An Interview with Thomas Moon Kang
On the 26th of March this year, One Step From Eden was released on Steam and Nintendo Switch. The game launched to positive reviews, being labelled "divine", "engrossing" and "one of the best roguelikes around at the moment". One Step from Eden is also a GWB Game Awards entrant, which means it will have the chance to be in front of the GWB judges and possibly win hardware, cash and more.
Recently we chose One Step From Eden as one of our spotlight entrants, which we promoted alongside our partners and friends at Intel GameDev Boost. We have also taken the time to ask the developer, Thomas Moon Kang, some questions about the game and his experience making it.
A Note: Tencent GWB, as part of the Tencent Institute of Games, strongly supports knowledge sharing and aims to help improve the quality of game development across the board. For that reason, many of the questions we ask are not related directly to discussing the game itself, but about the development process, issues that arose etc. We hope that this can be of interest not only to fans of One Step From Eden, but also devs looking to learn from both the problems Thomas faced and his successes.
A game of action and strategy
For those who haven't played One Step From Eden, it makes sense to start by talking about what the game is. How does Thomas pitch it to those who don't know the game? He explained "[it] is a roguelite that combines deckbuilding and real-time action. For people who don't play games, you use a deck of spells to fight enemies and bosses on a grid. There's lots of action and strategy at the same time.".
The comparison that often comes up when discussing One Step From Eden is Mega Man Battle Network, the hybrid action-RPG/card battle series which featured real-time combat on a 6 by 3 grid. The reverence that One Step From Eden has for the Battle Network games is clear, however sometimes such strong comparisons can hinder a game.
Does Thomas feel that the Battle Network comparisons overshadow the game? Apparently not, stating "The comparisons help by getting fans of other games excited about the concept." He does, however, concede that "some fans expecting a story focused game may be surprised by the stronger emphasis on gameplay." in reference to the fact that, unlike Battle Network, One Step From Eden keeps the focus squarely on the battles. This change in focus, as well as other changes to the core gameplay mean that the game is "tough to accurately portray" and that, in his opinion, it "ends up being something unique that can be compared to other games like Slay the Spire."
The Long Journey
Thomas started working on the game as part of a small game jam in his senior year of college. Even as a game jam game, the original concept wasn't too far from what One Step From Eden would become. Back then, the roguelite elements and real-time battles were already in place, albeit alongside visual novel-style scenes with choices. From there, the game and the idea grew:
"Development was a long journey. I would work on the game whenever I had spare time. I ended up quitting online games [like League of Legends] so I could spend more time on the game. I started learning pixel art because I couldn't find an artist to work with me. Social media and creating gifs and video also took a ton of effort to show people what was being worked on. Throughout development I learned so much as a coder and as an artist!"
According to Thomas, one area of particular difficulty was "figuring out how I was going to manage over 400 spells and artifacts". His solution? "I ended up using scripts that accessed variables from a table that contained all the different items in order to reuse the logic from the scripts. This cut down on the amount of code I needed to maintain and kept the items neat and organized in an XML table."
Another question we asked was about advice – did anyone give him advice during development, or help him overcome a problem? Apparently, there were "a few people" who gave advice during development, citing 2 specifically. The first? FTL and Into the Breach devs Subset Games "actually stopped by my booth and advised me to add the simulated previews during the spell rewards screen. I think it was a great feature that helped newer players a ton." The second? Well, the second is not a person, but people. Specifically, his Discord community. According to Kang, "[they] have shaped the game since early development" adding that "[they] have probably had the biggest impact on how well the game turned out. I would have missed so many glaring issues without them!". Our sincere thanks to the One Step From Eden Discord, then.
Polishing for something big
Like many games in the indie space, One Step From Eden had a Kickstarter. On January 3rd, 2019 the Kickstarter page for One Step From Eden went live, with a target of $15,000. Within 2 days it had met its target, and by the end it had reached $70,000, passing the stretch goal for a Switch release by $10,000. We asked Thomas why he felt his Kickstarter was so successful and, for him, above all else there was one thing – the demo. The demo was "the biggest influence [on] the kickstarter" because of "how polished and feature heavy [it] was".
That's certainly hard to argue with. The demo had "a lot of content, unlockables, and secrets" Which led to "some people [playing] it for over 50 hours!". From Thomas' perspective, "many other kickstarter demos are a bit too early or work in progress, riddled with bugs and poor quality of life." finally adding that "it's really important to get feedback and polish your work for something big like a kickstarter!"
An impossible amount of work
It should come as a surprise to no-one that making games is hard. That was definitely true for Thomas Moon Kang who felt that "Publishing a big game by [myself took] an impossible amount of work...even with all the support [I received], it still feels like it was impossible!". That help that he received, whether feedback from the likes of Subset Games or the Discord community, or the assistance he more directly received from "artists, translators, console porters, publishers, and of course my friends and family" was one of the most important factors to his success. In his own words:
"One of the most important factors in whether you succeed or not is the people you work with. It's very difficult to find talented people who will stick with you from start to finish. If people leave, you have to be ready to find a replacement fast. I got really lucky with a few of my team members who shared the same amount of commitment as I did."
So, an impossible task made possible due to help from committed partners. Looking back on it now, does he wish he had done things differently? No, it seems. "There are too many things I could have done better but you can't know what they are until you try doing things the wrong way first. I wouldn't make any big changes if I could go back."
A Final Word from GWB:
These interview materials will not just run on English-language social media channels but will also be translated and run on our Chinese-language social channels, hopefully expanding the audience for One Step From Eden ever further. In the coming weeks, we will have more interviews with some other entrants and those too will see their games promoted on our domestic channels.
If you want your game to receive similar global promotion, for free, just sign up to the GWB Game Awards now and submit your game.
Finally, we wish to thank Thomas for taking the time to answer our questions.
Links
The game is available for purchase right now on Steam and Nintendo Switch. You can also keep up to date by following the One Step From Eden Twitter and Facebook accounts.
To take part in the GWB Awards go here for more information and then sign up in order to submit your game.