TPG talks to Matthew Micheal Ritter, developer of the unique story-driven indie title, Boon Hill. You will learn where Matthew drew inspiration, thoughts on crowd funding, indie bundles and much more.
Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your role with the development of Boon Hill.
My name is Matthew Ritter. Or for those that prefer full entire names, Matthew Micheal Ritter. I’m a pixel artist and game designer who’s currently working as the lead on Boon Hill. There’s not to much else to tell, I had an idea for a game and that idea was weird and probably not very marketable but I’m trying to make it anyways.
How did you get started in developing PC games?
The same way most people do. I played PC games, I liked PC games, I decided to make PC games.
Where did the idea for Boon Hill come from?
I read a great book called ‘Spoon River Anthology’ that is about a small town’s graveyard and a poem written by each person in it. I thought that making a game with a similar idea might be fun, but I didn’t know if anyone would play a game with no goal. So I decided to try and make some kind of treasure hunt in a graveyard. After a bit of work, I decided to go back to the original goalless idea.
What are some of the successes and failures you learned from in developing Boon Hill?
The greatest success so far is discovering there are people who are interested in the idea. A game about traveling through a graveyard and reading epitaphs isn’t the kind of idea that screams ‘amazing and exciting’ yet I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback. Failures? Early on there was a few programmers that came in and out and kept flaking. Delaying production. Hopefully the current team is locked and things will continue smoothly.
In its current form, how close is Boon Hill to your initial vision?
Very close. At the moment it’s almost exactly what I envisioned on the moment I thought of the game. Which is exciting. Problems might arise, but assuming everything goes smoothly, it’ll be the same when it’s done.
Some devs admitted their games were too hard upon release because they became experts as they developed the game. Talk about setting the difficulty levels for Boon Hill and if you faced a similar challenge.
As there is no end goal for Boon Hill, nothing trying to kill the player, and no real ‘challenges’ difficulty isn’t so much a part of this game. It’s more about being intuitive. Hopefully we’ve set the game to play as intuitively as possible, so it never frustrates the player.
Please talk about developing the art style, level design and music for Boon Hill.
The level design is attempting to emulate a graveyard of course. But more than that we want a sense of reality to it. The graveyard is set on a specific timeline. The town is set as if it’s a real town, and the graves are placed in specific order (the order people were buried in). The design will hopefully invoke a feeling of place. Of setting. As for the art style, I’m a pixel artist, and the other artist working on the project is as well. We love the old 16-bit games and so emulating that older style was what we just had to do. The music will be very important, we’re hoping to at the end have a double soundtrack, normal instrumental music and a bit tunes track you can choose between.
Outside of creating the game itself, what is the toughest aspect of being an indie developer?
Getting people to care about the game can be difficult. Everyone seems to be making a game these days, and a lot of people will just tune you out.
Talk about your experience using Kickstarter in order to fund Boon Hill.
It’s been great. Actually seeing that people are willing to put money down for the game is very invigorating.
Have you receive financial or emotional support from friends and family?
More than I will ever be able to repay.
How important is it to get instant feedback about Boon Hill from users through online message boards and other social networking sites?
It’s nice. I don’t know if it’s important, but its the world we live in now, the world where feedback is almost instant and often quite opinionated. It’s definitely interesting.
How much value do you place on the opinions of those who review Boon Hill professionally?
A lot. I place more than I should probably. People who review games professionally for a living have a lot of experience and I care about what they have to say.
How do you feel about the various indie bundle promotions and the “Pay What You Want” pricing methodology? Would you be interested in contributing to a project like that in the future?
I think it’s very interesting. I’d love to get in those bundles. I like the idea of things like that. The idea that we might be able to support each other through a very honest and flexible system like that. It of course could be abused, but I still like it.
What are your thoughts on how the PC gaming industry as a whole are dealing with the problem of intrusive DRM and piracy?
I understand where they’re coming from, but they seem to just be making players feel attacked and it makes them defensive. I don’t know the answer to any of the problems of course on either side.
How do you feel about individuals posting videos of Boon Hill?
100% A okay! Do some people really mind that?
How do you feel about DLC and its current implementation in the PC gaming industry?
I’ve always been a fan of the game I buy being the game I get. DLC can sometimes be nice, but also sometimes feels like I’m being sold stuff that should have been in the initial release.
How do you feel about the online modding community in general and specifically if mods were created for Boon Hill?
I think it’s great. But I’m kind of a hippie communist at heart. Everyone should mod everything!
What advice would you give up-and-coming indie PC developers who are trying to break into the business?
Make games. Make as many as you can. Finish games. Make small games at first, games you know you can complete. Then, make more. At least that’s what I’m trying, ask me in ten years if it was helpful. – End
We would like send thanks to Matthew for taking time to answer our questions. You can read more about Boon Hill via Kickstarter.
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