Dig! Dig! Dino!

Christa Mrgan: After reading a news article about some exciting dinosaur anomalies discovered nearby, you decide to join a local paleontology dig site. At first, you mainly dig up trash, but soon you find some treasure that you can trade to upgrade your tools, overcoming obstacles and digging deeper as you uncover artifacts, dinosaur bones, and some mysteries.

Christa Mrgan: Welcome to the Playdate Podcast, bringing you stories from game designers, developers, and the team behind Playdate, the little yellow game console with a crank. I’m Christa Mrgan. Today I am talking with the creators of Playdate Season Two’s Dig! Dig! Dino!, an action adventure puzzle game you’re definitely gonna dig.

And spoiler alert: in this episode, we talk about the mechanics of the game and some specific upgrades and power-ups to help with your digging, and we also hint at some of the underlying story that emerges during your excavation escapades.

We don’t give too much away, but if you really don’t want to know anything about the game’s narrative, you might want to save this episode for later. Okay. Let’s get right into it and say hello to Fáyer and Dom2D and let them tell us all about their game.

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: My name is Antonio Uribe, also known as Fáyer, and I was the programmer and I guess co-designer of Dig! Dig! Dino!

Christa Mrgan: Yeah! He was also part of the team who brought us Arco last summer-- a dynamic tactical RPG, where three distinct tales are forged in bloodshed, laced with magic, and united by revenge. Dig! Dig! Dino! is his first project with fellow game designer, artist, and longtime friend Dom Ferland.

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: I am Dom. On the internet, known as Dom2D. Dominique Ferland is my full name. I’m a game designer and an artist, and on this game I’m doing some game design, doing some pixel art, the lovely black and white of the Playdate.

It’s an action-y, puzzle-y digging game, where you are an intern at a archeological dig, looking for dinosaur bones, because there’s been some scans on, this place that showed some strange readings, some strange artifacts, and some strange bones have been found there.

So you’re starting to dig up more and more of these things by using your shovel, but also other tools that you unlock and you upgrade through a little bit of a meta game of getting some treasure, spending it to upgrade your tools and unlocking things like a dog that helps you find bones or a drill that lets you break harder rocks as you dig deeper.

So I think that’s the core of it. There’s also a, small layer of narrative, where you start discovering some secrets and some weird, history in the ground about these dinosaurs.

Christa Mrgan: Yeah, you literally uncover the story as you dig. And both Dom and Fáyer have been Playdate fans for years now!

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: When did I hear about Playdate first? I guess one of the big announcements. I saw it and I was like, “yes, I wanna be a part of this.”

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: I heard about the Playdate when it launched. I ordered one and been having fun since Season One.

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: I was really excited about the possibilities. Not as much for for the crank, because it’s like I guessed that most of the immediate ideas were gonna be developed immediately

Mark Lentz: Everybody comes up with fishing!

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: And that you’ll have to find something more interesting to do with that and to, to date, I haven’t had many ideas that relate to that, but in general, like it seemed to me like it was a great platform because it feel like a more open way, what will be to work on a, like a Game Boy during that time. You can do something big enough or like super big if you like, but it doesn’t need to be like that. And the way it looks and the way it feels is amazing. I was immediately attracted to it.

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: And yeah, Fáyer told me about the idea of making a small game for Playdate, which was perfect for me to just ship something small and self-contained and just the perfect scale for me at the time.

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: I don’t know when we met each other online, but like more than 10 years ago. And because the game dev community and a certain website was better at the time.

Christa Mrgan: RIP, Twitter.

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: I remember we would try to make something at some point and it didn’t happen. And we were always trying, like we meet together digitally or physically we talk about like maybe making something. And in this 10 years it hasn’t happened. And then finally I was about to finish Arco. And I think Dom, you also were out of work. And then you were like, I’m looking to do something. And I was looking to do something and, you pitched me an idea and I was like, that sounds great, but it’s too much and I’m already doing too much right now. And it was like a bigger game, a complex game.

And then I mentioned that I wanted to do something for the Playdate. And he said like,

“oh, I have the Playdate.” And I was like, “ah, we can make something smaller for this first and try working together on something smaller and see how that works out. And then we can decide if we do the other idea or not.”

And that’s how I think this game started to happen. I pitched some concepts. I think we both pitched some ideas and concepts and you liked this one about the dinos, or like the general idea and went, " yeah, sure. Let’s do that."

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: It was perfect for me because I’d just left another job in the mobile game industry where companies are acquired and the studios are closed very quickly. So I hadn’t shipped a game in I think six or seven years because of that. So I was just looking to finish a game and when he said, let’s do a game for Playdate, let’s do this idea that’s about digging.

I saw the ending of the game. I saw the ending of production for it, and that felt very good. But yeah, also working with Fáyer was something we wanted to do for a while, but because of those jobs, because of life, it never lined up. I think we tried to make a tarot game at some point. We started, but then I probably had to join another game.

Yeah.

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: I don’t even know why we stopped. I think it was time because I, I remember trying to put together something. You sent me the art and we weren’t really sure where to take the idea, which is an important thing to figure out early. You know, like you can see the end. If at the beginning you’re like, “this sounds like fun or like basic and we’ll figure it out,” it’s difficult sometimes to find that, like incredible spark in the middle of it. But like, if since the beginning you can kind of see it there, then it’s easier to just continue and finish something.

Christa Mrgan: Oh man. That is such a great little nugget of wisdom. Not just for games, but for anything creative. Seriously, write that down. But so why digging for dinosaur bones? Where did that idea come from?

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: I was scrolling some social network, I saw an image of a person on a, like a dig site with a dinosaur, and I was like. That’s enough. I like how that look. And I was like, ah, I wanna make something about just digging dinosaur bones.

And also my kid is really into dinosaurs, so I was like, maybe that’s a good thing to make for my kid. And at the time it was just like, that: it’s gonna be like an endless desert. You’re gonna have to find these dinosaurs in this endless desert. And that was the base of it. And I think when we’re talking about small ideas, I went into my ideas list notes and I was like these are the ones that maybe fit, Playdate the most.

And I think that’s the only one that you like picked. And you were like, I think this is the one that we should do. All the extra stuff, that comes from Dom directly. Like the idea originally was just finding dinosaur bones in an area and that’s it. It didn’t have the progression of the tools.

I think that’s something that we discussed really early to make it like into something, or that wasn’t just do this and like try to find them in an open area or something like that. Because also of the space of the Playdate and everything, narrative and mysterious and all that comes from Dom. And I think you pitched that really early. Since the very beginning, you wanted to do something with that, right?

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: I always wanted to have just a little bit of like a surprise, like something that surprises you when you dig up. Because if you find bones, it’s fun the first couple times, but after a while it’s kinda same-y no matter if it’s different dinosaurs. So I was thinking what would make me be surprised and interested to learn more and dig more in terms of things you can find.

Christa Mrgan: Oh, heads up. We’ve arrived at Spoiler Town. They’re kind of sprinkled throughout the rest of the episode from here.

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: So I was thinking about the treasures, like different artifacts or things that you find, but then I was like, also what does that have to do with the dinosaurs? So I kind of tied them together by having this little bit of a story about what if dinosaurs were not extinct when we thought they were.

And that just led to a lot of ideas of weird items and weird dinosaurs you could find, uh, which I guess is a bit spoil-y, but it’s not too much.

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: yeah, the story of the game goes somewhere else, but it’s mostly like, what if dinosaurs develop in a different way than in our own reality? You know? And that’s kind of what we explore in digging deeper.

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: And that leads to some fun items. Like in real life you would find scrolls or, art items that relate to history of a culture, but what would those be for dinosaurs? So that leads to a lot of interesting things. And I had a lot of fun doing that because that led to new art and new takes on dinosaurs that we haven’t seen.

Also, because I didn’t wanna do the research on proper dinosaurs, so I made up new dinosaurs with this story.

Christa Mrgan: That’s such a good workaround! And so to progress in the game, to dig deeper, find more bones and artifacts, and to reveal more of the story, you have to sell the treasure and sometimes trash that you find In order to upgrade your equipment.

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: It’s a weird mix of tools, power-ups and like a regular game-y shop.

We start with the shovel, which is the most basic tool to dig. And the thing that limits how much you can progress in the game is your stamina or your like, energy, and everything uses the same thing. So we don’t like focus on too many different numbers or like put too many things on the ui.

You have this energy that allows you to do certain actions and eventually you can uncover the drill, that can break rocks and other harder things. And you can also find ways to get more stuff as you dig.

And then the dog I think was, there since on your early concepts, Dom, I think you drew this dog?

Christa Mrgan: Yeah, there’s a dog in this game. Can you pet the dog?

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: No. Can’t pet the dog in our game. What have we done?

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: No, we’re monsters.

Christa Mrgan: Oh. Okay. It, it’s okay. I’m just, I’m just gonna need a minute.

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: The problem is there is no, the dog is not there. When you put it, it like, it goes away.

Christa Mrgan: Man, but I’ve been saving up for the dog! I haven’t finished the game yet.

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: It’s important for players to have, like short term and midterm and long-term goals. And the dog was definitely like a midterm goal. Like short term, you just want to, you know, upgrade your things one by one. Long term you want to reach the next dig site by finding a certain number of bones, and the dog is perfectly in the middle. like, “Oh, I just need to find a thousand dollars in my treasure.” So I thought it was a good set of motivations overall.

I just wanted not a character on screen, like you’re just a shovel in the game. But I did want to have more cute things that you can unlock that feels satisfying and you have an attachment to. So dog was definitely one of the first ones I wanted to do. And we also have the radar. So Radar is the one tool that just gives you a bit of information. It just kind of pings and tells you in which direction things are. So that plus the dog are kind of the two puzzle tools you have, that lets you kind of optimize your digging. There’s a couple other things that you unlock later on that help you in that vein.

And then there’s a few more upgrades that are more related to the stuff you find in the second dig site and the third dig site that are a bit secret. So I cannot tell you about it.

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: But they’re fun.

Besides the shovel, I think the radar, was the first thing that I added to the early concept. So when we got together and started talking about this game and making it, I played with the Playdate, but I haven’t really done anything before in, there.

So I had three days before I was traveling to GDC 2024 and I was like, I have window of time. So I focused on making this prototype and it was something really simple because I struggled a lot ,with learning like the basic stuff with Playdate, but it was shoveling and the radar, because at the time, like the things that you find in there were like really basic.

I just like something I put together fast and I the radar was there. It’s something that will tell you to not like-- so you don’t waste time like going everywhere. Instead, like you can focus a little bit. It’s something that we discussed a lot of times and it had evolved a lot and had changed many times.

And there are some things that we added and then we removed because if you make it too powerful then it’s kind of boring. And adding like an energy or something to it to be like, oh, it’s gonna be more pricey. It’s also wasn’t that fun. And I don’t really use it that much. Once you understand like the logic of the things, you don’t need it, but sometimes it’s helpful. And then the dog-- the dog is the opposite of the radar because it’s kind of like a radar, but it tells you immediately where like the closest bone is to you relatively to where, like on the grid that you are.

But it’s also you can only use it once in a playthrough. So you have this dog and you summon the dog to the dig site and he sniffs around and finds a bone for you – tells you where it is. Like it could be deeper than you think, but it like it’s really fun to use. There are other interesting tools like that, but we’re not gonna tell you and the dog on, the shop area is like on the last line. But you can see it from the beginning because other things are blocked until you progress the game. Because I wanted it to be visible, but like really expensive. So you have something like, what does that dog do? And I like, I wanna get enough resources to use it to my advantage in the digs.

Christa Mrgan: And I love that you have a dog as a kind of power up, but then your boss, the director of the dig site, is also a dog. He’s like an anthropomorphic wolf.

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: I always find it funny when in universes is you have like animal people and animal animals.

Christa Mrgan: Yes. A classic. And so the game mostly doesn’t use the crank-- except for in one very specific way.

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: There is a very important thing. It’s uh, scrolling a newspaper. to scroll these, these cut scenes that we have that are just a newspaper that you can sort of read, that kinda gives you a bit of context. But yeah, otherwise, no. We tried it with the radar a bit, if I remember correctly.

We were thinking about it for tool selection or for digging, but the actions you take are repeated a lot, right? Like you do the same loop of going into the dig site, digging, using your tools. So whenever we introduced the crank, it felt just a little too much in terms of involvement, like manipulation with your hands to pull it out and all that.

So we ended up just keeping it simple with just using the d- pad and buttons and it feels better. But it’s still nice when you have that cut scene moment where you pull it out and then you scroll, it feels like a punctuation. So it’s, it still has a purpose.

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: Yeah, exactly. I think the problem with the crank in the way the controls work in this game is that the controls are very discrete. So it’s difficult to measure: do you wanna shovel more? It’s difficult to tell the player like, ah, that is one action or two actions, or you’re consuming this much energy or et cetera. It got really like clunky really fast. The first demo used the crank instead of the button presses because I wanted to use the crank as I think it’s something that everybody that designs a game for Playdate wants to use the crank because it’s the special thing. I think Dom asked me to create this other controller and he is like, “it is gonna feel better!” It’s like, “I know that it’s gonna feel better, but I kind of wanna force us to like figure out a way to use this other system.” But eventually we just decided it was too much. I was just creating this, like the tools for allowing Dom to balance it. But like,

that was an important thing because with this kind of games where like you’re in the middle of action and puzzle and you’re like doing something repetitive, it is really important to put in that great position where you’re not feeling bored, or that feels like overwhelming that, oh, I’m never gonna be able to get to the next point or whatever it is.

But also not to make it so fast that it’s like you’re not enjoying the moment that you’re playing.

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: We gave ourselves a bunch of tools to make that possible. The first one being the, that there’s three dig sites. I think a lot of games would’ve just made like a one giant infinite level where you can dig like much, much deeper. In our game I think there’s seven layers or eight per dig site. And then once you’ve collected enough bones, you can move to the next dig site, which has a few more elements, a few new things, but it starts at a higher difficulty and difficulty being the number of hits you need to do or the amount of damage you need to do to dig a tile out, or the number of hits you need to do with a drill on a rock.

So starts immediately at the second dig site a bit more difficult, a bit more demanding on the upgrades. And the third one does that even more. It sounds very boring when I say it that way, but what it does is that you don’t have to go through the long boring part every single time you do it.

If you’re so powerful that the first layers are too easy, then it would be very repetitive and very boring to do. So we kinda skipped that by making the player skip to the part that is relevant to them at that moment. But you can still go to the first dig site if you want to feel powerful or if you wanna finish collecting the last few bones that are missing, to complete a skeleton.

Christa Mrgan: Yeah, this kind of weighting or balancing in games is always super interesting to me. It’s like you want the gameplay to always be on that edge of challenging enough to stay interesting without feeling completely overwhelming or impossible. Or worse: boring.

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: You can have kind of a session that is more light and more like just digging up a lot of things. But it’s short. It’s not like a 30 minute session to go through all of it.

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: I think that was the most important thing, right?

Like that what we discussed was that because of how the Playdate works, we didn’t wanna be like, ah, you’re gonna be doing a session is gonna be 30 minutes. Like we wanted something short. Like a mobile game in general. You can do it in between other things. I feel like the start of the game, you can play for like an hour or so and be like compelled to continue, but at some point you’re like, all right, that’s enough for now.

But then if you grab it for five, 10 minutes, like a couple sessions and then continue, I think it’s a great companion game. And that’s what’s important too, to not get to a point where we make it so you have so much energy and so much hits or like tools that it takes 30 minutes to do kind of the same that before it was only five minutes. And other games, balance things like that. But it, in this case, it didn’t feel like it was gonna be good. I also personally don’t like to balance with a lot of numbers, but Dom immediately send me like a couple spreadsheets and I was like, oh no, I don’t want to think about like this.

And I was like, you know what? I’m I’m not used to being the main programmer in a game. Like for some time now I’m kind of getting back to it. And I was like, you know, i, I need to focus on the code, so like what you sent me. I’m gonna put it in the game and I create some things that you can continue to play with that and get it to the position that you wanted. I didn’t wanna think about that because like, it’s gonna distract me from the other thinking that I need to do in the game. And it worked really great. Like I was surprised, the first time that, that it got balanced and I played it and like, oh, like, it felt like the game that people are gonna play now.

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: If you ask me how I did it, I dunno, like it was a lot of iteration and a lot of trying. I think my main goal was every time you play and you do a session, which is a day, I don’t know if you explained this, but there’s, you have limited energy per day, and then you go back home and you buy some upgrades and you go back.

I wanted every day to be enough money or enough treasure to go to the shop and buy something. Every single time you go, you will buy at least one thing and often way more. 'cause I wanted the game to be generous and kind of fast in its progression. So you end up buying a lot of like sometimes three, four upgrades in a single run.

Christa Mrgan: Unless you’re trying to save up a thousand dollars for that dog you can’t pet! I’m fine.

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: And it feels good. It’s a rewarding experience, not a grind. It’s same for the number of bones you have to find to progress and just to finish the game, also. It’s not too wild, I think. it feels finishable it feels like something you can tackle. I think the whole game takes five hours to finish, and honestly, it feels good, 'cause most games nowadays are infinite and there’s an infinite grind of progression to do. And I’m, I like it, but sometimes I’d like to just have a game that I can say, “oh, I went through it, I finished it. It was fun.” You know?

Christa Mrgan: Yeah, totally.

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: So the goal of the game, the main is to uncover all the dinosaurs and dinosaurs are made of different bones that are like pieces from them. Some have like small number like three and others have six or seven or something like that. And you require a certain amount of the bones to unlock the next dig site but the game ends when there are a couple things that you have to do that we won’t spoil much, but when you have all the pieces for like bones for a dinosaur, you can go into the dino lab, and you can scan it, we call it. And it’s an action that allows you to recreate the dinosaur from the bones, or at least like an image of it. So, it is a way for us to say like, oh, we understand more about this now because you have all the pieces of the puzzle. And the goal is to do that to all of the dinosaurs available in the game, the main one. Because at the end we discussed about, like a lot about the tools and other things and finding different stuff in the game. There are artifacts and other things, but it was gonna be in the title there is like Dig! Dig! Dino! It’s supposed to be about like finding dinosaur, the main motivation of the whole theme of the game.

And we wanted to focus on that. We’re pretty generous with the way we structure it. And as, as you continue, it gets easier to finish the first places and getting to the end, which is what we are also trying to do.

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: I try to give personality to the layers. I know it sounds weird, but each dig site has a personality, and then each layer has a personality. And by personality, I mean the, the third layer, for example, has a lot more rocks than the first two. The fifth layer has a lot more chance to get diamonds or these kind of things.

So it, really feels like they’re distinct. It’s not just everything was randomized within this 3D space of layers, right? And then the odds of finding the bones are also higher the deeper you go and the better treasure also you can find the deeper you go. And once you get to the second and third dig site, there’s some new elements that add new obstacles that are kind of a new puzzle to it, like different blockers or rocks that are different shapes than you saw before. So now you have to figure out the best ways to deal with those, which is kind the puzzle of the game. It’s not as much of a puzzle as like a sudoku or something like that, but it still feels like, “oh, I have these obstacles to deal with in the most optimal way to make the best progress.”

And it feels good for your brain to, to tackle. So these personalities kind of add to that puzzle gradually as you dig deeper or as you reach a new dig site.

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: The game had a couple development phases. We have this prototype and for a long time that was mostly it. Then I think Dom sent me some beautiful art that looked closer what we have at the end. I was like, oh, I need to rework the whole game. It took me a couple days to put it together, that early version.

There’s not a lot of opportunities to test. I think just showing it around when we have the Playdate going around with some friends, like, “oh, I’m making this game. Do you wanna play it?” And then seeing reactions. I have a couple local friends that have a Playdate that have seen it.

yeah,

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: I had a couple friends play it. My partner played the whole thing. I kept my partner for a later play test. I wanted kind of a, late production play test 'cause I knew she would play the whole thing. And she did, over Christmas, she played the whole game.

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: I mostly don’t have a lot of testers around me, like my partner and my kid. There are some things that a young kid doesn’t-- like rules and stuff. He wanted to find the dinosaur, but like, he couldn’t understand moving, because it–

I don’t think we explained that it’s on a grid. It is like Minesweeper. you choose cells on a grid and you move around and then you choose the tool that you’re gonna use and you put that action in the world until get a return from that. And he didn’t understand that he was controlling the cursor. so I tested it in front of him and he like, just saw his reaction. He sometimes grab it and did stuff, but like, he quickly like got confused.

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: You brought a very early build to GDC as well, if and it was just the grid and moving it around and uncovering a couple tiles. But by showing it to people, realized like this is an action, a very base core action that people enjoyed doing. And that led us to continuing working on it, right? But I, kept playing it all the time. Like it’s the kinda game that we are just playing nonstop as we were making it.

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: Yeah, the moment that you’re trying to test some part of it, and then you get lost in playing and then you’re, oh, I was supposed to check these, not like, regularly play it. you, like,

'cuz you get hooked in the main loop of the game like pretty quickly. I like to do play testing, but it’s also kinda hard sometimes. If your friends are also game developers, they’re always trying to change the game. They tell you how to change it to fit their ideas better. And you’re like, yeah, but that’s not my game. That’s something else. You created your own game, you know?

Christa Mrgan: Yeah, I have totally done that. And I’m not even a game developer. haha whoops. But, let’s hear about the art in the game, because it is really cute!

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: I always draw cute, animal characters, humanoid animals. And that’s what I resorted to in this one as well. We have this little camp where you have this digging crew that is there. They have a little scientist, little workshop guy, and I think these characters really put life in this game that is pretty simple. But then the game is mostly about finding stuff as you dig, right? So I did a lot of like little trash items, little treasure, little artifacts and the bones themselves, which, become pretty wild as you find weirder and weirder things. But overall, I just wanted a very clear, like cartoony outlines kind of style.

And it ends up being kind of a rough, pixel art style. It’s not like super geometric, kind of pixel art style that, that you see in a lot of games. But it worked kind of great, honestly, on this, platform. It was my first time doing like with the one bit style, so just black and white.

It was a bit of a learning curve to learn how to do these textures and all that, but it was really fun to see it evolve. I will never show the first version of the art that I made, because it’s pretty bad now that I see how it has evolved. But I think overall it just makes this cartoony world that is very usable, very clear.

It’s still a grid game, right? So everything needs to fit cleanly in little squares, but I think I managed to find a good balance between, between the two. And I, I keep wanting to do more, but I have to stop myself because, I have to stop working on this game at some point. But yeah, finding a bottle and then a can was probably the first couple ones, but then, I don’t know why, but I kept wanting to add more, so I added a little poop and a little sock and a little this and that. My partner was disagreeing with having a poop in the game. But I did do some research about, these paleontology dig sites and they do love when they find poop. Yeah. They love finding like dry poop shells. They’re like, “oh my God, this tells us so much about these dinosaurs.” So I thought it was pretty important to have that in there. And it’s just, I dunno, it’s just silly, but I like it. It’s some good cartoony fun.

Christa Mrgan: Yeah! And what about designing the dinosaurs and their bones?

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: I tried to not directly do dinosaurs that exist, right? Because one, I don’t know enough about it. And I started doing research and I realized it would take me forever to, I actually know how to draw specific dinosaurs. Also, dinosaurs are extremely complicated.

The skeletons are extremely complicated. And doing them in 2D in black and white pixel art at this resolution was pretty extreme. So I realized I had to simplify them and make them just more iconic. There is a T-Rex- like there is a, an equivalent for a lot of dinosaurs that exist that you would think of, like a stegosaurus or whatever.

Christa Mrgan: Yeah. This seems like a good strategy for avoiding the “well actually” people.

And creating a bunch of your own dinosaurs is a real tyrannosaurus flex.

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: There’s a lot of parallels you can make, but they’re super simplified. Like you have three rib bones instead of 25 that dinosaurs have normally. And then by adding the little fantasy elements, there is a special thing that dinosaurs could have found that kind of changed them or evolved them or mutated them. And then that just led to kind of a, a generational tree of these weird mutations that you’ll see in the game.

Christa Mrgan: Yeah. Cool. That was kind of spoiler-y, but not too bad. You’ll see. So how about the music and sound design in the game?

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: So for the music and also the sound we work with Majo and Rich, which are friends of mine that have worked with me for many projects. They are my main audio team, when I start something new, I always reach out to them first to be like, "Hey, I’m trying to do this.

Are you free? Do you have, are you interested?" And they work together. They don’t work together in their work works, but they have this new team. I think they start to name themselves Noise Dungeon if I’m not misremembering because it’s kind of new. But they work together a lot in many different projects here in Mexico, they’re all Mexicans and they have their own like specific, things that they really like and they follow. But in this case, I think they followed Dom’s direction in general. They both had Playdates, so that made it easier also for them to understand what we’re trying to do. That being saying, Majo sent me a files that were like a hundred megabytes or something like that. But no, we have to do something different for this. It cannot be that heavy.

And I don’t remember exactly what was the direction, I think to start it was because it’s like a place that you repeat a lot. It needed to not feel repetitive. And we have many ideas about the vibes and how it continues as you progress for the game and all that.

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: It was a little bit of a feeling of adventure, even if it’s you’re just digging a hole, like you needed to feel like you were exploring or you were discovering things. Like it was kind of a mysterious vibe, that gives this, adventure feel. And I think they got it pretty quickly and delivered something pretty on point. The music evolving over the three stages kind of have the same effect of, “oh, now I’m progressing in the story. I’m progressing in this mystery”

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: and the sounds were, I think, fairly direct.

It just needed to sound like the tool that you were using and just in some spaces, like the newspaper needs to have like a “news flash” kind of sound and like things like that.

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: For me, the important part was the feeling of reward. Like when you get coins or when you get treasure or when you get a, bone, like that was kind of this hierarchy of reward. Like, I need to feel like this is what I’m working towards is getting this ping or this when you find a bone, you know, just confirming the mechanics with the sounds was the important part for me.

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: I know you can like, have your own uh,

earphones or whatever, but like the speaker is like not that big, so you also cannot pollute it with a lot of noises at the same time.

So we try to keep it, I think Dom said this as well for the art, like clear in a way, you know, like it doesn’t have a lot of things coming at the same time. And once you have a song track on the background and also like some sounds, because when you’re digging, you’re like revealing stuff, but also removing dirt or like hitting something and, or like even menu, et cetera.

It’s a great way to give you feedback in general. But because we cannot create like this complex soundscape for the game, it was more important to keep it clear. There are some areas like this little cut scenes and stuff we added a little bit more, but it’s also like the thing that makes the game be heavier fast because the code and art are really small and because there’s no colors and all that.

Like it’s easy to keep small, but like the music is the place where, yeah, it’s really difficult. There are some tricks in there, but like still the audio people wanted to like, you know what, like they send me these things that are like, that’s bigger than the whole game. And it’s just like a sound.

You cannot do that in this case.

The Playdate developer community has a lot of like neat tricks under their sleeve for these kinds of things. So I just pointed to that like, just try to use this format and compress it this way and all that. You don’t need to make it stereo, it’s fine being mono, like stuff like quick stuff like that.

And also we don’t need to have a track that is like. I don’t know, 10 minutes long or stuff like, sounds need to be like really fast because the game, it like shows really fast, so it doesn’t need to be like something that lingers too much and just like general advice, like that was enough. And at some point the compression was really important. Because we test a lot on the simulator, it’s fine because it’s your computer doing the work and you have headphones and you’re like in a computer, so it’s different.

So then once you put it in the device, it tells you like, oh, it changes a lot and it takes time and sometimes it breaks the game because it’s like, oh no, that’s too much. And the memory can handle having all these tracks at the same time stored in there.

Talking about code and I think optimizing for the limitation of the platform is something that we’re not used to, because when you make games for phones or computers, those are like quite powerful compared to the Playdate. The Playdate is surprisingly powerful, because it’s like more powerful than like a Game Boy and stuff that gets compared to commonly, but it’s like the way those games are made are completely different to the ways we make games now.

So like a puzzle on its own. I think it was fun. One limitation and it was my own misunderstanding on how it works is I wanted to have a bigger area on like on the dig site. It was something that was there, but for whatever reason, the assets were not like drawing themselves if I moved so far away from like the center of the screen, I never understood what it was. I tried to do a hundred different things and it never was clear why that was. And it was not something like I reached out to like close friends that had developed games for Playdate and I tried to explain because it was not something like, oh I’m doing this exactly and this happens. Like, it,

It had to be a lot in the way the game is structured, which is funny. I don’t know how people will make this kind of game because it’s grid based and that’s simple enough and everything is like stored in like an array that is like a grid and that’s it. But a lot of things in the game are bigger than a piece.

And so the way I handled that without having like actual collisions and kind of like doing it in a world base instead of a grid, it’s a funny thing that worked and I keep doing it and I got away with it because the game is done and it works and it’s done like that. And it’s funny that, that would be my way of explaining it.

And so maybe because of that, I couldn’t go beyond some boundary that I never understood why. And so at some point I was like, we cannot make bigger areas. And that forced us to keep it on the screen at start, which felt like something, I wanted to fix it because I wanted something bigger because the prototype was bigger.

But then we actually like it. At some point we’re like, you know what? It’s better to go deeper than to go wider because yet then you don’t lose like the things that you have in front. Like if you have to go a couple of screens away from where you are, it becomes unmanageable in a way. Like you have to keep a record in your mind of where you were at some point.

So it forced us to be in the screen and that helped to be like, it feels cozier…

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: I forces you to face obstacles, too, because at some point, if you have so many, so much space to, to dig from, if you find a complex, kind of cluster of rocks or obstacles, you’ll just be like, eh, I’ll just go somewhere else. But with this small space, you kinda have to face it. There’s this giant rock in the middle.

So I guess I have to find a way to uncover it, to break it, to get to the good stuff under, I think it was a blessing in disguise that you had this weird code problem for sure.

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: list. Eventually moved from " to-do" to “maybe” and maybe it’s full of a lot of like health ideas of like stuff that we discuss at some point. I like always to keep like on my to do list an ideas kind of area where we like, this is interesting, but it needs some thinking, so we’re gonna move it like further away from the things we actually have to do.

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: To me the biggest challenge was to stop working on it. It was to find the brackets in which the game, lives, right? Because we, we keep having more ideas. Of course, we, this is a fun playground, this grid that you can dig through, but narrowing it down to the core mechanics and keeping it tight and keeping it understandable and keeping it finishable for the players and for us, as in the production to me was a bit of a wrangling exercise.

But I guess that’s just because I have so much fun playing with these mechanics and this design. To me that was the biggest challenge, just putting a stop to it. And I kept still adding little cuts in there and a little bit of story here, but I think overall, I think we did a good job to keep it at a reasonable scale, but it’s still rewarding to finish and it still has a fair number of surprises in there.

Christa Mrgan: Yeah, definitely. And when Fáyer and Dom first started working on this game, they just wanted to make a Playdate game together. They didn’t set out with a goal to make this a Season Two game.

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: Obviously because it was from its inception, a Playdate game, we knew that we had to pitch it to you. And we didn’t know about the season. We just wanted to pitch it as a Playdate game to see if there were opportunities. Or just so you were aware that we were making this together and I think it was just right time, right place. I think we sent the regular pitch and then you replied something. Issa I think, replied something like, ah, we are actually doing this. Like in the future, and this seems like a great fit for that.

Would you like applying to that? And we’re like, yeah, of course. And I think that changed a little bit of what we were trying to do because at the beginning we wanted just to like, give this partnership a try and not something big enough and like a new platform that it’s always interesting to explore and all that. And once we got accepted, we’re like that can change things because then it’s not a game that you have to sell on its own. It’s a collection of games that has some specific behaviors and it’s something that people have some expectations that you have to meet that thing. And it, changed like the design conversation of how we were gonna grab the whole thing. But I think for the better, because again, like it’s easier to make something once you know where you’re gonna show it or what are you making it for? And it change in from like this phases, and I think that’s the best outcome for this game specifically.

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: To me, it was one of the easiest pitch to, to make because we already had a mechanic that works. We have a plan for a game we are gonna make no matter what. But we can just say, here’s how we would grow it to be a bit bigger, a bit more fleshed out if we have the support of Panic and the Season T wo. It’s just exciting at the base of it. And it’s exciting to think, oh, here’s what more we could do or they could do with this game. And I think it’s pretty obvious when you play it, like you have a bunch of ideas of where you would want this game to go or what else you would like to find.

So it was a great hook. Very easy to put in 10 slides which is a great limit for my brain also to just pitch something in 10 slides. It has to be pretty direct. And it all stems again from the idea of that this game is Finishable and when you show it to people, they’re like, “yeah, that’s gonna be a great game. It’s so direct and obvious.”

Christa Mrgan: Yeah, I was kind of surprised by how addicting the game loop is. It’s a lot of fun. So what kind of experience do they hope that people have with Dig! Dig! Dino?

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: Well, it’s a great, game to play in front of Netflix. Uh, no, I’m kidding.

It’s a great game for any kind of situation because there’s no timer. Your actions are all under your control. You have a limit in terms of stamina, but you have no limit in terms of time. So it’s a great game to pick up in five minutes and find a few surprises while digging or just make good progress by getting enough treasure to buy another upgrade. So it feels very satisfying. In the middle of a day, you take a break you just get a little bit of progress. You find a new thing, you get a little bit more of that nugget of story in there.

So I hope people like spend a week just throughout the week here and there playing a little day or two and have a great discovery of this weird story that we put into the ground.

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: Yeah, think, I know it’s fun because we’ve seen people play and they get engaged by it, but I hope that the other layers of it, like this, like narrative and mystery or like even like the art of it, like the dinos that you discover as you progress through the game.

as creators of like digital stuff, you always like when people grab it and make something else with it, or create fan art or create their own ideas and share it around and all those things. So I hope people engage with this game like that because it’s always fun. You know, like the worst thing is when people don’t really play your game. It’s just like goes out and it dies out. But if then there are people that play it like, yeah, I like this. And maybe they say something on a social network like, oh, this game was fun and that’s it. But then the extra level is when people start to create like fan art or have discussions. I hope that it gets to that point and that people have obviously fun with it and that they like it enough to use a system that was the thing that kept me working on it until this very day because it’s like a thing that happens at the very end that you have an option to do something there and maybe someone likes it enough to pursue that a bunch of times because we created a whole simple system, it’s there and I hope people use it.

Christa Mrgan: Hmm. So there’s an option to do something at the end of the game, and hopefully people use it? Very mysterious. Well, I really hope you dig this game and enjoy unearthing all of its secrets. No bones about it: it’s a Juras-SICK game. I. I’m Sorry, I’m trying to stop.

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: Thanks for listening to us talking about our game, Dig! Dig! Dino, and please buy the second season of the Playdate Games.

Christa Mrgan: I mean, hopefully you already did and that’s why you’re here, but like, I don’t know who you are or what you’re up to! But thank you so much for listening, and stay tuned for more episodes from Season Two, coming soon to the Playdate Podcast feed.

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: Thank you and goodbye.

Christa Mrgan: The Playdate Podcast was written, produced, and edited by me, Christa Mrgan.

Cabel Sasser, and Simon Panrucker composed the theme song. Additional music was composed by Majo Félix, and sound effects were created by Rich Cervantes, And they all come from Dig! Dig! Dino! Huge thanks to Tim Coulter and Ashur Cabrera for wrangling the podcast feed and working on the website, James Moore for making me an awesome Paydate audio extraction app, Kayleigh Stegman for handling social media, and Neven Mrgan, who created the podcast artwork and site design. And thanks as always to everyone at Panic. Playdate Season Two is available right now on the website and on Catalog! And of course, play date consoles are available at play.date.

Dominique “Dom2D” Ferland: I’m excited to listen to this podcast. Not this episode, but the other episodes…

Antonio “Fáyer” Uribe: oh, no. I hate listening to the a part of it because it’s like, who’s that dumb person talking? And it’s like, oh, it’s me.