Winner | Excellence in Design
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes was developed by Steel Crate Games
Each year at GDC, MFA students from the NYU Game Center interview the Independent Games Festival nominees, asking them three questions about their development process. In addition to this interview, you can read all the insightful interviews from 2016 here. These conversations, and much more, will happen when the Game Center returns to GDC in 2017. Learn more about the Game Center at GDC 2017.
Denver Coulson sat down with developers from Steel Crate Games to discuss the development of Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, a high intensity VR game for two.
When asked what sparked the idea for Keep Talking, the developers cited finding inspiration during a Global Game jam for VR. With the self imposed design-constraint of wanting the game to be fun for spectators and players alike, they began to see the Oculus Rift as a blind fold and ran with those limitations. By then using a large, physical manual they were able to achieve their goals by creating something of a theatrical space for the audience to enjoy and players to star in.
Though “the valley of despair” is on everyone’s mind when setting out to develop most creative works, Steel Crate said they never really experienced such a slump. Rather, they stayed true to their vision and were very clear about what they wanted right from the start. This understanding then made it easy to add or cut features down the line.
Over the course of development the devs at Steel Crate Games said that Keep Talking never underwent dramatic overhalls and that the original idea ended up being very similar to where they’ve ended up. Though they toyed with the idea of working in more overtly comedic aspects into the game, they ultimately decided that people naturally created that dynamic and allowed that to speak on its own.