Taria and Como

Christa Mrgan: After you’re separated from your little sister, you wake up in a hospital to find that the health bot you used to rely on to help you get around has been replaced by one that might not be so helpful. You’ll need skill and determination to puzzle your way out and find your sister, navigating a world that constantly underestimates you.

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. And today I am talking with Taria and Como creator Kip Henderson, as well as the games composer, Jesse Haugen.

This is a really great episode, but be warned that it does include major spoilers about gameplay, mechanics, the narrative and its themes, and there are a couple of specific mentions of levels.

So if you really want to avoid spoilers, I suggest playing the game first and then coming back to give this one a listen. It’ll be worth it.

Okay. You’ve been warned. Now let’s meet Kip and hear all about Taria and Como.

Kip Henderson: My name is Kip Henderson and I am the creator of Taria and Como.

So Taria and Como is a 2D platformer where you play as a disabled protagonist, where instead of jumping like in those platformers, you use a grapple mechanic to swing from platform to platform. It’s largely puzzle based, and the story revolves around these two sisters, Taria and Como who in this sort of dystopian world find themselves in this corrupt healthcare facility.

You play as Taria, and Taria’s goal is to rescue and, locate her little sister Como who she was separated from.

It’s very interesting to trace the origin of Taria and Como because of the way that ideas evolve. All the way back in 2016, I had this idea of two characters sharing the same space that were connected. Back in that idea, it was a character with a sentient robot arm. And so that was the partnership, where the robot was the arm and they had to work together.

And that evolved into an entire world full of robots and humans. And eventually I asked myself, “well, where do these robots come from?” And in order to tell that story, I invented these two sisters, Taria and Como, that were explorative, imaginative, and had a real curiosity for the world.

And I drew this sketch in my journal and below it I wrote, “this is a story about honor, dignity, and standing up for what you believe in, no matter what.” That was in about, I think 2018. And so that was the origin of those characters where they were originally of this larger origin story of a robot race.

But eventually that entire story fell away, and I just really locked onto these two characters. And the theme that’s been consistent from the beginning is the story’s about disability. So Taria has a prosthetic leg and the little sister, Como, has some sort of invisible disability. So originally it was migraines or memory loss.

And uh, if you play the game now, you can see that it’s a tic disorder, like Tourettes. And the other thing that’s been consistent is what I wrote about honor, dignity, and standing up for what you believe in. So, for one reason or another, larger powers within the narrative like a corrupt company, or the government is opposed to Taria and Como’s family. And so at the beginning of the game, you find out that the parents have been locked away and they’re currently staying with the foster family. And so, these characters from their inception, it’s always been about how do you navigate a will that is opposed to you and how do you retain honor and dignity while pursuing your end goal of, of being reunited with your family.

So I partnered with Juvee Productions, which is Viola Davis’ and Julius Tennon’s production company. And they found my artwork, found these two characters that I’d come up with and really believed in the vision that I had to tell this story.

So back in 2019, my college hosted a pitch festival where they gathered a bunch of executives into room with terrible acoustics. And all of the students came in and yelled the ideas across the table for 30 seconds before, speed dating style, moving onto the next executive. No one could hear anything that was said.

But I brought a comic book that I had done passed it across the table to a young woman and said, I did this. And she said, wow, that’s really cool. And we followed up via email afterwards and she invited me to come to where she worked, which was the Juvee offices. And that’s where I met this guy who’s now one of my closest friends.

His name is Josh Nelson Yusef. And he rejected all of my game ideas, but as he was scrolling through my Instagram, came across the drawing of Taria and Como and said, "oh my gosh, who are these? We need to make a story about them. And so that tipped off the relationship with me and Juvee and we’ve been working together ever since. It was through their connections and their agency that we came across Panic and Playdate. And the one-bit art style was just so cool. And the idea of trying to find a way to integrate the crank in a meaningful way and the gameplay mechanics posed a really fun challenge just as a game designer. And yeah, so we were looking for a form for Taria and Como and we reached out to you guys, I think back in like 2018 or 2019. It’s been years and yeah, I mean we, we were so excited work with you guys and make the prototype and then eventually make the full game.

We originally pitched the idea to you guys as a logic puzzle that involved being able to tell the truthfulness of NPC statements.

Christa Mrgan: You’re listening to a podcast about video games, so you probably already know this, but just in case: NPCs are non-playable characters. Okay.

Kip Henderson: And so you sort of pieced together this mystery from there. And we tried out several prototypes of that just on platforms like Twine and it wasn’t that engaging.

And I remember laying down on the floor in my studio and I had a slipper and I just tossed it up in the air to myself and I just gave myself like half an hour of " I need to think of a more engaging mechanic than what we currently have." And at the time, I had recently been reading the comic East of West and one of the characters in that comic has a robot balloon. And just that image of a young character with a second character that’s tethered to them was sort of stuck in my mind. It’s a very compelling silhouette. And I think like just in that, half hour session of throwing the slipper to myself, I can’t really explain it, but that’s where the idea came of, oh, we should have a grapple mechanic in which you reel in and reel out.

And we just built the rest of the game around that.

I’m really proud of the way the crank mechanic, the grapple, and the commentary on disability all came together in this one mechanic. So in the game Taria has a extremely limited jump and depends on these robots to help her get around. That gave me so much space to tell stories about disability because it’s easy for disability media for the message to be, "oh, disabled people can do everything that able bodied people can, and that’s just not always the case. You think of um, stories like Daredevil, where the gimmick is that he’s blind, but he has like super sonar hearing whatever, and functionally, he’s not blind at all.

And so there’s this disconnect between you have this disabled protagonist, but one that is entirely self-sufficient and doesn’t face any consequences for his disability. Whereas by contrast, you have something like Finding \ , which is like a beautiful story about disability, as you have all of these different disabled characters like Dory with her memory loss, or Nemo with his fin, or Gil with this scarred fin and all of the different, uh, relationships around disability and how it impacts each one individually.

I wanted to tell a story more like that. There’s so many things that I could talk about, but just on a larger scale, our society is set up in a way that it tries to serve the masses in a way that often loses the individual. And that is sort of laced throughout the entire story of Taria and Como. Taria constantly runs up against restrictions and rules that are designed at best to try to serve a blanket mass of patients, and at worst is the capitalistic greed of this company that is entirely self-absorbed and unwilling care for the people it has power over. In the beginning. She has this health bot named Kit that designed by her father, specifically for her, and it serves her needs and gives her the ability to traverse where she wouldn’t otherwise.

And never makes her do something that she wouldn’t want to do. And it’s just there to augment and assist and then. She meets Dr. Prixie and is now tethered to a corporate health bot that has all of its rules seemingly set for somebody much younger. And so there’s, there’s that idea of like, oh, we’re no longer serving the individual.

We’re trying to create something that will serve everybody. And part of that is, is like results and humor. Like, or not you have a disability, we’ve all received, emails from corporations that say “how did that call go? Your opinion matters to us.” And it’s like, what you mean the call that like lasted five minutes and I wasn’t able to get somebody on the line And, and I went through five automated options. And so there’s this bizarre disconnect where like, human to human, nobody would say, “how did that call go?”

But a giant corporation is collecting data and there’s— you know that you are not being talked to individually. And Taria and Como wrestles with that of what systems have been put in place to serve either the corporation’s need or to serve somebody like the “cookie cutter patient” in a way that now prohibits people with individual, unique needs from getting their needs met.

And so this to tie it all back together, this idea of Tara when she grapples is literally suspended in mid-air from the robot and is dependent on it. And that forces this frustrating relationship with somebody that is not advocating for Taria to have access in society. That’s my idea of how it ties in with disability.

And then as far as using the crank, what really hopefully sets Taria and Como apart is the idea of, part of the puzzle is how far the target is. And so, like Spiderman is all about speed or navigation, whereas Taria and Como is all about, I set my anchor point in point A, I stand in point B, that creates a certain length and that determines whether or not I’m going to be able to get to the next room successfully.

So there are portions of speed and if you’re really good, you can sort of start building momentum, but it’s this puzzle idea that is directly tied to the crank. And how well you can navigate this, figuring out before you swing.

I think telling the story about perseverance and about living in a world that’s not designed for you is so important because it grows the audience’s capacity for empathy and empathy leads to kindness, and love and kindness and understanding are just so important in community, in why we’re here as humans. And it matters to me personally, because I am a person with disability. I can’t eat. My voice sounds the way that it does. I have a multiple joint disorder, meaning that my elbows only extend uh, almost 90 degrees.

I’ve had numerous hip, and knee, back, foot surgeries. I’ve been in and out of a wheelchair. And there’s a temptation, even just in a interview or podcast setting, to lean into bitterness or to lean into like, “oh, like the world is not set up to accept people with disabilities.”

Mostly because that’s what seems to be what people want to hear from disabled people. And the reality is I’m like, I’m not bitter about my disability. I have a full thriving life. I have felt the love and support of my community and even of hospitals. Of doctors and nurses.

But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t difficulties and, and there’s not things that still need to be addressed. I think one of the core things that I would love to get across is this experience that I have at this as a disabled person. And I especially had it growing up where. On like a, on a less severe side of the scale, my mom would take me to a doctor’s appointment and the doctor would address all of questions towards my mother. When I’m sitting right there.

And this went on all the way until high school. And there was this sense in which I had to work to make eye contact, to smile, to let the doctor know that I was intelligent, that I could answer questions for myself that I was involved in my own health journey and wanted to be treated like a full human.

And it’s just those little micro interactions of trying to. Get eye contact. Right. I remember going to Disneyland with a girl that I was dating at the time and we’re stepping into line for I think Astro Blasters. And the cast member looks at my girlfriend at the time and says, oh, could you tie his shoe for him?

Because my shoe was untied. And it was just this like, all like, I know how to tie my shoe and, you didn’t have to address her. And so just, especially as a young, disabled person, there’s so much. Lack of awareness on other people’s parts, who are well-meaning and, you know, trying to navigate the world the best way that they know how.

But it, it’s just dehumanizing and it’s tough. And so in the game, you meet this character, Dr. P who is constantly working to remove the player’s agency. And my goal is to introduce the character of Dr. Prixie into the audience’s idea of like a new way that a person can be frustrating. We all know what it looks like to be evil if you’re Darth Vader or a classic villain, but, I think of characters that hit on everybody’s frustration of the sickly sweet, despicable character. And so, taking that idea, and the goal is one day that a disabled person would be able to receive some sort of frustrating interaction and then communicate to somebody like, “Hey, you are acting like Dr. Prixie.” And then that person knows " oh yeah, that awful character in Taria and Como. I don’t want to be like that. And now I have an instant framework for how to change my behavior in a way that better communicates love and respect to the disabled community.

I think representation of disabled characters in media is so important. I think the values that I was raised around, I sort of took for granted that oh, the best way to tell a story is like a universal story. I love Chris Pratt, but you think of all of his animated voices, and there’s certain value to that of like the Emmet of the Lego movie, where it’s two dots and a smiley face, and everyone can see themselves in a Lego figure 'cause it could be anybody.

But there’s something so special about seeing yourself in media. And the first time that I really realized that was I’d received an art commission from a friend who, their daughter is deaf. And I, myself am hard of hearing I don’t have hearing in my right ear. And this little girl was obsessed with Darth Vader, like just absolutely obsessed with him.

Favorite character. And this mother commissioned me to create little comics of Darth Vader interacting with her daughter. And so I drew them building a Lego Death Star together, and I drew them in the swimming pool together and, interlaced it with Star Wars quotes. And the last one I drew was Darth Vader is saying goodnight to this little girl and she’s in her bedroom with all of her empire paraphernalia and he’s giving her the “I Love You” sign as he closes the door behind him.

And the little girl saw that and said to her mom, I didn’t know Darth Vader knew sign language. And it was so sweet. And it just opened my eyes of like, “oh, that’s why this matters. That’s why this is important.” And ever since then I’ve worked hard to tell meaningful disabled stories so that I can bless more disabled people in the audience of that moment of, “I didn’t know Darth Vader knew sign language.”

Christa Mrgan: Okay. If you’re wondering, yes, I did tear up at this story, and I had to like stop for a minute and get a tissue and I was kind of embarrassed, but Kip was very cool about it.

Anyway, you can see the commission piece and a bunch of Kip’s artwork via the links in the show notes. And there’s a link to this really awesome behind the scenes video that Kip created as well.

Kip Henderson: So this was the first time that I had worked in one-bit art and it was a lot of fun, very challenging. I think a sane person would’ve used a pixel art program, but I went straight for Procreate, which is what I do all of my artwork in. And so I built my entire system of around Procreate. I had dither patterns set up to masks.

Christa Mrgan: And here’s the really wild part:

Kip Henderson: almost none of it was tile-based. every single artwork that you see in the background was hand drawn and is non-repeating. And so that’s how you got so much unique artwork within the game. It was all animated within Procreate and then all compiled outside of Procreate.

Christa Mrgan: I love that the game’s background and environmental art often gives you hints about where the arc of your swing should be.

Kip Henderson: The artwork complements the level design, where oftentimes you’ll find yourself swinging in the arc and you are following an arc that I’ve put in the artwork whether that’s like the spine of a skeleton or different sized potted plants where you need to follow the arc that they create.

For the animated characters we obviously have sprite sheets. I did, you know, 95% of the art. And our amazing programmer César is also an artist.

Christa Mrgan: Yeah, César Dominguez Garcia is a programmer, game designer, artist, and animator.

Kip Henderson: And in my opinion, he stole the show with the artwork because all of my favorite animations that has there’s one where she is like painting limp and projected as she gets carried back to a place after hitting some sort of obstacle.

César drew that one. And then the pose that Taria gets when she’s flying midair. César also drew that one. And those are like, just so much fun. And I have so much personality and it’s so lively. That 5% that just adds so much character was done by César.

I would say working in one bit and the challenges that that posed-- one of the biggest challenges I had in the world of Taria and Co mo everyone has darker skin which is one of the design choices that we made early on. And that’s hard to communicate in one bit. When you get down to the actual sprites of the characters because you need the eyes to be black.

The skin is white, or like the skin is the white pixel with the eyes of the black pixel. But once you get to bigger renderings of the characters, whether that’s in talk ing cutscenes, or yeah, dialogue panels we’re able to see the characters and try to use the one bit to hint at what the skin tone might be.

And for that once in a while for those cutscenes, I would draw the entire thing. In gray scale and then run it through a pixel filter in Gimp.

Christa Mrgan: Gimp is an open source image editor.

Kip Henderson: But I would leave all of the skin blank and then I would go back in Procreate and make sure that all the skin was uniformly consistent instead of leaving it up to a pixel filter.

That was one of the challenges of I’m able to do the hair and the texture and the shading and the background. Some of the more elaborate cutscenes are using the pixel filters, but all of the skin tones, we used a mask just to make sure that it stay consistent. And so was one of the things that, that we came across, while rendering in one bit.

I think from a design perspective, one of the most rewarding things was just a ton of research. Into all of the different ways to style black hair like all the different afros, all the different ways that you can braid it, and then making sure that that’s represented in the characters so that some of them have their hair done up.

Como has the iconic two afro puffs on either side of her head. If you look back at early designs uh, you can find them if you just scroll for ages on my Instagram. Both characters had just two big afros, which was fun, but taking it into this medium and making sure that it represented that style of hair accurately, I wanted to show what all could be done in all the different hairstyles, which lends itself to iconic silhouettes so that whether it’s at the Sprite stage where it’s just these little characters walking around or the characters that you’re seeing. When the dialogue pops up, you are able to make that connection because the silhouette stays the same.

So, the music in Taria and Como is by Jesse Haugen, who is a just phenomenal composer. He and I have known each other since I, I think I was in fifth grade. And he was in sixth grade. And I had a crush on his little sister. And Our families have known each other for a long time. And it’s just a joy to work with him.

Jesse Haugen: Kip and I have been working together in some capacity for a really, really long time. We met when we were both kids in Sunday School at church and have been creatively collaborating either directly through Kip’s projects, like little animations he would make for Instagram or, sort of indirectly, because we had both worked on projects together for creators like Zach King, but not actually him and I working together, but both of us working on the same projects, unconnected.

And so through either direct projects together or indirect projects had been kind of collaborating now for seven years maybe? When Kip decided that he was gonna start making video games, he gave me a call, which was super exciting for me 'cause I had always wanted to write music for video games. Primarily prior to writing music for games, I’ve written mostly for film, or even podcasts. More just linear narrative type things. I’ve always been a huge fan of video games though, and interactive music has always been a really exciting idea for me. And Kip’s stories also are just so brilliant and inspiring.

And because Kip’s an artist, he starts from a very artistic place with lots of visual cues and things, which really helps inspire me musically. So we worked on a prototype for a game together and then, Taria and Como finally got green lit and we got to work on our first published game together, which is Taria and Como.

Kip Henderson: I’d say Jesse is one of those people that is just as creative and passionate and good at problem solving as I am. Hopefully that’s a compliment. When writing music for a video game over something like a film or a podcast that’s linear, the way I like to describe it to people is it’s just a lot deeper of a process. Whereas a film, you know, in five minutes of film, the most music you would ever write is five minutes. But in five minutes of a game, you know, in a more complex game, like you could write 20 minutes of music because you have the music that happens when, danger is around, or the music that happens when you’re low on health or you have a bunch of varied loops just so that it doesn’t get boring.

Jesse Haugen: For Taria and Como, it was definitely a bit simpler, and that’s because of the restrictions with the hardware of the Playdate.

You know, we can’t have three hours of music for a three hour game. It’s just not reasonable with how small the file sizes need to be. So it was sort of that, like, how can I make the music not repetitive, varied, have it feel scored, which is really hard because in a film you know, when things are gonna happen. In a video game, it all depends on when the player chooses to make things happen. So a good example of this is like, our cut scenes in Taria and Como are these sort of slideshow like comic panels that you crank through. And so we came up with some clever ways to have, in some of them, okay, we have like a looping thing underneath, but then when you get to a certain panel, that triggers a one shot music cue.

So it feels like in the same way in a film, you know, these things are happening synced To picture, but it actually is all dependent on your move as the player. So things like that, you’re kind of trying to manufacture a score backwards almost, because the player is really the one who decides the way that it all plays out.

So we got a little bit clever in trying to make that happen with Taria and Como, while also recognizing there are some restrictions on how much music we just could include because of file size.

Kip Henderson: When we started, in on the music we instantly ran into a size restrictions and just what sounds good on the Playdate. And that meant that we moved from something that was more like marimba or xylophone heavy into something that was more synth heavy. And I’m really happy with where it landed.

Jesse Haugen: Compressing the music files was kind of painful, and it’s not just because of not being able to have a lot, but the type of compression that you have to do for Playdate-- this is gonna get really technical. If you use MP3s, that’s a tax on the CPU because has to decode audio file. But if you want to do streamed audio, like WAV, those are really big. So then you do 80PCM WAVs, which is like a compressed, streamed audio format, but that introduces a bunch of like noise and artifacts and things, which for sound design and stuff, it doesn’t really matter, but for music, you really notice it.

And it actually fundamentally changed our approach to the score because the original ideas for the score had a bunch of like marimbas and like these. mallet percussion instruments and things, and it was very acoustic, in other words. And when you converted that to 80PCM WAVs, it just had all this like, hissing noise.

And so it was like, okay, that’s not gonna work. And then so we did a bunch of experiments and discovered that more, synth-y type, maybe retro video game sounds actually convert to that and sound a lot more natural. So that’s why the score for Taria and Como is like almost exclusively synthesizer and not just that, it’s actually all analog synths.

This is a bad thing to do in a podcast, point to stuff, but I’m sitting surrounded by synths right now. And this synth in particular, the Juno 60, is an analog synthesizer that I bought for Taria and Como. And we just found that when you compressed it into this file format, it really just kept, its like integrity and sounded like it worked. And so, the restrictions and the file type of Playdate completely changed what the music was gonna be. And then we lucked out because I really wanted one acoustic human element.

We ended up going for cello, which was a part of the original vision, and the cello, thankfully because of the frequency range, I don’t, I can’t really explain why, but when we used the cello and converted it, it sounded really good still, and it worked. You know, That could be because there’s some natural kind of fizz or hair on the sound of a cello because it’s bows pulling against strings or something.

But artifacts just didn’t introduce problems with cello. So we were able to keep that human element and yeah, that’s how the score basically just became synth and cello, which was really fun. And it’s fun. The restrictions are fun. Like I’ve found creativity kind of blossoms in boundaries.

So the cello on Tara and Coma was recorded by Isaiah Gage, who is a brilliant cellist. He’s recorded with a bunch of people on a million things. I wanted someone who would bring like a very individual character and say something emotionally so that the story of our game would land.

Kip Henderson: The goal is to make it feel this sort of adventure, but with undertones of melancholy it’s not like you’re in this bright, joyful world and anything that seems to be bright and joyful is usually the enemy or like, that sickly sweet thing that we’ve talked about before.

And so Jesse just did a brilliant job capturing that in the music. Honestly, the soundtrack is one of my favorite things about the game.

Jesse Haugen: The soundtrack for Taria and Como is available to stream on any music streaming services, so please go listen to it and get immersed in it, but even better is get immersed in it through playing the game on Playdate.

Kip Henderson: The sound design is done by Jonathan Richmond. He and I share an office space, so it was great to be able to go walk two doors down and be like, oh, what do you think about this sound? What do you think about doing this with the game? And it just adds so much life and ambiance to the game.

I think one of my favorites is Taria finally gets to this room called the Drill Factory. And it’s sort of in pieces and, you can see these giant drills in the background. And what really sells it is the ambiance of, you can hear like water dripping from steel rafters and the creaking of the rafters of this abandoned space, and you can feel the space and almost like the haunting of it. That’s one of my favorite rooms just for that reason. There’s also when you wake up in the hospital, there’s like all the, the mechanical beeps and you know, I’ve, stayed overnight in the hospital many times, and for me, it, it bizarrely has this feel of like childhood nostalgia, just because I spent so much time there as a kid.

And so there was some direction that I gave him of like, “oh, make sure that you get this kind of phone ringing.” And she can hear that in the background just because that’s what I associate with that sort of hospital environment. All of the footsteps are-- like, the peg leg reinforces like, oh right, this character is disabled. This is her life. This is her reality. The tactile feeling is really accentuated by the click every time you attach to something or the clicks just making for a really satisfying experience every time you swing.

We did a lot of play-testing for Taria and Como and the aspect of the game that got reworked the most was the tutorial. We sent an early version of the game off to Arisa and our friends, at Sweet Baby,

Christa Mrgan: Arisa Sudangnoi is Head of Playdate Developer Relations, and Sweet Baby is a narrative design company that has advised on and collaborated with Panic and Playdate on a bunch of game projects. They’ve also created three of their own games for Playdate!

Kip Henderson: And, any time you send a version of the game off, you always want to add this disclaimer of like, I know it’s not done. but all of the feedback was, " man, we were just thrown in the thick of it. I have no idea how to control this character. This is really difficult." So Kip and the team decided to focus on really slowing down and expanding the tutorial to reveal different game mechanics to players one at a time.

Maybe we had it initially of just one small tutorial level gave you the basics and then that turned into two rooms that you explore, into three rooms, into four rooms into, until it became nine rooms that explored all the concepts that you need to know how to aim, how to reel in, how to look around even concepts like, oh, I need to reel out as far as I can if I’m going to get more height.

Which is not intuitive, you think, oh, I want to get up, I need to reel myself up, whereas what the player needs to learn is I need to get up, I need to myself out in order to gain height. So that took a long time to figure out how to teach plays there.

Honestly, one of the biggest inspirations for the game was the first Portal game because that concept is so unique and requires so much tutorial that each room in itself is just little bite size pieces of skill checks that the player needs to pass in order to move on to the next level.

And as we were playing it, we kept getting compared to Portal. I think people from Sweet Baby even said, "Hey, your boss fight is too hard. If you look back at Portal all you need to do is give the player a chance to show off everything that they’ve learned in a pretty safe environment. And so one big step for me in designing the game was, the first Portal has this developer’s commentary mode where as you play the game, you can interact with these yellow speech bubbles and hear what they were thinking as they designed each room. I took extensive notes on that commentary and then went back to my game and made sure that each room in the tutorial taught you one thing at a time.

Christa Mrgan: I think it’s really successful.

The tutorial feels very naturally progressive, where you’re getting just enough information with each new room to grasp the concept, without feeling overwhelmed. And this wasn’t necessarily easy to do in a tight timeframe.

Kip Henderson: We had six months to develop before we ran outta money. And in the middle of those six months I got married that was insane. And honestly, that was one of the biggest achievements was just getting married right in the middle of developing video game.

And I am so grateful for the way that my team navigated that. And you could definitely see a before and after. Of my work output. Like before I got married I was, you know, wedding planning and, all of that stuff. And then after I got married, I just locked myself away for a couple months and did all of the art artwork for the day.

So I think that’s something that I’m still growing in, is just pacing myself and keeping a project on budget and making sure that deadlines are hit which I feel like is every game makers nemesis.

Christa Mrgan: Yeah, for sure. And I think it’s fair to say that this is one of the biggest challenges, not just with game development, but with all kinds of creative projects, in general. Because by their very nature, they tend to change and expand over time. Tons of unexpected issues come up. Things happen. Anyway!

Kip Henderson: But I think that was one of the most difficult parts most fun. I love working with the team. with César and Jesse and John and the other representative from Juvee Kaylon and Madison.

Christa Mrgan: Kaylon Hunt was co-producer of Taria and Como, along with Kip, and Madison Belcher was Associate Producer.

Kip Henderson: It’s just so much fun. And by the end, you could feel this camaraderie and inside jokes during team meetings. And that’s just so life giving, but I just love puzzles and strategy so much that the actual level design process I think was the most fun for me personally. The trial and error and getting to test it and that instant feedback loop is really gratifying.

Hopefully like by the end of the game, you feel empowered to go out and make a difference. You feel the sense of, oh, I can take ownership of my life, I can consume good stories and and then go be a force for good in the world. And hopefully there’s space for, introspection or, for new ideas of, oh, I could treat people with disabilities with respect.

And I have a new appreciation for the variety of different disabilities there are. Taria’s character arc ties back to my own personal journey where my experience with disability is one of independence where I’m constantly fighting let other people know that I can do it myself.

And that’s not everybody’s experience with disability. For a lot of disabled people, their experience is, I need people to fight for me and fight alongside me. And so who’s very independent has to learn that Como needs an advocate and needs tenderness in needs care, and so hopefully people come away from the game of that experience as well of, disability is not a one size fits all. I need to be intentional about how I listen to people’s stories.

At the end of Taria and Como, Taria, this entire time, has been. Making fun of essentially the Playdate. And by the end of the game, the players’ perspectives have reversed, where Taria realizes video games are empowering pieces of media can be used to strengthen people.

And Dr. Prixie has realized the same thing and therefore is trying to get tired to stop playing video games. And so that is like my attempt at highlighting the impact that games have had my life. And I hope that comes across when, when people play it.

Jesse Haugen: We are so proud of the game and I’m so proud of the music and I hope that everyone loves it.

Christa Mrgan: Me too. Taria and C omo is such a cool game. I love the grappling mechanic and the puzzles, and as someone with an invisible disability, I love the way this story humanizes different types of disability and is ultimately all about resilience, standing up for yourself, and figuring out how to navigate systems that weren’t built with your needs in mind. And also why video games are good.

You can learn more about Kip, Jesse, and the rest of the Taria and Como team, as well as a bunch of other stuff we talked about in this episode, via the links in the show notes.

And this is the last official episode of Season Two of the Playdate Podcast. Thanks so much for your patience, as I struggled to finish it while working on a bunch of other projects simultaneously. But hopefully it was worth the wait!

I really loved hearing from Kip and Jesse about what went into making the game, and their hopes for what people will take away from it. And there will be at least one special bonus episode of the podcast for this season, at some point.

So keep an eye on our feed or on our social media. I really hope you’ve all enjoyed the Playdate Season Two games, and the stories behind them.

I love hearing people talk about what they’ve made: the fun parts, the hard parts, and just the joy of making something and having other people experience it.

And it was so cool to finally see that dream of people all playing the same Playdate games each week come true. I just really appreciate you all so much. As always, thank you so much for listening.

Jesse Haugen: Thank you so much.

Kip Henderson: Thank you.

Christa Mrgan: See you next time.

Jesse Haugen: Bye-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 Jesse Haugen, and comes from Taria and Como.

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.

Jesse Haugen: We lived on a farm like an hour from the closest town. So we had to buy batteries like you wouldn’t believe, like industrial amounts of batteries just to keep the Game Boy going.

But yeah. We’re so lucky now. Just charge!