One Man Left Studios began its journey into the realm of video game development with mobile games. With Space Food Truck, the two-man team looks to shift to the PC and delve into the world of deckbuilding titles. We spoke with Adam Stewart and Alex Okafor about their latest title, balancing difficulty, and what's the most important piece to get right.
Co-Optimus: Thanks for taking the time to talk with us. Would you mind starting things off with a little background on One Man Left Studios?
Adam Stewart: We're a two man company. Alex Okafor is our software developer and I (Adam Stewart) handle art, animation, and writing. We both collaborate on game design decisions. We originally met in an elementary school in Alabama, and in 10th grade or so (2002) we were at the same high school and started collaborating on little game experiments. We entered some Xbox Live Indie Game competitions, which is where we won my Xbox 360. I can't recall a time since 10th grade that we haven't been messing with some game project or another. Our first commercial release was Tilt to Live in 2010, which was really well received and allowed us to go pro.
Co-Optimus: When you first came up with the idea for Tilter Space (later Tilt to Live), did you think it would land as well as it did?
Adam: Oh hell no. We were both working full time in other industries. We thought we needed a whole back catalog of games to afford to go full time as developers. It was surreal.
Co-Optimus: From a design perspective, what do you feel was key to its success?
Adam: We haven't been able to replicate that level of success, so take this answer with a grain of salt. I would say it was the right game on the right platform at the right time. It was accessible, short-form, and it was very specifically designed with iOS and mobile play in mind.
Co-Optimus: After a couple of sequels to Tilt to Live and the turn-based strategy game Outwitters, you are now focusing on your first PC title, Space Food Truck, a cooperative deckbuilding game that puts players in charge of an interstellar food truck crew that cruises around the galaxy in search of ingredients so they can make some delicious dishes. Before we parse all of that out too much, why the jump in platforms? Has the idea/plans for this title been in the works for some time?
Adam: Mobile has changed a lot since 2010. Our last premium game didn't do well on the platform at all, and from what we experienced with Outwitters, free to play wasn't a guaranteed slam dunk either. So we first started looking at other platforms from a business standpoint, then we realized PC had a lot of appealing differences to what we were used to. Our game could take more than 30 seconds to explain without losing people's attention. You didn't have to cater so much to casual gamers or non-gamers. So we started prototyping, and Alex came up with this crazy idea.
He loves tabletop stuff, and I recall him saying he was looking for a very particular kind of co-op deckbuilding game to play with his friends. He had a hard time finding it, so he decided to just make it. He'd been picking away at a space travel simulation idea since forever, so those two ideas made a baby, and that was Space Food Truck. It's the most complicated thing we've ever made, we had no idea what we were getting into, and we've learned a lot just diving in.
Co-Optimus: There are a few mechanics here and there that remind me of other deckbuilding games, but were there any in particular that were an inspiration?
Alex Okafor: Cooperative play was always at the heart of the space travel sim prototype I had. But I couldn’t find a mechanic I was satisfied with. It wasn’t until I came across deckbuilders over a year later that a central mechanic finally clicked.
I was inspired by the feeling of constant crisis and calamity from FTL, as well as its sense of exploration/camaraderie between crew mates. “Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game” has a cooperative setting rather than the typical PvP you’d see in things like Star Realms or other card games. Neptune’s Pride/Neptune’s Pride 2’s was kind of the game that seeded the idea for SFT. I liked having a huge galaxy to explore and interact with other players in semi-realtime/slow-time. I really loved the idea of making something similar to that but less adversarial and more cooperative in nature. This kind of set off the chain of ideas and prototypes that ultimately led to SFT. Granted, looking at SFT now it’s a far cry from that original inspiration in terms of mechanics/gameplay.
Adam: For my side of the design, the only deckbuilding game I've ever played was the DC Comics one, so there was more critical thinking than inspiration. We have these four roles defined: Engineer, Scientist, Captain, and Chef, and we knew the game was about jumping around a big galaxy map and crafting recipes. From there it was a whirlwind of adding and removing elements to accomplish our design goals: making the roles feel as different as possible while keeping them as thematically consistent as possible. So we'd have very sophisticated meetings on topics like "what mechanics would make the Scientist's job feel more science-y?"
Co-Optimus: Despite the straightforward premise, there's a lot going on in this game. I'm curious to hear your explanation on what a typical round of play entails and what players are doing.
Adam: We prioritized making each role feel really different, almost like you’re playing four different games that all tie together and depend on each other. Every turn is a balancing act between doing your own job and helping your teammates do theirs. You want to empower yourself as much as possible to be an awesome captain, for example, so nobody will be pointing the finger at you if we lose. But at the same time, you can't hog all of the good cards for your own deck, because you won’t win unless everyone is doing well. We worked hard to make sure that every job matters, and that you have to keep an eye on how your friends are doing.
You can’t do your teammate’s job for them, but there are lots of options to help each other out if you coordinate. We’ve included some abilities that can either do something cool for yourself or for one of your teammates, like the Unomas Remote that lets any player draw a card. You can even give a card from your hand to a teammate’s if you’re in the same room on the ship. Then at the end of your turn when it’s time to buy a new card, you’re weighing “what’s the coolest card I can afford” with “which of us really needs that card?” Each turn you have a choice of focusing on your own job, helping a teammate out, or maybe a little of both.
Co-Optimus: Alright, so with that, where do you feel the cooperative elements come into play? Yes, you can go through those conversations with your teammates about what each member of the crew can do, which cards to play/draw at the end of the turn, but you can also do all of that in a single-player game. What makes adding more players to the mix cooperative?
Adam: Whether you're playing single player or with friends, it's still a cooperative game in my view. The four decks you're controlling need to pass cards and work together to solve problems, you're just doing the thinking for four people. It's not the best way to play Space Food Truck. Really you could play most turn-based co-op games by yourself, if you wanted.
SFT is much more fun (and less stressful) when you have a friend or two to spread the responsibilities around. You get better insights for solving crises because your objectives are more focused. You can plan your next turn while other characters do their thing. Best of all, you can ask the crew "can anyone get me some good power cards before my turn?" instead of digging through 3 inventories yourself to find out. There's a lot to keep track of, so having more brains on board definitely helps your odds for success. Plus there's a special joy in having someone else to blame when things go south.
Alex: In an action coop game, most players may know the proper technique or tactic to employ in some scenario. But you may have someone who has above average execution in that role you’d wish to use in that game. It could be better reflexes or better decision making. Analogously, If a player starts to specialize in only playing the engineer, for instance, they may bring more to the table than someone who plays all roles generally. Also, a major part of SFT, and many co-op games, is consensus building. Having multiple people bringing in various ideas helps open up very different strategic choices and outcomes.
Co-Optimus: Has there been any discussion around adding a mode to the game that could only be played with other players?
Adam: Our local mode can function as a single player, but it was really intended for couch co-op. I love couch co-op, so I wouldn't be in favor of an "online only" mode just for the sake of it. But I guess if we had an idea that required players to keep their cards secret, there's no good way to do that on one screen.
Co-Optimus: Shifting gears a bit, let's talk about game balancing. The game is still in an early state and subject to change, but based on game updates thus far, I know you've received a lot of feedback from players about the game's difficulty. When you're looking at this feedback and playtesting the game yourself, do you have in mind some percentage of success? For example, based on a sample of 10 games played, 7 of those should be success and 3 should be a failure. Is there a metric you use?
Adam: We're working on multiple difficulties at the moment to try and provide something fun for every skill level. Our current thinking is: if we use the same good strategies every session, knowing the game as well as we do, we should be able to beat our "normal" mode something like 80% of the time. So if 1 in 5 games we have bad luck and die hilariously, that's okay. A 100% win-rate means we have a solvable game, which we're not going for, because there's not a lot of fun to be had replaying a game you've solved. But if we get too close to a 50% win rate, that's a coin flip and that's absolutely a problem. At the same time, we're paying close attention to what our Early Access users are saying about difficulty and looking over their data separately from our own.
[Editor's Note: An update was recently released for the title that added three difficulty levels to the game]
Co-Optimus: There's a lot of random chance involved with any given player turn; what events he/she encounters, what cards are in his/her hand when that event occurs, what else has happened on the ship (e.g., a door breaking) that may prevent them from taking any action, what cards are available for them to purchase, and so on. Do you feel that that randomness is well balanced? Has any thought been given to implementing mechanics, such as players being able to address events as a group, to help alleviate some of that randomness?
Adam: That's a good question. When you make or even play a card game, you've kind of already decided that randomness is going to be part of the fun. So we're constantly evaluating how to give players enough outs to know that their choices matter, but not so many that they're never surprised. And it's easy for us to forget that our players don't know the calculated odds for anything, they only know what they've drawn. For example: when traveling, one in three planets has a negative event, and almost all of those can be dodged if you save some power cards for it. So it might feel totally random at first, but with some experience we hope you learn that traveling with 4 power in your hand is a very safe bet, and there's nothing in our arrival events that will directly damage your ship. The event deck is also gated off to control for randomness. The odds and consequences get worse every 15 turns or so. We're constantly on the lookout for anecdotes from players complaining about randomness, and debating what is or isn't fair to the player. It's as much an art as it is a science.
Co-Optimus: When I play Space Food Truck, I'm aware of the fact that I'm bringing with me a lot of my own bias and experiences from other deckbuilding games I've played over the years. Not all of that knowledge is beneficial. Is there anything in the game, or anything planned, to address that sort of player bias and/or help guide players towards certain strategies that will help?
Adam: We'll be updating our tutorial videos once the game is closer to final, and we've been hearing that those are pretty helpful for getting started. I think it's normal for players to bring their own hypothesis to the table, then tweak it until it works. That's part of the fun of buying a new game; it's a fresh puzzle to solve. I imagine you'd be pretty bored if the strategy that worked on your last deckbuilder immediately solved this one.
Co-Optimus: What do you feel is the most important part to get right with a game like this?
Adam: Making losing fun. You kind of get a free pass on that for co-op games, though. Talking trash to your friend for screwing everything up is like it's own reward. But if you can pull out a PvE co-op board game and have fun with it whether you win or lose, that's a perfect board game.
Co-Optimus: Do you feel you’re getting to that point with Space Food Truck?
Adam: It's subjective, but I do think losing can be hilarious in SFT. The game has been a bit too hard in some of the recent builds, so there were some spectacular failures between Alex and myself. We're in a tight spot and we come up with this elaborate plan to solve it, one that involves like 3 characters' hands and some card trading. Then the very next turn a crucial door breaks. Or even better, Alex's exhausted developer brain completely forgets our plan, so he plays a card wrong and dooms us all. We'll usually leave with interesting stories like "the planet was under attack by invaders, our captain was locked out of the bridge, and Space Pirates had stolen two of our wrenches." When the game still makes us laugh during playtesting this late into development, that's a good sign.
Co-Optimus: What’s next for the game? What’s the big picture of shifting from Early Access to full release?
Adam: Most of our major Early Access notes and changes have been addressed. Once the new difficulty modes are in, we'll be testing those pretty vigorously to make sure they each feel about right for their target audience. We'll also be looking over our Early Access users' numbers for win/loss rates. Aside from that, we're just polishing up the look of the game and squashing all of the major bugs. We're shooting for launch in February, and with any luck I think we'll make it.
Co-Optimus: Have you all had time to play any games other than your own? Anything that’s been a good break from development?
Adam: I just bought a house, so mostly I've been playing this awesome painting simulator. I did finally get around to putting the Riddler away in Batman: Arkham Knight recently, and just finished a quick run of Arkham City. I'm kind of on a Batman kick.
We'd like to thank Adam and Alex for taking the time to speak with us about Space Food Truck. The title is currently available via Steam Early Access for $17.99