For those who’ve been following us recently, you might remember our test of Human Fall Flat. An interesting game that just launched a Steam Greenlight campaign.
We spoke with No Brakes games CEO, Tomas Sakalauskas, to ask him everything you want to know about this interesting new game.
If you want to support the game yourself, be sure to check out the Steam Greenlight page here.
What gave you the inspiration for Human Fall Flat?
All of my games start their life through prototyping, searching for some fresh and fun game mechanics, then looking for a direction to take it in. Human: Fall Flat was a mix of experimenting with the Intel RealSense camera and a desire to implement procedural character animation. Once I got the character who was able interacting with the environment using physics, I wanted to make a puzzle game – a baby of Portal and Limbo. This changed right after playtesting the first puzzles – I noticed that quite often solving the puzzles was not the main goal of the players. Looking for ways around the intended solution or simply immersing in parkour runs or self-imposed challenges seemed to be far more enjoyable. I stopped making artificial boundaries and focused on an experience where every rule can be bent.
Will you expand upon the current game with new mechanics or will you keep things the way they are?
Every level so far adds some new mechanics to the game. The process of making new levels and new mechanics is interconnected. I start with a new mechanics prototype, then I make a gray-box level to test and tune it. Playtesting gives me ideas on how to improve mechanics or add yet another one, and then the level needs to be changed to cater to the adjusted mechanics, and then I start back at the beginning again. I will be adding new levels to the game up until as well as after launch, which means there will definitely be new mechanics.
Is there anything you aim to implement into the game?
I’m currently mostly working on polish: composing music, finalizing audio experience, tweaking some levels based on playtesting footage. Basically getting ready for the launch. I’m looking forward to return to designing new levels and mechanics after that. I guess bringing more content is the best way to say thank you to those who will be buying the game.
Why did you choose to make your protagonist a faceless white blob?
He’s not the protagonist – you are. I kept him abstract to remove emphasis from the character and let the player’s imagination (with the help of character customization functionality) create its own experience in the game’s surreal dreamscapes.
The game flowed from one level to the next in a somewhat psychedelic way, was this predetermined before you actually started on the game or did you make this up while you were already making the game?
The whole idea started with the search for respawn mechanics that do not interrupt game flow. I came up with the concept of falling back to where you started. Playing with this respawn mechanic had this dream-like flavor to it, so the game shifted from sci-fi to dreamscapes. It was a natural step to use the same mechanics to fall to the next level.
How does Human Fall Flat compare to your other game making endeavours? Was it harder to make or was it easier?
All our previous games were mobile, and being a PC/Console gamer myself, I’m finally in a familiar environment. That said, the development was both harder and easier. The easy part is that I’m doing this game by myself, there’s no management & communication overhead, no dependencies to handle, everything is super predictable and instant. The hard part is – I’m alone, this means I have to do everything from level design, to composing music, community management and marketing. They should start selling 25 hour clocks.
Why did you choose to make physics the main gameplay element?
I like simulation games. From a game design perspective simulation makes it easy to balance skill vs chance. There’s plenty of randomness in physics simulation, but it’s not totally chaotic, with the skill you learn to control it, still it’s impossible to perfect it to the point where everything becomes fully predictable.
For me physics games are also the most immersive – things behave natural and responsive, you know what to expect from the game world. Physics give a game designer a solid base to start, from which you can decide how much you want to move away from that to craft the desired experience.
Will you be keeping an eye on what people who’re playing your game are saying in terms of suggestions, fixes, improvements, etc…?
Absolutely, player feedback was the key driver when making the game and will continue to be that in the future. I’m not making a game for myself and the only way to make it right is listening to people who are or will be playing it. The launch of the game is not the destination, it’s the beginning of the journey and everyone is invited.
Are there any other projects on the way beside Human Fall Flat?
Not right now. Since I’m making a physics based game about dreams I don’t really need other projects to satisfy my creative drive. If I want to create another game, I can put it as a new mechanics in the next level of Human Fall Flat.
What are your past experiences?
I started my professional career in 1996, as a software architect and team lead of user interfaces team on a backup software. Later I was involved in process engineering, in 2000 started my own software company, which later shifted to product development and gave birth to agile team management tool www.eylean.com.
My alter ego started making games since I was 8, got a master degree in computer science focusing on real-time graphics and FX, and never gave up on doing gaming experiments as a hobby.
The second me finally won the fight in 2012 and established No Brakes Games. Our debut title was No Brakes Rally, a 2d racing simulator on Bing maps for Windows 8. Other noteworthy games were: cute family game Pocket Sheep, which got its share of success on Windows Phone and Windows 8, and a signal cracking puzzle for Windows 10 – Signals: Lockdown. The studio was about to collapse last summer, but I decided to continue the operation singlehandedly by giving myself a personal challenge called Human Fall Flat.
I also teach Game Design at Mykolas Romeris University to try to pass the craft to next generations.
Who’s the man and have you seen Waldo?I am, just don’t tell my wife. Waldo? No. Have you seen him?
