Games
The Game Bakers have been cooking up a co-op experience about love in a lost planet. We spoke with the studio about this space-set romance.
There are many love stories in video games, but it’s not often that players get the chance to experience an already established relationship in co-op play. Haven – indie studio The Game Bakers’ upcoming title – takes this concept even higher and into space itself, featuring a couple that escaped to a lost planet in order to be free together. A task that, as expected, won’t be easy.
Haven officially introduced itself as an RPG with a strong Japanese influence in how combat and the world works. In its heart, the experience is all about exploring these outer landscapes either in single player or co-op modes. There’s an intriguing combat system, crafting, and hundreds of lines of dialogue to read and interact with. But first and foremost, Haven aims to be relaxing for players.
This is a significant change of pace considering the studio’s portfolio. Their past work includes Furi, an intense hack and slash about a silent protagonist tasked with the elimination of several guardians throughout a floating prison, each of them protecting a particular floor. It’s the complete opposite of relaxing, presenting combat sequences that could easily be compared to FromSoftware’s work in terms of challenge. Its success was forged by an easy to learn, hard to master, kind of gameplay, along with a vibrant art style and artists like Carpenter Brut contributing to the soundtrack.
Jumping from this isolated and violent experience into a story about a rebel couple trying to find peace in an alien planet wasn’t easy and it took some time for the developers to understand what they were going for this time. Emeric Thoa, creative director, game designer and producer at The Game Bakers, says that he always wanted to make a game that had a love story at its core.
“Haven is more a game about the characters and what they fight for than a love story as we usually mean it. And gameplay-wise, it took its time to hatch,” Thoa explains. “We started prototyping the gliding, then we cut it… then we brought it back a year later, for the best. It’s actually pretty late in the development that we added co-op.”
The game has been in development for about two years so far and under production since 2018. It’s aimed to be first and foremost a solo game, like most JRPGs, but it’s also being made to be shared with someone. Thoa adds that the addition of co-op felt a bit like Furi’s speedrun mode, being a feature that became obvious later in development when the game was finally playable.
“Development-wise, Furi was pretty smooth. So, we pretty much tried to replicate that rather than do things differently. It’s still a game about freedom and it’s still a game that stands out. But for sure Haven is very different and has a very different mood. It took a little while for the team to get used to it, but now that they can all see the game, it’s much easier.”
During the conception process, many games arise as influences, but also some from other mediums. The studio calls it “kind of the lovechild of Journey meets Persona”, but it also carries influence from other games, like Gravity Rush and The Legend of Zelda, along with shows such as Cowboy Bebop and Korra.
For the main characters Yu and Kay in particular, Image Comics’ Saga proved to be an interesting point of reference, featuring a rebel couple who belong to opposite factions that are currently in a space war. Even though Thoa discovered the comic book series after the development had already started, he says it still proved to be an inspiration, with key differences and similarities.
“Yu and Kay are indeed from different planets, but it’s not the reason why they can’t be together. It’s a very different world from Saga, overall,” he tells us. “One of the similarities is that the main characters are not a couple who just met each other. They are past the seduction phase, they can be themselves with each other – that makes them pretty interesting to me. It’s a very different love story than what we are used to in mainstream entertainment.”
The characters are always together and interactions such as holding hands as they’re gliding through these wild landscapes can be seen in the latest trailer. While many of these actions will be tied to story cutscenes and conversations during exploration, hugging and kissing are also part of their movesets.
Story-wise, there’s much we don’t know yet, but the biggest focus is on Yu and Kay’s everyday struggles looking for a place where they can be together in peace. As they land on this unknown planet, they discover the presence of Rust, which is making wildlife aggressive and affecting the terrain as well. Players will move through different regions in what Thoa describes as a “progressive-open” world. The game starts off fairly linear, but quickly begins to open up as you move forward with the story.
This decision comes from the goal to make Haven as relaxing as possible, but also of delivering an accessible RPG experience. That’s why, in addition to not being as open-world as many recent titles within the genre, there’s barely any elements in the user interface. Quest logs, side missions, additional weapons or even stats won’t take part in the game, and it’ll only require a couple of buttons to play.
For Thoa, open world is not necessarily a quality and he calls it a dangerous structure that can quickly become overwhelming for players. “Where should I go, what should I do? It’s easy to feel lost. That’s why games rely on quest logs, maps, HUD navigation helpers and so on. You quickly feel like you’re following Google Maps on your phone on your way to the mall. I didn’t want any of that in Haven, and the structure stays relatively simple.”
Either in co-op or in single player, The Game Bakers are trying to make a 'pick up and play' type of game. You only need a pad to start playing on your own and another player can join at any time in local co-op with another controller (or by using the second joy-con on Nintendo Switch). The developers add that, in order to achieve this vision of simplicity, it takes a simple game design as its foundation, which is a big and challenging part of development.
Regardless of how players choose to experience Haven, aspects like the combat and decision-making in conversations vary significantly with a partner by your side. If you choose single player, you play both characters simultaneously. During exploration, one of them leads the way, and the other follows. But if a second player joins the session, each will take control of the characters individually.
“Combat will have players synchronising their actions, and during exploration, the lead can be shared whenever they want to. And you even have to agree on what to answer when there are choices in the dialogues!” adds Thoa. “I've always found that discussions between players about the story on the couch were interesting.”
Battles play out in an interesting way. It’s not exactly turn-based but rather real time, with the key difference relying on the timing of each attack. The studio says there’s a sense of rhythm involved joined by a tactical component, in which combat isn’t fast paced, but will still require synchronisation between the two characters.
As for combat bonuses or consumable items to help you during fights, Thoa tells us that there’s a bit of that in Haven, but never to the extent of other modern games. In fact, these encounters end up when the characters pacify an animal and cleanse it from the Rust. There will only be a couple of instances where a lethal outcome will be required, but they involve optional fights that won’t be required to finish the game.
In terms of length, The Game Bakers are aiming to provide some replayability in terms of player choices during the game, but for Thoa, that’s not his goal. “My goal is: Have a memorable experience for 10 hours with Haven, then go play, read, or watch something else,” once more reinforcing not unnecessarily overextending the player’s stay.
Lastly, the choice behind the name relies on the general purpose of the story. “Haven is the high concept of the game. That place where you can be free. That place where you can be safe and in love.” Players will have to wait until 2020 to experience Yu and Kay’s story, with a release window aimed between February and June. Haven will be available on PC via Steam, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch.
