Review Fix Exclusive: Joost Kraaijenbrink Talks ‘Qbeh-1: The Atlas Cube

Review Fix chats with Liquid Flower’s composer Joost Kraaijenbrink who discusses the development process by one of Steam’s coolest new puzzle games, “Qbeh-1: The Atlas Cube.”

Also breaking down the company’s ideals and the game’s hopes for the future, Kraaijenbrink gives us great insight into the puzzle genre and one of independent gaming’s coolest new developers.

For more information on Kraaijenbrink’s music, head here: http://launchablesocks.bandcamp.com/

To check out “Qbeh-1: The Atlas Cube” on Steam, click here: and the game, head here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/252550

Review Fix: What was the inspiration for the game?

Joost Kraaijenbrink: I suspect it’s impossible for any game to have only one source of inspiration, especially when there’s multiple team members involved. Everyone’s input is influenced by a lot of different things, among which are not just games, but movies, literature, and whatever else you can come across in life that can make an impression.

This being said, certain things influenced us more than others, and the top of that list is probably graced mostly by games, a lot of those being from our youth. I think the way these games influenced us varies from title to title. For example, we’re all great fans of the Nintendo classics like Zelda (especially around the time of the SNES, N64 and Gamecube) and Mario. Some classic videogame staples can be seen in Qbeh-1 in the way we divided the levels into distinct worlds with different themes like snow or wind(resembling maybe Mario 3), or in the simplicity of its game mechanics; player picks up cube, places cube, solves puzzles, gets to the end of the level (like in many older games). Then different items come into play, and the puzzles slowly become more and more complex (remember the thrill of finding a new item in Zelda and realizing the way it opened up all sorts of new possibilities?).

Something else that’s really important to us is atmosphere. Games like Knytt, Knytt underground, Saira, Samorost (1&2), Machinarium, Flower, Journey, Limbo, Fez, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and many more like them all have something important in common: to varying degrees they tell a story not with words but with gameplay, imagery, sound, and generally speaking, atmosphere. These elements are the ‘native language’ of video games. This idea is best explained in this article, in my opinion a must-read: http://boingboing.net/features/morerock.html.

This philosophy of ‘less talk, more rock’ resonates well with us, and we have tried to focus on creating a strong atmosphere through sound, music, visuals, level design and gameplay. The strongest tool available to any game designer is the player’s imagination, and forcing pages of text on them filled with names, instructions and stories will only limit that imagination.

In addition to this, we had to consider our strengths and weaknesses. We figured our strengths did not lie in writing or storytelling (in the classic manner), and so forcing ourselves to actually ‘write’ a story would only result in disappointment for everyone. There is a story, it’s just not told explicitly and it’s open to the player’s interpretation and imagination. We don’t take any of this to mean that text or explicit stories are necessarily bad things in games (on the contrary), but we do feel that the strongest aspects of the medium lie in its audiovisual and interactive components. Something else that was important to us was respect for the player. There has been some backlash lately against modern Japanese games for holding the player’s hand too much (see Phil Fish and Jonathan Blow’s rant at GDC) . We largely agree with this sentiment, although maybe not the way it was put in that particular instance (I don’t think it’s limited to Japan, and i’m not even sure it’s more prevalent there than anywhere else). It’s important to respect the player’s intellect for many reasons.

Some of the best parts of gaming come from exploration and discovery. Exploring new areas and discovering how new mechanics work can be incredibly rewarding, but not if the player is already told by the game to ‘go here’ or ‘do that’. We tried to shape our game in such a way that players are forced to try things out for themselves: there is no tutorial telling you what to do, and we chose to forgo manual saving/quick saving in favor of checkpoints placed throughout the level so any dangers encountered in the level are more serious and the player is encouraged to use cubes to avoid death, instead of trying to make that difficult jump.

We would be remiss if we did not mention Portal and Minecraft, two games to which Qbeh seems to be compared quite a lot. In Minecraft’s case the reason is obvious: picking up and placing cubes (although Minecraft isn’t the only nor the first game to use this mechanic). We love the creativity that invites and we hope that translated at least a little bit into the puzzles in Qbeh-1. As for Portal I think there’s some similarities in both puzzle design as well as aesthetics. Strangely though, Mirror’s Edge does not seem to be mentioned nearly as often, although I there’s a lot of stylistic similarities to be found there as well.

Additionally, as the team’s composer, I have to credit many, if not all, of the aforementioned games as big influences on the music in the game. I also have to mention Little Big Adventure 1 and 2 here, and I’d like to keep going and include artists who haven’t necessarily worked on games but I think we’d be here for a while.

Review Fix: What was the development cycle like?

Kraaijenbrink: Awesome, terrible, scary, exciting, boring, inspiring, depressing, difficult, easy… We spent more than a year making this game, and I think many developers will tell you that it can be the most wonderful and the most terrifying experience of your life. Qbeh-1 was our first commercial title (its predecessor Qbeh was released for free), and despite putting all of your time, energy and creativity into it you can never tell how it’s eventually going to land. So you’ll go from super excited, because making games is arguably the best job in the world (perhaps barring such jobs as space cowboy or wizard dragon rider), to terrified because you’re making something super personal, into which you’ve sunk much of yourself, and what if people end up not caring about it at all, or even hating it? Then there’s the financial side of things: as an indie developer, if your game tanks (especially if it’s your first one), it’s possible you just can’t carry on doing what you’re doing, and who wants to let go of the chance of a job on par with space cowboy or wizard dragon rider?

Despite these feelings, which I think are a natural part of most (if not all) creative endeavours, I think all of just had a lot of fun making Qbeh-1. And we tried to focus on that, because fear is a bad guide, worrying helps no one, and if you’re not having a good time making a game, chances are people won’t have a good time playing it.

Review Fix: What’s your favorite element of the game?

Kraaijenbrink: One thing I really like about this game is the creativity that can go into solving the puzzles. Allowing for creativity in the way the player progresses through the game is a little like walking a tightrope: a little too much freedom and the game element starts to suffer, but not enough freedom and you’ll have put the player on rails and the puzzles will probably go stale very quickly. It’s hard to find this sweet spot during development because everyone involved is so close to the project, and knows the levels and its puzzles really well. Nevertheless I think our level design guys managed to strike a good balance with it, which we got some proof of when we first saw our game played by someone outside the devteam. The day before launch a Twitch.tv user named Edward Vapid livestreamed our game and we all huddled up to watch it on the beamer. One of the first things we noticed was how he solved almost every single puzzle in a way we had never even thought of ourselves, yet none of us felt that he had ‘cheated the game’ or did anything we thought he shouldn’t be able to. That was a great moment and it proved we had succeeded in that setup.

Review Fix: How important do you think the puzzle genre is?

Kraaijenbrink: I think the answer to this question largely depends on what you take the term ‘puzzle genre’ to mean. There are plenty of games out there that focus heavily or entirely on puzzles, like Cogs, Spacechem or The Incredible Machine. But I don’t think the genre can always be so clearly discerned. I don’t think the definition of ‘puzzle game’ can be anything as clear cut as ‘a game containing puzzles’. Surely not all games containing puzzles are really puzzle games. For that matter, the term ‘puzzle’ is probably open to some debate. Is any problem presented to players to be considered a puzzle? Don’t most, if not all games have such problems? Maybe all games are to some extent puzzlegames then?

Now it is of course a stretch to call Call of Duty a puzzle game, but I think there’s a parallel to be drawn here with the aforementioned discussion of holding the player’s hand, something that I think the Call of Duty series does in abundance. This dilutes any puzzle elements the game may have. Any problem the player is presented with (like how to take out those enemies dug in on the far side of the river or something like that) is very often solved for the player by the game (either by straightforwardly telling the player to ‘use this missile’ or forcing them to take a path that will outflank the enemy or something like that).

On the flipside of this question are sandbox games like Minecraft. The player is hardly told to do anything and gets total freedom to do whatever they want. This too takes out a lot of the game-elements. If there’s little or no restrictions on what the player can do, the game turns into more of a ‘toy’ than a game.

Now I think both of these game design ‘blueprints’, if you will, are totally valid. In fact, I myself am a big fan of both the Call of Duty series (being a great example of how a cinematic game experience can actually work quite well) as well as Minecraft (who doesn’t love Minecraft?). But the more they edge towards these extremes, the more they lose the characteristics that make them games.

In any case I think it’s safe to say that puzzles themselves are essential to games. But there are many different ways in which to dress up your puzzles. Take for example classic adventure games like King’s Quest or the Monkey Island series. Puzzles aplenty in those games, but I don’t think I’ve ever really heard anyone describe them as ‘puzzle games.’

All this being said I don’t want to downplay other elements that make games interesting. Many games thrive on things like resource management or timing as their main element, but even with those games it comes down to how you want to define the term ‘puzzle’. After all, resource management is a tool used to approach a certain problem, and in the end a ‘puzzle’ is just a problem waiting to be solved.

Review Fix: Any thoughts on a potential sequel?

Kraaijenbrink: For now we are still busy supporting Qbeh-1 itself. We’ve had a fairly smooth launch with no serious problems, but we’re still keeping busy addressing problems or concerns on the game forums, answering emails and basically making sure everything runs smoothly for everyone. We’re also working on Mac and Linux builds which will be out soon, as well as Oculus Rift support and a level editor a little ways down the road. Rift support and the level editor will be enough to occupy us for a while, since these are things we want to do well, rather than just tacking them on for the sake of having them. For the Oculus Rift we really want to think about how to translate the game’s mechanics to work well with VR, which will probably take a bunch of testing and tweaking. As for the level editor, that’s a whole different animal.

We certainly are thinking ahead as well though, and our heads are always buzzing with ideas for other projects to work on. When the time comes to move on to the next thing, I do suspect we might feel like going in a different direction than something cube-like, but we’re not ruling anything out!

Review Fix: What did you learn about yourself through the development of the game?

Kraaijenbrink: A lot. Working closely together with a small group of friends on a highly personal project for an extended period of time brings up many different challenges. Things like how important it is work with people you’re compatible with (personally and creatively), and how important it is to keep business separated from friendship, and at the same time how hard those things can be, are things I think I could only have learned by going through this kind of process. As an added bonus for me I was the only ‘foreign’ member of the team (I’m Dutch, the rest of the team is Finnish) and moving to and working in a strange country, away from friends and family for seven and a half months, is something that has taught me a lot about myself. I think one of the main lessons for me was that it was not as hard as I thought to live and work in a completely different environment, and that I didn’t need as much stuff as I thought. A computer, a microphone, and a midikeyboard got me a long, long way in my work, and a small student apartment with a bed, a desk and a chair was all I really needed to cover my living situation. I do also have to credit the warm welcome by the rest of the team and their friends and family. Finland can be a strange country, but it’s certainly also a wonderful country. Just don’t try the tar-flavoured ice cream, it’s a trap.

Review Fix: What’s one thing about the game that you’d change if you could?

Kraaijenbrink: Big projects never feel quite finished, even though you’re forced to release them at some point. I think if we had more time and/or resources we would’ve liked to hint more at a storyline. Like maybe put some more cool models into the game to make the world less cube-y and give some vague sense of function to the levels. There is some story now, but it’s very limited and some people did not notice it at all (perhaps they did not play far enough into the game). We have talked about alternating puzzle sections with implicit story scenes where the player walks through surreal landscapes with strange objects or structures and maybe even some events like large machine-like contraptions being activated by energy cubes. There are already some cool assets in the game (I particularly like the large windmills dotted across the landscape in world 4), but really making use of them to hint more at the storyline would have probably required a lot more modeling, scripting and animating, which we just didn’t have the time or resources to do. There’s always more cool stuff to add, but at some point you’re going to have to slap a bow on it and send it off into the real world. In the end though, we did our best to recognize and accept our own limitations and I think it resulted in a great game that we’re all very proud of.

Review Fix: How would you describe this game to someone who’s never heard of it?

Kraaijenbrink: We’ve previously summed up the game in one sentence thusly:

“Qbeh-1: The Atlas Cube” is an atmospheric first-person puzzle/platformer/exploration game in which you pick up and place cubes with different abilities to explore your surroundings and solve puzzles.” The emphasis on atmosphere and exploration here are important, and perhaps we should add that there’s no violence involved; we just wanted to make the game a pleasant experience, and we strived to build a world in which players can lose themselves, if only for a moment.

Review Fix: How do you want this game to be remembered 10 years from now?

Kraaijenbrink: Not too differently from the way we hope people experience it right now. Being a pretty inexperienced and small team, we knew we couldn’t make the next OMGZ0rZ best game evarr mind blown super indie hit, and we didn’t set out to do that. We tried to embrace our limitations, rather than try to force something more ambitious than we thought we could pull off, and judging from the responses so far, people seem to understand the scope of this game and appreciate its simplicity. So in a nutshell, I think that’s what we’d like this to be remembered as: a nice, simple game in which you can easily get lost for a couple of hours. Even better would be if people still actually played Qbeh-1 ten years from now. But really, I think we’d be happy just to be remembered by that time.