Quite Fresh Games Interview

Founded in 2015, Quite Fresh is the professional tag of one Stefan Ahlin, whose CV
includes work for publishers such as Nitrome and King, and a list of over 20 game releases in different genres, but it’s his freelance work as an Indie studio that brings him here today. This one-man artistic and development team behind 2019’s standout RougeLite ‘Void tyrant’, and quirky mobile arcade game ‘Ultimate Briefcase’ has taken the time out to sit and answer questions for My Boxed Universe.

MBU
Obviously, a massive thank you for taking the time to answer questions for us now that your winter event is over. Can you introduce yourself for this who are perhaps not acquainted with Quite Fresh games?

STEFAN
Hey! I’ve been running Quite Fresh as a full-time job for nearly 5 years. My time is divided between own titles like Void Tyrant, and occasionally contract work on other games. Before founding Quite Fresh I spent around a decade working mostly as a game artist. I started during the pre-smartphone mobile game era. The business has changed hugely several times since then, but I’ve luckily managed to find ways to stay in it.

MBU
What was the inspiration behind Void Tyrant?

STEFAN
For many years I was thinking passively about single-player RPGs based around a deck of cards. There were a lot of PVP-oriented card battlers coming out. I thought these were cool, but I wasn’t that interested in the idea of building decks freely from a vast library of cards. I wanted to maintain the thrill of getting good loot, and building up your arsenal of cards as you went through your adventure. Non-card based RPGs on mobile were also often very stats oriented; they felt less like thrilling adventures, and more like long term time investment loops. I love carefully made portrait mobile games, and felt that there was a lot of untapped potential for RPGs on mobile.

Thematically, I wanted the game to feel fantasy, light-hearted, and a bit strange. I like it when players feel familiar in a world, but if it is too familiar it gets dull. I’m also a fan of leaving things in that are unexplained, almost lost in translation. I think there was a lot of mystery and charm lost when video games passed into blockbuster territory and corners were rounded off a bit too much.

A rule was to stay away from science and technology and focus on magic and legends in a space setting. Earlier iterations of Phantasy Star was definitely in the back of my mind, as well as an old anime called Starzinger which was very popular in Sweden in the 80s.

MBU
Do you think of the game as a RogueLike or a RogueLite?

STEFAN
This stuff is sensitive to some people, and yeah, I’d say it is a RogueLite in the way that it has got permadeath, is procedural, but doesn’t play like Rogue. In the end I think it doesn’t matter too much, as long as people understand what you mean in the context. If people understand what I mean, and I get to shorten a long sentence into one word, that’s all I need. Sometimes I’ll say something like “procedural deck-building adventure with a hit-or-stand battle system”, which is just exhausting to everyone.

MBU
Void Tyrant is one hell of a good game and features some great, vivid art. Did you struggle to find a publisher for it or did Armour Games Studios bite your arm off for the opportunity to do so?

STEFAN
Thanks for your praise! The publisher demo of Void Tyrant was pretty polished. I had a couple of publishers that were really interested, and a few that I’d say were at least a bit intrigued.
While the terms of the contract are important, other factors also play in a lot when making a deal. I talked to Armor Games several times during the negotiation and apart from them liking the game, it really meant a lot to me that they were friendly and honest, and we had very similar ideas on where to take the title and about how we looked at the business. Luckily they seemed to feel the same way about me and Void Tyrant, so we could work together.

MBU
The title received funding from the UK Games Fund (the UK government) can you give a
little background on how this came about and what it entailed?

STEFAN
I was really fortunate to get that early funding, and we’ve also been fortunate in the UK Game Industry to have that funding in place in the first place. I saw round three of the funding being announced and it was luckily really well timed with me having a pretty good early demo of the game already. At this point there was lots of work left to do, but the funding allowed me to experiment and iterate on the core, as well as polish it up a more pitchable version.

MBU
The title has some fantastic artwork, how many variations or art styles and concepts did the game go through before you hit on what you wanted?

STEFAN
The first prototype was very simple. It had pixel art and featured a cat in an astronaut suit. The game was then seen from the side, with the two opponents facing each other. I was seriously considering pixel art initially, as I have a long history doing that. I love pixel art, but soon I realised that it would be a pretty poor choice for such a text-heavy game. I’ve nothing against pixel fonts, but I find them to be quite straining to read in larger chunks of text.

Another reason to move away from pixel art was that I was drawn to putting the whole game in first person, with big monsters taking up most of the screen. I’m not saying you can’t do that with pixel art, but it made more sense for me to go more hi-res.

MBU
Do you have a favourite monster or character design?

STEFAN
The Crawlogram is pretty fun. Enemies that mimic the hero is an RPG trope, but it was hard not to play with that one. Visually it is pretty fun. For followers, I like the Moon Ghoul. I have a soft spot for sad characters, and he’s more like a blood junkie than a scary vampire.

MBU
The game uses a fantastic little battle system based on drawing cards without going above a score of 12, which additional cards in hand to revamp the parameters. How did you conceive this system?

STEFAN
The blackjack-based battle system came about when I actually started prototyping the thing. I was working with another game designer in the early development, and we iterated on the battle system quite a lot. The early iterations were very unforgiving to the player, much more so than the final game.

The thinking behind the hit-or-stand system was just to have something that controlled the outcome of battles; something that you could influence, rather than just taking turns dishing out damage and relying on your stats. The idea of overcharging (going bust) was inspired by fumble rolls in pen-and-paper RPGs and slotted naturally into the blackjack format.

MBU
Have you been tempted to test or produce a version of the card game for PVP either online or for physical play? It would make a fantastic in-app purchase for the title, and potentially a great tournament game for players.

STEFAN
A lot of people have asked for PVP, and I can understand why. It would work well with the combat system and format. Early on in development I made a decision to stay away from multiplayer in order to put down boundaries and avoid scaling the project up to unreachable levels. For now I’m not planning any PVP, but I’m keeping an open mind to the idea of different forms of multiplayer interaction.

Some people have asked about a physical version too. I’d probably be interested in
something like this if I had more time, or if I could get help from someone who has more experience in that field.

MBU
Do you have a favourite card to play?

STEFAN
Kick seems like such a basic card, but is very useful. Especially in combat against monsters that use Target, you can very easily force the opponent into overcharge. Duplicates of Kick and some powerful win condition cards will get you a long way. I’d keep almost any cards that manipulate the opponent’s attack gauge.

MBU
Do you personally have any favourite RPGs that inspire you?

STEFAN
I mentioned Phantasy Star earlier, and I’ve played a lot of other digital RPGs too, but I think the ones that inspired me the most are the tabletop RPGs I played as a teenager. Most of the games we played were Swedish games like Drakar & Demoner and Mutant (a later version of this game was recently turned into a video game too). Being a GM in these games, drawing maps, setting up adventures; all of this shaped me a lot more than any digital games I’ve played later.

MBU
We’ve just finished an expansive holiday event for the winter period that added new content to the game for a limited time. Are we likely to see more?

STEFAN
There will be more events and updates, but it is a little bit too early for me to talk about it.

MBU
What does the future have in store got Void Tyrant?

STEFAN
Quite Fresh and Armor Games will keep working together on the title. We’re all proud of how it turned out, and our fans are fantastic. We’ve got a little Discord community, and we’ll keep pushing out updates.

MBU
Have you got a new game in the works?

STEFAN
I’ve done a very small amount of prototyping, but expect to find more time for new ideas once we’ve gotten a few more updates out for Void Tyrant. It is pretty hard to predict what I’ll end up doing, but I’m starting to feel pretty comfortable in this genre now.

MBU
Do you have any advice for budding game devs that you can impart?

STEFAN
The thing I see most people struggle with is motivation. At the start of a project, the game almost makes itself. Your brain is in “discovery mode” and gets constant reward hits. This is great, and can take you quickly to a point where you’ll understand better if the game will work. When you’ve laid down the big strokes, the sense of discovery will disappear and you’re left with the huge task of filling out a million little holes in the game. This is where repetetive and unglamorous work will start. At this point it is incredibly tempting to start a new project, because your clever brain is then starting to miss the reward hits it got before.

Try to be honest with yourself at this point: are you wanting to start something new because the idea didn’t work, or is it because you’re craving the reward hits? If you’re sure the idea didn’t work, cancel. Otherwise, think about how to motivate yourself through the rest of the project, because it will be much harder from this point. To maintain motivation, gauge your energy levels when prioritising tasks. Give yourself fun and creative tasks when your motivation needs a boost, and do the hard or dull work when you’ve got high energy or in the mood to get things done.

MBU
Thanks so much for answering our questions today. For those who want to know more about Quite Fresh games, you can find them HERE and check out their Twitter feed for all things Void Tyrant.