While we often hear about the highly publicized trials and tribulations surrounding big budget games, we rarely hear stories about the independent game developers that deal with similar problems. In a new interview with Nintendo Power Podcast, Overcooked developer Ghost Town Games opened up about the challenges that arise when a development team consists of only two people.
Speaking with host Chris Slate, Overcooked creators Phil Duncan and Olie De-Vine shared a variety of humorous war stories about the development of the first Overcooked title. In the midst of discussing their humble roots, Duncan reminisces on the Sisyphean task of creating a four-player game with only two people, stating,
“[It’s] a tricky game to make when there’s only two of you. So the first game we really struggled [with] it. I didn’t know why we got it in our heads that it would be a really good idea to make a four-player game when there’s just the two of us. There’s lots of stories of us, like, both of holding two pads, and trying to juggle them.”
The duo then goes on to detail the arduous challenges they faced when trying to create the game’s first trailer. Since there wasn’t anyone to help them record gameplay for each of the game’s four characters, both De-Vine and Duncan had to simultaneously control all four characters themselves. De-Vine called this feat “an absolute nightmare,” stating,
“we had to set it up so that each joystick would, like, move a different chef and then we were trying to coordinate like a scripted sequence of things that needed to happen in the trailer.”
In addition to lacking manpower, the duo also lacked the proper computing power to create the trailer. De-Vine states that the pair was using “really old PCs at the time” and had to borrow a friend’s computer to capture the gameplay footage needed for the trailer. At one point, due to technical limitations, the pair tried recording the trailer at half speed with the intention of speeding it up in post-production.
You can listen to Nintendo Power Podcast‘s entire interview with Ghost Town Games below. The duo’s new game, Overcooked 2, will be available for Windows, Mac, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch on August 7th. Something tells me they didn’t have to borrow a computer to make this one.