This is the second game I demo’d from Ysbryd Games, and I was able to interview the Production Lead of Everdeep Aurora as I played the game!
In case you’d rather read it, I’ve provided a transcript of the game here.
Transcript
Rob
So I’m Rob, I’m the Production Lead at Ysbryd Games, and as production lead, I take care of our dev teams, check in with them and guide them through the kind of schedule of developing their game and making sure that we have stuff like: localization into the languages, porting into the different consoles, QA testing, all that kind of stuff. Helping them make design choices about the game, working on the script, making sure that, you know, if it’s not been written in English language the first time around, that it’s kind of up to standard. Yeah, just generally making it all happen and making shows like PAX West happen, yeah, so that’s it.
Balance
Very nice, and you’ve got a lot on your plate.
About Everdeep Aurora
Rob
Yeah, I’m spinning a lot of plates and every plate has a lot of stuff on it, so yeah. But I love my job and I love bringing these games to the world, giving developers like their chance for like their big break to make their art, give it the best outing that we can, show it to as many people as we can. Yeah, it’s a gratifying job and I’m always very happy to do it.
So Everdeep Aurora is the first game from the newly formed Nautilus Studio, Nautilus Games. They are two Spanish developers who have previously worked on other games as part of larger teams, for example, the programmer of Everdeep Aurora, Juan, he has worked on Death’s Door and Go Mecha Ball previously. This is their own studio making their own game for the first time. We often work with small teams, solo developers, first-time developers. At Ysbryd Games, we often get fairly relatively hands-on for a publisher with the game’s development. With the developers being Spanish speakers, although their English is very good, we help them with the naturalization of the English script as we are native English speakers. We help them with making choices about the game’s design and what do we present as a demo to the public at events like here at Pax West.
Everdeep Aurora itself is a 2D exploration game with platforming and a lot of heavy narrative. It’s designed to be a relatively short game, between six and ten hours, depending on how much like sidetracking, how much of you like the optional puzzles and stuff that you do. It’s a game which has no violence and we want players to be able to explore the world and unravel its story, its history and its mysteries in a way which isn’t predicated on them being especially good with combat or with reflexes. So if, for example, you liked the atmosphere and the world building of Hollow Knight, but you felt like the very difficult combat was a barrier to you enjoying that world and seeing what the secrets were like further into the game, then Everdeep Aurora is kind of the game for you because it allows you to kind of take your own time and explore and explore in a manner of your choosing without combat, without like survival elements or any of those sharp edges which would potentially put a player off. In Everdeep Aurora, you are playing as Shell, who is a feline child who awakens during a meteor shower which is bombarding this formerly very grand civilization which exists on the surface of this world.
Balance
The very whimsical nature in this game, it’s very charming.
Rob
A lot of that is influenced by Studio Ghibli films and the tone that they convey. There are like these moments of like of levity, of charm kind of on top of this otherwise quite somber world which is a place where people are kind of making do and just trying to like hide from the worst of it while kind of recapturing some of like the nicer aspects of life and trying to make a nice home for themselves by growing a garden or having a tavern which is still full of life despite everything. Because the game is absent of violence, combat or anything that would kind of interrupt your exploring, we hope that the player will feel like more relaxed about like backtracking and like experimenting with which direction they drill in because it’s low stakes, right? Because you’re not gonna die, it’s impossible to die in this game. Because the visuals of the game are those of like a game by color game, we’ve not like stuck to that a one-to-one recreation of the limitations of the game by hardware. Instead, the soundtrack is like this very orchestral full of strings and pianos and it wouldn’t sound out of place in like a Studio Ghibli film. So we want the game to feel bigger than it looks.
How is the lore in Everdeep Aurora?
Yeah, there’s a lot of history and a lot of secrets to this world, which we hope the player will kind of enjoy unraveling. We hope it’s kind of game that afterwards people will kind of be discussing online, like how they piece the story together and oh, this means this because I found this place where clearly the relationship between these two factions became this at some point in history and, you know, people can like have the fun of piecing together the story even if it’s not immediately spelled out like in a literal sense.
Yeah, that makes sense. It adds a bit of a different aspect of being able to enjoy the game that’s not easily presented to you or you don’t have to be playing the game to enjoy it. You can still do so by just exploring more of it and then conversing with others. And that’s where I guess you kind of bring in the community by kind of sparsely bringing out the lore here and there.
Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, playing as playing as Shell who’s like a lost child amid an apocalypse essentially, it’s quite an isolated experience, but we want people to kind of share their experience and how it made them feel and what they loved about and I think that’s kind of like the soundtrack in which characters are their favorite and like to kind of enjoy sharing that with other people who have also played it. And we hope that it’s like an experience that really sticks with the player with like the soundtrack, which even though I’ve heard it like a billion times because I’m working on the game, I still absolutely love the soundtrack and I find myself just like kind of humming it like while I’m like doing the dishes or whatever because it really gets in your head.
Oh yeah, I can definitely see that after playing it a little bit. Not a very, what’s the word that I’m looking for? Not an intrusive kind of song. It’s a very decent lullaby that’s soothing.
Yeah, lullaby is exactly the word, yeah. I’m gonna steal that if you don’t mind. I’m gonna call it a lullaby.
The soundtrack kind of encompasses a lot of different moods but still uses like sounds of like real instruments to like give the world like a bit more like real texture. We hope that this seemingly tiny world with tiny characters will have like a very big place in people’s minds and in their imaginations. So Everdeep Aurora comes to PC and Switch sometime next year. We will have information about specifics of the release date, hopefully fairly soon. We are very excited for people to explore this world and uncover its secrets and meet all the characters. That’s Everdeep Aurora by Nautilus Games and published by Ysbryd Games.
Yeah, I’m very excited for this. I mean, it’s definitely one of those games that I could easily find anyone, including myself, just winding down to. After a long day, just kind of pop this in and just explore a little bit more.
Yeah, exactly. And like, if you’re like playing it on a Switch and you take it out like on your commute or while you’re traveling, you don’t necessarily wanna like lock in for like a really hardcore boss fight when the train’s gonna pull up any minute and there are distractions, it’s kind of bright outside. You can’t really use the precision that you need. But with Everdeep Aurora, there’s no combat. Like the worst you can do is like fall into like a bit of a hole that you need to like drill your way back out or platform out of. We want it to be a game that respects the player’s time and can be like nice and portable on a Switch.
Yeah, I think that’s one thing that I always forget about like what I think makes a Switch nice is being able to have these portable games that I mean, I never liked playing games on the phone. And so having a game like the Switch where it actually feels good to play games on, this would definitely fit that, but rather the use case.
It’s a great format, yeah. So the way that the game looks and feels and everything and behaves, it’s all, it’s like very much for people who kind of, you know, would go on like a family road trip for hours and they’d bring their Game Boy and it’s like, that’s almost like the most fun part of the trip is you get to just like do nothing but like, you know, mainline this Game Boy game for hours and hours. So yeah, it’s gonna be a great fit on the Switch and on PC, it’s gonna have like full controller support. So yeah, we’re looking forward to people enjoying it in all different ways and different places and taking it at their own pace.