Three game devs climbed a mountain - epilogue

So all of my interview subjects died. Big deal. We learned some things along the way, didn't we? Back in Peak's lobby (a cartoonish airport you can play around in) the developers and I have a debrief. Is there anything they've learned while playing Peak - apart from the fact that having friends is fun?

"Don't work on a game for five years," says Bennett, referencing the fact that Peak was reportedly made in just a few months, yet has sold a huge number of copies.

"Yeah," says Holly, "that's a big one, honestly... it shows how you don't need to spend a huge amount of time if you just go in with a really simple premise and kind of extrapolate your idea from there."

"Yeah, do a little less," laughs Bennett.

What do they think of the game itself? What's interested them most about it?

"I think it's really interesting, especially in multiplayer, if I look at the 40 minutes we've played, we've obviously climbed, but also I've been fed, I've been put on shoulders, I've been throwing a frisbee, we've jumped in a cannon...

"It's really few inputs and so many outputs. I'm a bit jealous of that depth, with so little visuals."

Holly is impressed by how much they've pushed the core idea, which is basically a familiar climber's stamina bar: "The [usual] mechanic is you hold a button and go up, and your stamina goes down. And they said, 'Okay, how do we make that interesting? How do we make surfaces that are more interesting to climb? And how do we make your stamina more interesting by adding all of these debuffs or buffs to it, that you can see directly on the bar?"

"It's really simple where it can be simple, and complicated where it needs to be complicated," says Bennett. "I really like that. Absolutely. I feel so much jealousy that I didn't make a multiplayer climbing game.

"And so many of the ideas that are built into it - the novel ideas - are mostly social ideas. Like how you grab the person's hand to help them up, or you leave a rope, or use a cannon, or you're feeding people - all of that stuff. Even the resource management stuff. Because everybody has such a small inventory, it immediately becomes a social game."

Well, I had a good time anyway. Hopefully you Jankers did too. If you want more misadventures like this on Jank in future, tell us so. (Hint hint, nudge nudge, subscribe subscribe.) For now, I'm taking off my hiking boots. Bye!