Review Fix Exclusive: Inside Tick’s Tales

Review Fix chats with “Tick’s Tales” developer Bryce Covert, who discusses the game, the inspiration behind it and goals for the project moving forward.

Review Fix:  What inspired this game?

Bryce Covert: Among other things, in the months leading up to kicking off Tick’s Tales, I was watching a lot of Adventure Time. The genius of the show is the simplicity in how the characters are crafted. There’s a dog obsessed with food, an evil wizard bent on finding a bride, and a teenage boy who is the neighborhood hero. In keeping the characters’ aspirations simple, it allows the storyteller to put emphasis on the narrative adventure. It also leaves a lot of breathing room for humor, because you’ve already accepted the characters and setting as being pretty eccentric.

I wanted those qualities in Tick’s Tales. If the player can roll with the fact that the town of Remington is populated with characters named Brian O’Brainy, Captain McHulk, and Gandarf, then it’ll create a good setting for a really fun and funny adventure.

Review Fix: What did you play as a kid? How did they influence this game?

Covert: Tick’s Tales certainly is a product of years of mulling over what I loved so much about the games I played as a kid. My first interactions with a computer were playing King’s Quest, and as such, it’d be hard to deny the influence of that series on me. Tick’s Tales doesn’t really play like King’s Quest, or any game from the Sierra lineup, but I think there are numerous qualities of the series that I did incorporate — terrible puns, a simple setting, and, perhaps most importantly, not taking itself so seriously.

As a kid, I also spent hours glued to the TV screen playing Nintendo and Super Nintendo classics like Mega Man, Zelda, Battletoads, and Final Fantasy. Some of the aesthetic qualities, and certainly the music, draw more from these games than the early adventure games. In many ways, I wanted to portray, in a modern way, what I loved about games of the era, not just adventure games of the era.

Review Fix: What was the thought process behind the game’s visual engine?

Covert: I wanted to capture and portray what I loved about the games of my childhood, not necessarily create a direct clone of them. In the early adventures, a lot was left up to the player’s imagination because low resolution art could only be so precise. So my primary goal artistically was to trigger the imagination of the player in the same way as the early adventures did, but in the context of the 21st century player. I’m quite pleased with how this manifested itself — It looks like a limited palette pixel art old school game, but doesn’t feel like one. Playing a game at 320×240 resolution feels very stiff on a 24″ LCD display because it was never meant for that. I worked around this stiffness by embracing the fact that the game is going to be run on higher resolution displays. The huge discovery for me was in finding that emulating a handheld camera that pans and zooms on the protagonist results in a very lively feel, while still having that low resolution style.

Review Fix: What do you think makes this game special?

Covert: I think, more than anything, this game is appealing to an audience of game players like me. Tick’s Tales started by me asking, “What sort of game would I want to play?”, and, to the best of my abilities, following that question to its logical conclusion. It wasn’t designed to cater to a specific audience, but I believe that there are others out there who happen to share the same appetite for adventures that I do.

Additionally, as a one man development team, there’s a sort of unavoidable reality in which Tick’s Tales gives a window into my personal thought process, humor, and storytelling. My hope is that others share in the entertainment and fun that I had in writing and making it.

Review Fix: How do you want this game to be remembered?

Covert: The early adventure games inspired and challenged me as a young person. In order to play the early parser adventures, I needed to learn how to read. Later, the idea of making my own game encouraged me to pursue a career as a programmer. In many ways, making Tick’s Tales is a fulfillment of that lifelong dream. If this game encourages someone, in whatever capacity, to pursue their own dreams, then I will be thrilled.

Review Fix: What has the development cycle been like thus far?

Covert: Being a one-man team was hard, but one of the advantages was that I was never bored. There was always something to do. If I got bored programming, I could always spend some time animating, writing music, or drawing backgrounds. Fortunately, the choice of art style, programming language (Clojure), and writing style meant that I could iterate over and over pretty easily until I was happy with the result.

You hear a lot about that 80/20 rule – that 80% of the work takes 20% of the time, and this definitely proved true for Tick’s Tales. The game as a whole was playable from start to finish about 4 months from when I started, but I then spent the next 16 months refining it!

Review Fix: What’s next?

Covert: There’s a lot on the table! I know that the next game will continue in the tradition of engaging narrative adventure, but I’m still in the brainstorming stage. Realistically, most of my ideas would need a team size larger than one person, so I’m hoping Tick’s Tales will help me form a partnership with other designers who want to pursue the next game together.

 

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 14230 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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