Interview: Phoenotopia: Awakening’s Quang Tran
A game of satisfying, stylized pixel art and Zelda-esque adventure, Phoenotopia: Awakening provides combat challenges alongside folksy charm; players traverse crumbling ruins filled with treasures and sunlit temples in search of answers, an experience complete with varied equippable items, puzzles, and foe-rich environs. With the weight of inspiration guiding my questions, I chatted with dev Quang “Quells” Tran on the nature of the project.
Erik Meyer: Phoenotopia: Awakening provides 2D sidescrolling adventures, along with an overworld, extensive gear choices, and a wide variety of level/enemy types. In developing the project, what do you see as the common, unifying threads, and what makes for the consistent play experience? Does action push the plot along, or do NPC interactions deepen the experience? What kinds of moments resonate and build lasting memories, for you?
Quang “Quells” Tran: I’m a big fan of story, so I think plot is the main driving force for a good while. The player wants to know what happened to the villagers and to unravel the mystery behind the secretive Phoenix. The trail runs cold for a bit, and then it picks up, and then there’s a midpoint where most of the answers are revealed. Still, we save a couple twists for the end. I think we did a good job of pacing it.
While story is the main driving force, we also aim for balance. If the player went through an action experience, a more relaxed puzzle or NPC interactions were likely to follow, and vice versa.
As for lasting memories, if you ask a Chrono Trigger fan what their favorite scene from the game is, they’ll usually say the campfire scene. So for Phoenotopia, I think the scenes at the end of each chapter where the player gets to interact with the village kids or the people they’ve saved along the way will be what lasts. Maybe because we’re social beings and those are things we’re inclined to remember.
EM: The game includes elements like music (a sequence which opens a door in the game’s trailer, for example); from a design and implementation standpoint, how do you approach each unique in-game option, and can you give examples of the standards elements need to meet?
QT: The game was in development for so long that my design philosophy towards tools changed during development. Earlier on, I thought a good tool must meet these 3 criteria. They had to provide combat utility, puzzle utility, and make sense within the game world. The slingshot is the first tool you get and it meets these criteria aptly. It shoots enemies, hits switches, and it makes sense that such a tool would exist and that Alex, a troublemaker, would hand them to you.
Later on, my stringent requirements towards tools relaxed and I thought it would be more interesting to have more variety, even if the newly added tools don’t meet all the criteria. Things like the fishing rod and flute don’t have any combat utility, but they’re still fun to play with and increase the ways you can interact with the world. I also thought it would increase player satisfaction to see the inventory grow as things go along.
EM: In terms of pixel art, the style uses a fairly high contrast style and soft colors to feel both warm and straightforward, as opposed to harsh and busy. How did you arrive at this particular visual look, and what challenges have come with drawing this way?
QT: If you saw the original flash game, it sort of had the beginning rumblings of what would become this game’s style. The major rule I impose on my artists is “No Line Art”. I’m just not a fan of it. I think games that do without line art look bolder and cooler. The high contrast style and soft colors likely emerged naturally as a consequence of following that rule. You’d have to pick my artist’s brain for the full deets on that however.
It did come at a cost. Line art helps with visibility and readability, so that was always a concern. Every time we placed an NPC or object of interest on the screen, we’d have to mind the readability. We do this trick fairly regularly where we’ll place a circular gradient shadow behind an NPC to make them stand out from their environment. We’d have to adjust the size, the alpha, the color – nearly every time! So it was a lot of extra work. On the plus side, I’m happy with how the game looks most of the time.
EM: With so many enemies and usable weapons, different play styles will undoubtedly emerge, and of course players will have to respond to the various abilities of the many different entities. That said, over the last few years, I’ve noticed a growing divide in pixel art games. Some bullet hell games revel in making things as difficult as possible, while other titles simply focus on joyful play within an engaging narrative. In the world of difficulty versus beautiful experiences, where do you stand?
QT: I’m one of those people who would have delighted in playing Zelda: Breath of the Wild the first time at its highest difficulty. The way I see it, if the world is beautiful and engaging, a high difficulty level and losing is a convenient excuse to spend more time in the game. That kind of speaks to the mindset I had when designing Phoenotopia. We spent a lot of time making the towns bustle with people and activity and the nature ruined but beautiful. We’ve received mixed feedback on the difficulty however, so we probably could playtested the game a lot more. We’re actively listening to player feedback and patching.
EM: When it comes to specific fight sequences and the AI design of everything from leaping sand drakes and metal golems, what types of movement and improvisation do you seek to inspire in the player? And as a follow-up question, why is it so much fun to shoot arrows and slash things while dodging and weaving?
QT: I like fights where there is a lot of movement. If the player and enemy are switching sides a lot, and the player is throwing projectiles from a distance, closing in with a leap attack, sprinting to escape the counter-attack, and so forth, then I think we’ve succeeded. To that end, we try to avoid enemies that function just as obstacles. For instance, all humanoid enemies exhibit some intelligence, they’ll patrol, notice the player, signal allies, and actively try to hurt you, rather than wait in one spot and do the same attacks over and over.
As for why it’s fun to shoot and hit things, I’d say it’s a combination of particle effects, sounds, and screen shake. I definitely took a lot of lessons from Vlambeer’s talk years ago. I’ll link it here.
EM: I’m always curious about how exposition will creep into a game; Phoenotopia: Awakening isn’t the world we live in, so what devices (books, NPCs, cutscenes, etc) do you find best pull back the curtain and show larger truths about the game universe?
QT: We actually use all the tricks you mentioned. There are lore books, NPCs, and cutscenes to exposit on the lore and setting of the game universe. They all do their part.
My favorite is a bit tropey, but it is to insert the player in a ruined city, which so clearly resembles our modern cities, only ruined. That happens in this game, too! In the original flash game, this reveal was probably handled better. In the reboot, we introduce some new high-tech locales before you see the ruined modern city, so that probably reduces some of its impact.
EM: The game has recently launched, and reviews have included high praise, so what does your current to-do list include? And what does your roadmap look like, from now until the end of the year?
QT: The game did receive some high praise, but also a lot of criticism. We’re listening to the feedback and have submitted a patch already which we hope will address the main issues people have with it. We have more patches on the way and will likely continue actively patching the game throughout the rest of the year, since we want to improve the play experience. Nintendo’s patching process can be a bit slow, however, so we can’t move as fast as we’d like.
We’ve also signed up with a Japanese publisher to bring the game to Japan. So we’re working on a separate Japanese build of the game, which brings its own unique challenges.
Finally, we’re working on a PC port of the game. It’s a bit of an optimistic estimate, but we’re hoping to get that out in December.
In case you missed it, here’s the trailer:
