Rolling Glory Jam
Our next Indie Corner Spotlight Interview could be our most apt so far. Rolling Glory Jam is an Indie Dev team all the way from Indonesia! See what I did there? Oh well, moving on swiftly. The developers of the Indie hit game, Rage in Peace, talk in detail about the game’s development and their inspirations. I hope that you enjoy this amazing interview.
How long have you been a developer?
10 years
How many years has your team been developing games?
3 years
Who, or what, inspired you to become a games developer?
People who put their heart in their work and fight for it always fascinate me particularly when their work is something that can touch and inspire others, especially songs, arts, movies, and games of course. I merely want to be one of them, to be able to express what’s in my heart, and (hopefully) be able to inspire others. A game is an ideal medium for me, not only because of the fantastic experience it can give to audiences, but also because I can make one.
What was the inspiration for your team’s name?
It’s all started when a group of people who love making games in our studio joined Game Jam (Rolling Glory’s our studio’s name, it’s creative digital studio, not a game studio). We named ourselves Rolling Game Jam back then. And when we decided to develop Rage In Peace into a full game, we needed a name for the game development team, and simple enough, we chose Rolling Glory Jam.
Describe a usual day in the life of an indie development team.
Just like an ordinary day for everybody developing a game!
Can you describe the process/timeline of developing a game?
Rage In Peace was born in Indies VS PewDiePie game jam by Gamejolt in November 2014. The story premise is a man has a dream to die in his sleep, at his home, and with peace when one morning, the Grim Reaper comes bearing the news that he will die today. We have to make sure he can get back home safely to achieve his sole dream. Game design-wise, initially, its premise is a rage inducing hard platformer.
The game jam ended nicely for us, PewDiePie played our game in the end, and it had a huge impact. And surprisingly, many YouTubers played Rage In Peace after that, and it got good feedback on GameJolt. Time flies, we do nothing for RIP until early 2016. Rolling Glory decided to make Rage In Peace to be a full game.
At first, it was planned to be done in 2 years by just 2 of us, me as the game designer, story writer, and programmer, and Riva as 2D artist. We got help from Inya, another 2D artist, who helped on UI and graphic design stuff we needed. In the beginning, Inya is not full-time in RIP development, only helping whenever it was required. Later, in the last year of development, Inya joined to become a full-time 2D artist. We scrapped the game jam version but retained the core ‘fun to play, fun to watch’ premise and the story basis.
I realised that I don’t like unfair rage game so I decided ‘surprise and memorisation’ as a premise to avoid the’unfair’ element I don’t like. Every obstacle will always appear in the same position, same time, and the same pattern, so once you remember it, you will pass through easily.
This premise helps me a lot on level designing. We didn’t think the art style in the game jam version was proper for the full game version, so we designed a new art style. It’s not that hard, Riva and I discussed the art style we loved (and we thought it could be done with a few artists), which led to decisions to use Behemoth and Juicy Beast art style as our inspiration and main references.
And so after that, Timmy was born. For the story, I created a whole new story with proper characters, persona, plot, etc. At first, I wanted to express people’s thought about death through the game, but in the writing process, I streamlined the story to focus on Timmy’s journey. The whole story writing process was done throughout the development, and I had help on the story writing from Halida as a co-writer and Narwastu as a story consultant, he helped me a lot in making sure the story was tight and had a good plot.
After we completed a prototype demo, we came to our game music composer fellow, Septianfrom Monkey Melody, to share a dream of developing a game with great music. Septian had a dream to make a soundtrack album. Develop a game and release a soundtrack album? Why not both? So we had a collaboration on Rage In Peace.
Our next milestones of the development timeline after that was Early 2017 we signed a publisher-developer contract with Toge Productions. During 2017, Vian, a VFX and cinematic artist, helped us to conceptualise and implement the cinematics to be impactful despite the simple techniques we used.
Finally, we attended several Indonesian events and had the opportunity to showcase the game to the players.
How do you juggle all of the aspects of games development?
In Rage In Peace, I had the responsibility in every aspect of the game except in the implementation of art and sounds. In Rage In Peace, we mixed deep narrative story about death and life with challenging rage-inducing mechanics and fun gameplay. Thus, the most challenging aspect for me was juggling the story writing and level designing task because I needed a specific mindset and mood for doing each of them.
Finally, I did the level design just when my mood was positive and did the story writing when in a negative mood, and repeated this until I was satisfied with the result. For other aspects, I think I had no particular issue because I enjoyed them. Yeah, it was stressful, but it was all worth it.
What is your ambition as an indie developer?
Be able to give great experiences to players, inspire them, and make them think while having fun, or at least make them feel better in this uncertain world. And of course, I wish my game sell well too so I can make another game.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to get into the games industry?
Firstly, make sure that you love games and game development from your heart, then, decide what you want to do or to make, and fight for it! To accomplish your dream game, you will need determination and perseverance for sure. I always believe that hard work pays off, and everything you do from the heart will reach another heart.
Where do you see gaming heading in the next decade?
Honestly, I don’t have anything in mind, but I’m sure it will be exciting.
A huge thank you to Damas at Rolling Glory Jam for taking the time to answer my questions. If you would like your Indie Dev team to be featured next, give me a shout!
You can support the Dev team by purchasing their game on Steam or the Nintendo eShop on the following links.
Nintendo eShop – https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/Rage-in-Peace-1465330.html
Huawei P20
