It took some time to piece this together, but I'd love to let everyone know that I was able to get Arnold Rauers of TinyTouchTales fame, maker of Card Crawl, Card Thief and the upcoming Miracle Merchant to do an email interview and man, I am so glad he was able to sit down and talk about the processes of each game. Without further a due, here he is, talking about these games, and the behind the scenes toils.
(Click on the image for the App Store)
Not really. Once i had the concept running in the prototype it was pretty easy to expand on the base idea.
1: With Card Crawl, how long was the approximate‘Brain Storming’ phase?
It took me about 2 month to get the prototype in a state where i was confident that there is
actually a fun game. Since i took a lot of inspiration from Zac Gage and Kurt Bieg’s Scoundrel,
i had a relatively easy starting point. Obviously my design is quite different but still pulled a lot of
ideas from their version. I had one prototype prior to the one who got into production which i killed
after about 3 weeks of work. (There’s some more detail on this in the video)
2: Did you have any challenges with Card Crawl that you wanted to throw your hands up in the air and give up?
Obviously there are always things like optimization and getting the game to run on multiple devices that are hard.
In addition now an then a very mysterious bug appears and it makes me shake my fist at the screen but only because
i’m a really bad programmer ;).
3: your second game, in the ‘Card Series’, Card Thief, were there any lessons learned from Card Crawl that you applied here?
Yes. It was always clear to me that i wanted to follow up Card Crawl with a similar game but have new gameplay mechanics.
Prototyping took way longer than Card Crawl but i could reuse a lot of ideas and code for Card Thief. In addition to that
my design for Card Thief followed the ideas that i established in Card Crawl very closely. Things like cards only have one value
for everything or the game has to be on one screen for example. Also in terms of UI and interaction a lot of things
that worked in Card Crawl were brought over to Card Thief to make the development easier.
4: With Card Thief and Card Crawl both at the App Store’s 4.5 rating for both games, Do you feel like there’s an invisible bar over tour heads to do better with each game?
Well, as a creator you always want your latest thing also be the best. In the case of Card Thief i really worked hard
to not disappoint the existing Card Crawl fanbase. On the other hand in reality you can’t always out do you self every time.
This is why i tend to release smaller games in between big ones, just to keep releasing stuff in general, which is a good
practices to learn the art of „finishing a game“. In the case of my upcoming game Miracle Merchant, which actually was designed
even before Card Thief i try to promote it as a separate thing, that is not in the "Card X“ series. Still a lot of people expect it to be
as good as Card Thief. It’s always tricky to find the right balance between focusing on one great project and releasing smaller
more condensed experiences.
5 Most of your one star ratings are, “stuck at the tutorial” and “too hard”. What do you think would get people to a level of understanding that your games don’t hold the players’ hand but assume they are bright individuals that can figure things out for themselves even through trial and error?
Better tutorials for sure. I’m in a weird niche were the complexity of a board game meets the expectation of a mobile
game that can be played with one tap on the toilet. I think what works best for me is to stick with my existing audience
who knows how my games generally work and are willing to put in some effort to learn a rule or two.
This is again another trade off you have to make, either make it simple and try to get new players every time or stick
to your core audience and assume they will figure it out. I always like to (loosely) quote Zac Gage on this who said „the hard part
about making people like your game is to communicate why you the creator think a particular thing is interesting“, „you can
generally assume that most people like the same things, but they have a hard time understanding your motivations
on why you designed a game the way it is“. This is why my games have sometimes complicated rules, because i think
the game is way more interesting that way.
6: ENYO. I read it was an off shoot, kind of a side project that was thrown out there and made free. What was your reaction to find out that it was also well received?
There’s an interesting thing happening when you create a lot of games. At some point you become really good
at saying what concepts will work and which won’t. I knew that ENYO would work if presented in the right way.
Obviously ENYO builds upon the massiv success and critical acclaim of mobile rogue like Hoplite and the more obscure,
but also really good Auro. Both games which i value really high when it comes to rogue like design.
ENYO also fit’s with what i said earlier. If you can communicate why an idea is interesting, in ENYO it’s indirect combat via
hook and shield, it’s easy to find players who really get into the game. I had one particular player who i had contact with
who obsessively played the game to get the perfect game of completing the hard mode and scoring the max. amount of points.
Again i think making smaller projects in between is a good way of trying things out and just getting stuff out there.
I wasn’t expecting ENYO to be that popular among my core audience, but i was quite confident that it has something to offer
that not many games, especially mobile rogue likes have.
7: Now that Miracle Merchant is in Beta Phase/Test Flight, it already feels as if it will be a successful game. What kind of ‘Laurels’ do you think could be applied to solidify its experience and make it appeal to the fledgling gamer as well as your regular gamers who keep coming back to Tiny Touchables for their AAA Solitaire Style card games?
Again Miracle Merchant is a smaller side project and my No. 1 goal for those is to make them fast and not spent too much time
with additional features. The game itself has a solid core but lacks progression for example. A lot of Beta testers complain about
having nothing to do“ besides playing the game. Which is in itself a problem that is relatively new to games, but especially present in
mobile/video games. People expect to have a lot of extrinsic rewards, like quests, levels and unlockables. I feel that too many games
create artificial goals for the players and pull them along, while actually having really shallow gameplay. Again for Miracle Merchant
We will try to keep it small for now and if the response after release is good, we still could think about extending the game with more
„stuff“. I think MM will attract a lot of players who are more into casual games since it’s art style is very colorful and friendly. Thomas
Wellmann did a fantastic job on that.
8 Was there ever a time where doubt has crossed your mind about where your company and by Extention your lives would go if your games took off as it has done now?
Well, i always like to tell the story that in 2014 when i first started to become a freelancer working on my own games, i spent about $15.000 of my own savings.
When Card Crawl released in 2015 i had already ran out of money and my wife had to support me. If Card Crawl wouldn’t have been successful
i'm pretty sure i would have gone back to working as an employer in bigger companies. Luckily this didn’t happen. But i always have doubts about
my future as a full time freelance game creator. Markets change and while my games are earning quite some money right now, i wouldn’t be able
to sustain multiple failures in a row. I’m always looking at other studios and read about what they are doing to keep the dream alive
but there are plenty of things that can go wrong or good any time. I’m know that i’m in a very fortunate position where i have an established
fan base and good contacts to platform holders, press and so on. It’s always tough to say what the next years will bring in terms of technology
etc. but i think sticking to my niche (digital native board games, board games that are created as video games and can’t be played analogue)
is a good strategy.
9: What inspires you and your team to keep going each day? And what do you think is a great motivator?
It’s a mix between many things. I’ve been in love with games and gaming my whole live and there is a very strong
force in me that constantly pushes me to think about games and their design, so it’s somehow really easy
to get motivated each day. Obviously the fans and their feedback is a great motivator, but i think that’s not
exclusive to games. Anyone who creates something likes to hear back how people think about their thing.
In addition to that i think working with the right people is a big part. For example Mexer the artist of Card Crawl and
Card Thief is one of my biggest role models. He’s a pure force of creativity and creation, a great person and
a super funny guy. All the people i collaborate with are way better in their respective field than i ever could
and that is super motivating in itself.
Mr. Rauer's interview for me personally shed some light on his games. For me personally, TINYTOUCHTALES is a premier company that makes some of the best card games on the iOS App Store. Please look foward to my other posts, reviews and previews.
-Barrett
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