ooBleTS

We check in With OOblets develOper rebecca cOrdingley tO see hOW this adOrable mOnster harvesting indie is cOming alOng daniella lucas

Rebecca mo-capped her own dance moves for the game

main a field of plants that could grow into various different monsters.

left the town is full of shops that sell things like furniture to customise your home with.

ou know that feeling when something is so cute that you can’t help but make a little halfchuckle, half-squeal sound in public because no matter how cool and collected you normally are, you just couldn’t contain it? Ooblets is shaping up to be ‘That Feeling: The Videogame’ thanks to its adorable monsters and quirky art style. Part gardening centre, part battling pet shop, you gather and grow your own crop of companions to take part in friendly fights with others across the world of Oob.

When we catch up with developer Rebecca Cordingly of Glumberland she’s as bright and open as she is on Twitter – and is quick to tell us how the game is coming along. “A whole lot has happened in the last six months,” she tells us. “We added character customisation, lots of new Ooblets, over a dozen NPCs, NPC scheduling so they can walk around town and go to work and stuff, crafting machines, quests, player energy, a dozen new crops, most of the buildings, their associated interiors, player house upgrades and improvements, decorations, furniture placement, fences, paths – pretty much a majority of the game!”

How does tHe garden grow?

Much like in Stardew Valley, Ooblets gives you your own little house and patch of land to farm and shape to your liking. It’s also where you’ll be growing your monstrous friends after collecting their seeds, but there have been few details of how that will actually work and if certain Ooblets will take longer to grow than others. It turns out that it’s quite a difficult subject to navigate: “We haven’t balanced any of the growth times yet but there may likely be differences for Ooblets,” Rebecca tells us. “Although that sort of presupposes some Ooblets are worth more than others, which might not be very nice… So maybe not!”

However, unlike Stardew there won’t be any seasons that limit what you can grow and when: “We made the decision to not include seasons at this point to keep scope down, and because our variety of regions provides a lot of the things people are looking for in seasons. Some regions are planned to be snowy, really hot, swampy etc, but the climate will be a lot more stable back on your farm.”

However, the majority of the game revolves around training and battling with your Ooblets to progress. “The progression of quests and things in the town necessitates that you do quite a lot of battling, but how you split your time and when you choose to jump from one aspect of the game to the other is completely up to the player.

“Battling probably has a bit more depth than we were initially expecting,” says Rebecca. “Ben had this idea for how it would work that neither of us were totally sure about, but as we’ve been implementing it, it’s coming together really well. As it stands, battles are turn-based, typically 3 vs 3, where each move has a cool-down, and only one move can be played each turn (across your entire team). There are classes but we’re thinking they won’t be explicitly labelled since traditional RPG class labels would feel super out of place in the world of Ooblets. The way we have things set up, if the format of battles isn’t working out, it won’t be super difficult for us to rearrange things and change the rules.”

left you can decorate your house however you like – we’ve already got our eye on the catshaped plant plot in the bottom- left corner.

right the various areas will have different themes – you can probably expect more cactusshaped Ooblets in the desert.

Making Magic

Development isn’t always easy, especially when legions of fans develop expectations for a game that isn’t finished, but Rebecca remains upbeat about the whole process. “I don’t think people get into indie game development for an easy-going lifestyle. The hours are tough and instead of having one or two bosses, the entire gaming market is your boss. These past two years since I quit my job have been incredibly tough but the rewards have definitely been huge. Being responsible for the public’s perception of your worth is mentally draining in a way that I wasn’t really prepared for, and I’m always sort of waiting for the bottom to drop out.

“This is my first time releasing a game so it’s going to be a huge gamble about whether people will see the same things we see in Ooblets. Our existing fans have been so supportive and kind that at this point, I think if the game turns out to be terrible they’d still be gentle about it. We’ve tried to be so open and communicative about everything that if we fall short of their expectations, we hope our longtime fans will know they can reach out to us and help us shape the game into what it should be.

“In general, I think games are judged so much on context and subjective perspectives that you really can’t foresee how it will be received. Ooblets hasn’t broken into the mainstream gaming consciousness quite yet, and when it comes to overall reception, the interpretation of the game is going to make a big impact. What the broader audience has to say about the game is definitely something I worry about, but I have to keep reminding myself that the best I can do is make the game I want to play and have it be something I’m proud of.”

Of course, development is never smooth – sometimes things need to be dropped in order to meet deadlines, or morph into something else entirely when the

OXM says

stephen ashby I can’t wait to form my own ridiculous team of violent vegetables and take them battling. I’m hoping that years of experience with Pokémon and Viva Piñata will give me an advantage, but only time will tell. daniella lucas The team make fun of me whenever I start cooing over the latest Ooblet designs and updates, but I can’t help it, they’re just all so cute. Is there an Ooblet equivalent of a crazy cat lady? Because I think that’s what I want to be. adam Bryant I‘ve always wanted to grow my own friends and make them battle with others, and now I can in this adorable farming/fighting/ life simulator. I also can’t wait to impress my new pals with my wicked fresh dance moves.

Ooblets is set on an alien planet where there are no genders – you just wear whatever you want

“if ooblets had everything we wanted, development would probably take about 20 years”

preliminary idea doesn’t work as expected. While most developers keep these changes under wraps, Rebecca is incredibly open about the changes Ooblets has had to make along the way. “Since we’ve started we’ve added in so many new ideas and dropped a million others. If Ooblets had everything we wanted, development would probably take about 20 years. Hopefully we can get around to adding a bunch of the stuff we’ve had to drop post-release.

“Some of the things we’ve dropped have been an Ooblet that runs around spurting water out of tendrils flailing around on its head to water your farm, a sprawling Factorio-inspired farm production automation system, a 2D pixel art replica of the entire game that you could play within the game – this one was admittedly very stupid – and probably any sort of fishing since we haven’t been able to come up with any ideas we thought were clever enough for it yet.”

Final stretcH

For those of you hoping that Ooblets would be ready soon, there’s still a while to go, according to Rebecca. “When you look at things from a distance, we’re really far along. People who played the early demo thought we were close to release half a year ago, but the truth is there’s a mountain of work still to be done. Since so much of making a game is new to me, it’s hard to know exactly how much lies ahead. I get really nervous about saying 2018 all the time without knowing for sure that we can make it, but it’s definitely what we’re aiming for.”

While we might still have quite a wait until we get our hands on the wonderful world that Glumberland are creating, but for now we’re happy to do so. Rebecca’s openness gives us an inside look at the indie game making process – it feels like she’s very much taking us on this development journey with her. n

Make sure you follow Ooblets’ progress on Twitter @Ooblets.

we’ve got tHree brand new ooblets FroM tHe gaMe to sHow, alongside coMMents FroM tHe creators

Firmo is a very perceptive little dude, and a favourite Ooblet of many Mimpins club members who love all things technical as well as emotionally-stunted.

Gubwee is typically carefree, lives by the sea, comes up to about your knee, and is sure to make you a quick devotee.

Sidekey’s nature is a little tough to unlock... In general he’s a bit lowkey but watch out for him turning on you if he gets wound up.