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Tags: Blankitt Productions; Monsters of Mican
Monsters of Mican is an unusual-looking Might & Magic-inspired indie dungeon crawler with a "whimsical" sense of humor released on Steam back in March. It's the kind of game that surely would have remained in complete obscurity if it hadn't been randomly spotted last month by our own JarlFrank, who as a fan of all things eccentric gave it a try and found that he liked it. In fact, he liked the game so much that he decided to contact its developer, a gentleman who goes by the name of Skittzo, to learn more. In the interview, Skittzo tells us what led him to create such a game, his thoughts about bespoke content vs procedural generation, and also about his plans for an open world follow-up called Magic of Mican. Here's an excerpt:
Read the full article: RPG Codex Interview: Monsters of Mican
Monsters of Mican is an unusual-looking Might & Magic-inspired indie dungeon crawler with a "whimsical" sense of humor released on Steam back in March. It's the kind of game that surely would have remained in complete obscurity if it hadn't been randomly spotted last month by our own JarlFrank, who as a fan of all things eccentric gave it a try and found that he liked it. In fact, he liked the game so much that he decided to contact its developer, a gentleman who goes by the name of Skittzo, to learn more. In the interview, Skittzo tells us what led him to create such a game, his thoughts about bespoke content vs procedural generation, and also about his plans for an open world follow-up called Magic of Mican. Here's an excerpt:
2. Monsters of Mican is very whimsical. Pretty much every piece of writing contains a joke and the majority of monsters are visual puns. What made you decide to go for this tone? Is it because funny monsters are easier to create with a limited budget? A lot of them feel cobbled together from various asset packs.
My writing style has always leaned heavily on humor and more particularly puns. I blame/cherish the QFG series for instilling that in me. Also as I noted above I was also using Dragon Quest for inspiration, which is also known for excellent monster puns.
Even if I had a larger budget and better modeling skills I think I would've used the same style of monster design. I have modeled a few from scratch before, and they'd all still wind up named Tyrannosaurus Specs (a dinosaur with glasses) or Raybee (a bee that shoots lasers from its stinger). A light, jovial tone is just something I've always appreciated in games that really resonate with me.
As for how these monsters were made, I would actually say that did more to inform the story of this game than it did the tone/sillyness. I started off under the presumption that most of the monsters I made would be placeholders until I could secure funding to contract artists, but I kept having so much fun combining and editing things that it made the story concept of the "amalgam anomaly" just click into place. I had always planned on there being an ancient event that brought all the monsters to the world but the way I designed this game is what really inspired me to write it in the way I did.
3. My favorite part of the game is its variety. Every dungeon level is different, with unique traps and puzzles and boss fights. How did you approach the level design for this game? Did you have any major inspirations to draw from (other RPGs, pen and paper modules, etc) or were most of your ideas original?
I approach game design as a player first, so I always look at what I've made and say "if I was playing the game would I enjoy this?" To that end one of my biggest gripes with RPGs specifically but a lot of games in general is the lack of meaningful variety in both combat and exploration. Sure, you can happen upon some aesthetically cool area in Skyrim like Blackreach but you'll still wind up traversing it the same way you would any other area. Or, in Breath of the Wild you'll see a new enemy but it's just a stronger reskin of the same thing you've been fighting over and over.
I wanted to make sure you never have that kind of feeling in my game. The variety needs to actually be meaningful- one level introduces collapsing floors, then the next powerful water currents, then lava fields and crushers. It serves both the effects of keeping the gameplay fresh and also actually reasonably reflecting the world/area you're supposed to be in. A mine can have collapsing floors, that makes sense. It probably won't have lava, and probably not pirate ships making waves. So save that for other levels!
Many of the actual features were my original ideas. Obviously a minecart ride is something that's been done (and I just wanted for the quick thrill of it) but that pirate ship idea, or freezing the water in the kraken lair, or giving the Zebrarian boss literal plot armor (made of books) were my original concepts.
4. Avoiding repetition is a worthy goal, and I feel like your dungeon design achieved that quite well. It's a great approach to level design especially in today's gaming world where procedural generation is being used more and more by both indies and larger companies - think of Skyrim's radiant quests and the flood of roguelikes and roguelites released nowadays. What do you think of this popularity of procedural generation among developers? Is level design becoming a lost art because of it? In my opinion, procedurally generated levels always feel the same, there's no variety because it's just an algorithm recombining the same elements over and over, unable to think outside of the box. Do you think we can fight back against this trend by developing games with excellent hand-made level design?
I tend to agree that procedural generation can be looked at as one of the root causes of games becoming stale and repetitive, but I don’t think it’s necessarily always the case or the only cause. Specifically for something like Skyrim, I believe the scope of the game is more to blame- you have hundreds upon hundreds of dungeons and NPCs and quests, and only a limited development team, so it is just a necessary fact of development that you’ll need to repeat certain themes, mechanics and elements. So in this instance I think the issue is more the scope of most bigger games from AAA publishers- the amount of content they think is necessary for consumers (rightly or wrongly, I can’t say for sure) drives the need for repetition.
That’s something that is mostly not an issue in the indie space. An exception as you mentioned is with roguelikes, and while I don’t necessarily agree that they always get repetitive (personally I think Binding of Isaac is one of my favorite indie games of all time) you can run into that trap. But here’s something I didn’t really understand fully until I started developing my own game:
Hand-made level design is hard!!! Like, really really hard!
Taking a completely blank slate and deciding on a theme, mechanics, gimmicks, and then eventually putting all the pieces together is an incredibly overwhelming and draining experience. It’s no wonder why procedural level generation is so popular, because it removes so many of the pitfalls and difficulties with this.
I’ve played with the idea of using procgen to come up with a base map, and then just editing that to match an idea in my mind, but even that can begin to feel repetitive and predictable for players, so I did wind up just making everything by hand, piece by piece, and I think I plan to do that for the next game too. Hopefully (for my sake) I can make a few custom tools that help make this process a bit faster to actually carry out, but mentally it is still quite draining trying to fill a blank slate like that.
My writing style has always leaned heavily on humor and more particularly puns. I blame/cherish the QFG series for instilling that in me. Also as I noted above I was also using Dragon Quest for inspiration, which is also known for excellent monster puns.
Even if I had a larger budget and better modeling skills I think I would've used the same style of monster design. I have modeled a few from scratch before, and they'd all still wind up named Tyrannosaurus Specs (a dinosaur with glasses) or Raybee (a bee that shoots lasers from its stinger). A light, jovial tone is just something I've always appreciated in games that really resonate with me.
As for how these monsters were made, I would actually say that did more to inform the story of this game than it did the tone/sillyness. I started off under the presumption that most of the monsters I made would be placeholders until I could secure funding to contract artists, but I kept having so much fun combining and editing things that it made the story concept of the "amalgam anomaly" just click into place. I had always planned on there being an ancient event that brought all the monsters to the world but the way I designed this game is what really inspired me to write it in the way I did.
3. My favorite part of the game is its variety. Every dungeon level is different, with unique traps and puzzles and boss fights. How did you approach the level design for this game? Did you have any major inspirations to draw from (other RPGs, pen and paper modules, etc) or were most of your ideas original?
I approach game design as a player first, so I always look at what I've made and say "if I was playing the game would I enjoy this?" To that end one of my biggest gripes with RPGs specifically but a lot of games in general is the lack of meaningful variety in both combat and exploration. Sure, you can happen upon some aesthetically cool area in Skyrim like Blackreach but you'll still wind up traversing it the same way you would any other area. Or, in Breath of the Wild you'll see a new enemy but it's just a stronger reskin of the same thing you've been fighting over and over.
I wanted to make sure you never have that kind of feeling in my game. The variety needs to actually be meaningful- one level introduces collapsing floors, then the next powerful water currents, then lava fields and crushers. It serves both the effects of keeping the gameplay fresh and also actually reasonably reflecting the world/area you're supposed to be in. A mine can have collapsing floors, that makes sense. It probably won't have lava, and probably not pirate ships making waves. So save that for other levels!
Many of the actual features were my original ideas. Obviously a minecart ride is something that's been done (and I just wanted for the quick thrill of it) but that pirate ship idea, or freezing the water in the kraken lair, or giving the Zebrarian boss literal plot armor (made of books) were my original concepts.
4. Avoiding repetition is a worthy goal, and I feel like your dungeon design achieved that quite well. It's a great approach to level design especially in today's gaming world where procedural generation is being used more and more by both indies and larger companies - think of Skyrim's radiant quests and the flood of roguelikes and roguelites released nowadays. What do you think of this popularity of procedural generation among developers? Is level design becoming a lost art because of it? In my opinion, procedurally generated levels always feel the same, there's no variety because it's just an algorithm recombining the same elements over and over, unable to think outside of the box. Do you think we can fight back against this trend by developing games with excellent hand-made level design?
I tend to agree that procedural generation can be looked at as one of the root causes of games becoming stale and repetitive, but I don’t think it’s necessarily always the case or the only cause. Specifically for something like Skyrim, I believe the scope of the game is more to blame- you have hundreds upon hundreds of dungeons and NPCs and quests, and only a limited development team, so it is just a necessary fact of development that you’ll need to repeat certain themes, mechanics and elements. So in this instance I think the issue is more the scope of most bigger games from AAA publishers- the amount of content they think is necessary for consumers (rightly or wrongly, I can’t say for sure) drives the need for repetition.
That’s something that is mostly not an issue in the indie space. An exception as you mentioned is with roguelikes, and while I don’t necessarily agree that they always get repetitive (personally I think Binding of Isaac is one of my favorite indie games of all time) you can run into that trap. But here’s something I didn’t really understand fully until I started developing my own game:
Hand-made level design is hard!!! Like, really really hard!
Taking a completely blank slate and deciding on a theme, mechanics, gimmicks, and then eventually putting all the pieces together is an incredibly overwhelming and draining experience. It’s no wonder why procedural level generation is so popular, because it removes so many of the pitfalls and difficulties with this.
I’ve played with the idea of using procgen to come up with a base map, and then just editing that to match an idea in my mind, but even that can begin to feel repetitive and predictable for players, so I did wind up just making everything by hand, piece by piece, and I think I plan to do that for the next game too. Hopefully (for my sake) I can make a few custom tools that help make this process a bit faster to actually carry out, but mentally it is still quite draining trying to fill a blank slate like that.
Read the full article: RPG Codex Interview: Monsters of Mican
