

TRANSCRIPT:
GameCritics.com: Hello everyone, welcome back. This is Eugene Sax for GameCritics.com coming to you again with another interview. Since we’ve been kind of on a kick for interviews here lately. One in particular, so this was a game that was brought to my attention. It was an automation game, which is not a genre I’m most familiar with in the world, but definitely the visuals and the “vibe”. Haha, that’ll make sense in a minute for this game. Kind of kind of took me, hooked me really quick and kind of wanted to get into the game a little more. And I’ve had the pleasure of being able to go ahead and interview the developer here. So, my apologies, Manik?
Unwise (Manik Bhat): Yeah, you got her super close, Manik. But I’ve heard every pronunciation under the sun that sometimes I forget how to say it. So you’re spot on.
GC: All right, perfect. So yes, Manik Bhat, thank you so much for joining me here.
Unwise: Of course. No, thanks so much for inviting me. Excited to be here.
GC: Yeah, so why don’t we get started with the easy questions? So what got you into games and what got you into gaming as like a hobby?
Unwise: Yeah, I mean I I think my earliest memories I have are sitting next to my brother, watching him play Starcraft and M.A.X.: Mechanized Assault on the PC and Descent.
GC: Mhm.
Unwise: And so I fell in love with technology and games from that point onwards, and and played a lot of genres, but I always tended to go towards strategy, RTS, simulation games. And that’s why I’ve been, you know, about the story of, Future Vibe Check. I feel like there’s been this (emergence) of Buildy Crafty automation games over the past decade, and I love that. And another big part of my love since since pretty early life has been music. And I figured how about we combine both. Yeah. And that’s really the gen… how the genesis of Future Vibe Check happened.
GC: Gotcha. Okay. Very cool. ‘Cause yeah, like I said, I haven’t been the biggest into automation games kind of myself. So I definitely after I played yours took a deep dive in kind of some of the other big names out there just so I can get a little more familiar with it myself, and it sounds like from it’s mostly just the love of those games essentially is what kind of made Future Vibe Check and your love of music it sounds like too. Do you actually have like a background in music yourself or…?
Unwise: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like my the three biggest hobbies in my life that have sustained me have been music, video games and philos… like weird esoteric eastern philosophy. So, I’m like this is kind of a love letter to a younger version of myself of like what I would love if I was playing this when I was younger. So yeah, I played music all my life. So I I I own like a bunch of instruments. Play piano, guitar. I own a dejembe, a ukulele, a sitar, a banjo, bunch of random stuff. I can only really play guitar well. I would only say that. And I wish I could sing. I’m not I wish I was a vocalist. (I) can’t, Only my mom thinks I’m a good singer.
GC: Mhm.
Unwise: …and my wife. But it’s it it’s it’s something I wish I could do. But, this has been a way to reconnect with that early part of myself because I feel like after college, I didn’t really get time to play music at all. Yeah, because there’s no one to play with and it’s I was in a really small rinky dink apartment in New York, so I had none of my instruments with me. So, this was a way to kind of reconnect with my musical past in a way.
GC: Gotcha. Yeah. I also grew up playing music as well. I only had trumpet, as far as the instrument that I actually played a lot of. Dabbled a little bit in guitar there near the end of high school, beginning of college, but I never really threw myself into it. And I kind of wish I did ’cause that would have been a good skill to have. But always have liked all kinds of different kind of music as well. So I completely get the music thing behind it. So I guess tell me what in what was the inspiration for wanting to get into game development? Was it just that love for all of these things and the thought of, hey, what can I do to put them all together or was there something else that triggered that desire?
Unwise: Yeah. Yeah, I think it was a few things. I felt like so I was at a you know a change in my career path. I’d spent a decade in healthcare startups. So I had built a healthcare startup for nearly a decade. Went through that entire journey and kind of very gratefully and luckily that journey went well. So I was kind of confronted with this path of what I want to do next. And for me the big driving force in my mind was I want to build something that a younger version of myself would have loved. And it’s like games were the answer. And it was a completely different creative direction for me to learn something new, try something new, and just combine the things that I spent most of my time with outside of work, which was games and music. So that was one big, you know, area that I wanted to explore was giving something back. The second big thing was I felt like I I I would spend so much time in these building games and crafting and automation games, but that investment never translated to the real world. Like I would build these massive factories and like it would be cool. It’d be awesome. Love those games. But I’m like, okay, music is so universal. Imagine if what you built and spent so much time investing in could be experienced in the real world and could be shared with others in the real world. And music I felt was like the closest connection point for that where I spent 50 hours making this crazy composition and factory and Future Vibe Check. Well, now I can hear it and you know, share with others. The third big thing I was really interested in was how do kind of I I’ve I’ve been a bit worried about what happens in the next 10-15 years to human creativity when it’s so easy to make stuff with AI. And I feel like most people are not going to spend time learning music theory or reading a piece of sheet music or even learning a DAH — a desktop audio workstation like others. So like imagine if there’s a new way to play with music in a new musical notation system in a game format. And that’s a big driving force for me too, which is hey now you can like visualize rhythm, you can visualize pitch, you can do all these things. So that those are the probably the three big pillars that that made me want to start this thing.
GC: Gotcha. Yeah. Very cool, and that’s very kind of obvious from the kind of design that you do it. like you have so many tools that make it very easy to kind of get into that just from starting up. It’s a little slow to start, but that could just be my lack of knowledge in the game. But…
Unwise: No, no, you’re right. I mean, like the it’s it’s so the the toughest part of this game has been tutorialization and flow.
GC: Mhm.
Unwise: …And it’s so hard to get right ’cause some players get it so quickly. Some players are like, “This is this is so handholdy. What the heck?” and trying to strike that right balance is something that I’m still trying to figure out what’s the right way to balance the some of the game design to get to the aha moment faster. So, you’re not alone there. I don’t think we’ve solved it just yet. I have another update actually coming out in a week or two that I I think gets a lot closer to what I think the ideal state is for that early game. But yeah, because it’s like it’s automation mechanics which are already a bit complicated and now there’s music on top and there’s node based composition. It’s like there’s a lot of systems and there’s a base defense system. It’s like what the heck? There’s a lot going on. So finding the right, you know, a smooth entry point is probably the toughest and and the UX and UI of all of that is the toughest challenge we face, before we move towards a release date.
GC: Yeah. Gotcha. Very cool. Yeah, I’m think like the there was a part of the tutorial that I got a little stuck on. And I was able to do some of the other stuff because in the demo you give multiple kind of… I guess tutorial missions I’ll call it that you’re able to do. But like I’m interested in kind of the design behind it. This kind of goes into my next question as far as like what went into the music and sound design for this game especially with a lot of automation. So it is about that kind of flow state. You have the place where you’re pulling the resources from. You’re then refining the resources then using those to make something else. But the kind of interesting thing about this is because it is music based and music has its own kind of tempo to it. Like you have to do it on specific beats and everything like that. So one in particular I was getting stuck on was trying to get the correct set of beats to come through. And maybe I was just trying to do something a little too… little too advanced at the moment because I had like I had two going on just like a like a one measure type of rhythm and then another one trying to do like a two and a half or something like that. So maybe it was just me doing it. But kind of tell me a little bit more about what went into kind of how you program for that because I can imagine trying to combine those two together was a bit of a bit of a tough bit of a tough thing there.
Unwise: Yeah. No, it’s it’s definitely, you know, the systems in the game and and this is like me being biased being the creator of this, but it’s like automation games in itself are tough to build because of scalability and and all the systems. And so that was kind of one big area of problem, which is how do you build all these automation systems, conveyor belts, management, crafting, all these different loops. But the the the first big layer was the procedural music system itself and getting that pretty robust. And a lot of that is is is built and not even shared with the player yet in the game because I’m just building the UI to expose some of these parameters to the player. But the procedial music system in the background allows you to like play anything and sound decently correct in the right Key, Scale, Mode… Manages chord progressions, progression rates, you know, you know, tritone substitutions. it goes pretty deep in in music theory in the background. So that was one big, you know, big piece of engineering that had to be done that I feel pretty happy about where it’s at now. Relying on a lot of powerful I I’m stepping and then using the foundation of other people who’ve built some amazing systems. So there’s a lot of open source code there. Excited to share more of the code base and and doing some random dev blogs about it as well. But then the the way we got to where we are game design wise was a lot of iteration. There are versions of the game where we first looked at how music is currently produced on a linear timeline. So we had items on belts that moved along the game map and then got played at an endpoint and everything was super linear. And the problem with that was it made it really hard for players to change music on the fly which kind of defeated the purpose of the game. So then we explored and I happened upon node-based composition systems. And what those are is basically sounds are played via a grid. And being in a game environment, you have so much opportunity to encode cool music information like pitch and rhythm visually in a game world. And it works really well with a grid. So once we started going down the path of node-based composition, it opened up a lot of doors because it played well with the spatial reasoning and logistics puzzles that already exist in these automation games where now not only are you trying to optimize your production, but the way you optimize your production is linked to the music you’re creating. And the music you’re creating is really linked to the decisions you’re making in terms of placement and your operating model in the game world. And that’s a game where you have to optimize okay, do I move these nodes here to get closer, but do I really want to do that to sacrifice maybe some the rhythm that I really want? And the goal behind all those systems is how do we maintain the efficiency loop of automation, but how do we also incentivize the subjective experience of music play and playfulness of music creativity at the same time? So that was a big big unlock from a game design perspective of layering node based, grid-based composition on top of the commonplace mechanics and automation games like crafting and belt logistics systems and and and so on and so forth. The other big one that we have which is I’m excited about is this concept of gener… karma generation rates. So, I don’t know if you’ve gotten this far yet, but in the game when you play an item, you have this loop of crafting items. The better item you create, the more reward you get, and the reward value decreases based on how many resource gatherers are kind of consuming that value from your, you know, music network. Okay.
GC: Yeah.
Unwise: The other big variable playing with is, okay, so now you have a rate of how much you’re making every measure, every minute. That rate is linked to the damage of your towers.
GC: Mhmm.
Unwise: …And so now you have this light loop, strategic loop of, okay, so I’m managing these node networks that are growing to capture resources. That sense, but now I need to be super efficient because the more efficient I am, the more damage I’m doing.
GC: Mhm.
Unwise: So there are a ton of ways to play the game. And that’s kind of the beauty of these types of automation games is you can take it at your own pace and you can beat the game and be super inefficient with a bunch of spaghetti factories everywhere or you can be really efficient. But the other big part of what we’ve been focused on is how do we flip the narrative on the head of is this game endless growth at all costs? Or maybe the answer is how do you actually achieve a balance of your production and your consumption of the resources and the music you produced. You can’t overengineer, you can’t undergener. And I’m really excited about that because it’s not just, you know, number go up for production, but it kind of reinforces some of these spiritual themes we have going on in the game of, well, maybe the answer is actually a healthy balance. Maybe the answer is, hey, we need to make sure that what we consume produces to the level we expect it to. And endless growth at all costs might not be the ultimate solution for what we’re trying to achieve, in the game, let alone the world. So, I’m pretty excited about how players interact with these systems that are all interconnected. You can’t grow and gather resources without subtracting a level of your reward resource. you can’t defend without subtracting a level of your rate. And so you have to balance all of these while you’re managing the music you want to produce and hear at the same time.
GC: Okay. Gotcha. So, and you you you set me up perfectly for my next question. Like the combat behind it. I didn’t get enough into the demo quite yet to get to the point where I could start doing combat. Like it was just introduced and I have vibe stealers around kind of messing… Well, I say messing with my stuff, but it seems like really they’re just like picking up some of the like initial resources and then just kind of walking around with them, but they aren’t necessarily like stopping anything. It’s like a very light element as far as what’s going into it. So, I mean, do do players have to interact with that combat at all or could they just let the vibe stealers kind of run rampant and still be able to get to, I guess, whatever the end state is?
Unwise: Yeah. So, we’re… like player choice is really important to me. So, at release, one, players can turn off the entire vibe stealer loop if they want. So, they have that option.
GC: Yeah.
Unwise: The second layer is the vibe stealers are never going to stop your base outright. They’re just going to mess with your production, make you slightly more inefficient. And so, you could choose to just harmonize with them and just build around them like, “Hey, you know, five stealers, go have your items. It’s fine, and you’re just chilling and I’ll just overproduce a bit more and it’s all good. Yeah. Or you can choose to actually, you know, fight them, combat them. Right now we have those, you know, vibe stealers that kind of float and they’re actually, fun fact, they’re animated based on a sine wave, which is kind of similar to the bass wave of a yeah of a synth that you’re going to you can actually make a synth in the game, which is like my favorite feature. So all a lot of the animations use sine wave fun, but anyway, so they they they steal your items, they go back. The other vibe stealer we have is a power stealer. So it goes in and actually like dis, depowers cells in your base. Okay, and then the third one we’re playing around with is one that just turns off your factories for a brief moment in time and then turns like messes with your production a bit if you have some rates going.
GC: Mhm.
Unwise: So nothing outright as in terms of I will destroy your base.
GC: Yeah.
Unwise: Right. Because I think that’s too much pressure in in kind of fights against some of the mechanics of the game. I wanted the vibes dealers to be here is one, you know, for me, I was like, I like tower defense games. Like, oh, it would be so cool if your music drives tower defense. And that was one thing I just ran with it. It’s probably the least formed version part of the game so far, but it’s like my white white whale, where I’m like, I want this to work and it’s going to work. But it just needs a lot more development and polish for it to really come to life. Sure. But that’s the idea. Here’s a light pressure mechanic for people to play with more music and and and and optimize different things. So yeah, in in a way kind of like exactly like you said, you could just harmonize with it and not really interact with it. But if you want to be the most efficient, then maybe you should. Exactly. A most efficiently like I’m going to line up in a beat of percussion right at their spawn point and right when they pop out of their spawn point, they’re just dead like that. You could do that.
GC: Yeah. Very cool. So, I guess kind of piggybacking off of that again, kind of weaving in a lot of these things together, which thank you for setting me up so perfectly for this. So, like as I’m looking into a lot of the other automation games, kind of preparing to be able to talk with you and be a little more knowledgeable about the genre and that… yeah, is there actually an end state to Future Vibe Check? Like I’m thinking in a lot of other cases like there’s the Factorios, there is your Satisfactory which I guess that kind of occupies a slightly different space by comparison because that’s I think it kind of goes on to puzzle game at least a little bit. But then like Dyson Sphere or Satisfactory or something like that. I feel as though those actually have a somewhat defined end state where Future Vibe Check it almost seems like kind of like music itself. There’s not like the music and the factory is never done. It is just abandoned. Kind of in that like creative like fine art space. Is that true or is there actually going to be like an end state that players can interact with?
Unwise: There is going to be an end state. You’re going to… So, one is you’re going to be able to there’s quite a few more unlocks that are that are planned and already built but not in the demo like effects management, reverb, echo, flanging, high pass, low pass filters, things like that. There’s more modification of synth instruments, more modification of progression and discrete melodies, sound recording, vocal recording, autotune. So there’s like a whole set of progression around that narrative of unlocking your chakras.
GC: Mhm.
Unwise: There’s a bit of a narrative. The narrative is very early right now, as you can tell. I just give a little bit of snippets of what the characters kind of feel like to get feed… honestly feedback on the alpha, what people like about the characters or don’t like about the characters.
GC: Yeah.
Unwise: Just to guide the direction of the narrative going forward. But the end state is going to be you will have your musical factory, but the vibe you’re producing does have a purpose that will be narratively explained. And at the end of the game, you’re going to have a a version of your factory unlocked that you previously could not access and a version of music theory that you previously could not access. And so one way to think about that is, you know, we’re so used to seeing music theory in the lens of there’s 12 pitches to play with and and keys and scales, but there’s other forms of music theory that have a lot more crayons in the crayon box, like 22, 23 plus pitches. And so part of the endgame is you’re powering this factory, you’re making your synths. Now you’ve unlocked all your chakras and you now have the ability to make music in a completely different way than we’re exposed to. So that’s kind of that’ll be kind of narratively explained as well, but that’s going to be kind of the end game. You’re breaking free from the confines of music theory into a new way to think about music music theory at the end game.
GC: Okay, gotcha. And that that’s good to hear because like I at least just as a personal some of the games where it is just like you just make your own fun that I kind I end up bouncing off of it eventually. Like I’ll put in like a couple hours into it, but I… I always use the analogy like I need, I treat games like I need Lego sets. Like I need a set that gives me instructions. if you just give me a big box of Legos, like I’ll build like a very symmetrical like square house, but that’s like that’s all I can go for because then it’s like okay, like where where am I going forward with this? Like I need like some type of goal if that makes sense.
Unwise: 100%. And that’s why how I think about it is like that player ’cause I’m actually more like that player too. The idea is that core mode will be here’s the progression, here are the goals to get you to point A to point B and by point B you have accomplished a lot. You’ll have a full functioning music composition with your own custom synths, your own effects. You’ll understand how they work. You’ll have an efficient way of building harmonies and you’re going to understand new forms of music theory. And then, but the players that actually like just tinkering have the creative mode where there’s no progression. And there’s actually some crazy stuff people have built.
GC: Yeah.
Unwise: In that mode that I like, there’s one person, a couple people in (the Discord)… KingofDranovis and Saronin. Shout out. And it was funny because like one of them was like I encountered a bug and I’m like oh weird. I can understand how the bug worked and I loaded their save and I see this like 60 splitters in like weird probability generation. I’m like this is like I understand why there’s a bug now. Like I did not plan for (that)… Yeah. But that stuff excites me because I I do think there’s going to be some cool stuff.
GC: Yeah. And I I do want to get back to like the the kind of community aspect of that here in a second, but I did see kind of look through some of the devlogs and that before we got started that yeah, you just introduced the like community saves where you can upload to the cloud and then someone else can then bring it down and kind of listen to the music and I think that is so appropriate for this type of style of game and I do want to come back to that in a second. Sticking with the game itself though, yeah, so we know it there’s part of your love for automation games. We know there is your love for music. Tell tell me more about the religious kind of side of it or the it it’s like a you said it was like eastern like Hinduism I believe I kind of was gathering from some of your other things or maybe a little more focused but…
Unwise: Yeah no it pulls from a lot of different things. I didn’t want to be you know overtly tied to a specific religious faith. Sure. ‘Cause I’m not that way. I I think I I pull different things that I found meaning in my life that have been useful. And and the whole idea behind that was one I feel like in an increasingly confusing world having some tentpoles of how to understand it is helpful.
GC: Mhm.
Unwise: And for me personally I found some of these the tra… some of the the concepts in these traditions from both east and west and the wisdom found there to be very helpful in maneuvering through my own life. And I always felt that gaming games didn’t really tap into that in any way, either from the artistic style or the symbology or the the narrative or the characters. So, I wanted to find a way to see how do I bring like this weird cyberpunk aesthetic and sprinkle it with some of this eastern wisdom that could be helpful or at least spark some curiosity in someone to explore more.
GC: Yeah.
Unwise: And so that’s kind of the the goal, is exposing some of these concepts, whether it be the concepts of karma or the concepts of achieving some form of enlightenment or finding ways to reduce your level of ego to maneuver through the world more effectively, without suffering. I I wanted to play with those ideas and see how can I include those because I think they are actually quite well juxtaposed to the core idea of an automation game which is growth and and so I wanted to find some level of dichotomy between growth and balance which I think is a you know common phrase used in a lot (of religions).
GC: Yeah.
Unwise: So that’s that’s kind of the for for me personally I I usually follow the philosophical tradition called Advita Vidanta which is a from a kind of an offshoot of Hinduism which is kind of a a non material view of the world. So you see more of a reflection of that specific philosophical (thought) in the game. So, it it’s kind of a it’s pulled from a lot of different things that I enjoy from these traditions and ideally by the end narrative, there’s a consistent thread of point A to point B of where you started and and where you end, and yeah, I’m curious what what you thought of the character so far. Did what what made sense to you, what didn’t make sense to you? I’m cur… curious from a player’s perspective.
GC: Yeah. And I do like I was able to get the like the ideas of that kind of balance pretty quickly and it makes sense now as far as the growth aspect that you were trying to focus on there especially with the automation ’cause of course you know you start humble beginnings you have your one belt your one resource manager your one item that then starts the music for whatever it is but then of course you you get more resources you build more you refine you make it more efficient or you you just sprawl out. But in any case, it’s still that like growth and balance at the same time because you need to make sure all the resources are constantly flowing in a way that will still power your factory. So, I did get that, like it makes sense. I’m starting to connect the dots a little bit there. I definitely love the aesthetic to it. As far as like I’m in the same vein, like I have kind of peeked at a bunch of different like world religions and that kind of stuff just from a curiosity standpoint. Yeah. And especially like thinking to your point as far as games don’t really show that off very well, like a lot of them are like edutainment games, right? Like I’m thinking of one particular like Super Noah’s Ark which is like a a Doom clone essentially but it is just just Noah going through the ark, right? And I think a lot of them kind of go into that way or they go almost the complete opposite like Saturday morning super villain essentially like I’m thinking the Bayonettas of the world where it is yes you are fighting angels or devils or something like that but they are like so over the top. But Future Vibe Check does seem a little more grounded in a way. Yeah, exactly like you said like not necessarily for one individual religion but it is very easy to understand and it is more I guess realistic is the best way to say it. Like it’s not over the top. It is just like the everyday kind of thought. As far as the characters specifically like I’m seeing in your background here DJ Otter.
Unwise: DJ Otter!
GC: Yeah, that character is great. I love DJ Otter.
Unwise: That’s awesome. God has a lot of plans for him. He see he’s a little mischievous. You got to watch out for DJ Otter. He is. He is. You never know.
GC: And and I was kind of going to a couple of different videos kind of seeing like what else you’ve talked about with other people. And I stopped pretty quickly because I’m like, “No, I just want to kind of go in this as blind as I can.” But I wanted to kind of get an idea from you as far as like so there’s the Infinite which is kind of the like omnipresent just kind of like hey just let them let them do their thing and see what comes of it. You have your that kind of black spirally like I guess character with his own gravity and that and he kind of argues a little bit with DJ Otter like where did that I’m assuming there’s some inspiration behind that as far as maybe from a religious standpoint specifically.
Unwise: Yeah absolutely. So you know the DJ otter and the Conductor…
GC: Conductor, thank you.
Unwise:…are basically yeah yeah yeah they’re basically taking the form of something from the Buddhist concept of the Bodhisattva which is basically someone who has in their own mind achieved some level of enlightenment but has chosen to stay on the material world to teach others or serve others.
GC: Mhm.
Unwise: So they haven’t reached full enlightenment Buddhahood, but kind of one step below. And I’m I’m I’m oversimplifying it, but that’s kind of a core idea.
GC: Yeah.
Unwise: And so the idea behind there is that they have a bit of an antagonizing relationship because they both reach that level through different means and both are trying to teach us something to get to the next stage. But they both have their own issues in how the other teaches us. And so they are the spiritual concept of the Bodhisattva and this is why they’re a bit of a interesting you know relationship where DJ Otter is this more childlike mischievousness, playfulness… The Conductor is this more like intellectual form formulaic, you know, individual and character and personality trait. The Infinite is kind of, you know, here’s the level of I am seeing past the observer. The Infinite is basically… The Infinite is basically the representation of what consciousness is. One of the core things I’m trying to show in the game is you as the character, and this will be shown narratively… Part of the story is showing how all of these perspectives come from one single source which is kind of reality itself. The Infinite… the Infinite plays with that.
GC: Yeah.
Unwise: And so the end goal is you… all of these characters are actually the same person, and you the player are actually the same person as well.
GC: Ok, gotcha! So… I may be oversimplifying it a bit more but it’s almost like DJ Otter represents your street smarts as far as like… “Okay, I”ve gotten to this point, but I figured out how to kind of cheat this a little bit here, well I could do it this way…
Unwise: Gamed the system, yeah.
GC: But if I do it this way I can get to the same place just a little easier. Where the conductor is a little more by the book — let’s do step one, step two, step three, in order. Do not deviate. And then the Infinite is, I guess for lack of a better term… “Ya know, I’m just vibing here. I’m just seeing everything.”
Unwise: Yeah, the Infinite is mostly like I’m laughing and taking joy at the dramatic play in front of me. And yeah, that’s a good… And Street Smarts is a good way to put it. And the Conductor’s pissed because he’s like “I worked so hard for this! DJ Otter just comes in doing whatever he wants and gets to the same point? It makes no sense!”
GC: Well perfect, yeah so let’s talk about the like community side of things there too like I said I was looking at your devlogs for that and I did just see the where you can start pushing your factories up to the cloud so that way people can then download it and they can kind of listen to your music. I definitely need to go do that to see the expansive things that are coming from that. Have you ever thought of putting in like some type of multiplayer aspect to Future Vibe Check like kind of like a jam session type of mode or something like that?
Unwise: Yeah, that’s the dream. You know, I mean like right now is, you know, ability to share. Next is going to be MIDI support in and out so people can upload MIDI files and and export MIDI files of their factories. And that’ll come with a lot of cool stuff because then it’s all the, you know, the world of MIDI in at your fingertips in the game. Yeah, and then, you know, right now, mainly due to budget and and how we’re thinking about development…
GC: Sure.
Unwise: If we cross certain wish list thresholds by end of year, I will I’m going to I’d like to pull the trigger on let’s do multiplayer in creative mode. ‘Cause I think that, you know, the idea of go with your… get into a lobby with your friends and just make music together and goof off. It’s kind of cool. Yeah, and there’s something there that I’m really excited about. Architecturally, it it it would obviously anything multiplayer is super tough. And when you put something like audio in the mix, it’s even tougher. Yeah, but I I from how we built parts of the game, totally doable. It just will take time and effort and work and and and I’m hopeful that the game will, you know, find its audience and and and get some folks to make some cool music on it and share it. If that goes well, then it’s like, okay, let’s go do multiplayer and creative mode show, which should be super exciting, but it’s not planned yet.
GC: Okay, gotcha. Because yeah, like thinking about that exactly like we just said there, like you’re optimizing putting in MIDI files so you can either upload them into Future Vibe Check and then be able to use them or even download them out from Future Vibe Check. It almost seems like this goes from being a automation game about music to then probably what is kind of your point is now also a music creation tool that you can then link up with any of the other things outside and like create music from a game and then like modify that outside something with a little more in-depth like very specific just music tools or anything like that. And that is a… like I I like my brain just opened up of like “Oh the possibilities!”
Unwise: 100%. And that’s that’s goes back to like that third pillar of the musical notation system is you know there’s other cool things I’ve done in the game where obviously the grid represents rhythm. The colors of the notes represents pitch but then like the speed of the wind represents tempo. There’s a dayight cycle that’s tied to progression. There’s other you know weird things I’m doing there to like translate music theory to visual. And I haven’t even started really marketing or showing the game off in kind of where music producers and folks live.
GC: Yeah.
Unwise: Yeah. That’s one of the big goals is getting folks from the music creation community to get in and and see what they can make in creative mode. Mostly because also, you know, most people are used to making music on here’s a track that goes from A to B. And what’s powerful about Future Vibe Check is it’s node-based composition which is completely new way to make music. You can do like probabilities of rhythms and send things to a signal emitter. So that opens up composition possibilities by a lot. And other people have done node-based music, but I have yet to see someone do node-based music with procedural systems. And so I think that’s a first and I think opens up a lot of doors for music production.
GC: Gotcha. Yeah. And kind of going off of… some of the rest of the conversation as well, like where do you think Future Vibe Check fits in the automation game space? Like so I you think of InfiniFactory or like Space Chem or something kind of more the puzzly element versus a Factorio which is definitely more heavy on the automation side. It sounds like you like you’re kind of somewhere in the middle so to speak?
Unwise: I’d say that. Yeah, I’d say so. I I say we’re somewhere in the middle. I think the the goals are here’s a more accessible automation (game). And that means everything from controller support to, you know, ease of systems. Here’s a more immediate visceral automation game where you hear what you build. Mhm. And here’s an automation game with new puzzles to solve because of the spatial reasoning with node-based music, not just conveyor belts. And I feel like those are the three ways we’re differentiating. I think there are other ways like the narrative and the aesthetics. I feel like a lot of automation games sometimes feel to me like it’s it’s always like the sci-fi base or like the kind of the the planet in the desert and I wanted to find something that’s like super colorful like maybe almost too colorful. And and like I think that’s a differentiator is like here’s a super weird narrative with weird characters and a weird art style in this genre which is usually not that you know. So yeah.
GC: Gotcha. So, to the person who either doesn’t know a lot about, automation games or initially kind of bounce off of animation games, like say they look at Factorio or something like that or Dyson Sphere and they’re just like, “Oh, no, absolutely not.” Pitch them this game and why it would be better for the casuals. Or let me rephrase that, why it would be better for casual observers or people new to the genre and why you think this would be a good fit for them to give it a shot.
Unwise: Yeah, I I say automation games have something very unique about them where your actions and decisions lead to immediate improvement. And I think music has something very universal about it where your ability to create music is is divine and everyone enjoys that. I think the problem sometimes with automation games is it’s very hard to get to point B without a lot of time and effort. And you don’t see the fruits of your labor until very late in the game. In future vibe check, you see your fruits of your labor immediately. The second you create a music item, you hear what you make. And you don’t need to know any music theory to make something sound great. And so you can experience the beauty of music while also experiencing the beauty of solving some of the math and logistics in automation games in an environment that does not ask a tremendous amount of time or a tremendous amount of optimization to get there. So that’s kind of that would be my my pitch to the casual player.
GC: Gotcha. Okay. And that especially talking with you now like that I’m definitely looking more into it and I’m going to have to keep an eye on it and make sure to give it a look on full release and see what see what all I can start doing.
Unwise: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
GC: So, any other things that you would like to let people know about before like your full release comes out? I know right now your Steam page says that it’s coming soon. Demo is still available. So, everyone go download and give it a shot. But any other special things we should be looking out for other than what you’ve already told us?
Unwise: Yeah. Yeah. No, what I want to share with others is, you know, go check out the game and and make your own vibe and share it with the community. We have a new demo out and another up out soon and then a large update in about 2 months with MIDI support. And we hope for a release sometime March of next year if all goes well with the next few months of development. So that’s kind of timeline for release. But there’s also already a ton of cool music you can make in the game right now. And please join the Discord. We take feedback super seriously and it’s an awesome community that we’re building. So, we’d love to see you there.
GC: Perfect. Sounds great. I’ll definitely have to go ahead and hop in there myself. Manik, thank you so much for taking some time to talk with me here about your game. I’m really excited, looking forward to it. For everyone else who’s taking some time to watch this, thank you so much for joining us here. As we said, definitely give the demo a look. It is currently out on Steam, definitely some big updates coming here soon. And keep an eye on the GameCritics.com channel here for more trailers, more reviews, and more future interviews coming up here soon. Again, Manik, thank you so much.
Unwise: Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.
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