That is a fascinating concept! I want to dissect the scheduling component a little bit. You mentioned Tidekeeper as teaching these skills, which means that at its heart, Tidekeeper has a learning objective. How does designing a game with a learning objective compare to making one purely for entertainment purposes?
Lawrence: Good question. I tend to view the learning objective as another constraint to work in and a main star much of the design can revolve around. By "constraint", I don't want to come across as if I'm shackled by the learning objective. I see constraints and pillars as beautiful fence posts which mark out the area I get to play in. It's an exciting variable that can be woven into the game's mechanics and influence the theme and/or story. While I still aim to focus on fun, challenge, and all those elements that make games enjoyable, designing a game with a learning objective provides a unique challenge in also getting the learning objective to be taught in an engaging way. It's also a little heartwarming to know that the projects I'm working on can help some players with life skills.
Kylie: This sounds like a great perspective to have while designing such games! I'm sure your players appreciate the time you spend considering and testing things for their benefit. Speaking of, what would you consider to be some of the biggest challenges you've faced so far in designing Tidekeeper?
Lawrence: We were fortunate to come into Tidekeeper with a defined learning objective and grounded approach of how we wanted to showcase scheduling and time management skills. I would say that some of the bigger challenges have more revolved around everything surrounding it that the player is engaging with: world, story, minigames, and all the tech that goes into these aspects. Tidekeeper is a relatively large game for us historically. While we're all excited to grow the Hourglass Isles and deliver our full vision, a challenge for me has been to gauge how much to grow, what to grow, and how much we want to tackle as a team. I am by no means the final say; we are a pretty democratic team, but striving for balance and for aspects to not get lost or watered down in additional mechanics and features has been my latest hurdle.
Kylie: I can definitely understand that. At some point you'll have to reach a limit, but finding it seems really tough! You got this, though. As we're starting to wrap up, what would you say you're looking forward to the most as we continue development?
Lawrence: Our big push with these new additions to Tidekeeper has been to serve the environment and world of the game. We're all very excited to amplify the world and really make it feel like a living place. Filling in the gaps from our first deployment and exemplifying our vision of what the Hourglass Isles are and can be is a very exciting prospect and one the entire team is amped to deliver!
Kylie: This sounds exciting!! Thank you! Is there anything else you want to mention for the good of the cause before we sign off?
Lawrence: Everyone here is looking forward to making wonderful experiences for you! We want you to learn and have fun!