Have you ever reclined on Sam's bed before Bidds?
I haven't actually been to Sam's house before.
Really?
No never.
This is the thing, no one ever comes here
because I don't ever invite any anyone round.
You've invited yourself round.
So you've known each other for...
I don't know, ten years?
Ten years?
Yeah, it's ten years.
You've been in here eight years,
you've been making Swords of Ditto together
for three years,
you've never been here.
No. Never.
Southeast London.
A place where the Sun always shines.
The perfect inspiration for the multicolored world of Swords of Ditto.
This is Bidds.
He is One Bit Beyond
and this is where he works.
Let's go and have a look.
This is how everyone lives in London,
bathing in perpetual sunshine,
terrace open to the sky,
the twitter of sweet birds in the trees,
lush foliage...
And these fools.
This is Sam.
This is Francois. He has nothing to do with Swords of Ditto.
Why are you making The Swords of Ditto?
Why are we making The Swords of Ditto?
Is that too existential?
It's a difficult question really, I mean, we make video games
and we try to make good video games.
But why this game?
We thought we could make something that's like a roguelike
pushed as far as as it's possible for us to push it at least.
Because you know we're still only small, and we're trying to make a bigger game,
and we know that roguelike, the kind of approach, allows you to make a wider game with less content.
We still only have one level designer, but we've made a big game.
So, this is a nice pad.
Serious homestead.
Where do you work?
I work upstairs.
This is my family home, I live here with my wife and two children.
Been here for about eight years now.
Well bedded in.
Yeah we like it round here.
Here it is.
So I work in here.
Look at that, the executive master suite.
I do all the development and the programming from here,
I've got my main station.
Here on the wall we have, when we were at Gamescom...
Yes, I did that.
Yeah.
The developers stole all my artwork from the stand while I wasn't looking.
One of the references for
Swords of Ditto that you see a lot is Zelda, which feels like an obvious one.
I presume there was some Zelda going on.
There's a little bit of Zelda, most definitely.
What else had an influence on what the game turned out to be?
I'm always putting Quake in without Bidds knowing about it.
Because if you think about Doom and Quake,
you go into a room and, oh there's a big thing you can pick up,
and you get it and all the walls open up.
So looking at more modern games that we were playing at the time,
I was playing a lot of Destiny,
which you can't really see in it unless you're looking.
In a happy coincidence
François of Reigns
happens to be in the same neighborhood as Bidds of Swords of Ditto.
Nowadays we we talk about the "dadification" of games because the writers of games are
getting older
and they [become] fathers and stuff.
As you get older, I think as a man you become
more gentle
and you become more loving, especially as a father,
and that's definitely worked its way in
with things like the hugging, you know, the kind of affection that I have for my kids.
So what toys are there?
Got conkers...
So the main ones for the dungeons are the drone,
the vinyl frisbee,
the golf club, and the laser ring.
It's a fairly eclectic mix.
Yeah, so those four all have a dungeon designed around them.
I see.
We always
had the idea we were gonna do toys, and then have a dungeon for each toy,
but that is such a big undertaking for us that we had to scale it back,
and instead we chose some that were better,
that we could create more interesting puzzles with.
Like, a conker didn't have much mileage for a dungeon.
It's hard to come up with a lot of puzzles with just conkers.
Conkers is a game played in playgrounds across Britain.
And here to explain how it works is Sam.
So this is an English conker.
Francois actually has a French import conker.
And this is a onesie, so
this has won one game already.
And the idea is I'm gonna swing this and hit your conker,
and whoever's smashes first is the loser,
and if this wins it becomes a onesie because it's got no wins right now, OK?
See, that was a good strike.
Where did the name come from, Swords of Ditto, why Ditto?
It was a really long process wasn't it?
Devolver, Nigel was always keen on this word "ditto"
because of the idea of this repeating,
which is what we do, so that kind of fits with the myth
of the land and the curse that's going on.
And so we had Ditto for a while
before we managed to find the right word and right phrasing to go with that.
We're in Sam's hood
and what's interesting about this
is that these two here, Bidds and Sam, have been working on Swords of Ditto for three years?
Bidds has never ever been to Sam's house and seen where Sam works.
So this is as much of a revelation for Bidds as it is for us.
I'm excited.
We're all very excited.
I'm not excited.
You weren't invited.
I don't invite anyone round, you've invited yourselves...
Should we bust in?
I think we should bust in, come one, push him, push him.
The simple pleasures of the shared house.
Door handle socks.
Who's this?
He's from Office Space.
That's the character Peter Gibbons.
I want his state of mind.
You can tell how relaxed he is right?
Yeah, looks pretty relaxed.
So I look at that as I'm leaving and it just relaxes me.
And if it doesn't work I have an emergency version.
But what's it like actually
sleeping next to where you're making the game?
I love it.
Yeah?
Yeah, cos I wake up,
I can turn it on from my bed.
Oh, so you just lean out and...
Turn the computer on.
These pictures are a little bit dark.
Where did they come from?
I found them in a thrift store.
I like collecting pictures of old... old photos from other people's lives.
The ones that tell a story are the best ones.
So this woman obviously had it with her husband.
Scratched him out.
I don't know know who this is,
but he looks a little surprised that he's been caught with his goat.
Who knows what's going on there.
So you guys worked at Curve together, which is where you know each other from, right?
Yeah that's right.
How long ago was that now?
I started Curve
in 2005
and we were making Explodemon.
Cos you made Stealth Bastard didn't you?
I'd just come off a five year project
and I needed like a palate cleanser.
It was like a game about stealth that is a bastard to you, so I just went "Stealth Bastard".
And then I did this silly play on words: Tactical Espionage Arsehole.
And this is the whole...
This is how seriously I was taking it.
And I guess when I actually came to
start Swords of Ditto
the whole idea was actually
to design a game properly from the start to be something
rather than just to be this silly thing.
I was trying to work out, because Swords of Ditto to me looks
like a game that a much bigger team should have made.
I think we put it together knowing our own skill sets.
I mean I keep things simple.
I think that's my main strength is that I'm actually such a simple guy
that things have to be simple.
I think that's almost like how we've managed it, right,
is that we,
we didn't overcomplicate it.
We haven't had to do any really complicated procedural generation
because we don't think that stuff is really gonna suit the game,
because the game's supposed to feel human,
and it's supposed to feel like people have put it together.
Why do you have a microphone?
Is that for your daily podcast?
That's for the sound effects.
A lot of the voices in the game are actually me just
screaming, like, all the zombies.
They spit don't they, the zombies?
Oh yeah, they throw up, so I had to do vomiting.
Oh vomiting, yeah.
That wasn't a very good vomit.
Do a better vomit, come on.
I feel like a monkey.
It's like that, but I'm not even bothering now.
I'm so aggravated by your request, so I'm not even bothering.
Excellent.
I need you to tell me about the the role of Kuffs in your life.
When I was young, I used to go out drinking
and on a Friday night I'd always come back
and my older brother would always be waiting for me with a Christian Slater movie.
So this poster has just followed me around everywhere I've lived.
So it always feels like home.
In fact though, this is actually my motto.
When you have attitude
who needs experience?
That's what I live by.
There is a cocktail that seems to be becoming the Devolver cocktail
and we're going to...
We're gonna find out if Sam can effectively make one in his
compact and bijou kitchen.
This is Pilou on this picture down here.
This drink is his favorite drink.
It's a Moscow Mule, and
it's basically just vodka and ginger beer with lime.
But a very important ingredient is the...
the correct...
The copper mug.
Żubrówka.
Cheers Brian.
Bidds this is your your baby, is that fair to say, at its heart?
Yeah absolutely.
I'm the director of the company and the game,
I designed the game, and I programmed the game for the most part.
Sam did level design and he did all the audio design,
and then we have Alex Berry who's in Boston
who's our animator, and he does every animation in the game,
and we have Dave Hankin
who's the art lead I guess.
Jay does the dungeon art, the dungeon tiles and anything that goes in the dungeon.
And we have Niklas as well, who's in Malmo.
He's music.
Yeah, so he's been part-time.
He works elsewhere as well.
He works at... and he'll come in,
he'll do a concentrated burst on music and things...
He works at home, then he goes off and he works in a studio.
What are you going to do after the game's finished?
Keep working on the game.
This is it folks, it's never over.
There's loads of stuff that's not in there
that was conceived and, you know,
there's all these plans.
Can you tell us a secret?
What can you tell us about about the game that you've not told anyone before?
That is a nice secret.
You heard it here first folks.
The thing is you make it,
and it's yours while you're making it,
and then the moment that it comes out it's not yours anymore,
it belongs to the people who play it really.
They think of it what they think of it.
They judge what you made, and it's only fair.
But it'd be nice if it just never had to come to that.
Like, it could be mine forever.
One of the toys that you can arm yourselves with in The Swords of Ditto is the vinyl frisbee.
I don't think they're actually any good as weapons.
And I'm willing to put myself in physical danger to prove this.
Big mistake.
Very brave.
That's a weapon.
That could've been my leg.
That time I saw him coming.
I think we're going to have to draw a line under this.
Can we conclude from this that these are effective weapons?
Well, I think you can.
Yeah, you were scared.
I was scared. I admit it. I was scared.
You got it wrong didn't you.
I felt like I needed to prove it.
I did get it wrong, yeah, yeah.
You're right.
Good weapons, good weapons.