Many impactful indie games have succinct elevator pitches. Undertale is the RPG where nobody has to die. Hollow Knight is a sleek, difficult metroidvania about exploring a ruined kingdom of bugs. Hades is a reverential Greek myth following the machinations of the gods packed into an engaging rogue-like. Cris Tales creative director Carlos Andres Rocha Silva said indies aren't going to compete with the graphics and technical achievements of AAA games, so "making something unique is a good selling point."
For Cris Tales, that unique idea was being able to see the past, present, and future at once, and then creating a world steeped in Colombian culture with traditional animation to explore those time periods. Silva said he loves to play with weird concepts, and is motivated by the process of experimenting and creating new ways to interact with games. However, he also acknowledges it's possible to put too much love into something, and not always with positive results. Game ZXC spoke to Silva about the process of developing Cris Tales, and what its developers learned along the way.
How Cris Tales Came To Be
Silva was the CEO of development studio Below The Game from 2008 to 2019, during which time he worked on titles like Haimrik: a "pretty weird game" about walking on top of words that summon what they describe, and another example of his drive to explore unique ways of interacting. He came up with the idea for Cris Tales in 2016, and approached Sebastian Villarreal (art director) and Yaddir Villamizar (gameplay director) to help create a prototype. Together they co-founded a small team called SYCK.
Cris Tales' prototype was finished by 2017, but Silva said they were unable to sign any partners. "Now a lot of people look at the idea and think it's great," Silva said. "But at the time it was an unproven idea, so folks were hesitant." After it garnered attention at the Game Connection conference in 2018, they partnered with publisher Modus Games. By 2019, Silva founded Dreams Uncorporated to throw more muscle at development, and a demo was ready around the same time as it was officially announced at E3's PC Gaming Show.
"I was absolutely ecstatic to be there, present it to press and others who were interested. I was very happy."
Still, it was a long and difficult road. One lesson Silva took away was that for all the benefits of being innovative to sell a unique idea, "Sometimes I was too innovative." He and his team occasionally had a hard time understanding what they were hoping to accomplish, and grandiose ambitions led to trouble down the line.
Cris Tales' Art and Programming Challenges
Though Dreams Uncorporated got help from friends at other studios in Costa Rica and Mexico, as well as individuals like former Bethesda designer Mark Nelson to shape Cris Tales' characters, only 23 dedicated employees worked on the game.
Its unique art style was one of the most limiting factors for that team. "Everything that's there looks amazing, but takes a long time, and there's some stuff we couldn't use because it doesn't communicate timing well enough," Silva said. Cris Tales has an active battle system akin to Super Mario RPG, but its "natural and organic" animations can be tricky to time button presses for. The animation style also limited how many assets could be developed without overtaxing the art team, which led to "efficient" reuse and "difficult decisions" like cutting combos for more than two characters.
Exaserbating the burdens on Cris Tales' art team was its core conceit: Designing three versions of every NPC, enemy, and environment. However, it goes further than that. Choices Crisbell makes impact the future, which means there are different variants. On top of that, "We were dumb enough to try and make all unique NPCs - no one does that! Why did we do it? We really enjoyed it, but it was probably overkill and would have saved us a lot of time."
Troubles for the art team also rolled downhill to programmers, who had to assemble these assets and ensure every choice a player makes leads to the correct outcome. Not only that, they had to ensure enemies made appropriate actions based on what time period they were in, and that events players can witness in towns across various times did not overlap. Furthermore, Cris Tales' multiplatform releases were all developed simultaneously, so quality assurance (QA) caught a lot of issues, but not all.
"I think there's an inevitable part of making a 30-hour game, trying to take everything into account that could happen, where you can't anticipate people playing in so many different ways. We tried to do as much as we could, but people encountered a lot of stuff we'd never seen."
Working From Home, Staying Motivated
Outside the constraints set by Cris Tales' own ambitions, Dreams Uncorporated ran into the same roadblock as everyone in 2020: The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Its team is still working from home, which "took a toll on us and our development" at the start. Cris Tales was delayed last year, which gave the developer time to add and clean up more content where they could.
The uncertainty of the pandemic left people anxious and scared, which Silva said made it harder to keep himself and his team motivated after pouring so much of themselves into a difficult project. Luckily, even though they lost the chance to see live reactions at events like PAX, the team was able to look forward to finishing an anticipated game, which felt like more of an accomplishment. "It helped us get excited and motivated seeing that this was something the world was expecting."
Cris Tales is Still Adapting to Feedback
The Cris Tales team is continually encouraged by the "incredible energy" of its active Discord, articles written in numerous languages around the world, and quirky responses like physical mail Silva received asking if the android JKR-721 was inspired by the 1960s manga Cyborg 009. However, the game had a lukewarm reception at launch. As of this writing it has a "Mixed" aggregate of 184 reviews on Steam, and a Metacritic score of 73 on PC using 27 critic reviews.
The more harsh feedback is "hard to deal with," Silva said, and ranged from players running into issues QA missed because of its multiplatform development to things their team "may never have realized." For example, shop prices being too high, Matias walking too slowly for some, or its reliance on a "classic" system of saving at specific places. The team has taken this feedback into account and is releasing patches, hoping people have a better experience so they can walk away happier. "We still want to inspire ourselves from great things in the past, but learn more from how decades of game development have gotten rid of a lot of that."
Silva said even the most harsh reviews say Cris Tales a good game with flaws. After they finish improving upon it, the team will take a break to explore and experiment with new ideas, but are planning to come back with another undetermined project to see, "What are we capable of building next?" They'll be taking what they learned from this experience into account, and incorporating new ideas such as greater accessibility options inspired by games like Ikenfell for players who just want to enjoy the experience.
"Game development is hard and takes a toll on you, your body, and your mental state. It helps when you have random strangers around the world getting excited about something you're creating."
Cris Tales is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
