In this episode, I chat with Nate, a versatile game developer, about his diverse journey from working on AAA games like *Sea of Thieves* to creating his own indie titles, including *Spirit Hunters: Infinite Horde* and the upcoming horror game, *The Bagman*. We explore his passion for reviving retro horror on consoles like the Sega Mega Drive, examining how classic influences shape his design choices. Nate shares insights on transitioning from corporate to indie development, the importance of community support, and the creative challenges he faces in marrying point-and-click mechanics with the urgency of horror gameplay. The conversation also touches on the therapeutic aspects of development and the value of feedback in fostering growth within the gaming community.

Links to Nate:

https://linktr.ee/badtasty

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There we go. All right. What's going on, Nate?

Hello, how are you doing? Not too bad, not too bad.

And welcome, everyone, to another episode of Building Horror,

a Fearzine podcast, where we get to know video game developers such as my friend Nate here.

He is a game developer, and you have experience working not only in the AAA

space on games like Sea of Thieves, but also in the indie space with your own

studios, I believe, Creature Cauldron and Bad Tasty.

Yes, that's correct. welcome hello how are you doing um yeah

so yeah i've worked i got into the game industry

pretty late in my life but i've had the pleasure of working with um kind

of like lots of different size companies i started an indie

company called prospect games um

working on a kind of like a robot um a robot

fight simulated tech game unfortunately that never came out

but through that i got to work with revolution software on

beyond a steel sky sea of thieves i did a really nice

contract on that working on ai enemy stuff which was

a lot of fun um yeah and then i kind of

did some more contracts and now i kind of i got a bit

fed up of that i wanted to do my own thing so i started creature

cauldron with a pal um and we released

a game called spirit hunters infinite horde which is like a vampire

survivors type game um and we're currently working on

our next game which is non-horror um that's called star gunners and

i also do at the moment i'm doing contract work as well

for a um a company called aquatic moon then working

on a 2d well 2d-esque metroidvania called

twilight monk which is it's a very beautiful game it's with

a guy called um trent canuga who's a

really good concept artist he's worked with like blizzard and and all that capcom

and all those cool companies and it's a very beautiful game yeah and i know

then what i've always wanted to work on is horror games sorry going off on a

bit here being a tangent horror games and i started um bad taster working on

the first game called The Bagman.

Nice. Awesome. That's a lot. Yeah. It's good. It's good.

No, it's great. And that's where...

I love getting to hear everyone's stories, especially because everyone's got

such a very different background.

And I know we're going to get into this and how you got into doing this.

And, you know, it's not the traditional way of going when it comes to game design.

And then just to reiterate, I'm your host,

Dan Morris. I'm the head of and editor-in-chief of Fearzine Magazine.

And this is my little project that I started because I wanted to get to know

game developers who make video games better, especially those in horror because

horror is my favorite genre hence a magazine about horror games,

so thank you again nate for joining me um and

uh i i wanted to start off

with your indie horror game that you're working on

the bad man can you tell us a little bit more about that yes so

it's um i'm creating it for the mega drive

or sega genesis i think it was known where it was known in the

states um and i'm kind of from that

i'm also building it for the pc slash switch because i've got a

switch dev kit so i may as well build it along there and it's

a it's a narrative point-of-click game but

with stealth um action elements and stuff uh

very inspired by the clock tower um which came

out in snares in japan and then it's it's actually recently been

um the clock tower first i think it's called well fair rewind

i was gonna say when i looked at the screenshots for your game the

first thought i had was this looks like clock tower this literally been like

tiny me um when i was little i had a mega drive and i was like oh there needs

to be more horror games for the mega drive i think i got like splatter house

too i was like this is awesome you know um and then i saw a magazine um about

um clock tower and it just looked awesome,

um like but i don't think it ever came out in the uk i think i only ever played it on emulation.

Um but yeah i was like oh that i wish there was more games like that for

the mega drive and then so this is kind of so i wanted to make a horror game

and i wanted to make some for the mega drive as well i was like well this is

perfect because i get to make a horror game for the mega drive and bring like

a clock tower point-to-click s game to the mega drive and explore that space a little bit.

So it's a lot of fun but yeah yeah it's a stealth game and it's when i was looking through,

so originally i was actually working on a 3d horror game that

was about um old like a very old kind of

um lady that needs that's not what she

seems and i was enjoying the

process but it was i was kept costing it up for all the

art uh 3d animations the 3d um models

and it's like ballooning in costs and i i couldn't

really afford it because it's very much the horror side is

a passion projects at the moment um like if

anybody wants to fund me yeah please give me money but um yeah so

it was like so i had to kind of like re-scope that and then i thought i've always

played with this idea of like i'm just a slasher um point-and-click

game and play around with that space so that's

why i moved kind of like to today it's still costly but um

i can kind of it's i'm finding a lot more easier to scope everything

um which helps with then dealing with freelancers and

whatnot in regards to finding out costs of things that's yeah

nice uh i'm curious as far as the point and

click 2d element is there anything beyond the clock

tower influence and cost that influences you to

want to go that route yeah so i'm a massive so my

love of when i first kind of got into video games was like

monkey island but it was also the lure of the temptress um and.

Uh beneath the steel sky massive um kind

of like uh inspirational pieces games for me um i

actually my one of my first credited games was working on

beyond the steel sky with revolution software so that was

like a big tick on my you know bucket list of

things to work on and obviously a child Cecil to me

and the team behind revolution software but um but

yeah so but i've always i've always really wanted to make a pointy click as well

with the um lure of the temptress and beneath the

steel sky they had kind of like a command ai um interaction where you could

tell your companion to do stuff and for ill or no it's sometimes you could kind

of get them killed and whatnot um you know they did carry out these actions

and stuff and it was really nice interface to kind of play around with and add

a lot of replayability to a certain elements of the game,

um so i wanted to kind of bring some of that into it as well so i'm very inspired

by lower the temptress and beneath a steel sky and generally like point monkey

island was a huge you know i think everybody loves monkey island but that was

a huge one as well so i've always wanted to make a point and click um but.

I find with points and clicks, the input then slows down. So you have to bring

up the cursor, move it around, especially on the control pad.

So there's issues there that I need to kind of solve, but also,

so I broke it down into a, there's a point and clicking space with stuff,

but movement can be, you can turn the cursor off and still move around.

This will help with the stealth sections running away. So it still feels very

action orientated and like rather than stopping,

you know, bringing the cursor to select something and that slows it

down and bogs down the kind of the the adrenaline

and whatnot but yeah all these issues and

design kind of considerations kind of prop um kind

of pop up and they're a nice hurdle to kind of figure out and

solve because most of my background in the games

industry has actually been games programming rather than

design side so i'm i'm really relishing the

the kind of the journey of learning more about design the

pitfalls the things that i didn't consider until i hit them and then finding

solutions around them and whatnot and sometimes these solutions as well have

already been solved before so it's nice to look back at um other games you know

it's a reason to play lots of point and click games to kind of like discover

oh how did they get around this issue and stuff like right yeah.

What's one of the greatest struggles you've found in that

process trying to figure out the actual like hurdles

and how to get around them yes i think one of them is the one of

the first issues was how um slow the point click

so you're running away from anime chasing you i

recently started playing the clock tower rewind so i know exactly what you're

talking about i'm like man this is slow yeah and if you feel very slow and they

kind of kept that in with the remaster as well kind of the slowness but but

having that point and click interface and not having um able to kind of really

run and and get away and be more action orientated on your controller.

That was an issue at first and kind of i'm trying to find a way around that

and it's literally basically don't put everything behind the point and control

uh mechanics put the put kind

of like the puzzly bits behind that maybe but i'm still playing with it

it's still a learning process and it sounds like you're kind of modernizing the

point and click kind of gameplay mechanics yeah

yeah yeah definitely looking to kind of modernize it but not too much

because i still i almost want it to feel quite

clunky in certain regards because um i

don't want to kind of detract it too much from like the the mega drive

um feel you want to feel like that game can

live on that console like yeah you want to have that spirit

yes that's a good so yeah the spirit yeah that's a good

term yes have the spirit of it so there's a

there's a balance there to be found and hopefully you know as i kind of iterate

and work through it it's kind of like how i feel with classic survival horror

games and tank controls like i'm a tank control purist i guess like i love games

that can make good solid controls but i also really like tank controls even

though most people kind of hate tank controls.

And I try to justify tank controls in the sense that,

The way I look at it, not like beyond it being a development,

you know, pitfall or like struggle with game developers in the old days where

that was basically the best way that they can make the game function within

the fixed camera angle world.

I look at it as if you've ever had a nightmare or a bad dream in those dreams

that you always have a hard time running away.

There's always something holding you back or you can't move or you have that

moment of like, why can't I run?

Why can't I jump? Why can't I do this? and i try to relate that

to tank controls being like that's that version where

it's hard to run away or it's hard to move because you're in

a horror scenario and it kind of

adds to that tension it adds to that struggle and why you as a player are having

a hard time getting away from the thing when if it was the real world if it

was real you would just be like oh i would just you know back away easily yeah

i'll be like you know why am i running into the wall like yeah oh it's I think as well,

it's almost like you get fear from the input and the way that it's handling

as well. That can make you a little bit stressed.

And that's like, I get the adrenaline going. Even now, I just had this random

thought like, okay, now you steal this idea if you want.

I need to make a 3D horror game.

That has modern controls but in the vein of

like an eternal darkness if you start getting too scared it

suddenly flips the controls the tank controls and you're like what's happening

oh god yeah yeah why can't i move that'd be fun that would be fun yeah well

and one of the um the reasons as well for the retro side i was i was looking

at you know okay i'm gonna make my first horror game.

It's my own passion project what's everybody else doing and there's.

A very big thing about your playstation-esque visuals and

retro so yeah basically like at least all the

ones good really good ones i played have that visual as well because it

adds something as the visual really does add something um and

i got me thinking well if they're kind of going like

retro and stuff why don't i go like you know go big you know

go retro and literally just put the actual make the game on the

retro hardware itself that was another thing i don't know

actually if it'll work as well as you

know say make it in a more modern engine just with retro visuals because

i am to the actual hardware but i think it'll be an interesting um

experiment so to speak it's like you know well does

that cannot exist in the same space as this these kind

of retro looking games and stuff are you going to be able to actually produce

the game on the cartridge that would play on a megadrive yes i've

got um a number of friends that have either been in

the um the retro scene or whatever you want to

call it for a while and they've got all the connections there with how

to put it on i've also you know i've got big document as

well of how to do it all as well so i've got i've got connections there

my aim is to put it on a cartridge and put

it on mega drive that'd be like this is like

the tick box of dreams of things to achieve before i die type thing

and that's like having it yeah having a physical cartridge on

a mega drive is one of those sorry go

ahead finish what you're saying oh yeah yeah pretty much finish it oh no i

was just going to say that like the dream of an indie developer to ship a

physical game yes because that's kind

of like a thing of the past now actually shipped yeah yeah

is there something nice i mean i so i've got.

A few um new homebrew megadrive titles behind

me um xeno crisis is one of them and i think

they put it to other other cons well they have they've done um dreamcast

i think and snaz i think um but it's like it's just

cool you know like having like that but yeah even um

you know getting like a modern game physically released there's always an excitement there

seeing it in the store uh i'll see it just held in

your hands and whatnot um which kind of is lost

a little bit in modern stuff i can

go back to the point and click uh notion too

with your inspiration with point and click it's funny because uh my number two

and like uh army of two cohort maria uh with the magazine she's in a same boat

where she loves monkey island like she's diehard monkey island fan and she's

getting into and game development now.

And that's actually what she's looking at doing is making a point and click.

Kind of horror game yeah in a similar way

she's kind of going that same route yeah and

just to kind of um bring it back to phasing a little bit with the

community that you're building there that stuff that i imagine we'll we'll

be sharing then in that in the discussions there and stuff like that will be

really exciting when she starts going with that because there's so many issues

with um not issues um issues that i run into because i've never done it before

is the whole narrative and puzzle stuff you've got to have like a narrative

going but you've got like linking making puzzles and because I've never done

that before, that's the hardest part.

There's like, there's a programming side, which can be complicated is that now

it's the writing and the, uh, the puzzle design. That's actually the thing that

keeps stumping me and things like that.

So I've kind of like got, there's a program called Swine. I don't know if you've ever heard of it.

Yeah. It's the narrative game development. Yeah. With boxes and stuff.

And that's great because I've kind of like, you don't have to worry about the tech side of it.

You just kind of like have your, you know, your little boxes go into different

things. You have very, very simple if else statements driving it.

And that's great but i still struggle with that yeah

yeah because um yeah yeah just it's just a lot

of new stuff to learn so it'll be interesting to see how she finds it when she's

going through that i've talked about trying to help her with because she's kind

of struggles in the same boat with the the story and the the narrative kind

of side of things so that's something that we've been talking about and again

bringing it back to the fearzine community this is something that we're trying to,

not harness, I want to foster,

we want to try to build this little place for developers to be able to communicate,

share ideas, bounce things off each other, help each other.

And it's getting there. We're seeing more and more of it so far, but...

It's one of my favorite things that we've seen through the fusing community

in our horrifically wholesome uh group that

we're developing here yeah perfectly called somehow

like that oh man like that as soon as that phrase came

out we're like that's gold yeah and that's

that's came about because of just how genuine everyone's

been between us you know starting to take over the

magazine and we started sharing and talking about games and promoting people's

stuff and between myself and maria like getting on socials and just being like

oh your game looks great and you get people who are just like oh my god thank

you for even looking at it no i'm like yeah absolutely like we're here to help

we're here to support you you know

and i can honestly say like um um like

i got a message today just saying oh your game that you work on looks

great and it's like those little random messages um especially because

i'm sure as you've experienced like socials and stuff it's

kind of like you're just screaming out into the void half the time to get

any kind of like oh this looks awesome you know it's always

like perks up the morale a little bit yeah and

that's uh that's something that we've taken and leaned into

is just the positivity we're a bunch of people who love horror games but we're

really nice about it and we just want to we just it it makes us happy that we

can help other people especially when it comes to like developers we're just

desperate for some sort of you know.

Any kind of feedback you know that allows them to understand that they're doing

something they're worth doing or that it registers with someone yeah and like

you said screaming into the void how many times are developers out there posting

and posting and posting and they get either nothing,

or mostly negative response yeah yeah

and that's something that always drives me nuts and especially

when in the indie game studio you don't

know how long it's going to take to make a game and like people are posting on

people's accounts like we are taking too

long to make your game who's going to care and it's like what difference

does it make yeah i mean i love it's like you know

there's so many um games being made as well it's

it's a you know you're you're trying to like you're screaming

everyone's going through the same thing you know a lot

at least a lot of people are and so that's it's like um

it's nice in a way because you're sharing that kind of um space and

sharing that understanding that you know fuck me you know you know

god that keeps good to the

void and no nothing's happening but then you know you come to your community

and it's like other people going through it and stuff to share there and you

know and that's nice you know because you need it i think it's like it's like

a community and you need that because humans we are you know social creatures

and even though you know i like to do most of my social stuff behind a computer,

you know, we still need those connections, especially when those things are

shared in like horror, indie horror.

It's nice to kind of come together and share something that we all care about.

Yeah for sure and one of the things that i've gotten most proud about with my

attitude on socials at this point is when i see developers getting a lot of

like toxic garbage i'm always like don't worry about them your real fans are

here waiting and we will wait patiently,

don't worry about them don't worry about the crap because those

of us who actually care we're here yeah yeah

i remember um this wasn't a horror game but when creature

cauldron um which is a studio started with a

pal released our game we were

just getting like a lot of negative um it

was we released in early access and there was a few books yeah

spirit hunters yeah i've played spirit so i hopefully enjoyed it um and yeah

we're just like um i stopped reading the comments after a little while because

they were quite some of them really um full-on but it does it does like kind

of like you get used to seeing certain things but i wish we i wish we didn't have to go through that.

Because there was one point um and i'll just.

Share this um there's one point where we were like okay let's read just

all the negatives because you're sometimes in the

negativity there is constructive feedback negative negative comments

i love those they're great and and then there's the people that just

like want to rant but also there's truths in there and

if enough unfortunately there was quite a lot of people kind of like a bit

sweary but they were some of them say the same things but

we had to kind of like read through all the negatives and that was painful like

especially because it's my first time kind of when you're

working for a big studio half of that stuff you don't really feel it as much well

at least i didn't it's a little bit more diluted yeah diluted you

know i'm just doing my part um for the greater good and all that

kind of stuff but like the comments don't hit as hard uh negative comments

but when you're working on something that you've started up you've got a

lot of blood sweat and tears into and then you're kind of going oh

god i'm going to release it and see how it goes they all

they all like hit a bit differently and that was kind of like a fun experience

to learn just how to kind of like navigate that

space but you know there are

there are choosing those negative comments sometimes i think

that's uh that speaks on a certain level because i've

talked about this when it comes to game reviews and the negativity

around games journalism and that's

something that we as fearzine have to try to

like help ourselves try to stand out and

try to establish ourselves as genuine because we're

just a bunch of fans yeah we're independent fans

who love video games and we're just trying to do something that helps us a share.

That love as well as provide a service and the problem now is because games

journalism is so frowned upon i guess in certain ways like there's so much negativity

around that because people don't trust the main sources anymore yeah.

So that makes it really hard for us to make sure that people can feel like,

okay, we're making sense. And bringing it back around to my point is reviews.

A lot of people are starting to argue that reviews are pointless because they can't trust them.

And I've always tried to make the statement that all reviews have value,

whether they're good, bad, or otherwise.

Because no matter what, if the review aligns with your opinion or not,

it provides insight for a person to make a decision whether they want to play that game.

Just like you, your bad reviews are helping you make changes to improve the game.

So it's not like a bad review for a game. Like, let's say a game you love gets a bad review.

You might be upset about that. And you might say, oh, this person doesn't know

what they're talking about.

They're full of crap because they don't see the beauty or the greatness of this

game they might not have liked it they probably didn't or maybe they who knows

it's either paid off whatever,

if they make any point within that review that stands out to a person reading

that review to say oh they didn't like this part of the game and that had a

an that influenced their experience,

if you know yourself as a player and you can read that and say that's going

to bother me too I'm glad I read this before buying that game,

because it's going to affect how you experience that game and I've made purchasing

decisions all the time based on that I bought bad games because I read reviews

that said oh but you can do this in the game and I'm like ooh I like that I

want to do that I don't care about the rest of it,

yeah but But...

Yeah but it's interesting to see how that relates to your own process with the

development side of things yeah definitely agreed yeah and i think even um so

negative or positive um you know you,

can always have like a bit of a tidbit in there that kind of just you know registers

well with you and oh yeah cool okay yeah like you said you know you bought bad

game well badly reviewed games because it's got a point in it that registered

with you yeah it makes sense yeah and like.

There's just so many fine lines and like nuance to

things and but that's again that's the

whole point of having people like us you know

as far as game journalists is we're trying to tell you our experience with

something so that you can understand how you might experience that

game as well um and then that's how developers that

you build your games based on trying to create specific

tailored experiences yeah and i don't

know people just need to understand that not every game is for everyone that's

the simple truth you know i think as well i suppose games have the benefit of

if we if you prototype something and take it to certain players or places that

have like those game testing you can get kind of iterative feedback before you

kind of go full hog into the final thing,

which which really does help a lot that's what something i

try to do with everything i make now is get up to a state where most

of the core minutes minute stuff's in but then

get feedback um as earlier which i suppose you can't do with um

review uh reviewing games you've got to kind of write it yeah

with your feeling that's what you've got draft brought draft

process and whatnot but yeah but even still like touching on the fearzine side

of things the um the magazine will evolve in time we're going to try to constantly

tweak and adjust based on what people want and what we want as well and that's

something that we're always listening and we're always looking at feedback that we get from people.

I suppose as well, if you've got, because I know you've got like repeat writers, people then learn.

Them particular writers you know styles and what they like what they don't and

you can either go oh this person i don't really normally like um what he recommends

or she recommends but you know but it builds up a personality that you can kind

of go you know um how you take that review as well.

Which is nice you know it's nice that freak familiarity yeah

and it's something we try to do here with our our team is

to put the right game in the right hands like

i know myself there's certain games i don't like i'm not a fan of heidi horror

games and as much as i appreciate the puppet combo games i don't very much care

for them like they don't do much for me so i don't i won't handle a puppet combo

game i won't yeah i won't play those games for review because.

I'm not gonna like it so why would i review it yeah you're

not like the target audience for that so yeah so you're not the best person to

review yeah just like um you know if a new outlast game

comes out or a new amnesia i'm not

gonna take that game because i'm not a fan of those kinds of games this

minute i realize a game is a heidi horror i i'm

like nope not for me i'm not my jam but i

understand the value there because i understand that there are an audience

for those games and there are people oh yeah i'm part of yeah i

love those games like i have a friend who's a diehard outlast fan

and it's like great you know i get it like i played

outlast it was boring for me but i understand why it's

not for others yeah and that's where i'm

always coming at things is having a a sense and

an appreciation for the genre across and isn't it awesome that there's so many

parts of it that you know for all different types of people and what they enjoy

i think that's what makes it great you know it's not just one type of game it's

uh you know a collection um and they can and that collection can be very very

uh wildly different in horror Oh, yeah,

it's across the board. Yeah. It's all over the place.

All right, bringing us back around, like, I want to talk about, like, your...

Um getting involved getting into game design because you

said you started late in life so i want to touch on that

let's get the the story of how nate got

into game design yeah sure so um so

i was very lucky when i was younger because i had an uncle

who had passed me down his atari x 800 xl

and so i started kind of like making um used to be able to so god i don't even

know how long it was got atari xl was a very old um computer and it was cassette

based and you'd play your games by playing you know loading the cassette and

waiting for like 10 to 15 minutes for the game to load and all that kind of

fun stuff i've still actually got the atari xl down there somewhere

it still works it's great um but that's when

it came with um i think it was basic yeah basic it

came with basic pre-loaded on it so you can start programming right away um and

i've got handed like a load of magazines um for

you know how to program these things um and so

basically that's where i like started going oh this is cool i made loads like

little um if stories and if games and

stuff but then i kind of stopped that and then uh so

that was like my first introduction uh into kind of programming but

that was when i was like nine or something like that and then um kind of didn't

do gaming i wanted to be an actor so i started going down that path and uh you

know doing auditions and i went to acting college and whatnot and and and turns

out i'm not very good actor and And also I was, they did dance as well. I am not a good dancer.

So I was like, oh, and also like I hit 18, I think it was, and then I became

a very kind of like shy and a more kind of reserved type of person.

So it was like, oh, better just do the computer thing for a bit.

So I did the computing, but then unfortunately my mother got very ill and terminally ill.

And so I became a carer for a bit and that kind of messed up the education path.

And then I just kind of like jumped in and out of education while doing caring.

And then eventually, you know, I was a mature student at that point.

And it was literally I needed to get a job because I had no money.

So I started, I got a job after finishing university eventually doing embedded

programming, which was for my little custom made hardware on circuit boards and whatnot.

And so I did that for seven years, but I'd always wanted to get into the gaming industry.

So on the side i kind of like just chipped away at like game jams you know learning

what everybody was using and kind of like just built up a little bit of um i

don't know like a portfolio of little.

Tidbits and stuff and then i still

find it very difficult to get into the industry to kind of make that move from um

you know software engineer to games programmer um so

what i did i started just going to networking events and speaking

to people um and that was the thing that opened the doors

you know i spoke to the right person at the right moment just by luck and because

i had some stuff that I'd been playing with um I

kind of was able to get a foot in the door so to speak and then

so left a very well-paying job took a very low-paying

job to get the experience um but I did thankfully I

had some savings I'd saved up um and then yeah did

kind of got into the industry when I was 35 maybe

34 and so a late start but I

did have some programming experience at that point just not I did I

found um starting I was

quite good at blagging oh yeah I can do that and it

was just like oh sure now i'll have to figure out how to do

that but yeah that worked kind of well and i

just kind of like threw myself into as many projects as i could to kind of catch

up my knowledge base but the thing with games programming our games generally

you're always learning new stuff so it never stops and i enjoy that side of

it anyway and then so i got into the games in strayer it's um you know works

for triple a um some mid-size companies either via contracting and whatnot.

And then left all that started up creature cauldron with a guy

called pete cooper and a guy called um anthony

enright anthony enright's also a solo developer um

and he he's quite an interesting character he's a

police officer and now he's uh and he moved into the game

development because that's what he always wanted to do um and he's been releasing

games for like eight years on his own and then so we all teamed up and made

um spirit hunters doing a few prototypes and then we had a break and then uh

pete cooper wanted to do some we wanted to keep it small pete cooper I wanted

to explore a different area, so he went and did something else.

And yeah, so we've just kind of, that's kind of like the journey so far.

I kind of, but I've always wanted to make a horror game, as I said earlier.

So I've started like doing my own things by a bad taster while also doing contracting.

And it was like a long way, like lots of hurdles in the path to kind of getting

into the gaming industry at 35 or 34.

So was there any point in that, that you did any kind of schooling for game?

Um no so i didn't so i went to a uni

in london um and then i just didn't get

along um with london there's too too many people so

i came back and then i had to save up

some money and stuff and then went back and just did a standard computer science

course um for a couple years um and

then yeah so i didn't any have any schooling um games

because i thought if i get a you know a programming base

course everything can kind of like that could be a nice foundation for

any kind of game um programming stuff and then

it was just literally just doing lots of game jams and um reaching out

to people and um you know um joining communities

and being part of the game kind of programming

people yeah and stuff you know so it

was a computer science kind of like basis they built

yeah yeah and i mean one of the modules was

like build a computer game i think it was i can't remember now it's a long

time ago but yeah so um yeah so there's

some game programming aspects in that but

it's mostly your bog standard comp sci kind of degree

which to be fair i always

if you're going down the programming route i always recommend just doing

your you know bog standard game um sorry computer

science or software engineering course because that gives you a lot of nice

foundations for all like the algorithms you know data formats and all that kind

of stuff um whereas you might miss that just doing more of a design um s course

which might cover a lot of topics um but if you want to go into programming

you may as well just a nice programming you know software engineering.

Foundation but in the end you know everyone's different you know what what works

for one might not work for another what are you using now for your game development

like engine wise um so for the horror so for the bagman i'm doing using a framework

called sgdk which is an open source kind of like, it's very like, um,

for around the low level mega drive stuff

um so that's for the bag

man so everything's c and sgdk and

a little bit of assembler which is fun i love i love all that kind of

stuff um for um for the

contracting for twilight that's unreal engine

uh four what they're using there still so that's um that's there and first star

gunners which is creature called and that's c well that's unity c sharp um and

stuff so it's kind of i like to kind of keep a foot into lots of things because

it because the because when you're doing contracting you never know what kind

of contracts going to come up

so if i've got experience in multiple things then at least i can kind of.

Again blag if i don't know a little bit sometimes i can kind of blag it a little bit,

jump in go yeah i've done that so do you have an engine that you prefer to work in,

um it depends which one's annoyed me last sometimes it's

unreal sometimes it's unity and sometimes i just i mean if i couldn't if someone

just gave me a lot of money then i just like to work on scene and the low level

stuff because it's i find that the most fun um but yeah but either i'm not i'm

not particularly um you know pro or con one or the other you actually enjoy

getting into the nitty-gritty with the programming,

yes yeah i do yeah i do i enjoy that

side a lot um i'm just trying to find ways

to kind of also do the narrative and stuff for the horror stuff so

that's another area that i want to kind of get into and experience

um going through yeah in my um recent

journey my own like getting into like game design and learning

i started looking at various things a

little bit of game maker a little bit of godot i've

recently installed unreal engine to try to start messing with unreal and

then um i've also been messing around with rpg maker which yeah rpg maker is

interesting because it's a lot of pre-made assets of course you can actually

build and sculpt your own game within the engine and you can make it completely

unique in its own thing because like some of the most famous rpg maker games

you would never know were actually made an rpg maker yeah it's crazy.

But one of the things that rpg maker is helping me understand is like basic

scripting and events and planning and like creating quests and things and i

would actually really like to make a horror rpg one of the because i'm a big

fan of horror rpgs and i think there's not enough of those,

so I'm really I'm trying to think of some there's not many,

basically Parasite Eve.

Uh there's a few others there's a few others like shadow hearts um lots

of a list now of games there's a couple of them that i like i'm blanking off

the top of my head but there's not many there's not many at least like solid or

and like you could maybe argue that

like the persona games kind of squeeze in there or shin megami tensei

yeah because they have horror elements or they have kind

of scary scenarios but they don't lean very heavily into

it like parasite eve does and there's um there's

actually a japanese studio right now that um is the

creators of shadow hearts are making a new game called penny blood that i actually

backed on kickstarter i have no idea when this game's going to release though

but that's like one of the other like big jrpg like kind of horror s what's

that called penny blood penny blood i might make a note for later cool.

Yeah so like shadow hearts is another one that uh i'm i'm

i've been very interested in shadow hearts but i haven't had a good chance to actually

sit down and play it like i booted it up uh once a

couple like a year or two ago and i'm like oh man this is really cool maybe

i'll find the time one day to play it but i uh i want

more horror rpgs like parasite eve and i would love to see

parasite eve come back yeah that's cool that's one of the routes of my like

own game development side of things so it's this is all what i do when i have

time outside of oh yeah creating a magazine and everything else I'm doing on

top of trying to play games for review and making content and writing.

So I never stop.

No, it's very hard to find that time. I struggle with...

Having downtime and not feeling guilty when i'm

not feeling productive and i i like something

i struggle with that exact same problem yeah

and like i'm working on it but i still find it hard to

um you know find the joy that i used to

and just sitting down and just chilling you know part of

even myself in that exact vein like we could have a whole podcast

about this that if you're a creative who you

feel like you have to be doing something you have to be working you have to

be making something and then trying to enjoy some downtime and relax because

hey you need that you're the human body you need to be able to relax you need

to be able to unhook once in a while but you and i have the same problem when

you try to relax you feel guilty i have the exact same problem.

Yeah i find them what helps sometimes you just like walk in

the dark like that helps so much because i'm i think

it's just because i'm cut off from all electronic well i've still got

my phone in my pocket but i don't look at that but that helps maybe but

it's still um yeah it's just a word yeah yeah i

enjoy trying to like i go to the gym i try to exercise i

have my dogs that i take for walks um and even when

i do game one of the ways i help myself

feel a little less guilty about it is i try to justify that i'm playing this

because i need to for you know my creative avenues my outlets you know the magazine

and whatnot and like most recently you know all the horror games i'm trying

to play is because i want to be able to talk about it you know whether it's

the podcast or it's the magazine,

you know, when it comes to creating ideas for topics to discuss or...

I always feel, I tried to do that, but then I found myself,

and they're thinking I'm only doing this to pick my brain to not feel like it's

not being productive to try and play games.

I was really struggling with that. I won't go into it too much,

but I literally had a bit of a metal breakdown in 2023, which led to a lot of

this discovery of downtime and being a bit kinder to yourself and stuff.

And it's literally one of the things um that comes from

this is like you know it's finding that um way of

having fun again like when i was a kid i

could sit down for hours and and just enjoy the thing i

mean i make games now because i loved i

love games and making and making them it's just like

a for me a natural part of that progression but um within

that kind of um journey from player to maker i

i find it and i've lost the player side a little bit and

i i do struggle with that as i've mentioned like it's

it's funny i've had it like bizarre bizarre yeah

it's kind of like there's a double-edged sword to covering

games as well because when you make a game

work it it makes

it difficult to balance the fun versus the the responsibility

yeah that and that's something i've struggled with in the past of doing games

coverage and reviews for various outlets that i've worked for And I usually

avoid covering games I want to play because I don't want to have to write about

the game that I want to play.

And it's weird because like if it's a game I love, I'll happily write about

it after I've been able to take my time with it.

But that's also another side that I can bring this back around to fear zine.

One of the things with fear zine that we're not uh we're

not worried about trying to be the first to the scene because

i feel like that's another downside to

the current industry with the whole like first mentality

and that's that was a struggle that i had to deal with was that getting out

there first getting out to everyone being the first person to cover something

being the first person to say something about something and that's not something

i'm worried about with fear zine yeah because we're not about that the whole

idea with fear z because it's a magazine is,

you're getting a magazine it's impossible for us

to be 100 timely there's no way for us to actually get coverage out on something

within you know minutes or hours of its release because it's just not possible

and we we talk about this a little bit on the website i actually did like a

post on the website about this um because i posted something about fear the spotlight,

and how I wanted to just say I think Fear the Spotlight's great but I'm not

here to tell you that because I'm trying to be the first to the market to say

play this game I'm just saying I think it's great wait for our full review in the magazine and.

It wraps back around into the nostalgia of magazines and physical media and like,

disconnecting from this state that we're in yeah i'm if you have any idea what

i'm talking about anyone listening yeah no i do like you and anyone else you

know this yeah if this is kind of constantly the instant gratification thing

yeah i thought like it for me it's like um,

because i have to constantly feel productive it's a

it physical media and

a magazine where you can go away and read things nicely because

you can take it anywhere you don't need to be connected you know

if if i've got something um you know on

a computer i'm trying to read i've got a hundred other things

going i've also got access to you know my work at that

point so i find it very hard to you know as we're saying i don't know

if it was i had this conversation you know

listen to music while we work it's like it has to be ambient and stuff

you know because if if i've got a magazine where

we're words i'm not going to read it on the computer physically i can read it sitting

down chilling with my dog type thing it's nice disconnected yeah that's the

other thing too is the distraction level of everything when you're looking at

stuff online or on your phone or on a computer or tablet the the amount of things

that your brain is constantly trying to process and.

That's i don't know what exactly

the mentality is there as far as like how

human beings are adjusting and uh kind

of like evolving with technology but there's definitely

this like you need to touch the grass kind of thing and i feel like

that if you think about it yeah yeah i

mean gosh um i mean evolution we've evolved

so um and we've advanced so

quickly we should probably like our brains and body and everything still

um kind of um triggered and

set up for running around you know avoiding lions eating

us and things like that but now we're like sitting in front of devices

you know having all these things blaring in our brains giving us dopamine hits

very easily so yeah you know not to mention the simple fact that there are so

many games coming out nowadays like especially horror games the horror genre

is getting very flooded which is great in a sense It's a great problem to have,

but also it's incredibly overwhelming to have to think about,

I have all of these games that need to be covered and put out and trying to

hit deadlines, especially the speed and the volume.

You know, especially for us being a small kind of independent team,

there's no way we're going to be able to keep up with some of the larger outlets

and those teams. Oh, yeah.

And you've got to, and like I imagine like if, you'll get so many people reaching out to you.

If everybody starts reaching out, It's going to be impossible to manage.

You're going to have to let people down, so to speak.

Sorry, not this time. And that's another difficult, I imagine,

issue that you might come across.

Oh, yeah. We're trying to make sure we're getting coverage for as many people as possible.

But there's a fine line to that. There's only so many slots per magazine.

And we're trying to find the best ways to evolve around then.

I still feel like it's important for us and what we're trying to do to embrace

the fact that we're not going to be first.

We're not going to be the ones that are like out there screaming from the rooftops

because, A, we're a magazine again.

And B, you know, there's the influencers out there with hundreds of thousands,

if not millions of followers.

They're obviously going to be the first ones out there screaming and yelling

that everyone listens to or hears first.

But if you're not the person who if you're the person who watches

or sees those influencers and go this person's

ridiculous i want someone i can trust this is

where a magazine or someone who's had their ability to take

their time spend time with the

game think about that game and write a piece that wasn't rushed and wasn't hurried

to get out there as quickly as possible and that's another thing for me just

my own sanity i want to be able to take my time with things yeah i'll be able

to digest the products and the games and the experiences,

is if i don't what am i giving you when i spit out an article or i spit out

a review of just i jam through this game as fast as i can and this is what my

experience might have been even though that might not relate to you at all no

completely yeah that makes sense yeah yeah that's interesting.

All right yeah um,

just double checking i uh my little flubbing here i'm gonna i can't miss.

I'm reviewing like i have like some basic questions that i get into we've kind

of covered on oh there's a good one,

all right so you love horror games right mm-hmm yeah

you're gonna make a horror game or you're working on a game what are

some of your uh greater influences for horror outside of

the medium of games okay i mean

that's for me um so i love horror

films and one of the reasons i love horror games because i

love horror films that got me into the horror games because i was

um my grandparents were a bit naughty and

let me watch um horror films when i was like seven because they

um they didn't own a video shop but

um one of their um i think

my uncle or auntie owned a video shop and they had lots of

horror films in so when i was like seven or

eight i watched uh freddy krueger um nightmare before elm

street sorry i watched nightmare before christmas with

my daughter the other day and that's even that's in my brain um yeah um so i

watched that um so that's always like been a huge influence a lot of stuff so

like a lot of older 80s slashers and um horror films from that era where it's

like kind of over the top gratuitous gore slasher type stuff is always.

I don't know why but i find that very comforting to

watch those types of films um but yeah so like films um

gosh my brain's gone blank i mean all the

popular john carpenter films and a big big influence on

the bagman is is soundtracks i always love listening to

john carpenter just music in general there's like

ambient soundtrack yeah oh yeah so good yeah

i like i can't remember the band that did the it follows

uh soundtrack as well there's a film called it follows and they've

got a really good soundtrack for that um that film

i can't remember what they're called uh but yeah so but a lot of uh john captain

that and whoever did it um was a big influence on the soundtrack anyway for

for the um the bag man but yeah um yeah so lots of like all the horror flashes

and all that good stuff. It appears in the D, I think.

I'm wondering if it's a band that I know John Carpenter's worked with before that I listened to.

Oh, just Disaster Piece. Yeah, Disaster Piece. I thought it might have been

Dance with the Dead because John Carpenter's one with Dance with the Dead, too.

They're great as well. I really like Dance with the Dead.

That's a whole separate tangent. um so yeah i was gonna say in a relation that

when i was a kid i remember going to video stores and you see the old like vhs

cover art for old horror movies that vhs cover was always so ridiculous,

yeah and it was like oh i need to see what this is because of this image that

they put on those boxes that were always like i don't know how to explain that

art style like it's always like it's like, yeah, the 80s kind of style,

poster style as well, wouldn't it?

It's a lost art, so, yeah.

Yeah, you look back at some of those old, like, 80s horror movies and early

90s horror movies, and it's just.

I don't know what those people were thinking when they come up with those designs

and those styles but it captured the imagination and it made you want to rent

that movie so oh yeah definitely,

maybe that was it i suppose like it because back then it was like about it was

all about like renting films that's how that's that's their earlier version of the thumbnail i guess,

it's kind of like capturing the um the audience the customer's

eye yeah it's kind of like if you look at the old like nes and uh

other game cover art that people made especially

like look into the old like megaman cover and

how weird that looks compared to the actual gameplay yeah

you shouldn't like so i've got megadrive games behind me

i've got i've got a decent collection but it's probably about

80 games or so but um but they're all like obviously you

and i've got a few um american ones but the

best if you ever look at look up meg um megadrive or

genesis covers look up the japanese covers for the games for

megadrive games they are over the top with how um

cool they look like yeah i can relate that

to um like godzilla i'm a massive godzilla yeah and if you look at the godzilla

like box art for the u.s releases versus the japanese releases the japanese

releases are so crazy and over the top and they're always these like incredibly

detailed drawings of godzilla and whatever the other monster is and they're in these.

Insanely exaggerated poses with all these elements

and like effects and things going on and it's like

what am i even looking at and then the cover version for

the u.s is just like a screenshot of godzilla with like a background behind

him yeah it's like oh yeah similar

vibe with um japanese mega drive um covers

yeah i need to look at that yeah i was gonna say for me too like i'm not big

on the slasher horror movies but i i'm a big creature or oh yeah i love creature

horror monster horrors and like you talked about how there's like um like a

sense of peace watching those movies.

I think that's fine like i some people like that's

that works for you and um i'm sure

there's non-horror people that might hear this conversation but

what are they talking about that's crazy yeah i'm the

kind of person like i was like you as a kid growing up i was fascinated with

horror movies and if i watch the horror movie i'm like the more blood the better

the more gore there needs to be a lot of bodies a lot of people need to die

yeah i get what's the kill count i get annoyed if too many people survive at

the end of the movie like ah not enough people died yeah.

Definitely yeah it's always a little weird conversation to have it's like

yeah but it's good it's good it's kind of like why you know john carpenter and

like the thing is such a perfect like pinnacle horror movie because it does

all of that it checks all those boxes and there's lots of gore there's lots

of death there's lots of you know dismemberment and things and then you're left with like,

maybe somebody survived like or maybe not

maybe like because there's all the um is he actually

uh the thing at the end and they don't know you know and i

love that all that kind of stuff yeah they leave it open to interpretation and

like you don't know for sure yeah that's

great yeah one of the um the art briefs

and not the music briefs i gave to the composer uh for

the bag man um it was like literally the thing

i think it was a thing um john captain in general and

some of it follows soundtrack i said just make something

that kind of has that vibe and it's like yeah so but

there's a video that um so every year there's a guy called pigsy that

does a compilation um of mega drive games that

coming out are being worked on in that year and um the comments on there are

quite interesting but the um the bag man was included in that and someone brought

it up said oh this this this music's clearly inspired by the thing he did put

the thing in quotation inspired in quotation marks i don't know what that meant

is that positive or negative thing i don't know But yeah, it's like, oh, that's nice to hear.

You know, again, it's nice to hear that someone like kind of got the vibe and stuff.

Yeah. Picked up on that. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. You mentioned earlier too that you

were doing classes or talks to like students.

Yeah. So one of the things, this was like I mentioned earlier,

kind of having like a mini breakdown.

Well, it's only 23. Like, so obviously, you know, went to therapy and whatnot.

And one of the things was like put myself, because I'm quite an anxious person,

put myself into situations that, you know, I can work on that and stuff.

So I've taken that to heart.

And one of the things was, and it's also, you know, a positive thing,

it's like, you know, trying to talk, do talks, professional talks and whatnot,

and share some of the knowledge as well because of my background and starting

a bit later in the gaming industry, that might be kind of helpful for students.

So I thought, and I'll do a nice talk in, I think it's February.

To a bunch of students about how I got into the industry and stuff,

because if there's anybody that was maybe younger and maybe from a particular

type of background, like I was, it's kind of helpful to hear that it's not always

A to B to the final destination.

There's hurdles, there's, you know, life's messy and you kind of get thrown

around all over the place.

So, yeah. So I'm looking forward to doing that. I think it'll be, it'll be,

it's interesting for me from a learning aspect and also, you know,

working on my anxiety and all

that kind of stuff but also it'll be it'll be interesting just to kind

of hopefully provide some good information for some young folk

yeah good for you hopefully that will help

you with your own personal growth and development as well as

i can appreciate the notion for younger

kids or students to hear that like it's never

quite so easy you know and no that's an

important life lesson to understand and learn that yeah

life never goes as planned no it doesn't

it it will throw horrible things up into your face and

and you know and all even horrible stuff sometimes you

just you know um what i wanted to be when i

was 16 is completely different to what i wanted to be when

i was like 21 you know like this i think um

like from like 14 to 16 you change like massively

from 16 to like 18 you change massively

from 18 to 21 is she changed massively obviously

in ranges so it's like you know i always

find it kind of weird where people are meant to know what they want to be when

like they're 16 because you know nobody knows that really yeah i still i can

distinctly remember being in high school and talking to a guidance counselor

and then being like what do you want to do when you grow up and i'm like i have

no idea i was like i want to be a lesbian you know i want to be an actor all

i knew was i liked video games.

Yeah and here i am talking about video games.

Yeah, mine was interesting. I was like, I want to work in video games.

And she was like, oh, you're not very good at maths, though.

And I was never good at academically anything. I really struggled with tests and whatnot.

But it's like, oh, okay. So it's like guidance, maybe set me off in the wrong way. I don't know.

But yeah, it's important who you speak to as well. Because you speak to the

wrong person, they can really scuffle your thinking.

I distinctly remember having that conversation with a guidance counselor

in high school and saying like well i like video games and i think

i'd like to do something with video games as i grow older and

my guiding counselor like just right to my face was like but that's not a real

career yeah that's not yeah you know because this is back in the day when video

games were still in their infancy and still like not super popular yet yeah

they went on billion pound industry and stuff yeah and like for someone to tell

me like oh that's not a future to invest in like,

way too mess up my life thank you you know

like i could have started you know much sooner yeah definitely

like um like because obviously when you're younger as well you

think that older people know everything like i've hit 40 now and i'm still as

confused and lost as i was when i was like 20 old people don't know shit you

know but they have the power of um unfortunately kind of like um their words

carry weight i guess to younger ears and stuff so i've always kind of.

I always like to try and remind myself that you know what what i say can have

a bigger impact than you know i think it does you know to especially to a younger person,

yeah so it's important to remind remember that but i

there's again there's another thing i find fun it's like i thought you'd

hit an age i mean not you just know what you know life was

about and stuff and it's like it turns out no one really has a clue

we're all just faking it yeah yeah some

better than others yeah that's a weird sentiment

too thinking about like as i get older too and like i for

years of my life i've always had this sentiment of i i

get frustrated when people look at me and just like

make this like you know you're just a dumb young kid who doesn't know what the

fuck you're talking about meanwhile i have more life experience than some of

these people who are saying these things to me because like i you know went

into the military out of high school i've traveled the world i've been to more

countries than most people have been to towns,

you know, like I've got people who've never left their hometown telling me,

I don't know what I'm talking about. And it's like, are you sure?

You need to know about that.

Yeah anyways lots of life lessons lots of things to learn and grow and it's

it's to kind of like wrap up a lot of what we've been talking about in this

uh discussion is the semblance of uh,

you're always going to be learning and it's good to learn it you should

always be striving for knowledge and learning and adapting

and being flexible nothing's worse listen to

people listen to everybody as well like um one of

the things you know obviously there's a lot of younger people in the

industry listen to them because they might be a junior or

whatever but it doesn't matter because if you know they might bring fresh

ideas and all that kind of stuff so it's always be open to listen

to everybody it doesn't matter who they are or how old they are or anything

like that yeah not to mention younger people are always going to learn new things

faster oh yeah one thousand percent like that i mean i think about that as a

kid when i grew up i was learning technology faster than my parents and there's

kids now learning the current technology faster So then I'm learning it and I can't keep up with it.

And that's just part of growing up. And as you age, how your brain learns things.

I was the kid that everyone came to when they needed their stereo set up.

You know, I knew how to do it.

I act stupid now if anyone ever asked me to fix anything.

I don't tell people I work with computers at all. It's like too much to help and troubleshoot.

But yeah, it's like another aspect of always learning as well is at least,

it keeps your brain a little bit flexible.

So you slow down the rate that you learn stuff, the speed that you learn stuff

kind of doesn't, you know, just drop off a cliff, which can happen if you just kind of stop learning.

It's good for mental health, you know, in general, and keeping your mind sharp. Yes.

Always learn that. Always learn. Okay. Let's see.

I don't have anything else specifically.

Before I give you like the closeout, like, you know, just give us one last pitch for your projects.

Is there any other like topics you'd like to touch on before that? No, not at all.

Hopefully we've not covered anything that's not appropriate or anything like

that with the mental health. So, you know.

I think it's fine as long as we're keeping it kind of like in good spirit.

Friendly. Yeah, because I don't want to depress anybody.

But that's like keeping it on the notion of using it to empower yourself.

Yeah and that's what i mean i you

know i think this won't be in but like that's what

i've done i took away a bad a really bad experience on like

and i went okay how can i fix this and it wasn't very

empowering it's to be fair it's led something so negative has led to a lot of

positive you know what i mean within myself and also within um those around

me as well you know like being a better person being seeking out better people

you know it's all beautiful stuff I think that's a very valid point to even touch on and talk about.

And I think that that's helpful for anyone that might listen to this to think about.

There are going to be hard times, but getting through those hard times helps

you grow as a person and the learning, you know, bring it back around to the learning.

And I appreciate that. And I can hope that anyone else listening to this would

appreciate it, that we go through hard times, but it's getting through those

hard times that helps us develop.

And it's just like one of the most important lessons of

being successful is don't let

the fear of failure stop you don't let

don't let mistakes and don't let failures dissuade you because that's how you

learn and that's how you grow i think grow from failure yeah i think i'm saying

like failure is a beautiful thing you know the sooner you can fail like that

fail fast you know they said this is the saying because you learn so much from

failure and to be fair you You know, it's awesome to fail. And learn by doing.

Don't be afraid to try. And I'll use myself as an example, you know,

getting the magazine put on me and taking that challenge on.

And I owned it. And here we are.

Like, we're really pushing it.

We're driving to make everything as cool as possible and make it amazing.

You know, if you didn't already know, I've never made a magazine before.

I've had no experience. you know for anyone listening like I took this project on knowing nothing.

Nothing I learned by doing I learned by challenging myself and I took on the

responsibility to just do it and it's like hey if it doesn't work no harm no

foul and if it does fantastic you know and,

we're really excited i'm super excited that i've got all of you guys here all

you developers that are interested in being a part of this project helping us,

and being on this podcast and you know

discussing and sharing your experiences with me i personally find it incredibly

interesting i hope others are going to listen to this podcast yeah yeah it's

really interesting yeah listen to it and hopefully that works for you know the

casual listeners outside of just developers because yeah you know obviously we want this to be

something that everyone can enjoy and consume not just developers

but again if it helps other developers that's great too

and like if you're a developer and you're

listening to this conversation say hi you know if you want to get involved if

you want to be a part of this if you want to exactly if you want to hang out

if you want to chat if you want a whole horrifically wholesome community to

be a part of and collaborate a little honor when you say that comes up The little,

like, the more you know. Yeah.

I need my, like, building horror little, like, talking skull,

like, flying across the screen.

That'd be great. Yeah. But, yeah, I'm going to give you one last chance here,

Nate, to share where people can find you, your projects that you've worked on,

how they can best maybe support you if that's an option right now.

Yeah. And then I'll include any of those links in the description. yeah i

think so most of my links are on badtasty.com um

i'm working i'll start with what i'm working on i'm working on a

point-and-click horror game for the mega drive so

it's beautiful pixel art it's point click

but with like actually stealth um moments it's

a slasher i'm going to try and add lots of gritish score in there as best

i can for with 60 bits um the artist

i'm working with is really good um and yeah

and if you want to support me badtasty.com there's a patreon there

um all anything raised there goes straight back

into the game so at the moment i pay for stuff via contracting

um any extra money after bills and stuff goes into

paying freelancers for art music that's the

thing i can't do that um yeah so

and that costs obviously money and stuff but yeah but there's no pressure to

um you know give me money just to keep contracting it's

very fun project and yeah and check out

the videos and yeah i'm i'm i hang around on

the 13 discord so i'm always there for

chatting to i like listening to the other developers talk and all the cool stuff

that goes on there so yeah nice yeah again i i'm sure i've said it already but

that's one of my favorite things about this community seeing the collaboration

seeing the discussion developers talking to each other developers talking to

fans fans and developers you know cats and dogs.

I like you've got like streamers and you know social media folk there as well

which is very useful because like obviously indie horror that that kind of relationship

with streamers is super important as well and that's something we hope to build

upon too in the future is getting and.

Community linked in too with the the streamers

the content creators and that's you

know opportunities there that we're looking into and working with

and we're trying to build those relationships and um we're

i'm always reaching out to people that we

think can help us expand and grow our community more

and serve the developers as

well as the games and that's we're creating resources we're

creating these ways and places for people

to come together and collaborate yeah and like

if you need a streamer to play your game and they're like

oh yeah sure i'll do it you know i'm right yeah yeah why not

you know free marketing essentially like um yeah what

i was saying earlier is like you know you want to prototype your idea and

you want to get into people's hands as early as possible just to get some feedback you

know if you've got a community there of literally people that.

Love indie horror you know that's your target audience there

and if it's you know obviously a lovely community um um

you know it's it's that that's your feedback you

know straight away and you get some honest feedback as well because everyone seems to

be on the ball um and you're honest and wholesome yeah

so it's cool yeah and i'll say this too if

you're listening and you're a developer who looks for

feedback and playtesting that kind

of thing i myself have done quite a bit of that

already i know there's others in our community that are willing to do that

um i'm very much understanding of

like you know your game might be in a very early state people

always get really hesitant to share those things yeah i every time i've done

any kind of play testing people are always like just remember like this isn't

finished and i'm like i understand the same thing you know like i get it yeah

and uh like i still laugh about one of the games that i did coverage for in

the first issue it's it was a very early build and they're telling me like.

Go too hard on me don't judge this too harshly it's just scribbles on

a napkin that quote like scribbles on a napkin

and i played it and it was like a full-fledged demo and i'm like how are

you calling this just scribbles on a napkin it's like it's really well made

it's really solid and then like i i'm very

happy to provide feedback from my experience playing

the game and be like oh like this didn't seem right

or this was broken or there was a mistake here or something

and they're always like oh my god i'm so sorry i'll fix it i'll fix it i'm like it's fine

like i'm not i'm not gonna go running to the internet like this game's

trash yeah yeah no

is that is always scary yeah yeah but i

suppose it's because the uh like dynamic would be like a reviewer as

well like so maybe that worries me a little bit but yeah that's not

us yeah no that's not you wholesome exactly

we're not here to bash things i yeah it's a

part of our our like um mission statement

and our whole thing that we're going for

that i'm not looking to bash anything i'm not

looking to tear apart anything or tear down anything i genuinely

want games to be great i want to have fun with them

i want them to be fun i would rather help you

make your game better rather than tear it apart yeah

like i i don't like toxic negativity no i don't like click bait i don't like

people who are making thumbnails or titles just for clicks nothing irritates

me more than that kind of stuff of negative garbage of like,

oh, this game's trashed, and I click on it, and they'll like.

All they do is tear something apart. Yeah, there's no beauty in that.

Yeah, I'm not. I would rather help you guys make better games.

Yeah, yeah. And that's a beautiful thing. Thank you.

Yeah, so with that, thank you again, Nate, for joining me. Thank you for everyone. Yeah.

Sorry to interrupt you. Thank you, Nate. Thank you. Yes, there we go.

Lastly, just to close us out, this is Building Horror for Fearzine Magazine.

If you are interested in being on this podcast, feel free to reach out to us

if you're in the Discord or you can reach us on our email. We have contact at

fearzinemagazine.com.

We're looking to collaborate with game developers in any way we can,

as well as, you know, coverage and growing the magazine, growing our website, growing our community.

Be a part of our horrifically wholesome community.

And with that, thank you everyone and we'll catch you next time.