Over the previous few years, I’ve been doing extra interviews with builders I respect, and it has been difficult with timezones, schedules, and extra. One developer has been on my listing for a few years. In actual fact, I’ve wished to interview Santa Ragione earlier than I even joined TouchArcade again after I performed among the early video games from them. Issues lastly labored out over the previous few months, and I bought to speak with Pietro Righi Riva of Santa Ragione about their sport design philosophy, platforms, cellular releases, Steam Deck, curation, espresso, and far more.
TouchArcade (TA): Inform us a bit of bit about your self and what you do at Santa Ragione.
Pietro Righi Riva (PR): I’m the co-founder and studio director of Santa Ragione, a sport manufacturing studio based mostly in Milan. Since we began in 2010, I’ve been concerned in designing, directing, and producing our video games, FOTONICA, MirrorMoon EP, Wheels of Aurelia, and Saturnalia. My position encompasses overseeing the artistic course, the planning, and guaranteeing that our initiatives ship! These days, I’ve acted as govt producer on our co-production initiatives, comparable to Milky Means Prince and Mediterranea Inferno, each directed by Lorenzo Redaelli.
TA: I view Santa Ragione lots like Simogo the place I like how totally different every sport feels, however each launch is value my money and time. Are you able to give us a glimpse into your workflow on approaching totally different initiatives as a designer?
PRR: Our strategy to sport design is kind of iterative and exploratory. We begin with an experimental idea that guides all design and know-how choices. Every undertaking begins from the notes for concepts we took through the improvement of the earlier video games. These could be about themes, mechanics, or setting, and we attempt to perceive what would match collectively in fascinating methods. We prioritize innovation, which regularly leads us to mix genres and experiment with totally different storytelling methods. Lastly, we attempt to improve the design problem complexity from sport to sport, which isn’t essentially a factor I’d suggest!
TA: Along with your video games out there on varied industrial storefronts, you’ve executed many experimental releases like tributes to video leases, diversifications of novels, VR initiatives, music exploration video games, and extra. What learnings from these video games have you ever dropped at the industrial releases Santa Ragione works on over time?
PRR: Our experimental initiatives enable us to check new concepts and mechanics in a low-risk atmosphere. They function a sandbox the place we are able to play with ideas that may later be refined and included into our industrial titles. For example, the procedural technology methods and non-linear storytelling we experimented with in smaller initiatives considerably influenced the event of the dialogue system utilized in Wheels of Aurelia and Saturnalia. As for my solo work, I prefer to deal with issues that I really feel don’t align with our industrial portfolio, so they’re extra like an exhaust valve for creativity.
TA: Earlier than stepping into extra video games, I wished to briefly contact in your PhD thesis from about 10 years in the past masking the exploration of “play as a course of and the restricted position of the designer”. Are you able to inform us a bit of bit about that?
PRR: My PhD thesis (“Designing Playful Artifacts”) centered on the concept play is an emergent course of and that the designer’s position needs to be to create programs that enable for a variety of participant interactions and outcomes. This angle encourages us to design video games which can be extra about offering a framework for gamers to create their very own experiences reasonably than dictating a selected narrative path. It was a problem to outline design patterns that drive participant conduct with out resorting to challenges or rewards. To permit this strategy to work, designers have to be much less controlling of what can occur inside their video games, which in flip have to be “breakable” as a way to enable for distinctive experiences (and therefore depend on participant collaboration to work).
TA: Santa Ragione goals to affect sport design by way of new genres and to proceed the custom of Italian design. Anybody enjoying your video games can see the previous, however I’ve been stunned at how little individuals speak concerning the latter after I talk about your releases with them. I’d like to know the way you strategy bringing Italian design into your initiatives.
PRR: I come from an instructional background rooted within the tradition of Italian design. To me, designing is a part of a artistic continuum that predates the industrialization course of and extends to the current day. On this stream, we begin from one thing that already exists, and remodel it by way of totally different media. In that sense, we attempt to steal as a lot as doable from Italian style, structure and industrial design and use these media to speak about Italian society and politics, collaborating within the continuum talked about above.
TA: You’ve labored with many people over time on your personal initiatives and Santa Ragione. Are you able to give us a sport improvement anecdote that has caught with you years later from working with somebody particular?
PRR: I’ll inform you one factor I’m ashamed of. After we made the MirrorMoon demo, as a part of the 2012 International Sport Jam, we had no intention to show it right into a industrial launch. Then, the demo was nominated for the 2013 Unbiased Video games Pageant, which in flip meant that we might publish the sport on Steam. This was earlier than Steam was open to anybody for publishing, however we knew that was going to vary quickly, so, to optimize visibility, we needed to flip the demo right into a full sport within the shortest doable period of time. That summer season, Paolo, Nicolò and I labored for 16+ hours a day for 3 months, which was a fully horrid expertise, and made us swear by no means to crunch once more, a promise which we’ve maintained to this present day.
TA: I found Santa Ragione years in the past earlier than I even joined TouchArcade with a narrative about Fotonica on iOS. So much has modified since for Santa Ragione’s video games and platforms. How has it been for you working with totally different platforms over time?
PRR: There hasn’t been a lot of a distinction to be sincere, the most important change throughout all platforms is the shift away from human curation, and, on cellular, the diminished curiosity in premium titles.
TA: PC is clearly the main focus, however it’s nice to see extra video games come to consoles just like the latest console ports of Mediterranea Inferno which I cherished on Change. Are there any plans to carry older titles to consoles and among the newer releases to cellular?
PRR: We’re at all times exploring alternatives to carry our video games to new platforms. Our newest video games have all been printed for all main platforms, even when we quickly stopped bringing our video games to cellular, as a result of shrinking alternatives for premium video games talked about above. We’re presently evaluating the feasibility of porting a few of our older titles to those platforms, however we’d like to search out an skilled companion to revisit these video games.
TA: Given how diversified Santa Ragione’s video games are, I discover it exhausting to select a favourite as a result of I need individuals to expertise all of them, however I’ll say that the fixed all through is incredible and stylish interface design. How do you strategy giving what most builders neglect a lot care and character?
PRR: We strategy it with the identical consideration to element as some other a part of the sport, guaranteeing that it’s intuitive, aesthetically pleasing, and most significantly coherent with itself and with the remainder of the sport. We imagine {that a} well-designed interface can considerably elevate the perceived manufacturing worth of a title, and I personally have a background in interplay design that helps me preserve a excessive commonplace when directing and producing video games. Over time I collaborated with board sport writer Horrible Guild, producing/directing their digital releases (Potion Explosion, Railroad Ink Problem, The King’s Dilemma, and extra), and that was a possibility to resolve exhausting usability challenges in adapting board sport mechanics to digital interfaces that supply minimal quantity of friction.
TA: I first found Saturnalia in an older EDGE problem, 357 I imagine. Having performed it lastly, it’s one among my favourite latest survival horror video games. What have been your inspirations within the style for this sport?
PRR: Saturnalia attracts inspiration from a wide range of sources, together with conventional Sardinian folklore, German expressionist cinema and theater, and Dreamcast-era survival horror video games like D2 and Illbleed. Visually, the sport takes cues from the custom of Italian comedian books (like Dylan Canine) and the classics of Giallo cinema, such because the works of Mario Bava and Dario Argento.
TA: As I discussed above, PC is the main focus for sport launches, and whereas I used to attend for console ports of indie titles earlier than, with the Steam Deck, I can simply play them on a transportable day one. A number of your video games are both Steam Deck Verified or Playable. Have you ever been doing any particular work on optimizing video games for the system?
PRR: It seems that when you absorb consideration some accessibility rules when designing an interface (subtitles/textual content dimension, help for a number of display rations, help for controllers, key rebinding, high quality settings to help older machines, and so forth) you will get Steam Deck Verified with none extra work!
TA: Not too long ago, we had the unhappy closure of Die Gute Fabrik and also you introduced up the top of curation and the rise of algorithmic gross sales optimization. Getting eyes in your video games is clearly exhausting within the present time, so how do you deal with getting extra consideration to those initiatives? Having protection in locations like EDGE journal who’ve reviewed your video games earlier than most not too long ago each Saturnalia and Mediterranea Inferno clearly is nice.
PRR: That is THE QUESTION. Both we determine it out or the medium will stagnate. Innovation is extraordinarily uncommon in AAA due to the monetary dangers concerned, and if the one unbiased work that succeeds is rooted in conventional genres and visuals we are going to maintain enjoying the identical video games time and again for the foreseeable future. I don’t have an answer sadly, but when anybody does, please get in contact!
TA: Are you able to inform us a bit of bit about Horses, your subsequent undertaking.
PRR: HORSES is one other title we’re co-producing. Directed and created by Andrea Lucco Borlera, it’s a completely regular journey sport set in a wonderfully regular horse farm. I like to recommend watching a trailer. Sadly I can’t share particulars about platforms or launch date but, however we’d like to do a preview with you after we are prepared!
TA: What’s subsequent for Santa Ragione in 2024 alongside Horses?
PRR: Along with HORSES, we’ve two new initiatives for which we’re presently in search of funding. I can’t reveal a lot about them but, however you possibly can anticipate the identical proportional improve in complexity and ambition that you’ve got seen from sport to sport in our portfolio.
TA: What do you assume of the present state of console platforms for discoverability and likewise how they examine to what we noticed occur with cellular years in the past?
PRR: As talked about above, discoverability on console platforms has develop into more and more difficult as a result of reliance on automated and algorithmic “curation”. It’s true that there are far more video games now, particularly since (fortunately) retrocompatibility of customers’ digital libraries has develop into an business commonplace. I don’t know that there’s essentially a parallel with the cellular market, however for certain each want higher programs for customers to find issues they may like.
TA: What are your ideas on gaming subscriptions like Netflix and Apple Arcade and even Sport Go and PS+ for indie builders?
PRR: They’re double-edged swords. On one had, it’s the final bastion of human curation for the medium, actually the one area through which people are nonetheless making choices, and that may probably curate a extra various, extra fascinating number of video games than what you’ll discover within the varied glorified best-seller lists divided by tag that digital shops boast as automated, per-customer curation. Then again, in ecosystems through which these subscriptions have succeeded, they’ve successfully diminished total unit gross sales, giving platform holders an excellent higher monopolistic benefit, the place they’ll undercut publishers and provide decrease and decrease one-time charges to chose video games.
TA: What do you assume are crucial platforms and storefronts for indie builders to launch on right now?
PRR: A very powerful platform will likely be one which doesn’t exist but, one the place people curate choices of video games catered to actual audiences, and hopefully audiences that don’t but play video video games. We’d like a platform that’s owned by the publishers and the builders and never by actors that want to maximise brief time period revenue on the expense of the expansion of the medium. As per right now, crucial platform, whichever is keen to pay upfront for improvement prices, reduces builders’ threat and permits them to work on a brand new undertaking.
TA: Are there any plans to do any merchandise on your video games or studio this 12 months?
PRR: We’re exploring the potential of creating merchandise. Whereas we don’t have particular bulletins at this second, we’re trying into collaborations with artists and designers to see if there’s something fascinating we are able to make.
Observe: The sport shouldn’t be up for pre-order and is bought out, however the picture above is the official artwork from Restricted Run Video games for its bodily launch.
TA: How was it working with Restricted Run Video games and may we anticipate some extra bodily releases?
PRR: We’re very grateful to LRG for producing the Saturnalia’s version, which is one thing numerous followers had requested for. It was a really nice and clean expertise, I’m simply unhappy we couldn’t get an Xbox model produced! We might LOVE to have extra bodily releases, particularly for Milky Means Prince and Mediterranea Inferno which have actually incredible soundtracks that may be fantastic to bundle in some kind of particular version. Nothing to announce but, however we’re actively pitching this concept to potential companions. We’ll positively let you understand when and if we’ve information on this!
TA: Do you have got a message on your followers studying this?
PRR: To our followers, I wish to categorical my deepest gratitude on your help and curiosity in our quirky experiments. We’ve a pleasant and welcoming Discord neighborhood that you’re completely invited to hitch, we love to debate design and manufacturing matters with followers and we’re there for any questions you may need. I even have an enchantment: ensure to evaluation our video games in your platform of alternative, the place out there, and to inform your pals about our video games, it actually helps lots! And eventually, to people who can not afford our video games however wish to play them, you possibly can look ahead to one of many frequent gross sales we run and, if costs are nonetheless too excessive for you, please be at liberty to pirate with out feeling responsible, you possibly can at all times purchase the video games to help us at a later time when you possibly can afford it (simply don’t purchase from shady Steam key resellers! When unsure, be at liberty to e mail us).
TA: Now for crucial query. How do you want your espresso? (Go into as a lot element as doable re: beans, format, and so forth).
PRR: Nicely, I’ve to admit one thing, I’m not a espresso snob in any respect. I truly use a espresso capsule machine for comfort. No fancy espresso machines or artisanal brewing strategies. I choose lighter roasts and I like so as to add a splash of soy milk. Sorry!
I’d prefer to thank Pietro Righi Riva for his or her time and assist with this interview.
You’ll be able to sustain with all our interviews right here together with our latest ones with Peter ‘Durante’ Thoman about PH3 and Falcom right here, M2 discussing shmups and extra right here, Digital Extremes for Warframe cellular, Workforce NINJA, Sonic Dream Workforce, Hello-Fi Rush, Pentiment, and extra. As common, thanks for studying.