Had the pleasure to talk with the talented people of Tessera Studios. Let’s learn more about the studio and their game, Intruders : Hide and Seek. You can pick up the game right now for the PlayStation VR.
Can you tell us a little bit about the history of Tessera Studios, how was it formed. What does Tessera mean?
Tessera Studios originated in U-Tad (University of Technology and Digital Art), where an assortment of art, programming and design students were brought together to develop a game called Intruders: Hide and Seek as each of our respective Masters’ main project. Groups were formed arbitrarily by the teachers, an expected move given that students barely knew each other anyways; less so on a professional level. We were labeled as group 4 by our teachers. Tessera is a greek word for cube, or square, and a tesseract is a four-dimensional analogue of a cube. It is also linked to fictional cosmic or extradimensional mechanisms. Suffice it to say we did not only find this name fitting, but also extremely cool.
Looking back, I can’t help but think that we were the perfect concoction, as every member’s vision was integral towards the game’s creation.
Can you explain to our audience what the game Intruders : Hide and Seek is to those that are not familiar with it.
With Intruders: Hide and Seek, players will step into the shoes of Ben, a 13 year old boy who is casually enjoying vacation alongside his family until three extremely menacing intruders break into his house. You manage to hide, and they are unaware of your presence, but they have kidnapped your family. You are running out of time to save your loved ones.
Twists and turns will lead the way into the mistrustful psyche of the grown-up mind.
Intruders: Hide and Seek is a VR compatible experience. To succeed in your task, you must move unnoticed, in an attempt to survive the worst nightmare imaginable. It is a stealth-based thriller in which direct confrontation with the enemy will bring about a catastrophic outcome.
How many people were involved in making Intruders for the PSVR. What are there various roles. How many hours were needed to make this game?
It started with 11 of us. We are the founders of Tessera Studios, and the original developers for the game, but along the way we have received help from a few others. The three main roles were designers (the people who come up with the ideas), programmers (those who translate them into something playable), and artists (those who make everything look great). That is, as you can imagine, an obscene oversimplification. As the project got bigger, we also relied on help from animators (responsible for all the characters’ movements and expressions), and game testers for the polishing final stage of development. The game took 2 years to see fruition, during which we worked overtime most days (10-12 hours). We were doing what we loved, so it never became unbearable for us.
Who came up with the idea for Intruders? Why did they choice to make it a first person stealth game?
In our early brainstorming sessions, ideas ranged dramatically, from a game about a Super-Killer Jesus Christ (which we suspected would gain some unwanted controversy), to a medieval reality-show scavenger hunt, or a game where you had to combat insanity as the lone survivor of a gargantuan fall into the abyss. One of the team members came up with an idea for a game, where you were a little boy who witnesses how three intruders break into your house. You had to craft different tools and weapons by scavenging every-day items around the house (a sharp pencil, a toothbrush shiv or a soap bar inside of a sock) and either knock down the intruders or force them out of your place. This idea had some interesting elements, but soon we transitioned from this dynamic and almost buoyant feel, to a more self-contained chilling tension that would force the player to look away in unbearable discomfort, similarly to how Michael Haneke made us all feel with the movie Funny Games.
Were there any challenges or difficulties when making this game for the Playstation VR?
There were countless challenges, particularly at the earlier stages of development. It took us weeks just to fully integrate the hardware, and to have the VR goggles finally showing something. However, this wasn’t our greatest hurdle. The toughest part was figuring out what works and what stops working once you transition into the VR realm. When we started development, VR wasn’t fully established yet, and a lot of conventions had not been streamlined. There were very few forums, or official documents where you could find consensus over the strategy to solve the different design problems that emerged. Attaining optimal controls and smooth player movement to avoid motion sickness was the first challenge in this regard. After that we had to face many other interesting predicaments, such as cinematics in VR and successfully guiding the player’s attention, or even optimisation techniques so that the game would run at the desired frames per second. These are just a few of the issues you face when developing a game for VR.
What does the future hold for Tessera Studios? Will there be more games coming to the PSVR?
We are very proud that we could develop Intruders: Hide and Seek without any external financing. However, we do not wish to repeat the experience. We are actively on the lookout for publishers that might be interested in supporting our next project. We have many ideas in store, all of which are more ambitious than our prior work. Until we can fully jump on board of any of these projects, we are collaborating with different companies and clients developing VR related software and interactive experiences for them. This is not the end of Tessera Studios, and we hope we can prove ourselves further.
Will Intruders ever have a physical release for the US?
This totally depends on our publisher for Intruders: Hide and Seek. We certainly hope it does, but we cannot guarantee it with certainty, as we do not have the final say on those decisions, and distribution overseas means a high expenditure on their side. Hopefully our financial status will rise with this game, enabling us to have agency over these topics. However, we assume that if the game is a commercial success, a physical release of Intruders for the US will be the most obvious step to take. So sit tight!
Do you have any advice for VR developers who are also hoping to create a high quality VR game for either the Playstation VR?
My advice would be to pay close attention to what has already been established, and to play and draw inspiration from as many VR titles as possible, in order to avoid an excruciating trial and error approach towards development. Every experience is different, and likewise the pitfalls developers encounter along the way. I can only wish them the best. On a less technical level, I would advise them to find a way to always stay passionate and motivated with the project, and that requires teaming up with a group of people you can get along with and getting everyone on the boat to row in the same direction.
Before we end this interview is there anything else you’d like to share?
Only that we feel extremely grateful to everyone that has enabled us to live off of our dreams, and we hope we can continue to do so for years to come. We wish the same fate for other aspiring developers. Thank you very much for the interview!
