PHL Collective: Goosebumps: Terror In Little Creek

Goosebumps: Terror In Little Creek is the latest game from, Developer PHL Collective. Who have a an award winning back catalogue including titles such as Ben 10: Power Trip, The Addams Family: Mansion Mayhem and many more. We take a deep dive into there newest title and one full of nostalgia. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Hello and welcome to another episode of Gone Gold with me, Simon Hill, esports host, industry presenter and TV personality. We're back with another episode and I'm actually in Florida right now on vacation, having the time of my life. But that doesn't mean I can't bring you another killer episode of Gone Gold. Talking of killer episodes, last week's with award-winning actor Elena Viss was a huge hit and was heard in over 30 countries. It ties into my current visit to Disney. Elena had a dream and she travelled around the world chasing that dream and then she made it a reality. She became a real-life Disney princess before an award-winning voice actor and the stories about her time in Starfield in particular were captivating. If you haven't checked that episode out then after you've listened to this one go back and check out the back catalogue there's lots of amazing episodes here if you're new to Gone Gold then thank you for joining us and welcome to the show that brings you closer to the gaming industry than ever before with interviews and insights from your favourite developers and those voice actors who portray and perform your favourite characters within the video games world they're all here and we've got so many more great interviews like Everyone listening to this show can also do it a huge favour. Aside from sharing your favourite episodes across social media and tagging at GoneGoldShow, you can also scroll down on whatever platform you're listening on. That's it, a little bit further. You can see the ratings and comments section. Take a few seconds to leave yours, which will help push this show in front of more people and grow our engagement, which then allows us to keep delivering weekly episodes. So, shall we get to our next guest? A few weeks ago, we interviewed the wonderful and bubbly Morgan Taylor, who landed her first lead role in the latest title from PHL Collective, Goosebumps, Terror in Little Creek. Well... We're joined by the developers of that game right now. A studio that was created in 2013 and they've won multiple awards. Now they're being highlighted for their latest project. This episode is full of nostalgia and excitement, really insightful development stories and so much more. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Gone Gold with PHL

SPEAKER_03: 2:43

Collective.

SPEAKER_00: 2:53

In 2013, Philadelphia became home to a new game development studio that would focus on delivering and specializing in licensed video games that would appeal to the younger gamers. From Ben 10 to Adam's Family and even Spongebob Squarepants, PHL Collective has captivated players all over the world. With 16 games launched, 8 nominations and 3 awards, the studio has established themselves in a thriving industry. With the release of their new stealth-based adventure game, Goosebumps Terror in Little Creek, they're once again highlighted for their impressive work. Today, I'm joined by Brian, who is the lead designer on the game And Bren, who is the art director on Goosebumps. Guys, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01: 3:41

Thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_00: 3:42

Yeah,

SPEAKER_01: 3:43

we appreciate

SPEAKER_00: 3:43

it. Glad to have you here. And an impressive game that you've got on your hands here. We'll go into Goosebumps in just a short while. But first of all, tell us how the studio's feeling. It's been quite the process for you developing your latest game. It's now out into the world and players are starting to enjoy it.

SPEAKER_02: 4:01

Yeah, it's been feeling great so far. You know, it's been just, what, about a week now? Maybe a little bit over. Um, and it's been feeling really good. It's nice seeing, you know, uh, what is it like characters that people have been drawing of our characters and doing little short animations, which is great. Um, seeing the general positive reviews online has been fantastic. It's been overall a great, great experience so far.

SPEAKER_01: 4:23

Yeah, it's been awesome. Um, we, especially like watching live streamers, just, just sit down and like see in real time how they're reacting to different parts of the game and getting to experience it for the first time. Um, A lot of times as the developer, especially the end of the development process is really like head down, just like hammering bugs and playing the same thing over and over again that you kind of like lose your sense of like what it's like as a first time player experiencing it and if it's going to be good and if those moments are going to land. So watching people play it, like especially live streaming and seeing it in real time, their reactions to these moments is really awesome.

SPEAKER_00: 5:06

And Toke, us right back to 2013. How did PHL Collective launch itself into video game development?

SPEAKER_02: 5:14

So it's all started with the founder of the company, Nick Madonna. He worked in the AAA space for a good amount of years and he was ready for a change. He was making a lot of the same kind of content for a while and was looking to do something different back in his hometown of Philly. And that's when he linked up with me and the other co-founders founders of the company. And we basically Brian and I actually went to college together at Drexel. And we so we've been working together for years and Nick ended up meeting us. We worked on a small project together. But from there, you know, we kind of continued working together and decided to like, hey, are we going to do this for real? And we all just kind of jumped headfirst, you know, kind of working more in the indie space for like a long time, making smaller games. Yeah, but it was great. We just kind of kind of instantly connected with Nick and with the other co-owners of the company. And we just kind of hit the ground running. It was a pretty fast start, but it was a lot of fun. A lot of hard work, but also a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01: 6:21

Yeah. And I think one of the first things we were working on was ClusterPuck 99, which was a simple arcade-style sports game that was able to get us out to a bunch of different conventions and shows and meeting a bunch of people. And pretty early on, we made some connections at Cartoon Network and got our first contract gig with them making a little Tom and Jerry web game and that kind of started us down this path of creating kids games and we've been doing that ever since a lot with Cartoon Network but since then we've you know made a bunch of different connections and made games for Nickelodeon and Sony um Bren what else I'm blanking all of sudden DC with Justice League was a really big one. That was awesome. Yeah. And Super Pets too. And we did

SPEAKER_02: 7:13

the Addams Family game. But yeah, we didn't necessarily start out to do specifically family entertainment. Obviously, working with Cartoon Network was a dream for a lot of us because we grew up watching a lot of the cartoons, very familiar with the brand that they have. So getting that opportunity to work on Tom and Jerry first was awesome. Especially because when we initially pitched that game, we kind of pitched a more straight-laced kind of game that was just like, ah, this is probably what they want. It's definitely the safer bet. But then with that pitch, we also kind of slid in a second pitch with a little demo. And we were like, hey, this is a really weird idea. We think this is more fun. And you should do this. But here's what you asked for. And when they saw the weird pitch that we did, they were like, oh, no, we want that, which was a awesome because that was what we were a little bit more passionate about. Our lead programmer, Terry, worked on this prototype, which was essentially you were a cat and you just rolled around and just caused absolute destruction. Think the opposite of Katamari. Instead of collecting things and growing, you're just destroying and getting stronger. It was a pretty chaotic little demo, but that's honestly what kicked off a lot of stuff for us, especially in the One

SPEAKER_00: 8:37

of the biggest projects that you worked on that would elevate the studio into a whole new light was Ben 10 Power Trip. Talk to us about the first five years of the company. Of course, you mentioned Clusterfoot 99 there. What was the transformation from that going into Ben 10 and that would really kick off PHL Collective?

SPEAKER_01: 8:58

Yeah, I mean, I think that the Tom and Jerry game was the start of that. And we really enjoyed that. enjoyed that time and made some good connections at Cartoon Network. So then we continued talking to them about making bigger games, seeing what was out there. I'm trying to think, Brent, what came after Tom and Jerry?

SPEAKER_02: 9:19

So

SPEAKER_01: 9:19

we worked

SPEAKER_02: 9:20

on mobile stuff for a while, for about a year and a half. Unfortunately, they never got released because the company decided to cancel this wing of what they were producing. But that was what bridged the gap in between the initial Tom and Jerry game that we made for web. And then that led us into a more mobile development space for about a year, year and a half. And then that's when. But during that whole process, we were talking to, you know, Cartoon Network, like, hey, what's the next thing that we can do? You know, how can we make the next step? Because pretty much all of us have been mostly passionate about console games, right? That's what we grew up with. That's what we mostly gravitated towards. So even though mobile is very exciting and it was very flashy at the time, you know, we are a lot more passionate about what grew up with and what we were more familiar with, which was console games. And that's kind of what we were trying. We were chomping at the bit to make our first one. And when, you know, even though that Clusterfuck did come out on, you know, Switch and Xbox, you know, we felt like we wanted a bigger title, something that was a little bit more substantial. And Cartoon Network eventually gave us that opportunity with Ben 10. And, you know, we were we were hungry for it. We were still a pretty small studio previous to that. But then with the signing of that project, we were able to expand a little bit, bring on a lot of the local Philly talent that we've already been friends with for a long time because the development scene here in Philly is relatively small. We're not necessarily known for game development, but we like to think that the community here is trying to change that and we're trying to foster a bigger community here. So it was really great to be able to bring in a lot of our friends and cohorts to work on something.

SPEAKER_01: 11:08

Yeah. And I think the other missing piece there, Bren, was the VR stuff. So after Tom and Jerry, we were talking to them about some other projects and they came to us with the idea of some type of We Bare Bears VR. And at the time, I think they were looking... I forget what it was, Google Cardboard, where you'd use your phone as a VR headset. And they were like, let's make a So we fleshed that out for, I don't know, six to 12 months. And they were like, yeah, this is awesome. Unfortunately, the Google Cardboard is not. So let's take our findings here and make a full-fledged Oculus game, which ended up turning into not Oculus, but WePlayVR. It was arcade-based, in-person VR. So three people could get into a... It's a little glass box. put the headsets on, and then our game was Food Truck Rush. So you'd be the three bears from We Bare Bears and be cooking up food and serving orders and just causing general chaos inside of a food truck together in a physical space. And as that was in development, they were like, hey, we also have a Ben 10 VR game that we could use some help with. So that had already been in production, but we came in and fixed it up ourselves. Your latest

SPEAKER_00: 12:53

project has seen you once again working on one of the biggest franchises in both past and modern media, especially after its revival a few years ago in cinema. Goosebumps originally introduced to the world by the legendary R.L. Stine in 1992. I was a huge fan of the novels growing up. What was it about Goosebumps for you that attracted the studio into making a new game and how did those plans begin? I

SPEAKER_02: 13:20

mean, a lot of it for us was, it was something that felt a little bit different than what we've been working on for the past few years. You know, coming off the heels of Cosmic Chaos, Justice League Cosmic Chaos and, you know, the Patrick Star game. We loved both of those games and both of those brands, but doing something a little bit darker excited us, right? Because especially after working on both those projects for probably about three, four years, I guess, between the two of them, we were doing very bright, very younger aesthetic, right? So getting the opportunity, especially on the art side of things, to do something darker, doing something slightly more mature. Obviously, this is still geared towards a younger demographic overall, but still, Goosebumps has that darker setting the scares and everything. So it was very exciting. Uh, obviously the, both of us being huge fans of the franchise growing up and reading the books was, was amazing. Um, so definitely very happy about happy about that, um, and getting that opportunity.

SPEAKER_01: 14:20

Yeah. I mean, I think, uh, everyone has fond memories, like from our generation of like this scholastic school fair, the book fair that they would have, you know, the tables all lined up with books and there would always be new goosebumps books out that you'd just like run up and look at the covers and, you know, all be talking with your friends about. So it was definitely something that we had fond memories of growing up. And it was really cool for me to be able to dive back into that. At the start of a project, you really just try and get fully immersed into the IP. Because a lot of times it's stuff we're familiar with, but we jump between so many different properties that it's not something that we're living and breathing every day. And so So in order to do the fan service and make sure that we're creating an authentic game that really is something that they're looking for, you got to spend weeks, if not months, just living that property. So I was reading a bunch of the books, watching all of the old TV series, and watching the new stuff as well. I had seen the Jack Black Goosebumps movie when that first came out, but it had been a while. So I went back and rewatched that, watched the all the new uh series that are coming out just to get a really good idea of how people have adapted the original book series because that was the goal of the new game that we were working on they were like focused on the original book series this isn't tied into the show or the movies you can't reference those it's just the original book series um but it's always good to see how other people have adapted that and know what worked what what didn't work, how fans reacted to it, and how can we do something a little different than what has been recently done. We don't want it to seem too generic or played out, so we want to do something original. So we've got to have the full lay of the land to know everything about Goosebumps before actually getting started on it.

SPEAKER_00: 16:26

And there is so much source material to go to when it comes to this property in particular. Were there fans within the studio of just the books or just a series or both with more than just yourself and Bren here who are really invested in the IP.

SPEAKER_01: 16:42

Yeah, I think everyone from our generation was fans of the original book series. I think most people at the studio hadn't seen a lot of the new stuff. But I think we all grew up at least reading a couple of the Goosebumps books. So we're all very familiar with the original series.

SPEAKER_02: 17:04

Yeah. When we originally pitched this game, we were chomping at the bit for this opportunity because most of us were like, yo, this is so cool. And we would kind of tell each other stories about, hey, do you remember in this book, you know, this element and just like going back and forth. So when we were putting together the pitch, we were like really crossing our fingers, hoping that we would get this one because it was just something we were all kind of universally, you know, very excited for.

SPEAKER_00: 17:29

Let's get into it then. You'll unravel eerie mysteries, confront sinister monsters, navigate haunted locations inspired by R.L. Stine's legendary books, or whilst experiencing the Goosebumps signature a blend of spooky adventures and playful twists. The game really focuses on being its own unique story whilst paying homage to what R.L. Stine built over that 30-year period. How important was the process for the studio to still be true to the original Goosebumps universe?

SPEAKER_01: 18:02

Yeah, it's definitely really important, something we took really seriously. So we initially had in our pitch three different books that we were going to combined together. We, from the start, wanted to have multiple monsters in there and multiple different stories that we were bringing together. But we wanted to keep it smaller and more grounded in the characters and not have like 100 different monsters in there, partially for scope reasons, because we just got to rein it in for a smaller kids game like this. But also just because that's the kind of stories we like telling. Something that focuses on the characters and their arc, their transformation over the course of the game. So we really honed in on that. But initially, we had some other books in there. And as we started learning more about the franchise and kind of the heart and soul of what made Goosebumps so good, like the kind of that genius behind our R.L. Stine's writing where it was scary, but there was a lightheartedness to it throughout. It was always fun and playful and then would get spooky. And there was always that signature twist at the end. So we really wanted to make sure that we delivered on those elements and found kind of an overarching story that brought in a couple other books and the monsters with them, but all layered under this cohesive narrative of why are these elements being brought together. It's not that the mummy just shows up. There's a mastermind behind all of this and all of that is really rooted in the stories of the original books.

SPEAKER_00: 19:56

For you, Bren, when you're getting to sit down, design, put the artwork together for some of these monsters that you're going to encounter in the game, are you able to get really truly lost within the Goosebumps world and almost live out an inner child in you?

SPEAKER_02: 20:11

Yeah, I mean, it was It was awesome trying to figure out the overall look for this game, trying to balance that element of how do we make something very spooky, but also make it appealing to the demographic. So it was definitely a challenge. Obviously, the covers of the original series have such a strong aesthetic to them, and the artwork is so vivid. And we felt like if we just kind of matched that style, it wouldn't exact work for this property for as awesome as those covers are. So we tried to do something that was a little bit more appealing to maybe the younger audience and a wider audience to kind of really dive in and jump in on this. But yeah, I mean, getting to sit down and work with the team to be able to figure out what each of the monster looks like and really dive in and even talk with Sony and GameMill about how these characters should look and what elements and hearing Scholastic's take on how how we should tweak some of our designs was an awesome opportunity. Luckily, for the most part, it was pretty straightforward and pretty easy with a lot of this. I would say the hardest part for us when designing the monsters was capturing the, I don't want to spoil anything for anyone watching, but the main monster villain that we have in the game. They are kind of like the main mystery that kind of goes through the Terror of Little Creek and trying to come up with that monster design took a little bit of time. Originally, I was kind of pulling in inspirations not only from Goosebumps, but from other science fiction things that I personally love just to give my own little twist to it, bringing maybe a little bit of alien influence in there from the original movies. But yeah, we ended up working a lot with Sony and Scholastic to kind of find that middle ground of how this character should look. Yeah, and it was really engaging and fun.

SPEAKER_00: 22:11

Spoiler-free of course, tell us about our lead character, Sloane, who was played by the very talented Morgan Tyler, who's been on this show.

SPEAKER_01: 22:18

Yeah. Yeah. So the general plot line here is that Sloane and her friends are from Little Creek and their town is under curfew and it's starting to mess up their lives a little bit. There's some events at school that are being canceled and they're curious kids. They want to get to the bottom of it. They want to know why is there a curfew? No one's really saying any there's just rumors floating around town so they've heard that there's been some monster sightings at the library and so they sneak out late at night all meet up breaking curfew and find their way into the library in order to investigate what's going on and ultimately get wrapped up in the whole situation and need to figure out how to solve the problem to get the town out of curfew um so So throughout that, yeah, we have a lot of twists and turns, the monsters being introduced, um, a lot of, uh, well, light combat. Um, we, we tried adapting some of like what's great about resident evil, but for kids. So you've got exploration, puzzle solving, resource management, and with that comes some, some light combat. So adapting that for a younger generation, making sure that, you or anything like that but it's fun light-hearted combat that really fit in with the Goosebumps series was something that we focused a lot on and yeah through all of that you're going to unravel this mystery and there is some decisions that you have in there so you can ultimately affect the ending of the game depending on which route you want to go and see how Sloan comes out the other end of it.

SPEAKER_00: 24:08

Bren when you're creating the look and the image yourself and the team sitting down, how many versions of Sloane did you go through until you all kind of sat down and went, that's our girl?

SPEAKER_02: 24:21

Oh man, so many. There was so many iterations of Sloane. Yeah, I mean, it was great getting to try to figure out what she was going to look like. You know, we kind of had various levels of like, how nerdy does she look versus, you know, maybe is she more of like an artsy, you know, kind of individual. So just like going back and trying to find that middle ground and trying to balance between, you know, different tropes, right, that you see in a lot of games and, you know, movies and things like that and trying to not play exactly to those tropes and do something a little bit different and something that feels maybe a little bit more real, you know, in school, what friends you would have. I feel like a big thing that I try to do with that friend group is kind of have like a through line that kind of can connects all of them. Because I feel like in a lot of movies, especially in the 80s, 90s, that classic group that would go into the woods, right? You got the cheerleader, the jock, you got, what's it called, the nerd and the really artsy person. I'm like, why are these people hanging out? Not that they can't. Everyone can hang out with everybody. But I just feel like it doesn't feel like this is a natural group of people that are friends, right? So that was one of the main things I really wanted to focus on. to focus on with this game." And I was like, okay, I really want to make sure that this feels like a friend group that would actually hang out in middle school and have that dynamic, which I think the voice actors captured great. And for us, that kind of through line is that they all kind of lean a little bit more in the artsy realm. We have Sloane, who is a little bit more of that nerd archetype, but she kind of has some pins and a little bit more of that kind of email alternative of music thing going on. And then her friends, Lydia and Lizzie, have a little bit more of that punk and goth aesthetic. And then Harvey, which you could maybe argue that he has a little bit more of that sportsy kind of jock element to him, he's actually wearing a theater shirt on from their middle school. So even though he plays soccer, he's also very active in a lot of the theater and acting that takes part in the school. So that was kind of the narrative through line that I try to create and work with our artists to create this little group of friends that are trying to unravel what's happening in the town. But to answer your initial question, yes, there are many, many iterations of Sloane wearing various different outfits. I think we captured her face pretty quickly. And then it was just trying to figure out what she's wearing, what's too ridiculous. And then also trying to figure out what are the outfits that kids are wearing these days and trying to figure out. So that way, me being a 35-year-old dude, trying to create outfits of current day and what feels real was tough because obviously fashion is always changing. So making something that kids can actually connect with is important.

SPEAKER_00: 27:27

Things have changed since 1992 in the first Goosebumps book.

SPEAKER_01: 27:31

Exactly. Yeah. And I think that that was something that we also... Those elements, we ended up trying to push through the story as well. So making sure that... Yeah. Initially, it was just like, oh, Harvey's just like a soccer player. But then when we started talking about the theater aspects and giving him a theater shirt, it's like, okay, well, let's have him talk about that. Let's have some dialogue between the friends. So early on in the game, the friends all get walkie talkies. So even once they split up from each other and you're off investigating different corners of the world, they'll be radioing into each other and just be talking about school or the next school play that's coming up or what's going on inside Talking of dialogue, that segs greatly into

SPEAKER_00: 28:28

my next question. It's a highly protected IP, Goosebumps, and the studio were looking to create a unique story. Was this a collaborative effort between all people involved to nail the dialogue? and to give it that goosebumps tone.

SPEAKER_01: 28:44

Yeah, absolutely. It was definitely one of the most challenging parts of the development process was just nailing down the story, specifically the endings. We generally knew how we wanted the gameplay to resolve, but having that classic R.L. Stine twist at the end, we must have written a couple dozen iterations of. But it was a really great collaboration between us, GameMill, Sony, and Scholastic, where we were able to we would be constantly hopping on voice calls and talking through the different options, how it could play out, which characters should be involved. And ultimately, in certain instances, completely changing a character's arc in order to accommodate some of the stuff going on in the ending and making sure that all of the characters were thoroughly involved in the process. One of the big challenges we had was the adults. You and your friends are out doing things and investigating and trying to figure out what's going on. But there's adults around town and how much involvement they should have in the process. And it was really important to Sony and Scholastic that the kids are the solutions. Even if there's an adult who somehow has an effect on the story, if it's not deliberately the kids doing it, it didn't feel good. So we had to keep evolving and making changes to the script to make sure that the kids were always at the forefront and it was directly their actions that are solving or creating issues within the story as it goes

SPEAKER_00: 30:23

and this one will be a fun one for the original Goosebumps fans out there in the original series there were 62 books which is crazy to think in the space of what was it like six years I think in the first series R.L. Stine then followed up with a spin-off series I mean there's quite a few different spin-off series. I always remember the Give Yourselves Goosebumps series where you would get to a certain page and you'd have a decision and that would affect which direction you would go in the story then. When you began developing this and you were looking at the source material, were you ever tempted to chip into each different spin-off or was it always about the original Goosebumps series?

SPEAKER_01: 31:03

Yeah, pretty early on we got the directive that it needs to be the original 62 books. So that was really where we focused. And then from there, it was just picking which books we mainly wanted to focus on, which came down to narrative structure, what we thought would work best and tie together well between a couple of different books, but also just the monsters and the setting. What different environments could we put into this town? We had an area in mind that was our reference for the town. And so we're like, You know, we, we don't want to just like drop a massive, uh, stadium in the middle of this or have a skyscraper, like, you know, what makes sense for this town, but is also going to just be an interesting environment for us to walk around and make sense for the monsters. So there are a lot of different elements that come together where it's narrative gameplay, art, um, all of these different things to make sure that, that it's cohesive and feels good in the end. Um, Um, but yeah, getting, getting to, to have that restriction of like, no, we're, we're, we're not looking at, I don't know what it is at this point, 30, 40 years of goosebumps. We, we have this, this more narrow focus of like, yeah, this, this five, six year span of the original series that, that we're pulling from. Um, but then from there we, we tried getting as many like Easter eggs in as possible. Um, so like the reader beware of series we we adapted for those choice moments where you can affect the story by by having player beware moments um but then you know bren was always uh working with them as well to come up with different art pieces that we could drop in there like little um book covers or um different pieces of art like 3d models that would be laid around or dialogue that we could write to reference something else from another book

SPEAKER_02: 33:08

yeah yeah heather did a great job being able to kind of who's one of our head writers. She was able to intertwine a lot of the art aspects and the Easter eggs that we were able to create in with little narrative blurbs that pop up. I think one thing that's always really fun in a game is to see those little Easter eggs that are either nods to other books or just straight up something from that universe. That was the one thing that Sony and Scholastic worked really well with me on, of figuring out, hey, we don't want this just to feel like a hodgepodge of stuff that's just like hey remember this remember this and like hitting you over the head with like easter eggs but stuff that would actually maybe make sense right like oh here's like a postcard you know to another town that is a reference to this book right or hey here is a you know in the library here's like someone's like science experiment that looks very similar to you know something from you know what was it um you know that like in Mortman's setting. So there's a lot of interesting little things that we were able to key up that didn't feel like it was out of place in any specific area, but it had a connection with the book. So that way it didn't feel too outrageous with, I don't know, like an alien being in someone's backyard or something like that.

SPEAKER_00: 34:31

A really fun element of the new game is the puzzles. You'll also have to sneak around whilst you're solving some of these puzzles. What are the challenges you face as a studio to make sure the puzzle stayed true to the Goosebumps feel?

SPEAKER_02: 34:45

Yeah, Brian definitely did most of the puzzle work. But as someone that kind of worked with him and created a lot of the artwork, we tried to create stuff that not only fit in with stuff that was kind of expected within a read through of a Goosebumps book, but also making sure that it's not too challenging for the demographic. Like Brian mentioned in the beginning of this episode, kind of our elevator pitch or our tagline for this was Resident Evil for kids. That's kind of what we kept going back to. And even though we brought in other inspirations from whether it was like Silent Hill or Crow Country, which is a smaller indie horror game, we tried to bring in a lot of different elements that felt familiar for people like maybe our age that have played a lot of these titles but would be a good stepping stone for maybe this is someone's first kind of horror puzzle adventure game. So we kind of wanted to use that as the basis when designing a lot of these puzzles.

SPEAKER_01: 35:51

Yeah, and I think that was a challenging thing, adapting the puzzles. And it's always a really tough balance with puzzle games to strike when having... You can make a really impossibly hard puzzle really easily. If you have this through line that nobody else knows and you don't tell them anything about it, it can just be impossible until you get that right clue that... Having the right amount of hints and just being given the correct direction to know to go somewhere and that this is the obvious thing that you need to do now to progress forward, we had to balance constantly throughout development. And sometimes it was just a matter of changing the hints or putting an additional note somewhere. So if somebody got stuck, they had another place to check. But early on, we were really struggling strongly referencing Crow Country, which is very difficult. And they give you very little hints throughout and very little direction. It's a fairly large world that you can explore there. And at certain times, you have no idea what you're supposed to do next. And you've got to dig through a whole bunch of clues and go back and re-interact with a whole bunch of stuff. And the first time we had a kid's play test, they were so lost and confused in our game that we were like, yeah, this just isn't working. So some of it was like fully redesigning puzzles in order to make them easier. But just giving players a lot more direction, like making sure that there were waypoints for where you needed to go next. They had clear objectives, sometimes even some objectives within there. Having a note log so that any time you interact with a note, you can go back and reference that to see the clues. having dialogue changes to make sure that they kind of verbalize what they're trying to do next. So there's a lot of different pieces to that puzzle to make what we hope are good puzzles that fit our demographic that we were shooting for. But it's always tricky because certain people will instantly get something and feel like, oh, that was so easy. Like, you know, that was kind of a stupid puzzle. But other people just, you the right direction at the right time to get the clue we're trying to give them. So it's a really tough balancing act throughout.

SPEAKER_02: 38:28

Yeah. And that line between challenging and frustrating sometimes can be very thin, depending on the player. So trying to accommodate for various different play styles for a younger demographic can present a good amount of challenges. But I think overall, Brian and the design team did a really nice job of creating these puzzles. But going back to watching streamers and people play I think the one that we've seen that has troubled some people has been the animal puzzle that's been in like the kind of center of the map kind of by the theater that one seems to some people still still gets them

SPEAKER_01: 39:09

but there's a there's a lot there's a lot going on with that puzzle but we we've also seen some people hit it and just like blow right by it because some people will just brute force a puzzle like like just instinctively like oh like i can shoot this thing let me just keep shooting it and see what happens and then the puzzle unlocks so also trying to prevent those situations from happening because then you you lose that sense of discovery and like oh yeah i figured it out um and and you can just kind of breeze through the game without thinking about anything or or really exploring the environment fully so yeah it's tough

SPEAKER_00: 39:49

i'm sure there were lots of ideas concepts and development plans on the table in the initial pitch that may not have made the final cut. When you have this much source material to play with, I can imagine it's quite tempting to delve really deep. Did everything you wanted to see in the game make the final game? And were there any other interesting development ideas that we didn't get to see?

SPEAKER_01: 40:13

Yeah, definitely not. We always have to work within the scope that we have. We have a certain amount of time. And so early on with the prototyping phase, we're just coming up with all kinds of crazy ideas and seeing what works and what doesn't work. But we're also figuring out just what we can realistically accomplish in the time that we have. If you have infinite time and resources, if we spent 10 years on this game, there's a lot more that we could jam in there. But I think We always try to make the creative decisions to pick the things that are going to be most impactful to the game and really help to sell the story that we're trying to tell. And some of the wackier ideas that might just end up being so much time and effort to pull off, but ultimately not bring that much enjoyment to the player. We, we try and weed those ideas out and keep the game focused.

SPEAKER_02: 41:17

I think, I know we try to experiment with a few different like gameplay interactions that eventually got cut. Um, I know we were talking about maybe adding in some kind of like melee or something into the game just to kind of, you know, in case you like, uh, yeah, Brian was very in favor of melee. Yeah. Um, But I know one of the main things that kind of from the beginning that we pitched on this was we wanted it to be a pretty minimal or almost like a zero, like slappy in the game. We just felt like there was a lot of content in the Goosebumps, you know, zeitgeist of, you know, very slappy forward kind of stuff. And, you know, in the original books, there's so many other cool monsters and, you know, stories that exist. So we were like, let's focus on those. It seems like a lot of people People have had, you know, they're filled with slappies, so let's try to focus in other areas. And I feel like a lot of those original ideas did make it, you know, to the final iteration of our game. There's still, you know, obviously in like the DLC or like Ultimate Edition of, you know, Terran Little Creek, we do have like a slappy mask that you can wear. There's his little card is hidden, you know, in the world if you can find it as an Easter egg. But overall, his presence is pretty minimal, you know, in this experience. yeah

SPEAKER_01: 42:37

and that was another big part of just like doing the fan service where we felt like we had seen a lot of people talking about that like having slappy fatigue where it's you know the Jack Black movie oh it was slappy behind all of it the new Goosebumps series it was slappy behind all of it and I mean don't get me wrong slappy is great like I have great childhood memories of slappy it scared me to death but we really wanted to try to push to not have this be a slappy game for that reason. Just to do something different, give the fans something different to see and an original story that was maybe underserved in the past. We definitely had a bunch of other ideas. Initially, the pitch that went out would include Count Von Smelling. It was a little vampire dog. I hope I'm getting the name there right. But yeah, little vampire dog. And we're like, I mean, this could be funny. But then when we started talking through the gameplay implications of that, a lot of our monsters, we really want to be imposing and easy to be seen at different parts of the environment to support the stealth gameplay that's in there. We have light stealth. It's not like Splinter Cell crazy over-the-top stealth. It's not an entirely stealth-based game. But you do need to... duck behind cover and track where the monster is and sneak around them. If you make too much noise, you start sprinting. The monster's going to see you and start chasing you. And at that point, you've got to run and hide or just get out of there. So having a little dog running around the environment posed a lot of challenges that we felt like, yeah, this isn't really supporting the gameplay as well. It's a cool idea, but maybe let's go back to the drawing board on that one and figure out another monster that'll work. a little bit better for what we're making. But the melee was something I really pushed hard for because I just felt like design-wise, the game kind of needed it. But I think that was another back and forth with all parties involved to be like, I don't know if having a baseball bat or a piece of wood that you're beating monsters with is appropriate for this demographic. So it felt a little too violent and ultimately needed to get cut.

SPEAKER_02: 45:06

It was definitely a lot of fun and like what we were able to like play test and experiment with. But yeah, again, just like it didn't feel right for the demographic and just, you know, for when you have to think about ratings and the whole process of game development, it just would introduce a lot more challenges and kind of negativity as opposed to like what we're trying to aim for it as a more like lighthearted, you know, experience like into this universe.

SPEAKER_00: 45:34

So I load up my game. I get to the menu screen, pass the PHL logo, and start a new game. Tell me what I can expect as a player turning on Goosebumps, Terror, and Little Creek for the first time.

SPEAKER_02: 45:47

Oh, man. Well, I think you're just going to first have a sense of uneasiness because you start the game, obviously, as Sloan, and you have nothing. You have pretty much nothing at your disposal to kind of help you do anything, whether it's solve the puzzle, to defend yourself or anything like that, you're introduced to the game with the bare minimum. And slowly over time, you start picking up items that you can help unlock different aspects of the game. You find tools that help you defend yourself against monsters. You'll find enchanted items to help you unlock doors and open mystical pathways through different areas. So throughout the experience, you keep gaining these tools, these tools to kind of continue the excitement. And there's always something new that you have to, you know, unlock and, you know, face a new challenge. So I think that beginning sense helps aid in with the kind of, you know, spooky element for this game, because again, it's like, you know, what can I do? All I can do is run or like crouch and, you know, try to be stealthy. So kind of introducing players with like very base mechanics first, I think helps get them acclimated to like that core sense of the game And then slowly throughout the course, Brian and the design team did a good job of slowly introducing new things to create

SPEAKER_01: 47:12

new excitement. I think also just appreciate the main menu music right when you start up. That was something that we really focused on to make sure that it had a little bit of that nostalgic feel to it. Because I think anybody, if you were to fire up the original Goosebumps show theme song, even if it wasn't something you were a huge fan of it you should instantly recognize it um so we we tried to make sure that you could just sit on that main menu and uh wired our music composer did a great job of just making that feel like a really you know uh cool track that you could just sit there and enjoy yeah

SPEAKER_02: 47:53

it's very aggressive from the the beginning you load it up and it just like hits you like immediately which is interesting because the game overall doesn't have as much music as you would maybe think in, you know, from a traditional game. Um, there are key moments that music plays, but we wanted to make sure that, you know, there was silence with just, you know, atmospheric noise because that in and of itself is scary, uh, and creates a lot of tension. And I feel like a lot of times in games, if there's music can potentially feel like you're safe or it's like more calming. And if it's just pure silence, you're like, I have no idea what's going to be around the next corner.

SPEAKER_01: 48:32

I'd also say, uh, For new players, go into it knowing as little as possible. I think it's really good to have the sense of discovery both in gameplay as well as with the story. We've already seen a bunch of people just saying the ending to the game. If you watch a whole gameplay of it and get to see it, how the story plays out, I think you're going to miss out on a lot of the enjoyment of actually playing the game for the first time and exploring and figuring out the story on your own.

SPEAKER_00: 49:08

Before we wrap up, it's been quite the journey for the studio. You've picked up multiple awards over the years and worked on some huge licensed games. What's next for PAHL Collective?

SPEAKER_02: 49:20

I don't know if we can announce anything currently. We have a few games that we're working on right now that we're obviously excited about. We have another kids game coming out soon that's in the next month's I guess we could mention that one because that one is announced. Yeah, so we have a Barbie game coming out soon, which will be great. That should be coming out, I believe, in October, if I'm not mistaken. And so we're excited about that title. And then we have another horror game that we're working on currently, which is great because we like being in this space. It's a lot of fun for us. So still working on major titles, still working with major IPs. And it's been a lot of fun. So it's still more console development for us, which is kind of in that sweet spot of what we like to do.

SPEAKER_01: 50:13

Yeah. I hope more of this as well. I really enjoyed developing Goosebumps. It was a little strange for me because it's not the genre I tend to play on my free time. I have played plenty of Resident Evil games and horror games in the past, but it's not my go-to genre. And over the course of development, I forced myself to play as many of these type of games as possible. And now I'm like really into it. I really enjoyed the development process on this one. So I'm hoping to make more spooky puzzle based adventure games in the future.

SPEAKER_00: 50:55

Well, PHL Collective may not be as renowned for their sequels, but who knows? Never say never, right? Gents, thank you so much for taking the time to be on Gone Gold today. I really appreciate it. The game is fantastic. Really, really excited to see what the studio does next. What I like to do on this show is I like to give my guests the final word, but I'd like to say once again, PHL Collective, thank you for joining us on Gone Gold today.

SPEAKER_02: 51:21

Yeah, thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you so much, Simon. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00: 51:26

Well, there you go. What a throwback, just full of nostalgia. I loved the Goosebumps books growing up and to interview the developer of the latest installation into that franchise. Such a fun experience. The game is really, really good. It's a lot of fun. It's very lighthearted. It is exactly as the guys have intended it to come out. It's so much fun. And again, having that throwback element, bringing the 90s out to the modern era, which is exactly what we love. Ladies and gentlemen, that was Gone Gold with PHL Collective. Thank you to everyone who has stayed with us throughout this episode. Don't forget to give this show a little rate scroll all the way down on your chosen platform you'll see a comment section or a rating section add yours in take a few seconds and help this show push up the charts in your region or your country even and also it will help build engagement for the show and push this show in front of more people's faces I think I said show so many times which obviously means because I'm in Florida I'm going to see a Disney show so that's exactly what I'm going to go do now ladies and gentlemen enjoy your week we'll be back with another killer episode very soon but until then you know what to do keep it gongold