While the Iron's Hot - Interview w/ Arnaud Planche

[00:00:00] Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of the Pre-Order Bonus podcast. You're joining us for one of our Game Maker series and we are back to talk with Arnaud, creator of The Upcoming. Soon to be released while the Irons Hot. Arnaud, welcome back to the show.

[00:00:26] How are you? Good. Thank you for having me back. And we're also, of course, joined by Jake, Jake, Price. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. It's surprisingly doing very well for a Monday. Surprisingly well for a Monday. It's maybe because this is obviously the Thanksgiving holiday week,

[00:00:45] so short work week. Although Arnaud probably not for you, I would guess. I'm guessing you're going to be working straight through this week because you got a game coming out. Is that right? Yeah, it's been very busy lately. But all good stuff.

[00:01:02] I'll remind everybody that we spoke to Arnaud. It's been a year and a half, two years maybe even. We had an interview with you. We talked about at the time early in development while the Irons

[00:01:14] Hot. And we are now just literally like a week or two, maybe two weeks away from this game coming out to Steam and to other platforms. Arnaud, tell us how are you doing? How are

[00:01:28] you feeling about the development process? And how's everything on your side? Just give us the breakdown. You know, overall it's been, I'm doing great overall. Awesome. There's some, you know, the development process can be a little nerve-wracking, but she has a very first game

[00:01:47] coming out from our team in general. But it's been very good. We've had a lot of things change in like a year and a half. And overall we've been doing great, excited for the release.

[00:02:04] And since that time also acquired a publisher Humble Games, which is huge. I assume that's amazing for you guys. I assume that's been a good experience and that's been good for you guys. Yeah, that's been, that was huge in getting the game to where it is right now.

[00:02:21] Yeah. They've been super supportive of our, honestly, of our creative vision I would say. They've been very open into like letting us put together the experience that we wanted to put together. And they've been very supportive in like ensuring that it gets to the finish line. You know?

[00:02:41] So it's been great. That's awesome. How long have you been working with Humble Games? I want to say a year and a half. It happened kind of close after the first interview we had. And yeah, over a little over a year.

[00:03:03] Nice. That's cool. Now I don't want to say it was because of the interview with us, but no. Definitely not. We don't have that kind of poll. So if you're an indie dev listening to us,

[00:03:16] I'm lying right now. This is because while the iron is hot, I remember when this first showed up sort of in my Twitter feed about a year and a half ago, I just thought this game looks

[00:03:27] amazing. It looks super cool. And just to kind of give you guys an idea of what I see here. Right? So you were playing as a blacksmith and it seems like this sort of side scroller

[00:03:36] adventure game with a whole lot of crafting. And I thought it was cool initially and the game is very cool. But what initially grabbed me was like, hey, when you were playing like these games set in medieval times, typically you're playing as a warrior. But like what happens

[00:03:53] to the blacksmith? You know? And so playing from that perspective is what really grabbed me. And obviously the idea is grabbing the attention of a lot of people. It's great to see that

[00:04:02] you have a publisher. How would you say like in the last year and a half, the game has evolved from sort of this, these initial concepts that we saw of like, hey, you're the blacksmith

[00:04:13] that's making all the things possible. How has that changed? How has that been expanded since then? So a year and a half ago, when we kind of talked, it was right after we released our very first demo,

[00:04:28] I think. And at that time, the game was like you're playing as a blacksmith, but you could still have, it wasn't, you could still like do some combat. You could still do all that.

[00:04:41] So you weren't a warrior, but you would still like go through kind of like more action-y section. And the biggest thing that changed is that that's all gone and that game became like

[00:04:51] an awesome cozy game. And we focused more on that like crafting aspect and driving the world. Like driving the story through your crafting and through that skill of like, how does a blacksmith come about solving issues? And like what does the blacksmith bring about in an island that

[00:05:10] is a bunch of craftsmen but is missing a blacksmith? So we kind of focused more into that and we removed the aspect that weren't necessary to like the experience. And that made it be like a lot more

[00:05:26] of a chill game, which I loved working on. It made it like, you know, like I would be able to like develop during the day and then go on my couch on this team deck and like keep playing it

[00:05:36] and just relax. Nice. That's amazing. So yeah, I would say this is the biggest change we've had, like just focusing on the chill wholesome aspect of it. We made it also a lot more story driven.

[00:05:51] So you have like a whole story that takes you through the whole island and kind of like you impact the world based on like your choices and what you discover of it. So it's been, yeah, that's how it changed.

[00:06:07] How did you come to that decision? Because it feels like a big, you know, if you start out with a game and you've got combat and obviously like most, I mean, I'm probably not shy about

[00:06:17] saying I think most games revolve around combat or include combat in some way just because that's just like the nature of sort of tactile video games, right? It's like that you need

[00:06:29] some activity to do and that's in most cases going to be combat. How did you come to that decision? Because that seems like a pretty huge decision. Okay, we're just not going to have

[00:06:37] combat at all. It's just going to be this. So we had combat until our first milestone with humble like our alpha and then we went through testing and we realized it's just

[00:06:51] it wasn't fitting. And there's two reasons like it wasn't really fitting and we could make a game that wouldn't want make you want to fight like you would be able to you still have some danger that you experienced but it's never through like actual fighting. Like you have

[00:07:08] some stealth section where you escape some bats and stuff like that. But combat felt like first it wasn't necessary and second it was taking time away from us working on the actual core

[00:07:20] loop of the game. And kind of we talked with with humble and the team at humble and we kind of just realized, yeah, it just we should just focus on what the game is good at right now.

[00:07:33] And we kind of you know that saying like for the fun. And we just for the fun and just the fun wasn't in the combat we had designed for this project. It just it just it just

[00:07:43] made sense with like playtesting. I think that's cool. Yeah, I agree with Cameron. That sounds like a tough decision to make. And as you you're talking about like you said this is

[00:07:55] a conversation that you had with humble. And I know we talked about this a little bit before we started recording but I think now's the time for me to ask like, how do you feel like your

[00:08:05] relationship with humble has been and how how they helped you sort of narrow scope and really hone in on following the fun in Wild Irons hot. So early on in the project we kind of

[00:08:16] had a long we had long talks before signing on like what what scope was how do you like get to it was part of our discussions then we had we had kind of a plan that we had the GDD all that sets

[00:08:32] very early after signing I would say. And and then so that was the main plan of like we had a date, a plan all that sets. And then as we progressed forward they were offering me advice

[00:08:47] or like, you know, opinion or like how to play testing work they set up some testing with some other members of the team that had never played the game before all that stuff.

[00:08:59] And they were so like working together we're able to kind of keep our vision of what should the game be or what's the game like what did they what did we pitch pitch very early on

[00:09:10] like we pitched a blacksmith game where you impact, you know, like we experienced the work through a blacksmith kills. And they were able to like support me into like the decision that I needed to take. And like, they were offering advice but it was never advice like,

[00:09:28] you know, this is what you need to do. It's like this is what we think would benefit the game but at the end of the day was on our side and on our like, you know, decision to do

[00:09:39] yes or no we shouldn't take them. Most of the time, if not like, all of the time it was just great advice that we just incorporated as best as we could. But yeah, there's also, you know, like stuff like combat, they were like, you know, doesn't really work.

[00:09:57] Like, it didn't really connect when I played it. It felt like it was a lot of place. Then we looked into it and we're like, you know, this is our solution. Then they come back and

[00:10:06] then we have just a discussion on like the points with the producer on the project. And just working together we're able to like pin points and make sure that like, you know, we haven't we had other stuff that we had planned we had the story was planned

[00:10:22] and you know, all that stuff but testing working with him with them we get just an idea of like where we at and how much we can do until it's time to just release the game because

[00:10:37] game is needs to be released at some point. And we would we would just talk about it and being like, we don't think this is necessary. This is as impactful. How do we make it

[00:10:48] either more impactful or how do we like reattribute our resources to make sure like the other elements of the game are more impactful. That's awesome. I love that you use the word discussion like seven

[00:10:59] times in there right that's a type of relationship that you really want right you want this discussion. And what's what strikes me is interesting is you you started these discussions before signing

[00:11:11] a deal so they were willing to sit down and give you feedback and advice on the game before there was a contract in place. Yeah, I think it's kind of a practice. I've seen other

[00:11:24] kind of scouts to it sometimes where like, I feel like it's just it wasn't just like yes or no we'll do your project. It was like, we're interested but there's those elements that

[00:11:37] we are afraid of or that we think should be improved on or that, you know, or it's like it's just like all those discussions where I think like, you know, both sides have something to

[00:11:49] offer so it's more like a partnership than a publishing deal. So yeah, I know I'm first of all, I love this space that you run into with this game. In fact, Jake and I were

[00:12:03] just having a discussion a couple episodes ago about like the state of farming Sims and how you know, basically Stardew Valley is the king and there's essentially nobody else in that market

[00:12:15] is really I mean, there's been so many games in that market since that game came out and kind of brought this deluge of indie entry into that you know, farming space. But I love the fact

[00:12:26] that this game, you know, like you said it's like a cozy style game but it's like blacksmith simulator. Beyond that though, I'm curious when you were making the pitch to Humble and for the sake of people listening or like they're seeing the game, what's what's the

[00:12:42] hook that you pitched to them? Like what's sort of the vision or the gameplay loop that hooked them in and got them interested and that you think are going to get people interested? I'm as the

[00:12:51] creator, I kind of want to hear your pitch on it because I look at it and I think you know, super amazing looking like blacksmith simulator, which is amazing. But I want to hear like

[00:13:02] what is it that got Humble bought in? So when we first pitched the game, the hook that we had said is like Stardew Valley meets Moonlighter with a blacksmith. Nice. Sounds kind of weird. But

[00:13:19] I think that's what that was the title, the mix of the game we wanted to go for. And throughout development, it kind of like evolved into a more adventure-y style stuff like we had mechanics like Moonlighter had with like you could put

[00:13:34] items on the store and all that stuff. And we kind of just again play tested it and just got into a point where we just, you know, that Moonlighters aspect of it is

[00:13:47] not working as well as we wanted it to be. So it became more of like your blacksmith Stardew Valley kind of pitch. Okay. Got it. So it's fine you said Stardew Valley as an example,

[00:13:58] but it was a good loop because we wanted to make it so that, you know, like for me, Stardew Valley, like you start as a farmer and then as you progress, you get more tools that

[00:14:10] allow you to do more stuff like get the sprinkler. And that's the loop that we wanted to kind of replicate for a blacksmith. And our solution to do that was to make a village,

[00:14:22] rebuilding your village kind of stuff like story. So as you progress in the story, you meet people that you bring into your village, you get more skills that allow you to different things more efficiently and explore the island more efficiently or go to different areas and stuff

[00:14:39] like that. And is there like, I assume there's like quests with the villager if there's like an overarching, you said you've added additional story elements. So I assume there's a larger story component. Is that correct or mystery of some kind or something?

[00:14:53] Yeah, we added kind of so there's a three part three arc story in a epilogue at the end. Oh wow. You definitely that's crazy. So yeah, the first kind of like the way we did it is

[00:15:04] like the first arc gets you into the divide, like you kind of discovered the element in the system of how you're a blacksmith, the crafting system, the crafting loop. Second arc, we wanted

[00:15:14] to take you around the island so you meet the different people. And then the third arc is where it shifts a little bit. And I won't say much on it, but it shifts into like, what's the actual

[00:15:27] like deal on that island? Like what happened to like your village and what do you have to rebuild it and stuff like that. And your decision into the end of the third arc

[00:15:37] decides kind of like which epilogue you've got. So you either got like a very like wholesome and good epilogue or kind of like your gray epilogue where you were a little bit like, okay, that's

[00:15:49] little, I like, you know, don't spoil it. Okay. So the story has been super fleshed out then that's wild. So there's like some decisions that you've got to make. Yeah. The story as we wrote the story more and more, we decided we realized like that's what was

[00:16:07] driving this like the experience for most of the time. And it's like, you know, I feel like with crafting game, you can get into this loop, which was hard for us to like not

[00:16:18] get into of you make items just to make items. And we wanted to have this this element of the story of like, you know, you met you mean tonight, you meet a character and then you

[00:16:29] either discover or make an item for this character. And it's, it's like we've got orders and we've got all that stuff. But the side quests and the main story allowed us to kind of like

[00:16:39] push you into the crafting loop and push you into making items without being just like, oh, you have to make items to get some more money to upgrade your village. Oh, gotcha. You've got like, you've got like a chicken who wants a compass, so you have to build

[00:16:57] for the compass. It's like we have like some quirky characters. Nice. Yeah, this is sounding fantastic. Obviously, we were interested in the game, like when we first reached out for the interview and man, I just for whatever reason,

[00:17:12] wasn't aware of all of these story changes. And this sounds really fantastic to me. It really sounds like while the iron is hot has been able to really come into its own. To me, like it's interesting. You see your initial pitch was like

[00:17:25] Starter Valley meets Moonlighter, but you're a blacksmith. To me now it just sounds like while the iron is hot. Do you feel like you've reached a point where the game has really gotten

[00:17:33] its own identity? Hope so. I guess we'll know December 5. But I hope we got to that point where it does feel like a mix of different genres that are kind of weird. That story element

[00:17:52] kind of gives you that all text adventure vibe, but the crafting is also kind of a little bit of a crafting experience. And you've got those like to the side scroller puddles scene that give

[00:18:07] you like a little bit of an adventure genre. So it's, I hope so. It sounds like it. To me, it sounds like the current pitch is that while the iron is hot is while the iron is hot,

[00:18:20] which is kind of the goal, right? Yeah. Honestly, I think we were able to make, like I'm very proud of the game we made. So like I'm very proud of what we wrote for it

[00:18:33] and like of course this stuff that I want to like do better or do more of or stuff like that. I assume, yeah. I assume this close to release like you're obviously content complete. You're

[00:18:44] just bug squashing at this point. Is that okay? Got it. Bug squashing and testing on like different devices. My living room is filled with controllers. So along those lines, I mean, since we talked, you know, since we talked a couple years ago, what has been the number one,

[00:19:07] like the biggest hurdle, the biggest challenge that you faced like in the development process? What's been the most complicated or like hardest thing to figure out? Yeah. Talk us through like the challenge of kind of getting to where you're at now. Like what was the biggest thing that

[00:19:20] you had overcome? I think there's two challenges that we kept coming to. It was so the first one and when we cut combat, it was like how do you make a game interesting without this,

[00:19:34] you know, combat mechanic? You can't really just get more enemies. You can't really get like a different enemy. Like you just have to keep making it interesting. But you can't use combat. That was a first like challenge, like designing a wholesome game is challenging.

[00:19:54] And the second challenge was like how do you keep it interesting past the story? Like what do we want to do to make the game kind of like just not like that's it, it's done but like you can

[00:20:05] keep still playing at it and you can still get through it. So those two, like how do you make it interesting by itself? While like how do you have the story but still make it interesting

[00:20:19] without having to always follow the story? I guess that makes sense. Yeah. And I mean, not as a way to progress. Yeah, that sounds super difficult. This is why I don't make video games that I just talk to people that make them.

[00:20:39] Maybe you can reveal a little bit of your creative process here without like, you know, giving away anything. But what was what if any kind of breakthroughs that you have? I mean, obviously you did figure figure it out. And you created a game that doesn't have combat.

[00:20:55] Like what what things stood out to you or what what were sort of the breakthroughs in that process of figuring okay here's what we can do. Here's the things that are engaging and fun

[00:21:04] and interesting and like finding the fun without combat. It's a good question. I hope I have a good answer for it. I think writing the story was like the biggest part, like coming together

[00:21:22] as a team and being like where that was the story that we want to tell here was one of the biggest way we were able to solve that combat issue. Gotcha. But with that said, like how do you make

[00:21:33] it so that you still have like a loop that is interesting without just doing fetch quests? Yeah. Was so you know, it I want to say it's still a lot of play testing like you just write it

[00:21:46] and you implement it and you play test it because that's the only way I know how to make it, you know how to make sure it works out. And we were end up we end up like you know,

[00:21:56] if a story element or a moment in the story didn't really connect or was just a lot more of the same or was taking a lot of time for not a lot of stuff, we would shift stuff around

[00:22:09] a lot of play testing, a lot of play testing by sort of the creative process because we've had those we've had most elements in the game, art wise kind of set like we've improved on it and

[00:22:23] we've made new decors and new locations. But we were having those we were able to rapidly implement something and test it pretty fast internally. And before like reaching a milestone point or reaching a point where like we deliver something that doesn't make sense. We're able to

[00:22:41] do a lot of a lot of play testing internally and a lot of like just discussions with the other members of the team who all have different genres in the head like the art director loves

[00:22:53] dungeon crawler stuff. I love story driven stuff like just different people with a lot of different you know, gameplays that they like coming together and trying to find something or how

[00:23:06] to make a wholesome game. Yeah, I love that. Now I that if like it's me excited because I am 100% like a story driven type gamer like you can have the greatest gameplay loop ever

[00:23:21] but if you don't have a story like that hooks me in that's like hard for me to stick around. So I'm excited to experience what you guys have put together there. Yeah, excited to really sit. If you had a venture guess of how many hours of play testing

[00:23:36] you think your team has performed? Like what are we talking like how many hours do you think you've dumped into this dumped is the wrong word that's negative connotation like how many

[00:23:46] hours have you poured into play testing? I don't think I have the exact number. I have like since we put it on steam and started testing steam with the achievements which we implemented achievements like two months ago, we each have 160 hours pretty much on playing the game.

[00:24:04] It's two months ago? Yeah, I put it I started testing like all the steam behavior and like all the steam APIs and the achievements and all that stuff about two months ago,

[00:24:16] two or three months ago maybe and that's been like right now on steam my play time is 160 hours. So to that you can probably add like the moments where I didn't have steam turned on

[00:24:32] and I was just playing the game in the editor and that's yeah that's a whole lot of hours that's that's super fascinating too. Just the way that you're describing it from ever since

[00:24:46] it was on steam just testing a specific aspect of how it runs on one platform right? So I'm glad you answered that because I think that gives us a sense for those of us who are

[00:24:56] you know not devs and we love playing games that there's a lot of time that goes into this and sounds like that time play testing has been really beneficial to you've really been able to

[00:25:06] sort of figure out where you want the game to go and what's working and what isn't working. So very cool. And we handled steam and steam deck it's like the biggest stuff we tested it on

[00:25:19] which gave us kind of a good view of like how it would play on like holding it in like a switch mode or handheld. I'm glad that we've had support on the other stuff is what I'll say.

[00:25:38] There is a lot more gears spinning when you start doing it on Xbox and on switch and on PlayStation that I'm glad we had support on and I'm glad I was able to focus on the steam version.

[00:25:56] Is that that's another way that Humble has been able to help you out is just get people to play test on all these other devices? Yeah well we have like you know people that are helping

[00:26:04] us port to the version on like consoles so they've handled kind of like all this aspect of making the game on console and handling console release testing on console. That's crazy well that's that's incredibly helpful you get a much larger footprint going

[00:26:33] on console for sure. Were you originally just going on steam like until you had Humble involved? Yeah I mean when you're like by yourself I think making a solo game without any support on like release I feel like Steam is already a pretty big beast to tackle

[00:26:54] because you want it to be on steam and you want it to also now be on steam deck so you want it to be playable on both. So yeah before Humble we were focusing on just having it on

[00:27:06] steam yeah. Gotcha hoping we could one day port it on console but I know I have to ask this question this is going to be a weirder one do you have any real life experience with the blacksmithing?

[00:27:19] A real life experience in terms of like was did I spend time behind the anvil? Have you yeah have you yeah I haven't spent nearly enough time as I should behind an anvil

[00:27:35] and holding a hammer. Yeah but you have you've done a little bit. I've done I've done some in France there was like these things in the south of France where you can go in a forge and just

[00:27:44] like you know try it out. Oh really nice. That's wild. Yeah so did you just how much research did you do on this or did you just kind of come up with stuff on on your own or did you like

[00:27:54] build your progression systems and stuff off sort of real life terms and yeah can you tell that? Yeah early so we tried we were making a blacksmith game so we researched a lot like how do you do

[00:28:09] like blacksmithing in real life and then it was kind of like the question of what how can we kind of like transmit those experience in a pixel art game which that's not easy like it would have been a lot better for us to make

[00:28:27] it like a VR assimilation game or something and like just actually be hammering but on a pixel art game it was it was a little weird so we took some liberties and like what the process is

[00:28:37] but we tried to maintain the core aspect of like you melt it you mold it you grind it and then you assemble it. There were some moments where we tried again we tried a lot of different methods of like

[00:28:50] going through that process of the forge we tried like adding some heat treating some like different metals at different temperatures all that stuff and in the end we kind of like

[00:29:02] cut it down to like the bare minimum of like how to give you like that blacksmith feeling without you needing to be fully into blacksmithing to play the game and it being kind of chill

[00:29:15] like we didn't want it to be we used to have like for example we used to have moments where you would be able to like totally fail your pieces that wasn't very chill like it would make it

[00:29:28] like a lot more stressful to craft to like craft each items if you could fail them it was you know like a lot more stressful so we had to come up with a way to fix and and get to that.

[00:29:42] So yeah we took we did a lot of research for like I'm a big fan of forge and fire which is okay great show yeah that's awesome lots of forge and fire we did lots of research

[00:29:55] but we did take some liberties into like the blacksmith process with the blacksmith process and I think that's something we came up like in youtube like there's some people like watching playthroughs of stuff being like hey like you know it took some liberties it was like yeah

[00:30:09] we took some liberties so it's an awesome adventure and this is not 100 real to life that's funny that you got comments of course yeah of course you did yeah of course even those have like some like interesting interesting aspect with you know sometimes people

[00:30:29] say comments that aren't super actionable but if you like dig under it like you have some aspects that you can implement and consider when you design it well that's very cool well I know we

[00:30:43] we are close on time here but um we are super excited to be playing while Darren's hot coming very very soon as was already mentioned December 5th and we're not coming to all platforms

[00:30:56] correct Xbox I mean yeah coming to steam hopefully steam I mean steam and steam deck Xbox Xbox one PlayStation 4 PlayStation 5 and Nintendo switch awesome that's crazy well we're super excited to be playing at um Arno what is the best place to follow

[00:31:17] you follow the game see kind of what you're working on and what you're talking about we've so we've made a discord that's in our like steam page but honestly follow us on steam and wish this on steam wishlist join our discord if you'd like to join

[00:31:34] and yeah that that's the best that's the best place awesome well we will grab links for those and put those in the podcast description Arno thank you so much for coming on the show

[00:31:43] and talking about while the iron's hot giving us the inside scoop I for one this has got me even more excited to play this one so thanks so much for kind of revealing the secret sauce there

[00:31:55] you can find more from Arno obviously we'll put the Twitter we'll put the links to the steam page go wishlist that we'll put the links to the discord and then as far as the pre-order bonus

[00:32:06] podcast if you enjoyed this episode with Arno talking about his game and giving and having this interview we have a lot more of these in fact we have the original one from two years ago you can

[00:32:16] find on our podcast show page or you can find other interviews with other indie devs as well if you like this please let us know you can also do that on twitter at pre-order cast you can follow

[00:32:29] us you can follow me at mass generic jake at jakeup underscore chip tip 18 and finally if you want to support us you can also find us on patreon.com slash pre-order cast

[00:32:39] where you can get the deluxe edition of the podcast sign up for five bucks a month that helps support us support the channel helps us grow and do fun stuff like these episodes thank you so much for listening and have a great night have a good one