N+: The Interview
Mar 20, 2008The emergence of downloadable games on home consoles has led to some wonderful rediscoveries of old genres that many gamers might have thought had died. Metanet's N+ for Xbox Live Arcade is a spare, but devilishly refined 2D platformer that is a direct throwback to the earliest PC platformers. The game unfolds in bite-size levels that encourage players to find a switch to open the exit door and then escape from the small rectangular levels as quickly as possible. In his
We had the opportunity to catch up withMetanet Co-founders, and N+ creators, Raigan Burns and Mare Sheppard. Here's what they had to say about the game. Also be sure to check Insider for our in-depth interview with Raigan and Mare about the world of independent gaming in Independent View.
IGN: When did you guys first start working on the initial tech? I know Raigan talked about the idea coming from having a circular collision box instead of the traditional square or rectangular one for the character.
Mare Sheppard: We came up with that stuff back in 2003, maybe. 2002 or 2003.
Raigan Burns: Some of the first stuff we did was just stuff moving around, so you need collision pretty quickly.
Mare Sheppard: And we knew that we wanted to do something a little different than what you typically find in games. Basically we had kind of a rough concept of something that we really wanted to play. So we were kind of working on, "How are we going to make this happen? What do we need to do?"
IGN: So you guys started out thinking about doing a 2D platformer and it just sort of mushroomed from there?
Raigan Burns: Yeah. It was a good simple thing to go for.
Mare Sheppard: Yeah, a good first project.
IGN: So it's been – well, let me check my math here – that's four years it took from the first experimental prototypes to the final release on Xbox Live?
Raigan Burns: I think it took even longer because for a couple of years before the Flash version came out we were still learning stuff.
IGN: You guys formed your partnership in '99?
Raigan Burns: Er, 2001?
Mare Sheppard: Yes.
Raigan Burns: So that was when we first started trying to make game-type stuff.
Mare Sheppard: And figuring out what the heck was going to be necessary to do that.
IGN: At what point did you realize that there was enough in the core prototype that you had made to build it into a full game; to stop prototyping and start iterating on the single idea?
Raigan Burns: I don't know. I don't think we really realized that. It was just more that we had so many little pieces lying around, and so we were like, "Let's just make a game." But not all of it, we had some rope stuff we were trying that we didn't end up using. But so we tried, sort of, everything we had laying around and we put a few of the best parts together.
Mare Sheppard: We had a good simulation of a drunk person slipping on a banana peel. That didn't exactly make it into N, it didn't quite fit.
IGN: So you were going to plant little bottles of alcohol around the level, make them sort of obstacles; if you hit the alcohol the screen would go all blurry?
Mare Sheppard: Maybe for the next game.
Raigan Burns: I think that turned into the rag doll later on.
IGN: That's really cool.
Mare Sheppard: Also, we had all these parts but it was sort of like, ok this is stupid, we've been developing this tech for so long. It was just time. It didn't really matter, we could finish whatever we needed to finish. But it was more that we finally had to finish the game. We were kind of getting sick of not doing a game.
IGN: I'm sure it's a grind.
Mare Sheppard: Yeah.
IGN: I know the world has changed a lot in videogames over the last four or five years. When you first started developing N, was it something you were thinking would just be an independent PC-type thing? When did you start thinking about doing console and handheld versions? Was that like an early target that you guys had as well?
Raigan Burns: No, we were just playing a lot of freeware. We were still students, so we figured let's just release it as freeware or whatever.
Mare Sheppard: I think back then we probably thought that making a console game would involve selling out to some degree. (laughter)
Raigan Burns: I don't think we thought that we could do it, either. I mean, I still don't know that we totally could do it.
Mare Sheppard: Yeah.
Raigan Burns: But anyway, Microsoft got in touch with us and that was really good. We didn't know that there was any demand because it is, you know, there's no graphics and whatever.
Mare Sheppard: I think it was really validating for us. When we finished N, we were really, really happy with it. That was our goal. We had taken a huge step forward, so we were really kind of content with that. It's very hard to know that there's potential beyond that. Like Raigan said, we weren't sure if anyone else would really like it. It's different when it's free, basically. You can't tell if people are going to pay for it.
IGN: That's a big leap of faith to take, going from one to the other. So Microsoft kind of courted you guys to do the Xbox Live version, and then once you got the ball rolling with them, is that when the DS and PSP stuff came along?
Raigan Burns: Yeah. We had been talking to Microsoft for a year, half a year. The Xbox one was already started when we just started talking to Atari. But it wasn't really Microsoft, it was just one guy, Ross Erickson, who moved to Sierra. But he was just really, really addicted to N.
Mare Sheppard: It was kind of all he did for a big part of the year.
Raigan Burns: He would talk about it to all the other people making Live Arcade games, apparently.
IGN: That sounds like Ryan Geddes here in the office. Ha can't stop talking about it. So, you guys were basically self-financing for most of the development, right? You were just doing it like every other independent does, just bootstrapping it and working in your spare time?
Raigan Burns: For the Flash one.
Mare Sheppard: For N, yeah. For N+ we got Telefilm funding.
IGN: What's that?
Raigan Burns: The short version is, in Canada there's a thing called Telefilm which is a branch of the government that provides loans for making movies and TV. But they've just started doing games, so basically we got a loan from them to finance the Xbox version.
IGN: That's great.
Raigan Burns: When we talked to Microsoft, they said they weren't doing that. I don't know that they're doing it now, either.
IGN: Like fronting development?
Raigan Burns: Yeah. They weren't going to be like a publisher. They weren't going to put any money in, because that's not what they wanted their role to be.
Mare Sheppard: And since freeware games don't exactly bring in the big bucks, we didn't have any money. So we had to get a loan.
IGN: That's really cool. Did you guys see the news about the EU ratifying a similar kind of bill? I guess the EU ratified it a couple of years ago and France is the first country to actually, formally subsidize some kind nationalized game development. It was written up in Gamasutra, I think a month ago. It was really a strange thing, but I think you get like a 30 percent tax credit if you're a French game developer.
Raigan Burns: Yeah, there are some tax credits and stuff in Canada too.
Mare Sheppard: It's actually a great place to be a game developer.
Raigan Burns: A lot of the stuff for games, really it's just mostly film. There's a pretty big film industry here—
IGN: Yeah, it's huge.
Raigan Burns: It's mostly that they sort of branched off into games recently.
IGN: I want to ask you about the levels, too. It's sort of a curious level structure that you have for N+, these little clusters of levels built around missions. There's just so many of them, it's kind of a daunting number of really different, really creative self-contained levels. How long did the actual level-building take? Was that sort of a continuous process as you were developing it?
Raigan Burns: Yeah. We started last summer. We're actually still making levels for the DLC.
Mare Sheppard: I think we started making, for this DLC, 150 single player levels two weeks ago, maybe three.
Raigan Burns: And we had some left over. We sort have always, like, we've just been making levels sort of constantly since N came out. You know, each new version we'll add levels to the Flash one. It's just fun, just using the level editor is fun.
Mare Sheppard: You can be so creative with it. Each level is so short, so you end up having a ton of ideas that probably don't fit in one level so it's kind of a necessity to make a crapload of tiny levels.
Raigan Burns: Like popcorn.
IGN: It seems to me, like Raigan spoke about GDC with the knobs talk, just that core tech that you have now with the circular collision box; it seems like there could be a lot of hidden outgrowths that could come from that tech that you wouldn't necessarily have predicted. But just letting people play around with that and all the unintended circumstances that come out of that—
Raigan Burns: Yeah, definitely. We're still coming up with new ideas for level concepts. It's kind of hard to describe. Just by playing around you're like, "Oh, if you do a weird jump here." I don't know, just weird things like that. And there are a lot that we haven't—fans of the Flash version who've made levels, they've actually come up with a whole bunch of ideas that we didn't anticipate.
IGN: I've just been handed a question from Ryan Geddes. He wants to know when we're going to get content sharing for the XBLA version?
Mare Sheppard: It's possible, hopefully.
Raigan Burns: We don't know.
Mare Sheppard: It's sort of all in Microsoft's hands because they need to develop tools with which they can police their leaderbaords and actually delete specific content without having to delete the whole user profile, or having to disable it. If they can't do that, we're not allowed to release it.
Raigan Burns: They said that sometime in 2008 they might have something like that, but they're not really committing either way, so we don't know. We're waiting. It works, there's just a switch we have to flip.
Mare Sheppard: Yeah, so we're done.
IGN: Ok, so it's just Microsft's backend that they have to figure out.
Raigan Burns: I mean, if you have a devkit, the version that's on Partnernet actually has it enabled.
IGN: Oh really?
Raigan Burns: Yeah, you can use it there. It's just that we sort of had to turn that off until they have this infrastructure.
IGN: When you went through QA was there any kind of active mini-community of QA testers fooling around with that kind of stuff?
Raigan Burns: No. There was a room full of testers that were just dedicated to N+, but pretty much they had their hands full playing the levels. Apparently, we found this out at GDC actually, but they have to play through each level in each build and it was pretty much that builds were coming in at least a few times a week, and frequently daily. So I don't think they had any time.
IGN: Let's talk a little bit about the art style, I'm really curious about it. I thought it was actually a really neat choice you guys made to have it so spartan. I think it actually looks really good in 720p. It really brings out the crisp lines and the clean kind of—
Raigan Burns: Thanks. Yeah, that's something that we're kind of a bit disappointed with in terms of the reception. So many people give it bad reviews because of the graphics.
Mare Sheppard: Or just dismiss the graphics altogether.
Raigan Burns: They don't understand that you could make a choice to make it simple.
Mare Sheppard: Yeah, they think that we're either unskilled or we've just hired an untalented artist.
Raigan Burns: Or we have no money.
Mare Sheppard: It's nonsense really. The graphics, yes they're very simple. But the game is so difficult and you have to focus so much that if the graphics were busier, you'd probably go crazy.
Raigan Burns: Yeah, I think that's the main thing. That's a good point. They were that way because that's how they have to be. If there was a big 3D foliage moving in the background it would be too confusing. You have to be able to easily see where everything is.
IGN: I think something that really came out to me while I was playing it was, for the more difficult levels, the more you fail you begin to create this subconscious association with the thing that you're looking at. And it can really kind of turn you off over a long period of time. Like if you keep losing in the "lava" level or the "jungle" level or something, it can create this kind of subconscious gunk in your brain that just really pisses you off about the game. It's like, "I don't ever want to see another lava level again."
Mare Sheppard: I wonder if that's true for N+ then, because every single level is gray.
Raigan Burns: Maybe it balances out, so the levels that you like, it evens them out.
Mare Sheppard: Ok, maybe.
IGN: I mean, it's so neutral. I felt while I was playing that it kind of encouraged me to, you know, not focus on some transportational experience but just have it focus on the gameplay and experiment with different ways of what I was doing. Sometimes having a more ornate graphical style kind of distracts from that. It's like "Oh, look. My little guy's in an actual place now. I wonder why he's in the jungle. What's he doing here?"
Mare Sheppard: Yeah, that was something that always confused me with Lode Runner, which is one of N's major influences. What the heck are they doing in this weird jungle/amazon place? We definitely prefer the early version where it's just bricks and ladders and nothing.
Raigan Burns: Right. All the important information is communicated but there's no other information to distract you.
Mare Sheppard: Right.
Raigan Burns: Also the level design in N, I think the simplicity totally lets us do things with the level shapes and sort of make the shapes—they just look nice no matter what you do.
IGN: Right.
Raigan Burns: This is something we're sort of fooling around with in our next game, to try and make there be a bit more detail. But there's totally a trade-off where if you add too much detail, it's really limiting in terms of what sort of level shapes you can make before it just looks like garbage.
IGN: Absolutely. Did you get any pressure from Microsoft to sort of flesh out the look a little bit more?
Raigan Burns: Well, they did want it to be next-gen.
Mare Sheppard: Yeah, they suggested we should try and show off what the 360 can do.
Raigan Burns: Actually, one of the things that got cut, we were going to do a fluid simulation. Have you seen Plasma Pong?
IGN: Yeah, I have.
Raigan Burns: So we were going to do something like that for the smoke.
IGN: Wow, that would have been pretty cool.
Raigan Burns: Yeah, just sort of like ninja smoke. Not a lot of it, just like little wisps as you moved. But it sort of got cut because there was so much other stuff too.
Mare Sheppard: Yeah.
Raigan Burns: So we ended up not having to change very much. The graphics are more detailed than the Flash version.
Mare Sheppard: Yeah, and the particles, I think, are a bit more. They certainly look different, but I think they're a bit more detailed too. So we ended up, we were able to keep the kind of basic, minimalist graphics but add little touches here and there to make for more excitement.
IGN: It animates really well. It looks really nice, running in motion. It definitely doesn't look like the simple kind of stick figure thing that some people are knocking it for.
Mare Sheppard: That was important to us too. Just to make sure that everything was really, really fluid. Because the figure is so tiny that you kind of have to get personality from wherever you can. So that's the best way to communicate that to people.
IGN: Did you guys have to change anything major for the different platforms that it's going to be on? Especially for the DS, are you guys getting any pressure to do touch screen something or another. Maybe do the level editor with the touch screen?
Raigan Burns: Oh yeah, the level editor definitely uses the touch screen. But the thing is the handhelds are totally different. It's a different developer.
Mare Sheppard: It's a different art style.
Raigan Burns: Also we don't have as much control. We're just sort of like, what we like and what we don't like. But we don't actually have any power to make them listen to us.
IGN: Right.
Raigan Burns: On the Xbox version, we sort of ran the project so we got to do it exactly how we wanted it. On the handhelds it's sort of out of our hands a bit. I mean there are some things that we like there, but in general it's not going to be as much like the Flash version as the Xbox version was.
Mare Sheppard: We tried to make sure that it, in terms of the gameplay and controls, that it felt exactly the same or as close as we could. But there are limitations on those platforms, especially the DS because it's not as powerful. And because, I guess, the code had to be completely different, we had to make some concessions in terms of how it felt.
Raigan: Yeah, it just feels—the Xbox version is like almost perfectly identical to Flash. The handhelds just feel—it's really hard to explain. They just feel a bit looser.
IGN: Right.
Raigan Burns: And a bit faster too. Like in N, things are really sort of just slightly in slow motion. Jumping is a bit "moon gravity," or whatever.
IGN: Yeah, very much.
Raigan Burns: It's a bit sped up. It's a bit faster [in the handheld versions].
Mare Sheppard: So as a result, the games are sort of changed so you don't have to be super precise because the controls won't let you be as precise as you could in Flash or Xbox. So it's a bit different. Yeah, so I'll leave it at that.
IGN: Did you guys make any specific levels around that sort of new twist on the gameplay then?
Raigan Burns: All of the levels that we've made, all the single player levels sort of take that into account to get rid of some of the—where you're jumping between really tight-together mines and stuff like that. Just because it wasn't possible to pull off really.
IGN: Is there any hope for a WiiWare version at some point?
Mare Sheppard: Well, we're licensed Wii developers so it could happen, but the contract with Microsoft has an exclusivity clause for PSN and Wii so we have to wait two years. It might be better at that point to do something cool with our new game because we're just not sure that people will still be interested in N+ in two years. Everyone tells us they will be but—
Raigan Burns: We're kind of sick of it already. We've made so many levels. I don't know, we've made something like two thousand levels in the past year. So we're just about ready to work on something else.
Mare Sheppard: We need a break.
Raigan Burns: But maybe in two years we'll have forgotten.
IGN: One last thing I was really interested in about N+ was the music. It fit the art style really well and kind of fit the overall trial and error process that the gameplay goes through. It really helps you zone out and still kind of kept you upbeat and motivated to try again if you lost. At what point did you guys start thinking about music for the game?
Raigan Burns: From the beginning. The musician is in England, he was a friend of the developer.
Mare Sheppard: His name is Joris De Man.
Raigan Burns: We didn't really have anything—I think we called it "chip" tunes and sort of ambient. Because it's true, if you're listening to it again and again, and you'll be hearing it a lot as you play, you don't want it to be annoying. You want it so sit in the background, just like the graphics.
IGN: It's motivational. It keeps you propelling forward.
Raigan Burns: Yeah, exactly.
IGN: What can fans of N+ expect to see in the future?
Raigan Burns: DLC will hopefully be out soon. We are just wrapping up the first pack. Hopefully that will be out in a couple of weeks.
IGN: Oh great.
Raigan Burns: That's going to be easier because a lot of people apparently are not—The Xbox levels are much easier than the Flash version. Apparently we still didn't do a good enough job making sure, so these new ones they definitely do get hard at the end but they're definitely easier.
IGN: A little more forgiving for guys that suck.
Raigan Burns: And more co-op as well, because we didn't think it would be as popular but apparently everyone really likes the co-op.
IGN: Yeah, it's all the rage these days.
Mare Sheppard: That was something that, from the beginning we weren't sure if co-op was even going to work and it didn't really fit with all of our concepts. It was kind of confusing, we just didn't know if you could play with someone else. But it turned out pretty well. I'm really happy with it, it was a surprise.
IGN: It's a really neat feature.
Raigan Burns: It's a lot different, but it is cool that just through level design you can really change the character of the game.
IGN: Absolutely. Thanks for your time!
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