Developer Interview: Schmutznik

Schmutznik came about because I wanted to program a game for the Atari 8-bit series, the first computer my brother and I owned when we were children. Sprites on those machines were called player-missile graphics, and they had an unusual property. Each of the four player-missile graphics could only be 8-bits wide but could be as tall as the screen height. A robot with a stretchable neck, similar to the extendable legs from the cartoon Inspector Gadget, could work very well with this feature. I knew some Atari BASIC, but to make arcade games that moved at a reasonable speed, you needed to code in 6502 assembly language. I was able to do small things in that language but never enough to completely write a game. So I switched to GameMaker on the PC and found it much easier and with far fewer limitations (though I am sad Schmuztnik did not make it onto my first computer!).

There actually is a very slight story — why is there slime in the caverns? You do eventually find out, and the story serves only to end the game with a couple of jokes that made me laugh.

To make Schmutznik stand out from all the other 2D platformers, I tried out so many other art styles — some watercolour and lots of vector graphics. At one stage, the game was also going to be set on a giant spaceship, so I spent a lot of time borrowing books on submarines so I could design a self-contained, artificial environment. However, one night my family and I were on vacation in Santa Fe, and I picked up some modelling clay at a CVS pharmacy. Play-Doh proved to be far easier to work with because it doesn’t dry out as fast. The Play-Doh meant that it was hard to make the metallic and hard edges required for the spaceship interior, so I switched to underground caverns instead, which allowed for more organic shapes. Play-Doh was actually not too bad to animate with either.

Playtesting was difficult because I did not have a community that I could reach out to for help (I got so much help from a very good friend, Jim Cook, and also a very valuable playthrough on a beta build by the streamer FireHawke). Schmutznik was my first game, and I was learning everything from scratch — how to program in a modern language, how to market a game, and so on. Now, I think with the new title I am working on there are enough people interested in what I do who might be willing to try out some early builds.

I am also not a musician and was saved by a friend, Jeffery Meyer, who was able to write some music for the game, especially for the trailer.

And finally, the biggest issue was time! I teach digital art, I create illustrations for clients, and I also have a family, so game development usually comes after all of this.

Learning how to program! I’m an artist, not a coder, so I needed to watch so many tutorials and read many articles. Heartbeast, Shaun Spalding, and Tom Francis on YouTube were all so essential to my education. Beginning the game on the Atari 8-bit was not easy because I struggled to code basic functions to make the game work. Moving to a PC environment was much better because I could write in a higher-level language (I am not built to code in 6502 assembly language). I also was not as limited by graphical restrictions. Creative block was not an issue, but time was. I struggled to find the time when I had so many other work commitments.

Using real media means there are a few extra steps (I wrote a blog post for Game Developer here)
The steps were
1) Build an object or one frame of a character with Play-Doh.
2) Photograph it using a tripod and natural light.
3) Reposition parts or do whatever is necessary to animate.
4) Edit and clean up individual images in Photoshop.
5) Test in Photoshop to see if the images convincingly animate.
6) Import the PNGs into GameMaker and make sure they work with everything else in the game world.

Creating art with Play-Doh means that it is difficult to be precise. There was some digital massaging to make everything fit within the boundaries set up for each object. For my new game, I started by using real-life materials but quickly realised how laborious it was going to be, so I switched to vectors using Adobe Illustrator. I’m using some brushes so that each shape still looks interesting.

Absolutely! After I finished Schmutznik, I realised I wanted to make something far less linear, so that is what I’m doing! Again, due to all the other tasks I have to do, I have no idea when the game will be ready to show, let alone finish. The new game is growing organically, and I have a very rough outline of what I want to do. I’m being careful about feature creep, but so far [I] am enjoying the challenge of making this new world. The technical requirements are a little more advanced, so I’m having to learn a lot of new coding techniques too.

No! I could not come up with a suitable name and was stumped for some time. My wife suggested Schmutznik, and it worked well. That’s the name of the robot, by the way.

As I mentioned earlier, the cartoon Inspector Gadget partially influenced the extendable robot’s neck. Lots of games I played as a child influenced the game. The varied levels came from an old Synapse game called Pharoah’s Curse by Steve Coleman. The giant rolling ball in a later level might have been inspired by the famous ball rolling trap from Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s hard to pinpoint precisely, though, because I have played so many games over my lifetime!
One other source of design was pushing the base mechanic as far as I could. In Schumutznik, you cannot jump but instead extend your neck until you hit a certain kind of block, and then the rest of your body will follow. Detaching from this new place means that the block you were hanging onto will now fall and cause damage to you or an enemy. From this, I was able to make lots of variations to keep the gameplay experience fresh and, hopefully, never boring.

A remake is unlikely because I would rather make new things! As for a sequel, nothing has come to mind, but you never know. I am working on a brand new game in my very few periods of free time. After a week or so of launching Schmutznik, I came up with a new game project that has a lot of potential. The biggest difference with this game is that I want it to be far less linear, allowing you to explore the landscape and to do all kinds of mischievous things. Humour is also a driving force behind this new project. Many of the gameplay mechanics are all about doing things that make me laugh. Its current status, as of late July 2022, is that there are some areas to explore, some buildings you can enter, and at least one small area that is complete. I’d like to say more, but [I] want to wait until I have something polished that I can share on Twitter.