CatchaDiablos

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Christa Mrgan: On a distant moon, your quest is to capture all of the demons you encounter. encircling them in salt. They’re not friendly but if you can avoid their attacks, you can use their mysterious power up to help you on your hunt. Can you run circles around them all? 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 joined by JP Reibling, who goes by Joven Paul online, and Mario Carballo, also known as AFK Mario, about their Season Two game, CatchaDiablos.

And there’s not much in the way of spoilers in today’s episode! We talk about the gameplay mechanics of CatchaDiablos, and a little bit about the team’s earlier game Pullfrog, as well as the upcoming sequel to CatchaDiablos, Devils on the Moon Pinball, but no major spoilers for any of them.

So JP and Mario have a game studio called Amano Games, and you can hear them talk about their game Pullfrog and interview developer Gregory Kogos about his game Oom in Episode 32 of the Playdate Podcast.

There’s a link in the show notes. But I’ll assume you’re meeting them for the first time now, so I’ll let them introduce themselves.

JP Riebling: I am JP and I am artist/musician and co-game-designer in CatchaDiablos.

Mario Carballo: And I am Mario and I’m also a co-designer in CatchaDiablos and programmer.

Christa Mrgan: Cool. So great to have these two back with us to talk about the game they made for Playdate Season Two. So, what is it? What’s it about?

JP Riebling: Let me think. CatchaDiablos is short game where you’re a little guy that tries to catch some demons inside salt circles and… that’s not a very good pitch. Let me think about it again.

Mario Carballo: One would think that we would be prepared for this question.

We dunno what game we’re making.

JP Riebling: What would you say CatchaDiablos is, Mario?

Mario Carballo: It’s a little guy making circles for catching different diablos that he finds in the moon, with a little bit of a roguelike element where you have to start again from scratch every time you die, or like lose, I don’t know if you die. And like a collection of interesting diablos, I think is one of the most fun things about the game— finding different creatures and trying to figure out how they behave and what they are and what are you doing in the moon, trying to catch them.

JP Riebling: I don’t know how universal this experience is, but as a kid, you know, I would play with my compass from school to draw circles like a lot, you know, pretending the, that the little legs are actual little legs and walk around like, pivoting you know, and alternating the pivoting motion.

When we arrived at that mechanic, we were like, ah, I think this would be a great idea because we developed Pullfrog which is kind of like a platform-y controls that uses the d-pad and the buttons to play the game. Then we were developing the pinball game. We’re still developing the pinball game, and with CatchaDiablos we were like if we’re gonna make it, we have to make a crank centric control game, right? So, yeah. Arriving at this control scheme for the game, we think it’s a fun mechanic. Once you get the hang of it, we think it’s pretty fun to play.

Mario Carballo: It’s just like that movement is fun, so let’s just do something with that. And I was like, let’s just build a game on top of that, whatever game it is, it doesn’t matter.

JP Riebling: It has a little bit of like Mario said, roguelike elements. A little bit of survival. It kind of feels like a mashup of-- we reference survivors games a lot and also Binding of Isaac you know, very, a very light condensed version of some ideas in those games. But that’s kind of what’s guiding a little bit of our development process.

Mario Carballo: It is like the Binding of Isaac meets Vampire Survivors meets Pokémon. That’s like the thing.

Christa Mrgan: Wow! So the binding of Isaac-- the video game, not the Bible story-- though, to be honest, I don’t really know how much overlap there is… anyway, the game is a roguelike action adventure. And Vampire Survivors has become the namesake of the bullet heaven genre of shoot 'em up games, where you battle waves of enemies and there are some roguelike elements, too.

And of course Pokémon is Pokémon, where you collect, train and battle your Pokémon. So yeah, CatchaDiablos is an interesting mix.

But let’s back up and get the backstory on Amano Games. How did Mario and JP start working together, and how did they decide to make games for Playdate?

JP Riebling: Ooh. So, it was a pandemic. Mario had joined a small Pico-8 development club where the plan was to make one game a month.

Christa Mrgan: Oh, yeah. So it comes up on the podcast a lot, but just a reminder that PICO-8 is an emulator for a fictional video game console that mimics the limited graphic and sound capabilities of eight bit game systems from the 1980s.

And there’s a huge community of people who make games for it. Okay, so.

JP Riebling: So, Mario was making a small game and he started poking at me to get help for it. He was like, “Hey, what do you think about this? And can you make some music for it?” And he started like slowly coercing me into making games with him. Not that I didn’t want to, but it was like a hobby situation.

And, And I was interested in learning Pico-8 and a little bit of programming. So that kind of hooked me into making games. And we started making small games for Pico-8. We made a couple of games during the monthly club situation, and then like our third game, which was a Halloween-themed game for October, took us until, I think January to finish because we really got into like pushing the Pico-8 to its limits. And so, you know, the monthly game thing kind of, died for us, but we really enjoyed making games together, just like no pressure, just for fun, exploring like mashup of different genres and games that we really like to play.

It wasn’t until I think, maybe uh, six months after that we decided to form a studio and name it. 'Cause Mario was kind of tired of well maybe Mario should tell the story of why we decided to name ourselves Amano and found a studio.

Mario Carballo: So we launched these three games on Pico-8. Our main like platform was New Grounds, which is quite cool because it was like a website that I used to go quite often when I was a kid. And yeah, we published these three games on New Grounds and people started covering them. You know, there’s people who specialize in like web games or like free games.

And some of those people were covering the games and they would always say like, oh, this new game, by Mario. And I would say " no, it’s Mario and JP." And we even put it like in the title screen every time. And, but like, itch doesn’t have a really good way of saying these two people worked on this specific project.

Because I wanted, people to acknowledge JP as well in the project. And then I was like, you know, I think it’s easier if we just start a studio and call it something. And then it would be like, Amano’s games, and it wouldn’t be like, only my games or something like that.

So yeah, that’s how we were like, oh, we need a name for these new projects because we wanted to continue making games, I think. Like after the third one I think we were kind of burned out from working on Pico-8, but we weren’t burned out on making games together, so it was like, oh, let’s just make more of them.

So yeah. Then we heard about Playdate from I think the announcement and I signed up for the developer preview thing that happened. Me and a friend Bob, who was with me at the office, he’s a designer and he got the developer preview.

He bought it and then he told me like, for a year, “oh, let’s do something together.” But I remember having a couple of calls and then being like, "oh, you have to download this SDK and you have to install this editor and you have to put this Lua code so you see something in the screen. And he was like, “nah, I’m not gonna do any of that. I better just give it to you.” And he sold it to me. And then I told JP “Oh, we should try to make something for Playdate.” And it was like, we can make infinite games because we don’t have the limitations of Pico-8. And then quickly we learned that time is still like a limitation for every human being.

JP Riebling: Yeah, very different from Pico-8’s, but still.

Mario Carballo: And we haven’t learned our lessons because with each game it is like, “oh, we’re gonna try to break those limitations now,” going like lower level or whatever.

JP Riebling: Yeah, let’s make a physics- intensive game.

Christa Mrgan: Yeah! Like, say, a pinball game?

JP Riebling: Yes, Devils on the Moon Pinball is a pinball game where you catch devils on the moon, discover different mysteries surrounding what’s happening in the moon. Give your pitch, Mario.

Mario Carballo: It’s a pinball game for the Playdate. The main idea is to have a table that has three levels vertically, and you can catch diablos in those three screens with the pinball ball, similar to like pinball games in the Game Boy.

Christa Mrgan: Yeah, it’s not out yet, but you can wishlist Devils on the Moon Pinball in Catalog. There’s a link in the show notes. You can also get a sneak peek from Mario and JP in the Playdate Update #6 video on YouTube. And since it’s so closely tied to CatchaDiablos and the games were developed in tandem, I figured this episode should also talk about the making of that game.

Mario Carballo: We’re also really inspired about modern pinball games, like Demon’s Tilt. We have been really happy about that game. Like we are really passionate about it.

And when we started working with CatchaDiablos we were thinking about oh, we really like the characters that JP has come up with for the pinball game.

And we like the mechanic of catching them. And then when we started talking about this mechanic of moving around and making circles, it was like, what if you catch the Diablos in the circles? And then it was kind of obvious to join them together so that we would do less work.

And also like the general vibes of the game. We really like it. And we already have the idea to make 40 or 50, no, 40. 40 diablos. It was like, yeah, let’s just reuse them and give them a little bit more of a setting. And also the main idea of the games and how they are connected is that, Devils on the Moon pinball is what happens after CatchaDiablos.

So CatchaDiablos is like the prequel some weird way. Yeah.

JP Riebling: Yeah, I mean the story part of the games we’re still working on untying them and what that’s about, you know, focusing first on, on mechanic and basically getting the game finished. One of the things that kind of connected them as well is Devils on the Moon pinball, being a game inspired by games like Pokémon Pinball, have like, a catching mechanic.

So we thought about making some little demons that you can catch as well in this game. And I’d made like 40 animated characters for that game. And so,

the characters for CatchaDiablos were actually designed for Devils on the Moon Pinball. And they’re gonna have a little bit of, you know, different stuff and extra things, but they’re basically, you know, the same assets and we’re trying to use them in different ways.

And so that’s also why the story ties into it. And, you know, aesthetically and thematically we’re trying to have a connection between those games. And you don’t have to play one, you know, to understand the other. They’re independent in that sense. But, you know, we like that they’re connected and if we manage to have some lore elements that tie the games together… I always really like when media does that, when like good media ties in things.

So yeah, we hope we can achieve that successfully.

Christa Mrgan: Yeah. I haven’t played devil’s on the moon pinball yet, but I’m sure they’ll pull it off. And since so far, all three of the games that Mario and JP have made for Playdate have been action games, I wondered if that came from a shared love of action-based games.

JP Riebling: I do tend to prefer action based games. I’ve played also a lot of turn-based RPGs and kind of like more visual style novels and games like that. But I think my brain just looks for action stuff. I like my games to be active, right? So I think part of the games we develop being in that line, I think that’s what guides a lot of it.

I’m a huge fan of games like platforming action games like Mega Man. Those types of games, I can just shut my brain down and don’t think, I think it’s just like muscle memory that makes it happen.

Mario Carballo: I wouldn’t call myself a person who plays a lot of arcade action games, because I’ve always thought that I was bad at them. And I still think I am. But since working in Amano, I have played so many and played so much of them that now I enjoy them more and I think I’m better at them as well.

I tend to like, like strategy games like turn-based or like city management and things like that, but lately I don’t have the time to play them, so I haven’t played them as much. And I tend to like, like smaller games. Like if somebody manages to abstract some complex mechanic into a small game then I really like that.

For example, one of my favorite games is called Utopia, which is a mobile game that it’s like Civilization, but like really well-adapted to mobile games. So yeah those kind of games. And I think we like RPGs as well.

And, now we don’t have anything really planned, but we have talked about making an RPG and I think we’re both excited about something like that. Yeah.

Christa Mrgan: You heard it here first, folks!

Mario Carballo: I don’t know if like we’re gonna continue making arcade-y action games. Like we’re not tired of it, but I think we like to explore different genres every time trying to go in a different direction just to learn how to make things.

JP Riebling: Yeah. And it’s also refreshing to try something different and then come up with all the hurdles that involves doing something different. 'Cause we, we recycle some of the stuff, like the tools we build, but, you know, if we had made a, another game like Pullfrog, it would’ve been much easier, right, to kind of get something out fast. But it’s always fun to, to explore something different. Like a whole physics engine made for the Playdate for pinball.

Mario Carballo: The last year has been really rewarding in terms of learning how to do things, and especially in code. Because what happened is that when we release Pullfrog, I think we’re both happy with the game. But I had like a weird feeling about it because there were some things that we wanted to do that we weren’t able to do because of performance reasons.

And it’s not that the Playdate can’t do those things because like at the time I was watching, you know, the Playdate Squad Discord and there was like 3D channel that people were doing crazy stuff with 3D on the Playdate. And I was like, “oh, if these people can do this, then my little 2D game with a frog bouncing around shouldn’t be an issue for the Playdate, right?” But I didn’t have the ability at the time to make it better. And I felt like I got stuck somehow. Like, Normally when I finished a project uh, I would say like, oh, I, know that if I rewrite this project from scratch, maybe I could do it in a better way now that I have learned like all the hurdles about doing this.

But with Pullfrog it was like, 'I don’t know how to do this better. Like, I think this is my limit." So then when we started talking about the next game I was like, "oh, I want to do a game in c just because I don’t know that, and maybe knowing how to do things in c and in a lower level will help me get unstuck on this and get better at making games. And just like, when we’re making a game, the blocker is not like, “oh, we can’t add more mechanics because I don’t know how to make that performant enough to be able to play it,” right? So the main thing that I said to JP at the beginning was like, “I want to make this game in C; whichever game it is.”

Christa Mrgan: Yeah. So using the Playdate SDK, you can write games in Lua, which is like a lighter, friendlier scripting language, or you can use the C programming language, which is lower level, and so a bit more complicated, but which can also give you more control and better results in terms of performance.

Mario Carballo: Pullfrog is completely Lua and the new games, CatchaDiablos and Devils on the Moon Pinball are pure C, mainly because I wanted to force myself to learn C.

And yeah, it was like the main objective for me. I wanted to learn this because it’s been like something that I wanted to do for so long. And I dunno why I put myself through this, but I was like, “I’m gonna make everything from scratch.”

So that was also another rule, like CatchaDiablos and Devils on the Moon Pinball are made in this new engine in C from scratch. And so I didn’t use anything from the Playdate SDK, like only the, the basic things to call the operating system. But we rewrote like the drawing routines and audio routines and everything. So it was just like a lot of work, but it really rewarding and I learned a ton, like a lot of things that I thought before that I was never going to be able to do, suddenly I was doing that, but it was like, oh, it wasn’t that hard. It was just like, spending the time doing them. And now it gave me the confidence of " oh, we want to do this game. We surely can." Just understanding better how machines work and how do things in a lower level and understanding how the memory and everything works.

The SDK being like a little bit more general. I can do it better for our specific case that doesn’t need all of this stuff. But in general, I had a really good time using the SDK and I think if I use the C SDK, I would be happy as well. But, I decided not to.

So, we built a robust engine that at this point,

yeah. Why?

The physics engine is really specific to our pinball game. Like it wouldn’t work for a different game. It’s made specifically for ours, and it’s fine. Like we can trick things. Like I can put a big “if” in the middle of the physics calculation that is super realistic to see like if this is a ball that is next to the flipper and we want to add extra force, because games, right, I can do it in a really simple way. So, so yeah, I think the SDK has like the right amount of, surface to work with.

JP Riebling: And it really shows, like Pullfrog was struggling at 26 frames per second when a lot of things were on screen. We’re able to run like our pinball game at 50 frames per second on the Playdate. Like no problem. Multiple balls. And you know, we can do a lot more with Mario cheap, technically, with this new approach, right? Everything we did kind of like is a building block to these new games. And like the pipeline and art-- like right now I have a Blender setup where I can sculpt a character and then export that into pixel art and get assets into the game. I can do a lot of stuff like artwise that I couldn’t do before because of the pipeline that I set up. So I can make a game that looks the way I want it now and that makes me really happy. Aesthetically, I can go crazy. Now we just have to make sure that we don’t reach storage limitations and stuff like that, 'cause that’s also always a big hurdle.

So like for a lot of the art, I just go straight into like 2D animation, like Photoshop and Pixel Art, you know, by hand. But some of the characters were, I don’t know, I couldn’t wrap really my brain around drawing them and having them look good and consistent.

So I basically did a little test run with different characters. I made like a winged guy that, you know, stands up and sits down and falls down. I made that in Blender and then I render out the animation you know, with no anti-aliasing

Christa Mrgan: Oh yeah, side note: anti-aliasing in this context is a thing that graphics applications do to smooth out rough pixel edges. But of course, that’s the opposite of what you want when you’re creating pixel art.

Okay, so then:

JP Riebling: export the assets into Photoshop. I do a little bit of cleanup and then I bring that back into the engine and that’s how we get the assets in. Not all of the characters are 3D, things that are hard for me, I usually do 3D for that.

I’m super comfortable working in one bit, but especially 'cause I have a lot of actions that help me. In Photoshop, I can just draw freely. And then the dithering kind of happens automatically and then I can tweak it afterwards if I want something a little bit more specific.

But, yeah. In terms of style, I’m very into kind of spooky stuff. Kind of spooky but cute I think is kind of, how I like my game assets to be. So yeah that’s how we started with Devils on the Moon Pinball. It started out being kind of like a haunted house theme kind of situation, but I didn’t really like that, so I started making it a little bit more, let’s call it esoteric, kind of a bit more inspired by the mystical part of Majora’s Mask, that aesthetic.

And I dunno, maybe more like astrological aesthetics, I guess? I’m not into that stuff, but the aesthetic, I think it’s pretty cool of that whole thing. And for Catcha Diablos, I just want to make using those characters as the base for it. It’s still in the world of Devils on the Moon, right?

So the moon had to be kind of the main focus and maybe it’s more like a spacey theme, now that I think about it. It doesn’t feel as mystical, I think. It’s more like, uh, the little guy, and then there’s a spaceship in the beginning and you can see space and you can see the moon.

And I don’t want it to make it like too spacey or too star-ship-y, but I I think it moves in that space a little bit more. And also, by this point, the game will definitely have the collection system, the album mechanic, where every time you catch a new Diablo, you can, get a little page of a book that kind of tells a story with a picture and a text.

And this has more of a child’s drawing feel. It connects to the Devils on the Moon Pinball. That’s kinda the connection we were trying to make, right? So since this is timeline wise a prequel to Devils on the Moon Pinball, you kinda get the perception of what the characters or the Diablos are to the character in CatchaDiablos and then in Devils of the Moon, it feels like more of like demons that you can learn about.

Maybe I’m not doing a good job explaining 'cause it’s not really set up yet in present day, but in future day, hopefully it will make sense what I’m saying.

Christa Mrgan: Yeah, sure!

Mario Carballo: And I just want to shout out the Playdate Squad because we have a development log thread in there, and JP shared a lot of the process in there. So you can see the actual images of behind the scenes.

Christa Mrgan: Yeah. And shout out to the Playdate Squad Discord, generally. What a great crew. Everyone is so enthusiastic and willing to give their feedback or share their knowledge.

But, so, one of my favorite things to ask game developers is, “how do you balance your games to find that just-right level of difficulty, where it’s challenging for most people, but still fun?”

JP Riebling: I think that’s one of the big struggles in general in game design, or at least the ones I think I’ve had or we’ve had in our games. I tend to push things since I’m the one that’s constantly like testing and tweaking values and stuff.

I’m the one that gets good at the game really fast. And so my standard is always " ok, but this feels too easy." And Mario’s always like, “I gave it to my girlfriend. She thinks it’s too hard.” I’m like, “ok let’s tweak it a little bit more.” And it’s difficult to find that balance. I think I’ve learned a lot from Mario-- always making it easier for the player, even though the challenge might not be there, at least I perceive it not to be there-- it’s always a better call. Right?

Christa Mrgan: I don’t know! I guess it really depends on what you want the experience of playing the game to be like. But maybe as a general rule of thumb, yes, if not easier, at least more incrementally rewarding? Anyway!

JP Riebling: I think a lot of the games I enjoy tend to be really challenging. And I enjoy them because of the challenge, but, you know, not all players I think are like that.

Maybe I think players used to be like that, or maybe that’s just my perception of it. But, yeah, I think, it’s a difficult line to tread ’ cause you also don’t want people to get bored, right? You don’t want people to find it too easy. But I think the experience of being good at a game and like overpowering a game is more rewarding I think in the end.

So yeah, I mean, in this particular case in CatchaDiablos, we’re kind of working in tandem, different things. So we’re still kind of working on the AI behaviors and with the tools that we have, I’m building kind of what each character does. And in that, finding I have to make charts of a difficulty rating that I give to each character and then try to balance the levels accordingly.

We have a pool of different characters that can appear every wave on every level, and I have to tweak like what characters appear and how the synergies between those, I don’t call them enemies, we call them well mobs or diablos, 'cause you’re not really fighting them in the game.

You’re kind of catching them. But like the difficulty of their behaviors and how that might be a challenge to the player is a difficult thing to tweak. I think using like graphs and like giving values to each mob. And trying to balance what they do versus, you know, what, the level that they’re supposed to be in and the difficulty I want them to have.

I think that’s how I get to it. And as for the bosses, like we’re still developing the boss behaviors as well. So by the time people hear this, probably the game will have everything the game will have everything that it’s supposed to have, all the bosses, and I’m sure they’re pretty great.

But right now, that is a mystery to me.

Christa Mrgan: Yeah, I guess that’s a problem with trying to get a headstart on the season’s episodes. I recorded this conversation while the game was still in development.

Mario Carballo: Our games get balanced by that pull and tug of JP and I --of, of him making it harder and me trying to make them easier. And then I think we get into a good middle ground. But I don’t know. I’ve, I have mixed feelings now about it. Like I’ve been playing a lot of UFO 50 and those games are hard and they don’t explain a lot of things. And I have a really good time with them. But also, like I understand that new games tend to be more generous in a lot of ways, and I understand that’s also fun.

My brain is always conflicted about what to choose because I understand both sides and sometimes just trying to make the right decisions. And I think like one of the benefits of the season is that there’s gonna be a bunch of games. So then it’s a little bit easier to be more audacious with your design ideas because oh, if people don’t like this particular game, some group of people, because that always happens, they’re gonna have like other games that they can jump to and play, which is a little bit freeing and fun to work with as well.

When we worked in Pullfrog, one of the things that we don’t have enough time or energy to work with is the tutorial. Like the tutorial in Pullfrog is just like a slideshow of " these are the controls and you do this." I think it’s fine. Like no one has complained about it, but you know, there’s always like a chance to make something elegant and show the player how to play the game in an interactive way.

And I’m really happy with the tutorial that we have in CatchaDiablos. We didn’t plan it that much, but the moment we sat down and start thinking about it, the thing that we have now, I’m really happy about it. And when I see people playing it, I still get stressed because I see people playing and I want to tell them what to do.

But if I allow them to just play and try to discover the game, I think eventually they do it. And it seems like after the tutorial, they already got it. Its different control scheme’s kind of weird. You have to get used to it. And we found a way in the tutorial to let the players explore the world and the movement without like hazards and being able to then move to the game.

And like it seems like when they start playing the actual game, they already have the controls nailed found. So that’s been really great. I really like that. And yeah, I think one thing that we haven’t talked about is the AI of the enemies, which is kind of interesting. We developed like a behavior tree thing where we use a tree structure to select the behavior that the mob is gonna do, a diablo is gonna do at certain times.

And we have a bunch of rules. We’re still like polishing that and adding more behaviors, but the thing is that at some point it was like we’re gonna have like at least 40 theos in the game and how are we gonna do 40 different distinct like behaviors and making sure that people understand, " oh, this one moves like this and this one moves like that" and it’s fun for everyone.

And so then I was like, oh, I’m gonna develop a tool so JP can do this. And then we can work in parallel. I continue working on the programming while JP does 40 of the behavior trees. And we managed to do it. It’s a little bit clunky, but it works. And also, like one of the things that JP is really good at is making those systems to organize things.

Like he has like a cheat sheet of all the mobs and they are grouped by these groups that made good synergies between them. And it’s like these pools of mobs that he already thought all the system of how they are gonna spawn and how, we’re gonna randomize them in a way that is fun.

And then when he showed me that, I just had to like translate into code really easily because we already have the system in place in his head before we had to test anything. So that kind of thing help us a lot, like me making the tools so JP can work on his things while I continue working on the code.

And then JP working on things that he then shows me an image and immediately I understand everything. So I can do programming now without having to think that much about it. Just like it’s already a system that we know how it works.

JP Riebling: And also like being constrained by limitations, right? A lot of stuff in game design I think comes back to that. When you can do anything, it kind of gets overwhelming, but when you have a limitation, it really narrows down your focus. So the same with like difficulty and behaviors.

Right now, we have a limited set of behaviors that mobs can do, especially because I’m not gonna make like more animation frames for each of the 40 characters with the deadlines that we have, right? So to make it work with what we have like we have just a very limited set of behavior. So trying to make each character a little bit unique and distinct in what they do is a challenge, but also the constraints help you just move forward. You can’t get stuck like polishing it and tweaking it for six months. You just have to get it working and get it to feel as, as right as possible.

Christa Mrgan: Yeah. I think that’s the right mindset to have, generally, and I’ve heard other developers say this, too: like first you have to make it exist, then you can make it good. And I also really like “perfect is the enemy of done.” I really try to remember that for just all kinds of projects, honestly.

So another time constraint that JP had was that while he was mainly focused on creating these 40 different Diablos and figuring out and tweaking their behaviors, he also wanted to create all of the music for both CatchaDiablos and Devils on the Moon Pinball.

JP Riebling: Each game has its own unique music. Maybe some leit motifs are kind of shared there among the two games. Again, I’m answering for the future me. But yeah as of right now, I’ve been working on the music and sound effects of the game for about a month. It’s been a weird head space to get into 'cause there’s still a lot of art to do for the game and we still have to finish up a lot of stuff.

But the music had to happen and we can’t really get someone else to make it at the moment. So I’m kind of juggling those two things. I’m making all the music for CatchaDiablos first before Devil’s on the Moon. So, I’m using FL Studio and kind of trying to get into that workflow. 'cause there was a lot more music to make for this game, so I wasn’t sure I was gonna be able to do it at the leisurely pace that I was doing the music for Pullfrog.

Christa Mrgan: Yeah. FL Studio is a pretty popular digital audio workstation, featuring a sequencer and a ton of instruments.

JP Riebling: so yeah, right now I’m using FL Studio, learning it as I go and trying to get the audio out. It might be a little inconsistent in terms of instrument and mixing, but I’m working on it, I’m working on it really hard. I hope it’s, I hope it’s good. Again, I’m not a musician, so it’s really weird.

Like, I,

Mario Carballo: It is good. I like it. I, I have it stuck in my head since I heard it, so I think that’s good.

JP Riebling: Yeah. And right now I’m battling with like the mixing of it, like getting all the tracks to kind of feel consistent and because, you know, for me right now it all feels kind of like sparse. We’ll get there. I mean, I’m working on it really hard and I dunno, it’s been fun, but also a little bit stressful 'cause at first I was really frustrated that like the first two weeks I would open the tool and work on it and be like, oh man, I have no idea what I’m doing.

We should’ve just hired a musician. We have friends who are willing to do this for us. But I’m like, no, I have to do it myself. It has to happen. But right now I’m in a better head space. I practiced enough and I think having Tracks out that work and are in the game and listening to them and being able to tweak them on the fly has given me more confidence about where the music in the game is going. And hopefully for the people listening to this. Now the track is good and everything works and everybody likes it.

Both games, Devils on the Moon and CatchaDiablos, they kinda share a world, so I wasn’t sure what the mood was. And I’m still kind of figuring it out, but I want it to be spooky, but again, not like a haunted house kind of feel, not like a spooky, scary skeleton situation. I want to feel like kind of mysterious and getting those vibes out has been a bit of a challenge. But yeah the vibes I think are, mysterious but exciting hopefully.

Christa Mrgan: So, a little gothy?

JP Riebling: Yeah, gothy.

Christa Mrgan: And not only did JP insist on creating all of the music, Mario also decided he needed to write his own audio engine.

Mario Carballo: I was like listing the things that I had to do for this new engine in C, and I was like, oh, we have to do drawing routines. I have to do physics system. And I was like, oh, I have to do audio engine and I don’t know anything about audio.

And I was like, this is gonna be the hardest thing ever. It’s gonna be terrible. And I was super scared about it. And I told JP I really don’t know how we’re gonna manage to do this. Like, I guess I’m gonna try to find like a course or like a book or something. And then while we were working on the game Lucas from Owlet’s Embrace and, Victor, too, I think from also the Discord were working on their audio engines and they were like sharing a bunch of information about it and like the different audio formats that they were using and how they were implementing it ,and sharing code. And I think it took me like a day or two to implement the audio system.

And it was like, oh, that was easy! I dunno what I was scared about. And then like, I turned to JP and I was like, ok time to make the music. And now he’s like suffering all the actual hard work of making the music of the game. So, I dunno I’m enjoying that I don’t have to be all stressed about audio because I was really stressed about it six months ago.

JP Riebling: I am also learning a lot though. So that’s pretty fun.

Mario Carballo: Yeah, me too. Like now I know something about audio, even though I don’t consider myself an expert or anything, but I understand things now. Before I was just like, gibberish.

JP Riebling: And I think it also comes back to the way we work. 'Cause like Mario has said this to me and like I’ve said this to myself, and people ask like, “why don’t you just get someone who knows what they’re doing? Like just get someone to make the music and make the sound effects?” And I’m like, “yeah, but I wanna learn.”

Christa Mrgan: Yeah, that’s the fun part.

JP Riebling: Which is true, but also, if someone works on something for you, you’re kind of at their whim in terms of like times, right? I can’t ask them to fix a bit of audio like 40 times or change a little bit of something that I want to constantly, and we work that way.

We’re kind of really iterative in the way we work. So we make something and then we change it four times till it works or till it ties in with things perfectly. And doing things yourself just gives you the flexibility, you know, of doing that. It’s more stress and sometimes maybe more pressure, but I think in the end, even though the audio might not be perfect and the music might not be fantastic, I think it helps us get things out on time and, really working perfectly.

Mario Carballo: Yeah, that’s the main drive I think for Amano Games. It’s just learning new stuff.

Christa Mrgan: That’s so great. I love that. So, Mario and JP were already working on Devils on the Moon Pinball. How did CatchaDiablos become a Season Two game?

JP Riebling: We were in contact with Arisa because of Pullfrog.

Christa Mrgan: Arisa Sudangnoi is the head of Playdate Developer Relations. She helps developers bring their games to Catalog, and she was the main force behind curating and coordinating the games for Playdate Season Two.

JP Riebling: I think at one point she asked us like, oh, are you guys planning on working on anything new? And we’re like, oh, we’re not sure yet.

But once we released Pullfrog, we told her like, “oh, hey, we’re planning on making a pinball game.” At first we asked her like, oh, are you interested in publishing this game again? Like, you did Pullfrog for us, or maybe like a season two. I don’t know, let’s talk about it. And she came back to us and she was like, we’re not sure about the second season yet, but yeah, no, we’d be happy to, you know, hear your pitch. And the plan was to like do whatever that was with Devils on the Moon Pinball. But once we started working on it, we weren’t really sure about how long it was going to take us to finish.

And that’s when Arisa sent us a message like, oh, hey, we’re thinking about a Season Two. You had said something about it. Do you want to do it with the pinball game? We were like, no, let’s do another game instead!

Let’s make two games at the same time. So yeah, it was you know, asking around a little bit and then like coming back to us, and being like, oh sure, what do you guys wanna make?

Mario Carballo: I think we started sharing Devils on the Moon Pinball in social media and started gaining some traction. And then like when we were talking with Arisa about that. She mentioned that they were starting to talk about Season Two. And then we got the message like I think a lot of Catalog developers got that if anyone is interested in making a Season Two game, just send the pitch! And we talked about it and it’s like, “oh, we already showed Devils on the Moon Pinball.” One of the parts that we really like about the season idea is to be like a surprise, right? We don’t know what kind of game we’re gonna get.

And I think if we were gonna do the pinball game for the season, it would be like, everybody would know which game was it? You know, like, oh, these guys are making a Season Two game. It’s obviously the pinball game, and this way it’s like, no, it’s something completely new and interesting.

Christa Mrgan: Yeah, somebody actually emailed Playdate support about this, which is really funny because they did assume it was the pinball game, and they were like weirdly angry about it. I kind of wanted to do a dramatic reading of the email, but I decided that would be too mean, even if I kept it anonymous. Anyway.

JP Riebling: We sure proved them wrong. Ha ha ha

Mario Carballo: those people who expected pinball in the second season! So, yeah. And then we started talking about CatchaDiablos and we were really excited about it, so

JP Riebling: it was pretty straightforward. And we were actually kind of dreading getting into the second season 'cause we were at a point where there wasn’t a real deadline, but we were like we gotta finish the game. We gotta finish Devils on the Moon Pinball.

I kind of hope we get it, but I also hope we don’t get into the season. And then we got the mail like, “Hey, you guys, you’ve been accepted to work on the second season!” We were like, yes. Oh. Damn.

Mario Carballo: Definitely.

Christa Mrgan: Yep. But they did it! They finished CatchaDiablos, and it came out and people are playing it.

JP Riebling: I just hope they find it fun. We want it to be a short game. 'Cause a lot of these kind of like games in the similar vein, I think they require a lot of time investment and they’re quite long and they have, like content-wise, they’re quite robust. I just want people to have fun with the game and live the short experience and finish the game and say, “oh, that was cool.”

Mario Carballo: I have seen people playing it. And just the moment people start like looking at the different Diablos and putting names on them, you know, oh, I found the one with the big skirt or whatever. That moment is great.

I think that, like sensation of the game of like, I found this new creature and now I want to know more about it. It’s one of the best things that the game has. And also the movement, like once you, get the hang of it, it feels really good to, to move around all the level.

JP Riebling: I want people to say, “oh, that’s a fun way to use the crank!”

Christa Mrgan: I’ll say it: Oh, that’s a fun way to use the crank. I hope you think so, too, and I hope you have a lot of fun catching all of the different Diablos that JP has created and that you enjoy the robust performance of the game, thanks to Mario’s new C programming skills! You can learn more about Amano Games and a bunch of the other things we mentioned in the episode, via the links in the show notes.

Thank you so much for listening, and stay tuned for more episodes about Playdate Season Two, coming soon to the Playdate Podcast feed.

JP Riebling: Thanks so much for listening.

Mario Carballo: Thanks so much for having us.

JP Riebling: Bye.

Mario Carballo: Bye.

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 JP Reblling and comes from CatchaDiablos.

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, Kaleigh 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, Playdate consoles are available at play.date.

JP Riebling: But yeah. Yeah we’re really excited. We’re really happy. We shouldn’t have had these two games overlap because that’s a lot of work. But we’re really happy that we’re finishing them. We’re out of the woods… not quite yet, but we see the end of the road.