Wanderer - Interview with Sam Ramlu

What are the challenges of a small indie developer on the other side of the globe? With a pandemic breathing down your neck and a world where there are no events or trade shows to showcase the product? We went to the outrageous expense of calling New Zealand long distance and interviewed executive producer of Wanderer, Sam Ramlu. This resulted in a very interesting conversation with great insights into the world of game development, which I would like to share with you.

The VR time travel adventure game Wanderer was released at the beginning of 2022 for PlayStation VR and SteamVR headsets, and it was quite appealing to me - as you can read in my review for Wanderer. But that's not the end of the story. I wanted to know more about the universe created by Oddboy and M-Theory. So please enjoy my interview with Sam Ramlu, one of the creative heads behind the game.


Wanderer


Who are you and what do you do?



I’m Samantha Ramlu, I’m the executive producer here and one of the cofounders of the joint venture studio.


This Joint Venture between M-Theory and Oddboy consists of two seperate teams. Did they work together before? Was it challenging to coordinate?



Yes, we are two teams that came together to develop the game, but we worked together before. Actually, one of the Oddboy guys used to work for our creative studio where we do a lot of client work. And he started his own game studio but we always kept in touch and were very familiar with each other. And as directors (the four of us) were pretty close.


How big is the team of M-Theory and Oddboy?



At the peak of development we probably had around 25 people (which doesn’t include voice artists and so on), but the core team was around 16. Right now we’re only nine. I think a lot of New Zealanders are used to wearing a couple of hats. [laughs]


Wanderer is your debut game. When did the decision come down that you would release your game ONLY for VR. That’s a pretty hard cut for a small studio. Would your game idea have been possible without it?



We’ve been working with VR ever since the first Oculus Dev Kit and kind of kickstarted it with a lot of work and experiences for clients. And we could see the potential back then. In 2016 there weren’t a lot of games in VR but more came out while we were pitching our idea.

Wanderer was specifically designed for it - this whole idea of being immersed in the space and visiting different moments in time by being in that time. The gameplay and story are still great, but it wouldn't be the same as a normal PC game. And to be honest, we’re just more familiar with VR.


VR gaming may be a niche so far, but with the statement from Oculus and especially Sony with the next generation PlayStation VR, signs have been set. What are the possibilities you hope to see from the upcoming PlayStation VR2?



It's been a long time coming. We’re really excited for what we can do with Wanderer from here on out. To take that potential and make it amazing.


Wanderer


Can you give us a brief, rough idea of the development stages, from the initial idea to the final product?



The idea was formed back in 2016. We were doing some exhibition work and created this Star Wars museum experience for our own purposes, where you could walk around and see the (Tie)-Fighters. And then we thought: Imagine if you could walk through a museum and you could pick up an artifact and get transported to that time and see the story of that artifact. Which we thought was such a great idea. So we kind of turned it from that museum environment to "how would that pan out as a game". What if you were instrumental to what happened during that time.

So after that, we applied for an interactive fund in New Zealand, which was very, very small. But we thought, let's see if we can get some funding. There were six projects chosen and we were one of them so we saw: Yeah, someone likes our project and there's some value in this. But we knew to do this properly, we needed to create a demo. A good pitch is just not enough. So we put our own money into it and hired some people to help create it, and after that we could go out and look for real funding.

During development, we still did client work. But once we partnered with PlayStation, we were able to pull the teams together, hire a lot of new people and went into full production, setting up the story and pipeline, which all happened concurrently. There was a lot of learning, since we never had done anything at this scale before.

Our creative directors Eugene (Eastlake) and Ben (Markby) were responsible for pulling that story together. We also had some great writers (how did this action maybe affect that outcome). So we set up our overriding stories from the beginning, which I guess is really good. You know the full arc and what we want to do with the whole story.


We explore flooded streets of a big city, ancient temples and even get to wander around the moon! How did the locations and timelines come about? Do you have history-buffs or archeologists in your studio?



We knew we had to make an impact. The first time you time travel had to be great. And I think we’ve achieved that, because every single person I’ve seen was like "Wow, I’m on the moon!". Also Tesla was always a really interesting thing for us and we wanted the places (you visit) to be different from each other. But like mayan temples and even World War II, not all places had to be necessarily joyful and happy.

We looked at a lot of research, read up a lot and when you try to find other important moments in history, you get down that rabbit hole of information where you discover characters that are super interesting. For me it was important that we get some women in there, but the problem was that there is not a lot of good documented stuff about female characters.

That’s why we included Amelia (Earhart) as a key character. So we hooked people with real places in history, fabricated the story around and twisted it. So you just carry on and each place has a different feel, with different things to do - it’s like mini storylines within this bigger game.


At the time of this interview, we only see four reviews on Opencritic and just a few more on Metacritic. There’s a lot more User ratings on Steam with "very positive" feedback. How’s that coming and what do you think of those critic sites in general?



For us it was important to make a game that is well regarded, even more than massive sales. And we were so passionate about it. Because we wanted people to see the vision that we had and hoped they had the same feeling. So it was vindicating and reassuring, because we were very nervous. You just don’t know how something is gonna be received. And in the last couple of months some people in the community had doubts about the game and us (maybe because of the delay, is it gonna live up to what we showed etc.). It wasn’t really negative, but people got nervous, which made us nervous.

We had given the keys out to a few reviewers and were hoping for everyone to get at least a week with the game. But because we tried to perfect and perfect and perfect it ended up only being a couple of days for everyone to try it out (keys out on Tuesday, game launched on Friday). So we were nervously waiting to know what people thought. A lot of the review sites won’t tell you until the release and everything was embargoed.

When we launched, for us it was 6 o’clock in the morning and I didn’t sleep. We were all in the office together, watching some of the videos come out and it was just great to see people playing it the way we intended and enjoyed it. They expressed surprise and were just wowed - it was really, really great!

People started going like: "Oh, they actually did it. They lived up to that hype". And it looks like a lot of the lower reviews are based on bugs, we had to iron out. Which sounds awful but is a good thing to see. Because that’s something we can fix.


I really enjoyed the concert, where I had to lick a toad to get hallucinations and end up with drumsticks in my hands. Beat Saber and Rock Band come to mind - very trippy.



I remember when Ben was like "Imagine if we did this" and we said "That’s insane.. but sounds kinda cool" [laughs] Imagine if you could be playing a concert like Woodrock, why not? We could just imagine ourselves there, that's where a lot of these ideas came from.


Wanderer


Some ideas came from Half-Life: Alyx, it seems. What other titles were used for inspiration?



We were in development already when Half-Life: Alyx came out. And for us it was more things we wanted to realize in VR. Half-Life: Alyx did backup a lot of our thinking and the things we were delivering. So when Alyx and Boneworks came out we were like "Oh, great. They’re going with the physicality stuff. If these guys are doing it, we’re doing it in the same sort of way."

We felt like we were on the right track. It supported and perfected what we were doing. And, again, because there wasn’t much stuff out there you didn’t necessarily know what was gonna work. But we did so much client/brand content that we knew how people reacted in VR and what they wanted to do.


How do you get players to "feel" like they're in the room in VR, rather than just going through a predetermined level section?



For us it meant physicality. The first thing you do is start picking up things and playing around with them. So we made the most of that. If you’re putting someone through these times in history, you don’t want them to lose the immersion. We wanted people being in there, taking the headset off and going "Oh that’s right, now I remember where I am."


Where did the inspiration for the puzzles come from?



One of the things the team was conscious about was "How can an item from this time zone help an item from another time zone". That was really important - the key pieces that could help you throughout. We started with the items we needed and then decided where to put those.

If the puzzle was "You have to find a frog to lick it" then where could the frog appear and how could you capture it. It builds from there. We asked ourselves: "What can you do to make the most of VR". And I think the name "Escape Room" doesn’t do the game justice, because of the mix between adventure, action and puzzles. So this balance is always very interesting.


What other mechanics and mini-games were once planned but ended up getting cut?



What didn’t make the cut was some kind of Gold Rush period. We imagined panning for gold, but that was cut out quite early. Because we were thinking of famous things in history - what are some great events that people might be interested in reliving. And actually the demo that we did was about the Wrights Brothers. The storyline back then was "If early flight hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t be able to get to the moon".

So we did this whole thing in Kitty Hawk where you had to capture that moment in a photo. Because history is all about who captured it, not about who did it first. So you had to put together this old-school camera and take the photo at the right moment, which helped you to get to the moon later. But we couldn’t quite fit it into the overall story.

Another thing we explored a lot was an amazing story about a female chariot racer in Roman times, but we thought it might be to neausiating for people to be on a chariot. We probably underestimated the audience there, because movement doesn’t seem to bother people as much as we thought it might. So that’s something we’re potentially looking at for the next one.


What was the most interesting workaround you had to find for a problem?



Our biggest problems were probably linked to budget and time [laughs]. There was this idea that came from the movie Tomorrowland, where she picked up an item and it immediately took her to another place - but it wasn’t time traveling. What a great idea, you’re just picking up stuff and then suddenly your location changes.

But the natural instinct for a lot of people was to then drop the item, and as soon as you dropped it you’re back to where you were. So what we ended up with (which I think is a lot stronger) is the fact that you use the watch as your time travel device. And that allowed a lot more drama.


Wanderer


Time travel, experiencing the story and changing history. Would the latter in particular be a good idea in reality?



I feel like it's always hard to question those things. Because you don’t know where you might end up. If you’re playing with time, what makes you think that you could change it for the better? It’s like the butterfly effect. You might think it could have a different outcome, but why would you risk it?


To address the elephant in the room: How is work in times of corona, quarantine and home office? Has it been a big adjustment?



We’ve been pretty lucky in New Zealand, since we probably didn’t have to do that as much as everyone else. But we all started really working together in September of 2019 and went into lockdown in March (2020). It was hard because even though we were digital and you’d think it would be easy to work online and from home, we still needed to work very well together as a team. There are a lot of meetings done during the day just to make sure everyone was good to go and alined. It was taking so much more time with that stuff, than if you were in the same environment.

Also VR headsets, we didn’t have enough, just about four or five kits. But we made sure all the developers and key people had access to them. Still, it’s hard to test things in VR, you’re constantly switching in and out and in and out - it’s not like a normal game. All of that added to the timeframe. It was tiring on the brain and everyone was really exhausted. And tricky - since we were a small team, you couldn’t just replace people that easily. QA got really hard as well. We were trying to find kits for everyone and buying them, it was ridiculous actually.


(Especially with VR) How do you present your game, when you can't strap the VR goggles on anyone's head in good conscience?



We were worried, because that’s how you present VR, right? One of the big marketing things was gonna be being at events and expos and obviously that wasn’t going to happen. And we probably wouldn’t have the budget to do all that. But we had to go through Sony’s VR scene. They looked at that stuff online and for the day to day testing, those who could and had the kit because everything was delayed, we got milestone feedback. So that was good.


Do you miss trade shows and on-site appointments?



Not overly, but I miss the face to face interaction and engagement with people. It’s always better doing that than with a camera or via email. You can sit down with someone, have a chat and don’t know what comes out of that maybe. And otherwise… look we would have been at so many trade shows and booked stuff and imagine what happened with that delay (of the game and due to Covid). So in hindsight it worked out fine.


Your next game is ... already in the works, already conceived or still a long way off?



We can’t confirm anything yet but we hope to do more. We’re in a better position now, with the game being received really well, than we were before Wanderer came out. And we want to include even more female characters.


Thank you for the interview.





Dieser Blogartikel ist auch auf Deutsch verfügbar: Wanderer - Interview mit Sam Ramlu


InterviewDeveloperWandererVRVirtual Reality
Wanderer - Boxart
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  • Entwickler:Oddboy
    M-Theory
  • Publisher:Oddboy
    M-Theory
  • Genre:Action-Adventure
  • Plattform:PC, PS4
  • Virtual Reality:Oculus VR, PlayStation VR, Steam VR
  • Release:28.01.2022