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Received investment from Eagle Horn, two people started a business remotely, and the first game was 98% praised on Steam?

Game Grape 2024/10/21 23:52

Text/Liang Lotte

Grape Jun didn't expect that someone would really make the stalk of "butter + cat = perpetual motion machine" into a game.

As we all know, to throw a cat from a height, it must be on all fours; The butter toast fell off the table, and it must have been butter on the ground. Well, if you tie butter toast to your cat's back...... Congratulations, the perpetual motion machine was invented.


In 2012, an energy drink manufacturer

Turned this meme into an advertisement

On September 6, a side-scrolling action puzzle game called "Butter Cat" was launched on Steam. In this game, players have to control the butter toast jump with their left hand, and control the cat's movement with their right hand.

As of the time of writing, the game has received a total of 1,096 user reviews on Steam, with a positive rating of 98%. For an indie game, the "rave reviews" score is excellent.


In the comment area, many players said that the number of levels in the game is "large and full", and the dual protagonists of "cat + butter toast" are designed to be cute. After all, who wouldn't love a cat that could spiral into the sky?


In my imagination, a relatively mature indie game like "Butter Cat" is likely to come from industry veterans with rich development experience; But after talking to Cheng Blashin (Li Yuyang) and Frank (He Yuyang), the main beauty of the game development studio Team Woll, the real situation was a little unexpected to me.

The game is invested by Eagle Horn, and there are only 2 developers; This is their first time developing an independent game, and before that, most of them were casual kryptonite mobile games, with no experience in the development of level puzzle games; For them, "it's a blessing to be able to do 'Butter Cat'."

01

From the outside to the inside

If you want to sum up "Butter Cat" with two key words, I think it should be cute and solid. The former is the table, and the latter is the inside.

Let's start with cuteness. The same cat as the main character, compared to the realistic painting style of "Lost", in my opinion, the 2D pixel style of this work is more acceptable, and it is more attractive to light casual users. In terms of setting, compared to the usual dark wind and dungeon-style puzzle games, the light is brighter and the colors are softer, creating a relaxed atmosphere.


The relevant content of "Butter Cat" on Xiaohongshu,

Most of them emphasize cuteness and cuteness

In addition, whether it's cats or butter toast, the developers have designed them to be rounded and Q-bomb, which makes people want to pull and knead.

Game grapes, invested by Eagle Horn, two people started a business remotely, and the first game was 98% praised on Steam?

The cat's character is based on Frank's cat "Sesame Paste"

Take the cat as an example, when it is stationary, it will float up and down slightly, swing its tail naturally, roll on the ground, and stretch its waist; When moving, its short legs flutter non-stop, and its tail flexibly stretches and bends in the direction of movement. One of my favorites is the elastic effect of the cat toast when it is combined, and the sound effect of "rui~rui~" when it spins and takes off, it is like a mental massage for the brain.

Game grapes, invested by Eagle Horn, two people started a business remotely, and the first game was 98% praised on Steam?

A jelly-like cat

The developers also realized that a lot of people came for the cute appearance of the game. So, they also made corresponding content inside and outside the game in response to this: every time they participated in the game show, they would bring badges, stickers and other peripherals printed with the characters; In the game, they added skin functions, such as the Mid-Autumn Festival, the cat turned into a jade rabbit, and the toast became a mooncake; Recently, they also designed a set of "butter cat" memes.

Game grapes, invested by Eagle Horn, two people started a business remotely, and the first game was 98% praised on Steam?

But it's not enough to be cute, and appearance always needs internal support. This support is a solid level design.

There are five chapters, more than 200 levels, and roller coasters and boss battles that connect the chapters. Each chapter of the game has several new mechanics, big and small, and the puzzle experience often reminds me of many classic games: Portal, Time and Space Fantasy, FEZ, ...... The game is updated with mechanics in the levels, as well as new combinations between mechanics to keep players fresh.

For example, in the first chapter, the game introduces a "rotating board", where the player can use the roast driver as a hub to control its rotation; In the second chapter, it introduces the "Butter Springboard", on which the player can control the cat to stand and jump.

Game grapes, invested by Eagle Horn, two people started a business remotely, and the first game was 98% praised on Steam?

The video is from station B @ a certain V is full of magic

游戏葡萄, 获鹰角投资,两人远程创业,第一款游戏就Steam 98%好评?

Same as above

In the middle of the second chapter of the game, the developers combine the mechanics of "flipping board" and "butter springboard": when the cat is standing on the butter springboard on the rotating board, the rotation of the rotating board provides the cat with additional acceleration, allowing it to fly farther.

游戏葡萄, 获鹰角投资,两人远程创业,第一款游戏就Steam 98%好评?

Same as above

From the perspective of the overall design, perhaps due to the limited manpower and catering to the needs of casual players, the game did not dig to the extreme in terms of mechanics and puzzle settings, but chose to broaden the breadth. To put it simply, it is a pile of volume, and the power of bricks flies. In the first chapter, there are cat climbing frames, paradox walls, pipes, ice bricks, rotating plates, roast toasters, and phase swapping robots...... There is a feeling of being wealthy.


In general, "Butter Cat" is different from the same type of games that often use hardcore puzzle-solving as a selling point, it uses cute characters and painting style as a selling point, and introduces more casual players in addition to the basic puzzle-solving game; At the same time, with its solid level design and continuous freshness, these players will stay. Personally, it's not the best game I've played this year, but it's arguably one of the most comfortable games I've played.


02

Two Game Jams

If you pay attention to the names of the Butter Cat developers mentioned above, you will find that the pronunciation of the two names is the same: one is named Li Yuyang and the other is called He Yuyang. "So we usually use the English abbreviation, my name is Frank, and his name is Blasin." Frank said.

游戏葡萄, 获鹰角投资,两人远程创业,第一款游戏就Steam 98%好评?

A small easter egg from the Game Jam version of Butter Cats: YY-X2

In January 2022, the two met for the first time in the core.

At that time, the core netizen "TaoistPunk" launched a game development challenge: let everyone come up with ideas, he will choose, and become a programmer to make the game. Of course, he also encourages other programmers to work on ideas that are not selected and that they are interested in.

So, Blasin took a fancy to Frank's plan and spent 14 hours working on their first game, Woll, without any communication.

The rules of the game are simple, the player uses the left and right arrow keys to rotate and the spacebar to shoot a triangular attack. The red Woll ring will shrink the reel, and will only disappear when the player hits the white weak spot.

游戏葡萄, 获鹰角投资,两人远程创业,第一款游戏就Steam 98%好评?

游戏葡萄, 获鹰角投资,两人远程创业,第一款游戏就Steam 98%好评?

Later, Team Woll became the name of their team

But the collaboration didn't make much of a splash, and "Woll" was just a small episode in the trajectory of their respective lives, in Blasin's words, "we got to know each other, and that's it." And the next time they work together, it won't be until a few months later, when the Game Jam BOOOM is officially held by the core.

In May 2022, due to the very speculative exchange, Blashin pulled Frank to participate in this game jam with the theme of "Take me somewhere nice".

In the beginning, they used a space odyssey as a backdrop and designed the main character as a bonsai. The problem is that bonsai don't move on their own. At this time, they invariably thought of the advertisement for the butter toast cat perpetual motion machine. Cats will always move on their own.


With the idea in hand, it took Frank half an hour to get the initial concept art. Based on this concept art, their inspiration began to emerge: a dual-protagonist that could be separated, a puzzle platformer, and ...... These elements are also in line with the theme of Game Jam "Roaming Together".

游戏葡萄, 获鹰角投资,两人远程创业,第一款游戏就Steam 98%好评?

The characters in "Butter Cat" originally looked like this

Once the idea was formed, Frank was responsible for Blender modeling, as well as the visual polishing of the white mold level. Blasin, on the other hand, is responsible for the implementation. According to him, the way the toast jumps is based on the mobile game "Leap Day" developed by Nitrome; The feel of platform jumping is copied from "Kirby of the Stars" on the GBA; The style of the game is a reproduction of the pixel style of "Excursion".

游戏葡萄, 获鹰角投资,两人远程创业,第一款游戏就Steam 98%好评?游戏葡萄, 获鹰角投资,两人远程创业,第一款游戏就Steam 98%好评?

Because the work content is too big, they didn't sleep well for several days, and finally built the opening and ending screens, although the game was completed on schedule, but in Blasin's opinion, it left a lot of problems, such as the exit of the level is not obvious, the guidance is not in place, and the BUG is not time to fix...... They had only one goal in mind: to do it and win.

After making Game Jam games, Blashin got used to passing them on to itch.io. "Butter Cat" is no exception. He told me that it was the equivalent of keeping a file, and he didn't expect much at the time.


You can still be on the itch.io now

Play the Game Jam version of Buttercats

As a result, in less than a week, the issuance and investment were found. "Too fast. I just finished uploading the game yesterday, and when I woke up today, someone told me in the QQ group that a YouTuber broadcast your game live. Then, the snowball got bigger and bigger." Blashin said.

From the perspective of latecomers, we can dig out this transmission link: on May 7, 2022, a YouTuber named "Alpha Bata Gamer" discovered the game on the itch.io and made a video; On the same day, a blogger named "Game Original Power" on Weibo reposted the download link with a promotional video of the game, which received more than 3,000 retweets. In addition, there are Japan game media reports on the game.

游戏葡萄, 获鹰角投资,两人远程创业,第一款游戏就Steam 98%好评?

"Alpha Bata Gamer" updated the video immediately after the game's release, and it seems that he really likes "Butter Cat"

The cute art style and cat characters have attracted many players. But both were concerned that players might not like the gameplay, or that the game might be just a hit. itch.io back-end data finally dispelled their doubts. The ratio of downloads to clicks of the demo is close to 50%, and it has received 12,000 downloads in half a year.


"The concept is fun and I love to play.

We look forward to seeing you flesh out this idea further!"

In the face of social media, the popularity of the player base, and the invitation of publishers and investors, Blasin used four words to describe his mood at the time: "happy, surprised, excited, and inflated". Maybe, they can really make a full version?

03

Work remotely and try not to communicate

"At the time of the release, they told me that your game would be a full version in the future. I'm not convinced yet." Frank said.


Core CEO Simon's interaction under Blasin's post

Before working on Buttercats, both of them had been working in the game industry for five or six years, but none of the projects they did were related to indie games.

Blasin has worked in two companies, the first job is to make Xiuxian Krypton gold mobile games, and the second job is to make casual mobile games with advertising monetization as a profit model.

Frank's experience is similar. After graduating, he first worked in an Internet company, making gamified social applications, responsible for all visual aspects of content; Later, he moved to a Shanghai outsourcing company, specializing in commercial illustration.


The rollercoaster content of the connecting chapters,

It's actually a variation of Blasin's previous parkour gameplay

Although they had the possibility of making commercial indie games, they did not decide to leave their jobs until the end of July and early August, after signing a contract for the release of the core and the investment of the development core, and devoted themselves to the development of "Butter Cat".

At that time, the core was just in the game publishing business. In Blasin's view, other publishers, big and small, will only treat Buttercat as another game that needs to be released; And the core will be very attentive, because "Butter Cat" is the first work they took over. Of course, Blasin also admits that they have an element of gambling. As it turned out, they were right.

A photo of Basin and Core CEO Simon

They were also found by Pioneer Core as an investor. "At that time, they didn't call it Kor Xin, they just said that Eagle Horn wanted to invest in us. Their expectations for the game are among the best of all investors." "I've never seen them in this format, not only for investment, but also for offline exhibitions and knowledge sharing," Blashin said. On "Butter Cat", K&B Investment accounts for 20% of the shares.

The "Butter Cat" logo at the 2024 K&D Core Exhibition

According to common sense, after getting the investment and signing the issuance, the next step is to rent an office and start the classic episodes in those entrepreneurial stories, but they chose to cooperate online and jointly develop "Butter Cat" in two cities thousands of kilometers apart. When asked why he made this choice, Blasin's answer was, it was too natural.

First of all, the two of them are in different places, and they both like their own cities, so there is no need to find a place to start a business.

Second, they had adapted to remote collaboration in their previous jobs: Blasin was based in Guangzhou, but the company was in New York and connected to the team in Beijing; Frank, on the other hand, went to Nanjing due to the epidemic and worked remotely for the company in Shanghai for a while. Therefore, both parties are no strangers to remote work.

A cityscape photographed by Blashin in Guangzhou in November 2022

In Nanjing, Frank discovered this "winner noodle restaurant in life"

In fact, the online collaborative development of games by teams is not new. However, in practice, this model will face many problems, which is why some companies prefer to work offline.

Moon Studios, the developer of the "Ori" series

The members met for the first time in person four years after the studio was founded

Blasin told me that the biggest problem with online collaboration is communication. In offline office, you can communicate with colleagues at any time; But online, you can only rely on typing voice, which is not only too time-consuming, but also affects work.

To solve this problem, they designed a communication mechanism that was in line with the development process of Buttercats. Every Monday morning, they meet to review the previous week's work and plan what they will do this week.

And for special cases, such as who realizes that something needs to be communicated in sync, they will also immediately meet and spend 10-20 minutes to solve the problem. If you don't, this problem may end up slowing down the development process and making it less efficient. "If you only communicate in words, you may have different understandings and don't know what you're talking about." Blashin said.

On the 2022 National Day, Blasin wrote code on the high-speed rail because of inspiration

That doesn't mean their remote work routine is about frequent meetings, though. Blasin summed up the remote work experience of his previous company: communication is necessary, but don't mess around with meetings. Meetings are very energy-consuming, and there are too many meetings, which can easily affect the normal development of the game. In a way, it's ideal not to communicate as much as possible.

In his opinion, in order to improve efficiency, the arrangement of work should be done in a parallel way. Minimize interdependencies between tasks. This avoids a situation where someone else has to wait because someone else hasn't finished their work.

In addition to this, Blasin also specifically mentions "laws". Although he works from home, the overall arrangement is similar to the relaxed version of the eight-hour workday: Monday through Friday, two days off; 3 hours of deep work per day, no more than 5 hours at most; Try not to work at night. Through regular life, to ensure the physical and mental health in the development process.

Blasin's working hours statistics app made with Unity,

Green represents working hours and yellow represents flow duration

On March 21, 2023, the two completed the exhibition demo of "Butter Cat"; In June of the same year, the game participated in Guangzhou Nuclear Fusion. After knowing each other for more than a year, the two met offline for the first time.

Frank remembers that the two of them found a beef hot pot restaurant near Blasin's house and had a great time. However, the next day he contracted gastroenteritis and "threw up very happily." During the exhibition, while others were busy collecting goods, Frank also received an additional "shot of levofloxacin and a bunch of pill boxes".

Frank's post at the time, nothing is in control......

04

Development in three steps

Judging from the overall schedule, from the start of development in July and August 2022 to the official release in September 2024, it took about 2 years and 1 month to produce "Butter Cat".

Blasin told me that the development process can be broken down into three parts: the first 3 or 4 months are spent determining the mechanics, procedures, and feel, thinking about how high and how far the character can jump; In the middle, more than a year has been working on mechanisms and laying levels; The last half year is at the end, doing boss battles, achievements and other scattered things.

A sketch of a boss plan that has been temporarily abandoned

When asked about the most difficult part of the development process, they unthinkingly uttered one word: "levels". Because neither of them has experience in this area.

There are currently seven or eight mechanics that are the basis of the level in the game. According to Blasin, in order to make the level, they spend 2-3 months designing a mechanic, diverging at will, and then removing the chaff in the process.

One of the game mechanics: the gravitational field

There's a term in psychology called "Eureka" or "Aha moment." Frank has a lot of inspiration when it comes to designing mechanics, and often comes up with a mechanic that will be followed by an "Aha moment"; Blasin, on the other hand, had to spend two or three weeks racking his brains to come up with one.

Therefore, in terms of division of labor, Frank is mainly responsible for coming up with ideas, which may not be mature enough, and there are many unexpected solutions, which are easy to mislead players; Blashin is in charge of the rational part, fixing and cutting down the solutions to these errors.

One of the game mechanics: phase swapping robots

Some players have suggested that they do the first three chapters first, release EA, and then make a full version and sell the next two chapters. But they didn't, for the simple reason that they couldn't.

In the level design of Buttercats, they didn't design a certain mechanic first, experiment on that mechanic, and then make the next one when it matures; Rather, several mechanics run in parallel, colliding with each other, defining each other, and eventually forming the entire game.

Take the "Wall of Paradox" mechanic, for example, which determines whether the cat and butter toast can merge and separate in that area, and can solve many level deaths. According to Blasin, this mechanic was actually only figured out half a year before it was released. Its addition forced them to make adjustments to about half of the developed content.

The "Wall of Paradox" also appears in the roller coaster content

In addition, in order to improve the efficiency of level production, they also spent two months designing the level editor "Cato Maker".

Frank told me that due to the lack of a level editor, when designing levels during Game Jam, Bhasin could still break them in the program, and he had to deduce them on paper, so it was very inefficient and not necessarily feasible to make.

And with the level editor, just like Made in Super Mario, you just need to drag a few components and press the enter key to directly design the level and start testing; If you get an error, you just need to delete the components and you can continue with the previous steps. Compared to Unity, it's much more concise and won't overwhelm you with the sheer amount of content and operations on the interface.

Blasin: "Editing pipeline tools is at least ten times more efficient than before"

During the development process, it is also worth noting that the development node was heavily influenced by the game show.

Fusion in Guangzhou in June 2023, Bit Summit in Kyoto Japan July 2023, Beijing Fusion in September, and Chengdu in November...... While not every node has a new version, it pushes developers to integrate the game. In Blasin's opinion, if he didn't participate in the exhibition, he would have been more scrambling to integrate the game at the end.

In November 2023, "Butter Cat" was on Chengdu Nuclear Fusion

At the same time, the feedback from the players at the exhibition also made them more clear about the development direction.

On the one hand, in terms of the overall gameplay, Frank's imagination at the beginning was only the most traditional level puzzle mode; But the feedback from the players made them realize that they needed something new and exciting to reconcile the puzzle gameplay. So, they added roller coasters and boss battles to the game.

On the other hand, some of the guidance that they feel is already obvious is actually not communicated to the player at all; After testing, they gradually understood what guidance they needed to provide and how to adjust the level structure to give players a clearer understanding of the developer's intentions. "Now most of the comments say that we have better guidance and a friendly difficulty curve in the early stage. It's honed out at the game show." Frank said.

Specifically, early versions of the game had few text prompts and mostly conveyed information to the player through images.

This may not be much for players who are used to old-school games, but the problem is that the game's cute characters and art style attract many novice players. They have comparatively less experience with the game. Therefore, the official version of Butter Cat not only adds more text descriptions, but also increases the proportion of teaching levels to better convey the game mechanics.

Since I didn't see the prompt in the upper right corner, the first level of the Game Jam version forced me for two minutes

Interestingly, during the exhibition, they also met Xiao Pan. He is the world speedrunning record holder for "Master".


In the list of development teams, Pan's name is in fourth place

Blashin recalled that at that time, Xiao Pan sat in a corner, buried himself in playing for a long time, and was very serious, and recorded videos while playing, comparing them back and forth with his mobile phone. At that time, they thought to themselves, no matter how fast they are, it will not be much faster than the developer can play it once.

After a while, he showed Blashin his evil maneuvers, which still amazes Blasin. In a way, Pan knows the game better than they do.

Therefore, they approached Xiao Pan for a game test. During the closed beta, they found that the Sense of speedrunners had a feeling of wanting to break the game, which exposed a lot of physics problems in the game, forcing Blashin to observe the character's behavior at the frame level, thus raising the immunity of "Buttercat" to a higher level.

The above is the fastest speed of two developers to clear the level,

Below is a little speedrun shock from the big guy

On June 6, 2024, Blashin updated its development diary, announcing that the game is expected to be released this fall; At the same time, the project officially entered the final sprint stage.

According to Blasin, due to his lack of experience, he was late in the last 3 or 4 months. "It wasn't until we sorted it out that we had a new perspective on what was more and what was missing."

After counting the drafts, they found that there were more than 700 levels designed in total. In the last few years, they had a lot of headaches sorting out the content, and it took several nights to sort out the current 140 main levels and 60 side levels.


In August of this year, Blashin printed more than 10 pages of bugs

05

epilogue

A month ago, Blasin told me that "Butter Cat" sold nearly 30,000 copies, had a wishlist of 90,000 copies, and received more than 700 positive reviews, with a 98% positive rating and rave reviews. According to the original goal of the financing plan: the game will be sold at the current price of 50,000 copies, which will pay off, "so far, it is quite promising."

For the future development direction, they have also released updates on social platforms, from Steam Deck adaptation to more language support. There was still a lot to do, but until then, they could at least get a good night's sleep.

A week before the release, Blasin's sleep time statistics

At the end of the conversation, I asked them a question: After spending more than 2 years and finishing "Butter Cat", do you have any experience for newcomers who want to make indie games?

"Think too much and think too much, think too much and do more. And more rest, I think rest is too important." Blasin said.

In his opinion, some newcomers are still in the theoretical stage, watching a bunch of GDCs, but doing nothing; The other part is doing too much, getting lost in technology and art, forgetting that you're making a game. "The most important thing in making a game is to play, it's the level, not how good your skills and art are."

"Making games is a very comprehensive thing, what you have experienced, all your experience can be applied, so you should experience more, do more, and cherish more." "It's been a blessing for me to be able to do Buttercat."

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