Think about a recreation that is perhaps described as the other of Half-Life 2, Left 4 Lifeless or Counter-Strike: International Offensive. These are first-person shooters set in wartorn, post-apocalyptic cities, so their inverse is perhaps a third-person recreation with no weapons in any respect, set in a heat, buzzing metropolis of pleasant characters, possibly starring an lovable cat. Weirdly, the end result might look lots like Little Kitty, Large Metropolis, the primary challenge from former Valve designer Matt T. Wooden.
In practically 17 years at Valve, Wooden helped construct and ship the corporate’s most notable titles, together with Left 4 Lifeless, Left 4 Lifeless 2, Portal 2, CS:GO and each episodes of Half-Life 2. He was a founding member of the CS:GO challenge and labored on that sequence for six years; he was pivotal in crafting Portal 2’s co-op mode, and he created choreography and fight scenes in Half-Life and Left 4 Lifeless. Stage design was one among his specialties.
Wooden left Valve in mid-2019, and right this moment he’s the pinnacle of his personal recreation growth firm in Seattle, Washington, Double Dagger Studio. He didn’t plan on beginning his personal studio post-Valve, and he actually didn’t assume he’d be constructing and self-publishing a recreation about an lovable cat. However, he’s, and it is known as Little Kitty, Large Metropolis.
“It truly is extra about cozy exploration,” Wooden instructed Engadget. “The sport has facets of platforming, nevertheless it’s very gentle platforming. It is extra about exploring vertically, and exploring nooks and crannies. I’ve performed numerous issues all through my profession, however one of many issues I spent numerous time doing was stage design in video video games, so I’ve numerous private curiosity in creating areas that really feel enjoyable to discover, to form of poke round in.”
Little Kitty, Large Metropolis has Saturday-morning-cartoon vibes, with hand-animated scenes and a clear, pleasant artwork fashion. The primary character, Kitty, has broad inexperienced eyes, inky fur and batlike ears, and so they’re on a mission to search out their method residence to an house advanced within the heart of a bustling downtown. Nevertheless, procrastination is extremely inspired. Little Kitty, Large Metropolis is an open-world recreation full of lovable animals to befriend, folks to pester, quests to finish and hats to put on.
The hats are embellished bonnets that are available varied kinds, together with a fish head, a half-shucked corn cob, little satan ears, a cowboy state of affairs, a hedgehog and even some root greens. Kitty’s face endearingly pokes by the middle of every hat, and they are often geared up at will all through the sport. Except for just a few distinctive circumstances, there aren’t any stats hooked up to the hats — carrying the ladybug head doesn’t grant Kitty motion pace, and the development hat doesn’t add bonus armor. Principally, they exist to be cute.
“As a recreation designer, you sort of sit down and go, what’s the function of this factor that you simply’re doing?” Wooden mentioned. “You at all times want a operate, a function, a cause for doing the factor. I believe 10 years in the past, I might have mentioned, OK, hats are gonna provide you with this capacity, or, like, there’s going to be all of this gameplay tied to all these items. And whereas that’s true for some issues concerning the hats, largely, they’re beauty. It was refreshing to come back to that conclusion to say, no, these are only for enjoyable.”
Double Dagger Studio
Wooden’s lengthy historical past at Valve contextualizes his present position because the founding father of an impartial studio, and his years contained in the insular firm have helped form his method to recreation design.
Valve is a singular behemoth, even within the AAA area. It owns Steam, which capabilities as a bottomless financial institution; it’s a personal firm, so it doesn’t have shareholders to appease; and it’s the steward of iconic franchises together with Portal, Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Left 4 Lifeless, Crew Fortress and Dota 2 (a lot of that are on Wooden’s résumé).
“Valve will not be a typical giant recreation studio,” Wooden mentioned. “You’ve gotten numerous autonomy and freedom to do issues there. However, you continue to form of reside inside that course that Valve goes in.”
Valve’s inner construction has lengthy been the topic of fable and legend amongst online game followers, with the corporate’s founder Gabe Newell within the position of messiah and the Valve Handbook for New Staff as its sacred textual content. The handbook made its method on-line in 2012 and went viral for its Libertarian-inspired company beliefs — it outlined a flat hierarchy at Valve, suggesting staff had the power to handle themselves and work on their dream tasks at any given time. This cemented Valve’s status as an ultra-rad, super-cool online game firm within the public eye, and this notion persists right this moment.
In observe, this construction has resulted in an extremely wealthy firm that doesn’t produce a lot. It’s a operating joke that Valve can’t depend to 3: Half-Life 2: Episode Two and Crew Fortress 2 got here out in 2007, Left 4 Lifeless 2 got here out in 2009, and Portal 2 got here out in 2011. In 2020, Valve debuted Half-Life: Alyx, a VR recreation unique to the studio’s Index {hardware}, and after ignoring a particularly disruptive bot invasion, the corporate rolled out an replace to TF2 this summer season, largely comprising community-made maps and property. In the meantime, Steam has been printing cash whereas sustaining Valve’s deathgrip on the PC market.
Double Dagger Studio
When Wooden talks in regards to the enjoyable and freedom he feels constructing Little Kitty, Large Metropolis, he compares it with a top-down rigidity and complacent paperwork he skilled in Valve’s manufacturing line. Right here’s how he described it:
“Valve talks lots about, like, you are able to do something you need. And it is like, nicely — that is by no means true. You already know, Valve has a course and so they have a trajectory. And so, for me, it was realizing that the course that Valve was stepping into was not a spot that I needed to be long-term. As a result of I’d been there for a very long time and so they had been sitting on their laurels a little bit bit, and it is like they weren’t actually difficult themselves, taking dangers or doing something. Steam’s making some huge cash so they do not actually need to, however I used to be not OK with that. And after a few years of making an attempt to determine easy methods to handle that, I made a decision, you realize, it is necessary for me to go and make my very own selections for some time.”
Wooden made it clear that he appreciated the alternatives and stability that Valve supplied him, and total he known as it a “nice firm.” It’s straightforward to see why so many gifted recreation builders are drawn to Valve, a studio with limitless sources, a laissez-faire administration fashion and a library of prestigious IP. Working at a longtime studio additionally means there are many specialists round to test your progress and supply recommendation, and these are fail-safes that Wooden doesn’t have any longer as an impartial developer.
“That may be a bit scary,” Wooden mentioned. “Nevertheless it’s been nice. I like working with a small group targeted on a recreation the place, to us, it is completely different. To me, it is a problem.”
Double Dagger Studio
Wooden mentioned that although he probably works extra now, he additionally has extra power and fervour for his tasks than he did in his last 5 years at Valve. Little Kitty, Large Metropolis represents a litany of game-design firsts for Wooden, together with the truth that it’s a mini open world and it has zero fight. There at the moment are seven full-time group members at Double Dagger Studio, plus just a few contributors, and so they all discovered one another naturally, by Digital Age requirements — Wooden shared early concepts of Little Kitty, Large Metropolis on Twitter, and builders bought in contact.
“At first I did attain out to a few of my co-workers who had left Valve already and so they had been , however like — this was a typical theme about reaching out to individuals who used to work at Valve, is that most individuals once they go away Valve, they’re sort of performed,” Wooden mentioned.
Regardless of the present surge of indie-focused publishers like Annapurna Interactive, Devolver Digital, Personal Division, Humble, Netflix and Uncooked Fury, Wooden is self-publishing Little Kitty, Large Metropolis beneath Double Dagger Studio. That’s to not say he didn’t discover a possible partnership — he really made all of it the way in which to last contract conferences with one writer specifically, however in the long run, he turned the deal down.
“It did not make any sense,” Wooden mentioned. “As a result of what they had been in a position to do, for me, completely didn’t justify the cash that they had been gonna take. And so it was actually onerous to discover a writer that made sense. I believe that the distinction between the place I used to be in my profession, and the place somebody possibly proper out of college could be, is that I walked away from Valve with a piece of cash that I mentioned, ‘I am gonna make investments that into an organization.’ And so I did not need to depend on a writer to spend $100,000 on a yr of growth or no matter. I did have that freedom and area to say no.”
Double Dagger Studio
This yr alone, Little Kitty, Large Metropolis was introduced for Swap, it had a profitable displaying at Summer season Recreation Fest, and it’s getting some recent swag within the type of a Makeship marketing campaign providing an exceedingly cute Kitty plush and a salmon-shaped, zip-up catnip toy. The Double Dagger group is ending the sport whereas Wooden oversees all of it, no security web in sight.
After we first began speaking, Wooden described Little Kitty, Large Metropolis as one thing like Alice in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz, a recreation a few misplaced soul looking for their method residence and assembly a colourful solid of characters alongside the journey. This can be Kitty’s story, however at this stage in his profession, it feels lots like Wooden’s, too.
Little Kitty, Large Metropolis is on observe to come back out in 2024 for Swap and PC — through Steam, after all.