Muse Games may be a relatively young indie game studio but it has already released several titles including the steampunk airship combat game Guns of Icarus - which will soon get a followup with online multiplayer combat - and an atmospheric 3D puzzle platformer called CreaVures.

The four-man Muse team talks about their games, their development process and the future of indie games.

indiePUB: When and why did Muse form as a studio?

HOWARD TSAO: Muse officially started in early 2010 but we worked on a couple of small web and iOS games (Extreme Sledding and Elementia) in 2009. Towards the end of 2009 we made a game called Guns of Icarus that did well on Steam and later on the Mac App Store. We then formed a company to keep creating games. Before the forming of Muse, we were originally working on a virtual world and web integration project for another startup and we started using the Unity game engine. Along the way, we saw avatars wearing less and less and decided that we didn't have it in ourselves to push the boundary further in that direction. So we took what we learned with Unity to start making 3D games for the web and other platforms, which is what we are really passionate about.

iP: Why indie?

TSAO: I wanted to create an environment where our vision, creativity and collaboration matter. In a bigger company, or a bigger team working for a large publisher, individual voices can be lost sometimes. This is a way for our team to do what we love.

CONRAD KREYLING: Agility and lack of top-down authority. I love knowing my input is directly affecting the development process, and I control a large piece of a game's destiny.

BRIAN KEHRER: Until recently, all games were indie games. NES and Atari teams really had design philosophies closer to us than the massive studios we see today. I think a lot of major studios are now trying to rekindle that, but it's difficult. Consequently we all work really hard to maintain the creative freedom we have.

iP: How did you get into game development?

TSAO: I know passion is cliché but it's still true. We wouldn't be in game development if it wasn't what we loved to do. We got into game development really as fallout from a failing business model and earlier project. So bad luck, really. We just decided that, with all the knowledge we accumulated with Unity and then emerging game market segments in 3D games for web and mobile, the opportunity to pursue what we truly loved and are passionate about couldn't be better.


ALEX JAROCHA-ERNST: I've been playing and analyzing games for my own amusement for many, many years and sort of arranged my college career in an attempt to pick up all or at least most of the skills I'd need to be able to make something myself. Then I went into pretty unremarkable web development when I got out of school, because it seemed to be what was needed to pay the bills, with this vague intention of making games in my spare time. Muse gave me the opportunity to do it full-time, which is much more interesting.

KREYLING: I spent several years doing web and flash game development right out of college and was looking for a new challenge. I had taken some 3D programming classes in school, so when the opportunity to join the Muse team arose I jumped on it.

KEHRER: My background was in Film and 3D animation, but I've always been primarily interested in game development. I taught myself programming, and am a perpetual student of game design. Economics, math, and SimCity lead me to an interest in dynamic systems - a very important part of games.

iP: What is your personal development process?

JAROCHA-ERNST: I research and experiment a lot. I try to survey both existing solutions to a problem, either in games specifically or in the larger world of computer science, as well as real-world systems that might be relevant. Then I start building little pieces of functionality in isolation to try and come up with something that feels good, is fun, looks good or otherwise fulfills whatever criteria I'm looking for. It fits nicely with the idea of rapid iteration but the downside of this is that sometimes things that are messy and experimental don't get cleaned up quite as much as I'd like before making it into the final game.

KREYLING: I'm a meticulous foundation-builder. I spend a lot of time developing libraries and supporting code on which to build. While this doesn't sound like a particularly agile development process, I'm generally getting very generic code in place to allow me to change things very rapidly later down the line. I can imagine this is frustrating to my co-workers who won't see any results for weeks and weeks and then suddenly a game appears from nowhere.

KEHRER: I start by trying to get the player interaction working first. Often times, the design you thought was spectacular on paper simply isn't fun. Also, frequently, the changes necessary are obvious once you are actually playing the game. The longer it takes to get from design to gameplay, the greater the risk.

iP: What type of gaming experience do you most enjoy?

TSAO: Personally, I like strategy, simulation games, but I'm also a sucker for AAA adventure games like Red Dead Redemption.

JAROCHA-ERNST: I look for games that offer good strategic depth or the feeling of exploring and interacting with something vast and alive: big complex strategy games, puzzles, simulations and competitive multiplayer games that are about strategy beyond clicking on heads.

KREYLING: I love games that are both relaxing and immersive. Rez, for example, is probably my favorite game to date. If I could give players even a tenth of what that game has given me I could probably retire happily.

KEHRER: I love the promise of rich and dynamic narrative experiences. I strongly believe the words 'narrative' and 'interactive' do not need to be mutually exclusive. Too often they are.

iP: What do you hate in games?

TSAO: One thing that I don't like as much is making games difficult for the sake of proving a point. If a game like that is targeted for a specific audience, then OK. But I find that in more mainstream games sometimes and those games I tend to not enjoy as much.

KREYLING: Ever get to an end boss and suddenly have to use novel, never-before-introduced mechanics to defeat it? Yeah, that's pretty much the worst

KEHRER: Games that aren't actually interactive, but a series of scripted cutscenes and events. Those aren't really games. While they might be fun in their own right, I find a lot of games I'm very excited about turn out to just be cool movies.

iP: What is your game philosophy? What experience do you want players to come away with after playing your games?

TSAO: We try to craft the player experience specifically for each game that we create. With Guns of Icarus, it was really about the intensity of battle and the frantic feeling of rescuing your ship as things descend into chaos. So it was that thrilling nervous energy we were after. With CreaVures, it was the polar opposite. We wanted an experience for CreaVures where players would find the controls accessible so that they can get into the flow easily. We wanted to bring the wonders of nature to life and an interesting way and have players relate to the characters they are playing. Overall, we wanted CreaVures to be a relaxing, smoothing experience in a magical landscape.

JAROCHA-ERNST: I always want to give players the feeling that they're interacting with a consistent, understandable, complex system, whether that be a believable game world or just game rules that are deep enough to be interesting. How this manifests specifically depends a lot on the emotional experience we're trying to create in any given game. I look for games that offer good strategic depth or the feeling of exploring and interacting with something vast and alive: big complex strategy games, puzzles, simulations, and competitive multiplayer games that are about strategy beyond clicking on heads.

KEHRER: I typically start with an emotion I'd like to evoke in the player. The more specific the better. Games have the ability to foster a set of emotions no other medium can due to their interactivity. Players can experience pride at their accomplishments, shame, paranoia or perhaps even love. Really complex feelings. After we've chosen a core feel, it's a lot of experimentation and iteration to see if all the systems (including) art, design and controls are working toward reinforcing that experience.

iP: Muse has two games on Steam (CreaVures and Guns of Icarus). How did that come about?

TSAO: When we completed the development of Guns of Icarus, we submitted the game to Steam. They liked what we did and worked with us to release the game. It was a relatively longer process, as integration with the Steam API took us a while to master. But the people at Steam have been really helpful along the way, and that was really refreshing for us. Steam loves indie development and their platform and service are amazing. They really think from the perspective of developers, especially small indie developers and do what they can to facilitate. Once we were going through the approval process, they set a release date for us. Then it was up to us to work feverishly to get the integration work done. We launched Guns of Icarus on the same day that the Steam Mac Store went live and Steam gave us a feature on Mac, Adventure and Indie and we made the top seller list. With CreaVures, since we already did the integration once before and we already had a track record delivering a product for Steam, the approval and integration process was quick. We just had to work feverishly again to make sure we have everything ready before the release date that Steam slotted for us.

iP: What was your role? What approach did you take to making CreaVures? What were your inspirations?

JAROCHA-ERNST: I did some early prototyping, went away to work on another project (GoI) for a few months, then came back to help out with graphics programming and effects in the final stages of the game both in terms of polishing the PC version and trying to cram something as close to that as possible into the original iPad. Visually, I think our earliest inspiration came from a mix of tarsiers - which really are small, cute, nocturnal animals with semi-luminescent eyes - and lots of bioluminescent sea creatures. The artists clearly took that and ran with it to create something pretty unique.

KREYLING: I was the Project Lead as well as the Lead Engineer. The development process for this game was somewhat non-traditional: I was given a grey-box prototype of this game at the start and told to turn it into a full game. Immediately this game felt more like DK Country to me than anything, though as time went on it became less DK Country and more Lost Vikings. I'm not displeased with the result.

KEHRER: I did the initial gameplay and controls prototyping, as well as the original design document. I came back during the final crunch to do the sound design. For me, CreaVures was driven by its art and aesthetic. We really wanted to create a sense of wonder in the player. I tried early on to make sure the controls didn't get in the way of that. The original inspirations were The Lost Vikings, Lemmings, Limbo, and DK Country.

iP: What was the hardest part to develop in CreaVures?

JAROCHA-ERNST: Getting our very distinctive visuals to carry through on all platforms, particularly the mobile ones. The graphics chipset in the original iPad nearly brought me to tears.

KREYLING: Pokey's climbing mechanic. I don't know why but this particular mechanic was a chronic problem for us. It was always something: The climb was broken, the climb was too slow, the climb was too fast, the climb looked weird, the spikes all appear in the same place, other CreaVures couldn't climb up the spikes. By the time we wrapped on it I never wanted to look at the code again.

KEHRER: Discrete physics based gameplay. We wanted the feeling of real physics, without the player being able to to get into strange states, as you frequently can in physics based games. This required basically scripting all of the physics in the game by hand. Smooth controls and physics were fighting each other from day one but the CreaVures team really persevered and made a whole lot of very complex behavior just work.

iP: What was the hardest part to develop in Guns of Icarus?

JAROCHA-ERNST: Networking. Software development mostly exists in this nice ivory tower of abstracts and absolutes...until you have to deal with real-time networking, at which point all the messy physics and nondeterminism of reality come back to bite you.

KEHRER: Networking. I'm glad we have some engineering wunderkinds - so I didn't have to touch most of it. Designing control schemes that are lag resilient and still responsive was already very difficult - and resulted in numerous heated discussions around the tea shelf (our caffeine source of choice).

iP: Guns of Icarus getting PvP elements. Is that by design or demand? Is this an expansion or new game?

JAROCHA-ERNST: In a lot of ways, the new Guns of Icarus is what we wanted to make GoI in the first place. All through the development of the first game, we would have conversations about this or that feature that ended in, "Maybe in Guns 2…" because we didn't have the resources to do it at the time. As for PvP, we feel it's just the best way to deliver a satisfying combat experience. No game AI we have the time or ingenuity to make will deliver as satisfying an opponent as a good human player. So we decided to make the raw airship combat work first, in this PvP context, and build on that later for PvE content.

iP: What have been the reactions to Guns of Icarus?

TSAO: With Guns of Icarus, we could definitely do a lot more with multiplayer and expanding the game. We've gotten a ton of great support and responses for the game but the consistent feedback is for us do a lot more with multiplayer. This is really the motivation behind Guns of Icarus Online, where there would be extensive PvP, fleet battles, customization, ships and weapons upgrades, skills system, etc. With CreaVures, women have really loved the game. We've actually gotten quite a bit of positive feedback from parents and grandparents who buy the game to play with their kids and grandkids. They are drawn to the game's accessible game play, aesthetics, character's personalities and non-violent nature. We designed CreaVures to be more of a family friendly, light player friendly experience and I think we did a pretty good job achieving this goal.

KEHRER: In almost all ways, Guns of Icarus Online is a new game. The core philosophy and emotions are similar, as well as a few of the core gameplay mechanics, however, this is the game we always wanted to make. PvP just seems like a natural extension of the Guns of Icarus world. While fundamentally, the game is meant to be collaborative, this is a post-apocalyptic world with different factions vying for control of limited resources. PvP just makes sense - and besides, it's a whole lot of fun for us in the office, we think everyone else will enjoy it, too.

iP: What does the future look like for indie games?

TSAO: I think the future for indie games has never been brighter. We went from having really high barriers to market and expensive development costs to being able to deploy across multiple viable distribution platforms and to create games on shoestring budgets all within the last 3 to 4 years. Steam, iOS, Facebook have all experienced tremendous growth obviously, and while the market places are getting crowded, at least the developers with quality games have a chance of standing out and doing really well. On the cost front, Unity has lower the cost for game development in 3D astronomically. With affordable costs and viable channels to distribute games, indie development will continue to blossom in the foreseeable future.

KREYLING: Not to dramatize this too much, but I do feel like we're entering the "Age of the Indie". Technologies like Unity3D and Flash are allowing small developers to create amazing games across a range of platforms, including the budding mobile platforms. There's absolutely nothing more empowering than clicking a few buttons and suddenly having your game running on both an iPad and an Android device.

iP: What advice to you have for other indie game developers...

TSAO: Try something different and believe in your ideas. Not make a clone game because a similar game has done well. Make something original.

JAROCHA-ERNST: Make something distinct, in both visuals and gameplay. You'll have a very hard time competing with the AAA guys on anything traditional, or on sheer quantity of art and content, but you have a freedom to try things that they don't.

KREYLING: Keep your games in scope! Take a few simple mechanics and really refine them rather than throwing a million mechanics at the wall. Keep your code generic and modular, allowing reuse across your games.

KEHRER: Don't be afraid of your players, and certainly don't tell them how to have fun. If there are mechanics your players are exploiting - or actions they perform you weren't expecting, find ways to incorporate them into your design in a balanced way - it might just be the most fun part.



SITE: Muse Games
GAME PAGE: CreaVures
GAME SITE: Guns of Icarus Online