Behind the Scenes of Battle Train with Joe Mirabello

Welcome to another episode of The Gamerheads Podcast! In this episode, we sit down with Joe Mirabello, the director at Terrible Posture Games, to discuss his transition from working at a major MMO studio to crafting his own successful titles like Tower Guns and Mothergunship. Joe introduces us to his latest venture, Battle Train, a unique deck and track builder game, and reveals the fascinating connections it shares with his previous work.

Have you ever wondered how games like Hades manage to keep you hooked, balancing gameplay with a compelling narrative? Joe Mirabello sheds light on the secrets behind narrative progression in roguelike and roguelite games. Listen as Joe elaborates on the concept of player progression, where your own skill and knowledge become the ultimate save file, setting Battle Train apart from traditional roguelikes and multiplayer games.

Launching an indie game in a saturated market is no small feat, and Joe shares invaluable lessons learned from the development of Battle Train. He emphasizes the importance of taking breaks for fresh perspectives, a strategy that proved beneficial for his team. Joe also highlights the significance of delegation and community engagement, offering a roadmap for aspiring developers to navigate the complexities of game launches.

Don't miss this episode packed with insights, strategies, and behind-the-scenes stories from the world of indie game development.

Be sure to wishlist Battle Train!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1708950/Battle_Train/

Follow Terrible Posture on Twitter:
https://x.com/TerriblePosture

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Chapters

• 0:00 Game Developer Talks Battle Train
• 10:03 Progression and Narrative in Game Design
• 17:54 Lessons Learned From Battle Train
• 24:47 Building Hype for Game Launch

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This episode of the Gamer Heads Podcast is brought to you by Seven Bridges Premium Gourmet Yum Yum Sauce. Enhance every bite with our savory blends of flavors, perfect for meats, vegetables and crispy treats. Whether you're dipping, drizzling, marinating, grilling, roasting or snacking, seven Bridges Yum Yum Sauce takes your culinary experience to the next level. Get yours today and make every meal a gourmet delight. Hi, I'm Celia Schilling from Yacht Club Games.

Speaker 2: 0:28

Hey, this is James from Mega Cat Studios. Hey, this is Matt aka Stormageddon from Reignite Screen Snark and the Fun and Games Podcast. This is Stephanie from the Boss Rush Podcast and the Boss Rush Network.

Speaker 1: 0:40

Hey, this is Mark and Kion from Bonta Affold. Hey, this is Mark and Kion from Bonta Affont. Hey, this is Sebastian with the PronerdReportcom and the Single Player Experience Podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:49

Hi, this is Chris.

Speaker 1: 0:50

Mike and Garrett from Daylight Basement Studio. Hey. This is BaronJ67 from Level One Gaming. Hey. This is Todd Mitchell from Code Right Play Salutations. This is Mike Carroll from Stroll Art. Hey, this is Jeff Moonen from Fun and Games Podcast. What's good y'all. This is Adam from Respawn Aimfire hey this is. Patrick from the Backlog Odyssey. Hey, this is Rune from Runic Codes. Hi, this is Andrew from Spaladabirds. Hi everyone, Jill Grote here from the Indie Informer.

Speaker 3: 1:19

Hello, this is the Crypt Master and you're listening to Roger Richier. You're listening to Roger on the Gamer Heads Podcast and welcome to another episode of the Gamer Heads Podcast.

Speaker 1: 1:41

My name is Roger Along. With me this week I have a very special guest, a returning guest, joe Mirabello. He is the director at Terrible Posture Games, creators of such games as Mother Gunship, forge, tower of Guns and the games that they're currently working on that we're going to be talking about today Battletrain. Joe. Thank you so much for joining me and welcome back to the show.

Speaker 2: 2:01

Thank you. Thank you for having me back on. It's nice to see you again, nice to talk to you again.

Speaker 1: 2:05

Yeah, yeah, I'm excited to talk about this game. So it's been a couple years since you were on the show. So for those that may be the first time that they're hearing you, first of all go back to listen to the other episode, because it was a really fun episode. But for those that you didn't just tell us a little bit about yourself, what got you into gaming, Sure.

Speaker 2: 2:27

So my name is Joe Marabello and I'm the founder and CEO and creative director at Terrible Posture Games. But I was not always a creative director slash founder. I used to work in games as a technical artist and I should say that I used to work for MMOs and action RPGs. And I was working for a really big MMO studio and that studio went really suddenly and catastrophically out of business. 300 people lost their jobs overnight. That kind of inspired me to go solo and I thought I was just going to be taking a sabbatical. I had learned a lot there technically and I kind of knew I didn't know everything, but I knew a decent amount to making my own project. So I decided to give it a spin, thinking I couldn't do worse than how that MMO studio had done.

Speaker 2: 3:11

But I really genuinely thought this was taking a break. I was like going to take a break from AAA games. I was going to do my own thing. Instead of working on this massive MMO for hundreds of thousands of concurrent users made by hundreds of people, I was going to work on just this small game made by one person, for one player at a time, and I'd always wanted to work on first-person shooters. So I ended up working on something called Tower Guns.

Speaker 2: 3:31

Well, that ended up being more than a sabbatical it was 20 months and then I released it and it ended up becoming a second career and I gradually began growing. The company went from just me to me and a few people and a few partners to me and a team to me and a team and multiple projects, and now we're looking at basically 10 years at this point that I think we've been in business, which I can say is longer than any studio I've worked for in the game industry, because the game industry is pretty a lot of things come and go pretty quick and I feel pretty proud that I've been able to provide a, you know, a place of stability. This is a pretty unstable environment.

Speaker 3: 4:10

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 4:11

So that's been nice and we've released a lot of different kinds of things, as you mentioned before. Tower Guns, yes, but then Mothergun Ship, the original one I worked on. We co-developed with the company of G Grip Digital. We did a playable sitcom with Epic Games called 3 Out of 10.

Speaker 3: 4:24

That was a lot of fun and very silly.

Speaker 2: 4:28

And that led to the beginning of Battle Train, actually, but we can get into that later. So, yeah, that's kind of what got me into being an indie developer, and we're still small. And Battle Train is our latest game and it's a deck and track builder is what we're calling it. It is a roguelike game where you launch explosive locomotives at your opponent.

Speaker 2: 4:46

And it's all set with the framework of the world's most popular spectator sport slash game show called Battle Train, and it's about the cast and crew that runs it, and you play as a contestant on this show, literally building tracks to your opponent's bases and then sending out these explosive trains and trying to blow them up. It's very ridiculous, it's very silly. It's a lot of fun.

Speaker 1: 5:08

And it's quite surprisingly deep mechanically. Yeah, I loved the trailer, and I forgot about the sitcom game too, and now that you mentioned it, I'm like, oh yeah, this kind of leads right into that, into the Battle Train. I can see that. What inspired Battle Train, then? What were some of the things that, besides maybe your work on that previous game, what are other things that inspired the game?

Speaker 2: 5:29

Well, I've been playing a decent amount. I mean, I've always loved roguelites I like the roguelikes with the K, the traditional roguelike as well and I've always been looking for new ways to combine mechanics that I found that I really liked, that catered to people with shorter attention spans like myself. You can play a roguelite game and have an entire good, solid, fun, fulfilling experience within a single sitting, and that, to me, is wonderful. And you can go back again and again and again and always feel like you're getting something really enjoyable over what I call basically lunch break or maybe a long lunch break or an evening. And I feel like that's pretty crucial to the roguel Genre, where we're taking some of these mechanics inspired by rogue and, you know, kind of drafting them onto other genres.

Speaker 2: 6:09

Yeah and I'd explored a lot with that, for with with tower guns. And then, as we were building this playable sitcom, three out of ten, which was much more linear narrative game, we were experimenting a lot with different kinds of mechanics. No and there was one mini game in particular particular, that was something I had never really seen before, which was almost like a pipe dream the game Pipe Dream, if you remember that game. Yeah, yeah yeah, connecting pipes.

Speaker 2: 6:32

Yeah, but almost like dueling Pipe Dream I was like that's really interesting and that started me down the road of thinking about what could be a full game from that mechanic and how we could combine it with things that we were good at and create something that was really compelling and different and fresh.

Speaker 2: 6:46

But as people play it, they're like this feels like I know how to play it without ever having played anything like it before. And that's pretty important to me is making sure that nothing feels like it's obtuse or so awkward that people don't immediately have a sense of how it should behave.

Speaker 2: 7:02

If you sit down in front of Battle Train, you can pretty much pick it up within about a minute which is perfect, but there's a lot of depth in what you can do with this system, but the actual interaction with the system I like it to be as easy and as seamless as possible.

Speaker 1: 7:19

Nice, and one of the things that I really like about this game is that it has the TV show setting like a game show and it like a like a game show that's, and it's perfect for like a rogue light type game, I think, because it's right, because it's like small and encapsulated. But watching the trailer like it feels like there's more to it. There's some narrative aspects to this game as well. Can you talk about that? And then I don't know, maybe you can't or as much as you can, but I think I'm more interested in a little bit about that. But then also, how do you handle trying to drive a narrative in a roguelite game where you're not really sure it's not linear right? It's depending on how good the player does in that time that they're playing the game.

Speaker 2: 8:01

It does, you're right. But there are some interesting things that you can do where you play around with essentially what is a metagame. So, first off, you're right, play around with, um, essentially what is a metagame? Um, so, first off, you're right, the story does. There is a little bit of a narrative story.

Speaker 2: 8:12

It is about the cast and crew that run this game show and even though each run is a session of the game show, there's lots of of sprinkled um narrative elements about these characters, um, and you should start to get to know them as you're playing the game and kind of get a sense for the drama behind the scenes of the show, um, and that's something I think is really fun, um, but I don't think that just because a game loop is tight and confined and meant to be experienced uh, um, in repetition, doesn't mean there's not already a narrative going on there, especially if you look at you can even look at something like isaac. Um, isaac has the same story every single time you play it. You are trapped in your, your basement, um, and you're trying to figure out how to get out. But the narrative there is actually more about the player and what they're unlocking and how they're learning about how to use these different tools and they're constantly building up their metagame progression.

Speaker 2: 9:06

Um, that is a mechanical narrative. However, you can do that same thing on a story level and I've been experimenting with that ever since Tower of Guns, where, on certain runs, I would just keep track of the number of runs you're on and on the fifth run, I would start spawning a different level from the start and players would be surprised.

Speaker 2: 9:22

As much as players like to know and jump into something, they also like it when you subvert the expectations that you provide, and I feel like that's pretty crucial to the sense of delight that players feel about certain games. Anytime you see a rule set, set up by the developer, and then they start to break their own rules a little bit in ways that delight the player, I'm always impressed. I think about undertale as a very good example. Undertale give you that little box for combat at the bottom and after a little while they started breaking the box, changing the size of it, moving the size, having things go outside the box. It was very well done because you thought that that box was a rule, yeah, and it ended up that it wasn't yeah that's the kind of stuff I'm talking about and narratively I like to do the same thing.

Speaker 2: 10:03

Hades does a really good job with this, where every time you go back to your base camp, or I should say back to your starting point, you have different discussion points with these characters that you're talking to and they are progressing a narrative.

Speaker 2: 10:14

But the actual gameplay is locked and is sacred and the players kind of understand that element of it. But they still have a story they're proceeding through and even if they were to get no further in the progression through the dungeon, they do get a little bit of progression through a narrative when they return back. So they feel like they're always moving forward to something. So, to answer your question a little bit more short and succinctly, I don't think that narrative needs to be locked in so tightly with the gameplay. It actually can lead into a sense of progression um, uh and um. The two can play nice, uh, as long as you've kind of planned ahead of time and you treat it as if they are proceeding in time, as long as you treat it as if the player themselves is a save file that is learning more and more and more as they play the game, and the number of times they play the game or the amount of times they've seen things is kind of factored into how you proceed and progress the narrative.

Speaker 1: 11:09

Interesting. Yeah, I like that a lot. I think a lot of times when you think of leveling up, you think of a character leveling up. You forget about how the player also levels up when they play.

Speaker 2: 11:18

That's a great way to put it the player is leveling up as well, and I mean some games do a different. Some games actually tie it straight into the mechanics and you get better as you go. Rogue Legacy does this, uh, dead cells does this. You know a lot of more recent rogue lights do this, um, or you could say you know it levels up the drop pool. So the randomization changes with isaac they do that, um or it. There can be straight up upgrades, like in hades, and I don't think there's really a wrong way to do it. Yeah, um, but um, the story itself is another thing that is being upgraded is the thing is the way I look at it.

Speaker 2: 11:52

Yeah, and however you present it, as long as the player feels like they're making some movement through that, they never really feel like a run is wasted because they've chipped away at something that feels like it's a greater project.

Speaker 1: 12:03

Yeah, I think that's the biggest challenge for a player. For me, right, is to feel like that there's something that I'm at least progressing towards. Uh, and when, when I don't feel that, that's when I was like, like I don't that, those are the types of things that I struggle with with roguelikes and roguelites, right, um, but when you feel like there is progression towards something that's to me, that's where the magic lies in.

Speaker 2: 12:29

So, yeah, and I mean, you know some roguelites, like really traditional roguelites. The progression is entirely in the head of the players. Now I understand that if I unlock this certain thing, then I know a little bit more about how that enemy will respond, or I know a little bit more about how these systems will work together or about how to understand the randomization of what these different potions do. You do get better as a player, but it's it's way more invisible in a in a real traditional roguelike. But uh, I, I like the conceit of the, the menus and the upgrade trees and the. You know the meta progression that you talk about. I like that. I think it's's fun in more modern rogue lights.

Speaker 2: 13:11

So, yeah, I agree with you, and I guess that's actually probably why I have a tough time with multiplayer games, because you don't actually get those. If you have a social experience you're playing with friends, then great, you have a social experience. But if you're just playing with strangers, you don't get any real sense of progression. Some games will have tons and tons of unlocks, unlocks, but to me that's never really felt like a big pool pull in a multiplayer game yeah, no, I agree, I agree, I agree with it.

Speaker 1: 13:37

I think that's an interesting thing, right, because, like I do agree, I think that multiplayer games, this story that's being told, like fortnite and things I think of, that it's not so much the story, but it's your time with your friends, right. Right, you are the story in those games. You are the story, yeah.

Speaker 2: 13:51

You know there's upgrades and there's things you can buy, but it's infinite and you know it's infinite. And if it has no end. To me that doesn't feel like it is progression. Yeah, that just feels like it's sitting in a current and proceeding through an endless current like. So I like the rogue lights because you feel like there's a point at which you will have found or most of, or a lot of all of the elements the designer put in there for you yeah so I mean, when I think of, uh, when I think of mother gunship forge, I mean obviously that's, that's a rogue like type game as well, um, but this is much different.

Speaker 1: 14:27

What were some of the challenges you had to overcome when creating Battle Train?

Speaker 2: 14:31

Um well, this is an interesting one. We started working on Battle Train. You know I say we've been working on it for a couple of years, kind of loosely, but when I thought about it and I look back on at it, we started working on it, at least in a little bit right when COVID began, right when COVID began Sorry, right when COVID was in the beginning of that like, basically that first year, the first anniversary is when we began working on it, so we're looking at like four years at this point and we didn't work on it too much.

Speaker 2: 15:01

We just kind of started stubbing in bits and pieces of the idea. I made a physical version of it in Tabletop Simulator like a quote, unquote physical version. We were kind of mocking up whether or not the idea could work and playtesting it with each other. That was, by the way, a terrible way to play the game. It worked great for prototyping, but we needed to have a DM literally placing pieces while the two players were playing.

Speaker 2: 15:21

So it worked for proving out the concept, but it proved also why this would be a good video game.

Speaker 2: 15:28

We could do that all automatically, but we began making it at that point just while we were waiting for another project to kick up.

Speaker 2: 15:37

And the other project did kick off, and then we had to put it on the shelf. And then we came back to it when the other project finished up that was, forge and chipped away at it a little bit more, and then another project came up and we had to put it back back on the shelf, and so this has been something that we've been working on in bits and pieces for, uh, you know, four years, and the biggest challenge for this thing was finding the time and the resources to be able to actually finish the game. Like, I love this game and I've been really dedicated to it, um, but it's very, very hard to justify, you know, putting everybody on the team on this project without having funding for it or funding paths for it, and so going out pitching the game, finding some partners, finding validation externally, I think is incredibly important, because it could be something that we just liked ourselves but nobody else was really interested in.

Speaker 2: 16:27

So, I look for external validation as one of the biggest first things things, and we didn't want to announce the game because we would potentially be working with a publisher we ended up finding a funding partner for the game that basically let us commit the team, give it the time it deserves, give the game the time it deserves to finish baking, and that funding partner is nerd ninjas. They're a fellow indie. Uh and this, I don't know if you know about the industry's funding situation right now, but 2024 has been a really hard time to go find partner funding. Publisher funding platform funding. There's not a lot of people who are willing to fund projects at all.

Speaker 2: 17:02

And you know we can do a little bit on our own, but you know we want to push this game further than we were able to do on our own and in 2024, at least. This has been a really brutal year, and I just happened to be complaining about some of the deals that publishers were giving to small developers, to a fellow indie, and they were like you know, we really think that this game is awesome. I would love to work with you on it.

Speaker 2: 17:24

So it was a really nice, like I feel like a really good moment where, where you know, uh, you don't hear a lot of nice stories like that, yeah, and india will start to put faith in their fellow indies and kind of uh, uh helping basically helping each other out and I hope that we're in a situation someday where we can do the same to another small studio and kind of help them out. So they partnered with us to get the time on the books to finish this game properly and get it out the door, and we've been going full steam ahead ever since.

Speaker 3: 17:53

Nice.

Speaker 1: 17:53

Pardon the pun. I was going to say the pun yeah, no-transcript that you were worried that this wouldn't be made, that you were just going to give up. I mean, like, at some point is there a point where the sunk cost is too much and you just either forge forward or you say this is it, we're just going to drop it and forget about it?

Speaker 2: 18:17

I would not have liked to have said that.

Speaker 2: 18:20

Part of me feels like we might have been able to chip away at it again through the gaps in between two or three more projects to get to the point where we're like, okay, now we can justify getting the last quarter of the funding ourselves, or the budget ourselves, or something like that.

Speaker 2: 18:34

But it's the longer a game sits, the more stale the code becomes, the more people begin to get jaded of it. There's a little bit of a flash in the pan thing when it comes to development, where you want to really capture stuff, you want to be able to take your time on a game, but you also can get jaded on a project pretty uh, quickly, especially when something that drags on for years like this. So, um, I was, I'm very aware of that, um, and I will also say, though, that that the timeline here, that protracted development time, even though it wasn't time actually led to us being able to iterate. We could look back critically at our own work, kind of see what wasn't working and evaluate it in a really good, like almost objective, sense, because we were different developers by the time we came back.

Speaker 2: 19:17

We're like you know what? This isn't working. Let's scrap this mechanic and replace it with this other one.

Speaker 2: 19:21

That has actually been very healthy for the game and I'd love to take that as a lesson yeah to basically have these micro pushes that you can do early on before a team gets all invested in something, but then be able to get time to distance yourself from it and then come back with the whole team. So that's something we did accidentally with battle train, but I think is it was actually very effective to helping it become a better game yeah, yeah, I like that.

Speaker 1: 19:46

Um, one of the things I really like about this game, too, is is the the art style. Can you talk about the art style and the design for the game, and how did you decide on that?

Speaker 2: 19:56

uh, well, this, this was one of the interesting cases where I was not involved in the art style uh, too much in the beginning. Uh, it was driven by our animators and our um, our art staff, beyond just me. Yes, I came out of the art field and I do come out of technical art, but for this particular project, I was actually handing it off to. There were a couple of people in particular, but the animator, lauren Lamon, was working with us and she drove a lot of the character design early on.

Speaker 2: 20:23

And still, her groundwork there on was working with us and she drove a lot of the character design um early on um, and still you know her, her like groundwork there is still, you know, playing a key factor in all of the character work um, and she has a sensibilities that leans more towards this look and so we kind of all fell in around around her um. But we were looking for an art style that we knew we could build quickly, that could use our technology, that we built from three out of ten for the character work and could lean into a lot of the lessons we picked up from three out of ten. That playable sitcom was built really quickly and meant with iteration in mind and rapid development in mind. So for three out of ten, the playable sitcom, there were 10 episodes and the first episode we built took us like six months.

Speaker 2: 21:07

Um and by the time we got to the 10th episode, we had streamlined so much and automated so much and gotten our our ducks in a row and our processes so refined that we were down to like two months and up. So um it was super fast. Yeah, maybe even less, probably not less. It was like about eight weeks or so, pretty fast, wow, and it was fun, but it was also really, really, really wild. Um yeah, I would have loved to have continued it, because I bet we could have gotten even faster um but yeah, we basically took that core tech and started from there with battle train and we

Speaker 2: 21:42

weren't able to go that fast with Battle Train, but we were able to do quite a lot pretty fast using a lot of the frameworks, the different systems that we built for managing the game, managing the data, managing the input, managing the flow of the cutscene. Compared to the gameplay, a lot of that stuff was kind of I don't want to say solved, but I would say we leaned heavily on this technology suite that we had built and, um, that helped us build stuff pretty quickly. But it also did dictate some limits, and one of those limits was what we could do quickly with the art style and and how much flexibility we had there. But, um, it has been constantly iterated on and it will continue to be constantly iterated on throughout the rest of his development. Um, just nailing the look. In general, I like where it is, but I know there's a lot of things that we want to do to push it further.

Speaker 1: 22:29

Yeah, and the voice acting is really good too. Can you talk about the voice acting in the game as well?

Speaker 2: 22:34

Yeah, I mean I'm very proud of our voice actors. We've been working with some of them all the way back from the original Mothergunship.

Speaker 1: 22:39

Nice.

Speaker 2: 22:41

There's Heather Masters, dave Pettit and Andy Mack and DB Cooper were voice actors we worked with for the Rochelle Mudd Gunship. We brought them back for basically every single project in some form, but then they were also all in the 3 out of 10 show and we got very good at working quickly with them.

Speaker 2: 23:03

And there's something to be said for being able to work really quickly with a voice actor, being to be like hey, can you jump in a session this week and just do the session, live together remotely for an hour and then they give you the files yeah, um and when you have that kind of rapport, the kind of point where they get the characters, they get what you're going for, they get your sense of humor, they trust you as a writer and as a audio director or as a vo director and then you trust them on their delivery, it means means you can move so much faster.

Speaker 2: 23:25

We did have some other new actors for Battle Train that came in and we'll have other things we want to capture as well down the road. But being able to lean on the voice actors that we had just picked up along the way Katamari style was really helpful for us being able to move quickly on Battle Train, the main bad guys played by Alan Edelberg I should mention him as well, just because he's all over the uh, uh, the game yeah, I, I love, I love the main.

Speaker 1: 23:50

I love the main, uh, villain, I mean he is very funny and just I mean just a little bit that I've seen I did he just it just feels, uh, I just got the sense of like there's something bigger here and it's very funny and I got your sense of humor and I and I absolutely love what I got to see in the trailer so far with that.

Speaker 2: 24:06

Awesome, yeah, I mean we're leaning also on a lot of tropes too expecting players to kind of you know like the main bad guy is like this M Bison type character there that you have to get to and we lean into that a little bit and play it up a bit.

Speaker 1: 24:23

Yeah, I love that, I love that. So I mean, you kind of alluded to this a little bit before, but what are some of the things you've learned from working on Battle Train that you're going to move forward with? Uh, you mentioned the, the micro, like building of things and like coming back to it and kind of doing retrospectives, but is there anything else you're going to that you're going to take away from building the game and apply going forward?

Speaker 2: 24:46

apply going forward. Well, that's one of the biggest things.

Speaker 2: 24:47

Um, I think that, uh, we've actually held back from announcing it for a long time, um, and that I don't think was as good of an idea. I think that we, we you know I was holding back hoping that we could find uh, or because I thought, or was thinking that we might find a publisher and so they might want to assist with an announcement. But, um, I don't know if that was a good idea when I look back at it, because that whole time we could have been gathering attention on the game, getting eyeballs and these days eyeballs is everything for, for the steam algorithm or for, or just making a waves when you, when you actually launch the game. So I, the jury is still out on that one the. The reasoning was sound, but I'm like, was that a good idea? Should we announce our next game a little bit sooner? Um and uh, um, I'm not sure.

Speaker 2: 25:31

Um, I also feel like there's a lot that we learned iteration wise, like you mentioned before, with these, this kind of micro build in the beginning and then letting it sit for a little bit. That was something we did accidentally. I think was very beneficial for uh battle. And then I think that the other thing that I'm beginning to get much better at is there's a lot of systems in this game that I have not touched, and just delegation in general.

Speaker 2: 25:53

It's been something I've constantly been getting better and better and better at, but with Battle Train and Mother Gunship 4, which is the game before it, I've gotten much better about not being in every system and every loop myself. I'm trying to do the same thing to my tech director and pull him out of being the the main um uh, nexus, where, everything, where he's basically a bottleneck as well, because I was a bottleneck before um and if we're able to remove ourselves from being bottlenecks, then we're empowering more of our team.

Speaker 2: 26:19

And that is something we've done pretty well with battle train and I hope we continue to kind of do better. Better with every game is just elevate our team around us and empower them to do more without having to wait and just know that they have our trust.

Speaker 1: 26:34

Yeah, yeah, I like that a lot. Going back to the announcement thing, I think that's an interesting discussion too because for me as a player, I actually like when games are announced and within the 12 months, like right, like anything beyond that is is like then I start questioning is this game ever going to come out? So I don't know. That's an interesting. That's an interesting discussion, for sure.

Speaker 2: 27:00

I think that you know 12 months is not so bad but but we are looking at the release of Battle Train being within the first few months of 2025. Okay so we are well within that now.

Speaker 1: 27:12

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 27:13

We could have probably announced earlier, tried to apply to some festivals at PAX or AGDC. There are some places where I think that we could have started that train rolling a little bit started that rolling a little bit sooner. Um, they're non-stop at the office, just kind of puns all over the place hey, joe, do you think this thing is on the right track? All right, I'll go full steam ahead on this, all right.

Speaker 1: 27:44

Oh, that's awesome. It's fun yeah, are you planning to bring this to PAX or any other events at all in the future?

Speaker 2: 27:53

We haven't announced anything yet, but we're constantly looking at opportunities and we're excited to get this thing in front of people. So we'll be kind of evaluating everything. Every opportunity comes our way. The response from the announcement has been pretty positive. People, especially those who have played it Like we gave it to a few YouTubers early to kind of play more of the bill that we've gotten Everybody seems to really enjoy it. So we know we've got something special on our hands. We just are going to be looking for ways to kind of bring it in front of as many people as possible, to kind of get that. The big thing is whether or not it's going to be drowned at launch, and that's a problem that even the best game out there will have right now. You could take a game that was a top 10 game of three or four years ago and right now it could be drowned on launch just because so much is going on.

Speaker 2: 28:40

Or gamers have shifted in what they like and what they spend time on, so it's a big question mark. Um, I believe this game is is the best thing that we've designed, and I think it'll be, um, something that is beloved by players. I just hope there's a lot of players so we can continue to keep making more games yeah, yeah, uh, and I I think there's a demo planned.

Speaker 1: 29:01

When, when do you plan to launch the demo?

Speaker 2: 29:04

uh, that'll be a little bit later on in the summer, so I don't know if we've actually set the date yet. If people were to wishlist or sign up for our mailing list right now on TerriblePosturecom, then they'd get a notification when the demo goes live. You could also wishlist it. There'll be announcements on Steam or join our Discord at DiscordTerriblePosturecom and you know we'll have news all in there as well. So lots of ways to find out about when that demo does go live nice, nice, and I'll put a link in the show notes.

Speaker 1: 29:30

Uh, so, listeners, you can go. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, go, wishlist the game. Uh, I I, when I saw this trailer go up, I just I had to reach out right away and said can, can joe come on the show and can we talk about this game? Because I just it just looks so brilliant and right up my alley, so I'm super excited about this game thank you.

Speaker 2: 29:48

Yeah, it's been exciting to build, it's been fun to build. It's uh, like I said, like we've been working on it so long, uh, it's a really personal project to us and just to see people finally be able to play it has been really satisfying.

Speaker 2: 30:00

You're never really sure, man, when, when people first play a game, you've gotten your friends, family to play it and maybe some of them said like, hey, this is pretty cool, but when a stranger plays it, someone that has no obligation to be nice to you, uh, plays the game and has every reason to not be nice, especially if that's kind of stuff that you know sells these days yeah, it's being critical, yeah yeah, uh, it's. It's always nice to actually hear people respond in a positive way. So, uh, it's been, it's been really really validating, I guess, is the best, is the best word nice.

Speaker 1: 30:30

Well, joe, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule, uh, and meeting with me and talking about the game.

Speaker 2: 30:36

Uh, like I said, I'm really excited about the game and, uh, and I'm looking forward to when we get to play it thanks, um, I appreciate you having me on here and, um, I'll be happy to get a copy in your hands when we get to play it. Thanks, I appreciate you having me on here and I'd be happy to get a copy of your hands when we're ready.

Speaker 1: 30:49

Perfect, Awesome Listeners again. Go check out the game wishlisted on steam. Follow Joe, follow their progress. I think you're on. You're on Twitter. You're on any social media as well, Right?

Speaker 2: 31:01

Yep, you can find out about battle Train on our Twitter at slash. Terrible Posture or TerriblePosturecom has links to all of this stuff, or you know, just wish list it on Steam. Battle Train is the name of the game and please wish list it. Actually, that's the most important thing these days, really it is.

Speaker 1: 31:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah Again. Thank you so much and listeners, thank you so much for taking time to giving us a listen. Until next week, everyone stay safe and game on.