Hello everyone! In this interview we chat with a former Durham Computer Science student, Tom Lister, who has gone on to form their own game development studio to finish up a game they started right alongside their studies!
DurJam is an active community of students interested in game development, from programming and game design to storytelling and writing music! We are all about celebrating the amazing achievements of students that you may otherwise have missed. Have a story you want to share? Please get in touch, we would love to hear from you!
Toby O’Donoghue’s questions are in bold.
Tom Lister’s responses are in plain text.
Let’s start with some fun and get to know you, what’s your favourite game ever? Why?
The Beginner’s Guide. It’s the only other game from the lead developer of The Stanley Parable, and it’s one of the few games I’ve seen that uses the format to enhance its narrative in a truly meaningful way. Honestly, I would call it the best told story I’ve ever experienced, in any medium. Only £8.50 on Steam!
What game can you just not put down right now?
Well, technically it would be Unlock: The Game. I’ve been so tied up with polishing what we’ve made and making promotional materials that I’ve barely had time for anything else… but recently I gave Balatro a go, though I beat it on my second run which spared me the addiction! About a month ago I started Animal Well, which was a much needed break. Didn’t put that one down until I finished it!
What’s a game you thought you’d dislike but ended up loving, or vice versa?
I didn’t have many expectations for Circle of Sumo: Online Rumble, but now it’s the go-to competitive game for Discord calls. I’ve nearly hit 100 matches!
Is there a particular game soundtrack that you find yourself humming or listening to regularly?
So many. Undertale was the first time I really took note of a game’s music, but Hollow Knight is my current obsession on piano – along with the unbeatable Professor Layton soundtrack, of course!
Would you rather have to use motion controls for every game or play with a one-second input lag?
Motion controls – anyone answering otherwise definitely hasn’t thought it through. Plus, it’s not a bad excuse to invest in a VR headset!
What sparked your interest in game development as a career?
I suppose I’ve always been making games in some form, from sketching board games on paper to making adventure games in PowerPoint in Year 7. My first foray into proper game development (a Year 9 course in GameMaker aside) came with Programming Black in my first year at Durham. We were given the coursework of teaching ourselves a new skill, so I called up all my friends back in London, taught myself Unity, and decided to produce the top-down shooter Jake’s Quest based on our good friend Jake O’Flynn.
It was meant to be a surprise, but he glimpsed the production Discord server and we had to convince him it wasn’t a server where we were talking about him behind his back. Never change, Jake!
Do you watch any game dev youtube videos that have inspired you? Who is your favourite creator / What is your favourite video?
The Developing series on Game Maker’s Toolkit ran alongside most of development and certainly would have inspired me, had I not already begun making Unlock: The Game! That being said, it was filled with useful advice and encouraged me to keep working on the project. Definitely a must-watch for anyone thinking of using Unity.
Please tell me about your game!
Unlock: The Game is an experience built around a simple idea: what if every feature of a game – from mechanics, to genre, to the player character’s personal traits – could be enabled or disabled in any combination?
This isn’t just a gimmick, but an integral part of the game’s puzzle design. As you encounter puzzles and obstacles in the world, you adjust your features to find clever ways of conquering them. But most importantly, you can only have so many features enabled at once!
UNLOCK: The Game’ looks like a real passion project with a lot of love and attention put into it. Where did this idea come from and how has it changed through development?
The game started as a simple Python text adventure with much looser rules and a much greater emphasis on comedy. The player would encounter a goblin in a medieval forest, and the only way to get past was to go back to the main menu and turn off the goblin – the rest of the experience grew from there.
It was quite an absurd experiment; there was a feature called ‘abrupt ending’ where the player would die in some convoluted way as soon as they turned it on. The comedic angle has definitely remained, with a ton of joke features in the latest version (which still have genuine uses!) but the concept of a ‘feature’ is now much more consistent.
‘Programmer Art’ is something all hobby game developers are all too familiar with, with indie devs often opting to simplify everything as much as possible. You on the other hand have more complete reskins and artistic styles in this game than I can count, and all of them flow and tell a story together. Did you ever worry that this would be a huge undertaking? How did you overcome this hurdle? Was there any style you considered/wanted to add but decided not to? Why?
Oh, I’ve never let common sense stand in the way of unchecked ambition. But luckily, I’ve usually had a team to support me through it. I’ve learnt a lot about 2D design over the course of this project, but I would never be able to complete the game on my own (well, not within a decade at least). The workload is distributed without much overlap, so one person focuses entirely on sprite art, one person on 3D modelling, and myself on the ASCII art and Basic 2D art style – which is pretty rudimentary.
What’s the funniest bug you have come across while working on your game?
I sent my younger cousin a copy of the game for playtesting. He got the hang of it quite quickly – so quickly, in fact, that he sent a screenshot in which he had somehow managed to accumulate so much money that the integer value wrapped back around to negative 1.037 billion. I was extremely confused, as the old man character who offers to double your money can only return 30 coins at the most. When I opened the code to take a look, I saw a note reading ‘remember to implement the wager limit!!!’ and quickly sent new copies to the five other people who were playtesting.
I loved your game’s trailer! Marketing and promotion is yet another skill indie developers need to develop which you may not think about beforehand. Especially with your campaign, you need to make these as engaging as possible. How did you learn these skills? Do you think it has been worth it? Does it sometimes feel like they take time away from development that you wish it didn’t?
Oddly enough, I’d consider myself an amateur filmmaker first and a game designer second. I’ve been making movies for as long as I can remember, and got a lot of production and editing experience when I helped produce the feature film ZIPWHARF last year. The editing room is my favourite place to be, and I think I’ve learned a lot of lessons about trimming the fat and keeping the viewers’ attention.
When it comes to crowdfunding, editing is probably the most useful skill you can have aside from game development itself. That is, unless you can afford to outsource it! The trailer is the first time most people will encounter your game, so it’s extremely important to get right. For us, it hasn’t really taken away from development time, because we won’t be continuing to build the game until we hit our crowdfunding goal, but the more sensible thing would have been to prepare all the marketing material in advance. Take notes!
Seeing your LinkedIn Post promoting your 2 years of game progress was a real eye opener for me, we had been in the same CS classes for 3 years and yet I had no idea! DurJam is all about sharing these amazing stories so people like myself may have found out about someone else doing something they love sooner. How did you find working on your game while studying?
Did the game start as a fun side project? Did you always think/hope it could become something bigger?
Mostly impossible when it came to third year! I started work on the game when I got COVID at the end of first year, and was stuck in my room for a week. Since then, I worked on the game whenever I could find time, mostly over summer or during term breaks, and started to take development as a career path seriously when I completed my final exams. At that point, I realised I’d need a budget in order to see this (massively overambitious!) project through to completion.
Game development requires so many different hats (programming, art skills, design, player psychology, audio mixing, a fun idea, etc) Which of these is your favourite? Least favourite? How have you tried to balance which of these you learn yourself VS. asking for help?
Programming is the part I will fixate on for a dozen hours at a time, getting so wrapped up that I often forget to eat. Though it’s easiest to get myself into a coding flow state, there’s nothing quite as satisfying as the ‘Eureka’ design moments which I can then implement and send out for playtesting and feedback. It’s the same with writing screenplays; the two are more similar than you might think!
I know many people, including myself, that have considered starting a company straight out of university and living the indie developer ‘dream’ life. What are some things you could tell yourself that maybe you wish you knew before taking the leap? Good and Bad.
Build your audience BEFORE launching your funding campaign – we’re engaged in a mad scramble to get the word out, and having a fan discord server or social media campaign beforehand would have been an excellent idea! Additionally, have something to show off – unless you can self-finance your game, your potential backers will need evidence that you can commit to your promises. A gameplay trailer is a good start, prior credits are even better, and a demo is unbeatable (we’ve got one in the works right now).
Do you have any advice would you give to students eager to start their own game development projects but unsure where to begin?
Think about what makes your idea unique: the market is extremely saturated, so even if your game is a lot of fun to play, word-of-mouth won’t spread unless there’s something which sets it apart. Make smaller, simpler projects (even ones that already exist!) if you’re in the process of teaching yourself a game engine, then take what you’ve learned to create a test demo of your dream game.
I’d love to hear anything else you want to share
Even if our project doesn’t catch your eye, browsing Kickstarter is more worth it than you’d think! Most video game campaigns (including ours) offer a copy of the game at a lower donation tier, and usually at a lower price than the final release. So you’re supporting independent developers, AND pre-ordering the game at a discount!
What are your plans for “UNLOCK: The Game” after the campaign concludes?
Two years of development with an estimated release date of February 2027. We’ve mapped out payment and work hours for every member of our team, so we’re primed and ready to spring into action! Of course, that’s only if we reach our goal – otherwise the project gets shelved. But we’re hopeful we’ll grow our audience before time runs out!
Where can we follow your progress?
We primarily post on Instagram and TikTok at @unlock.thegame, but there will also be updates on our Website.