Developing Roguelite Game Where You Play Two Characters At Once

Introduction & Background

To be completely honest, it started out with the three of us making a game with a much larger scope. It was going to be a co-op bossfight game where you would only fight bosses together for the entirety of the game. After some time, we decided to pivot towards something that was more reasonably scoped, something we could make and release on our own in a reasonable amount of time. The three of us all have regular day jobs. At the time, we were all working at Hazelight making Split Fiction. So we only had our spare time to develop Archons. The team consists of me (Per Stenbeck, Design & Sound), Andreas Tykoson (Code & Design), and Johannes Burström (Art & Design). So Archons was a side project that we just loved doing in our spare time.

The idea came from our coder, Andreas, who pitched controlling two characters (like Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, a great game, everyone should play it), but in a roguelike scenario inspired by the Vampire Survivors genre. I thought it was really nice with a fresh take on that genre, and it felt like a very good scope since the fun and main challenge would be in that main mechanic that we could build content upon.

Overcoming Challenges

One of the absolutely biggest challenges was how to make basically everything be in sync with the music in the game. All the enemy attacks, all the abilities, and weapons always trigger on a beat. So for our programmer to set up that system and have it be smooth and on time was a big task for sure.

For me, on the design and sound front, it was easier. I made sure that the sounds would fit with our music and that they were mixed in a way that didn't make your ears get sick of the repeating sounds. There are multiple ways of doing this. One of the tricks is, of course, to randomly pitch shift the sounds a lot, to get rid of the monotony that comes with a sound repeating over and over again. Another thing we did was to include sounds from the music in the sound design of the weapons and enemy attacks, etc. This really made it so that the sound FX melted into the music nicely. We worked with an extremely talented French musician called Olivier Orand, who made all the tracks for the purpose of Archons. It's worth playing the game just for the soundtrack, really!

Another big thing we had to overcome was how the camera worked in this setting. Since you control two characters at the same time, we noticed quite quickly that it was horrible to have the characters switch sides. So we eventually landed on having the camera rotate with your characters, to make sure that the players were always on the "correct" side of the screen. We of course recommend you to play the game with a controller, and that would mean that your right thumbstick controls the right character, and the left thumbstick controls the left character. Turns out, having the camera rotating with your characters was by far the best option, and it actually works really nicely. Our programmer also added lots of tweakable options for the player to customize the camera movement if wanted.

Team Structure

We all come from previous game development experience. Some titles that we have shipped include A Way Out, It Takes Two, and Split Fiction, all three at Hazelight. Deciding on the structure of the studio came quite naturally. It started out with just me and Andreas, wanting to make a small game together. After a while, we realized that we would need an artist, and then we got really lucky and found Johannes Burström on ArtStation. I fell completely in love with his art style, and after our first online meeting, we both knew that this would be a great fit.

Publishing & Marketing Approach

We focused purely on Steam. Our main ambition was in the making of the game, and we focused 100% on that, and unfortunately, not so much on publishing and distribution. It's easy to look back and say "we should've done this and that," but we only had focus on finishing the game and getting it out there for people to play.

We didn't focus much on marketing and community building. We did do quite a few Reddit posts, and we had Reddit ads going for a bit to gather a good base of wishlist. We released a demo for the Steam Next Fest, which was great, and we got a little bit of attention there, which got us some extra wishlist numbers. After launch, we sent out keys to streamers and posted as much as we could about the game, but it was mostly just fingers crossed that the players would enjoy the game so much that it would spread by itself. Of course, we were hoping that some big streamer would pick up the game and that it would be a kickstart to the spread of the game, but unfortunately, that never happened.

Post-Launch Support

The winter-themed endless map was an effort from us to try and give our small community something nice while at the same time trying to boost some visibility. Other than that, when it comes to monetisation, live ops, etc, we are not very active on that front. Once we released the game, we all very much enjoyed getting our spare time back. A lot of things had to take the back seat for a while when we were finishing up the game, so we were all very happy to have that stuff back in our lives. So in a way, maybe Archons didn't get the marketing attention it deserved when looking back. But we are still very proud of what we achieved and the number of people that have played the game (over 15.000 people with great reviews on Steam).

Hopefully, this article can help spread the game to some more players out there. BulletHell Studios has parted ways for now, and we are all enjoying doing our own little projects at our own pace at the moment. But who knows what will happen in the future?

Tips For Indie Developers

My advice would be to make sure that you have a marketing strategy before releasing the game. And don't stress with the release. I would say that it's better to wait, even if the game is finished and ready for shipping. Just wait, get your marketing strategy in place. Maybe team up with someone on marketing if you don't have the energy, expertise, or time to do it yourself. Offer them a piece of the sales or something if there is no budget. But give your game the chance it deserves if you believe in it. We released Archons as soon as it was done, and I think, with knowing what we know now, we should've probably waited and secured a publisher or someone in marketing before releasing the game.

Advice Looking Back

Sorry to be repetitive here, but I definitely think it would be the marketing aspect. Making sure that all the marketing and/or publishing deals were in place before going ahead with the release of the game.

Other than that, not much. We had a lot of fun doing this project together, and we are very proud of the result. We really hope that more people will get their hands on the game in the future! Thank you so much for wanting to write about it!

Per Stenbeck, BulletHell Studios

Interview conducted by 80 Level