If you’re into PC gaming, you have probably heard of Steam, a multiplayer platform developed by Valve Corporation where users can purchase and play various games online.
The genres of games available for purchase include everything from action to casual to indie. Colin Dwan, an NC State alumnus, is the owner of a company called Prologue Games that has released the first two acts of its three-act game “Knee Deep” on Steam. Act one was released in July 2015 and Act two was released in November 2015.
“Knee Deep” is a swamp noir, theater-style adventure set in the Florida town of Cypress Knee. During this game, the user makes his or her own choices that influence the game’s story.
“Knee Deep” started as an idea from Wes Platt, the writer/designer of the game. Platt knew Dwan prior to Prologue Games from work on a previous post-apocalyptic, massively multiplayer online game called “Fallen Earth,” which launched in 2009.
“I think it was 2014 when [Dwan] came to me with this idea,” Platt said. “He asked if I had any story ideas that might be applicable for a game, and I told him that I’ve been kind of noodling around with this thing about a town called ‘Cypress Knee,’ it’s full of corruption and crazy characters, so we put together a pitch deck.”
Dwan founded Prologue Games in fall 2013. He said he had been talking to his friends around that time, notably Platt, about making a game with story-driven content that is heavy on the narrative.
“[Dwan] went out to GDC in California, the game developers conference, and got funding,” Platt said. “He came to my son’s first birthday party and he said to me, ‘If I’m able to get funding, do you want to come work with me on this project,’ … I didn’t really expect anything to come of it, but I was like ‘Yeah Colin, sure, if anything comes of it, let me know,’ and lo and behold he went out and made it happen.”
Publishers and investors were able to clear funding for “Knee Deep” and building began in fall 2014, according to Dwan. He said using Steam as the platform to distribute and market the game has come with its own sets of advantages and disadvantages.
“It’s the largest platform out there,” Dwan said. “The best aspect of it is the sheer volume of customers that they have the possibility of funneling through. Some of the disadvantage is that there’s so much competition.”
Dwan said that gamers noticing “Deep Knee” is the biggest challenge of being on Steam because of the large competition.
“Participating in Steam sales helps, but just because we’re on there doesn’t mean anybody comes to our page necessarily,” Dwan said. “We have to figure out ways of getting people to click through, so building up a good marketing screen is what we’ve been focusing on for the last couple of months.”
Dwan said the team at Prologue Games is small, but the members have various skill sets and experiences to cover the different aspects of the game such as art, design, scripting, animation and programming.
“We have a designer, a couple of artists, environment, animation, programmers and then a general world builder — she’s probably the most versatile in her skills to help tie in all this content into the engine,” Dwan said.
Platt explained that their company has a few younger staff members who have just finished college, which has added to the staff diversity.
“[We have] young people right out of college, and this is their first gig,” Platt said. “And they have made really amazing work for us.”
According to Platt communication and collaboration in any team is important, especially when the team members have specialized skills that don’t overlap much with the other members.
“We’re all pretty good at talking about ideas as we go,” Platt said. “It especially improved after Act 1, because with Act 1, we did not know exactly what we were going after visually.”
“Knee Deep” gradually became very cinematic and Telltale-like, but the team wanted the game to have a signature appearance. Greater effort was put into working with a stage and adding in more theatrical elements, according to Platt.
“Once we knew what we wanted it to look like, that informed how I wrote, it informed how the artists approached the things they were designing,” Platt said. “They would come to me and say ‘well, you’re writing this, can we make that work with this,’ and everybody kind of works together, and the animators get with it, and the programmers get with it.”
Dwan said that because their team is small, impromptu meetings are sometimes initiated, which offers a more dynamic environment for feedback to be recieved immediately.
“Especially in a small team like this where we all trust each other — we can provide feedback without upsetting somebody or stepping on their toes, making them think ‘Oh, this is not done yet,’ you know, you can work together and find a way to creatively collaborate on a project,” Dwan said.
The team’s work is ongoing with “Act 3: Boomtown of Knee Deep,” releasing March 8. Adopters of the game will get “Boomtown” as a free update.
The future projects of Prologue Games are unknown, but as things wind down with the release of the final Act 3 of “Knee Deep,” Platt said there are definitely interesting possibilities on the horizons.
“Any project that we’re working on is really expected to be something that we try to make our own,” Platt said. “… So anything we do in the future I’d expect that to be the same sort of thing where maybe it’s like something you’ve played, but we’ll turn it on its head somehow. We’ll spin it in a new way.”
Dwan and his team’s game “Knee Deep” was created by his company Prologue Games. The game takes place in a town called Cypress Knee in Florida.
