It's hard.
Enough.
They all want a gig for us.
I am Frank, and I'm here with Jonathan.
Hey. Hey, yo. Here.
We got Tyler.
Hey, what's up guys?
And we are the capital creative showcase.
we're going to be talking with a lot of video game developers today,
checking out all the new games that are out here.
These are local devs to the Sacramento area.
It's a wonderful event. We also have Smash Brothers.
Yeah, that was retro Systems over there playing Super Nintendo,
Super Mario Brothers and whatnot.
it should be a really good event.
What do you guys think about it so far?
Excited? Yeah.
It's, going to be a lot of fun.
It's a great set up here.
We like being out here
and just kind of enjoying the time and meeting all these new developers
and seeing all these new games coming across.
Yeah, there's been some really big highlights.
Asia games. I believe they're new this year.
you guys got to check out their game.
It is one of those games, you know, is going to be selling well on steam.
I look forward to to take a look at it and,
hopefully we can chat with the later on.
I'm looking forward just to see all the games. Yeah.
I mean everything here is so unique and so different.
I mean, it's it's just cool to see like more
and more people here as we, you know, as this scene gets bigger.
Yeah.
What do you think gentlemen and highlights so far?
I haven't really had a chance to go around and check out any of the games, though.
I know last year that was a lot of fun seeing the unique games
that people are making.
so I look forward to us being able to take a break at some point.
In order to set. You've been setting up for two hours?
Yeah, we're we're a little we're a little pooped.
It's also it's also cool, though,
that they're going to do like a People's Choice award. Yeah.
So there's like an area that you can scan like the QR code and then like
people can vote for their favorite game and then they get an award at the end.
They also have it where the developers of the games vote
for the game that they like the most, and they have a Developers Choice award.
So I think that's a cool twist that they have.
They've added. It really is. And we're going to submit our vote.
We're going to talk about it before we do it though,
and give our reasons to kind of explain what our votes are for.
but I do want to clarify, all the games are dope.
It's just so we're not picking favorites, but we're literally picking.
Favorite picking favorite.
I mean, I love these conventions.
This is one of our favorites.
It's a it's, it may be a smaller one, but the fandom is so dedicated.
But they they wear me out.
Yeah, they they do.
I remember last year Kyle came out.
We had we had like throughout last year.
It was it was frankly a little bit too many people for being honest.
we're all bumping heads back here.
All of us try to shuffle back and forth, but was we had Kyle come out
and then we're like, oh, afterwards we'll go to the bars, we'll hang out all day.
It'll be great.
Me and him both. Thank God he was on board with that.
We were just like, let's go watch the Kings game at my house.
All right, let's get back to some beers and, like, doze off on the couch.
Yeah, it was perfect.
Yeah.
Oh, man.
okay, so we have a lot to do today.
We have a lot of interviews, a lot of checking out things.
We'll discuss a lot more going on.
We even have a regular episode planned.
We're going to go over the news and talk about a lot of things
that are coming up in reviews and stuff.
So we'll see you guys soon.
And thanks for hanging with us.
Welcome back.
Everybody get Freaks network.
We're here at the Capital City Showcase.
I'm Tyler from who's got next game.
I got some great people we're doing interviews with today.
Go ahead and introduce yourself. Guys, come say hi to the community.
Let us know what you're all about.
Absolutely. Hi.
Maurice Jackson, one of the owners of the Holland e-Sports team.
I have my partner, Elizabeth, who's also a partner within e-sports as well.
So you guys are an esports training facility, which is so cool
to hear that esports has revolutionized and come up to the point where we can
now have this stuff for communities of all different ages.
So I kind of want to talk about like what your guys's goal is
and where you guys are at in regards to, you know, what you're doing.
Yeah, yeah.
So, so our location, our company is called the Holland Esports Training.
We focus on training kids from the age of 6 to 17.
And to your point, we're really looking to find a way
to introduce a youth into this world of e-sports.
I know before when gamers got into esports,
it was always a battle in their journey
to for them to get to that professional level,
getting people
to understand the values, the premises, why is such a passion of theirs?
We're really looking to close that gap, looking to use legacy players
to help our kids and youth understand the value of e-sports,
but then also showing the kids how to learn from their past experiences
to help accelerate their growth in their competition play.
But everything we do is fully curated by our by our community.
We make certain that our kids are not only introduced
to the games of their choice, but we also help them provide assessments.
We give them coaching, we help place them on teams,
and we also have our own self curated league to help them
graduate naturally into the levels of competitive play.
And there's a variety of games too, that you guys utilize.
It's not just like one set style of game.
You guys are open and diverse with a bunch of different stops.
I mean, you've gone over the list of stuff
and I know that you guys are continuously adding stuff.
So it's so cool to have.
And I know that you guys have multiple locations as well.
That's correct.
Yeah. So right now we have three locations.
We have one in Folsom.
We have one in Las Vegas, and our third one is in North Carolina.
we compete on Overwatch, League of
Legends, Fortnite, apex. got
Minecraft.
Yeah. And then, Rocket League. Yeah, yeah.
So we and then we're also always introducing new games.
Like just in the next month, we're going to be launching our, our game and Siege.
It's gonna be training on siege as well. Yeah.
but then, was talking to you about even Tetris.
Yeah. Bringing that into the fold.
Yeah. We're gonna mix in a couple of different things.
And we've talked a little bit about, you know, like wanting
to bring in different styles of games
because you've talked about the team aspects of games.
But then we also talked a little bit before, before we started,
the recording was more of kind of the single single player aspect
of, of the games and, and kind of working through those.
So it's interesting to see that
you guys are taking this dynamic and just running with it and getting youth
involved in that kind of stuff, and I love that about you guys and stuff.
So what what inspired the whole thing?
Where did it start out?
Well, for us, it started with the fact that as we were watching e-sports
and we were seeing that e-sports
is now being offered as a college scholarships to multiple schools.
we also saw that, competitive landscape was growing across the world.
I mean, they just announced the first esports World Cup and Saudi Arabia,
and then we started to look at, okay, where do where do people go
grow and learn.
Obviously, you have land centers where guys can,
you know, guys and girls can code, learn and playing.
But then we started thinking about where does the youth go?
Where does a youth go to be introduced and learn how to grow and training?
This I mean, baseball has Little League, football has Pop Warner,
but esports professionals had really nothing before this, right?
So we said, okay, why not build build a bridge and fill that gap?
Yeah.
And now have a place where kids can come in and can learn from professionals.
learn the artistry of e-sports, learn how to compete the right way in these games.
But learning community instead of learning in isolation.
And then we've also saw and again, another countries that, they're these,
these, e-sports are these internet cafes that are in some other countries,
a lot of these, a lot of those people who are in those internet cafes,
that's where their teams were formed, that's where their teams graduated,
and that's where these teams are competing on these world stage.
But then if you look at the states, we didn't see a lot of that happening here.
So that's where we thought
it was critical for us to build that bridge and say, okay,
where do we bring the youth in to come together to build this level of experience
and to do it in community and to do it with socializing and doing it
while learning some of the traditional landscapes of modern day sports.
Yeah, like communication, social skills, coaching,
mentorship, all the things that we got from traditional sports teams.
Yeah.
No, that's so cool to think about too, because we even talked about how,
like in regular sport, there's all this stuff, like you were saying,
but in, you know, in the e-sports world, it's it's such a niche thing as well
because, you know, a lot of people, it's not even just like they don't know,
they're just hesitant because they're not sure.
And it's good that there's this bridge in between
so that they can understand more of like, oh man, like, I can't get into this game.
This game has a competitive seem like there are games out there.
Like even when we talked about Tetris, you're like, there's a classic tendency.
Yeah.
You know, so it's cool to be able to have that for somebody
and be able to talk about, hey, yeah, there is a competitive scene
for a game that you like, but hey, I appreciate you taking the time, man.
Let them know where they can, you know, find
you guys on social media or anything like that. Yeah.
Let them know. Yeah.
So our locations again we have three across the United States.
We have one in Vegas, one here in Folsom.
The third one's in Cornelius, North Carolina,
the one here in Folsom on 187 Blue Ravine Road in Folsom.
they can find us on Instagram at 704 via Holland
or our Vegas location at 702 via Holland, or
our Cornelius location at 916 Holland.
Okay. Awesome. Hey, I appreciate you taking the time, man.
I wish you the best of luck.
I think we're going to be working together pretty soon. Absolutely.
Yeah, I definitely want to so need. That Tetris League.
Yeah check them out guys. Mulholland e-sports, man.
They got big things going on.
All right everybody, we're here with another game developer.
How are you doing? How are you enjoying the event?
I, really enjoying it.
Thank you for having me. This is super fun.
Go ahead, introduce yourself. I cut you off when you're doing that. Hi.
I'm, Ricardo Andre's, my alias, the comic master.
and, yeah, I'm an indie game dev and author.
What, what gamer did you bring today?
I brought Dark Storm.
So Dark Storm is a third person shooter.
And kind of the premise is you are a robot named Mars, and you have to go
and exterminate alien insects in this fictional city called Razor City.
So, the game takes lots of inspiration from Dune
and Titanfall and, yeah, it's the first of many games.
Hopefully.
What kind of story?
And did you get the story from the novel?
And like, I know you're also a novel writer.
Did you pull that story from there?
That's correct. So I'm a science fiction novelist.
my my novel luminary Quantum Rising, is actually different from Dark Storm.
So, Dark Storm was kind of a story that I kind of had in the back of my head.
and I wanted to do something different.
I, as a science fiction writer, you know, you love the genre,
but I thought it'd be fun to kind of explore a different venue and,
maybe look at how robots and aliens mash up together. Yes.
Is there any sort of.
A lot of times when we go into sci fi,
there's a, current day morality that we're trying to explain.
Is there anything going on in your game?
Yeah. So actually, one thing that I've been
really interested to implement my game is AI.
I know AI is really prevalent, in today's society,
and I thought it'd be interesting to have a killer robot
with artificial intelligence trained to fight aliens. Yes.
and to abstract humanity.
Because I know humanity shows up in science fiction all the time.
Of course, of course.
Now, is this going to be set in the distant future or in a different place?
I currently have it set in 2040.
That is a random number I chose off the top of my head.
Yeah, but I think kind of having a future that is close to ours kind of resonates
with a lot of the players compared to something 2130, for example.
Right?
Especially with the use of AI, AI is currently on the rise.
So when you start to introduce it in the game,
of course people start to feel the impact a little bit more.
in your story.
How has AI developed over time?
Have we lost control of it? Is it protecting us?
So I've always been one for AI, and I thought it would be interesting
to have artificial intelligence work alongside humanity.
Yeah, partly because in Dark Storm you're fighting aliens.
It's an alien invasion.
And AI is something created by humans, right?
So if humanity can utilize their tools to fight back
against aliens, I feel like that also really resonates with the player.
They feel like they have that fighting system.
Also, I wanted to steer away from tropes so.
Hard to do because of course we have like games like hell drivers, stuff like that.
So many alien games.
What kind of tropes are you trying to avoid
and what did you do that was unique?
AI in this subject?
I think the biggest trope we could talk about is how I turns against humanity.
Yeah, I think that's seen time and time again.
for things like Terminator
and all these other works that are becoming more prevalent nowadays.
Yeah. So that was definitely one trope.
Another trope that I wanted to steer away from was like I mentioned, you know,
making sure there's no humans in the game.
I think a lot of us as players are really used to playing
some sort of biped figure.
So to play something that is, you know, walkable,
you know, you have this walking mech, but it's a robot.
It kind of reminds a lot of players, at least players who have played it today
reminds them of like Armored Core six, for example, games
that they aren't really familiar with, they haven't really seen.
So that's a great that's great.
Speaking of development, how long have you been developing this game?
I have been developing it for seven months,
so I'm currently a college student studying computer science.
That's incredible.
I've seen how good this game looks for seven months. That is insane.
Thank you. There were a lot of restless nights.
Yeah, mixing calculus two and video game development
has definitely been a struggle, but I'm just glad to be here.
Yeah.
What, what kind of programing language are you using for this?
I'm using unity.
So I started programing when I was 13 and when I started programing,
I actually, dove right into unity, and I thought it'd be really interesting
to use an interface that a lot of pro developers are using.
Yeah, but still really push myself in the deep end.
So during the pandemic, I spent a lot of time learning unity.
And then finally, once I developed Dark Storm,
it just felt like second nature to me.
Is there some benefits to unity that you see are better than, say,
Unreal Engine or any of the other engines out there?
I would say the best, positive to unity would be the community.
I think the community has really sold me on unity because,
as I'm, you know, programing dark storm, I run into problems
and you just go online and say, hey, I need to fix my rigidbody,
my character controller, or whatever it might be.
And there's tons of forums made by unity developers,
unlike something like Unreal Engine, which is, more closed off, if you will.
Interesting.
Speaking of community, have you gotten a small community
started to build with for your game as excitement builds?
I have, you know, it's really hard to be
in this industry, especially as an indie game developer, indie author.
You can't expect instant feedback.
So when I checked my steam reviews, I was really happy to see
that people were playing it. Oh, good.
especially because, you know, like I mentioned, working
full time and college student, you know, you,
you publish the game and then you kind of like,
it's in the back of your head because you're going day to day.
So to see people playing it and talking about it, even on my social media
is, has really just made me feel like some I've made some sort of impact.
Have you gotten any feedback from this marketing,
the social media presence that has changed how you're developing the game?
I have, and I think one of the biggest feedbacks is actually making it free.
You know, I mentioned a lot of people, especially my best friend.
I told them like, hey, I want to make my game, you know, $20
and I decide $20 just because, you know, a lot of games I played was $20.
Yeah, it seemed it seemed logical.
But what he told me is like, you need to make it free.
You need to make it free.
Not in the sense where people aren't paying money,
but free in the sense
where they can download it and try it and tell you what they think.
And that just opened my world.
unfortunately,
I can't make my novel free because, you know, you for five years into it.
And. Yeah, but I really thought that making it free meant a lot to me.
What is the gameplay like in your game?
Are we first person shooter kind of kind of explain that.
So Dark Storm is currently a third person shooter. Okay.
Now I've heard lots of people say that they wanted first person, whatever it is.
And I didn't realize that, you know,
some people were just in love with the perspective.
It's so divided. Yeah. I had no idea.
So I chose third person primarily because I like seeing the model.
I like seeing the character.
to give some perspective, I played Battlefront when I was a kid,
and I loved seeing the Stormtrooper, the Jedi Master, whatever it is.
So to see Mars, your robot walking around the environment really meant a lot to me.
Yeah.
So Dark storm, third person, you're walking around this map, and this map is
Razor City, so it's completely decimated by an alien invasion.
And your task is to go and find these aliens and vanquish them.
Yeah.
Originally, the working title for the project was Search and Destroy.
And, you know, the same friend I mentioned
told me that's, you know, it's a Call of Duty game mode.
You can't just take that name. Yeah, but I liked the concept.
Search and destroy.
You can have a robot search enemies and destroy them.
So that's kind of the concept of the game.
And I was really inspired by doom.
I really liked how simple doom was and how playable it was.
Or you're thrown into this sci fi map, you have to go and find your enemies
and pick up collectibles.
I think that really forces the player to go and explore your map.
Go finding different areas of the map that you spent a long time developing,
and see if you can pick up collectibles to make your character stronger.
So okay, so that's some RPG elements where we're making our character stronger.
You speak about the map, is this an open world game?
Yes and no.
I would say open world in the sense where it is a giant map,
but no, in the sense where there are barriers, you. Are.
Not welcome in certain areas, and the map will tell you so.
And I think it's great being here, hearing the feedback people say, because I know,
you know, you consider games like GTA five, that is completely open world.
It's practically Los like a digital Los Angeles.
And thinking about that, can I make, you know, an open world in this dark storm?
There's a lot of things you have to consider.
So I would say that I, I should try to steer away from that.
Now, how do you
how do you decide the limits of your city or your, your environment
when you're trying to do an open world game like that or a bigger map like that?
I think the biggest thing is the storytelling.
So if we consider the the summary of Dark Storm, you know, decimated city,
alien invasion, killer robot, what are some locations in Razor City?
The fictional environment that the player can go explore?
One of them I thought instantly was military compound.
You know, there should be at least three military compounds
that show a ton of dead skeletons.
Show that soldiers skeletons with guns and army trucks destroyed tanks with fire.
another thing was a shot. Community.
And I will say the shack community came from limitations.
You know, keeping a low budget on the video game, I found shack models,
like, literally kind of like homeless people could have lived here.
So that suggested maybe, you know, there was an alien invasion.
Humanity.
Try living in the city and then decided they could not.
Another thing I decided was a shipping container section,
kind of like in Call of Duty, how I know.
And, the World War Two video game, they had the shipping container area.
Yeah.
The reason I decided this is because it's a little it's like a labyrinth.
So you have to navigate around the shipping containers
and it's a little eerie.
So that's how I chose the different sections of the game.
Now, do you have to worry about
how far a person walks before they run into the next interesting
item, maybe a collectible part of the game, something like that?
Or is it just like you want to make it feel vast?
a little bit of both.
So one thing that I really
wanted to include in the
game is if there's collectibles, I need the player to access them.
Yeah.
The other thing, too, is I didn't want the player
feeling inclined to walk off the map.
So one thing you'll notice when you play Dark Storm is it feels like there's sand
dunes blocking
you inside a section of the city and playing the game, exploring the map.
It didn't feel limiting in the sense that I had thought it would,
but because there's so many collectibles spawn throughout the map,
it really forces you to not quicken up your pace and go and collect these.
Yeah, these little items.
So and that's the primary game, play loop is the collecting
the items of stuff like that.
But it sounds like there's still a good deal of exploring and sometimes games.
Forget about that. That's good to hear that.
You've got that in hand. Absolutely, I completely agree.
So before we head out, where can people find the game?
And I want to shout out the novel too.
So Dark Storm is available on steam.
You just search Dark Storm.
I believe I'm listed under the Comic Master and feel free to download it.
there's no waitlist, no anything on there so you can go and download the the game.
As for my novel Luminary Quantum Rising, this is novel I've written for a while
and that is published through Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
And if you follow me on my socials, I have author events
all over the Sacramento Bay area area so you can go and find me.
And I love to design novels. So awesome.
That's cool. Thank you very much for hanging out with us today.
Thank you for having me. Of course.
Tyler here, he's got a who's got just who's just up there.
The who's got excellent podcasts on our display.
Tyler, we haven't heard from you a little bit on geek breaks.
Explain how who's got next games going.
It's just three dudes from college just talking about,
you know, back in the day, playing video games on the couch and just debating
and talking about different genres.
And the big thing right now is, we just went past March Madness,
for basketball, but I decided to turn it into a video game bracket.
So we got a bunch of different games that we have.
Our, you know, criteria is like, oh, what's the best,
you know, game to play on the couch with your buddies.
So we have each of the consoles.
So we have we PlayStation two, you know a bunch of different consoles
that we're going to go over, and then we're going to do a grand bracket
where each of the number one games that make it through the bracket
are going to go into a bracket and fight it out to determine,
in our opinion, what's the best game to play with your buddies on the couch.
Now you guys just finished the bracket, correct? We did.
We bracket and I believe the. PlayStation bracket.
Was PlayStation bracket.
Now I got I got some major beef with you
because Crash Bandicoot lost on that thing.
If you're if you're thinking PlayStation one is one of the pinnacle games,
how did that come out?
So the criteria is not best game, you know what I mean?
Because people made that argument is like, oh, hey, it's the best game.
Okay, well, we're not talking about the best game.
We're talking about the best game to play on the couch with your buddies.
Yeah, because I agree that it's the best game, but I don't agree
that, like because I've made the argument of passion play can be something.
You did actually, you were defending.
It was knocking down hard.
And it's hard because with the solo play game like that, you know,
what are you supposed to do to argue plain on the game, but,
you know, on the couch with your friends? Yeah, yeah. It's fun.
It's it's criteria.
You can change the debate so many times and have different nominations
just by putting in a little criteria. Like, yeah.
And you see with like all the other brackets that we have, I mean, the,
the most unique one, I'll give a little preview are Gamecube bracket.
There's no Mario Party because we decided to do
like one game per like criteria.
So like we have Mario Party eight in our bracket.
So we didn't want to do okay.
Mario Party favors Mario Party six in the grand final.
Well, okay, it's two Mario Party games.
You know, at that point you're just debating mini games versus,
you know, having a collective retrospect of different games
that aren't, you know, like Pokemon Fire Red versus Leaf Green.
Okay.
The same game, just different.
Yeah. You know, Pokemon changes. Yeah.
Mario Party might be the best couch co-op game in general.
I mean, I'm trying to think of something that's so.
Mario Kart. Geared for couch co-op.
Yeah, Mario Kart is good, but like the party aspect of Mario Party.
Yeah, I think it's inviting these segmented things.
You can go up to go for bathroom breaks.
I guess car has that feature as well.
Can you think of a better kind of game that's designed for couch co-op?
I don't know.
Not off the top of my head.
Mario Brothers three.
Give me a list of games to go through.
I'm sure Mario Mario Brothers three are more like Mario Brothers
two or the original Mario Brothers.
It's, I would say, at least in the two player respective.
Well. We had that is another debate.
It's like, okay, so what is two players?
Four players. You know how many players can play?
Yeah.
Because you have like the Wii that can you know
you can go on land and do eight players.
Yeah.
You know and retro consoles don't have that you know.
Yeah I got to say though for the Mario Brothers,
the reason that one's a tough one.
And I mean, David's mess with Miguel on this.
Yeah.
Is you have to wait until that person's dead to play the second player.
So if you're playing against playing with somebody who's actually,
like, skilled at the game, well, then you're screwed. Yeah.
And you're sitting there and you're just kind of like, somebody else play.
Yeah. You're like trying to, like, throw popcorn in her face.
It's nice when you smack the controller.
Yeah. You're like, mom's taking too long.
You throw that out there.
So it did for Miguel.
As we give him a dummy controller, he would just play on and go crazy for his
good old days. That's funny.
okay, so yeah, smash brothers also hit smash hit today.
That's a great couch co-op game.
Agreed.
Yeah, and it's a game that I've been playing since I can remember.
Like I one of the first consoles that I bought on my own was a Gamecube.
So I've been playing Smash Brothers since I was able to play console.
Yeah.
And that was back in like 2001.
Oh, God, I'm so old. Yeah. You know.
Yeah.
Every time I hear these dates and I'm just like,
oh, yeah, that's like 25 years ago.
He was old enough to go to war.
Yeah. Oh my God.
I remember working at ToysRUs and Louise were like the hottest item in the store.
Couldn't find them, I know.
And in 2006 Nintendo sends the shipments out every Wednesday.
So Wednesday morning I had a bunch of parents lining up outside of toys R us,
and eventually
I came up with a ticketing system so I can give them tickets
and then go back to their cars and warm up
because I was in the middle of freaking winter.
They're trying to buy Christmas gifts.
and it was nuts.
It was mayhem, right? So we had them all go through.
It took about six months for the WI to be readily available and then like,
okay, we're past that phase, right?
And then those bastards and the other think, oh, we fit.
Yeah. You remember we. Fit.
Oh yeah, I have it.
Yeah. I had the board too.
Yeah. That was such a craze.
And then again the line showed up.
Oh look it's again genius. Move on Nintendo.
That's a good. Move. It just sold. So that they had.
They came out with a sequel.
But yeah we did. Plus
like it's basically a sequel with just more features.
Yeah. Yeah.
I can't imagine how many consoles that sold
families buying it, thinking all this is going to be a hundred million.
Our kids. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, hundred million. They likes to play me the.
PlayStation two, but still, it's more than enough.
That's a lot.
That's enough off of a simple game that people thought it was a fad.
People played it for a little while and realized,
okay, well, yeah, I'd rather go outside and play soccer.
Well, my. Kids playing included with the Wii.
When you bought it, we sports. Yeah, yeah, that was.
Talk about a staple of the Tendo.
Yeah. It's a it's sold 100 million copies.
Did he ever expect it to happen.
On the like actually sold. Yeah.
Didn't do you think they actually expected that.
They actually thought like oh you know what
we're going to do really well with this game.
Like I don't just a dummy.
I think they knew they had a gym and you know, they went in 1 or 2.
Do you go in 1 or 2 direction with it. Okay.
You sell it or pair it with the console to sell more consoles?
Yeah. You know what I mean.
I think it was a smart move for them to pair it with the console in.
The design of the of the Wii.
That was the whole thing is the motion, you know, functionality with the controls.
So they had to have something like that that was engaging to get people
to sell people on this new control, you know, feature that it had.
Well, then it jumped into sports resort.
Yeah. That's right.
They did that. Yeah.
And those are, those are two games for the weed.
I'm like, man I can play those all day like and never get sick or bored of them.
You think about it.
It's almost it's like a kind of augmented reality thing
that they had way ahead of everybody else where it's,
you know, you're actually physically interacting with the digital world.
Well, and they made attempts
with like other retro consoles, but the technology just wasn't there.
Yeah. You know, yeah.
Even for a Wii, it was very early.
And compared to what we have now for, you know, augmented reality, virtual reality
predates that.
Again, it was Nintendo pushing the board on this.
there was a thing where you put a pad down.
It was like a Dance Revolution pad.
And I actually owned what I want in a poker game.
and, you had a lock down left, right?
Like the controller A and B on it, but you had to dance it out the entire time.
Yeah, I remember that. I remember years, yeah.
And so I mean, that was such an innovation thing.
I mean, no other company was even thinking about that.
They were trying to get better graphics and.
Buttons between two layers of plastic with a I know print on top.
But it's smart. That you pitch it as exercise.
It actually came with a, like an Olympic, Olympics game.
Yeah.
And then, another thing that pushed the boundaries.
You might have actually use one of these.
I know I did, the Virtual Boy, that was.
I mean, yeah, most harsh red light in your eyes possible.
And I had a tank game.
I, I remember playing a tank game with it, but you look through it
and it was, quote unquote VR, but it was like three layers of red lights
that you look through and kind of like pointed in a certain direction.
But I mean, give it up to Nintendo.
They pushed it and sometimes it works, sometimes as a Virtual boy claps.
But the Wii was one of the best.
Yeah, it's one way or the other.
With Nintendo,
I've never I've never had a Nintendo console that's in the middle like,
I mean, handheld wise.
I mean, the DS was a craze.
And who I when the DS came out, I thought, well, why do we need two screens?
Just give me one bigger screen. Yeah.
And I thought it was stupid.
And now I mean the DS makes some of the best games that I can remember.
Yeah.
And that's actually in our bracket as well.
We have some like handheld.
Good Game. Boy handheld. That was really cool too.
Yeah.
So so looking at agenda, furthering this adventure,
we have to switch to presumably announced next year.
It's all but guaranteed.
What are some of the features you expect to see on the.
Again, the thinking Nintendo is going to push the limits.
I think that they're just going to go for more of like
upgrading the graphical aspect.
And say, okay, they're.
Going to attempt. 4K. Yeah.
And then I feel like they have something in their back pocket
that they're just going to sneak in and be like, oh yeah, here's, you know,
AR goggles for you.
You know what I mean? Something that's going to.
That will really push if they can to incorporate some sort of VR.
I think there's a that's a huge selling point because they.
Have like the Xbox One. But that's not really VR. That's a joke.
That's a joke.
Yeah.
It's like a it's like a half assed version of VR.
Yeah.
Jordan, is there any kind of features
you can imagine that Nintendo would put into the switch to?
I mean, just more social connection trying to,
you know, be able to play as a family, cross-platform, stuff like that.
Yeah. It's hard to say.
I mean, they already they already, and push the limits of everything they do.
So with imagine them trying to make a new version of the Wii
and using now that we have,
you know, augmented reality is much more well established,
you know, the Wii gloves and stuff like that.
So you have all the controls and the tactile motion and stuff.
I could see them evolving that.
yeah, I don't know. It's tricky.
I'm going to throw out what if, you know, we had the Diaz time of Diaz
and has that two screens? What if they did the same thing?
But now we have that flexible screen?
Oh, yeah.
What if it opens up
and it's one long screen that can be divided into two or something.
So yeah, you know.
Focus on that gives you the opportunity for like
you know, how they're doing the classic consoles. Yeah. On it.
So that gives them a chance to do Diaz as one of those for a selling.
That's a good point.
Yeah.
So and I could.
See that and that screen when I first came out,
I think that's the stupidest thing when I was on phones,
cause I'm like, that thing's in a crack. It's going to be that.
And the early ones, we're not great.
But now, we've got we've got a friend d you know, d she has one and swears by it.
One of my. Bosses has one.
He uses it and he does emails and stuff on his phone.
He's constantly using it.
Really? Never had any issue with the screen in the middle.
Does not seem insane. We're in the. Future.
Does, you know? Definitely.
yeah. It's such a it's just odd leap in technology.
You never thought that was going to be something people would want, let alone
develop, right? A screen that folds in half.
But then you think of so many applications,
you can put it on all kinds of, round surfaces.
The modern flip phone.
Yeah, it is the modern flip phone, actually.
Yeah. I think it had snake on it. I'm sold.
You wrap wrap a car with that.
Put cameras. Around it and snake to it.
Yeah.
Speaking actually is speaking of Nintendo and mobile gaming
ROMs are now allowed on the, iPhone.
Have you guys set that up? Yep, I have delta.
I, I did Delta I just downloaded my favorite TikToks.
poster boy I tell you, I got a lot of trouble over that.
The TikTok is still up.
It's okay.
Well, I may have shown how to steal games.
Yeah. Oh, no.
I saw one of the comments or someone saying,
don't actually show the download for it.
Yeah, I just I may have broke it.
So yeah.
TikTok, you know, they're shady so it's fine.
I'm shady with them. It's cool.
But you know who's not YouTube.
Yeah, they are pissed.
Oh yeah I got a strike I had it I did it before this.
Actually, I did take a little class to try to remove that strike.
And so I took a little class explaining like they did.
Like it was really like a driving class, but it was like eating drivers in.
I took driver's ed for YouTube. I did it this morning.
and so in July I got that strike removed from the account.
I can only get three and then you're out.
But I was like, for real, guys?
I posted all kinds of crap on there that, you know, I whatever.
I guess you can't technically show.
Delta's thing is really cool because it's.
Clean so. Much that that's on there.
Have you what have you played on there so far?
So far I've done Tetris.
Of course he's done Tetris.
That's the only thing I did the first.
Did you really get on?
Did this one? I did Kirby's Dream course.
I love Kirby, I love everything Kirby.
So Kirby's dream course is just. It's a racing.
Yeah, it's a golf game.
Oh, I thought the oh dream course. Okay. Yeah.
And so I tried that and it was super fun to do it that way.
I actually set it up so I have it on my iPad
and then I use a Bluetooth controller with it. Yeah.
So it's basically like a mini console so I can take it wherever I want to.
Which is really. Nice.
And it's pretty. Compatible with a lot of different widget controllers.
Yeah, you're able to play with a N64.
I'm sorry, it's for X-Box or the PlayStation five.
Controllers can hook to your phone so you can do that.
I even have a mount that goes on the PS5 and Xbox controllers that hold my phone.
Yeah, and I could play any Nintendo game.
And you know, there's going to be once for PlayStation, whatever.
it runs, N64 games.
It runs Gamecube games.
I have, Diddy Kong, of course, as well.
I said no Doug Franks to to grab that.
But I also have I was playing Pokemon Fire Red on there like a dream
better than the graphics. Of course, this is all released.
have you seen the video people? Now?
They actually, stream their screen to their big screen TV.
and then they use them.
That makes so much sense.
So there's people with like AT&T TVs playing Pokemon Emerald.
Oh my God, the future is now, guys. Yeah.
I know what Frank's doing when he gets on.
I mean, I'm trying to, like, we have until five today.
Yeah, I.
Was just going to sleep. Well, maybe tomorrow.
Tomorrow? Yeah. I'm sleeping after this. Yeah.
Hey, everybody.
We're here now with Kevin from Coble Tactics.
How are you today? I'm good, I'm good, it's good.
How are you doing? I'm doing good.
Now you're showcasing your game here at the Capitol Creative Showcase.
Can you explain a little bit of what your game is like?
Yeah, sure.
So, a couple tactics.
It is a fantasy themed tactical roguelike.
So, it's about, mostly
planning and strategy is a large part of the game.
it's about, getting together like a large band of, different,
like, party members that you can equip with different kinds of weapons and items.
you can like custom equip.
Do you want these guys to have bows?
Joining me sword.
if you, look for like, casters specifically, you can give them like,
they can get spells you can equip for, for skills and stuff.
So it's kind of about building your own strategy, you know,
do you want to get bunch of, meat shields and just throw them at it?
You want to focus on a bit of healing?
Do you want to get like, a whole bunch of back liners and just,
get high movement characters so you just never get hit?
there's there's a lot
different strategies, elements to it that you can go with.
It's, it's a little bit similar to, games, kind of like Fire Emblem,
I would say.
Well, yeah, a little bit, in the tactical like large party of, of different guys.
but a little bit.
Right. Some stuff like that where.
Yeah, stuff like that or Xcom.
Xcom is a really good example.
Okay.
and the those games
where you like have different units, it's kind of important to keep them alive.
For instance, there's a whole system where every time that someone lives,
they'll level up and you can recruit them again.
So not only are
you not as much at the whim of RNG, which the roguelike element helps with,
but it also, allows you to, like, get more powerful over time with it.
Yeah, but they also scale in cost.
So you don't necessarily have to like, commit to it fully
because, you know, if you do, the high cost
means you're spending most your resources on maintaining these guys versus maybe
if the guys you're you're working on don't have the high stats, you might go,
it's not really worth the cost to keep putting in into them,
and you might decide, maybe I can wolf or something about it.
and each one's unique.
we're going to have challenges you can do kind of like,
the way that Hades does their, their job systems
where you can, like, put on different difficulty modifiers, making them harder.
a good example is your main guy, your hero,
the one guy you start with who's your always mate, your mainstay?
there's, one of the challenges is
if he dies, you instantly lose the run.
It's just so resets.
Yeah.
and you get extra
meta currency, these gore points you can use for all kinds of cool stuff.
You can, unlock new types of units that and show up in the random generation.
you can unlock new item slots so that it becomes easier
because you will get more unlocks available each run.
it's a lot of cool stuff, like some of it's cosmetics.
you can if you get like, x number of kills,
a certain type of enemy you can have, like,
or it's number of deaths or kills and get like a skin for one of your current guys.
It looks really cool.
There's, there's cool stuff like that in front.
It's not like you put a lot into this game.
How long have you been developing it?
Yeah. well, we've been developing.
It's not me alone.
I want to clarify this.
There's once a team of, like,
5 or 6 of us.
They're like, mainstays at the moment.
but we've been developing it for, a good couple years now.
Oh, yeah. Actually, how many more years do you think you are in? Yeah.
there's many years it takes.
That's an open ended question, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah, it's as many as it takes, really.
Because, like, this isn't a project that, like, we're
we're like doing as, like a sponsorship or something.
This is, it's we're pulling it by the bootstraps right
now, you know, and it's, we're doing in our free time.
We've all got like our own lives going on.
some of us are in college, we're just graduating from college.
Some of us have like, full time careers, in, like, other fields.
And we're just devoting the rest of our time
to this project because, honestly, we we really wanted to.
Yeah, I guess you kind of.
It came out of a long form, nine month
long game jam event here with, Sacramento Developers Collective.
Yeah.
So it came out of that sort of game GM spirit.
It's kind of just evolved into this
fully fleshing out project that we've just committed ourselves
to keep going with because we've got to the end. Nine months, we went, you know,
why do we need to stop here?
We want to keep going. This is a cool project. Yeah.
And so you guys just kept pushing the community forward.
Did you guys actually meet there at the Game Jam?
Yeah, yeah, we did. Yeah.
So we, we met up in person for the first meeting for
for talking about it for it wasn't just us.
It was a bunch of people
because they had like, like pitching and or made different ideas.
And then the most popular ideas got voted on
and the teams kind of got like formed around that.
So that was how we found our team.
and the person who pitched it, Dan Daniel Todd,
he's the lead, our lead project manager, and he's also the artist for us.
And he, he does phenomenal pixel art this game.
It's it's the reason why it looks the way it's gorgeous. I was already looking.
I could links to everything guys. So you guys could go around
and check it out, but you're showing some of it online.
I believe it is the Red Dragon, if I remember correctly.
It was gorgeously done. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So the game over there seems like it's going to be building
your characters to be able to be more efficient and stuff like that.
Is there any of the game loops that you've been putting into the game?
yeah.
So there's there's also, skills a little bit.
So it's it's not just about efficiency.
It's also about trying out new things.
Okay.
So each character you know, like I mentioned before,
they as they level up, they'll get new skills.
And those skills can be pretty powerful.
So but there's a lot of ways you can go about the game
because you don't have to necessarily go with, oh, I'm going to keep leveling up.
The same for you guys. You might.
And it lets you try out a few things at a time.
You might go, I'm going to level up like this one fighter and this one cleric.
We're going to see how this goes.
And then you kind of
learn the specifics of that class and that one way of playing it.
But you might also have a run where you just get a lot of kobolds, for instance.
And, there's race perks too.
So like the race perk for kobold is that they're really cheap.
You don't get any other buffs, but they're really cheap.
So you might have one run where you're like, screw it.
I'm just going to take like 15 guys because I can afford it, right?
Army of them.
Yeah.
Like none of them are super strong.
But I have a lot. Yeah.
So it's it's that kind of thing of it's not just necessarily
oh I need to plan, optimize.
There's, there's room for creativity and messing around.
How do you balance that.
Because there's so many games that struggle with that. Yeah.
So I think the way that we balance it is mostly around the,
the encounters themselves are built with, it's,
it's funny because it's like the roguelike element,
it has a bit of randomization in itself
where the different characters that are generated in each, mission
you play have their own, like randomized stats.
And so the difficulty is going to vary a little bit from time to time.
But I think the main difficulty comes from like the number of enemies
that are present rather than their specific stats.
there's also like a general a generic term for like
there's the normal guys are like your typical peasants and villagers that fight.
Yeah.
And then there are the heroes and the heroes have their own class system
that is like their own set of skills that are they kind of mirror
your own abilities, essentially.
And so those are like the powerhouses that kind of show up.
And so it's it's less about like bouncing about like,
oh my gosh, what are the players going to do.
Yeah.
And it's more about bouncing about what do we do this like an overall
fear difficulty that, you know, it's not necessarily
something that's going to like completely obliterate you on the first couple tries.
Unless it's like later in the game
you're like like the the late levels are going to be really tough.
So three levels are approachable is the idea.
So that way you never get in a place where you're like, man,
I tried the strategy and I died on the first level and that sucks.
I guess I can't use that strategy and like there,
there will be some of that in like, oh, I died in like the third level.
Dang.
But it's it's not like I can't try this in the first place.
You know, it's like there's
so that that's come with the balancing I think come to the most of that
that design work though for how the levels are structured and
the planning around it is from, Chris, Chris Jensen, he's really a designer.
There is also one other thing that I forgot about until now,
I forgot to mention, there's there's secondary objectives.
And this is kind of a catch for if you have like
a week of strategy or week or team and you're falling behind,
it's, it's cool because it has like, it's a risk.
What's a reward risk?
Losing your risk reward. This is a reverse.
it makes the mission easier because instead of having
to beat everyone on the field, you can kind of rush down this objective.
Like the first level is you're trying to loot this carriage.
So instead of beating everyone and then taking the carriage
like you're asked to do, you can just blow up the carriage.
Yeah.
And the carriage is like a fully interactable
object in the game is what we're going to do.
So you can you could just attack it directly.
And if it runs out of health, it's likely to fire damage.
It runs out of health. You just win the fight.
But the downside is Red Dragon gets mad at you
because he says you weren't supposed to destroy, you're supposed to loot it.
And he says on your next mission, you get less gold to work with.
So in the short term you get pay off, but in the long term makes a little harder.
So it's kind of like it's this,
it's like a
balancing of difficulty where if you have like a rough session,
like in 1 or 2 sessions, you can kind of like you know,
finagle it so you still make your way through and you're kind of squeaking by.
So it makes things more tough.
But it's not like you instantly lose a run. Right?
Even though it kind of snowballs a bit over time.
It's not like the effects stack, but it's just you having the next mission
harder means you're more inclined to go for the secondary again.
Yeah, the final mission.
The final boss doesn't have a secondary, so it's kind of like
you can usually consistently make it to the boss if you're really good.
It's just about it kind of adds a challenging way,
but it also makes it, balanced so that you'll at least get far in each run,
which is nice, because you at least feel like, man, I accomplished a lot of stuff.
I did good things, even if it ended up being more stacked in our final fight
because of the decisions you made and you recognize.
Yeah, this is because
the decisions I made as a player ended up putting me in the spot.
Because I chose to do secondary. I could have taken the risk to.