JETT Squad Profile // Richard Flanagan + Dan Berry
Hello there. Tsagas scrivener Dustin Harbin here, with a fresh #squadprofile this week, focusing on two all-star JETT contributors.
Now that the JETT demo is out in the wyld here on Steam, and with the new Given Time campaign coming in early 2023, it's a great time to talk about "JETT Squad", the people who’ve contributed to this game over the last near-decade of work. They hail from all over the world, syncing up (sometimes groggily) across numerous time zones, via a mix of video calls, Slack threads, and once in a while, even a good ol’ email.
Two of the newest additions to the squad climbed aboard specifically for the Given Time campaign: Richard Flanagan and Dan Berry. One a decorated veteran of the indie games scene in Montreal, and the other a decorated veteran of the indie comics scene in the UK. I would say more, and in fact I do say more, below:
Richard Flanagan has collaborated on a number of games across the indie and AAA games landscape, but he’s probably best known for his game FRACT OSC (2014), which he not only created and designed, but handled all the sound, music systems, animation, UI, typefaces… Yeah, he’s one of those guys.
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[h3]"If you’re in ownership of functioning eyes and ears, then you owe it to yourself to play this game."
9/10 FRACT OSC review on Game Revolution[/h3]
---
FRACT OSC is a first person musical exploration game where the player is dropped into a forgotten and broken down world built on sound. As the player brings the machinery of the world back on line, they solve musical puzzles that contribute to the rich synthwave soundtrack of the world. The game stealthily teaches players how synthesizers and aspects of electronic music work, and by the end players will have unlocked their own electronic music studio.
DUSTIN HARBIN: So Richard, how did you end up working on JETT?
RICHARD FLANAGAN: Craig and I had been in each other's gamedev orbits for a while, but it wasn't until 2016-ish that we noticed some common inspirations. I think it was around that time that my wife Quynh and I played an early version of JETT, akin to a vertical slice, that captured a lot of what would come to be released eventually.
I was immediately smitten by the feeling of the game, as it captures something that (I think) both Craig and I find ourselves craving in locomotion based games; a feeling that captures the vibe of snowboarding. There are plenty of games that try to emulate actual snowboarding, but capturing that mindset of momentum, choice, risk and reward is rare.
DH: Where does the snowboarding thing come from? Are you a snowboarder yourself? Or do you just find that motion dynamic interesting in games?
RF: Snowboarding is a big deal for me and is easily the closest thing to a spiritual practice in my weird little life. For over 25 years it has given me an ever-mutable balance of freedom, escape and focus that I honestly have trouble putting into words; hence why I’ve been on the lookout for examples that capture that same feeling in games, or otherwise.
Snowboarding videogames try to simulate aspects of the snowboarding experience in a very literal way, but rarely capture the emotional context of carving a perfect line or threading the needle through a pair of (probably too narrow) snow covered spruce trees.
JETT does, and in my (ahem, expert) opinion, is one of the absolute best examples of games that capture that vibe.
DH: What was the nature of your work on the new game campaign?
RF: I joined the team in December 2021 and was lucky to serve as a sort of design-backstop on the already cohesive and impressive design achievement that was the Given Time campaign. I helped them turn a few screws, provide some external sanity checks, and help shape and tune the systems into something just a bit tighter and more inviting for folks to play within.
Aside from design stuff I also got a chance to collaborate on some mograph for the pretty dang cool opening titles of the Given Time campaign with the lovely Dan Berry. Dan is also one of those folks that wears a lot of hats and our skill sets really lined up on the opening of the game while also giving us opportunities to meddle together on a lot of other areas of Given Time.
DH: The Dan that Richard is referring to is Dan Berry, a cartoonist, educator and podcaster, among numerous other things. Rivers, a book he co-created with David Gaffney, was recently optioned to be adapted into an HBO series. Unlike Richard, who I’ve only met this year (great, would recommend), I’ve known Dan for years, as we’re both cartoonists.
DH: Dan, how in the world did you end up working, somewhat centrally, on a giant expansion to an existing game?
DB: I first met Craig back in (I think?) 2014, in a bar in Toronto. There’s a long-ish chain of events that stack up to get me there. I’d played and loved Sword & Sworcery when it came out, and was charmed, as we all were, by Jim Guthrie’s soundtrack. When I started the Make It Then Tell Everybody podcast in 2012, I wanted to use one of Jim’s songs as a theme tune and got in touch with him. He kindly said yes, and I eventually ended up making a music video for his song The Rest Is Yet To Come the following year. I was in Toronto in 2014 to exhibit at TCAF, an excellent comics festival and Jim and I arranged to meet up, and it turned out that Superbrothers guy was going to be there too! Anyway, fast forward to 2021 where Craig and I reconnected to chat on the podcast about JETT. It’s a good chat, you should take a listen. After we’d finished recording, we carried on talking and the existence of Given Time was alluded to, and I basically pitched the idea of me helping out and we went from there.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/JqHXsZ4L1QU
DH: What was the nature of your work? I was honestly surprised to find out how indispensable you quickly became to the project.
DB: I’m not sure there’s a short answer to that question. It has been really varied. On the practical side of things, I’ve been cutting trailers, editing audio, contributing some design work, and generally being a spare pair of hands. On the creative side, I’ve been working on narrative pitches, writing and editing dialogue, with some environment work and a little gameplay tuning here and there. I think as well, generally being around as a spare brain to add capacity and a second opinion to maintain focus has been pretty useful.
I was really aware that stepping into a project with established systems, style and lore meant that I had to try to work in a way that left as few of my own grubby fingerprints on it as possible. Tuning in to the unique Superbrothers aesthetic and approach and (hopefully) leaving no visible fingerprints has been very satisfying.
DH: What’s it been like collaborating with people that are in completely different time zones?
DB: Really not all that bad. I’ve been a freelancer for a few years now, so the idea of a regular schedule, or a commute, or lunch at midday is now almost entirely a thing that happens to other people. I’m based in the UK, so perhaps the time difference gave me something of an unfair advantage? As if that 5 hour head start on the day before almost anyone else woke up (apart from Patrick, in Japan of course) gave me a little extra brain-space to get myself in order? Who knows. I can’t really give the time difference much credit though, when the people I was working with made it really easy. Genuinely a delight to get to meet and work with the rest of the squad.
DH: The release of Given Time is just a few months away. What can you say about the coming campaign? Is it substantively different? Are there any parts you’re particularly proud of your contribution to?
DB: Given Time is a new campaign that asks for a slightly different style of play than The Far Shore, that’s more open and exploratory. I think that the feeling of being alone and having to be self-reliant on a distant planet is greatly magnified here.
The parts I’m most pleased with are the subtleties that I think could easily be overlooked at first glance. These are elements that we deliberated over at length–dialogue, environment, music, artwork and more–that hint at greater depth in the story and its resolution. Trying to hand the player a jigsaw puzzle instead of a photograph.
DH: It must be hard to build in nuance and subtlety in a game where the player is often having to pull off complicated flying maneuvers while reacting to the environment around them. It seems like the vibe in the new campaign is definitely more solitary and… scary? Is that the right word? How hard was it to balance gameplay and “vibes” while still typing up narrative threads?
DB: Yeah, that was at the forefront of my mind. The game has an in-built sorrow underlying it, the characters are running from their destiny and wrestling with the moral implications of their actions. This was a kind of lens that gave focus and flavor to other emotional elements, like dialogue and music. There’s a particular scene I really like later on in the game, where Caro radios in with a brief status update and she’s like “you know what? I’m actually doing okay, I’m kinda alright, feeling pretty positive overall y’know?”
And it gives this really neat moment where the facade of their training and the mission and their objectives that they’ve given up so much for fall to one side for a second. I love the depth.
Was stuff like that hard? I don’t know about hard work, but it was a lot of work. I remember Craig and I working on that particular bit of dialogue while he was in Canada and I was on a train in the middle of Denmark in the middle of the night with my internet signal dropping in and out. Stuff like that sticks in the mind!
---
Thanks very much to Richard and Dan for taking the time to talk with me. Speaking of further discussion, we're also posting short videos, dev thinking, and general vibes over at @jettxyz on Twitter. And of course you can follow Richard, Dan, and myself there as well if you feel so inclined.
Now that the JETT demo is out in the wyld here on Steam, and with the new Given Time campaign coming in early 2023, it's a great time to talk about "JETT Squad", the people who’ve contributed to this game over the last near-decade of work. They hail from all over the world, syncing up (sometimes groggily) across numerous time zones, via a mix of video calls, Slack threads, and once in a while, even a good ol’ email.
Two of the newest additions to the squad climbed aboard specifically for the Given Time campaign: Richard Flanagan and Dan Berry. One a decorated veteran of the indie games scene in Montreal, and the other a decorated veteran of the indie comics scene in the UK. I would say more, and in fact I do say more, below:
Richard Flanagan has collaborated on a number of games across the indie and AAA games landscape, but he’s probably best known for his game FRACT OSC (2014), which he not only created and designed, but handled all the sound, music systems, animation, UI, typefaces… Yeah, he’s one of those guys.
---
[h3]"If you’re in ownership of functioning eyes and ears, then you owe it to yourself to play this game."
9/10 FRACT OSC review on Game Revolution[/h3]
---
FRACT OSC is a first person musical exploration game where the player is dropped into a forgotten and broken down world built on sound. As the player brings the machinery of the world back on line, they solve musical puzzles that contribute to the rich synthwave soundtrack of the world. The game stealthily teaches players how synthesizers and aspects of electronic music work, and by the end players will have unlocked their own electronic music studio.
DUSTIN HARBIN: So Richard, how did you end up working on JETT?
RICHARD FLANAGAN: Craig and I had been in each other's gamedev orbits for a while, but it wasn't until 2016-ish that we noticed some common inspirations. I think it was around that time that my wife Quynh and I played an early version of JETT, akin to a vertical slice, that captured a lot of what would come to be released eventually.
I was immediately smitten by the feeling of the game, as it captures something that (I think) both Craig and I find ourselves craving in locomotion based games; a feeling that captures the vibe of snowboarding. There are plenty of games that try to emulate actual snowboarding, but capturing that mindset of momentum, choice, risk and reward is rare.
DH: Where does the snowboarding thing come from? Are you a snowboarder yourself? Or do you just find that motion dynamic interesting in games?
RF: Snowboarding is a big deal for me and is easily the closest thing to a spiritual practice in my weird little life. For over 25 years it has given me an ever-mutable balance of freedom, escape and focus that I honestly have trouble putting into words; hence why I’ve been on the lookout for examples that capture that same feeling in games, or otherwise.
Snowboarding videogames try to simulate aspects of the snowboarding experience in a very literal way, but rarely capture the emotional context of carving a perfect line or threading the needle through a pair of (probably too narrow) snow covered spruce trees.
JETT does, and in my (ahem, expert) opinion, is one of the absolute best examples of games that capture that vibe.
DH: What was the nature of your work on the new game campaign?
RF: I joined the team in December 2021 and was lucky to serve as a sort of design-backstop on the already cohesive and impressive design achievement that was the Given Time campaign. I helped them turn a few screws, provide some external sanity checks, and help shape and tune the systems into something just a bit tighter and more inviting for folks to play within.
Aside from design stuff I also got a chance to collaborate on some mograph for the pretty dang cool opening titles of the Given Time campaign with the lovely Dan Berry. Dan is also one of those folks that wears a lot of hats and our skill sets really lined up on the opening of the game while also giving us opportunities to meddle together on a lot of other areas of Given Time.
DH: The Dan that Richard is referring to is Dan Berry, a cartoonist, educator and podcaster, among numerous other things. Rivers, a book he co-created with David Gaffney, was recently optioned to be adapted into an HBO series. Unlike Richard, who I’ve only met this year (great, would recommend), I’ve known Dan for years, as we’re both cartoonists.
DH: Dan, how in the world did you end up working, somewhat centrally, on a giant expansion to an existing game?
DB: I first met Craig back in (I think?) 2014, in a bar in Toronto. There’s a long-ish chain of events that stack up to get me there. I’d played and loved Sword & Sworcery when it came out, and was charmed, as we all were, by Jim Guthrie’s soundtrack. When I started the Make It Then Tell Everybody podcast in 2012, I wanted to use one of Jim’s songs as a theme tune and got in touch with him. He kindly said yes, and I eventually ended up making a music video for his song The Rest Is Yet To Come the following year. I was in Toronto in 2014 to exhibit at TCAF, an excellent comics festival and Jim and I arranged to meet up, and it turned out that Superbrothers guy was going to be there too! Anyway, fast forward to 2021 where Craig and I reconnected to chat on the podcast about JETT. It’s a good chat, you should take a listen. After we’d finished recording, we carried on talking and the existence of Given Time was alluded to, and I basically pitched the idea of me helping out and we went from there.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/JqHXsZ4L1QU
DH: What was the nature of your work? I was honestly surprised to find out how indispensable you quickly became to the project.
DB: I’m not sure there’s a short answer to that question. It has been really varied. On the practical side of things, I’ve been cutting trailers, editing audio, contributing some design work, and generally being a spare pair of hands. On the creative side, I’ve been working on narrative pitches, writing and editing dialogue, with some environment work and a little gameplay tuning here and there. I think as well, generally being around as a spare brain to add capacity and a second opinion to maintain focus has been pretty useful.
I was really aware that stepping into a project with established systems, style and lore meant that I had to try to work in a way that left as few of my own grubby fingerprints on it as possible. Tuning in to the unique Superbrothers aesthetic and approach and (hopefully) leaving no visible fingerprints has been very satisfying.
DH: What’s it been like collaborating with people that are in completely different time zones?
DB: Really not all that bad. I’ve been a freelancer for a few years now, so the idea of a regular schedule, or a commute, or lunch at midday is now almost entirely a thing that happens to other people. I’m based in the UK, so perhaps the time difference gave me something of an unfair advantage? As if that 5 hour head start on the day before almost anyone else woke up (apart from Patrick, in Japan of course) gave me a little extra brain-space to get myself in order? Who knows. I can’t really give the time difference much credit though, when the people I was working with made it really easy. Genuinely a delight to get to meet and work with the rest of the squad.
DH: The release of Given Time is just a few months away. What can you say about the coming campaign? Is it substantively different? Are there any parts you’re particularly proud of your contribution to?
DB: Given Time is a new campaign that asks for a slightly different style of play than The Far Shore, that’s more open and exploratory. I think that the feeling of being alone and having to be self-reliant on a distant planet is greatly magnified here.
The parts I’m most pleased with are the subtleties that I think could easily be overlooked at first glance. These are elements that we deliberated over at length–dialogue, environment, music, artwork and more–that hint at greater depth in the story and its resolution. Trying to hand the player a jigsaw puzzle instead of a photograph.
DH: It must be hard to build in nuance and subtlety in a game where the player is often having to pull off complicated flying maneuvers while reacting to the environment around them. It seems like the vibe in the new campaign is definitely more solitary and… scary? Is that the right word? How hard was it to balance gameplay and “vibes” while still typing up narrative threads?
DB: Yeah, that was at the forefront of my mind. The game has an in-built sorrow underlying it, the characters are running from their destiny and wrestling with the moral implications of their actions. This was a kind of lens that gave focus and flavor to other emotional elements, like dialogue and music. There’s a particular scene I really like later on in the game, where Caro radios in with a brief status update and she’s like “you know what? I’m actually doing okay, I’m kinda alright, feeling pretty positive overall y’know?”
And it gives this really neat moment where the facade of their training and the mission and their objectives that they’ve given up so much for fall to one side for a second. I love the depth.
Was stuff like that hard? I don’t know about hard work, but it was a lot of work. I remember Craig and I working on that particular bit of dialogue while he was in Canada and I was on a train in the middle of Denmark in the middle of the night with my internet signal dropping in and out. Stuff like that sticks in the mind!
---
Thanks very much to Richard and Dan for taking the time to talk with me. Speaking of further discussion, we're also posting short videos, dev thinking, and general vibes over at @jettxyz on Twitter. And of course you can follow Richard, Dan, and myself there as well if you feel so inclined.