[Adventure Calls] No Failure Is Final–An Interview with Josh Hallaran, creator of ‘8-Bit Adventures 2’
By Mike Roberts (TKFY)
‘8-Bit Adventures 2’ is available on all major gaming platforms including Steam and Consoles.
Josh and Critical Games’ next adventure, ‘Infinite Alliance’–the indie RPG crossover event of the decade(!)–can be wishlisted today!
You can listen to this Interview in audio format in full on the TKFY YouTube Channel.
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Josh Hallaran, Critical Games
“I’ve basically always wanted to develop games ever since I was a kid and played Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time. That really just became my lifelong passion.”
Mike Roberts (MR): For those who don't know, we're both coming to you live from the Central Coast of New South Wales in Australia. And thinking of all the things that people might not know, maybe tell us a little bit about yourself first, Josh, and how we come to talk today. Tell us about you—who are you and what do you do?
Josh Hallaran (JH): Yes, so my name's Josh Hallaran, and I've basically always wanted to develop games ever since I was a kid and played Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time. That really just became my lifelong passion. So as a kid, I was always trying out different game engines and things to just try and figure out how you actually make this happen. And eventually I just took the plunge, started trying to make my own commercial releases, and over a long period of time managed to get more and more kudos from players and interest in my work and just build up gradually over the last decade and a bit.
MR: Man, it's amazing how time flies—and scary.
JH: Yeah.
MR: In some ways, to me, you've done what every indie game developer dreams of: first of all, shipping a game. In a lot of ways, when I look at 8-Bit Adventures 2, I see someone making their dream game—like, having it on the perfect platforms: Nintendo, Xbox, PlayStation, PC—and now having a physical release with boxed copies being pre-ordered and going to be available through Limited Run Games. And you've done all of that from the Central Coast, where I live, where I grew up, where I was born. And to me, I think that's absolutely incredible. So my first question to you is, how's it feel? How does it feel to be here now?
JH: I guess it doesn't really feel as impressive as it sounds. For me, it's been happening in real time, so it's been a result of years of work and planning. And so it's an end goal that you reach after a very long time and then start the next goal. But it's great. It's been amazing to be able to actually bring 8-Bit Adventures 2 to life, have it reach the level of quality that I always wanted my games to reach but didn't have the money for. And yeah, just to have people really love it and all these other opportunities open up, like consoles and physical releases. I'm a huge game collector, so having a physical release is just the dream come true. The game isn't real until I can hold it in my hands.
MR: I know what you mean, because at the moment, it's so easy to ship. Obviously, it's a journey to get a game ready to be shipped and things, but digital is so ubiquitous. Physical releases less so. And there's been a lot of questions, particularly in 2024, about DRM, digital rights management, owning things. And I think that the best thing, apart from the fact that it's awesome—over here I've got my boxed SEGA Saturn collection up on here—but the fact is that today a lot of people don't own their software. But a consequence of having physical releases is that you always have it—it's yours. No one can take it away from you.
JH: Yeah, I think that's kind of one of the really exciting things about it is that no matter what happens to Steam or GOG or whatever, the game will live on in perpetuity in some fashion or form. In the same way an NES game from 1985 or 1986 is readily available on eBay. There's something really special about that.
MR: Yeah. And when I think about where... So from my perspective, the first time I played 8-Bit Adventures 2, the first time I met you was at the Central Coast game developer Fallout talk that we had down here at the Paradiso. And I was immediately impressed by the game, not least of all because it was a style and genre... I think you guys have coined—or your pixel artist coined—that NES+ aesthetic? I immediately looked at it and I got it. This is a game that's made for somebody like me who loves everything from Breath of Fire to Chrono Trigger and other PS1 classics. It was crazy that it was made here! But tell me, you started—when you first started playing games, you were talking about how you started toying with game engines as a kid and trying to work out how to make games. Critical Games formed as a concept for you in 2011. There was the time leading up to that. 8-Bit Adventures was 2015, Tales Across Time 2016, and then 2023 you had the release of 8-Bit Adventures 2, which is an incredible run. What I'm really curious about is where this journey began. Not only do we now have someone here on the coast who's created something that I think is fantastic and has created the ultimate thing, which to me is boxed copies on console. But how did you get there? If you cast your mind back to 2011, getting to become Critical Games, that first part of your journey, before you had released anything on Steam. Tell me about that period of your life.
JH: First off, thank you very much. It's crazy to think back, right, because basically I went the stupidest, hardest way into making games that you really can. I started off going to a college in Sydney and I did the first trimester of it. I didn't really feel I was learning anything or it was really gelling with me. And so I insanely decided, I don't need this. I'm going to drop out of college and I've got to make my own games. I've been doing this for years, since I was a kid, making little projects. If I just have the time and the inclination, I can make something myself. And of course I immediately started trying to make this huge Unreal Engine 3 narrative-driven first-person shooter with multiplayer and all these different things. It was just showing my complete naivety and inexperience. But then I kind of thought, well, okay, I'm clearly not going to be able to do this by myself with the amount of money I have. So let's go back to what I've always loved, which is just classic Japanese-style RPGs. Use an old version of RPG Maker, which I'm really familiar with from when I was a kid, and just try and make a game in a couple of months. And so that's what I did. I made a game called Path of Thanatos. Back then the RPG Maker community kind of had their own specialized websites where people would be able to buy RPG Maker games developed by people—Amaranth Games and Aldorlea Games—pretty obscure but they had a niche dedicated fan base. And so my game did fairly well on there and that really emboldened me to keep trying. But once again I hit the same problem where I immediately started trying to make a much larger, more ambitious project that I didn't have the funds or the experience for. Then I tried to get some government money but that didn't work out and all that. But during the wait to find out if I got government money, I started making another RPG Maker game. And this was the original version of 8-Bit Adventures. And so basically the idea for that was, how can I make a game where I can do all the music, do all the graphics, just have a simple hook. So the original idea was basically that color gets drained out of the world and as you complete dungeons, you bring each color back. That was the original idea. And so I made this game and I released the original version of 8-Bit Adventures 1 in 2013, January 2013. And it was terrible. It was absolutely terrible. It's the worst thing I've ever made. Some people really liked it. Some people were pretty harsh.
MR: And when you say released it, was that because if you go back to 2013, I'm curious, there might have been some platforms and things—Itch.io—that were either in their infancy or weren't available. How did you get that version of the game out? Was it a zip file on the GameMaker forum?
JH: It was those RPG Maker websites I talked about. It was a platform called Desura, which died many years ago. One of the forgotten platforms. There weren't really many places that I could actually release a game at that point because Steam was still a walled-off fortress that only the huge games would really get onto. And yeah, so there weren't too many places. I was really disappointed with that and I thought, okay, I'm going to go a different direction. So I started doing mobile games. I made about five different mobile games over that period of time. One was a Super Nintendo quiz game. That got 10,000 downloads or something like that, which I was very happy about, but it made 50 bucks from microtransactions. But that really didn't work out either. I tried a bunch of different things. I tried a music app that I worked on with my cousin. I tried an endless runner where every level was a totally different mechanic, applying the same mechanics to different scenarios and all these other things. And of course none of it was really working out. And so I was getting to the end of my rope with game development. And then I got an email from a company that did Greenlight bundles and they wanted to do 8-Bit Adventures 1 in a Greenlight bundle. But because I was so shell-shocked and ashamed of the quality of the game from when it first came out, I was, no, can you give me six to eight months and I'm gonna revamp it, greatly improve it. I'd learned a lot more working on mobile games, so that was a really good educational period. I got better at polishing a game and getting a sense of when it's feeling right rather than just being a bit more slapdash like I used to be. And so anyway, I basically greatly upgraded 8-Bit Adventures 1 to what people know now. I brought on an artist who was much more talented than me and he did the character portraits and I managed to use open-source artwork to try and improve the look and style of the game overall. And yeah, really just managed to up the presentation values in a whole lot of different ways to a level that I was a little more comfortable with and make the game much more interesting, make the story much more rich. And then that was then able to get onto Steam, get approved through Greenlight, and that kicked off where I am today.
MR: There's a couple of things I want to touch on here. One is that you made something. Just releasing something at all to anybody is a step that a lot of makers never take. But I also know that feeling of knowing when something's not good enough, and you feel it inside. It's not even that other people are telling you—rather it's internal—you can do better. At this point in your career as a game designer/developer, were you working part-time/full-time? Were you just trying to crack games and make it indie? Had you thought about being employed in the space? And then I want to come back to the Greenlight bundle and how that opportunity came about. At the time you shipped Path of Thanatos, that was the first thing you'd made. Next, your woeful version of 8-Bit Adventures: the one that, at the same time, got you this opportunity. Throughout this early period, was this a hobby? Was this something that you were trying to pursue as a full-time career? Tell me a little bit about that in this phase of your career.
JH: I was really trying to pursue it as full-time. I was doing odd jobs for different people that I knew—help with website development and just odd jobs. But I was really trying to focus on it and get as much done as I could just because obviously games just take a lot of time.
MR: Yes.
“I went the stupidest, hardest way into making games that you really can.”
JH: The other thing as well is that living with my parents took really any of the pressure off. I'd finished school, I'd only just turned 17 at the end of my final year of school in Year 12 because I'd gone through an accelerated class. So I felt a lot younger. I felt I could take that time a bit more just to try and make some things and experiment, try and find my footing. So I treated it as instead of doing the years of college, I'm doing hands-on learning.
MR: Yeah, you're investing in your education but you're self-educated.
JH: Exactly. So that was kind of how I looked at it at the time. It was definitely not the smartest way to go in many ways. But it did teach me what I needed to know in the end. So it all worked out.
MR: Yeah, well you had that. Not everyone at that age—and I'll include myself in this—has that conscientiousness to keep coming back to the computer, to the drawing board. Particularly when you're facing up with something that isn't quite as good as you know you want it to be and you're dealing with that sense of, how do I get better? Because in a lot of ways, when you've made something at that point, you can now see everything that's wrong with it and you're also the most qualified person to fix it. But then few of us come back to improving it. And with that in mind, you did that with your—let's say—your alpha release of 8-Bit Adventures and then you spent some time polishing, improving, maybe remaking some parts for this Greenlight thing. How did that come about? How did that opportunity present?
JH: Literally just a completely random email from a company that was hunting down games for a Greenlight bundle. Obviously, you weren't ever going to make much money out of a Greenlight bundle. It was mainly just the idea back then—basically, games on Greenlight, you had to vote for them. When they got enough votes, Valve would let games onto the platform in batches. And so the idea of a Greenlight bundle is everyone buys the game, gets a DRM-free copy, they go and vote for your game on Greenlight, and that gets it across the line onto Steam. And then once it gets onto Steam, they get a Steam code. So that was the way everyone was gaming the system because engaging organically with that system at the time was a bit of a nightmare. The Steam community was pretty trolly at the time. I remember when I first put up a game, just to try it out. Within a day I just took the page down because there were just 100 comments basically spitting on you. People were... Because at the time there was a sense of, only Half-Life 2-level games belong on Steam—only the creme de la creme. And so a lot of the community was very unhappy about the idea of saturation, letting the floodgates open and letting more games from indies in. So yeah, it was an intense time and it's funny to think about in retrospect. Steam has changed an awful lot.
MR: No doubt. In terms of that opportunity coming through, how did it feel at the time?
JH: Well, it was exciting, right? I really was at a moment where, what do I do? Nothing's working. And of course back then we still had this idea of, oh, if you get onto Steam, you'll become a millionaire. That's it. Because that had kind of been what it was in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012. So of course that is not the way it actually worked in the end. Not even close.
MR: You ship.
JH: Well, actually, the funny thing is, by the time I was ready, the company that had contacted me were no longer doing bundles for Greenlight. When I got back in touch with them they said, "Oh, sorry. We don't do that anymore. Good luck."
MR: So you finish the game and then at that point the opportunity has passed. They're not doing it.
JH: Yeah, Greenlight bundles for Steam were on the way out. Luckily I managed to find a completely different company that was still doing the bundles and liked what I'd done and so they saw potential. So they put me in. But there was a moment of abject panic after spending eight months trying to achieve this all. And then almost getting the rug pulled out from under me.
MR: It gets released. That's 2015-ish, this version.
JH: Yeah. May 2015, I think.
MR: And so we'll say it's a success, but it's not going to the moon. Early 2015. And then for 8-Bit Adventures, your next game comes out, but you even fill in some gaps. But we're going towards Tales Across Time, which has a similar aesthetic, but the color palette evolved and it had a slightly different aesthetic—16-bit.
JH: And basically the reason for that is 8-Bit Adventures 1 comes out. People like it. It's the first game I've released where people seem to really connect with it and are passionate about it. And so I'm like, well, okay, I'll make a sequel. We'll up the production values and we'll make it bigger. Hopefully we can build on that momentum. Obviously trying to go bigger, trying to have an artist do all the graphics so I'm not using any open-source stuff or anything like that. That all takes time. So while assets were getting started on, I basically decided that well, I'll make a short experimental game in the meantime. And I'd done a competition. It was an RPG Maker competition where it was create a short one- to two-hour game in a month. And that's what Tales Across Time was actually. It was what I made for that. And so I just used an asset pack that I could buy on one of the different stores. I got a bunch of royalty-free music and all that. And yeah, that's where Tales Across Time came from. It was just this idea of how do I make a short-form game and how do I kind of make it interesting and unusual? So I hit upon this idea of short stories in video game format. So the game is just basically three short stories told one after the other with a connecting through-line. And yeah, it was purely just, let me just take these freely available assets and try and cobble together something out of them. I didn't win the competition, but I had a pretty good basis from which to make another release. And so while I was waiting for stuff for 8-Bit Adventures 2, I just put that together and put that out on Steam. And I thought I'd test out to see what happens on Steam if you use a really low price point. So it was just $2.99. And what I found is that people are much happier to pay $10 than they are $3, which was a real surprise to me.
MR: There's a name for that phenomenon which escapes me, but it's always interesting to hear where the message seems to be price up a little bit more rather than down.
JH: No, honestly, I think it says a lot that, not just in terms of production values, but 8-Bit Adventures 2 sold a heck of a lot more than 8-Bit Adventures 1, despite 8-Bit Adventures 1 being half the price. And 8-Bit Adventures 1 sold a heck of a lot more than Tales Across Time, despite being more than double. So I do think don't feel squeamish nowadays about charging a reasonable amount for your game. People associate more money with quality, I think. And so I think it's totally acceptable—just $20 USD really is probably the baseline nowadays, whereas that was a bit of a harder sell six, seven years ago.
MR: Yeah, right, okay. So Tales Across Time emerges as an opportunity based on a competition. Whilst you're already in production mode for 8-Bit Adventures 2, you're getting some of the early assets and things together. So at this point, after 8-Bit Adventures happens, Tales Across Time becomes a competition project essentially. And then you polish it, release it at a cheaper price point because it's a smaller experience. And this was all something to do essentially in downtime, whilst things are starting to be made for 8-Bit Adventures 2, or whilst you're waiting.
JH: It's not exactly downtime, it's more that my role was different. I wasn't doing any game development as such during that time. I was doing documentation and liaising with the artist and the composer and the programmer and all that, trying to get systems and assets foundationally built. So obviously that's not necessarily as time-consuming as full-on game development. It seemed a good opportunity to squeeze something in there and just do a little experiment.
MR: Awesome. Yeah, because it was one of those things. When I looked at the timeline of things that you've done as Critical Games, I was curious about that. So now I know a little bit more than I did before about where that fits into things. Because when you originally shipped the new version of 8-Bit Adventures and you had the success of having it ship and be well-received, immediately your thoughts then turn to 8-Bit Adventures 2, which is where we are today. So released in 2023 and there's been additional things coming through 2024 with it shipping to consoles and being ported there, with its initial release coming out to PC and platforms via Steam and GOG. That's correct, right?
JH: That's right, yeah.
MR: The release has been happening over the last 12 months. But in terms of production, do you do 8-Bit Adventures, having had that opportunity to originally ship sparks you up at this decision point, this inflection point where perhaps you might have gone and done something different. You ship 8-Bit Adventures and now you say to yourself, okay, I've now got to make 8-Bit Adventures 2. What was the reality of what was happening when you started production on 8-Bit Adventures 2?
JH: Well, the reality was basically, okay, people really like this. If I can build on this, then maybe sales will keep going up and we'll get more attention and all that. And so I designed the game, essentially. I wrote up a very detailed design document. I broke down what's going to happen from beginning to end, which mostly stayed intact. And I hadn't really done that before. I hadn't really planned everything out ahead of time. But knowing this time I was working with an artist on every aspect of a project and working with a programmer on the systems and all that, I knew I needed to have a detailed plan. So that's where that kicks off. My naivety, once again, kind of comes through at the time because I made this revamped version of 8-Bit Adventures 1 in eight months, and I made the original in six months. So I can make a much bigger, better sequel in two years.
MR: Of course.
JH: Of course. And obviously it ended up taking seven years to get it out, which is...
MR: You can't not mention COVID through that—both positively and negatively. So on one side, a lot of the world stopped for a moment, and there were a lot of people looking inside, thinking about the direction they're going and changing careers and things. But it's hard to know how long a piece of art is going to take to make. You start out with your best assumptions about it. But what I guess I'm trying to say is you might think two years, but a lot happened in that seven years, right?
JH: Oh, absolutely. And obviously, yeah, I did Tales Across Time in 2016, so there's a little bit of leeway on that first year. But just in general, yeah, it was a very long development. I designed a really big game. A game that was just too big really for what it needed to be and too ambitious in some ways.
MR: Perfect size for something paying homage to such a great genre of JRPG. That era still remains fantastic. I say this because I'm replaying through Chrono Trigger for my annual playthrough at the moment. So the fact that you've got 30 to 40 hours, airships, and a whole bunch of other things... Now it's, I think it's kind of what it has to be, right? In a way you can cut it down, but that's not what you wanted to make.
“I tend to now describe [8-Bit Adventures 2] as a story-rich pixel art tribute to the golden age of JRPGs.”
JH: I think here's the thing though: if you actually look at Chrono Trigger from a zoomed-out perspective, that's actually a really efficient short JRPG. That is 20 hours essentially—you can do everything in 20 hours in that game. It depends on if you know what you're doing. The early game is a bit cryptic in general. I think that probably is the sweet spot for what you're able to do ina reasonable length development. Whereas I've hit the scale of a PS1 JRPG, where the team size was getting a little bigger and the budgets were getting a little bigger. Just in terms of scale, we don't have CG cinematics that cost $10 million or anything like that. But just in general, on a scale level, I think we are hitting that later era where you have much larger teams and you do have these really bolder visions. But even Chrono Trigger... Actually the team size was a bit of a bump up from some of the things that Squaresoft and Enix had done prior.
MR: Absolutely. And they had that all-star cast as well who had some great experience across multiple mediums, different games and types. Just having Toriyama-san involved in the art and the design... I think it stands alone. But I digress. This isn't a chat about Chrono Trigger though! The DNA of that game is clearly in the lineage of Critical Games.
JH: 100%.
MR: Yeah, and I think you call that out in a lot of different places, but you can just see it when you play it. And not from a derivative point of view. It's just that you can't not be inspired if you love that genre because it stands alone.
JH: It's the game design bible, I think, for JRPGs. Right. It is the pinnacle example.
MR: And I think you described it really well by saying it is that perfect sweet spot. The 30 to 40 hours, I think is very heavily influenced, as you say, by that PS1 era of games—probably spearheaded by Final Fantasy 7, amongst others. But there was definitely this sense of longer games. And now you get to the point where sometimes it's not bloat. Still, I look at games that say 90 hours, 120 hours or whatever. And that's a real detractor to me these days. I want something that's a more contained experience that values my time, which was not something...
JH: It has to be bloat at that point. There has to be some degree of it. Even if it's just random battles or if it's just a lot of...
MR: You're keeping me longer. Yeah. To try and sell me something at some point. Because I don't know that there's any point in capturing my attention any longer if we're just if there's filler, that's not a great point to filler. To come back to 8-Bit Adventures because it's all killer. There's no filler.
JH: Yeah, that's kind of a lesson I took from Chrono Trigger—was try and get the pacing right.
MR: Yeah, absolutely.
JH: If you can do that, I think that really just elevates any experience because you don't feel your time is being wasted. Your memories are all of the high points.
MR: I've been playing the game. I picked it up on PS5. Before I go there, for anybody listening to this version of the interview now or in the future, when you think about 8-Bit Adventures 2, how do you describe it? What's the elevator pitch for everybody for the game? They'll be able to see a lot of this stuff in Adventure Calls—we'll link to other things from there. But when you think about it, how do you describe the game?
JH: I tend to now describe it as a story-rich pixel art tribute to the golden age of JRPGs. So for me that really means relatable characters, a sincere heartfelt story, a vast map to explore—usually via airship and other vehicles. All those sorts of things! Like a sense of adventure and purpose and an experience that leaves you feeling satisfied at the end. That's really what that classic era of JRPGs does for me and really means to me. And turn-based combat as well. Really strategic turn-based combat with a bunch of party members that you control. Those are the pillars.
MR: And it's obviously this natural evolution from—if we circle back to your initial trying to make something really high-scope, a large scope back in, looking at Unreal, coming back to something that you love, then having modest success with 8-Bit Adventures and then you are able to now look at 8-Bit Adventures 2. And in a lot of ways I think I described before, like it seems the work of someone who's trying to craft their dream game. The love for it and the detail comes through. And I'll give you an example. There's a thoughtfulness to the game and the design. And I can give you two examples. So one is at the start of the game you're going through some caves and tunnels in this sandy tundra kind of area, there's a sandstorm coming across. And you go in, you go through one of the tunnels. And one of the things I noticed was when you leave that and you come outside the door, I noticed that you guys had taken the time to draw the light in from the door. So obviously outside—most other games including Chrono Trigger, with a couple of exceptions where you're on the bottom part of the screen and you're just... It's a door and you're exiting the door. Wouldn't have taken the time to just put in that extra bit of color. It matches the palette for the stuff outside. And I thought that was really great attention to detail that you know there's going to be light outside whilst it's a dark cave or ruin. We're going to cast the light on the inside. You could have just skipped past that and just painted it with the plain texture of the ground. Right. So that was something that stood out. And also full credit to that.
JH: Is Jerome Fahey, our artist. So he's in Newcastle. He's great. Yeah, he doesn't miss any detail.
MR: It speaks to the bringing together of the talent too. And the other piece was it's a small feature, but I really appreciated it, was when you name the three archetypal heroes—the warrior, the thief/hero, and then the mage. It's great when you come out into the courtyard afterwards and you have the opportunity to correct your answers to the test because there's that sense of... I just thought that was really thoughtful that maybe someone didn't realize why they were naming the characters or that it was important. And then you've given them that opportunity to go, oh, man, I kind of screwed up my answer to the test. But it also fits in the fiction because you've just done the test. Those two things really stood out to me early in the game.
JH: Thank you. I'll be honest. That was actually an addition to the console versions—a later update. Because a few people were asking, "Can I change my names? I kind of put in something stupid... I didn't expect the game to be serious."
MR: It's a thing you used to do when you're a kid playing those games. It'd be whatever the cool character that you liked at the time, and then you're stuck with it for 20, 30, 40 hours. That's a response to player feedback.
JH: I incorporated a lot of things from player feedback. Pretty much every update since 2023 has been in response to something that players have said. So tried to be really alert to that.
MR: Talk to me about getting it to console. I know you partnered with a great team to get there. For someone as a collector, from day one when you started looking at 8-Bit Adventures 2, did you think it's definitely going to go to console? Tell me about that journey.
JH: No, I never thought that would be the case. When I started, the landscape was PS4, Xbox One. There wasn't really a way to get RPG Maker games running on there because 8-Bit Adventures 2 was made in RPG Maker MV.
MR: Right.
JH: That was a complete overhaul for the RPG Maker series and everything ran on JavaScript. And the major issue was basically that the consoles didn't really talk to JavaScript, so there was no straightforward way just to port it over. So I never really thought it would happen. I thought that mobile was a possibility. So I was thinking in that direction, but not that I really took any precautions to actually think about that because my game is 4:3, which is a nightmare for 16:9. But that was obviously where I was thinking at the start. But I can't remember exactly when it was. I guess it was maybe 2021, maybe 2020. I saw a post on Twitter from Radalaka Games about how they were working on RPG Maker console porting technology. And so I immediately got in touch and tried to organize a deal with them and get it all set up for consoles. But I was only thinking Switch. The way that they work is if they port it, if they port to one thing, they port to everything. So there's not really any point in limiting the number of platforms. So yeah, just all of a sudden it was, okay, we're coming to everything. And yeah, that was a long process. There was a lot of work involved because obviously I had to finish the game and then they had to start trying to port it. I know they had a bit of trouble with the RPG Maker porting tech in general for a while, and so that delayed everything a bit. But in the end they got builds running for every platform and so then I had to take those builds and test them out and tell them what wasn't working and what wasn't as it should be. Because obviously I'm the only one that really knew exactly how things should look and perform. So we did that process for a while and it ended up I had to do quite a bit of work on optimization as well, just because the Switch version was running pretty rough. When you got out onto the world map, it was just the game went down to something like six, seven or eight frames per second. It was because it was a huge map! Tons of different things running in the background all the time. You can cross it pretty quickly with the airship. So yeah, with the level of optimization of having to run the game in this... I can't remember the exact terminology for it. But you're running the game in a way that it's reading the JavaScript and converting it in realtime into something readable for the Switch. And then on top of that, of course, you've got the limited power of the system itself. And so you have to figure out the right way to optimize it. So I had to cut out a ton of different background processes and try and streamline them, and we had to optimize some of the games' plugins and code and all sorts of different things to try and get it running. So that was a really intense month and a half where it was just optimize round the clock to get it ready for when it was supposed to come out. But yeah, we got it.
MR: When you reflect on 8-Bit Adventures 2, what was the hardest part about the entire project? You're coming into the eighth year of development.
JH: It's been nine, ultimately, just about...
MR: That's a long time for a person to work on a single project. Were there any points that you thought of scrapping the project, giving up? And what was the hardest part?
JH: I'm too stubborn to give up. But it was hard, right? There were times where it just felt like it would never be over. I've taken way too long. There's no way I'm ever going to make enough money out of it to justify that time investment, all these different things. And obviously, while COVID was really good in some ways—I managed to get into an IGN stream for Gamescom, which was huge for the game—that was really good. But then as COVID dragged on, I'm literally doing nothing but sitting on my computer, working the entire cycle of the lockdowns. It definitely got a bit oppressive. And I would never recommend that anyone spend this length of time on a game. I have really come to the conclusion that Squaresoft had it right. They had a mandate that you could only spend two years working on a game. So make games that will fit the production of two-year time frames. I think that's probably the right approach in retrospect. To do that though, you have to understand scoping. You have to understand how long everything in a game is going to take to make. And the only real way to understand that is to make a bunch of games and get that experience. So you can then predict how long different tasks and different assets and all that are going to take for the project. I've definitely come out of it with a very different perspective than when I went in.
MR: What would you have done different in terms of 8-Bit Adventures 2's production timeline? Now that you're the most qualified person to continue to work on that title now that it's shipped, what would you do differently?
JH: It's a hard question, right? Because if I do anything differently, the game doesn't kind of end up being what it is. I could do things much more efficiently, I could do things faster. I probably, yeah, it's hard to say. There's probably things you could cut without a huge impact on the game. But at the same time, I feel that kind of detracts from the point of a project which is to be this big full-scale classic JRPG. So it really is hard to say. Obviously there's those little mistakes or little things where I understand how to use the engine better as I go along. I think one of the things is that I made a lot of cutscenes where I just didn't bother putting in the... I didn't have the assets, but I also didn't bother putting in placeholders. I just kind of left it. So I think it probably would have been good if while I was making those cutscenes, I just put in—if I developed a placeholder system. And so I just put in placeholders so that I knew exactly where each asset had to go once I finally got those assets. Little efficiency things like that. One thing actually, the major thing I wouldn't do is basically I timed all the text in the game. So that my idea was that reflects the way that people would speak it. It gives cutscenes a bit of a modern flow, as though there was voice acting and that. So characters animate in time with different moments in the text. Some people really liked that. A lot of people hated it. And that's why we added the fast text option so that people could ignore all the waits and go through it as quickly as it can. Makes the text appear as quickly as it can. So that took a ton of time to try and get all the timings for every single text box correct. I'd cut that now because, even though some people are fans of that, if it's not for everyone it's not really worth putting in that amount of time.
MR: Yeah. When you think about the effort for the feature—I guess, bang for time buck—only in hindsight, mind you, because I guess you couldn't have known that necessarily until you've implemented it. But it's something that you feel that you might have cut from the game if you had the benefit of that hindsight.
JH: Yeah, I think it wasn't really something that had come up from the demo or anything. So I didn't get any red flags early on because I did a demo back in 2017, I think it was. And got a lot of early feedback, which was helpful. But I don't think that was particularly brought up, so... Just one of those things where it's like, okay, I see where I was going. That was a cool idea, but the audience has spoken. Let's not waste time on that in future.
“The game isn’t real until I can hold it in my hands...”
MR: Let's talk about Limited Run. Leading from the opportunity to get to consoles... It was one of those things where it's probably a dream to have happen as a collector, but because of the technology, it wasn't a foregone conclusion that was going to happen. It was very much, maybe mobile, maybe Switch, but that opportunity happens and it works. Does that then naturally flow into the Limited Run opportunity? And getting a physical release, how does that come about? And when did that become real?
JH: It wasn't so much natural as it was just me sending an email, starting the conversation with them. I sent a demo, they really liked the demo and saw potential in the game and so it carried on from there. Limited Run had a lot of changes because they were bought by a different parent company and all that. So I had things lined up with them early, but then it looked like that was in flux, so I wasn't really sure what was going to happen. It was only just after the console release back in October that everything finally solidified again and we were doing consoles. So it was something that I really hoped we would get. I definitely wanted to try and show that there was value and a market for this. They've been really great to work with because they know their stuff. They've done hundreds of these kinds of releases and so it's been a really easy process in some ways. My main issue is that because they require you to have all the content for the game on the cartridge or on the disc, I've had to really speed up my work on the free DLC that I've been working on. And so that's coming out now in January because that has to be done for physical release. So yeah, so it's been a bit of a rush in that way and of course I've got to get the ESRB rating done properly. So when you're a digital-only game, you can use the IARC service, which is free, and you just fill out a questionnaire and it gives you age ratings for pretty much everywhere in the world. When you're actually releasing a physical release, you have to get an age rating done by the ratings board properly, so you can't bypass the process. So that means filling out a huge questionnaire and doing a huge video which shows potentially questionable content that they want to include in their rating. So there's still a lot of work to do on that score. Limited Run takes a lot of the pressure off.
MR: In terms of those classifications, because it's interesting because often you think to yourself, Josh is going to have to ship the source code, of course, but there's all these extra things that are kind of hidden in the background when, particularly the first time you do a thing, you don't necessarily think about. With these ratings, is it something that you have to do in each region or is it really just one major region—for example, the US—that you have to comply with depending on where the game's going to ship to, or do you have to do it for every region?
JH: It literally is just that the game—physical editions—are being produced in America. That makes them an American release and it means they have to have an ESRB rating on the box. That's thankfully all we have to worry about.
MR: Reflecting on all this. There's the journey to here. 8-Bit Adventures 2 physical release is happening, coming out in 2025. Pre-orders are open now...?
JH: Yes. So they're open now until January 26th. And after that they're theoretically gone. So get it while it's there.
MR: It's in the name for folks: Limited Run. When you think back now, what's the part that you're most proud of?
JH: For me, just because I'm really passionate about writing and narrative and all that. I'm really proud of just how the story and characters ended up turning out and how the characters have connected with people. It's been really interesting that we've got a seven-character party and every player seems to have their own favorite. There hasn't been a single character that's been neglected. Someone has always shouted out every single one of those party members as their favorite. And there's been some moments where people have told me that they've gotten really emotional and they've really connected with something or a sad moment hit as intended or different things. Being able to have an emotional connection with the player and having that succeed. Have them remember the characters and remember the story and take that with them going forward—hopefully take some of the positive messages and all that from the game going forward. I'm very proud of that.
MR: That's awesome. So 8-Bit Adventures 2 ships, Limited Run release happens. What's next for you and Critical Games?
JH: Well, that's the thing. So obviously I'm trying to get this free DLC done. So that'll be January next year. Or next month? Yes. So that should be January 16th before it goes to print. And then apart from that, I've got two other currently secret projects that I'm working on.
MR: Secret projects? You say secret projects?
JH: Yes, secret projects. Which one of them? Well, I don't know. I was gonna say one of them people could probably guess, but I'm not entirely sure about that. But one of them is definitely a surprise. I don't think one of them is something that anyone will predict.
MR: Well, I'm looking forward to the announcement. If there are no announcements that are going to be made right now.
Spoiler Alert! The now ‘not so secret’ project. Well, at least one of them!
JH: You should definitely... One of the projects should definitely be announced by mid next year, I would say.
MR: Yeah. Fantastic.
JH: And it's going to be a much shorter development cycle. That's the other thing.
MR: Yeah. So I know from some of the messages I've seen from you in various places that you acknowledge with where you wanted to get to with 8-Bit Adventures 2, that it would take more than you. Whilst back at the start of your journey, it was all about doing everything yourself—programming the engine, I'm going to do the art, going to do the music—and you realize as a developer—while there's a lot of love that goes into that—but as you scale up your projects it's not really feasible if you want to achieve a larger vision. Which was definitely the case for 8-Bit Adventures 2. The people you've worked with on 8-Bit Adventures 2 share the same passion as you. What's it been like collaborating and making that leap from solo to now working in this team and pulling together to try and get this release done.
JH: So that was a huge change. Yeah, for sure. I was really lucky because I just found the best possible people to work with. Just people that were always professional, always knew their field and were happy to speak up if I was getting something wrong or if there was something about that field that I wasn't taking into account. Just, I was really fortunate. So Sebastian Cruz was the first person I started working with. He's in Chile and he did the soundtrack for the first 8-Bit Adventures game and then for the sequel—well, the updated 2015 version. He was there.
MR: He was there in the alpha nasty version.
JH: Yeah. So he's been there the whole way with me. For some reason, he has stuck with me this entire time and we're working on the next project together as well. But so that's—he just does incredible music. He learned Famitracker, which is essentially an NES sound chip emulator. He learned how to use that for his project, for 8-Bit Adventures 1. He just got better and better at using it over time. So yeah, we have a 78-song soundtrack, so he really just went all out. And then we've got Jerome Fahey. So as I said, he's in Newcastle. So it was really funny actually because when I found him I was just cold-calling DeviantArt profiles whose pixel art I liked to try and see about the game and he was the only one that responded to me and we'd worked together for I guess a year or two before I even found out that he was in Newcastle. And it's like, oh, we're in the same state.
MR: That would have made some of these meetings a lot easier.
JH: But it's just funny, right, because you've got no idea when you contact people online. Generally speaking for a long time we were all just using forum names to interact. And then there's Sofya Noor, so he was our programmer on 8-Bit Adventures 2. And he just again, just exactly knew what to do. He included all these extra features that I hadn't even thought of and just gave me the tools to be able to make the battle system do everything that it needed to do and for everything to look right in the final product. So yeah, no, I really just found the perfect people. It was literally just two of them were found on the forum, one was just contacting a DeviantArt profile. There was no introductions or networking or anything like that. It was just... Yeah, really just got lucky and found the people that could do the job. And we're passionate about it. That's the thing. I think we all have a bit of a sense of ownership over 8-Bit Adventures now.
MR: Absolutely. Yeah. And I said, I think earlier in the talk, I think that thoughtfulness and intention to detail comes through. Like the music is... It's what you expect when you look at the game, but it's great music and it's... Now the soundtrack's available on most music platforms.
JH: Yes. So you can pretty much stream it anywhere.
MR: Yeah. So obviously the music stands out immediately from the minute the title screen shows up. And then, as I mentioned before, the attention to detail with both the art and the programming, the different systems that come into place. And whilst the rename feature was a response to feedback, I thought it was incredibly thoughtful. I think in general it is a game that is grounded and inspired in a classic genre, but it's also capable of evolving. Man, the number of times I go back to older games like Phantasy Star 4... There's no run button. I am needlessly taking too long to cross this stretch of desert. It's the 2020s. It doesn't have to play like 1992.
JH: I think we want the spirit and the charm of the style without necessarily the limitations. Some of the limitations are important, but I think others—they just didn't think about that. They didn't consider that it wasn't a priority. It wasn't something that anyone else was doing. The run button was actually a piece of feedback I got for the 2017 demo.
MR: It makes such a difference.
JH: Yeah, it absolutely does. Yeah. Originally I was going to use random battles. And so the player's step count was really important. I was concerned about implementing a run system because that would make encounters happen more quickly.
MR: Ah, right. Because it was tied to the step count.
JH: Yeah. That was kind of what then led me to be, okay, I think sprinting is going to make the game better. Let's think about actually having enemies on the screen that can run into you rather than doing random battles. And so a chain reaction from that initial player feedback.
MR: That's awesome. Well, getting towards the tail end of things here. Is there anything you'd like to share with anyone about Critical Games? Where can people find you and where they can buy and pick up this labor of love, 8-Bit Adventures 2?
JH: There's criticalgames.com—there's not really much on there but that's just kind of my little profile, get in touch kind of website. In general if you just type in 8-Bit Adventures 2 into Steam, GOG, Itch.io... On the Nintendo eShop, PlayStation Store, Xbox... What is the Xbox store called? Xbox Store, Xbox Live. What is it called?
MR: Actually I think it's called the store now. I had a love-hate relationship with my Xbox Series X in the last 18 months. I think it's just the Xbox store. It doesn't have the same branding. Yeah, it had for 360 where it really felt it was a thing.
JH: Yeah. Xbox Live Arcade, XBLA. Basically just if you type in 8-Bit Adventures 2 you'll find the game. If you check out Limited Run Games you can pre-order the physical edition which, if you're a collector like I am, I highly recommend it. I'm really excited to work on the manual and get all the fun stuff in there.
MR: That's one of the cool things I noticed about the online press kit that you have. It's really cool. You guys should definitely go check out the website—I'll link it wherever this is.
JH: That's 8bitadventures2.com.
MR: Yeah, there's a cool manual that's very much in the vein of the manuals we used to get in boxed copies of games in that 8-bit, 16-bit era, which I think is something that's missing now. Whenever I pick up something from my collection I love seeing even just line art of characters. A little bit of a bio. I know that stuff's online and you can find it but it doesn't feel the same. It's just not the same.
JH: It's because it's not printed. It's not in your hand. It's not a part of it, all in one, part of your purchase. Right? The box and the manual and maybe a poster or whatever that came with it. It's all that stuff is part of what you're buying with the game—well, back in the day. So every time I open up a case now and it's just white backing with maybe some warning information printed in black on a white background or something. It's disappointing. It never quite feels the same.
MR: I know what you mean. Just a little insert with a piece of key art and a code for something—that's kind of what you get these days. It's definitely not the same thing.
JH: I will say one of the coolest things working on physical editions is we got to do brand new cover art.
MR: Which is looking really good!
JH: Thank you. Yeah, it was going back to Ryan Jampole. He did the promo art from many years ago for the game. He's a comic book artist that's worked on Sonic and Mega Man and Archie, and he's got his own series now called Taka. But he's really great at doing the '90s anime style mixed with a bit of western cartoons and animation. He really knocked it out of the park for this. It was great to be able to revisit this with him and get a new piece done.
MR: He's done such a great job. I had a bit of a poke around through his DeviantArt and I actually started reading some of Taka because I was curious about it.
JH: He's really good.
MR: You managed to, through happenstance or luck, assemble the ultimate team and create an amazing game, get it to all of the platforms and in a physical release. And you do that all here where we're from on the Central Coast, man. Kudos to you.
JH: And you can do it anywhere. This is what I told the New South Wales government and the Federal government. There's such an opportunity because indie game development can be done from anywhere. All you need is a computer and an internet connection and that's it. So I really do think it's an amazing opportunity. Trying to actually release a game, and get it noticed, and make money out of it and all that... That's a huge kettle of fish. I do think there's a lot of potential in rural areas and areas outside of the big cities for indie game development to really take off over here. So we'll see.
MR: In closing, a final question. What would be your advice to people aspiring to the same thing as you? Which is... You could have taken any path, and you might not have even taken this one. But to be an indie maker of games in 2024, whether you're currently in the process of starting, have been doing it for a while, maybe haven't achieved the success you want or aspire to more success, or you're just getting started—what advice would you give to anyone?
“When you’re starting out, really start small. I know everyone wants to make a big game, but start small. It really will help.”
JH: The first thing to say is don't stress out if you're not making it big with your first game or anything like that. I still haven't made it big. I'm still not selling anywhere near what some people think I am! Game development is really about this process of building up. Most people don't just strike it big on their first release. Oftentimes it is a long journey and process where you're building on each little success. You're getting better at making games. You're building up a fan base. There is a whole progression to it. It's always fun to think about the fact that Angry Birds was Rovio's 50th game. But just in general, my advice to people is always try and create the smallest game you can imagine—which is still obviously something that you're interested in—but just try and make the scale of that game as small as you can imagine. Then, halve that scale. And you have what is a feasible project for someone starting out, or at least a feasible project. Get it done in a short amount of time. I think when you're starting out, you just really want to be finishing as many games as possible because every time you finish a game, that is when you've really learned a lot from it. I feel like the process of finishing something and releasing it seems to teach you more than making a bunch of prototypes that never get released. I think the more you can go through the complete process of game development, the better you'll get at it. The more understanding you'll have, and the more you'll be able to plan projects that do have the right scale and the right budget. You can start really applying your creative ideas in grander ways. But when you're starting out, really start small. I know everyone wants to make a big game, but start small. It really will help.
MR: Awesome, man. I wish you every success with Critical Games and 8-Bit Adventures 2 and the upcoming releases. Thanks so much for your time.
JH: Thanks, Mike. I really appreciate you having me on, and it was great chatting with you.
Interview conducted on the Central Coast, NSW, in the year 2025 by Mike Roberts. Presented by TKFY.
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