Posted July 13, 2018
The fast and the Furi-ous.
Most gamers have a love/hate relationship with boss fights: they are often a source of hair-tearing frustration due to the difficulty spike and long duration but on the flip side, the feeling of accomplishment they bestow usually makes up for it tenfold.
It's no wonder then that a game which consists only of consecutive boss fights is far from an easy undertaking. Both for the player and the developer. Audrey Leprince, co-founder of The Game Bakers who gave us the stylized gem Furi, agreed to shed some light into their struggles and victories.
Hi Audrey. Please begin by introducing yourself in a few words.
I'm Audrey Leprince, I founded the indie studio The Game Bakers with my business partner Emeric Thoa eight years ago. Furi, an all-boss fighter, is our latest game. Before Furi, we made a tactical RPG series called Squids, which releases on the Switch this summer, and the mobile brawler Combo Crew. Before creating The Game Bakers, I was a game designer and then producer at Quantic Dream and Ubisoft with a six-year spell in China. In 2017 I also launched the association Women in Games France, which promotes greater diversity in the video game industry.
How would you describe your day-to-day work in a few words?
At The Game Bakers, I'm in charge of executive production, which involves putting in place everything to do with production so that the games can be created: financing, partners and defining the overall strategy with my business partner. I'm also in charge of publishing our games (communication, business development, marketing, etc.) and the administrative side of the studio. I also contribute to the creative and narrative aspects of our games to varying degrees depending on the game. I did the story and dialog for Furi.
What was the inspiration for the Furi project?
Furi came about for a couple of reasons. First, the strong game concept that Emeric Thoa has been interested in for years: games with just boss fights. And then the realization that our only viable strategy for surviving in the saturated indie market was to create a different kind of title for a specific niche audience, one that stands out and does not have mass appeal.
Can you tell us a bit about the development of Furi? What were the various phases before arriving at the final version?
Development of Furi was relatively fluid, basically because the game's creative director had a very specific vision for the game. Thanks to the strength of this vision and a very clear pitch, we could get creative partners on board to help with the game, like the character designer Takashi Okazaki and the soundtrack musicians.
First, we created a "fake footage" video, which allowed us to convey the vision for the team and also to find creative partners and financial backers. We then did a lot of prototyping to create functioning and innovative gameplay that combined melee and ranged combat. Our next milestone was a vertical slice of the game with a complete boss, and the next phase was production to create all the game's bosses. Finaling and bug fixing was the last part, and it's always too short! After the game released, there was a lot of work to do for new platforms, updates and additional content.
There was a lot of remote working on Furi. Is it ultimately a blessing or a curse?
It's not something all teams will like, but remote working works well for us. It certainly requires more effort in terms of communication and organization. But we think the positives outweigh the negatives: the ability to work with the best international talent like Takashi Okazaki, and the quality of life our teams can enjoy by living wherever in the world they want. The people we work with are very happy because they can live in the country and abroad, while working on great indie games. It's quite a unique opportunity that The Game Bakers offers.
Where did your unique artistic direction come from?
We have an internal joke: “Game Bakers c’est la couleur” ("Game Bakers is colorful"). But that hides some of the truth: Emeric and I worked on so many realistic war games before Game Bakers that we really wanted to find a bright artistic direction when we started working on our first games. We hope our games are memorable and leave a nice aftertaste, and the artistic direction contributes to that. For Furi, the unique neon artistic direction was a stylistic choice from the creative direction and also linked to gameplay readability, the incredible character design by Takashi Okazaki and the work of the whole art team, especially Anthony Beyer.
What are you most proud of? And conversely, would you change anything if you could?
With Furi, we are very proud to have made this type of game, without compromising. We made a game that doesn't appeal to everyone, but it appeals massively to the kind of players we designed it for. It's always difficult to keep a strong creative vision throughout the production cycle, to make choices and to not get influenced, and that's something we're particularly proud of with Furi.
If we could change anything we would like to have spent more time polishing the final product. It really makes a difference in quality when you can perform more testing, playtests, etc. to refine the experience and remove frustrations – at least those that weren't planned as part of the design!
What was your marketing strategy for Furi?
Our concept for Furi from the beginning was of a game that stood out in terms of pitch, gameplay, character design, soundtrack, art direction, Japanese influences, the challenge, etc. All these elements that we put into the game were also what we based our communication on. This allowed us to make nice teasers before release and to grow a community.
We obviously also benefited from Sony's influential marketing because Furi was the free game of the month on PlayStation Plus when it released.
The game was picked up by the media quickly after this and positioned as a must-play indie game for 2016. It was also really well received by gamers and this generated great word-of-mouth for us. Subsequently releasing the game on new platforms, and recently on the Switch, has also helped us prolong the marketing and sales of the game. This is on top of the DLC, updates and fan merchandise, like the soundtrack on vinyl, physical collector editions, etc.
Do you have any tips for anyone wanting to make an ambitious game like this one?
My advice is to try not to include too many features and too much content. Rather, you should concentrate on the experience, a key feature and to push it as far as it can go, as only indie titles can do. Furi's "triple I" design philosophy was our key tool, which allowed us to control production and also to push the experience as far we could. We talk about this in more detail on our blog on the Game Bakers website for those who are interested.
Thank you Audrey !
Most gamers have a love/hate relationship with boss fights: they are often a source of hair-tearing frustration due to the difficulty spike and long duration but on the flip side, the feeling of accomplishment they bestow usually makes up for it tenfold.
It's no wonder then that a game which consists only of consecutive boss fights is far from an easy undertaking. Both for the player and the developer. Audrey Leprince, co-founder of The Game Bakers who gave us the stylized gem Furi, agreed to shed some light into their struggles and victories.
Hi Audrey. Please begin by introducing yourself in a few words.
I'm Audrey Leprince, I founded the indie studio The Game Bakers with my business partner Emeric Thoa eight years ago. Furi, an all-boss fighter, is our latest game. Before Furi, we made a tactical RPG series called Squids, which releases on the Switch this summer, and the mobile brawler Combo Crew. Before creating The Game Bakers, I was a game designer and then producer at Quantic Dream and Ubisoft with a six-year spell in China. In 2017 I also launched the association Women in Games France, which promotes greater diversity in the video game industry.
How would you describe your day-to-day work in a few words?
At The Game Bakers, I'm in charge of executive production, which involves putting in place everything to do with production so that the games can be created: financing, partners and defining the overall strategy with my business partner. I'm also in charge of publishing our games (communication, business development, marketing, etc.) and the administrative side of the studio. I also contribute to the creative and narrative aspects of our games to varying degrees depending on the game. I did the story and dialog for Furi.
What was the inspiration for the Furi project?
Furi came about for a couple of reasons. First, the strong game concept that Emeric Thoa has been interested in for years: games with just boss fights. And then the realization that our only viable strategy for surviving in the saturated indie market was to create a different kind of title for a specific niche audience, one that stands out and does not have mass appeal.
Can you tell us a bit about the development of Furi? What were the various phases before arriving at the final version?
Development of Furi was relatively fluid, basically because the game's creative director had a very specific vision for the game. Thanks to the strength of this vision and a very clear pitch, we could get creative partners on board to help with the game, like the character designer Takashi Okazaki and the soundtrack musicians.
First, we created a "fake footage" video, which allowed us to convey the vision for the team and also to find creative partners and financial backers. We then did a lot of prototyping to create functioning and innovative gameplay that combined melee and ranged combat. Our next milestone was a vertical slice of the game with a complete boss, and the next phase was production to create all the game's bosses. Finaling and bug fixing was the last part, and it's always too short! After the game released, there was a lot of work to do for new platforms, updates and additional content.
There was a lot of remote working on Furi. Is it ultimately a blessing or a curse?
It's not something all teams will like, but remote working works well for us. It certainly requires more effort in terms of communication and organization. But we think the positives outweigh the negatives: the ability to work with the best international talent like Takashi Okazaki, and the quality of life our teams can enjoy by living wherever in the world they want. The people we work with are very happy because they can live in the country and abroad, while working on great indie games. It's quite a unique opportunity that The Game Bakers offers.
Where did your unique artistic direction come from?
We have an internal joke: “Game Bakers c’est la couleur” ("Game Bakers is colorful"). But that hides some of the truth: Emeric and I worked on so many realistic war games before Game Bakers that we really wanted to find a bright artistic direction when we started working on our first games. We hope our games are memorable and leave a nice aftertaste, and the artistic direction contributes to that. For Furi, the unique neon artistic direction was a stylistic choice from the creative direction and also linked to gameplay readability, the incredible character design by Takashi Okazaki and the work of the whole art team, especially Anthony Beyer.
What are you most proud of? And conversely, would you change anything if you could?
With Furi, we are very proud to have made this type of game, without compromising. We made a game that doesn't appeal to everyone, but it appeals massively to the kind of players we designed it for. It's always difficult to keep a strong creative vision throughout the production cycle, to make choices and to not get influenced, and that's something we're particularly proud of with Furi.
If we could change anything we would like to have spent more time polishing the final product. It really makes a difference in quality when you can perform more testing, playtests, etc. to refine the experience and remove frustrations – at least those that weren't planned as part of the design!
What was your marketing strategy for Furi?
Our concept for Furi from the beginning was of a game that stood out in terms of pitch, gameplay, character design, soundtrack, art direction, Japanese influences, the challenge, etc. All these elements that we put into the game were also what we based our communication on. This allowed us to make nice teasers before release and to grow a community.
We obviously also benefited from Sony's influential marketing because Furi was the free game of the month on PlayStation Plus when it released.
The game was picked up by the media quickly after this and positioned as a must-play indie game for 2016. It was also really well received by gamers and this generated great word-of-mouth for us. Subsequently releasing the game on new platforms, and recently on the Switch, has also helped us prolong the marketing and sales of the game. This is on top of the DLC, updates and fan merchandise, like the soundtrack on vinyl, physical collector editions, etc.
Do you have any tips for anyone wanting to make an ambitious game like this one?
My advice is to try not to include too many features and too much content. Rather, you should concentrate on the experience, a key feature and to push it as far as it can go, as only indie titles can do. Furi's "triple I" design philosophy was our key tool, which allowed us to control production and also to push the experience as far we could. We talk about this in more detail on our blog on the Game Bakers website for those who are interested.
Thank you Audrey !
